God's Word tells us that in this life we will have tribulation.....and persecution....and that we will be hated. Tribulation is not....flying to Hawaii only to have the airlines lose our luggage....nor is it having the water pipes break only to ruin a bathroom or a kitchen or a basement....nor is it in not getting a job that we want. Nor is it living with a Democrat party that calls good evil....(as bad as that is)....nor is it being in a Republican Party that calls evil good....(as vexing as that is.) Everyone is to have tribulation and be persecuted and be hated....but not all of us have all of these things happen to us to the same degree or in the same way....but all of us should wonder why we have not at least experienced them.
                Martyn Lloyd-Jones would explain that these things prepare us for glorification. That is a profound thought and not something that we normally would come up with on our own. There have been times in history when all of this was moot....and there are places around the world at all times when believers are suffering tribulation and persecution and hatred.
                All of this also....will be moot in due time....and that due time is soon. The church in America is the frog in the pot. The water slowly boiled and did us in. We are literally filled with idolatry....little statues and high hills and worship under trees in ancient times....but primarily entertainments today....little desires and high thoughts and vain worship under church roofs.
                If we realized.....how few are saved....if we realized this alone.....we would be shouting from the rooftops....warning our loved ones....and it would result in tribulation and persecution and hatred....but we do not realize that few are saved. We have been lied to by shepherds who over time became nothing but hirelings....who would feed the sheep enough to survive....and herd them into to the sheepfold at night....but they want nothing to do with confronting wolves....only confronting sheep telling them that the wolves are in the sheepfold.
                I'll quote John MacArthur in that in 1948....and the establishment of the state of Israel...."God put the world on notice." Time was short....and it was time to prepare. Today...God has taken home just about all of those....(on a national level....MacArthur and Sproul and just about all of them)....who warned us. Israel....the state whose miraculous beginning started all this in motion....is on the brink....boasting wildly back in September of 2023 of a coming peace....it has....or is beginning to see that the emperor has no clothes.
                 God will have a prepared church....prepared for our glorification....purified through tribulation and persecution and be hated. It is not a happy thought....but it is a medicine that heals.