Philippians 1:28a

"And in nothing terrified by your adversaries which is to them (the adversaries) an evident token of perdition,..."


Do you know what that means? We read these things but we don't really stop to think on them. It's those who oppose the believers. Those who have brought persecution on the believers over the centuries have simply set their nose with flint to their eternal doom. And that's not going to change. Anyone who opposes the Gospel, anyone who brings persecution on the believer, short of his own salvation of course, are headed for any eternal doom, now that's what perdition means. So that's what Paul is saying, "For those who persecute believers and bring pressures on us, are headed for their own perdition, their own doom."


But it's also an evidence of our own salvation, when they bring persecution on us. You had better be careful if everybody has nothing but good to say about you. Because the unbelieving world really shouldn't be able to complement us much because they don't like who we are and what we stand for. So Paul makes it so plain to these Philippians that when the pressures from the outside world, whether it was the Judaisers or the Pagans or the Romans