Am I remembering that when someone hates me because of Christ, that it is a good sign, not bad?

18 “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. 20 Remember the words I spoke to you: 'No servant is greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21 They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me.

INSIGHT:      I hope you are being persecuted more now, than when you first started this devotional, if y0u weren’t already.  For the first 19 years of calling myself a “Christian”, I suffered very little persecution beyond sitting next to the occasional atheist on an airplane.  Ironically, the more we obey Christ, the more we will suffer persecution, from those who call themselves “Christians”, but who don’t have an actual true saving faith.  Not many professing Christians are persecuted for their faith today, because they have a very worldly life that doesn’t make them look any different from the rest of the world, hence why the world doesn’t hate them.  However, when we you lay hold of the self-denying, cross-carrying, world-hating, faith walking, Christianity that Jesus Christ lived and preached, then you can be certain that you will face persecution.  We should also remember that what most of us consider persecution is very different from what some of our brothers and sisters around the world are going through.

I read a story about our brother “Sadavir” in India, who couldn’t help telling others about the hope he had found in Jesus Christ. In January of 2015, nearly 200 people swarmed his home at 1 a.m. and forced him out.  Sadavir’s wife begged the mob not to harm her husband, but they took him and ordered her to stay and bring him food in the morning.  The next morning, Sadavir’s wife made his food and came with her husband’s mother and sister.  They traveled more than 60 km to the camp where the mob had taken him.  In front of his wife, mother, and sister, they tied Sadavir to a tree and beat his legs with bamboo sticks, shouting, “You are spoiling our culture by converting our people to Christians!” After beating him severely, they finally pulled out a trishula (a spear symbol used in Hinduism) and pierced his chest, killing him.

Ironically, 10 years after I wrote this original devotional and story, I said in a video, ‘If this were North India, these people would come to my house, drag me outside and beat me to death.”  I was referring to the “lynch mob” that gathered in the 1,600 comments under Taylor Meitzner’s “Why I stopped following Michael Chriswell” video.  Taylor had first reached out to me with desperate cries for help with her mental sanity and faith in 2017, and then again in 2019, after she got sucked into a cult.  On Feb 12, 2019, after I helped her and her friends get out of the cult, she wrote a long email to me, of which a few excerpts follow…

“Lately, after all this, I’m starting to believe that I’m actually mentally ill…. This situation has birthed so must distrust in God and questioning who He is. I don’t know what is from God and what is from Satan in this situation. Since this, I’ve done a lot of research on cults to try and figure things out and it makes Christianity seem so dark. Ethan got a dream that had “Satan is after you” written out in letters. My mind is torn apart in every direction possible, I’m struggling to believe in God and whether His guidance is real and what even is true Christianity.” 

She was so disoriented that she started to run to another counterfeit, the multi-million-dollar lifestyle John MacArthur, and the “God no longer speaks outside of the Bible” camp.  It made her feel safe, but I warned she was going from one dead extreme to another.  Soon she told me I was the one deceived because God does not speak through numbers (Job 33:14).  Then on Sept 29, 2022, after being inspired by a fool of fools (Matthew24eleven) she made the video which almost destroyed my entire ministry and got me ran out of my home.  Then she labeled me a cult leader and started rumors that I was likely starting a compound in NZ.  How ironic now are her own words to me in that 2019 email, “I don’t know what is from God and what is from Satan in this situation.” – Taylor Noelle -Meitzner  (YT:BroadcastingHisLove)

SEE RELATED CONTENT AND BELOW FOR THE FULL BACKSTORY WITH EMAILS AND RECORDINGS BETWEEN TAYLOR AND I BEFORE SHE PUT UP HER VIDEO.