On Pilate, and the Persecution of God’s Remnant

On a doleful morning long ago, darkness was confronted by light, and the darkness understood it not, nor overcame it. Pontius Pilate was confronted by Jesus Christ. The man Pilate was in a position of apparent judgment: the world in judgment of the divine; the Devil in judgment of the Son of God. Here was a natural man confronted by the living Truth and who willfully refused to discern it. Instead, he resorted to the wisdom of the world and began to question Jesus in order to discover who He was. Yet Christ confounded Pilate’s worldly questioning with His divine silence. And when Pilate convinced himself that there was no real harm in Jesus, he thought of how he might let him go. This is how the world begins to treat the Church. By exposing her to the neutralizing influence of its own worldly wisdom, it believes it has made the Church safe and to be no different than any other belief system, just as Pilate came to think that Jesus was no different than any other small-time trouble-maker or Rabbi. At first Pilate was disposed to favour Christ by choosing to believe Him to be harmless and inoffensive; in the same fashion the world has been disposed to be tolerant and favourable to the Church. And, in fact, in its cloying and deceitful tolerance and favour, the world has actually neutralized the Church (at least in the developed world) and has made her harmless. She is no longer a threat to the world. In many cases, she has now been either neutralized to the point of being a laughing stock, or else she goes a-whoring after the very same corrupt values and standards of the world that are so soundly condemned by Scripture.

Yet for many people merely neutralizing the Church is insufficient. They are threatened by the light of the Gospel even when it burns but dimly and, like the mob in Jerusalem that day, would have it extinguished altogether; the indifferently tolerant who are in the world, like Pilate facing Jesus, will inevitably give sway to the growing fear-mongering of the intolerant mob. And just as Pilate tried to do that awful morning long ago, the tolerant ones will endeavor to quiet and placate the increasing hostility from the ones who feel most threatened. Just so, Pilate had the Christ scourged, in the mistaken hope that such an act would coddle the hostility of the Christ-haters. Yet when the mob perceives this tolerance as being sympathetic with the Church, the tolerant ones, in the name of tolerance, will quickly disavow themselves of any relationship and the faithful Church of the Remnant will be given over to authorities who will persecute it with increasing fury, just as Pilate gave Christ over to the soldiers after washing his hands. And when even that fails and the biblically faithful Church emerges from her persecution bent but undiminished in faith, the mob will resort to more permanent measures, just as did Pilate when he realized that all his attempts at neutralizing Christ and placating the mob had failed.

So we see in Pilate’s encounter with Christ a pattern for the world’s encounter with the faithful. And as Pilate did to Christ, so the world will do to the Church. As you have seen if you have followed the links above, much of the Church today has been hoodwinked by the devil (who was the real adversary confronting Christ) and has fallen victim to his soft wooing, going whoring after the things of the world. But the faithful Church will increasingly be persecuted until the end. If we are not hated, we are not disciples!

But in all of this, let us not forget that all these things took place by God’s “determinate counsel” as it is in the KJV, or by the “predetermined plan and foreknowledge” of God as it is in the NASB (Acts 2:23), as part of the great plan of salvation first announced in Genesis 3:15. God used Pilate, an ungodly man, to be the instrument (one among many) by which the original proto-euangelion of Genesis 3 would be accomplished. Does not this stagger the imagination and more importantly beggar one’s pride?

So then, let us take some comfort. Persecution will come; it is promised and prophesied. We will suffer, but in our suffering we share in the very life of Christ. This is the day that the LORD has made, let us be glad and rejoice in it.

Soli Deo Gloria.