You [jc] said,
Onward Christian Soldiers
Being Christian soldiers does not mean we will go to war against other nations that may be a threat to our security and freedom. In fact, we are commanded to love our enemies. This theme of love for our enemies is throughout the New Testament.
Don’t forget this: The world thinks we are a Christian nation since the majority of Americans claim to be Christians. But we are not. We are as atheistic as a nation can be, especially with Bush as the warmongering president.
Comment:
It seems that all of your preaching is meant to denigrate Bush, our nation’s president. Bush is not only obligated by our constitution to protect and defend our constitution but also the people whom he serves. I wouldn't want his job, being a Christian and Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the greatest nation in history, He has certainly been forced to make some tough decisions and I agree he's made some poor ones, BUT; Decisions are always arguable at best. But slander is not a Christian fruit of the spirit, yet it remains the responsibility of the slanderer. That's you. Slander does not serve any useful purpose."
I would suggest that you continue to study the WHOLE Word of God, not just the selected passages that meet with your limited understanding.
Pray on that.
I have heard that the Word of God is like a lake of living water... shallow enough around the edges for a child to wade in and get his feet wet and be refreshed... but deep enough that the most profound of thinkers cannot fathom its depths.
Romans 13
Submit to Government
1 Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. 4 For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. 5 Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake."
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ jc This is my personal response to this individual: It might be wise for new bloggers to read post # 207 first to get a better understanding of what is being said. Just scroll down a bit to read it.
Concerning your first comment:
I agree with your first statement that Bush, as president of the United States, is obligated to protect and defend our constitution, country and the people whom he serves. Where the trouble comes to the surface is that he claims to be a born-again Evangelical Christian. If he truly is a genuine, New Testament-believing Christian, he should not have become our president, because a genuine Christian must be obedient to all the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Now, if your Bible is similar to mine, which is "The New International Version," you must be aware that there are a large number of verses which emphatically command how every real Christian must love their enemies. Those pertinent verses concerning love for our enemy are the ones you say are the only select passages I use; in fact, they are the very ones you and your churchy cronies avoid like the plague.
Now, here is the enigma at the present: How can our president defend this country from its enemies, with force when necessary, and still be obedient to Christ’s teachings of love for our enemies? This tells me Bush should do one of two things: abdicate his office as President so he can adhere to Christ’s commands, or renounce his commitment to Jesus Christ so he can continue to fight and kill in Iraq like other pagan politicians, without continually dragging the Christian religion into the dregs of hell. It will never happen. He can’t have/do both. As I have said a dozen times, Christianity is a religion of love, not killing and defending.
In regards to slandering Bush, here is Webster’s definition of slander: "the utterance in the presence of another person of a false statement or statements, damaging to a third person’s character or reputation: usually distinguished from libel, which is written." If I committed slander or libel against Bush by telling the coherent truth, let him, your church, or you take me to court. Think before you write.
According to the Word of God, I uttered or wrote no false statements about Bush. This evil war against his supposed enemies is a breach of the Christian constitution (the New Testament). Whenever I present these charges, I am in obedience to Scripture, always presenting unambiguous evidence. 1st Timothy 5:20. "Those who sin are to be rebuked publicly, so that others may take warning." Sure!
The most egregious sin which Bush is guilty of, and is at the same time the epitome of all sins, is this: destroying his enemies, and allowing many American soldiers to die, etc. That is in direct violation to one of the most important commands that Christ Jesus gave us: to love our enemies in return for their hatred for us. That love command makes the Christian religion uniquely superior among all other world religions, even though it may sound absolutely ridiculous to those who are not actually experiencing the life of Jesus Christ. One must, in effect, be part of Christ’s body to believe and live as He did/does.
As a matter of fact, Christ could not have said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life," if He did not give us the command to love our enemies. That command is an intricate part of God’s truth in His ability of winning over people like you and me who once were ungodly sinners. Listen to this verse: 1st Timothy 2:3. ". . . God our Savior who wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth." That verse loudly proclaims that God has a loving desire for all sinners (those who hate him) to be saved. In principle, if God hated and destroyed all evil people—He could do just that, but his love for the lost will not allow Him—He would have no one left to save, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23.
Also, when Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as your self," He, without saying it, implied: If our neighbor was our enemy, should we not love him/her now that he is in need or should we just kill him/her because he doesn’t believe as we do, and is a potential threat to us? Let me repeat this. Love for our enemies is a major part of the second greatest command of all: to love your neighbor as yourself. What more can be said? God desires His ways to be our ways. That was one of the reasons God came to earth in the body of a human (Jesus Christ).
What Bush is doing by his ungodly, aggressive attitudes toward his/ours enemies is to present a false gospel (heresy) to all American Christians. This is what I mean: Since Bush is the highest-ranking American "christian," he also is—whether he knows it or not—the most influential "christian" in our country. This is what the apostle Paul said in Galatians 1:8. "But if even an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to you, let him be eternally condemned." Ouch!
You see, we are to expose false brothers (Bush) whose teachings or lifestyles do not conform to Christ’s gospel. That is why this blog has been a vanguard to the truth for the last two years, while handicapped religion—because of its blindness—remained silent. Check your concordance to see how many verses warn us about false brothers. In fact, it may just be that attempting to get American Christians, actually the whole world, to believe that it is God’s Will to fight any or all nations who in the future may be a possible threat to the homeland, is even more damaging than all the killing in Iraq. It is only fair to say that Bush is personally doing all the killing and destruction by proxy, by ordering this senseless war.
Since it seems you belong to a church which believes we should support Bush, you are between a rock and a hard place. For you to believe as the New Testament, along with what this blog, teaches, you must disassociate yourself from your beloved church, and thus lose your respected title as deacon. It is time for you to make a correct decision. If anything that is written in this response is not according to what Christ teaches in the New Testament, please let me and the readers of this blog know.
As to your derogatory statement pertaining to my limited understanding of Scripture, we all are limited to one degree or another. Since you falsely accused me of slander, etc., it is your duty to back up your statement in writing that I am failing in my attempts to present the whole Word of God. If I am guilty, I will be the first to acknowledge it.
By your saying to me, "Pray on that," which was aforementioned in the fourth paragraph, it sounds like you may be a spiritually disabled Mormon.
Now to the crux of your argument in Romans, Chapter 13:1-5. Verse one. "Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities . . ." I add these words of Jesus to Paul’s exhortation: When a teacher of the law asked him (Jesus) this question (in Matthew 22:21): "‘Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?’. . . Then he said to them, ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God's.’" Paraphrased, most law-abiding people in the world, including myself, will agree that whatever laws regarding our inner actions with other humans, taxes, etc. which are mandated by our government, federal, state or local, must be obeyed.
Romans 13:2. "Consequently, he who rebels against authority rebels against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves." True, but with this exception which Paul neglected to explain: repeating, give to Caesar only what is due him; with that in mind, we must never deny our Lord and Savior in any way, our allegiance to Him, or obey any laws that give us the right to violate our commitment to Jesus Christ. An example: Just because we can’t legislate morality, it doesn’t give us the right to legislate Biblical immorality; when, for the sake of equal rights, evil is called good (equal rights for homosexuals pertaining to civil unions and gay marriages, etc.)
Another “must” that is not talked about or practiced by many, since it has been negated by most conventional religions, is this: The apostle James make this teaching clear and concise in the book of James 4:4: "You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world [by your silence and indifference condones the evil and greedy ways of the world] becomes an enemy of God." [emphasis added]. James’s warning is more applicable in America at this time with all the freedoms we have. Although we are free to live to the point where “anything goes,” many of these liberty-type laws can easily suck us into the sinful trappings of the American culture (lifestyle of friendship with the world). It has happened and will continue to happen, but it happens so insidiously that we will be, if we aren’t already, incapable of differentiating between good and evil.
Of course, to keep this comment in context, chapter 13 of Paul’s letter to the Romans was referring mainly, if not only, to Christians living in Rome and concerning Roman law. That Roman law was the prevalent, if not the only, ruling body in the entire Mediterranean region. This seemed to imply that Paul was responding to rumors/suggestions, etc. that they (Christians) as citizens of God’s kingdom weren’t obligated to obey certain Roman laws. If true, that was why Paul was quickly refuting that notion. That could have been the reason for chapter 13.
Yes, God did establish/allow that barbaric empire to come into existence according to His foreknowledge of all events; otherwise, Christ could not have been condemned by a Roman governor or hung on a tree, etc., as the Old Testament prophesied. Check Galatians 3:13, or Deuteronomy 22:22-23. Hanging on a cross/tree was, at Jesus’ time, Rome’s primary form of execution.
Here is another reason. Just as The Lord said to Pharaoh in Romans 9:17, and also in Exodus 9:16, in the middle of all the plagues God was sending onto Egypt for not letting His people leave the land of Goshen: "I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be displayed in all the earth." That statement infers, if asked, that God would also have poignantly said to Emperor Caesar, "I have raised you up for this very purpose, that my gospel could/would be spread throughout the entire Roman world.”
Above and beyond my hope of being with Christ for eternity, my greatest hope is to die for the cause of continuing the work of Christ—the sooner the better—for defending the truth as presented in God’s instruction book. Do you believe the fear of death has been destroyed by Jesus Christ? Now, our physical death is a blessed experience, a time for all to celebrate, which is the opening of the eternal door to the culmination of our faith; finally arriving with the anticipation of seeing my Lord Jesus face-to-face, although I know it is better that I remain for a little while longer for the sake of making sure this blog gets into the hands of those whose most earnest desire is to believe and live in a way that is pleasing to Jesus Christ. Check Philippians 1:21-24 to see if your church agrees to live in compliance with the reality of death, since Jesus Christ is our life-long paradigm (example, model), even in death. Also, the writer of Hebrews says in verse 3:15, "And free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death."
In summation, for me to boldly tell the truth according to the New Testament, concerning pernicious acts committed by our President and Emperor (Bush), I would be subject to judgment if it weren’t for America’s freedom of speech. And even if there wasn’t free speech, as in a totalitarian regime, etc., I would still speak up for Christ and accept the proper punishment (torture, and finally, death).
In your first sentence, you said you were sorry you checked in on this blog. I am extremely grateful that you did, for your sake and mine, and for the benefit of all the bloggers who regularly subscribe to this Biblical blog. Try praying on this message with an unbiased heart, if you can. God bless.
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