By Theodore Shoebat
A few months ago I heard a pastor — who is quite educated in Church history — give a sermon, saying that Islam is a great religion. He condemned people for saying that Muslims should not be allowed into the country, or that they should be deported, as “un-Christ like,” and even went so far as to say that we should tell the violent Muslims that they are not following their religion correctly.
After the service I confronted this heretic and the conversation went something like this…
Me: You do realize that the Muslims invaded all of Eastern Christendom, and also invaded almost all of Spain?
Pastor: I do know this and am quite familiar with the history
Me: And you do realize that popes like Urban II, in the Council of Clermont, declared war against the Islamic religion? The Church has been the greatest enemy of Islam. The Spaniards fought the Muslims for almost 800 years in the Reconquista. And after the Spaniards won their nation back, the Muslims tried to reconquer Spain in the Morisco Revolt, and it got so violent that the Spaniards deported all of the Muslims out, with the Church actually approving the expulsion.
Pastor: Yes, I am familiar with all of this history. I think what should be done is that the Church should tell the Muslim world that if they don’t stop persecuting Christians then we will send an army missionaries to their countries.
Me: Why didn’t you say this in the pulpit. You are deceiving people, because now the congregation thinks that you believe that Islam is a religion of peace
Pastor: I am just trying to convey the teachings of Christ
Me: Christ destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.
He smiled with evil lips and said: “No, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.”
I said to him: “It was God the Son. Three men approached Abraham, and Abraham bowed down to only one. That One was Jesus Christ.”
He said: “Your eisegesis is questionable.”
This is the typical form of argumentation that these sophists use: once you are put into a corner, use words like “eisegesis” to sound intelligent and squirm your way out of a debate. By the end of the little discourse he lend his hand out to me and said, “Thank you for expressing your opinions to me.” I shook his hand and left.
A few day ago, I bumped into this heretic and could not help but revive our little debate.
Me: Do you remember me?
Pastor: Oh, yes I do.
Me: Do you remember our discussion on Islam?
Pastor: Yes
Me: Did you look into anything I told you?
The pastor’s eyes lit up and they revealed themselves to be glossy and tense, the typical eyes of a devious heretic. He said, “Well — well — I am open to truth.”
I told him: “Every Church Father that has ever talked about Islam, has condemned it as a heresy.”
He said: “I — I — I am not disputing that!”
Me: Well then I don’t you say this in the pulpit?
Pastor: Well, now is not the time
Me: I am not talking about now. I am talking about that sermon you gave in which you said that Islam was a great religion.
The pastor began to squirm and he made it quite obvious that he did not really want to be in my presence. He did not even look me in the eye, but now was looking towards a different direction when he said: “I maintain the Christian teaching of self defense,” as though this was suppose to shut me up.
Me: You said that Islam was peaceful, and that we should tell Muslims that they are not following their religion correctly when they kill people, when in reality they are following their religion correctly.
Now the pastor was stuck in a corner; he just revealed that he understood the evils of Islam, yet he was telling people that Islamic violence was a misguided following of Islam. What was the heretic suppose to do now? He said: “I have never read the Koran so I am not in a position to speak against it!”
Me: You don’t have to read the Koran! The Fathers of the Church already declared what we are to think of the Koran. You could just read St. John of Damascus, Urban II, Innocent III, read what they said and you would be totally within the realm of Orthodoxy.
Now this heretic was really stuck. He began to distance himself from me. I came up behind him, put my hand on his should and said to him:
“Stop teaching heresy, stop deceiving people, and start telling the truth.”
He slightly turned his head and said something like, “Thats a great accusation.”
I turned away from him. By then there was a good amount of people around us. I turned again toward him and said, “You are a heretic and an infiltrator!” He turned his head slightly, just looking at me with the corner of his eye, and said: “Thats an accusation that most people would disagree with.”
Ah, the typical weakling argument that people who are in positions of authority so commonly make. “Most people would disagree,” as if the mob has any say so on reality; as though truth is determined by a board of directors. Its as though he was saying, “So many souls have I taken, and none of them will ever believe you, because I have them, and you do not!” I just looked at him and said, “You are nothing but a heretic!” And walked away.
The story is an illustration as to the spiritual decay that is permeating the entire society. This corrupt pastor, and his church, is but a microcosm of the madness that has so plagued society, and the heretical sickness comes from the society and is seen right into the government itself. Its not just one person, but this sickness that we see in one person is a reflection of a soulless chaos that is throughout the society. “This slow and awful self-hypnotism of error is a process that can occur not only with individuals,” writes Chesterton, “but also with whole societies.”
The results of this spiritual evil that inundates Western society manifest in other nations, where Western politicians have supported Islamic terrorists who then use this support — training and arms — to wreak havoc and chaos throughout. And yet while this destruction occurs, we have pastors who preach that Islam is a great religion.
There are around 173 million people living in Nigeria, and over 300 million people living in the US. Yet, the murder rate of Nigeria is much higher than that of the US, with 33,817 murders happening in the year 2012 alone. This high murder rate is greatly assisted by Boko Haram and the Islamic terrorism done by the Fulani herdsman. It seems that every day there is some massacre happening in Nigeria. Just look at what has been reported just today: twenty five people were butchered by Boko Haram, killed at random, just to satisfy the bloodlust of these demonic killers. Here is the report:
A bloody and terrifying raid by Boko Haram on Friday left at least 25 people dead in three villages in eastern Nigeria’s Adamawa state, according to residents and a local government official. Adamawa state borders Borno state, Boko Haram’s birth place and main stronghold.
Storming in on motorcycles, the gunmen attacked the neighboring villages of Kopa, Maikadire and Yaffa around 9 a.m. local time, shooting and killing residents, according to witnesses and local government chairman Maina Ularamu.
The gunmen are former residents who joined Boko Haram and left to live in Boko Haram camps, according to Ularamu and the village residents. After the Nigerian military launched a campaign of bombing raids and ground assaults on their camps, those Boko Haram militants sought to escape by returning to their villages.
Villagers tipped off military authorities and the returnees were arrested.
Friday’s attacks were retaliation against those villages, according to witnesses and the government chairman.
But do not get me wrong, it appears that the US is escalating as a society to the frequency of this type of random violence. All of the school shootings we have had, the theater killings, the millions upon millions of babies that have been massacred through the horrific “Roe V. Wade” lawlessness, and also the thousands of people who have been killed in gang violence, and the tremendous amounts of child trafficking. Also, lets not forget all of the blood America has helped spill in other countries: the removal of Saddam led to ISIS, and a myriad of other Islamic terrorist groups, and these have slaughtered thousands, including many Christians. The US’ support of the Syrian revolution has led to the killings of countless thousands and the mass destruction of cities that were once flourishing, intact metropolises. When the Muslim Indonesians slaughtered and raped hundreds of thousands of Christians in East Timur, it was the US, the Australians, and the infamous Margaret Thatcher, who provided arms to the Muslims to assist them in their systematic holocaust.
The shattered cities, the clouds of debris, the cries of the helpless, while being portrayed as the works of pirates and bandits, are all done behind the curtains of modernity. They make seem as though it is only terrorists who are committing these atrocities; the helpless remonstrances that cry for justice, they spring forth from the soul that exclaims against the sinister empires that are protected by the luster of royalty. We thirst for justice, we hunger after love, because we thirst for God, for God is Love and He is Justice. And looking upon the Cross, the Crucified Savior meets our gazes, and we — in a small degree — come to a sense of awareness of a Soul that weeps for every evil inflicted upon the innocent, and with this are our hearts pressed with bittersweet passion. As the philosopher Rene de Chateaubriand wrote:
If this perfect model of a dutiful son, if this pattern of faithful friends, if that agony of Gethsemane, that bitter cup, that bloody sweat, that tenderness of soul, that sublimity of mind, that cross, that veil rent in twain, that rock cleft asunder, that darkness of nature — in a word, if that God, expiring at length for sinners, can neither enrapture our hearts nor inflame our understanding, it is greatly to be feared that our works will never exhibit, like those of the poet, the “brilliant wonders” which attract a high and just admiration.
Every martyr, and every oppressed soul, is a poem unto itself, expressing the agony of the Incarnate Word, and being unto themselves images of the Incarnate Love, Who brought all that exists into existence by His very presence, that has no beginning and no end, but is the Beginning and the End, and Who contains the universe and yet the universe — with all of its prodigiousness, cannot contain Him; and sitting upon the the stone of Heaven, their cries are but sonnets for the heart, from which the rivers of blissful victorious martyrdom flow with glowing hues under the sun of ceaseless amour.
Let our love for the persecuted continue, and not end with just words and cries, but let our emotions be proven sincere by our actions.