By Theodore Shoebat
A wealthy British bouncer named Tim Locks, sold his house and left a life of extravagance to join a Christian militia, and he now fighting ISIS. His action exemplifies pure selfless love. I did a whole video on this:
He is 38 years old and was a bouncer for Cheekies nightclub in Staines, Surrey. Now instead of fighting troublemakers, he is fighting Islamic terrorists.
Locks said:
‘I didn’t come out here to be a celebrity but it is a way of gaining awareness. Some people move out here to make a name for themselves.
He also said:
The situation out here is dire. Blankets and rice cannot defend the people against Daesh. …The western world needs to pull their finger out. Send us some kit, send us some food. Send us weapons. If you don’t send it, you are failing the world.
Tim, and people like him, are very wanted targets since ISIS sees them as more of a threat than the local Christian fighters. Many of them are former military or have a very helpful trade or skill. Tim is a very experienced builder and with his skills in building he is very resourceful in the battlefield, where construction is needed. Tim also said that his country, England, is doing absolutely nothing to fight ISIS:
We are here. We are the boots on the ground. There is no pay. I am here to protect the local people and democracy. But we are seriously under resourced. …Britain has done nothing to help the situation. I have done more to help people here in a week than David Cameron has done. He has done nothing.
Locks said this of the local Christian fighters:
The people here are fantastic. We have been very well looked after. We are never on our own and always have someone who speaks one of the local dialect. Daesh are far too cowardly to get us.
In honor of these men I would like to present to you a section of my upcoming book on Christian militancy, which will be the most extensive research done on the subject and coming out within this year. This section is on how the Christian warrior worships God by emulating God, and thus following the God-like nature that is embedded onto us by our Creator.
“Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26), this is what God said before He created humanity. Therefore, man is like God, and when he emulates His Creator, he becomes like God, the Architect of mortals. St. Gregory Nazianzus said:
“‘Then we shall know as we are known’ (1 Cor 13:12), when we mingle our god-formed mind and divine reason to what is properly its own and the image returns to the archetype for which it now longs.” (Nazianzus, Oration 28.17, in Gregory the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, Ambiguum 7, 2, 1077B)
The warrior becomes like God, his Creator, and as God hates evil, so he, when he fights evildoers, will emulate that same divine hatred. The God-inspired David “strengthened himself in the Lord his God” (1 Samuel 30:6) before he charged into battle to fight the Amalekites and save the people who they oppressed.
Truly was this a crusade, with David carrying up the cross of his suffering, and denying himself, and in so doing did his soul ascended heavenward and found strength in God Who “teaches my hands to make war, So that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.” (Psalm 18:34) David found strength in the Lord, because the strength of God was instilled in his heart so that he, with fiery zeal, could be directed by divine guidance to fight “the battles of the Lord” (1 Samuel 25:28). When David clashed with the Amalekites, and combated against them, he was not only used by God, but more sublimely than that, he was connected with God in a very profound way. He achieved what St. Peter said when he wrote in his inspired epistle:
“Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” (1 Peter 1:2-4)
By fighting against the tyrannical pagans, David was both fighting for and partaking in “all things that pertain to life and godliness,” through the divine power which granted to him such virtues, and in doing so, was he amongst the “partakers of the divine nature,” being the instrument of God “to execute wrath on him who practices evil.” (Romans 13:4)
By fighting in a holy struggle did David participate in virtue, committing himself to the purest manifestation of love, to “lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 15:13) In the words of St. Maximus the Confessor:
“It is evident that every person who participates in virtue as a matter of habit unquestionably participates in God, the substance of the virtues.” (St. Maximus, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, Ambiguum 7, ii, 1081A, trans. Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken)
St. Justin Martyr said that God “takes pleasure in whose who imitate His properties, and is displeased with those that embrace what is worthless either in word or deed.” (Justin Martyr, Apology, 2.4, ed. Ronald J. Sider) The one who imitates God’s nature, hating evil for the cause of love, and loving justice and all righteousness, is the one in whom God’s delights. The soldier of God who fights for the Law of Love and for the establishment of justice, imitates God in His holy wrath.
To become a partaker in the divine nature, and be used to advance virtue, is part of a spiritual journey the ancient Christians called theosis, or to obtain the likeness to or union with God. In the Western Church this has been called divinization, not that one becomes God or divine himself (this would be blasphemy), but that one unites with God, becoming one of the “partakers of the divine nature,” to use the words of St. Peter, and an instrument for God’s justice.
St. Thomas tells that the king’s justice is administered by God through him, saying that the sovereign is “fired with zeal for justice when he considers that he has been appointed to exercise judgment in his kingdom in the place of God; and, on the other, he will acquire kindness and clemency, for he will look upon all those subject to his government as though they were his own members.” (Aquinas, De regimine principum, 1.14)
God became man so that man can become like God, and so the king, becoming a son of God through Jesus Christ, becomes a vessel for the divine rule of God over the nation, (See Aquinas, De regimen principum, 1.15) who dispenses “the ordinance of God” and is established as “God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.” (Romans 13:2-4)
When the holy warrior or the righteous king punishes the wicked, he becomes one amongst the “partakers of the divine nature,” (2 Peter 1:4), and in so doing, he participates in the eternal law of God, as we can deduce from St. Thomas when he says that “all things participate to some degree in the eternal law”. (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia IIae, 91, article 2) The doctors of the Church teach us that all of the goodness in human will consists in following both the will and the law of God, and that all evil consists in waring with God will and His law. (Vitoria, On Civil Power, question 3, article 1, 16) Thus, the king who enacts the law of God, and rules in accordance to the divine will, participates in the love of God, and in the nature of God.
King David fought the Lord’s battle, strengthening himself in God, and for this it can be said that he reached theosis, becoming like God that he emulating the Almighty in His justice and virtues. God uses both the bodies and the souls of His warriors to practice virtue, and that in involves uprooting evil. We become His weapons. In the words of St. Maximus:
“The soul becomes godlike through divinization [theosis], and because God cares for what is lower, that is the body, and has given the command to love one’s neighbor, the soul prudently makes use of the body. By practicing the virtues the body gains familiarity with God and becomes a fellow servant with the soul.” (St. Maximus, On the Cosmic Mystery of Christ, Ambiguum 7,iii, 1088B)
Notice how he says that the body, being used by God for His justice, becomes a means to loving one’s neighbor. What does the law say? Love God and love neighbor. This can applied to both Holy War and righteous laws against the wicked, for to uproot evil is a part of justice, and, in the words of Augustine, “justice is the love of God and our neighbor by which the other virtues are pervaded: that is, it is the common root of the entire order between one man and another.” (Augustine, 83 quest. 1:61, in Aquinas, Summa Theoligiae, IIa IIae 58, article 8)
The soul reaches God, and is indwelled with His eternal virtues, and the body is used to partake in those virtues. In the words of St. Paul:
“Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
David strengthened himself in the Lord, his soul sublimely indwelled with the virtues of God, and filled with “zeal for the lord,” (1 Kings 10:16), and his strong arm striking in the spirit of that same zeal. In such a state did David glorify God in body and in spirit. The knights and crusaders who defended glorious Christendom glorified God in both soul and body, for their souls were filled with the divine virtues, and they used their bodies to fight for those very virtues. In the words of Ramon Llull, a Spanish knight who warred against the Muslims in Spain,
“So then, just as all of these aforesaid practices pertain to the knight with respect to the body, so justice, wisdom, charity, loyalty, truth, humility, fortitude, hope and prowess, and the other virtues similar to these, pertain to the knight with respect to the soul.” (Ramon Lull, 2.11, trans. Noel Fallows)
David and all of the warriors who fought for God and His Divine Law, illustrated the greatest indication of inspired virtue: perseverance. It is perseverance that is the sign of the Christian warrior, and it is the virtue that brings him to eternity. In the words of St. Bernard:
In truth, perseverance is a sort of likeness here to eternity hereafter. In fact it is perseverance alone on which eternity is bestowed; or rather, it is perseverance which bestows man on eternity; as the Lord says, “He that shall preserve unto the end, the same shall be saved.” (St. Bernard, On Consideration, 5.31)
The crusaders had perseverance, and thus fought and died, journeying to eternity. Meditation on the eternal heaven, and the divine majesty of God, in the words of St. Bernard, “fosters a spirit of long-suffering, and gives strength to perseverance.” (St. Bernard, On Consideration, 5.32)
It is for this reason that the zealous warriors of Christendom trained not only their bodies, but their souls and their minds, through contemplation on God, to connect with the King of Heaven and the Eternal Warrior. The warriors of Christendom practice isolation, withdrawing from society and entering into hermitage, taking the quiet sound of the wilderness to contemplate on God and martyrdom. Our Warrior and General Christ practiced hermitage when “He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.” (Luke 6:12)
He practiced hermitage when He “was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” (Luke 4:1) Christ battled the devil in hermitage, showing us how, within our humanity, we vanquish temptation in hermitage, and gain strength and perseverance. This spiritual strength gained through contemplation was what the knight Ramon Lull wrote of when he described the Christian combatant pilgrimaging to a place of hermitage “to worship, contemplate and pray to God, to whom he gave thanks and blessings for the great honour that He had paid him throughout his life in this world.” (Ramon Lull, The Book of the Order of Chivalry, prologue, 3)
St. Paul said: “be imitators of God as dear children.” (Ephesians 5:1) When the Christians truly imitate God, they emulate not only His mercy, but His justice and His wrath against evil. When Moses slaughtered the pagans, he emulated God; when Josiah demolished the houses of the sodomites, he emulated God; when Elijah butchered the prophets of Baal, he emulated God; when Ehud thrusted his sword into the corpulent belly of Eglon, he emulated God; when Jael hammered the nail into the head of Sisera, she emulated God; when Joshua slew the Canaanites, even women and children, he emulated God; when Jehu slaughtered the house of Ahab, and the priests of Baal, he emulated God. To slay the wicked, is to emulate God. When you look at a man, what you are seeing is Heaven and earth intertwined.
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7) In man there is heaven and there is earth, and so within him lies a divine nature that enables him to be like the Holy Trinity.
The Son, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, battled alongside Joshua in the conquest of Jericho, and He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah; and so we, emulating Christ, fight and war against the forces of darkness. St. Paul said: “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), and so when the Christian soldier wars with the forces of darkness, he lives and acts in the Crucified Master.
Christ surpassed all human will to sacrifice Himself for the eternal life of humanity; and so we, being His warriors, emulate Christ by charging into the battlefield of sacred combat and laying down our lives for the glory of His Church. As St. Bernard wrote:
“We are said to love, so is God: we are said to know, so is God: and much to the same purpose. But God loves like Charity, knows like Truth, sits in Judgment like Equity, rules like Majesty, governs like Authority, guards like Safety, works like Virtue, reveals like Light, stand by us like Affection. All these things the Angels also do, and so do we, but in a far inferior way, not, of course, by our native goodness, but by the goodness whereof we partake.” (Bernard, On Consideration, 5.5)
This is just one of the many theological discourses that I have written on Christian militancy from the upcoming book, which will be the most extensive study every written on Christian warfare. But before the book comes out, get the new 2-disk DVD special on Christian militancy, which is just a taste of upcoming book.
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