Have you ever been on the receiving end of a sneer? Someone scrunching up their nose in distaste? According to Scriptures, it’s because you stink of death. Now, I’m not saying that you literally smell of a decomposing body, but you, dear Christian, represent death for those that are perishing.
We have a lot of hate directed towards us. It seems as though professing our faith is becoming as bad as declaring war on a defenseless country! To top it all off, people are throwing historical events and facts in our faces, blaming Christianity and not individual people for the destruction, control, and death of people for centuries. So, would it be accurate of us to say that we hate Germans because from the 1930’s to 1945 they executed a multitude of Jewish people as well as many other ‘unmentionables’? Should we hate the Belgian people for their horrific ill-treatment of the Congolese people during colonial times? Should the people of colour in South Africa hate Afrikaners because of Apartheid? Anyone with any sense in their head would realize that this should not be the case- you cannot blame a whole country or race for the acts of a select group of people! So why is it acceptable to identify a few bad eggs out of a nest and then seek to destroy the rest of that nest with perfectly good and nutritious eggs? I’ll tell you why- because to the majority of the world who are perishing, we are the aroma of death that leads them to their death.
There is something within the perishing world that wants us gone, or at least, they want us to revoke our faith and deny Christ, but that would lead to our death, and not just a physical death, but a spiritual death as well. You see, we smell of Christ and it’s a wonderful scent to us who are saved. There is something special within us that is offensive to the perishing world, and that is the knowledge of the truth. The truth is that Jesus came down to earth in the form of man, died on the cross for our sins, arose from the dead on the third day and now sits on the right-hand side of GOD as our Mediator. Because we believe this, we are thus the fragrance of Christ.
Some people will go so far as to show us a point. For example, the members of the Temple of Satan have sought to push their religion wherever and however they can to come against the Christian faith. In the past few years, they have tried to set up their own monuments to Satan wherever Christians monuments have been installed. The Ten Commandment monument in Oklahoma was set to get a rival in the form of a Baphomet monument (which is now installed in Detroit), the metal silhouette of an infantryman kneeling before a cross (which was removed by the way) in Minnesota, had the Satanic temple wanting their own monument in the shape of a solemn black cube holding an upturned helmet, its sides adorned with an upside-down pentagram (it thankfully got the axe). They even want to introduce ‘After school Satan clubs’ in challenge to Christian evangelical groups that sponsor after-school religious programming. Oddly enough, Lucien Greaves aka Doug Mesner (founder of the Temple of Satan), said that his organization does not worship the devil, but that they are a nontheistic religious organization. Lies. When the Baphomet monument was put up, a video was shown of people coming to pay their respects to the monument, and to worship their dark lord- Lucifer.
The state of California is also trying their best to control the Christian faith. People in other countries are dying because of their beliefs and many Christians are meeting in secret for fear of persecution just to come together to praise and worship GOD. I recently came across an article based in Scotland that stated that Christians are finding it difficult to practice their faith because they are being questioned about it- a young child saying grace before eating her meal was questioned by her peers and teachers about her purpose in praying! It seems as though some people no longer know what the purpose of praying is.
Let’s just face it, more and more people are finding us troublesome, harmful and dangerous. Can you imagine that? We, who are meant to be as gentle as doves, are the dangerous ones! What is the world coming to? To put it bluntly, they are coming to their death.
Honestly though, are we really that dangerous? It seems that people choose either the flight or fight option when they encounter a Believer: they will run away from us, or they will attack us and demonize us for all the world to see. I watched a news report that claimed Chick-fil-A has infiltrated New York City with their ‘pervasive Christian traditionalism’. Infiltrated and pervasive are rather strong words, don’t you think? This method of publicly attacking us is gaining supporters from all walks of life who would like to see the demise of the Christian faith. It’s a war out there, people, and it’s only getting worse.
I know that Christians have been preaching about the End Times for centuries, but that preaching is needed. We need to be ready for the return of Jesus, and it seems as though He is well on His way to coming back to earth to collect His saints. You may stink like death now, but to those who hear the Word of GOD spoken from your mouth and choose to believe in Jesus, you become an aroma of life leading to life.
Ending Thoughts: To one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life.” 2 Corinthians 2:16. You may be the aroma of death to some, but most importantly, you are the aroma of life that will lead a once lost soul to life.
