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Category: Christian Social Witness

Christian Social Witness has increasingly become about SOCIAL MEDIA platforms & sharing live preaching & local Bible studies virtually. Stories in this category address 21st c. Christian issues of communication. Here’s where I need your help:
Would you email Roger@talkofJesus.com and tell us how, when & especially where you TALK to others online? Thanks for your COMMENTS & ideas. – Roger

Persevering the Social Distancing of Virtual Relationship
Letters to a Distanced Church

A quick glance at the map reveals many first century churches near the Aegean Sea, a long voyage from Jerusalem.

Believers of The Way had to depend on distant leaders to sow and nurture virtual relationships:
- to each other,
- to other churches (many in local or nearby homes)
- and to distant Shepherds of Christ like Peter and Paul.
The Apostles embraced these saints of so many distant churches with Christ’s love. They loved their flocks through letters and by occasional visits of their founding fathers (Apostles and other disciples of Jesus). Each of these mission churches had its own shepherd, sometimes a father of the household where they met.

Like the Gospels, Church Letters (Epistles) arrived by messenger or with its own pastor (Shepherd or father) returning from Jerusalem, Rome or other place where the Apostles could encourage them in Christ.

A voyage to Thessalonica from Rome or Jerusalem is about the same distance.

Pastoral letters (from the Shepherds or Church Fathers) would be read in as many of the churches along its route as practically possible.

Do you suppose that the saints of the Church in Thessaloniki suffered social distancing from their local friends, neighbors and businesses?

YES. In fact many early Christians were socially distanced from their own communities and neighbors due to threat of persecution or even death.

2 Thessalonians

from the Church Fathers of the First Century

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy,

To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is only fitting, because your faith is increasing abundantly, and the love of each and every one of you toward one another grows ever greater…

Hear Paul’s heart for them and note how these socially distanced Christians coped with a new reality much different than before.

4 As a result, we ourselves speak proudly of you among the churches of God:
- for your perseverance and faith
- in the midst of all your persecutions and afflictions which you endure.
This is a plain indication of God’s righteous judgment so that you will be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you indeed are suffering.

Commentary on a too-familiar setting
- Does this also encourage you in your social isolation from the brothers and sisters of Christ’s Church?
Picture this background from commentary of John MacArthur:

..pressure and persecution had also increased. The seeds of false doctrine concerning the Lord had been sown, and the people were behaving disorderly.

So Paul wrote to his beloved flock who were: 1) discouraged by persecution and needed incentive to persevere; 2) deceived by false teachers who confused them about the Lord’s return; and 3) disobedient to divine commands, particularly by refusing to work.

Who witnesses Christ’s love in you?

Our own 21st century community also watches us, even as the Lord Jesus assures His distant lambs held near in every era,

“In the world you have tribulation, G2347 but take courage; I have overcome the world.” – John 16:33 NASB

There’s that PRESSURE AGAIN.

COVID – the Affliction of Social Distancing – 2

Pressure from Affliction – ours and our loved ones.

Paul assures the Church of Relief & Retribution

For after all it is only just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict G2346 you, and to give relief to you who are afflicted G2346 and to us as well when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God, and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
2 Thessalonians 1:6-8 NASB

Sinners AFFLICTED — Sinners without hope as once we were.

SEPARATED by our sin, DISTANCED from the Lord God never seeking Christ Jesus, the Savior who cleanses our soul.

Afflicted by others, but also sinners spared from Judgment by the mercy of the Lord Jesus.
- COVID – Social Distancing for a time known to the Lord.
- Judgment – Just punishment separating sinners from God forever.
- COVID will end, replaced by other pandemics of the world’s sin.
- Judgment will come to the unrepentant after our mortal time expires.
These people will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power..
2 Thessalonians 1:9 NASB

Yet in Christ, our Lord and Savior, with the Presence of the Holy Spirit; even now — in these days of affliction — we draw near to the love and light which shines through the darkness of this world.

Amen.
January 8, 2021
COVID – the Affliction of Social Distancing – 2
Affliction

Our hearts in this year of our Lord 2021 still struggle with the affliction of COVID and restless crowds of displaced people displaced from work. All the world suffers a great loss of normalcy as we cry out, “HOW?”
COVID – the Affliction of Social Distancing – 1 + talk of Jesus .com

We will return to our 21st century lamentations of COVID, but now return to the 6th century B.C. question of the people of Judah:

“How?”

Previously, in case you missed part 1:

COVID – the Affliction of Social Distancing

Even though the Lord warned those with ears to hear in advance, their unexpected suffering is real.

Eicha – Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah
- 1:3 Judah has gone into exile under affliction H6040 And under harsh servitude..
- 1:7 In the days of her affliction H6040 and homelessness Jerusalem remembers all her precious things That were from the days of old..
- 1:9 She did not consider her future. Therefore she has fallen astonishingly; She has no comforter. “See, O LORD, my affliction, H6040..
Strong’s H6040 עֳנִי
- affliction, poverty, misery;
  - from H6031; depression, i.e. misery:—afflicted(-ion), trouble.
That’s it! .. with this COVID affliction of A.D. 2020, 2021 and perhaps years of a generation to come, isn’t it?

Jeremiah tells us [in Lamentations 3]:

I am the man who has seen affliction H6040
Because of the rod of His wrath..

Remember my affliction H6040 and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness.

Like Jeremiah, we ask: Does the Lord our God not hear our laments of this present affliction?

Lamentations 4 & 5

Hear this 6th c. B.C. prayer with contrition of crushed spirit and acceptance of just punishment for guilt.

Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach..
The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!
Lamentations 5:1,16 KJV

Where is our A.D. 2021 confession of sin against the Lord?

Indeed, the nations are unclean before the Lord our God.

θλῖψις – Strong’s G2347

Not that we require more synonyms for our sufferings, but the NT Greek brings with it hope of the Good News of Jesus Christ our Savior.

TRIBULATION or affliction
- a pressing, pressing together, pressure
- metaph. oppression, affliction, tribulation, distress, straits
  - From θλίβω (G2346); to press (as grapes), press hard upon
  - a compressed way; narrow straitened, contracted
  - metaph. to trouble, afflict, distress
  - Four years ago I addressed this root & persecution in Tribulation? Cheer up.
Tribulation? Cheer up.

Behold the hour is coming

This prophesy of Jesus Christ may not sound any more encouraging than the affliction of COVID or our isolation in social distancing; but you with ears to hear, listen to this metaphor of the Lord Jesus for the time ahead.

The Gospel of John

“Whenever a woman is in labor she has pain, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish G2347 because of the joy that a child has been born into the world. – John 16:21 NASB

Does the Lord’s metaphor not apply to these early pangs of pain in these last days?

Jesus continues in His metaphor of labor pain applying it personally to His own approaching Crucifixion for our sins in Jerusalem, which of course is followed by the Lord’s triumphal resurrection!

The Disciples would once again know their Lord in His risen flesh!

COVID may be one cause of our present affliction, but social distancing will not cure the condition of our dejected demeanors of heart and soul.

“Therefore you too have grief now; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you. – John 16:22 NASB

The Lord assures the Apostles that they will be ALONE.

While Jesus is isolated in death they will think that HE is ALONE. But HE is not.

Jesus will be with the Father.

“Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.
John 16:32 NASB

SCATTERED.. AND ALONE! Sure sounds like our contemporary SOCIAL DISTANCING.

“These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, G2347 but take courage; I have overcome the world.”
John 16:33 NASB – Strong’s G2347 – thlipsis: tribulation, affliction, trouble

COVID – an affliction of God’s Judgment?

Jesus and the Apostles guide the Church to the narrow path along the valley of the shadow of death.

Perhaps the time has come and is now here for Christians to witness Light into the darkness of these foreboding days of COVID’s crumbling impact on the unclean social environment of the world.
Roger Harned – talk of Jesus .com challenge to the socially distanced church of A.D. 2021

Social Media is not the world
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to be continued...
NEXT: letter to a church persevering through suffering
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January 6, 2021
COVID – the Affliction of Social Distancing
Solomon’s Jerusalem – the end of an era

Until the death of Solomon in 931 B.C., a glorious city of Jerusalem overlooked a great empire blessed by the LORD God, but then the politics of Israel divided the great land.

In just a few generations Israel (Samaria) succumbed in 722 B.C. and Judah when Jerusalem was sieged and the Temple burned in ~586 B.C.

Prophesy: Affliction Now!

אֵיכָה יָשְׁבָה בָדָד הָעִיר רַבָּתִי עָם הָיְתָה כְּאַלְמָנָה רַּבָּתִי בַגּוֹיִם שָׂרָתִי בַּמְּדִינוֹת הָיְתָה לָמַֽס׃ ס
Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah Eicha 1:1 WLC

Our Loud Cries, “HOW?”

Jerusalem falls [~586 B.C.]. Three years later the Jews and Jeremiah are forced to depart to Egypt. For forty years from (ca. 645–605 B.C.) Jeremiah had preached to Judah of the LORD’s judgment against it.

The Septuagint [Greek O.T.] introduces the crying out loud of Lamentations:

“And it came to pass, after Israel had been carried away captive…Jeremiah sat weeping [cf. 3:48, 49, etc.]…lamented…and said…”
Introduction to Eicha (Lamentations) 1 :: Septuagint (LXX)

How lonely sits the city
That was full of people!
She has become like a widow
Who was once great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the provinces
Has become a forced laborer!
Lamentations 1:1 NASB

Lamentations for the lonely cities

You may have felt that recently for a virtually empty NYC New Year’s Eve broadcast. Or perhaps the closed shops of your town caused anxiety that maybe you should where a mask in public.

What we knew as home and comfort, security and blessing — all those things have changed until God knows when.

The affliction of our hearts in this year of our Lord 2021 still struggles with COVID and countless crowds of displaced people have NO place to work. Some will be evicted from their meager subsistence in cold rooms rented from the rich princes of our darkness.

All the world suffers a great loss of normalcy as we cry out, “HOW?”

Will we find hope in our despair?

For in A.D. 2021, we feel just as lonely and afflicted as those forced from Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and also in A.D. 70, Jews and Christians into a crumbling Roman Empire.

Our journey into this unknown world of COVID doesn’t look so hopeful just now.

excerpts from Lamentations

She weeps bitterly in the night,
And her tears are on her cheeks;
She has no one to comfort her..
3 Judah has gone into exile out of affliction..

All her gates are deserted..

Her little ones have gone away
As captives led by the enemy.
6 All of her splendor
Is gone from the daughter of Zion;
Her leaders have become like deer
That have found no pasture,
And they have fled without strength
From the pursuer.

Social Distancing

Fleeing from the world’s uncleanness

It was never just the Jews fleeing Jerusalem or multi-ethnic victims of a holocaust perpetrated by a 20th century thousand-year empire who suffered affliction.

Solomon suggested that there is nothing new under the sun.

Sieges of our empty cities of our empires in the time of Assyria or Rome, the U.S. or China, and even current afflictions of our political princes and their followers or victims do not surprise Almighty God.

In every era some in all nations some will succumb to war and hunger. Souls suffering by circumstance must flee from the wrath that is to come.

A pandemic of sin forces social distancing from the love of the LORD and each other. Throughout the self-idolatrous nations of their ‘mother earth,’ a covert COVID infested world will do what is right in their own eyes.

Wail out from the depths of your soul

The funeral dirge of your affliction
For it is not only for the sins of Jerusalem
But for the afflictions of the world
Fleeing from the Lord God.
Roger@ talkofJesus.com Jan. A.D. 2021
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to be continued...

NEXT: in COVID - the Affliction of Social Distancing - part 2
we will define affliction & look to Scripture for our cure.
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January 4, 2021