By Theodore Shoebat
Christian militia, from: The Daily Beast
Thousands of Christians in Lebanon have formed an army to combat ISIS. The militias are driving out jihadists groups like ISIS and al-Nusra, and have prevented Lebanon from becoming another Mosul. One of Christian militia leaders, Rifaat Nasrallah, said
If it weren’t for us, it would be another Mosul for the Christians in Lebanon… We will never stand to not hear our church bells ring… That will never happen here.
As one report explains:
Nasrallah, a veteran of Lebanon’s civil war, first organized his local militia after fighters with Jabhat al-Nusra, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, began staging incursions into his town over the summer, ransacking local businesses and kidnapping residents. Since then Nasrallah says his men, most of whom he says also fought in the civil war, have managed to do what the Lebanese army had been incapable of: Secure the border with Syria just outside Ras Baalbek.
Just a few months later in August, only a few miles to the south of Ras Baalbek, the Syrian border town of Arsal was overrun by militant rebel groups including Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS. The fighters attacked government buildings and took more than 20 Lebanese military and security personnel hostage. Since then, two have been beheaded by ISIS and one has been shot by Jabhat al-Nusra. The Lebanese government is still engaged in ongoing negotiations aimed at securing the soldiers’ release.
Nasrallah says it’s thanks to his men that something similar hasn’t happened in his town. But this small Christian militia isn’t acting alone; they coordinate directly with Hezbollah, going on joint patrols, and receive supplies and training from the group. Recently, as ISIS fighters joined the fight along Lebanon’s border, the Lebanese army has also begun working with Nasrallah’s men. But, he says he doesn’t receive nearly as much support from the military as he does from the Shiite militant group.
True love is never settled by compromise, but through bloodshed. Christ said, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13) And the Christian militias who have risen up to fight the torrent of the Islamic sword that seeks to destroy their friends, their brethren, these are the ones who exemplify this eternal passage in the purest fashion.
These Christians are part of The New Militia, or the militia that foreshadows The New Crusade that is to come, in which Christendom will revive and destroy the enemies of God and the haters of the Cross, and establish the holy light over the wretched shadow of Satan’s darkness.
The Christian militias in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and other lands inflicted by the violent inflictions of Islam, are truly pioneers that cause us to foresee the advent of the most holy Crusade, in which nations of mighty Christendom will revive themselves, pick up the Cross and with Christ as their General, destroy the armies of the Antichrist.
We recently had an opportunity to speak with one of these militant pioneers, named Tony Elias. He is a young man, in his early twenties, filled with zeal and vision for the Christian Faith, and he has joined the Christian militia in Lebanon to combat the Islamic expansion that wants to completely overthrow the government and wipe out all of the Lebanese Christians. The interview can be watched here:
Truly is he a modern day Crusader, even identifying himself as one. Unlike the fake and empty Christians of the modern world, he does not hide in shame of the Crusader history, when Christians were actually militant and fought for orthodox truth. He says:
I am not ashamed to be called a crusader.
The militia sent us a number of photos of themselves, with crosses and guns:
Christian militant with cross and gun
Christian militant before giant Cross
Christian militant before an icon of St. Charbel
Elias is part of the Maronite Catholic Church, the oldest Christian order in Lebanon’s history, and they are the first Christians, and only Christians, in Lebanon,who have combated the bloody Islamic tempest since the earliest days of Islam. Elias explained to us that the struggle between Christian and Muslim in Lebanon goes all the way back to Islam’s advent, saying:
Just when Islam started, they [the Muslims] started to attack Christians and other minorities to make them Muslims. The history teaches us that not all Christians were strong enough to handle these battles, some turned into Muslims and some stayed Christians by force. We actually use the reason that our grandfathers used to make us stay here, by asking ourselves that if they didn’t do that, would I now be a Christian? …No! …now in Lebanon Muslims are gaining many numbers and they enforce their political superiority over the Christians
The ancient Maronite Christians fought against the earliest Muslims who tried to conquer their country. Some may object to this, and may use “turn the other cheek” to justify cowardice, and allow the Muslims to invade, but if these ancient Christians did nothing, all of their later generations would have been Muslims, and would have ended up in hell, without salvation. Elias himself told us this:
They do say that you shouldn’t fight, but if my grandfathers did not fight for the Faith, they would have converted to Islam, or their children would have converted to Islam, and by that I would have been Muslim and I would have ended up in hell. People argue and they say that you go to hell for fighting, because it is not Christian to fight, but what sends people to hell is not fighting, because those generations afterwards would end up Muslim and end up in hell.
Truly it is an expression of Christian compassion to fight evildoers who expand their wicked heresies, for to not fight, and thus allow them to deceive whole societies, will send entire generations into everlasting fire.
From the very beginning Islam wanted to destroy the Cross that stood firmly in the earth of Lebanon; from the very first years of their existence did the Muslims slaughter and pillage to uproot the Church in this land, and replace it with their devilish crescent idol. With this in mind it is quite profound that the symbol of the militia is a Cross with a sharp end, declaring that, like a sword, it will be forever posted into the ground of the earth of Lebanon. As Elias explained to us:
We have a cross that is sliced from the bottom so that it becomes like a steak because the Cross will always be a steak chiseled inside the ground of Lebanon, and it will always be there.
Now the devils are returning to rob what does not belong to them, now they come to flood the land and replace the light of God with the darkness of Lucifer. ISIS forces are striving to break into Lebanon and wipe out Christianity, and this is where the pioneering holy militia arises, to defend the Church and the nation. As Elias explained to us:
“Now in this year we have seen the rise of the Islamic State by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and we have seen how it started to get its land in Syria and Iraq, and how Christians there have fled their homes and are suffering. So, based on that, because Lebanon is not so far from Syria and Iraq (and from the Middle East) families here started to think of a way to defend themselves, if something happened to us. … We have our weapons but I want to say that we all agreed to not use them only if a real danger happened to us
The militia functions through scouting, with men each night looking after the borders to see if any approaching jihadists are trying to sneak into any of the villages. As Elias told us:
Every night some men go and just look after the borders of our village … We scout on the border to make sure ISIS is not coming on the border, and if ISIS is coming in the border we let the authorities know, or the Lebanese military know, and we are always prepared and ready to defend ourselves because we think the danger is right around the corner.
Another Christian militant named Abu Tony, a militia member of the town of Qaa, said:
With the Syrian war next door, we have many troubles, many suspicious people come here, we have to be on high alert. We have to defend our land from terrorists, from ISIS and Nusra Front [al-Qaeda branch operating in the area
Abu Georges, a Christian militiaman from Qaa, explained how Muslim terrorists try to enter the border through a certain mountain, and how in one battle the Christians slaughtered most of the jihadists:
Behind this mountain there are militants and they always try to infiltrate here. Last time, just five days ago, we fought with them and killed most of them
Elias actually foresees that the jihadists will overpower the Lebanese military, and that when this happens, they will be ready to fight,
They’re power will vanish, we will be ready and we will not face what Christians in Syria have faced, or in Iraq.
Through combat do these men illustrate their love for God; through fighting do they put their lives on the line for their friends, and through the strength of militancy do they love the Lord their God with all strength. Elias explained to us that the militants partake in the battle against the terrorists to love God with all mind, spirit, heart, soul and strength, saying:
The Christians are always commanded to love God with all of our hearts, with all our might, with all our wills, in every way. …In this case we are working on the strength part
This was truly amazing to hear, for I was hearing the theology of Christian militancy being said by an actual militant, whose soul is rooted in one of the most ancient churches in Christianity. Everything that I have been writing in my articles was being said by someone who actually carries the sword and defends the Faith.
He applied the first commandment of Christ, that “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30) to holy war. This very passage of Christ was applied to warfare in the Scriptures, for after Josiah killed off the pagan priests, destroyed the houses of the sodomites, and purged the land of witchcraft, the Bible says, “Now before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses; nor after him did any arise like him.” (2 Kings 23:25)
This is the same application that I have been teaching for quite some time, and it was very enlightening and refreshing to see someone who is actually in a Christian militia, and involved in an actual fight, use the same application. When we asked him what theology is behind the militia, he quoted the passage of Christ from the 15th chapter of the Gospel of John:
There is no bigger love than to give yourself for your friends
This is a most orthodox application, for St. Cyril, when speaking on the Christians defending themselves from the persecutions of the Muslims, said,
Greater love hath no man than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends” [John 15:13]. And we therefore submit to the insults that our enemies cast at us individually, and pray to God for them, but as a group we defend one another and lay down our lives for one another, so that you wouldn’t, by enslaving our brothers, take away their souls along with their bodies and kill them off completely.
Even the body is esteemed as a gift to be used for fighting, seeing that God did not make anything in vain, and it is to be used for holy combat against the devil and his followers. As Elias told us:
God did not give us anything in vain, we have to use it. The Lord gave somebody 5 talents and he multiplied them to 10 talents. We are not suppose to be hiding our talents under the ground, we are suppose to invest our talents.
While there is the “good and faithful servant” who has “gained five more talents besides them”, and who shall be “ruler over many things”, there is the “wicked and lazy servant,” who “hid your talent in the ground.” (Matthew 25:20-24) These are the useless people who call themselves Christians, but do nothing to fight against evil, and not only that, but also assist the enemies of the true Christians. The useless Christian is the first enemy, and the cause of all evils. Elias himself told us this:
I want to say also that the first enemy of us, isn’t Islam, the first enemy for us is the weak Christians that do not have the courage enough to spread the Bible
This militiaman understands that the war between Christian and Muslim is not secular, but one of religion, between those who uphold the Holy Trinity, and those who want to replace it with the antichrist unitarian god. As he himself explained:
We all know that Muslims don’t believe in Jesus as we believe in him. [They] don’t believe in Him as God. They believe in Him as a prophet who accepted that a man would die in His place. Thats not the Christ we believe in. Those Christians who are losing their Christian identity, are our first enemy.
And what of “turn the other cheek”? These militiamen do not follow the superficial and weak interpretations of the modern theologians and the heretics, but the teachings of the orthodox and ancient Church of holy Christendom. Elias told us:
My point of view on turn the other cheek, is not to be weak, but to show him that I am strong enough to take the other slap. … The strength in me is to accept that second slap, and that will may make him ashamed of what he did, and if he doesn’t feel ashamed, then its my turn to act.
He then went on to say a very fascinating explanation, that in the time of Christ the Jews loved fighting for fighting’s sake, and that Jesus, in teaching them to come back to the Law of God, was bringing them to the precept that fighting is not an end unto itself, but a means to an end. That end is victory over evil. As Elias told us:
The Jews attended a point where they fought for the love of fighting. Jesus came and He fixed what they were thinking, telling them that not fighting itself is important, but the reason for fighting is important. Thats what He did; He fought death and He won.
Christians do not kill for the sake of vengeance, or for the pleasure of bloodshed, but for the advancement of justice. In the words of Augustine, Christ told us “‘We are not to resist evil,” lest we take pleasure in vengeance which nourishes the soul on another’s wrong, but we are not to fall short in correcting men.” (Augustine, Letter 47, trans. Parsons)
At times, to correct others is to kill them. This should be the case of those who come to attack churches, rape women and slaughter Christians. To kill such people will not be a wicked or selfish gratification of the flesh, but a selfless act of righteousness vanquishing the attempt of the demonic and the sinister.
To fight is not an evil unto itself, it is to become militant for the want of pillage and plunder that is evil. To use the words of St. Ambrose, “to be in the army is not a crime, but to be in the army for the sake of pillaging is a sin.” (Ambrose, Sermon 7, in Bellarmine, On Laymen or Secular People, ch. 14)
These militias of God — how valiant and worthy of emulation are they! — teach us the Gospel through their actions: they put their lives to the sacrifice to fight the devil, as Christ sacrificed Himself to “destroy the works of the devil.” (1 John 3:8) By fighting, and exerting all of their energies to protect their churches, their priests, their monks, and their people, they put their lives near the gates of death, willing to combat the slaves of the devil till the entrance of life’s end is opened. Upon their their hearts the words of the holy Apostle:
“By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” (1 John 3:16)
It is because they place themselves in the intensity of battle, the moribund position of holy combat, that these men exemplify the highest point of love: sacrificing themselves. They are amongst those who, in the words of Deborah, “offered themselves willingly with the people” (Judges 5:9) to fight off the pagans who approach them to destroy Christianity, and thus are they amongst those whose love for God is like “the sun when it comes out in full strength.” (Judges 5:31)
These Christian militiamen choose fighting and death over slavery and servitude to a false religion. Christ said, “whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.” (Luke 9:24) And surely do these Christian militiamen, who put the Holy Cross above the idols and heresies of Islam, have eschewed selfishness, and have chosen to lose their lives for the sake of living everlastingly. In the words of St. Ambrose:
Here, then, is fortitude in war, which bears no light impress of what is virtuous and seemly upon it, for it prefers death to slavery and disgrace. (Ambrose, Duties of the Clergy, 1.41, trans. Romestin)
It is now time for the Christians, in the advancement of Christendom, to rid the land of mosques and all other pagan temples, and establish the Light of Orthodoxy over the tyranny of heresy and paganism.
In the words of Augustine,
the pagan shall not stand against the Christian who has taken away his labors by despoiling or giving away the temples of the idols, but the Christian shall stand against the pagans who took away his labors by laying low the bodies of the martyrs. (Augustine, Letter 41)
As the Christians fight the internal war against the flesh with the spirit, do they fight those who seek to destroy the Church and uproot Christianity. In the words of St. Gregory,
Just as the Lord of victories made your excellence shine brightly against the enemies of war in this life, so it is necessary that the same excellence is shown against the enemies of His Church with all vigor of mind and body (St. Gregory, epistle 74, in Bellarmine, On Laymen and Secular People, ch. 14)
Some may argue that these Christian militias are unbiblical, because they are not government personal, or an army of the state. To clarify, Maronite militias work with the official Lebanese Forces in fighting ISIS, so it is not as though they are some ragtag band of criminals or vagabonds. Moreover, ask yourself, was Abraham a part of an official state when “he armed his three hundred and eighteen trained servants who were born in his own house, and went in pursuit” against the enemy (Genesis 15:14)?
Was he a part of a government when he “divided his forces against them by night, and he and his servants attacked them and pursued them as far as Hobah, which is north of Damascus” (Genesis 15:15)? No. Abraham fought against a government. While he had his own militia, he combated a tyrannical state. When he executed the force of his army, and unsheathed the sword against the wicked, and acted as “an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil” (Romans 13:4), the Lord did not curse him or reprimand him, but instead fought alongside Abraham, for the priest Melchizedek “met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him” (Hebrews 7:1) and declared to him that God “delivered your enemies into your hand.” (Genesis 15:20)
Therefore, Christian militias who fight for the cause of justice against tyranny, light against darkness, and who fight for God over the wiles and despotisms of the devil, are righteous, and not wicked, just as Abraham was not pernicious when he assembled his militias to fight the pagan tyrants. Christ is “a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 7:17)
Thus, Christians are of the same priesthood of the one who blessed Abraham after he slaughtered through the sword of his militia, and therefore can the Church conduct its own militias to fight off the wolves who prey on the sheep. The emulation of Abraham’s use of a militia did not leave in the advent of Christianity, but continued on in the Church. For, in the words of St. Odo of Cluny, one of the pioneers of Crusader theology,
For some of the Fathers, and of these the most holy and the most patient, when the cause of justice demanded, valiantly took up arms against their adversaries, as Abraham, who destroyed a great multitude of the enemy to rescue his nephew (St. Odo of Cluny, Life of St. Gerald of Aurillac, 1.8, trans. Sitwell)
Some will object that since now we are in the New Testament, that the wars of the Old Testament are no longer worthy of our emulation, but even St. Paul saw the gallant and heroic actions of the Hebrew warriors as great illustrations of faith, when he wrote in his epistle to the Hebrews:
And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. (Hebrews 11:32-25)
When the glorious Apostle speaks of those who “turned to flight the armies of the aliens”, he is speaking of the Hebrews who fought off the pagans, and what are the jihadists of ISIS but aliens trying to invade a Christian land?
St. Clement, of whom St. Paul himself wrote as one of those “who labored with me in the gospel,” (Philippians 4:3) and was called by the Apostles to be the Bishop of Rome, praised the feats of Judith in her beheading of the general of Nebuchadnezzar, Holofernes, in his attempt to conquer Israel, as an example of how one should be charitable,
many women, being strengthened by the grace of God, have done many glorious and manly things on such occasions. The blessed Judith, when her city was besieged, desired the elders that they would suffer her to go into the camp of their enemies, and she went out, exposing herself to danger, for the love she bare to her country and her people that were besieged; and the Lord delivered Holofernes into the hands of a woman. (St. Clement, Epistle to the Corinthians, lv)
Judith was not a member of an official army, but a true militant who, not being a member of any official force, denied herself and took it upon herself to do that which was right to defend her land against the invading Babylonian pagans. St. Ambrose praised the ancient warriors of Israel, Joshua and Judas Maccabees, for their valiancy and determination to take up the sword and defend their brethren:
But how brave was Joshua the son of Nun, who in one battle laid low five kings together with their people! … But the Maccabees thinking that then all the nation would perish, on the Sabbath also, when they were challenged to fight, took vengeance for the death of their innocent brethren. (St. Ambrose, Duties of the Clergy, 1.40)
Militancy never ended with the coming of Christ, it was only continued by the Church, and it is done through “the Mediator of the new covenant” (Hebrews 9:15). Was it not Christ who visited Joshua and told him “See! I have given Jericho into your hand, its king, and the mighty men of valor” (Joshua 6:2)? Elias, a modern day crusader of Lebanon, told us that the Law of God was never gotten rid of, only fulfilled, saying:
“‘Am I going to make null the law? No, I came to complete (fulfill) the Law.’ [Matthew 5:17] That means that Christ Himself was the God of the Old Testament.”
I was quite enthusiastic upon seeing how the Christian militant of the Middle East thinks, as opposed to what we have been hearing for years in the West, and how he still believes in the Law of God in regards to holy war, that it has never ended, and should never be thrown out. Elias was very pleased to see that we, as Americans, and the followers of Shoebat.com, are supportive of the cause of the Christian militias. He said:
I was pleased to see Americans that aren’t against Christians who fight for their cause. Because what the media shows us is that Americans or European countries, or maybe Christians outside, do not encourage what we are doing in the Middle East. But actually we are the ones being killed, not them. We are the ones suffering, not them.”
The story of the militias brings my mind to the most glorious story of St. Theodore the Recruit, a great pioneer of Christendom. Years before Constantine came to power, and the Roman Empire became Christian, and years before any Christian army was formed, the pagans slaughtered the Christians if they refused to make libations to the gods and to their idols.
St. Theodore was a soldier in the Roman military, and when he was ordered by a judge to make a pagan sacrifice, this holy warrior exclaimed, “I am a soldier in the service of my God and of his Son Jesus Christ!” The judge, like a Muslim who denies the sonship of Christ, said, “So your god has a son?” To this did the saint firmly respond, “Yes!” The judge asked, “Might we know him?” and Theodore said, “Indeed you can know him and come to him!” Theodore was given one night to think of his decision, to sacrifice or not to sacrifice.
He did not hypocritically say to himself, “I must submit to the government, therefore I will sacrifice.” Nor did he say, “My weapons are not carnal, but spiritual, therefore I will do nothing.” What did he do? He entered the temple of the pagan goddess Cybele by night, and burned it to the ground with fire. He was caught, and before the judge was asked, “Theodore, do you want to be with us or with your Christ?” Theodore declared, “With my Christ I was and I am and I will be!” A fire was set and he died in the flames, yet it is said that his body was not injured through the fire, but that he simply gave up the ghost. (Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, 165, trans. Ryan)
St. Theodore, amongst the earliest of the Christian militants, taught us through his actions just how militant Christianity is; for so hot are the flames of militancy within the Christian Faith, that he, without any government approval, rose up himself and attacked and destroyed the temple. The temple he set ablaze was the temple of Cybele, a goddess who was worshipped as a meteorite idol.
And so the Christian militias of today fight and defeat the Muslims who, just as the pagans of old, worship a meteorite they call the Baitullah. It is the same war, with different names; the same holy struggle, but with an enemy who continuously changes his titles. The Apostle Paul fought against “the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Zeus” (Acts 19:35), and so the Christians today, through arms and through arguments, combat Allah and his image which fell front the sky.
This holy land of Lebanon was touched by the divine feet of Christ, and was illuminated by the divine presence of the Savior, and from the very beginning did the devils wish to take it, knowing that it would soon be enlightened by “the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.” (John 1:9) It was in this land that a woman once told Christ, “My daughter is severely demon-possessed.” (Matthew 15:22), and it was in this very land that Christ told the wearied mother, “’O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.’ And her daughter was healed from that very hour.” (Matthew 15:28) And great is the faith of these Christian militias who remain in this same land, and cast out the devils through the sword, vanquishing the followers of the demonic and defending their sacred nation.
Awaken, holy Christendom!
Blossom with your beautiful pedals in the spring of the holy fray!
Take your inheritance, O holy Christendom,
From the pagans who stole it away!
Conquer with Cross and Sword!
Fight for Heaven and Your Lord!
Drive out the Muslim!
Drive out the Sodomite!
Drive the devils away with all your might!
With zeal we fight for God
And all the saints of holy martyrdom
For the blood of glorious martyrs
Awaken, O Christendom