Zone1 Should Christians get more physical in defending their religion?

[Carl in Michigan]

The proverb’s meaning is still basically the same: a person who lives violently will probably at some point be killed in a violent manner

Unfortunately, so will true Christians. ALL died horrible deaths except John. And he SHOULD have, but his life was spared from the boiling oil! God doesn't call us to travel the easy path, but the HARD.

When he Called Simon He said, "I will teach you to be fishers of men."

He explained when you catch a load of fish in a net, the good are sorted from the useless. He told Peter, to go and gather ALL who will listen. But He will separate the wheat from the chaff when He comes. That's HIS job, not ours

 

[Bezukhov]

In Mortimer's Bible Jesus said: "But I say unto you, Hate your enemies, curse them that curse you, do evil to them that hate you, and slay them which despitefully use you, and persecute you"
And this: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, if someone steps on your little toe, you break every bone in their body!"

 

[initforme]

As a lifelong Christian I will revert to never fighting

 

[RoccoR]

RE: Should Christians get more physical in defending their religion?
SUBTOPIC: Defending the Faith 'vs' Defending Religion
⁜→ et al,

This is really a question for the Society of Jesus (The JESUITS). I have seen them referred to as "the armed militia of the Roman Catholic Church."

As a lifelong Christian I will revert to never fighting

(COMMENT)

Have you been taught this?

Most Respectfully,
R

 

[Ivan88]

The Christians who remembered Apostle Paul telling them to honor kings did not get killed, but those who listened to Edom that honoring the king is idolatry all got killed miserably. Eventually, Edom got control of the Roman church and pretended to be "Christians". They proceeded to torture and kill millions of real Christians throughout much of Europe.
The Judaized protest-ant churches and the Vatican fought tooth and nail against Hitler. Too bad He didn't catch them in their wicked treachery.

 

[Ivan88]

Unfortunately, so will true Christians. ALL died horrible deaths except John. And he SHOULD have, but his life was spared from the boiling oil! God doesn't call us to travel the easy path, but the HARD.

When he Called Simon He said, "I will teach you to be fishers of men."

He explained when you catch a load of fish in a net, the good are sorted from the useless. He told Peter, to go and gather ALL who will listen. But He will separate the wheat from the chaff when He comes. That's HIS job, not ours

Edom is the dry grass and real Israel is the fire. Obadiah 18. Self professed Jews and fake Israel occupying Palestine are not Biblical Israel.

Christ said, sell thy cloak, if necessary and buy a sword.
22:36 Luke

 

[Ivan88]

Every time Christians call YahShua/Christ, as Jesus, are insulting Him.

 

[irosie91]

What a stupid post. Are you into fist fighting over religion?

Mortimer posted about Jesus and the roman shill
money changers. I don't remember a FIST FIGHT
in that episode of sedition. He tried to clear the
TEMPLE of roman filth with a simple CLEAN UP

 

[RoccoR]

RE: Should Christians get more physical in defending their religion?
SUBTOPIC: Christ vs' Jesus
⁜→ Ivan88, et al,

You will have to teach me...

Every time Christians call YahShua/Christ, as Jesus, are insulting Him.

(ASSUMPTION)

You probably know much more than I. I was under the impression that the disciples of "Jesus" concluded that He was the savior - they applied the title of "Christ" (‘‘the Anointed One,’’ the Messiah, or in Greek ”Crist"). What is the insult or the disrespect?

So, school me so that I may understand.

(SIDEBAR)

The Supreme Being that holds the characteristic God Powers (omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent) knows the intent of the mortals. The Supreme Being cannot be insulted. The Supreme Being is not subject to the emotional characteristics of humanity.

Most Respectfully,
R

 

[buttercup]

This bears repeating. I'll bold the pertinent part.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.​

​

Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God;​

​

Ephesians 6:12-17​

 

[Vastator]

If that worked so well then how to explain why there aren't a couple of billion Jewish converts as a result of the Nazi death camps?

Most Christians and their churches stayed hidden and practiced in secret.

Jesus, and every one of the apostles were Jews...

 

[DudleySmith]

Jesus, and every one of the apostles were Jews...

Who said they weren't? Except Orthodox Jews claim Christians can't be Jewish, which is baloney, but they spent a lot of effort trying to exterminate Christians for some1,800 years and failed, so naturally they're pissed off that these uppity goy refused to die or be their slaves.

Christians are more 'Jewish' than the racist Babylonian cultists fabticated by Ezra and the Saduccees and the Pharisees who survived the failed Bar Kokhba Revolt and started the new 'oral Torah' based cult, so no one need take the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox as 'Jewish' either, by their own standards.

 

[surada]

Edom is the dry grass and real Israel is the fire. Obadiah 18. Self professed Jews and fake Israel occupying Palestine are not Biblical Israel.

Christ said, sell thy cloak, if necessary and buy a sword.
22:36 Luke

Luke lived in Antioch. He never met Jesus.

 

[DudleySmith]

Unfortunately, so will true Christians. ALL died horrible deaths except John. And he SHOULD have, but his life was spared from the boiling oil! God doesn't call us to travel the easy path, but the HARD.

When he Called Simon He said, "I will teach you to be fishers of men."

He explained when you catch a load of fish in a net, the good are sorted from the useless. He told Peter, to go and gather ALL who will listen. But He will separate the wheat from the chaff when He comes. That's HIS job, not ours

SElf-defense and fighting off invaders and bandits is not 'living by the sword'. The extreme pacifist interpretation is just wrong, is all.

 

[DudleySmith]

Ephesians is Paul's response to the city's church having 'sold out' to the city government, and getting back to its original mission; it has nothing to do with Christians defending themselves or their families.

 

[presonorek]

They once were but nowadays they are not willing to protect their religion physically anymore against attacks. I listened to TikTok videos, Andrew Tate an American said islam is the true religion because it is the last religion, that means the last religion where you wont get out alive if you insult Mohammed or burn the Quran even in a Secular country where muslims are immigrants like Sweden, but in a mostly christian country like sweden or the USA you can insult in the most vile way Jesus and Christians wont defend themselfes physically.

A devout Christian answered, that we should focus more the heavenly realm, Gods realm not the physical realm and that the Bible says it is God who is to avenge, not we, God is the perfect judge, and it is not our buisness to protect God.

I think that is a bit more complicated, while we do really need to focus on the godly realm the Bible says we must first seek the kingodm of God and his righteousness, and that his will should be done on earth like in heaven, right?

Matthew 6,33 Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness...

Also according to the Bible we should do what Christ would do, we should strife to be holy like he was holy... But didnt Christ got physical with the money changers in the Temple? Does that mean if we something unrighteous and blaspheming etc. at least in Church maybe not in the state, but at least in our Church/Temple we can or should get physical? Didnt Christ throw over the tables of the money changers?

Matthew 21,12 Then Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves. 13And He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer.’ But you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’ ”…

So can we get or are allowed to get physical? Should we get physical?

In my opinion I would if i know i can win... or if im angry enough

The ideology with the most violent advocates will survive. The superior idea isn’t always the winner. If Christianity doesn’t become more physical then Islam will become the world religion in 500 years or so.

The Islamic religion isn’t all that bad as long as the whole world is converted to Islam which I think is kind of their objective. I see no need for Christians to compete with Islam through violence. The moral code of Islam is almost identical except for the treatment of nonbelievers. If the nonbelievers are eliminated through violence then that is no longer a problem. I’d say, “no.” Christians have no incentive to become more physical in defense of their faith.

 

[irosie91]

The ideology with the most violent advocates will survive. The superior idea isn’t always the winner. If Christianity doesn’t become more physical then Islam will become the world religion in 500 years or so.

The Islamic religion isn’t all that bad as long as the whole world is converted to Islam which I think is kind of their objective. I see no need for Christians to compete with Islam through violence. The moral code of Islam is almost identical except for the treatment of nonbelievers. If the nonbelievers are eliminated through violence then that is no longer a problem. I’d say, “no.” Christians have no incentive to become more physical in defense of their faith.

Islam does not work without an UNDERCLASS. Even today in "modern" muslim lands, kaffirin have to be
imported to do the dirty work and the intellectual
stuff that is beyond the islamic mind and the whipping boy function and various hedonist
services. Historically---there was a time when the big shot "IMAM" would discourage
efforts to "revert" kaffirin because he needed the
Jizya

 

[Carl in Michigan]

The ideology with the most violent advocates will survive. The superior idea isn’t always the winner. If Christianity doesn’t become more physical then Islam will become the world religion in 500 years or so.

The Islamic religion isn’t all that bad as long as the whole world is converted to Islam which I think is kind of their objective. I see no need for Christians to compete with Islam through violence. The moral code of Islam is almost identical except for the treatment of nonbelievers. If the nonbelievers are eliminated through violence then that is no longer a problem. I’d say, “no.” Christians have no incentive to become more physical in defense of their faith.

Since you are neither Christian nor Muslim, your OPINION is duly noted

 

[presonorek]

Since you are neither Christian nor Muslim, your OPINION is duly noted

Thank you I think. I couldn't tell if that was a compliment or not.

 

[buttercup]

SElf-defense and fighting off invaders and bandits is not 'living by the sword'. The extreme pacifist interpretation is just wrong, is all.

I know your post above was to someone else, but I want to chime in here, since you keep trying to frame this whole thing into being about mere self-defense. I already said in Post 12 that in my view there's nothing wrong with self-defense, so I agree with you on that, but that doesn't seem to be what Mortimer was talking about. The title of the thread does not say "defending oneself or one's family" it clearly says "defending their religion."

For crying out loud, in an earlier post he made it sound like "spreading the religion with fire and sword" was a GOOD thing, which obviously is more than mere self-defense. He can correct me if this is not what he's talking about, but he seems to be talking about getting physical as a Christian - either as an individual or a group - when Christians are discriminated against or oppressed.

Jesus never said, "slaughter your enemies by the sword!" In fact He said to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Those are not my words, those are straight from Jesus, read Matthew 5:44.

We are supposed to use a sword, but not a physical sword. As I posted twice already, Ephesians 6 talks about the "armor of God" that we should use in the ongoing spiritual battle between good and evil. And btw, the only offensive weapon within the armor of God is "the sword of the Spirit" which is the word of God.

The armor of God passage was not only for a specific church that Paul was addressing, as you claimed in post 55, it is for all believers regarding how we fight the enemy. (satan and the dark side) We don't fight a spiritual battle physically, the "weapons" and "armor" are spiritual.

I'll post it one more time, and highlight the pertinent parts.

Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.​

​

Ephesians 6:13-17​

And by the way, you have stated before that you're an atheist. If you still are then I don't necessarily expect you to agree with everything I've said here. But respectfully, please don't speak for Christians or try to be a bible teacher because the scriptures clearly say that "the natural person" (which includes atheists) does not accept or understand things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness to him; because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:1)

And FTR, I'm not an expert or a bible teacher, and don't claim to be... I still have a lot to learn, and I do continually learn, both on my own and in a small bible study group once a week. But I am a believer and when I make claims on biblical matters, I always try to back it up scripturally, so that most of the time it's not just my opinion but either the standard Christian view, or sometimes a more controversial view but still backed up scripturally. So if you do get into more debates on religion threads, please always back yourself up scripturally. By that I mean with a specific chapter and verse, not just "the bible says." Thanks.