Paid bodyguards for shepherds

[Copen]

At the beginning of the New Testament era and for many years afterwards there was the greatest persecution of Christians. When Saul, just a newly converted apostle, realized the Jews sat at the city gates day and night to kill him, the disciples let him down over the city wall in a basket to escape.

There's nothing wrong with escaping when you don't do harm to your adversary. But today's apostate church leaders would have hired bodyguards to kill, if have to, in order to save the shepherd. What is wrong with this picture?

If you have been called by God to preach, teach, feed Gods flock, you need to be prepared to lay down your life if necessary. That criterion weeds out the hireling who always has his hand in your pocket and lives "deliciously" with a much smaller percentage of money going to some pet humanitarian project -- to keep you dishing it out.

When persecution came to the church in Jerusalem as a whole body, the saints of the New Testament church scattered --BUT Peter stayed. See the difference in today's church? The preacher doesn't leave the church behind.

I actually heard a missionary say that when they were in Africa when persecution came they could get out of the country but the poor native people they had been preaching to had to stay behind. And some of them had suffered greatly for their Christian faith.

Folks, that is not the way it is supposed to be done. The shepherd is supposed to die for his flock, not abandon the flock to the wolves.