Joel C. Rosenberg highlights a key difference between Islam and Christianity:
Rosie O’Donnell declared this week that “radical Christians” are as dangerous as “radical Muslims.” The Pope, meanwhile, declared this week that radical Islam is “evil” for trying to force people to follow Mohammed or be killed by the sword. Christians were understandably disappointed by Rosie, yet no violent protests have resulted so far as I know. Radical Muslims, on the other hand, are on a rampage, rioting throughout the Islamic world and even burning the Pope in effigy.
Joel’s best line, however, is this:
That said, I think the world would be best served not by papal pronouncements about Islam but by the Pope — and all followers of Christ — staying focused on the message of the gospel, preaching about how much Jesus loves all the people of the Middle East.
That’s what called “staying on message”, folks.
After kicking out the Taliban, I have to say I’m disappointed we (viz: the United States) didn’t influence the new Afghan constitution more, to keep as much sharia out of it as possible. Because we failed to do so, the result is persecution of Christians, though this is hardly surprising in Muslim lands.
You will be in our prayers, Mr. Rahman.
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” —Matthew 5:10
Calvary Chapel Petaluma in northern California has started the Read the Red campaign to raise awareness and funds for the persecuted Church around the globe. Buy a wristband, make a donation, strengthen someone’s faith.
I know a few Indians, most of whom are Hindu. They are not the kind of people I would imagine capable of the kind of violence Compass Direct is reporting from the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Chattisgarh. (Compass’s site appears to be down at the moment.)
In the former state, two Christian pastors have been found murdered, the deeds claimed by the “Anti-Christian Forum.” In the latter, two hundred Hindu extremists attacked a church in the village of Moti Chowk. Police then arrested nine church members, charging them under the Indian Penal Code with “disturbing the peace.” All nine were released on bail two days later. The Christian community is also being boycotted in the village, restricting their access to the community well and from buying food at the local markets.
Items like this show us how blessed we are to live in a nation like the United States. Please pray for those in India and around the world who are persecuted in the name of our Lord.
[Info provided via Voice of the Martyrs.]
After the ACLU got a homosexual group officially recognized at a high school in Washington State, it’s now filed a friend-of-the-court brief essentially asking that case to be struck down, because a Christian club is now using that case to be recognized itself.
“This goes to show how far the ACLU will manipulate the legal system to further their radical agenda,” said Chandler, a litigation specialist who is working on the case.
“They are backtracking,” Chandler said. “They used these laws to get what they wanted -– equal rights for the gay-straight alliance -– and now that they’ve gotten that, they want to retract it so the Bible club doesn’t get the same benefits.”
[…]
“The ACLU is obviously engaged in religious bigotry -– in cases concerning homosexual groups, they argue that Prince fully applies, but now, when it clearly applies, using the ACLU’s own standard, to a religious club, they are seeking to overturn the Prince decision,” he said.
The ACLU continues to prove it is no friend of the Christian when it comes to religious liberty. The ACLU is engaged in an agenda, it would appear, to guarantee freedoms to everyone except Christians.
Today we wrap up Chuck Colson’s look at the “Four Horseman” of this, our modern age, with this final quote from his speech, “The Enduring Revolution”:
The fourth modern myth is radical individualism. The fourth horseman brings excess and isolation.
This myth dismisses the importance of family, church, and community; denies the value of sacrifice; and elevates individual rights and pleasures as the ultimate social value.
But with no higher principles to live by, men and women suffocate under their own expanding pleasures. Consumerism becomes empty and leveling, leaving society full of possessions but drained of ideals. This is what Vaclav Havel calls “totalitarian consumerism.”
A psychologist tells the story of a despairing young woman, spent in an endless round of parties, exhausted by the pursuit of pleasure. When told she should simply stop, she responded, “You mean I don’t have to do what I want to do?”
As author George Macdonald once wrote, “The one principle of hell is ‘I am my own.’”
Revelation 6:7-8 tells us “And when He had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living being say, ‘Come and see!’ And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”
The great sin which was the downfall of Lucifer, and led to his and a third of Heaven being cast out, was the sin of selfishness. I’ve read that to be a practicing Satanist, one doesn’t have to belong to the Church of Satan. All one has to do is to totally live for oneself, with no regard to anyone or anything else. How many of us are guilty of that at one time or another?
Ultimately, if this is the way you live your life, you will find yourself in Hell. Most people have this image of Hell as a place of fire and brimstone, with the Devil and his demons forever taunting them. Many people have said, oftentimes as a stab to harshly judgmental Christians, that they would rather be in Hell with their friends, than in Heaven with the likes of them. What these poor souls don’t realize is that Hell isn’t going to be a place where you will be with anyone. You will be utterly and absolutely alone. Worst of all, unlike here and now, where when even alone the Spirit of the Living God is present with you, in Hell you will be completely removed from the presence of God Himself. That is what Hell will truly be, and why one should fear, not embrace, it.
From “The Enduring Revolution”:
The third myth is the relativity of moral values. The third horseman sows chaos and confusion.
This myth hides the dividing line between good and evil, noble and base. It has thus created a crisis in the realm of truth. When a society abandons its transcendent values, each individual’s moral vision becomes purely personal and finally equal. Society becomes merely the sum total of individual preferences, and since no preference is morally preferable, anything that can be dared will be permitted.
This leaves the moral consensus for our laws and manners in tatters. Moral neutrality slips into moral relativism. Tolerance substitutes for truth, indifference for religious conviction. And in the end, confusion undercuts all our creeds.
From “The Enduring Revolution”:
The second myth of modernity is the promise of coming utopia. The second horseman arrives with sword and slaughter.
This is the myth that human nature can be perfected by government; that a new Jerusalem can be built using the tools of politics.
From the birth of this century, ruthless ideologies claimed history as their own. They moved swiftly from nation to nation on the strength of a promised utopia. They pledged to move the world, but could only stain it with blood.
In communism and fascism we have seen rulers who bear the mark of Cain as a badge of honor; who pursue a savage virtue, devoid of humility and humanity. We have seen more people killed in this century by their own governments than in all its wars combined. We have seen every utopian experiment fall exhausted from the pace of its own brutality.
Yet utopian temptations persist, even in the world’s democracies — stripped of their terrors perhaps, but not of their risks. The political illusion still deceives, whether it is called the great society, the new covenant, or the new world order. In each case it promises government solutions to our deepest needs for security, peace, and meaning.
I just read a speech delivered by Chuck Colson in 1993 to the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Colson was accepting the Templeton Prize, and this speech was the accceptance address. I was especially struck by his usage of the Four Horseman as a literary device, and thought I would share one a day. From “The Enduring Revolution”:
Four great myths define our times — the four horsemen of the present apocalypse.
The first myth is the goodness of man. The first horseman rails against heaven with the presumptuous question: why do bad things happen to good people? He multiplies evil by denying its existence.
This myth deludes people into thinking that they are always victims, never villains; always deprived, never depraved. It dismisses responsibility as the teaching of a darker age. It can excuse any crime, because it can always blame something else — a sickness of society or a sickness of the mind.
One writer has called the modern age “the golden age of exoneration.” When guilt is dismissed as the illusion of narrow minds, then no one is finally accountable, even to his conscience.
The irony is that this should come alive in this century, of all centuries, with its gulags and death camps and killing fields. As G. K. Chesterton once said, the doctrine of original sin is the only philosophy empirically validated by the centuries of recorded human history.
It was a holocaust survivor who exposed this myth most eloquently. Yehiel Dinur was a witness during the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Dinur entered the courtroom and stared at the man behind the bulletproof glass — the man who had presided over the slaughter of millions. The court was hushed as a victim confronted a butcher.
Then suddenly Dinur began to sob, and collapsed to the floor. Not out of anger or bitterness. As he explained later in an interview, what struck him at that instant was a terrifying realization. “I was afraid about myself,” Dinur said. “I saw that I am capable to do this … Exactly like he.”
The reporter interviewing Dinur understood precisely. “How was it possible for a man to act as Eichmann acted?” he asked. “Was he a monster? A madman? Or was he perhaps something even more terrifying … Was he normal?”
Yehiel Dinur, in a moment of chilling clarity, saw the skull beneath the skin. “Eichmann,” he concluded, “is in all of us.”
Jesus said it plainly: “That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man” (Mark 7:20).
There was a time when “fear of God” meant piety, or at least conscience. Today, it more accurately describes the worldview of secular liberals who get itchy and twitchy at any reminder of our religious roots as a nation.
Not content with having “under God” stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance, Michael Newdow has filed a lawsuit (paid subscription may be required) to “remove all prayer and ‘Christian religious acts’ from the Jan. 20 inauguration.”
Perhaps Mr. Newdow, Judge Cooper in Atlanta, and all of the justices on the Supreme Court, need to read the First Amendment to the Constitution again. “Congress shall make no law…” [Emphasis added. And will continue to be added until it gets through the very thick skulls out there. —R]
Perhaps Mr. Newdow would like to file suit against the “Father of our Country,” the first President, George Washington. It was Washington who added the words “so help me God” to the end of the presidential oath. It was Washington who chose to open his inaugural address with a prayer to the Almighty.
Mr. Newdow claims “that an inauguration that includes prayers by religious ministers would turn nonbelievers ‘into second-class citizens and create division on the basis of religion.’” Perhaps Mr. Newdow should turn his looking glass inward, for it sounds as though Mr. Newdow has some unresolved conflict within that causes him to feel inferior when he compares himself to others.
I wonder if Mr. Newdow would be as strongly opposed to the prayers and invocations that will no doubt be offered if they were done in Arabic, and quoted from the Koran? Perhaps Mr. Newdow should travel to Saudi Arabia and complain about the domination of Islam in the every day lives of the citizens there. Then Mr. Newdow would learn what freedom of religion is all about.
I think this proves that like the Pledge case, Mr. Newdow isn’t concerned with his daughter (who personally was never opposed to saying the pledge, including “under God”) or anyone else being “forced” to tolerate a “religious” element in the public square. It has more to do with Mr. Newdow getting his name in the papers and his face on television.
It’s freedom of religion, Mr. Newdow, not freedom from. And let’s just say that the “religious” elements you are so opposed to are being paid for by the $40 million in private donations made for the inauguration. Will that satisfy you? No doubt it will not.
A federal judge in Atlanta has ruled that stickers placed on Cobb County textbooks regarding evolution are unconstitutional. The stickers read, in full: “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.”
Judge Clarence Cooper has a problem with the above benign statement regarding evolution:
His conclusion, he said, “is not that the school board should not have called evolution a theory or that the school board should have called evolution a fact.”
“Rather, the distinction of evolution as a theory rather than a fact is the distinction that religiously motivated individuals have specifically asked school boards to make in the most recent anti-evolution movement, and that was exactly what parents in Cobb County did in this case,” he wrote.
So if the Cobb County school board cannot call evolution a theory, and they cannot call it a fact, exactly what can they call it, Your Honor?
The fact is that evolution is not a fact; it is a theory, and one that has yet to be conclusively proven. This is all the “religiously motivated individuals” Judge Cooper scoffs at are trying to say. Christians simply want the government to acknowledge that evolution is not fact, has not been proven, and we do not wish to see our tax dollars used to indoctrinate our children in to believing it is such.
Perhaps Judge Cooper needs to read the Constitution yet again. There is no separation of church and state in the Constitution. The First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law…” Congress, Judge Cooper. Last time I checked, the Cobb County school board didn’t qualify as being the legislative body for the rest of the nation. Finally, Judge Cooper, the First Amendment says “freedom of religion”, not freedom from religion.
Fearing attacks by Islamic militants, Christians in Indonesia are moving their church meetings “underground”.
Amidst fears of bombings and shootings by Islamic militants, some Christians in Indonesia are trading in their traditional churches for more secure, though unorthodox, buildings. On any given Sunday, thousands of Christians flock to office buildings, shopping malls, hotels, and even movie theaters to worship.
“It puts us at a lower risk for being a target for religious persecution,” said Pastor Steve Lunn, whose International English Service holds worship services for 1,000 people in a downtown Jakarta office building.
“People tell me they feel safer,” Lunn told the Associated Press. “The facility itself is not the most important thing. It’s just a place to gather. The most important thing is being together and worshipping God together.”
Christian leaders also say the unorthodox approach is necessary because they cannot get building permits and that ignoring the rules risk having a facility shut down, or worse, destroyed by protesters. In addition, plans to build new churches sometimes draw violent protests from Islamic groups, which view them as an attempt to convert Muslims.
Islam is, of course, as we are reminded almost daily by the mainstream media, the “Religion of Peace”. Please pray for the Lord’s protection of the church members in Jakarta and other regions of Indonesia.
Ravi Zacharias has posted on his ministry web site an interview he granted Julia Duin of The Washington Times last year. Ravi was born in India, and raised in Hinduism, before becoming a Christian. He is widely recognized as an authority on the major world religions. I found a couple of gems:
I am totally convinced the Christian faith is the most coherent worldview around. Everyone: pantheist, atheist, skeptic, polytheist has to answer these questions: Where did I come from? What is life’s meaning? How do I define right from wrong and what happens to me when I die? Those are the fulcrum points of our existence. I deal with cultural issues whether they be in the Middle East, Far East, the Orient or the West. You broach questions in the context of their culture and then present Christian answers.
[…]
What America needs more than anything else right now is to know she cannot exist without the worldview that helped bring her into being. And that was the Judeo-Christian worldview. What America also needs is the willingness to allow the Christian faith freedom of access in the institutions that it allows every other faith to have.
Isn’t it interesting that when these mainline divinity schools were conservative, room was given for the liberals. But they have become liberal and the conservatives are squeezed out, if not humiliated out, which is a fascinating reality.
One of the unfortunate by-products from the ouster of Saddam Hussein has been an increase in persecution of Christians in Iraq by followers of the “Religion of Peace.” It will be an uphill battle for the U.S. to influence a constitution for the newly freed nation that will not be based on Islamic law, but rather allows the practice of all religions.
Pray for our Iraqi brothers and sisters in Christ that God will protect them, and that they may be witnesses to their Muslim countrymen.
