Wednesday, July 1, 2020
I have said in this venue in the past that I would gladly die for Jesus Christ rather than deny him. That has not changed.
But Robert J. Morgan tells the account of David Hackston, back in the 17th century, a wealthy Scottish man who came to Christ after listening to some outlawed Presbyterian preachers. This made him an outlaw putting his life in jeopardy and he eventually joined those who took up arms against the crown.
After some time, he was captured and what happened to him thereafter puts a new meaning on being willing to die for your faith. Upon being captured he was stripped naked and set backward on a bareback horse, with his feet tied tightly to the horse's belly. At his trial in Edinburgh, he made the following statement: “Now I stand here before you a prisoner of Jesus Christ for adhering to His cause and interest, which has been sealed with the blood of many worthies who have suffered in these lands. I do own all the testimonies given by them, and desire to put in my mite among theirs, and I am not only willing to seal it with my blood but also to seal it with the sharpest tortures you can imagine.”
Morgan recounts how they took him at his word in his book, On This Day in Christian History: “His right hand was stretched out and hacked off. The executioner took so long to do it that Hackston asked if the left hand could be severed at the joint. This was done, he was then pulled to the top of the gallows, allowed to choke a while, then dropped with his whole weight. This was repeated twice. Then the hangman, with a sharp knife, sliced open his chest and pulled out his heart, still beating. It fell on the scaffold, and the hangman picked it up on the point of the knife and said, ‘here is the heart of a traitor.’ Witnesses claim that it fluttered on the knife. His hands and head were nailed to the top of a nearby bridge.” Hackston‘s body was disemboweled, drawn, quartered, and burned.
How sobering this is. Is this what is coming for us? If you think not, keep in mind this was done only about 350 years ago in the name of justice by the rulers of Scotland in order to suppress “Calvinist” thinking! We see today in our own land how quickly things can change. People are aghast when they hear that I am in prison for helping a desperate mother protect her child from court-sanctioned sexual abuse in the name of so-called “gay rights.” Soon, they could be locking us up for possessing a Bible because it contains passages such as Romans 1. How soon before the blood of Christians will begin to be spilled in this nation? It merely takes a slight shift of those in power and such atrocities could easily be perpetrated upon you and me who refused to deny Christ – in the name of justice. Mark my word, sooner or later, those days are coming to our land unless the church wakes up!