QED

Onward, Christian Soldiers!

mo with scimitar III was reading an interesting article (The Future of Christianity) by Anglican priest and regular Quadrant contributor Michael Giffin, who stopped me in my tracks by saying the Bible is silent about the Islamic threat. He added that he was proud that “for the most part, the Church has remained consistently silent about the supposed Islamic threat and stuck to preaching the Gospel of Christ.”

Now I admit to wanting the Christian churches to be more muscular when it comes to Islam. First, what do I mean by being more muscular? Well there is a middle course between Pope John Paul II kissing the Koran, as he did, and poking imams in the eye with a burnt stick. It’s a question of balance. To my mind a proper balance is not struck when Christian Church leaders make overtures towards Islam. Interfaith dialogue is misconceived, in my view, when the other side is committed to taking over.

It is no accident that where Islam predominates Christianity and Christians are driven out.  Christ was not a doormat and neither should be those whose job it is carry his message.  And it is a grave mistake to think the Bible is silent on the Islamic issue. Christ was quite clear about false prophets arising. “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.”(Matthew 7:15-16)

How much clearer could He have been? St Paul was pretty clear as well in his letter to the Galatians:

…there are some who are confusing you to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven [even, I add, the Archangel Gabriel to Mohammed in a cave] should proclaim to you a different gospel contrary to what we have proclaimed, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed! 

This should be instructive and alerting for those Christians who have ears to hear. St Paul bears reiterating: Let those who proclaim a gospel contrary to the gospel of Christ be accursed. Not invited,  you will notice, to morning tea by the Archbishop of Canterbury to discuss matters of common faith. There is no faith in common. Islam denies the divinity of Christ and places a man of unsavoury disposition above Him in the pecking order. It is just not tenable to sit down with these people as purveyors of a false gospel.

Nor is it tenable to ignore them and remain silent when the faith to which they owe allegiance is responsible for the persecution of Christians. Whether Edmund Burke said it or not, it is surely true that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. I cannot see that Christian churches are right to simply stand by and allow the propagation of hateful scripture to go directly unanswered and unchallenged.

If a number of Popes in history had not taken up the cudgels it is doubtful that Christianity would have survived the militaristic onslaught of Islam. The fight isn’t over until both sides disengage. The other side have not disengaged.

The threat is real and it is not all being acted out in far away countries between people of whom we know nothing. It is here and now and “simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking about our adversaries is folly; it means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our freedom.” Reagan was referring in this quote to political appeasement. It applies equally to spiritual appeasement.

18 thoughts on “Onward, Christian Soldiers!

  • johnhenry says:

    Sad to recall the opprobrium heaped upon the brave shoulders of Pope Benedict XVI following his calm yet compelling Regensburg lecture ten years ago:

    “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

    I know that Benedict was quoting a statement made by Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, but I believe that he was also voicing his own deep convictions about Islam.

  • ian.macdougall says:

    …the Bible is silent about the Islamic threat.

    The Good Book is not much of a guide on what to avoid when buying a used car either.
    Islam began in the 7thC, Christianity in the 1st. So how could it be otherwise?
    But the rest of it here is OK. Modern Islam is far less tolerant than modern Christianity. The Iranian constitution for example, recognizes Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian Iranians as religious minorities. But not the Bahá’í Faith. Nor do non-Muslim religions have equal rights with Islam; nor is one permitted to convert from Islam to any other religion.
    Which is a confession of Islam’s relative weakness as a doctrine.

  • bemartin39@bigpond.com says:

    It is becoming ever more certain that Islam will end up ruling the world well before the current century is done. The reason for that inevitability is simple. On the one hand, Islam openly and unambiguously claims that world domination is its “ holy” destiny and it’s proponents are actively engaged in a vast range of activities, both peaceful and violent, to bring that about. On the other hand, the rest of the world – whether atheist, secular, agnostic or religious – is in almost complete denial of the impending doom that awaits it, in spite of the loud, clear and constant proclamation by Islam of its ambition and active pursuit of it. To compound this hopeless scenario, the majority of non-islamic leaders, religious and civic alike, seem to be eager to smooth the path of Islam towards its ultimate goal, as if they were in some trance, making them totally oblivious to the reality of the process. How is all that possible is the ultimate conundrum.

    • Jim Kapetangiannis says:

      Bill,

      You and Ian (in his post) are quite right! It is becoming “more certain” that Islam will end up ruling the world before the “current century is done”. I don’t disagree that it’s becoming more certain but I would say it’s not 100% certain. More dangerous is the “man of sin who exalts himself above all that is worshiped and called divine”. Neo-Marxist secular humanists are the ones to watch, not so much in the ranks of the common folk (who will still have their various ‘faiths’) but in the organs and institutions of power. Mohammedans for now are no more than poorly educated, barely civilised, tribal but eminently “useful idiots” in the common cause against Him whose Kingdom is not of this world.

      I can’t help but recall the temptations of Christ in which, Satan made an offer to Christ whereby, in return for submitting to Satan, His reward would be to “rule the kingdoms of the world”. Christ rejected this offer as the most certain path to judgment through some future conflagration followed by eternal damnation. Unfortunately, this is the very same offer that both Mohammed and Karl and crew accepted. The reason they both despise Christ and Christians is that they refuse to owe any allegiance to any “kingdoms of this world”. In fact as Jesus quite emphatically said, His kingdom is not of this world.

      So while we wait for the spiritual contest between good and evil to finally play itself out in human affairs, we who hold our allegiance to Christ simply go on being “heavenly minded” so that we can be of earthly use in service of all, even those who persecute us and despise us. As Lord Keynes once remarked – in the long run we’re all dead so I say, why worry too much about what goes on down here. The Devils pact has been made with the rulers of this world and sealed in blood. It’s now up to the unearthly King to intervene and bring new Babel down.

    • pgang says:

      I doubt it. The next major conflict will most likely be against Chinese supremacism. While we’re suffering through that there won’t be much quarter given to any Islamic shenanigans, or for lefty nonsense for that matter. Pacifism didn’t survive in Britain for very long after 1940.

    • whitelaughter says:

      “It is becoming ever more certain that Islam will end up ruling the world well before the current century is done.”

      Gee, where have we heard that before? The inevitability of Marxist world domination perhaps? The obviousness that the Wehrmacht could not be stopped? Napoleon?
      They are all gone, and we remain.

      And Islam is even more self-destructive that these examples. Winston Churchill in The River War calculated (using the army draft figures, which included all able bodied men) that in a decade the Madhi’s regime had slaughtered *90%* of their own population! ISIS has proven similarly self-destructive; no doubt the next head of the hydra will be the same. We don’t even need to *win* this fight, merely survive, and let them slaughter themselves.
      And to win, all we have to do is be ready to defend those who abandon Islam; once it is safe to flee this evil cult, watch the numbers drop!

  • pgang says:

    Another thing that struck me about Giffin’s (otherwise superb) article was his acquiescence to existentialism in opposition to the very foundation of Christian reality – God as creator of all things. Giffin is happy to be an apologist for naturalism and rejects the very essence of the essential reality that God created a perfect world without death, and Adam and Eve as special beings who stood apart from all others as his own children. He would rather accept the flawed mind of Darwin, who deliberately set out to oppose Paley’s argument for design (and failed) and thus remove God’s relevance in line with the spirit of ‘the enlightenment’, than uphold the necessary truth of Genesis. Any compromise on the special creation plain narrative utterly murders Scripture and its overall cohesion, and it astonishes me no end that intelligent church leaders like Giffin are so willing to bin it.

  • pgang says:

    I agree with Peter except on one minor point. The Christian church would have survived the onslaught of Islam, but history would have looked very different, and we may not have been sitting here in freedom typing on our PC’s.

  • norsaint says:

    Thomas Aquinas on Islam is always worth a squizz.
    St. Thomas Aquinas on Islam:

    “He (Mohammed) seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh urges us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected; he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity.

    He did not bring forth any signs produced in a supernatural way, which alone fittingly gives witness to divine inspiration; for a visible action that can be only divine reveals an invisibly inspired teacher of truth. On the Contrary, Mohammed said that he was sent in the power of his arms – which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants. What is more, no wise men, men trained in things divine and human, believed in him from the beginning (1). Those who believed in him were brutal men and desert wanderers, utterly ignorant of all divine teaching, through whose numbers Mohammed forced others to become his follower’s by the violence of his arms. Nor do divine pronouncements on part of preceding prophets offer him any witness. On the contrary, he perverts almost all the testimony of the Old and the New Testaments by making them into a fabrication of his own, as can be seen by anyone who examines his law. It was, therefore, a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity. It is thus clear that those who place faith in his words believe foolishly.”- Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 1, Chapter 16, Art. 4. Footnote: 1. Sura 21:5, Sura 44:14; Sura 16:103, Sura 37:36

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  • mags of Queensland says:

    Muslims venerate Mohamed, a prophet, yet claim Jesus was also a prophet. So why is it OK to kill people who ridicule Mohamed but not Jesus? If the West is smart it will play Sunni against Shia until they destroy each other.

    • whitelaughter says:

      Mags, places like Pakistan trumpet their willingness to punish those who insult Jesus: not that this helps the local Christians who are in constant danger, not least because their testimony is only worth half that of a Muslim’s.

      Playing the various Islamic groups off against each other will indeed be useful in the short term, but sooner or later one side will win, so we need to be ready for that eventuality as well.

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