Conquest of the Future R ome, 56 AD. When God in spired Paul to write a letter to
nothing that shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Neither D-hours, nor mornings 20 below, nor Black Israelties, nor the coldest heart of any per son in New England, nor any other created thing. Did the Romans know their future? Do we? Of course not. The trials that lay ahead will be as diverse as Satan can con ceive. It seems daunting until we consider what we’ve learned in a year or two - reliance on Christ. God challenges us to conquer - not in ourselves, but through Him.
on Times Square where a less than cordial mem ber of a particular sect decides you need to stop preaching. Famine, na kedness, or seemingly so when you give your snow camper your coat be cause she decides its “T- Shirt weather today.” But all of it wasn’t for us. Our reputation was inconsequential, our bo dies were trivial, our opinions irrelevant - it was “for thy sake we are being put to death all day long.” So did we “conquer overwhelmingly?” Was there ever a time when we relied on Christ and He didn’t pull through? Paul says no. He says that
the Christians in Rome, He most certainly was preparing the “little Christs” for the persecu tion that would climax in 70 AD with the destruc tion of the Temple. Tri als for the believers were already common, espe cially in Rome, but the point it would eventually reach would set the per secution precedent for the rest of church histo ry. Paul writes that "in all these things we over whelmingly conquer.” What things? Tribula tion, distress, persecu tion on 5th Avenue, or
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