ACROSS THE WORLD, an often quiet but unmistakable pattern is unfolding: hostility toward Christianity is rising, and in many regions it is increasingly less quiet. Persecution rarely arrives fully grown. It often begins with cultural disdain, then legal pressure, then public shaming, and eventually open suppression.
In Nigeria, believers are slaughtered by extremist groups while the world largely looks away. In China, pastors disappear into detention while underground churches continue to gather in hidden rooms. In India, mobs burn Christian buildings with impunity. Ancient Christian communities in the Middle East are shrinking under relentless pressure following Western military intervention. Country after country reveals the same spirit wearing different masks: silence the gospel and push Christianity to the margins of society.
And while many in the West assume such hostility belongs only to foreign nations, Canada is already displaying the early signs. Christian convictions are increasingly framed as dangerous and pastors are investigated for teaching what Scripture says plainly. Christian parents are treated with suspicion when they raise their children according to their faith. And the wave of church burnings since 2021–nearly one hundred–should trouble every believer. Burning houses of worship is rarely vandalism, but a symbolic attack on faith itself.
This is not merely a cultural shift. It is spiritual, ideological, and historical.
Scripture warns that there will be seasons when truth is despised, when opposition intensifies, and when the people of God must stand firm. Across the world, we are watching such a season take shape. And Canada is not exempt simply because we wish it to be.
Persecution has always revealed the strength and purity of God’s people. The early church grew under pressure because it expected suffering and embraced courage. The persecuted church today thrives in places where gathering is dangerous because believers know that discipleship cannot be casual.
Meanwhile, in the West, we have long assumed comfort is normal and opposition is abnormal, and that mindset must change.
The government of Canada has introduced Bill C-9 for review and a future vote to become law. This is not a minor legal adjustment; it is a doorway to state control over Christian conviction. By removing the long-standing religious exemption from Canada’s hate-speech laws, it hands government and courts the power to reinterpret Scripture itself as harmful, hateful, or criminal.
The moment biblical teaching can be judged illegal because someone claims emotional distress, the gospel becomes subject to political approval. Pastors could face charges for preaching, believers for sharing verses, parents for teaching their children. This is not imaginary–this is exactly how creeping persecution has begun in every society that sought to silence the church through legislation.
Bill C-9 threatens to transform Canada from a nation that protects freedom of conscience into one that punishes it, replacing truth with state-defined morality and treating faithful Christians as offenders for simply believing what believers have always believed.
My wife grew up in the final years of the USSR, where believers worshipped quietly, singing hymns in hushed tones with their curtains drawn. Families whispered their convictions, and every minister was watched and often followed. When she and her family were able to escape communism in 1989, they were so grateful to arrive in Germany, where they could worship freely without government intrusion. Now those same Marxist storm clouds hang low over Europe and North America.
Some of my relatives fled the terror of Nestor Makhno, a man whose roving bands burned villages, targeted believers, and punished Christian communities simply for existing in southeast Russia as the Bolsheviks prepared to seize power and turn everyone into a slave of the state. They found refuge in Canada, believing they had reached a land where faith could flourish without fear.
When our families hear the language of “acceptable” and “unacceptable” Christian beliefs emerging in Canada, when they see the rise in hostility toward the church, when they watch the burning of sanctuaries dismissed as understandable–what many Canadians treat as mild concerns–they recognize these as the first warning signs of what they once fled.
We must awaken to a greater understanding of the threat we face. Not to panic or despair, but to watch and pray, as the Lord commanded. Christians also need to understand that Scripture has already told us to expect seasons like this, especially as the world currently moves toward the time period described in Revelation 18: the sudden collapse of the beast system “in one hour,” when the powers of this age unravel with shocking speed. Such speed, in fact, that nothing is left for those who have suffered loss of their wicked crafts in the collapse, but to weep and wail.
This is not a war of physical violence, but an unprecedented destruction of evil spiritual forces.
The camp of the saints–all those washed in the blood of the Lamb–is presently surrounded by Satan’s hosts, as foretold in Revelation 20:8-9. We face a formidable foe, and know not the perils ahead that could be ours to endure.
As hostility rises, as truth is despised, as systems of power strain toward control, the church should not be surprised. But, we should be spiritually alert and anchored in the Word. We should be steadfast in holiness. And we should be preparing our hearts, our homes, and our communities for the possibility that persecution may increase before redemption breaks through.
The same God who delivered His people from empires, warlords, and regimes is the God who walks with His church today. He has not changed and His promises are firm. The victory already belongs to Christ. May our faith be as resilient and unwavering.
