TSIYON NEWS

From Eliyahu

 

Consider this:  

 

If you live in America, Canada or any first world country, you may have never seriously thought you might be hauled into court because of your faith. According to recent reports, that is becoming more of a real possibility in today's world than ever before. The guarantees of the U.S. Constitution have historically been seen as providing the highest degree of religious liberty. However, according to a Newsweek item of 8/5/20, entitled Religious Freedom Is Under Attack Like Never Before, those guarantees have come under growing attack, even in the United States Supreme Court. Here are the facts:

   "We have had 14 cases at the Supreme Court of the United States in only nine years defending our "first freedom." Put in the context of legal history, the numbers are truly shocking. For the first 110 years of the American republic, the U.S. Supreme Court decided only three questions concerning religious liberty. The Supreme Court's jurisprudence concerning religious freedom begins in earnest in the 1940s, and climbs off the charts from then to the present day.
   Put another way, for the first almost 100 years of our republic, there were zero cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, and 110 years passed before the high court heard a case on the First Amendment's Establishment Clause—and then not another case on either clause for another 41 years after that.
   Since 1940, litigation on religious liberty has exploded at an alarming rate in nearly every area of religious life: school prayer, legislative prayer, release time education, religious land use, distribution of religious literature, conscientious objection, wearing religious head coverings in military service, the Pledge of Allegiance, religious beard length and so forth.

   Our country has witnessed a barrage of litigation directed at the fundamental freedom of religious liberty—more than 75 cases since 1940. The numbers do not lie: It took 110 years to see three Supreme Court cases challenging religious liberty, but only 80 years to litigate more than 75 more. Religious freedom has been under increasing siege for eight decades now.

   ...We have, in our recent pandemic, lived through what many on the legal, political and cultural Left envision as religious freedom, but often downgrade to "the right to worship": stay in your homes, worship in a virtual environment and don't let your religion outside and certainly not into your workplace, lest you infect the rest of us. That has rightly chafed many Americans. They understand that religious freedom is something more: that one's duty to the Divine is not something granted by government and, therefore, not something permissibly taken by it, either.
   Rather, it is a freedom attached to our humanity. It is a right meant not merely to permit religious worship, but for it to be exercised. It is a liberty not only to hold one's convictions and conscience, but to speak about them publicly and to live them out freely."

Clearly, there is a trend in law today that could eventually see many believers dragged off to court and even put in jail simply for doing one's "duty to the Divine." 

First Amendment of the Constitution - "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

 

The religious liberty recognized by the Constitution is a hiccup of freedom in history. The historical norm is quite the opposite, with hatred and bigotry, not to mention tyranny, far more likely to rule the day. Unfortunately, that darkness is all coming back like a flood. Yeshua told us what to expect in this world, in His priestly prayer:

"I have given them your word. The world hates them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that you would take them from the world, but that you would keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, even so I have sent them into the world."  John 17:14-18

His Word and His Truth set us apart from the world, condemns the world, and for that they hate us. We are in the world as He was in the world, to shine forth His light. There is a growing satanic darkness now coming up that is changing everything. That darkness hates the light and is determined to neutralize that light, and all who walk in the light. It is a fitting time to look back at those who forged the way forward in a dark world with the light of Messiah. Paul is as good an example as we can find, to understand how to deal with the practical realities of arrest, court, and persecution. 

 

This week we are looking at Paul in court before the Roman Governor. There is a lot to learn here, so I hope you will join me for this Tsiyon Academy meeting. Join me tonight at Tsiyon.Net at 8:00 PM CST at our live online Tsiyon meeting and learn to think more like Paul, in times of trial. Surely, we all need this.

 

Blessings and good health to you!

 

Eliyahu
Tsiyon.Org

 

PS - Our Revelation video series starts next week!