Worldly Powers Fear

As I sat in a training seminar today for a new business venture, the speaker spoke of how all network marketing businesses go through stages of ridicule and then violent opposition. She said that we were rapidly approaching the violent opposition phase, and to be grounded in your dreams and in the facts.

As I waited on my dinner to be served at my favorite restaurant, I flipped open my pocket bible to the New Testament. What I saw was John 15:1-25. While the first parts of that speak to our grounding in Jesus as the vine, Jesus' words in verse 18 struck me.

"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
(John 15:18)

Jesus was hated because He tore at the very fabric of Jewish establishment. The leaders of the Jewish, who ruled tyranically over their own kind, hated Jesus out of fear that their prosperity and position would be threatened. They were blind to the type of life they could live in if only they'd lead as free men, rather than enslaved men.

This brought me back to the intense persecution network marketing companies, also known as Multi-Level Marketing, come under at some point if not all the time. What is meant to liberate the people is seen by corporations and those enslaved by the exchange of time and money as a scam. What actually does liberate the people is persecuted and dreams of individuals are lost. See, most people fear freedom. Jesus encountered it. Some because it threatens their position, and others because it threatens their definition of security.

Jesus said the world would hate us because of the message of freedom He brings. That rings similar to what I see as the freedom Network Marketing brings. It is a new frontier and the world doesn't want to see it birth. But, do you realize millions of Americans have been in one or more of these. If all the rest of the people would stop tearing them down, maybe they'd actually get the lifestyle of their dreams.

Jesus sent the disciples out to spread the good news. Aren't we doing the same?