By Theodore Shoebat
The Irish government is now in the business of trying to get an elderly Evangelical pastor, who is in ill health, in prison for simply saying that Islam is a satanic religion. His name is Pastor James McConnell. Shoebat.com commended the pastor and also posted his sermon last year:
Now the Irish government is going to be prosecuting the pastor, and will try to get him into prison. If they succeed, he may get up to six months in jail. The pastor stated:
I am facing up to six months in jail and a hefty fine for saying what I believe. I have had four heart bypasses, a liver operation and I have cancer and diabetes.
…All I need to get by in prison is my tablets, my reading glasses and books from the library.
…If I am sent to jail, I will use my time there reading and writing. My wife is 79 years old and in ill health too. But she has always been my rock and we will get through this together.
In an interview the pastor said:
I am 78 years old and in ill health, but jail knows no fear for me. They can lock me up with sex offenders, hoodlums, and paramilitaries and I will do my time … I have no regrets about what I said
The spokesman for Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution, which is going to be pressing charges against the pastor, described the supposed “offense” of the pastor as such:
That offence was one of sending, or causing to be sent, by means of a public electronic communications network, a message or other matter that was grossly offensive
The police first offered the pastor an “informed warning,” which in the United Kingdom is kept in one’s criminal record for 12 months, but it is not a conviction. The pastor refused the offer. Now they are coming after him with prosecution, and if they win, the pastor could end up in a jail cell for up to 6 months.
This story proves what I have been saying in regards to religious equality and freedom: there is no such thing as religious equality and freedom. Every nation is dominated by a certain creed, and that creed is held to a superior position over every other creed. Either a nation chooses Christianity to be this creed, or another creed — one of a diabolical nature — will take its place, and it will bring upon the society the horrors of hell.
Look at the homosexuals; because we have tolerated them, because we have accepted their agenda over the exclusivity of the Holy Faith, we have now allowed them to advance in the society, making laws that persecute Christians, that force Christian businesses to close down if they do not accept their deranged religion.
They no longer respect Christianity in Ireland, or in Northern Ireland. Secularism is now the state religion — as opposed to Christianity — and it enforces itself upon the society so as to make Christianity but an insignificant thing. The business of secularism is to make everyone respect every creed but Christianity, and they have greatly succeeded to a large extent.
Christianity, by its very nature can never be conformist. In its very foundation lies the words: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Mark 12:17) They are certain things that belong only to God, and no state can ever take them away. It is the desire of secularism to take that which belongs to God, that is, it is bent on stealing the souls of the society, not for any generally known or specific religion, but rather for the religion of indifferentism. This is why Christianity and secularism never compromise, and never will compromise. Once they are put together, there is no peace between the two, immediately they are divided, immediately they are separated by that sword that Christ brought to earth. “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34)
No matter how hard the enemy tries, they will never get rid of Christianity. If there is on thing I am certain of, it is this: never ever will the haters of God succeed in removing Christianity. It will never happen. You can’t do it, no matter determined you are. The Christian Faith has passed the test of time, it has passed the test of blood, of sweat, of tears, of courage, of valiancy, of battle and war, it has passed the test of Faith. The Jews tried to destroy the Christian Faith when they declared, “Crucify Him!” and pushed Pilate to kill our Lord. In the holy tomb death was conquered, and the most profound declaration was made to all the earth and to all the cosmos: the Church will never be destroyed, for death has been vanquished. And once the blade of death has been bent and made dull, how then can you stop the armies of saints who scoff at death? How then can you stop those saints who are joyful in glory, who sing aloud upon their beds, who have the praises of God in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand; To execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people (Psalm 149:5-7)?
So many people have tried to destroy Christianity, and all have failed. It is inherent within the Christian spirit never to conform to the commands of tyranny. It is in its very foundation, it is in its very roots, never to acquiesce to the demands of any government or any mob that contradict the Divine Law of God, for we are to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33).
In the very beginning of the Church’s history, people were trying to destroy the Faith. The Jews commanded the Disciples to never speak of the name of Christ, and did they conform? Did they give in? No. Rather, St. Peter — inspired by the Holy Spirit — provided for us at that moment the precept by which Christianity rejects all conformity with the world: “We ought to obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29) And this is the creed of our rebellion against the world compelling us to conform to its enforced indifferentism; here lies the words by which we kick down the altar of carnal adorations and the idol of collective trendism.
Christianity, unto its very nature, is a rebellious religion. Origen once described Satan as the tyrant over the earth, and we as Christians are the rebels, launching a coup against his despotism. Those who hate Christianity always portray themselves as the “rebels,” but in reality they are the conformists, they are conformists to those who rebelled against Heaven, while the Christians rebel against the tyranny of Satan on earth, and remain loyal to the beautiful liberty of Heaven. There is a great story that illustrates the nonconformist spirit of Christianity.
In the fourth century, when the pagan emperors Maxentius, Diocletian and Galerius were trying to annihilate all Christians in the empire, a Christ woman was flogged, and placed on a rack where both sides of her torso were furrowed by blades. Another woman, gazing upon such a sight of cruelty, could no longer bear it. “And how long, then, will you cruelly torture my sister?” She was ordered to be brought before an altar to give libations to the gods, but she in complete defiance to tyranny–and complete obedience to God–kicked the altar down as Gideon brought low the altar of Baal. After enduring the greatest of tortures, she was sentenced to the flames. (The Book of Martyrs, ch. viii)
In ancient Israel, the saints took down the idols of the pagan: Gideon brought low the crescent idols, David burned the idols of the Philistines, Moses shattered the golden calf; and in the Church, the saints still continue this cosmic war, for wherever the Church is, there is division, there is battle, there is purging, and there is illumination in which the eternal rays of the Faith wipe away the filth of Satan’s deceptions.
Read the beautiful words of Scripture and let the love of God engulf you; let your spirit be illumined by the profound prose of truly what love is; let your intellect be elated by the holy battle that we are to leap into, a war against the darkness, against evil, against the enemies of love.
Read the words of the holy David when he wrote:
The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place. (Psalms 68:17)
Read the words of the holy St. Paul when he exclaimed with sublime prose:
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.(Hebrews 11:22-24)
When we are upon the holy mountain, we stand still amongst angels, amongst warriors and ascetics, amongst the spirits of men made just, only to behold what is holy. We are stirred from within, “strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man” (Ephesians 3:16), and come to a sublime awareness, an elated state of the spirit — a pure ecstasy really — that Christ truly is Lord, and that the warrior of God kneels before Him, in humility and tears.
It is this spirit, where strength emanates from humility, that invigorates Christendom to strive through all of the persecution, to endure all of the combat that it must undergo, not for the sake of the fleshy self, but to fulfill those words of Christ,
I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18)
So many slaves of hell have attempted to prevail against the Church, and they all have failed to assail the dauntless spirit of the Christian. The Jews tried in the first century, and they failed; the Pagans were bent on utterly annihilating the Christians, and the warrior Constantine — inspired by God — defeated them and rescued the Church; the Communists massacred tens of millions of Christians, and they still did not succeed; the French Deists in the 18th century slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Christians, and still the Cathedral of Notre Dame remains strong; the atheists of Spain made an ocean of Christian blood during the Spanish Civil War, and the churches of even liberal Madrid are stilled packed with congregants, young and old. During the Spanish Civil War, atheist terrorists who were haters of God, slaughtered around 10,000 Christians in the small village of Paracuellos.
I had the opportunity of visiting this very village, and I noticed a giant Cross placed on a hill. It was placed there to honor all of the martyrs who were killed for the cause of the Faith. I realized at that moment that I was standing on holy ground, earth consecrated by the blood of sacred martyrs. And then, a thought came to my mind: the ones who wanted to destroy the Cross, their time is transient; but the Holy Cross still stands. It is truly an image of the Church; for it stands, it is struck with all of the arrows of hell, and it prevails, only to be beheld by our eyes. I had to take a picture of this beautiful image:
Even after all of these massacres, all of millions of saints dead, all of the oceans of martyrs’ blood, the Church still stands.