SHOEBAT EXCLUSIVE
By Theodore Shoebat
Jesus Christ was not a pacifist, He believed in holy war and crusading against the enemy. Christ did not believe in unjust or secular war, but the use of holy war against those who persecute the Church and desire the destruction of Christianity.
The common argument is, “I never see Christ declaring war!” But the argument is illogical. Christ didn’t have to declare temporal war in order to believe in war. Its the equivalent to saying that those who have never declared a war are automatically pacifists. There is no sense in such arguments.
Its true, Christ never declared “a war,” but He believed in war. Christ said:
The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. (Mark 12:29-30)
Now, how can this verse be applied? When reading the New Testament, one must always do so in light of the Old Testament, and vice-versa, never isolating a text to the exclusion of the other. When something is stated in the New Testament that is also stated in the Old, we should always see how it is applied in the latter.
Christ, when He said this, was quoting Moses when he said:
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)
Notice all of the elements used by both Christ and Moses when describing the action of loving God: one must use all the components of the body. One must utilize the intellect (the mind), charge with the fires of zeal (the heart), soar in the contemplation on the heavens and passionately plunge into the passion of piety (the soul). But both also refer to the body as necessary component to use when loving God. Christ uses “strength” and Moses “might.” Both indicate a physical element involved in the observance of piety.
The modern Christian can easily interpret the application of the spirt, the heart, and the mind, in loving God. But how is the body used? Christ never isolates one element from the other, but makes it clear that one use all the elements — spiritual, intellectual, and physical — as one. How then is the body intertwined with the other functions? This disrupts, and confuses, the entire modern perception of Christ as a pacifist. How then is the “first of all the commandments” applied?
It is applied to warfare, both spiritual and physical.
When one looks at how the verse is applied in the Old Testament, one finds that it applies to physical war and the vanquishing of evil people.
Moses applied it to the execution of a false prophet (a Muhammad, a Joseph Smith, or the like), when he declared:
If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder,
And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them;
Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him.
And that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death; because he hath spoken to turn you away from the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to thrust thee out of the way which the Lord thy God commanded thee to walk in. So shalt thou put the evil away from the midst of thee. (Deuteronomy 13:1-5)
Moses also applied the verse to attacking cities who advance and advocate false religion:
If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities, which the Lord thy God hath given thee to dwell there, saying,
Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known;
Then shalt thou enquire, and make search, and ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought among you;
Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword. (Deuteronomy 13:12-15)
To attack a city implies the process of war, for the invaded would naturally use defenses to hinder the orthodox attackers. This event is, by definition, a crusade. And through the eyes of the inspired Moses, to invade a pagan indoctrinating city, would be to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul”. Therefore, the first of all commandments declared by Christ can be applied to holy war against an evil city that wishes to advance paganism.
In the second instance, the first of all commandments was also used to describe king Josiah when he slew the pagan priests, destroyed the houses of the sodomites, and made dust of the heathen idols:
And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove.
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And all the houses also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the Lord to anger, Josiah took away, and did to them according to all the acts that he had done in Bethel.
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And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there upon the altars, and burned men’s bones upon them, and returned to Jerusalem.
Moreover the workers with familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the images, and the idols, and all the abominations that were spied in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away, that he might perform the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord.
And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him. (2 Kings 23:7, 19-20, 24-25, ellipses mine)
The warrior loves God with both his incorporeal and corporeal faculties. He uses mind to discern evil; his soul to worship God, and his might to endure persecution, and wield the sword of justice. As he contemplates the eternal glories of Heaven, he strikes those who conduct wars against God, just as Michael and his angels battled to thwart the advances of Lucifer and his hordes of demons. As there was a war in Heaven, so is there a war on earth. It began in Heaven, commences within ourselves, in that we choose to follow God or Satan, and ends in battle between those who chose God and those who chose eternal darkness.
Here is a video I made explaining all of this: