Yum!
Posted on 08/27/2006 12:41:00 AM PDT by Crazieman
Per Fox News
What are hardships when one has faith? There are only two possibilities. We either know God will provide us sanctuary or He will abandon us. I know the first is true as I have experienced it more than once. Through His actions He has earned my faith and following.
I don't believe you and I are far apart, although you may be more accepting of certain individuals. I too, was almost struck by lightning. The brilliant, flash of white, the heat upon you as if your face were on fire, enveloped by the sound of thunder, hair standing on end and the feeling of ants crawling upon your skin as the electricity bounds you? Perhaps I should start sending letter to the congregation and telling how to change things.
I could start by telling them to end the practice of women reading the Bible on the altar. Perhaps I could tell the Vatican to divest the stocks in condom companies and birth control pill manufacturers and arms companies and getting out of the business of business and back into the business of religion. Perhaps I should tell them to elect a young man to the Papacy with the strength and fortitude to face the muslim threat?
You guys dont understand. None of you have ever been in that situation.
If a guy walks up to in a wal mart parking like with a gun and demands that I hand over my cash and credit card, or he will shoot me, I am giving them that. that does not mean I am weak. if someone holds a gun to my head and asks me to convert to islam. I will tell them what they want to hear to survive, i will not deny christ with my heart or convert. I will admit it is like a form of spiritual rape, painfull,
Which brings me to this. I was sexually abused as a child. I let the guy do want he wanted to me and did not tell anyone out of fear. I was a child that was afraid. We are Gods children and God understands our fear.
God understood the fear of Steve and Olaf.
Do you put your Lord higher than your family? Higher than your own life? We are called to do that.
yes. I put God higher. most certainly.
but I will put it this way. I dont think God is happy with religion. I dont think God likes religion at all. I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior, and that makes me a christian, but I prefer to just be a person that is saved by his grace.
I dont care much for religion personally.
religion can be sour. Christ is always sweet and never ending love.
Somehow, I don't think they'd enjoy killing me as much, if they did at all (hey-you never know). I do know they wouldn't have a very useful video of my beheading because I'd be yelling things like "God is love!" and "Take me home, Lord Jesus!". I don't think that would help their cause much, and could even hurt it. And if they didn't kill me, I could live without shame, knowing that I went to the brink trusting in my God and calling good, good, and evil, evil. That's what I really hope I would do, in the same position as these two men. I don't know if they are Christian, or if they believe in their hearts that God is real and was with them, even in that place. If they do believe in God, what must that do to their faith? They have proven to themselves that servants of Satan himself are to be feared and revered and that the reality of God is basically, well, a benign fantasy. I can't imagine what that would do to me. I think I'd rather die.
We've got to be as prepared to die as they claim to be, (in their sick, twisted minds) only for the right reasons. Think how proud my grown children would be, how they could hold their heads up! Think of the alternative.. fear, fear, fear! Enough to go around for everyone! Where's the victory? Where would the victory be? In escaping with one's life? For what? To be taken another day? Someone's got to stop being afraid of these messengers of Satan! I'm just saying I certainly hope I would behave that way in the face of these cowardly thugs!! I don't think anyone really knows until push comes to shove, but it's good to think on such things, or else then we'll all just be taken by surprise.
2 Maccabees 7
The Martyrdom of Seven Brothers
1 It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and thongs, to partake of unlawful swine's flesh.
2 One of them, acting as their spokesman, said, "What do you intend to ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors."
3 The king fell into a rage, and gave orders to have pans and caldrons heated.
4 These were heated immediately, and he commanded that the tongue of their spokesman be cut out and that they scalp him and cut off his hands and feet, while the rest of the brothers and the mother looked on.
5 When he was utterly helpless, the king ordered them to take him to the fire, still breathing, and to fry him in a pan. The smoke from the pan spread widely, but the brothers and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly, saying,
6 "The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us, as Moses declared in his song that bore witness against the people to their faces, when he said, 'And he will have compassion on his servants.' "
7 After the first brother had died in this way, they brought forward the second for their sport. They tore off the skin of his head with the hair, and asked him, "Will you eat rather than have your body punished limb by limb?"
8 He replied in the language of his ancestors and said to them, "No." Therefore he in turn underwent tortures as the first brother had done.
9 And when he was at his last breath, he said, "You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws."
10 After him, the third was the victim of their sport. When it was demanded, he quickly put out his tongue and courageously stretched forth his hands,
11 and said nobly, "I got these from Heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again."
12 As a result the king himself and those with him were astonished at the young man's spirit, for he regarded his sufferings as nothing.
13 After he too had died, they maltreated and tortured the fourth in the same way.
14 When he was near death, he said, "One cannot but choose to die at the hands of mortals and to cherish the hope God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life!"
I say again:
I have a lot more confidence in God's capacity, willingness and practice of watching over HIS WORD
than that position seems to believe in or trust.
I have a different construction on reality than that position by a significant margin.
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
MAY IT BE the choice of all true believers.
Some people have said in all sincerity that THIS is the hill they'd want to die on. In response, they have been called liars, fools, braggarts, and extremists; embarassments; clueless, judgmental, pious, holier-than-thou, un-Christian AND the equivalent of radical Islam. All for daring to suggest that anyone might possibly have done anything differently or better than Steve and Olaf. Or, heaven forbid, that their becoming ventriloquists' dummies for Islam just might not have been the best thing that anyone in the wide world could have done under the same circumstances.
Dying at the hands of these punks (yes, they are punks, in the sense that they are weak and cowardly) under these circumstances would not have accomplished one single thing in the struggle to defend freedom.
They're not punks. We're not talking about a street encounter with armed teens wanting to steal your wallet (though I'm beginning to think most people would fight harder for their wallets).
This is part of a plan for domination. They're going to accomplish their goals through fear.
You don't think it's wrong, under duress, to assume the mere form of their religion as long as you get to keep the substance of your own. I do. I also think that the form of submission is all the Islamics require or want (and I am not in favor of giving these guys what they want). They don't care if we are only going through the motions. They only care that they have the power to force us to go through the motions at their command. And looking around me, I see that they do indeed have the power. Despite the military superiority of the West, as individuals we're paralyzed by the fear of becoming the next Daniel Pearl, or of what these animals might do if they're not given exactly what they want, no matter how unreasonable. So from individuals and small groups come the capitulations. Cartoons are suppressed. Movie scripts are altered. Frescoes containing the image of Mohammed are covered, so the the church won't be burned down. Grown men put on costumes and read from scripts.
Now they've got FOX News dancing on strings, singing the praises of those beautiful Palestinians and preparing to recite the epic poem that is Their Story. Some free press. And all because they're now afraid that if they utter the least criticism of these savages, the next journo snatched off the street won't get out of it so easily.
How has any of THAT helped in the struggle to defend freedom, hmmm?
As I've said previously, agreeing to their cheap demands demonstrates the cheapness of their religion.
To them, it only confirms the cheapness of ours. How much could Jesus be worth, if so many have already decided in advance that denying Him even symbolically before men---and it doesn't get much more "before men" than on television---is definitely the way to go?
AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN! AMEN!
This is sick stuff...
Antiochus Epiphanes, who succeeded to the Syrian throne around 175 B.C. wasn't a very nice man.
I'll say. And there are times....i.e. Saddam and Sons, that it seems certain people think they were "ruling" in those same ancient times.
I really hate to say this but, I'm not sure we are accomplishing much in Iraq regarding democracy. By that, I mean, when we leave, I think any semblance of democracy will leave as well.
I'm not sure which ME countries are democratic, which are moderate, which are under sharia law, but, I'm beginning to think that we will have to be a presence there for a long, long time, just to prevent those under sharia law from pressuring the others.
I read somewhere that 25% of the muslims in the US are wahabist. If this is true, we are really in trouble.
I thought to myself, yah, and you and all the others in news and the Left won't cut the poor Iraqis a break when they lived under their own horrific terror for 30+ years themselves!
It will take time, but they all will come around. Nobody likes having men forced on them as a child, OR having their hands cut off, etc. etc.
We need to get rid of Wahabism to effect much change. As long as that demented, evil group survives it will keep breeding more and more terrorists. The muslim clerics around the world need to quote verses from the Q'ran that prove that wahabism is a distortion and that allah, wouldn't approve. They need to do it and often. This would help stop new converts to it, but as long as their schools teach it, it will thrive both there and here.
"Some people have said in all sincerity that THIS is the hill they'd want to die on. In response, they have been called liars, fools, braggarts, and extremists; embarassments; clueless, judgmental, pious, holier-than-thou, un-Christian AND the equivalent of radical Islam."
I think you have it backwards. The trashing began with attacks on what these two kidnap victims did. There were people claiming that God would punish these men. If you or others want to practice this kind of fundamentalist Christianity, go right ahead. I respect your view. But I also respect those men and what they did.
Yum!
According to their live Fox report just now, they did not have their security with them and the doors were unlocked on the armored transport. Smells like a staged media event. Just sayin'.
Let the thrashing of my commentary begin. They are responsible.
This thread is still going strong since I was on yesterday afternoon
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.