I want to share with you a very important message. Please watch this to the end.
Now since I started to post things online I have been banned on Instagram, not allowed to stream,
not allowed to post and almost lost my account. I lost my Facebook account and then it took few
months and then they reactivated it. Then I was banned, I was flagged with posting supposedly
inappropriate content when I posted things about alphabet community. Tik Tok is where I
got shadow-ban especially when I started to post things about purity and sexual purity. Now on
YouTube that has not happened yet but if you have watched my ministry, you've seen that especially
during the pride month, I took a very strong stance on the biblical truth and the biblical
standards for morality and that is not very much liked in our culture especially by mainstream
media and the culture. I know friends of mine who lost their accounts. I know other pastors who had
large following online and completely either got demonetized, de-platformed or completely removed.
I want to give you a promise and also ask you for something. My promise is to preach God's word not
to water it down or to sugarcoat it but also to season it with grace whether it's topics that
people don't want to hear or topics that could get me banned on YouTube and kicked out of other
platforms. I had to make a decision before the alphabet month came up. Will I be preaching about
this? Do we need to stream this? We're going to lose our platform. We're going to lose our
subscribers and all of that stuff but I knew that staying with the truth in love is more important
than influence and the following but I want to ask you for something. Would you sign up for my emails
so that in case I do lose the platform, we can stay connected. You can go to Pastorvlad.org/email
and choose your form of email whether it's once a week to receive a short encouragement or once a
week to receive a reminder about audio podcasts or once a week to receive a blog or to receive once a
month a reminder about fasting, whichever way that you can do it. You can always unsubscribe if you
don't like receiving that. I promise not to spam you, promise not to sell you stuff. What I do is I
try to send very condensed, very small encouraging and uplifting emails every single week to better
your spiritual life. I know that emails seem like an old school kind of thing but at the same time,
I do believe that when it comes to social media, it's very unstable and even YouTube,
you can lose all of that but with emails, we're able to communicate and able to stay connected.
Persecution is nothing new and though being banned, de-platformed I wouldn't call it a
heavy persecution because there are people who face really serious persecution but still it does
remind us that in 2 Timothy chapter 4, Paul tells us in verse 3. For the time will come when they
will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears,
they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth,
and be turned aside to fables and a lot of people and some pastors actually would avoid
anything that is controversial, anything that could get them banned and they just focus on
you know they say, 'No, we just preach Jesus' but means we don't talk about things in the Bible that
could get them in trouble, that's really kind of what a lot of pastors are. Not all but quite
a few pastors online. Even I had pastors warn me, Hey you shouldn't be talking about that stuff. Hey
aren't you afraid you're gonna get run over by the YouTube Community or run over by this other
community if you post things. The Bible also tells us that, 'Blessed are those who are persecuted for
the righteousness sake For theirs is the kingdom of heaven' Matthew 5:10 and Matthew 5:11 it says,
'Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely
for My sake. Now I know people who are truly persecuted. My persecution of being banned,
called with names and everything, I wouldn't call that on the level that people are experiencing
that today but something I do keep in mind is that Christian faith has always had persecution in its
background. For example, in the first century, in the beginning Christians were a small group faced
with occasional trouble from religious leaders. Some Christians were killed including Jesus who
was crucified. Majority of Christians were not attacked necessarily by the Romans but by the
Jewish believers who didn't believe in Messiah. They just believed in God and didn't believe that
Jesus was the Son of God because Romans actually provided an umbrella of protection for the Jewish
community where Romans required their citizens and everyone under the Rome to worship Roman gods
once a year and to provide a certificate that you worshiped their god but Jewish communities
had a free pass. They didn't have to provide the certificate that they worshiped a Roman god once
a year and so they get the free pass because of their faith in God and it was very important to
them and because Christianity came under the Jewish faith at first, what began to to happen
with Christians is everywhere they spread the gospel, they were hid under the umbrella of not
being required to worship a Roman god once a year until Jewish community made it very clear that
Christian faith is not an extension of Judaism. Christian faith is completely opposite of that
because they worship Jesus and Jewish community disassociated themselves from the Christian faith
and Christians got thrown under the bus and what started to happen in the second century
is as Christianity grew, Romans felt threatened and suspected Christians of not following their
gods and many times, they were seen as bad people. Christians were accused of like for example eating
other human beings because Christians you know took the Lord's supper and the Romans didn't
understand that. So what they would say is that Christians are gathering in their secret cults
and they are eating each other. They're eating human flesh and because Christian gatherings
were called love feasts, Romans also added another accusations and said not only leader
eating human flesh in their gatherings but they're also practicing sexual orgies and so Christianity
was viewed as this perverted, twisted thing because of the reputation that Romans wanted to
spread to make people not want to join Christian faith even though Christians were outstanding,
moral citizens, loving, taking care of the poor but the reputation about them was destroyed by
Romans who worshiped their Roman gods and emperors would punish Christians and though that punishment
wasn't always consistent and constant, the persecution really got heavy in the third century.
In the third century, Roman leaders became more severe in persecuting Christians. They wanted
everyone to worship Roman gods but Christians refused. An emperor named Decius made a rule
that everyone must prove that they worshiped Roman gods and many Christians were punished and killed
for not obeying that and later on, another emperor Diocletian he made it things worse. He tried hard
to get rid of Christianity and Christians faced terrible suffering and death and as I mentioned
before that once a year, Roman empire asked people to provide a proof that they worshiped
a Roman god. This proof was called a certificate or libellus. It was a document or a piece of paper
that showed that they performed a sacrifice to Roman gods and the emperor. The authorities
wanted everyone to follow this traditional Roman religious practices and this certificate was a
way to make sure that people were loyal to the Roman gods and if people couldn't show the proof
or refuse to sacrifice, they faced punishment, fines and penalties and a lot of times, they were
killed. Some people would buy these certificates even some Christians under the table and get away
with it but many Christians were killed for not worshiping Roman gods and Christians were
persecuted but they developed this thing like a secret symbol and this was secret symbol was a
fish symbol was an ancient Christian symbol shaped like a fish and the word 'ichthus' meant fish in
Greek. I probably not pronounced that correctly but my Greek is not good. It was used by early
Christians as a secret symbol during the times of persecution. The legend has that when Christians
met a stranger on the road during the times of danger, one person would draw the upper arc of the
fish symbol in the dirt and if the other person was a Christian, they would complete the drawing,
forming the full fish symbol. This way they could identify each other discreetly and share
their faith without drawing too much attention from those whom might persecute them. Over time,
Christianity grew, persecution decreased and then this fish symbol became more widely recognized and
accepted as a symbol of Christian identity and so I do want to encourage those of you who are
going through persecution from your family members today, being called with names, being accused. I
remember in the beginning stages of our ministry, other churches you know would call us and
really label us with such a weird bizarre false accusations. It was very painful because I wanted
to be accepted by them. I really wanted to fit in. I didn't know any English at the time and so
it was just very painful and I want to encourage you, if you're going through that to persevere,
your reward is great in heaven. Don't give up. Find a community of people that believe in support
in those things that you're walking in and can uplift you. For those that are facing severe
persecution, we're praying for you. We're standing with you that God will intervene and bring relief
and mercy in your situation and for all of you who love this ministry and who are being blessed
by this ministry, while I am not Debbie the downer and expecting this this channel will get shut down
and my social media will be gone but at the same time, I do want to be prepared. I expect the best,
I prepare for the worst and so would you do me a huge favor and just go to Pastorvlad.org/email
and sign up for the email. You will right away get an email from me to let me know how you came
up into this ministry, you know share a little bit your story, try to reply to that right away
so that our emails don't go into your junk folder going forward and so that you can receive those
emails. I promise not to spam, sell or sell your information to other people or sell you
stuff. I want to send short emails every week to encourage your Christian faith and then in
the PS of the email, I'll always kind of let you know of upcoming events or some things that maybe
you wanted to be aware of. We're also developing a video platform on my website and that will become
an app where all of our solid teaching and our e-courses will be available on, in case something
doesn't go well with YouTube. So we don't want to put all of our eggs in one basket but we're
still grateful for this opportunity to bring these videos teachings and live streams to you through
YouTube, through Facebook and other means but I do want to have a backup plan just in case something
happens because the way this world is going, I'm pretty sure that you know many Christian creators
who speak truth in love might not last very long on these platforms. We pray for the best,
we hope for the best but we do have to prepare for the worst. So thank you for watching this
video. I hope that you were encouraged and I hope to see you on the other side of the email list.