September 19, 2014
Murderous Heart
Australian authorities thwarted
an ISIS terrorist plot that included abductions and videotaping civilian
beheadings. Although the 15 people arrested had not yet murdered anyone, it
wasn’t for lack of preparation. I’m reminded however, that Jesus equates the
anger these people harbor in their hearts with the actual deed itself. “You
have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone
who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that
anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment” (Matt
5:21-22b NIV).
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Gail;
-----I’ve read a couple books that tags Islam as the beast and this twelfth Imam they’re expecting as the anti-Christ. I’ve never seen a better fit presented. And the more I ponder it, the better it fits. From the very nature of these people and their religion through their history right on to their eschatology, highlighted by their lust to behead, everything about them fit’s the anti-Christ like a designer glove. They hotly deny Jesus was God’s son. They do recognize Him as the greatest of prophets before Muhammad, but God has no son and Jesus was not the Christ! “Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.” (I John 2:22)
-----Well. Pasting that scripture to them like a label isn’t really fair, though it’s real true. I John 2 speaks more to the category of people that are the antichrist than to the bloke himself who’s yet to come. But looking at the nature opposite of Christ’s nature reveals more fit yet. For instance, and more fundamentally, Christ brings His believers freedom not only from sin, but also freedom within an ultimately unique and totally personal relationship between each believer and the Father through Christ. This is of imperative importance in a world of fraud and deceit as defined by Romans 3:4, “Let God be true though every man be false.” You’re false. I’m false. Every one of us who has not yet died and been actually perfected in nature and being is false. Romans 3:4 categorizes every human temporally alive as false, not because everything about us is false, but because if one thing about us is false, we are false. Microsoft has an old file comparison utility for verifying whether or not two files are identical. If so much as one byte of one file is different from the other, that file is false. So our ability to stand true before the Lord does not exist except through His grace because we each have more than one byte of information wrong. Worse yet, without grace towards one another our ability to be united as one in the Lord is destroyed by all the differences of beliefs arising from this falsehood. This is why Romans 14 is such an important chapter. It reveals that our beliefs do not have to impeccably match each other’s for us to belong to the same body of total unity in Christ. Unity happens through graciousness towards one another being a conduit through which honor flows for one another. One Christlike attitude extending to your brother through another Christlike attitude produces freedom in the Lord to be what God makes of you individually within the intimate relationship the two of you have going. The closer to Christ’s Father you become, the more grace you exhibit towards others. This isn’t the way things are with the Muslims. The closer to Allah you become, the duller your sword gets (that way the beheadings are the more brutal!) You think down their precisely defined channel or - chop, chop.
-----Islam is the opposite of Biblical Christianity at the very heart of what it is to be the one or the other. Practiced Christianity is very much like Islam, men demanding others to accept their peculiar doctrines, breaking fellowship over the pride of knowledge, chopping heads off with words as swords. The Bible does not teach that as Christlikeness. But the Koran teaches the use of actual swords. Islam is a fascistic system of obedience to the leader in surrender of all your individuality. Christianity is the elevation of your individuality unto righteousness through God’s saving grace as assisted by the edifying love from others, especially the leaders, until eventually you in turn edify others too. Christianity is an organism of individuals freely acting around a simple truth: the love of Christ. Islam is a beast of individuals compulsively acting around a common deceit: we rule! -you loose! Allah akbar. Sorry guys. You got that wrong. Jesus rules. And soon we’ll never see your type later. Oh, the bliss of that promise!
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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