Just Some Thoughts

I don’t know if we can call today’s posting a bible study as much as we should just call it my opinion, although I hope my opinion is led by the Holy Spirit. You will have to judge that for yourselves.

In mulling over the statements made in my blog the past few days, my thoughts kept returning to the statement of Jesus to Peter, when the High Priest came to arrest Jesus in the garden. Remember the words of Jesus? “He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.” After which Jesus miraculously healed the guard’s ear that Peter had cut off. Never again do we see Peter as a militant of any sort. Never did we see Jesus as a militant of any sort. The most militant Jesus became was at the Temple with the money-changers when He chased them off with a whip and overturned their tables.

Further still, never do we see any of the disciples resorting to even “self-defense” at least not militantly, only in fleeing, or escaping. (Many scattered away from Jerusalem after James was martyred.)

These thoughts led me to go and try to find out more about Christian martyrdom. There are so many books on Christians who have been martyred; martyrs of the Catholic faith and martyrs of the Protestant faith. I have a few of these books myself.

But I went to google on “Persecution of Christians” and found an entry in Wikipedia listing specific eras “Christian persecution,” some even that I had not been aware of. This is probably telling you how great a student I was NOT in school, but I didn’t realize that France basically de-Christianized itself during the French Revolution in 1789, by removing every semblance of Christianity, and all clergy from within its borders. That was just one of the eras of Christian persecution listed in Wikipedia, there were many more.

As some of these persecutions continued without abatement, Christians began to form their own uprisings and that just seems to have led to even more deaths, sometimes 100s of thousands of people killed. The Christians never seemed to have won out after an uprising.

And the Muslims! All the killings of Christians they did! It appears that they were only quieted down since the last Caliphate was de-throned, but began rising up again in 1979. There have been centuries and centuries of Islamic killings. No one in his right mind can think that we will not have to deal with them in this country as well, and soon, if we continue to be silent or “politically correct” on this critical issue! Critical not only to us Christians, but to any non-Islamists!

Look at this quote just today in a letter written to Charles Krauthammer and Fox News from Keith Davies, Executive Director of the Walid Shoebat Foundation (www.shoebat.com):

“Islam has only had a secular mode and "non-violent" strain from 1920 (fall of the Ottoman Empire) until about 1979 (fall of the Shah). If you study Islam's 1400 year history, it has always spread by the sword. You just happen to live in the period just after the Turkish Caliphate defeat, but you are witnessing the new rise of Islam which is also clearly described in the Bible...when Nazis took over Germany they were initially a small minority but it did not stop them from taking over because good people were silent, did little, or did nothing...”

Mr. Davies, a Jew, wrote this letter because of the stand that Mr. Krauthammer and Fox News, among others, took AGAINST Geert Wilders (if you don’t know who he is by now, just google his name and you’ll find out) for proposing that Islam is not a moderate religion. He believes that there are moderate Muslims, but there is not a moderate Islam. He also believes that Islam is not a religion, but a totalitarian idealogy.

Our mistake, as has been the case in Europe and in Mr. Wilder’s homeland of The Netherlands, is to treat Islam as a religion. In the YouTube videos “Geert Wilder’s Warning to America, Part 1” (and also Part 2), he lists the things that can be done now to try and prevent the Islamization of America. His own country is prosecuting him for speaking out against Islam, as are other countries in Europe. I hope you will watch his videos and then tell me what you think about what he is saying. I believe he is on the right track.

But he calls for “offensive” measures, none of which include picking up a gun, but all of which require getting out of our recliners, speaking out and speaking up against the “politically correct” stand on Islam. He lists several ways to do this, which I will leave to you to hear for yourselves, by watching his videos.

Meanwhile, keeping all the current news in view, I still must come back to the New Testament teachings, because I want to live as I am taught by the Word of God.

While there is a scripture in the Old Testament that says you may defend yourself or your property even to the point of killing the violator (I know there is because I remember being surprised to find it, and after reading it I felt for the first time that owning guns was not anti-biblical, but for the life of me I cannot find it now...I will keep trying, but if you find it please let me know), I still wonder why Stephen and James and the other followers of Jesus didn’t resort to that. We know the reason Jesus didn’t resist: His mission WAS to die. But what about the others? What about us? What is our mission as His followers?

If we are not to be more militant (other than in times of defense) then are we at least to be more vocal? I think so.

And to be more vocal requires more preparedness. We have to know what we are talking about. And, we need to get involved, as our founding fathers did in community and state and nation.

Here’s another little item from the current news that should also encourage us to speak up, one that concerns revisionist history and other changes in school textbooks today. Read this clipping from a Fox News article today:

"Gilbert T. Sewall, Director of the American Textbook Council, believes textbooks that end up in classrooms around the country have been steadily getting worse. "There's no doubt that identity politics have contributed to the decline of textbook quality over the last twenty years," says Sewall. He warns that vocal groups from gender activists to nutritionists have "demanded" their way into curriculum, simply by being the most vocal. Sewall says an editor at a top publishing company told him years ago that the squeaky wheel gets the attention and, "What was true then is even more true today." In Sewall's estimation what he calls "the Christian right" has been most persuasive in recent battles in Texas."

I say “Hurray for Texas, my home state!”, and yet, Texas has also succumbed recently to Muslim demands, which you will see in Wilder’s Warning to America. But if the “squeaky wheel gets the attention” then why are Christians not “squeaking”?

Since the silencing of Christianity, and the rising of Islam, in our own country are the biggest issues we Christians will have to face and to deal with in future (and if not us, then our children), I think we all should take time right here and now to get on our knees and beg God’s forgiveness first, and wisdom and direction second, to get moving as HE would have us do, to combat the enemy that is not only already at our gates, but is perhaps, as Wilder says, the Trojan Horse we have allowed inside our own borders by our ignorance and by our silence.

I think our founding fathers would be ashamed of us. We have let religious “political correctness” kill our testimonies and our witness of the power of Jesus Christ here in our nation and in the world.

So now you have something to think about. Please let me know what you think.

Tomorrow, Lord willing (for He directs my writing), I will return to Phoebe, the deaconess, continuing our study of church structure and spiritual gifts.