A performer at an awards ceremony delivers his acceptance speech. It is a brief story of professional struggle and then caps with the claim that he is the first representative of his particular cause to ever win an award. At this, the crowd erupts into a standing ovation. Neither the music nor the movie for which he is honored may have been any good, but that doesn’t matter. Narrative won.
The world has caught on to the idea of personal testimony as a way of promoting not only its goods and services but its ideologies. The plug doesn’t need to be true. In fact, it can conceal a number of harmful untruths. Marketing is, after all, simply the management of perception—how the seller wants you to see something. Testimonials can be paid for, scripted, or acted. It’s what we receive every day through commercials.
Author and scholar John Stott says to the Christian public,
“So much so-called ‘testimony’ today is really autobiography and even sometimes thinly disguised self-advertisement that we need to regain a proper biblical perspective. All true testimony is testimony to Jesus Christ, as he stands on trial before the world.” (1)
When Jesus stood before the high priest and eventually Pilate, He bore the strongest, truest testimony of all:
“And the high priest said to him, ‘I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Mt. 26:63-64).
No one applauded.
Instead, they acted like vampires confronted with a crucifix in an old horror movie:
“Then the high priest tore his robes and said, ‘He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your judgment?’ They answered, ‘He deserves death’” (26:65-66).
Death. That’s how the world responds to real testimony.
Following His death and resurrection, Jesus told the early disciples, “You shall be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). Our lives were to be tied up in a testimony of His identity and full salvation. Thus the churches were to be light-bearing entities, as seen in Revelation chapters 2 and 3, where they were called lampstands.
However, at some later point in time, as mentioned in Revelation chapter 11, only two lampstands are mentioned, whom God calls “my two witnesses” (v. 3). I’m going to set aside for a moment the possibility that these two are entities or organizations and just go with the natural reading of the text that they are individuals. (2)
What happened to all the churches? Some will say they’ve been raptured off the earth. Maybe so. If that’s the case, faithfulness to God has dwindled down to two folks still willing to tell the truth.
I’m liable to run afoul of your eschatology in even proposing such a thing. There could be, at that point in time, a faithful gospel preaching presence in other parts of the world.
But I’ve also noticed in our current moment that testimony has not necessarily gotten easier, even in protected western nations. Under threats of retribution and cancellation, pressure is certainly felt. And with the way pulpits are willing to trade hard truths for popularity, perhaps testimony will yet become an endangered species. That would mean a landscape with a lot of religious presence and little abiding glory.
But God always keeps a light on somewhere.
The other day I happened across the story of a man at a McDonald’s drive-through. He told the girl working the window that he liked the cross she was wearing. “Thank you,” she said, “I also love the One who died on it and then rose from the dead.”
These days that kind of story is a bolt out of the blue, jarring. But that’s only because of how we’ve been conditioned. Even a small mention of Jesus in the workplace has long been treated as inappropriate. I contrast this to the casual way in which my barber mentioned she was a lesbian. She had not known me nor my faith. There had been no context at all for her personal divulgence while cutting my hair, and yet even the walls of Babylon could not be thicker than the legislation protecting confessions like hers.
However, unless the story of the McDonald’s employee happened in the densest part of the Bible belt, the girl working the drive-through risked being reported to HR, disciplined, or fired. Someone in company headquarters might have had to apologize for the incident with a public statement—We do not support intolerance or hate of any kind, blah, blah, blah….”
I don’t want to whine about this. If we bear the testimony of Jesus, we will typically get in trouble with the world the same way He did. He warned us it would happen. Happily, at the moment, we still have some rights to which we can appeal, just as Paul did when he was under duress.
In the meantime, the confession of our faith must stand to the end, which was Paul’s solemn word to Timothy:
“I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen” (1 Tim. 6:13-16).
1 John Stott, Authentic Christianity. Christianity Today, Vol. 40, no. 9.
2 The identity of these two has sometimes been debated. I wanted to avoid weighing down the post with theories on the subject. Common thought is that they are Moses and Elijah, who utilized (respectively) plagues and fire in their ministries. Both Moses and Elijah appeared during the transfiguration of Christ on the mount, and even conversed with Him about His coming redemption (Luke 9:31). Unfortunately, various cults have also interpreted the two witnesses as being the founders of their aberrant groups.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on John Myer
Featured Image by Ben White on Unsplash
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