Over recent times it is difficult for many people to see what is happening to Christianity and faith all around the world. For many it seems like Christianity is under attack.

We read of Christians being persecuted around the world. We read news of a Christian singer being told she could not sing Christian music in public. We read of controversy surrounding street preachers. We read of Churches closing, and we know of the difficulties that the Church of England is facing. It is quite probable that Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world.

So what on earth is going on?

The simple answer is that I believe God is doing a great work in our time.

I believe the Bible teaches that persecution often brings widespread apostasy and at the same time persecution is a sure sign that the Kingdom of Christ is growing.

In the book of Daniel 2: 35 we read a prophecy concerning the Kingdom of Christ and how a stone that smote an image “became a great mountain”. That rock that became a mountain is the Kingdom of Christ who promised He would build His Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it (Matthew 16: 18)

When Jesus promised He would build His church He did not claim it would always be a towering structure. When He used the word build, He implied a continuing structure that can be extended. As a CofE minister said a while ago, ‘The Kingdom grows one soul at a time’.

I believe the Christian church in the uk has hit one of the most challenging times in the history of Christianity and I believe we will get through it.

As John Gill rightly stated in his commentary on Daniel 2: 35 “Christ’s kingdom, from small beginnings, has increased, and will more and more, until the whole earth is subject to it: this began to have its accomplishment in the first times of the Gospel, especially when the Roman empire, as Pagan, was destroyed by Constantine, and the kingdom of Christ was set up in it; and it received a further accomplishment at the time of the Reformation, when Rome Papal had a deadly blow given it, and the Gospel of Christ was spread in several nations and kingdoms; but it will receive its full accomplishment when both the eastern and western antichrists shall be destroyed, and the kingdoms of this world shall become the Lord’s and his Christ’s, Rev 11:15.”

In Isaiah 2: 2 the prophet wrote these words, “it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all the nations shall flow unto it.”

Be strong and the next time you see a tiny rock, turn around, lift up your eyes unto the hills and remember the rock that became a mountain. The implication is, it’s unmoveable.