These famous words come from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. They are very appropriate for our times.Every day, I am getting emails, tweets and news alerts of Christians who are giving their lives around the world rather than deny their Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ.
Here are some examples:
10 Christians killed in Nigeria, 12.2.12
150 Christians killed by Boko Haram in Nigeria
Christians in Syria die by two car bombs
These have been in the last week and a Google search will produce more.
In the Gettysburg Address are found these further words which apply today to these circumstances, (pretend you are on the ground where these Christian martyrs have died, hear these words being spoken to you who remain alive, then apply them to our country where being a Christian is more and more castigated, you will find courage and direction for these times):
“The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought (and died) here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”
Our brothers and sisters dying on foreign soil, and some even now in America, certainly deserve that we dedicate ourselves to the unfinished work of the Gospel for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. There are advances yet to be made. There is still a great task remaining before us.
Increased devotion.
Higher resolve.
Let us add our witness, our labors and our lives, if necessary, to the Great Cause before US.
“And this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness, and then shall the end come,” Mt. 24:14.
