A street preacher in England was recently fined for quoting Leviticus 20:13, the judge telling him that if he wanted to mention homosexuality, he needed to use a different text, while in Canada, some Christian leaders have been banned for life from addressing homosexuality. Could the same happen to us here in America?

Before you dismiss this question as outlandish and absurd, ask yourself this: If I told you just 10-15 years ago that we’d be where we are today with regard to religious freedoms, would you have believed me?

If, in the year 2000, I told you that in 2015, when one state passed a religious freedom restoration act the governors of other states would ban all non-essential, state-funded travel to that state, would that have sounded outlandish and absurd?

Would you have believed me in 2000 if I told you that:

• Christian companies would be put out of business for declining to participate in homosexual “weddings”?
• The president of the United States would call for a ban on professional counseling for minors with unwanted same-sex attraction or gender confusion, even if the parents supported that counseling?
• Army chaplains would be fired for teaching biblical morality?
• Christian colleges would be threatened with the loss of accreditation for having a sexuality standard that forbade all sexual unions outside of male-female wedlock?
• An influential New York Times columnist would say that the way for the church and LGBT community to live in peace would be for the church to remove homosexual practice from its list of sins?

We have become so accustomed to these outrageous stories, which can be multiplied almost endlessly, that we have almost lost our moral indignation over them, by which I do not mean hatred toward people but rather a deep recognition of the moral madness in which we live.

Now is the time to stand up and be counted.

Now is the time to be bold and unashamed of the gospel.

Now is the time to dig deep and say, “I will not capitulate to the culture. I will do what is right because it is right, regardless of cost or consequence.”

Some Christians think, “Well, if it ever comes to the point that we are actually banned from teaching and preaching on certain biblical themes, at that point we will take a stand.”

But to think that way is to deceive ourselves, since if we’re cowardly today in these days of minor persecution in the USA, we dare not think we’ll be bold when it gets really tough.

That would be like saying, “I’m too out of shape to run a mile today, but I’ll be ready to run a marathon tomorrow.”

Put another way, if you sow cowardice today, you won’t reap courage tomorrow. If you sow compromise today you won’t reap conviction tomorrow.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, the prophet Jeremiah complained to the Lord when he encountered opposition and death threats in his small hometown of Anathoth.

God responded with a sobering rebuke: “If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe land you are so trusting, what will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?” (Jeremiah 12:5)

The Lord was saying to his servant, “Jeremiah, if it’s too hot for you in your home village, how are you going to make it in the capital city of Jerusalem? If a little opposition has you ready to throw in the towel, what are you going to do when things get really intense?”

In contemporary terms, if we’re not willing to preach the truth and stand for what’s right today when the worst consequence might be a wealthy church member leaving our congregation or people posting nasty comments about us on Facebook or losing a potential job promotion or being kicked out of our schools, what makes us thing we’ll be willing to preach the truth and stand for what’s right when (and if) real persecution comes?

What if holding to the Scriptures would land us in jail? (Put aside for the moment that, around the world, believers are being killed for their faith, and in the most brutal ways at that. Here in the States, the thought of going to the jail for the gospel is quite radical.)

Is it possible this could happen in America, “the land of the free and the home of the brave”?

I’m not making any predictions, and I personally don’t know any gay leaders who want to see me thrown in jail for writing a column like this, nor do I know of any government agency that would be ready to imprison me for giving a biblical perspective on homosexuality on the radio. And I have no question whatsoever that if the government did engage in such egregious overreach that the backlash would be severe.

What is clear is that: 1) If we have seen such a massive societal shift in such a short period of time, then we could see even more extreme things in the coming years. Why not? 2) Most of the American church is in such a compromised state today that, should greater opposition to the gospel arise in the coming years, we could expect even greater capitulation from Christian leaders, if not even overt cooperation with those who would persecute the church.

What this means on a practical level is also clear: Today, not tomorrow, is the time to stand up for our religious freedoms. Today, not tomorrow, is the time to deepen our commitment to the Lord and his truth. Today, not tomorrow, is the time for courage.

As the Scripture says, “Today, if you hear [God’s] voice, do not harden your hearts” (Hebrews 3:7-8).