I'm not answering your Paul question again and again. Whether the Christians where I live deserve persecution or not is not the main point here sir, and I don't care about being persecuted at all actually, the issue is, American version Christianity as I said, has catalyzed the apostasy around the world and continues to do so, and as such they deserve chastisement to wake them (you)up to the reality of what true Christianity really is. That chastisement I happened to say is persecution and I am absolutely NOT WRONG, depending on whether God chooses to use that method, and I don not see why not as this would be corporate chastisement of the Church as a whole. Go back to the story about David that you yourself refered me to, God gave three choices to David for his chastisement and one of those was "running from his enemies three months while they pursued him," Uuh! I think that is persecution?????

Rev., I never said he was pesecuted for sin, but the logic there is, if God could allow christians to be persecuted even when they are living holy, logically, why would He not chastise them with persecution? Furthermore if God can use Satan himself, the arch-enemy of man and of righteousness to bring affliction on his children for certain purposes of His, why not persecution, which is caused by Satan anyway. And if He could allow the Israelites to be afflicted by wicked gentile nations because of sin, why not the Church? Which He allows to be persecuted anyway. Persecuion caused the Church in Jerusalem to move on and obey God by spreading the gospel beyond Jerusalem as Jesus had commanded. If Jesus can threaten to cast the Jezebel of Revelation into a sick bed, kill her children, and put those fornicating with her into great tribulation, then persecution can surely (as has been the case in the biblical narrative) be used by Him to wake some folk up, and get ready its coming.

Where exactly did I say God allowed them to be persecuted because they deserved it? I was explaining the position of God in contradistinction to that of an earthly western father. Howbeit deserving worse persecution in that they deserve chastising? I stand by that! There is no way for you to show that persecusion by the wicked cannot be used by God to chastise. The God of the Bible allowed wicked Babylon to reduce the holy temple to rubble, to take his only people to Babylon as captives, for what huh? Read Daniel 9:24, discipline is one of the reasons. And they never carved idols after that. Paul was restrained from pride by a messenger of Satan, whatever that messenger caused on him, we know Paul did not shun persecusion (unlike spoiled American Christians) but gloried in his persecusions and proceeded to head on to Jerusalem against advice not to do so. For him to live was Christ (not prosperity for stuffing on whoppers) and to die was gain.

Rev, God is not the typical smiling, hoop-shooting all-American dad in a golf shirt afraid of what strangers might do to his kids. Rather, He is the sovereign King of the universe who has in history allowed His children to be tortured by antichrists with horrific tortures, so lets not turn Him into an American or anything unbiblical. In fact Paul had messesnger of Satan plaguing him and Jesus refused to deliver him but gave him grace. The biblical narrative does not show us that persecution cannot be His way of chastising, instead it points to it as a very possible means of doing so, so please.

Rev, remember that place where the Bible said God chastises those He loves? And that place where it says judgment begins in the house of God.Yeah! There is almost no more Christianity in America, at least anything a bit closer to Ephesians 5:27, although the apostasy is all over the world, the American Church helped greatly to catalyse it. Down here in Africa there are little American copy cats everywhere you look.