# Twilight's Last Gleaming

## Metadata
- Author: [[Robert Jeffress]]
- Full Title: Twilight's Last Gleaming
- Category: #books
## Highlights
- Relativism also dims a Christian’s light. Media entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey claims to be a Christian. However, she does not believe that Christianity’s truth is exclusive. “One of the biggest mistakes humans make is to believe there is only one way. Actually, there are many diverse paths leading to what you call God.” 9 Of course, her conviction that other religious belief systems are just as valid as her own (whatever that may be) contradicts the words of the Founder of her faith, Jesus Christ, who proclaimed “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6). Unfortunately, if the Barna poll cited earlier is correct, more Christians believe Oprah Winfrey than Jesus Christ. ([Location 1039](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006GCDKP8&location=1039))
- Many years ago, my grandmother wrote a poem titled “A Plea for Tolerance.” However, my grandmother’s understanding of tolerance varied greatly from today’s popular understanding of the word. The historic understanding of tolerance is best understood from Webster’s New World Dictionary, Second College Edition: “To allow or to permit, to recognize and respect others’ beliefs and practices without sharing them, to bear or put up with someone or something not necessarily liked.” 13 ([Location 1068](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006GCDKP8&location=1068))
- Gregory Kouki identifies the three critical components of historic (or “true”) tolerance: 1) permitting or allowing, 2) a conduct or point of view one disagrees with, 3) while respecting the person in the process. ([Location 1072](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006GCDKP8&location=1072))
- When Persecution Comes ([Location 2364](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006GCDKP8&location=2364))
- Millions of people around the world have enjoyed the intriguing novels and insightful nonfiction books of Christian author Randy Alcorn. However, many readers are not familiar with his personal story that redirected his life and ministry. ([Location 2365](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006GCDKP8&location=2365))
- Any Christian who dares to take seriously the mandate to be salt and light in this world may not always receive justice but will almost always receive persecution. Such a guarantee comes from Jesus Christ. “In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world,” Jesus assured His followers (John 16:33). ([Location 2391](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006GCDKP8&location=2391))
- Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. (2 Corinthians 11:24–27) ([Location 2396](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006GCDKP8&location=2396))
- Yet more Christians died as martyrs during the twentieth century alone than in all other centuries combined.3 ([Location 2407](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006GCDKP8&location=2407))
- Today, more Christians are imprisoned in China than in any other country in the world. Hundreds of thousands of believers are detained in work camps each year without a court order so that they can participate in a “reeducation through labor” program, as the Chinese call it. The only legal churches allowed by the Chinese government are those that are controlled by the government. Christians who meet in house churches not sanctioned by the government risk torture, imprisonment, ([Location 2421](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006GCDKP8&location=2421))
- Philip Yancey describes a visit with Pastor Allen Yuan, who helped to found the house church movement in China during the Japanese occupation. Yuan, ninety years old at the time of his interview with Yancey, had spent twenty-two years in prison. He had been tortured and spent months in solitary confinement in a windowless cell. “I pulled the blankets over my head and prayed. For ten years no letters from my family got through. I had no Bible, but a few passages and psalms stayed with me,” Yuan recounted. The pastor spent thirteen years of his sentence in China’s most northern province. “It was a miracle! I had only a light jacket and in the freezing winter weather I never caught a cold or the flu. Not sick a single day!” Yuan testified.10 Pastor Yuan is convinced that persecution is not only inevitable but also profitable for believers. “We live in a time like the apostles. Christians here are persecuted, yes. But look at Hong Kong and Taiwan—they have prosperity, but they don’t seek God. I tell you, I came out of that prison with faith stronger than I went in. Like Joseph, we don’t know why we go through hard times until later, looking back. Think of it: ([Location 2425](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006GCDKP8&location=2425))
- we in China may soon have the largest Christian community in the world, and in an atheistic state that tried to stamp us out!” 11 ([Location 2434](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006GCDKP8&location=2434))