In the bustling, hustling chaos of the modern world, there is a truth as ancient as the stones beneath us: The lions come. That is the raw, unadorned reality etched into the marrow of Christian history. The lions come — silent predators lurking behind the veneer of civility, behind the gleam of modernity, behind the hypocritical smiles of those preaching for tolerance and civility.

Throughout time, we’ve seen that the worst thing the world can unleash on the Church, on Christ’s flock, is what it eventually unleashes: its fury, its hatred, its savage hunger. It did this to Christ, pierced by nails and crowned with thorns, abandoned by friends, mocked by foes, and left to bleed in the dust.

And it will do it to his followers. Again and again. There will be new faces, new methods. They won’t necessarily be emissaries of the Roman Empire, despotic kings, or communist dictators of the past. But it will be the same hatred and violence in new guises and faces, under the banner of political correctness, secular rage or indifferent apathy.

And here is the brutal, uncompromising fact: If you are strong enough in your faith, the lions will come for you too. Not just in the distant past, not only in the catacombs of antiquity, but today, when the streets are lined with the banners of progress. The lion’s prey is the faithful, the bold, the unwavering. The ones who refuse to dilute doctrine into a thin lukewarm soup.

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