EXCLUSIVE
By Theodore Shoebat
If Christians are to survive, they are going to have to become militant, rather than relying on the watered down secular Conservative Movement.
The Conservative Movement is becoming a cult. It has become a group that accepts only a number of morals from Christianity, while being either indifferent or sometimes vindictive toward the theology and spirituality of Christianity, reducing the entire system of Christ to a mere private and individual belief. Allow me to lend you an example of what I mean.
In a rally organized by the Mormon, Glenn Beck, in which Beck promoted the heresy of Universalism, numerous pastors attended as supporters of the cause for which the event stood. Of these pastors was Jerry Falwell, Jr., and when he was asked in regards to the theological differences his Faith had with Beck’s, Jerry responded with these dangerously accepted words:
Glenn Beck’s Mormon faith is irrelevant. People of all faiths, all races and all creeds spoke and attended the event. Nobody was there to endorse anyone else’s faith, but we were all there to honor our armed forces and to call the people of America to restore honor.
Jerry belittled the heresies which Beck preached, esteeming the rally as simply one to “restore honor” in the country, without even admitting the dangerous ideas that the Mormon promoted, which can be easily identified in this video:
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While Jerry claims he just wants to help “restore honor,” he illustrates the worst lack of honor: an absence of honor towards God, as he harlots himself to the false god of Beck, which is the same as the feigned deity of Muhammad. Jerry, and the rest of the pastors who attended the event, praised a Mormon and disregarded orthodox theology, are no different than Rob Bell who, in this video, is seen welcoming and clapping his hands to both the Islamic religion and the Dalai Lama:
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The only difference between Bell and his ilk, and Beck and those like him, is that one is obviously and blatantly evil, while the latter is cloaked with a conservative and clean cut look, and comes with societally accepted words of patriotism and feigned piety.
Herein lies the central creed of the Conservative Movement: believe in a god (doesn’t matter which one); say you are pro-life (while being indifferent to contraception, which prevents, and with some products, destroys life); say you are for traditional marriage, while trumping the freedom for homosexuals to indulge in their deviant acts (as long as it is within the privacy of their own home, of course); say you believe in tolerance for all faiths because that is “what the Founding Fathers wanted.”
I may have missed something in the description of the secular creed (and if I did, forgive me), but these tenets are, overall, what the Conservative Movement is composed of. One great example of this is Ted Cruz exhorting Obama to combat Putin’s anti-homosexual laws, as you can see in this video I made:
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If Ted is truly the Christian he says he is, he would not be calling out for the rights and freedoms of blaspheming rock bands like Pussy Riot and sodomites.
The positive aspect of the Conservative Movement is that it contains some Christian morality, but its negative nature is illustrated by its utter lack of fastidiousness toward orthodox theology.
If theology truly is irrelevant, then by this same logic the theology of Obama, with all its support and sympathies toward Islam, should be equally irrelevant.
With that said, the main aspect of the Conservative Movement that is destructive, is that it forces a number of Christian morals into a political sphere, and deems the whole of Christianity to an individual’s own spirituality and interpretation, without ever conceding, or wanting to concede, that Christianity itself is political.
Christianity is not a Faith designed for private belief, but for the universal expansion of God’s truth with the intent of vanquishing the lies of Satan.
The Spirit of Christianity, is revolution. When Nebuchadnezzar demanded that the people of God bow down to the golden image, they expressed their revolt by refusing to comply; when Mordecai was expected to supplicate towards Haman, he outrightly spurned such a thought; and when Antiochus commanded that the Hebrews make sacrifices to Jupiter, the Maccabees took up their swords and fought hand to hand and blade to blade.
If Christians are going to survive, not only will we have to become militant, but we will have to cooperate in rescuing persecuted Christians from being massacred by Muslims throughout the Islamic world. Please donate to save Christian lives in Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan.
Christianity permeates every aspect of society, in politics, family life, arts, music, literature, and war.
When St. Peter struck off the ear of the guard, Christ commanded him to “Put up thy sword into the sheath” (John 18:11), which indicates that the sword was never discarded, but that it remained within the grasp of the Church. St. Peter was reprimanded by Christ, not for the use of the sword itself, but because it was not the appropriate occasion to execute his weapon, for Christ told him, “the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18:11). Christ, then, allowed Himself to be killed and did not desire that the zeal of Peter hinder His ultimate mission.
St. Peter attacking the guard
There is, therefore, an appropriate time for the Church to unsheathe the sword that St. Peter possessed. This leads us to the theology of The Two Swords of St. Peter, a doctrine long forgotten today, but strongly emphasized in the ancient Church. The concept is centrally based on Luke 22, when Jesus tells His disciples, “he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one,” and St. Peter responds, “Lord, behold, here are two swords”, and Jesus says, “It is enough.”
One sword represents the temporal, or political power of the Church, and the other signifies the spiritual authority of the Church. When St. Peter declared the final decision in the Council of Jerusalem, condemning obligatory circumcision, as is recorded in Acts 15, he was unsheathing his spiritual sword against the Judaizers.
St. Peter with sword
When St. Peter affirmed that “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29), he was unsheathing the political sword, in that he commanded defiance toward the political power of the Jewish leaders when they were attempting to prevent the Christians from preaching. When St. Peter was upholding this authority, he was zealously following what Christ commanded specifically of him:
strengthen your brethren. (Luke 22:32)
And in strengthening his brethren, he was fortifying them against Satan, protecting them from the dark powers through the two swords.
The Last Supper
St. Peter struck off the ear of the guard with the political sword, and yet it was not discarded but still remained in his sheath. Therefore, the political sword remains in the hands of the Church. But when Christ reprimanded St. Peter for his use of the sword, it was an indication that the Church was not designed to be a central government, or the only political authority ruling over nations and punishing evil doers. Therefore, while the Church is in possession of the political sword, she does not strike her enemies herself, but commands temporal rulers to use it against her persecutors. Thus St. Bernard writes to the Church:
Both [swords] are yours, but both must not be taken out by your hand (1)
St. Bernard furthermore declares to the Church:
The material sword has to be taken out by the hand of the soldier at the command of the emperor but subject to the nod of the supreme priest. (2)
St. Bernard
In the necessity of a holy war, against heretics and pagans who are persecuting Christians, it is the Church that uses the state as a vehicle to unleash the political sword on God’s enemies.
We see this illustrated in the prophet Samuel when he commanded king Saul:
Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. (I Samuel 15:3)
We also see this in the Church, when Pope Callixtus III commanded a crusade in 1456 to fight off the Turks in Serbia, in what is called The Siege of Belgrade.
Now, this is not to say that the only ones with authority to fight against persecutors are government rulers. In times when the enemies of the Church are slaughtering Christians and there is no government righteous enough to help them, then in such a circumstance the Church may execute the political sword.
For Elijah gave this command to the people of Israel, and not the corrupt government of Ahab:
“Seize the prophets of Baal! Do not let one of them escape!” So they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the Brook Kishon and executed them there.” (I Kings 18:40)
Elijah killing the prophets of Baal
And the earliest Christians were ready to stone the guards if they arrested St. Peter and the other Apostles with violence:
Then the captain went with the officers and brought them without violence, for they feared the people, lest they should be stoned. (Acts 5:26)
Mattathias, the father of Judas Maccabeus, was a priest, and he did not hesitate to unsheathe his sword and slay the soldiers of Antiochus when they were forcing the people to worship their idols.
Moses slew the Egyptian who was abusing a Hebrew, an action St. Stephen esteemed to be one of justice, saying,
seeing one of them suffer wrong, he [Moses] defended and avenged him who was oppressed, and struck down the Egyptian. For he supposed that his brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand, but they did not understand. (Acts 7:24-25)
Therefore, if Moses and Mattathias attacked their persecutors to protect themselves, then the Church has the same authority to protect herself.
St. Stephen
In Christianity, there is not an absolute severing of Church from state, but rather a perfect harmony between the two. It is the state’s duty to resolve secular and political matters, while the Church is commissioned to deal with spiritual issues. But here is when the two entities come into harmony: when a political matter pertains to the spiritual well-being of the people, or is connected to any point of religion, it is the Church, and not the state, that has the authority to resolve it. Hence Christ commands St. Peter, the bearer of the two swords, to “Feed My sheep” (John 21:17), meaning to care for his flock, spiritually and temporally (when the temporal situation pertains to religion).
You may disagree with me, but the strength of your contention is easily revealed once it is put against the modern results of secular government (abortion, the homosexual agenda, etc). For in our times, it is the state, and not the Church, that dictates when life begins; it is the state, and not the Church, that determines what is and what is not marriage. I can give a number of more examples, but I will refrain for the sake of brevity.
St. Gregory VII beautifully explains this equilibrium between Church and state, when he wrote in one epistle:
Among other welcome expressions therein, this seemed especially calculated to advance the glory of the imperial government and also to strengthen the power of Holy Church, namely, that the empire and the priesthood should be bound together in harmonious union. For, as the human body is guided by two eyes for its physical illumination, so the body of Christ is guided and enlightened with spiritual light when these two offices work together in the cause of pure religion. (3)
Dante sublimely describes how the Church should direct the state for the purpose of spreading the Light of God throughout the world:
Let Caesar therefore show that reverence towards Peter which a firstborn son should show his father, so that, illumined by the light of paternal grace, he may the more effectively light up the world, over which he has been placed by Him alone who is ruler over all things spiritual and temporal. (4)
As the flesh must be governed by the spirit, so must the state be governed by the Church. The secular Conservative Movement wants us to think that the state must be ruled under a secular, but conservative government, without any acknowledgment toward theology or the nature of the true God. Their logic is the same as affirming that the spirit must be ruled by the flesh.
The secular conservatives will argue that they are not for the state overpowering the Church. But, what they will not admit, is that as the spirit and the flesh will always be in constant war with each other, so will the state and the Church be in continuous combat, ceaselessly fighting until one conquers the other, unless a harmony between the two is established, and the Two Swords of St. Peter are unsheathed against those who wish to enslave the saints and replace the sublime Law of Heaven with the lawlessness of antichrist.
If the Church is going to survive, it must stop cease this harlotry with secularism, and become militant. Christus Vincit!
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(1) Quoted by Bellarmine, Against Barclay, ch. 19, trans. Tutino, brackets mine
(2) De consideratione, 4.3, in Bellarmine, Against Barclay, ch. 19, trans. Tutino
(3) St. Gregory VII, To Duke Rudolf of Swabia, concerning Henry IV, trans. Ephraim Emerton
(4) Dante, Monarchy, 3.18, trans. Prue Shaw
