John 15:18
John 15:1818If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me first.
Used to interpret modern persecution of Witnesses — most prominently the 2017 Russian Supreme Court ban — as evidence that the organisation is the true religion: the world hates Christ, the world hates JWs, therefore JWs are the disciples Christ promised the world would hate.
is true: the world does hate Christ and those who are his. But Jesus did not say "the only persecuted group will be my true church." Persecution is a moral category, not an epistemological one. Mormons were driven from state to state in nineteenth-century America; Falun Gong is brutally suppressed in China; North Korean Christians, Iranian converts from Islam, Coptic Christians in Egypt, Nigerian Christians under Boko Haram, Yazidi and Assyrian Christians in Iraq — all face real and grave persecution. The Christian response is solidarity in suffering and honesty in doctrine. The two are not in tension. Stand against the Russian ban; stand against every other persecution; and let doctrine be tested by — Berean comparison against Scripture, not by headlines.