CHRISTIANS, prepare for persecution. Open your eyes and choose stronger leaders for the dark days.
I am not a Christian, but I am amazed that your bishops and ministers are not warning you of what is already breaking over your heads.
How mad that Queensland’s Education Department can now warn schools against letting students praise Jesus in the playground.
The department has put out reports telling state schools “to take appropriate action if aware that students participating in (religious instruction) are evangelising to students who do not participate”.
It gives examples of what students must not say in the playground — such as “knowing about Jesus is a very important thing”, or “God, please help us to use our knowledge to help others”.
Nor may students hand out Christmas cards or decorations.
What do these bureaucrats fear from children inspired by Christ?
Is it that stuff about loving your neighbour? Or that instruction to respect the dignity of every human life that makes Christians the enemy of totalitarians?
But this ban on playground talk of Jesus is only the most shocking salvo of the new war on Christians.
Last week, two Christian preachers were summoned to Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Tribunal for preaching their faith’s stand on traditional marriage and homosexuality.
Hobart pastor Campbell Markham and street preacher David Gee, from Hobart’s Cornerstone Church, were denounced by an atheist offended by, among other things, Markham quoting a verse from the Bible.
We’ve seen this before. Hobart’s Catholic Archbishop, Julian Porteous, was two years ago ordered by this tribunal to tell by what right he spoke against same-sex marriage.
How cowed the churches have been before this looming persecution, now picking off vocal Christians, one by one.
Just this year, Sydney University’s Student Union threatened to deregister the university’s Evangelical Union unless it stopped insisting members declare their faith in Christ.
Meanwhile, same-sex marriage extremists bullied Coopers Brewery into taking down a video of a Christian MP Andrew Hastie debating same-sex marriage, and lobbied IBM, PwC and Sydney University to punish staff belonging to a Christian group opposed to gay marriage.
Last week, 70 pro-Safe Schools activists picketed a church to abuse people at an Australian Christian Lobby meeting as “bigots”.