Posted on 11/09/2001 12:18:53 PM PST by Romulus
At the risk of being accused of treason and sedition - not a novel thing in my family - I admit to having a certain admiration for the young fundamentalist Muslims, with their east London or northern accents, eschewing home comforts to go off to fight for the faith of their fathers. They face the privations of cave-dwelling, the dangers of mortal conflict, and an uncertain welcome if they survive and return to Plaistow, Luton, Crawley, Birmingham or Burnley.
I'm not sure about the other places, but Burnley is no stranger to treason and sedition. My family comes from there. Our home, Towneley Hall (now owned by the Burnley Corporation), was once a centre of that other fundamentalist religion, recusant Catholicism. After the saying of Mass became illegal in 1559, we, too, were viewed with the deepest suspicion for having allegiances that ranked above Queen, country or government.
John Towneley, my ancestor, was heavily fined by Elizabeth I's Inquisition Council, and went to prison several times. Eventually, in order that his 14 children should not have the satisfaction of claiming for their father a martyr's crown, John was released from prison, mortally sick and almost blind, to be confined instead to his Towneley estates. His friend Sir Thomas Fitzherbert, from whom I am descended on my mother's side, was also stubbornly Catholic. He died in the Tower.
Ever since I can remember, therefore, the idea of dying for your faith has been held up as a pretty splendid, if not heroic, thing to do. And Towneley heroes were not confined to the Reformation. Hearing Mass in the tiny oratory built on to the end of our drawing-room at Dyneley - the house in which the Towneley bailiff used to live and where John and his family heard Mass in secret using an altar that could be folded up to look like a wardrobe - my five sisters, my brother and I often found ourselves sitting next to a small and very ancient leather frame enclosing a piece of hair. The legend reads, 'My cousin Frank Towneley's haire, who suffered for his prince August 10th 1746'. His prince was Bonnie Prince Charlie (his brother was the prince's tutor), and Uncle Frank was eventually hanged, drawn and quartered for his part in trying to restore a Catholic monarch to Britain. For many years my family kept Uncle Frank's severed head in a basket and passed it round after dinner.
So when I hear people such as the 22-year-old accountant Mohammed Abdullah from Luton saying, 'Our religious duty comes before everything else', it has a certain resonance. Of course, Mr Abdullah's religious and social history is entirely different from mine. Since Charles Martel's victory at the Battle of Poitiers in 732 - a battle that spared my family and the rest of the people on these islands the prospect of Christian martyrdom in the 8th century - Islam and Christianity have gone their separate ways. Had that battle been lost, as Gibbon tells us, 'the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mohammed'.
In the event it took the crisis precipitated by Henry VIII to set the English the ultimate test. When the Christian schism came, martyrs were, of course, claimed on both sides. Many, for example the Norfolks, cannily swayed with the wind. They were well rewarded. Families such as mine, who stuck willy-nilly to their guns, were derided as misguided fundies, traitors who were quite out of step with the more doctrinally enlightened and modern times in which they were living.
My family remains in many ways defined by its history. So, when I hear adjectives that once would have applied to us being applied now to keen young Muslims, it is impossible not to feel a certain frisson.
Moreover, I have found myself wondering if I, despite the recusant blood running through my veins, would rise, like 26-year-old Abu Yahya from Plaistow, to the challenge of defending my religion if called to do so. Would you? To push this question even further, if we were invaded by an Islamic state, would you, in order to save your life and the lives of your children, bow your head and perform the Salat if told to do so? Is not the fact that Muslims find this question (with appropriate reversals) easier to answer than Christians rather shocking?
It is perfectly true that Christians are specifically forbidden to seek martyrdom, something that caused Sir Thomas More mental agonies when awaiting his inevitable execution. But there is a difference between seeking martyrdom and accepting death. The 11 September hijackers (or the ones who knew the game plan) and the Muslims who are now clamouring to suffer in the service of Allah would not qualify for martyrdom under Christian definitions. Christians believe that seeking martyrdom is a wicked thing since it denotes the sin of pride.
But it is not fear of the sin of pride that would stop the British being martyrs now; it is the sin of indifference. Moreover, I have a suspicion that, faced with the threat 'convert or die', the instincts of even Catholic and Anglican bishops would be to compromise.
Since Vatican II, Catholics could certainly do so. Indeed, some commentators, such as the French academician Jean Guitton, appear to believe that Catholicism has no specific doctrine to advance; it should merely assist in deepening individual perceptions of God. The days of exclusivity are gone. What all contemporary Christians should be working towards is a relativist interpretation of religion in which the form of your worship matters less than the depth of your spiritual experience. In times in which, according to the Vatican II Decree on Missions, Ad Gentes, 'nova exsurgit humanitatis conditio', Christians should play down uniqueness.
I think it was this new emphasis on syncretism that inspired Cardinal Lustiger, then Archbishop of Paris, to declare in 1981, 'I am a Jew. For me the two religions are one.' He was, naturally, immediately contradicted by the Chief Rabbi, but you cannot say that the cardinal was not trying. Who knows what Monsignor Georges Darboy, one of his predecessors in the archiepiscopal chair would have thought? It is little more than a century since his martyrdom in the Paris commune.
And where does this kind of thinking leave me and my fundamentalist sympathies? Out of kilter, it seems, with the Christian world. For, while I have no wish to be martyred or to engage in religious wars, it seems an enviable thing to have something beyond worldly considerations for which you would be prepared to lay down your life.
Of course, some of those young men rushing off to Afghanistan are full of nonsense. Of course, some are using Islam as a peg on which to hang rather less noble ambitions than to die for Allah's sake. But Islam has retained something that Christianity has lost: an ability to summon people to its support and not have them ask, 'What on earth for?'
Some people may feel that what I deem a loss is actually Christianity's gain; that indifference is better than fundamentalism. But, as I watch the Abduls and Aftabs go to meet their fates, I think about John Towneley and Uncle Frank. It is probably a treasonable thought, but it may be that, although I disagree with the causes that would-be Muslim martyrs are espousing, in the fibre of my being I have more in common with them than with many of my apparently more sophisticated friends and neighbours.
Wait dont tell me...ummmmm the preservation of the saints *grin*
I remember a young girl in Columbine who said YES moments before either Eric or Dylan put a bullet in her head:
And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death. Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them!
Kinda like the Taliban are doing right now; dying for their faith?
,as for myself Id accept Allah and make any apologies later and join a resistance movement,people have a habit of being more useful alive.
This statement is anti-Christ on many levels:
Reason 1)
For a day in Thy courts is better than a thousand; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.Reason 2)
Whosoever therefore shall confess Me before men, him will I confess also before My Father who is in Heaven. But whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father who is in Heaven.Reason 3)
For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospel's, the same shall save it.Reason 4)
For unto you it is given on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me.Reason 5)
And ye shall be betrayed both by parents and brethren and kinsfolk and friends, and some of you they shall cause to be put to death. And ye shall be hated by all men for My name's sake.Reason 6)
The 10/40 window of the Islam world will be opened with sand wet with the blood of the saints:Reason 7)The history of the expansion of Christianity has proved that "the blood the the martyrs is seed" - the seed of new life in Christ spreading through the world. For almost three hundred years Christianity grew in soil that was wet with the blood of the martyrs.- John Piper from Desiring God
And when He had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the Word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" And white robes were given unto every one of them, and it was said unto them that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants and also their brethren, who were to be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.For it is written: Precious in His sight is the blood of His saints and elsewhere Precious in His sight is the death of His saints.
How warped! There have not yet been enough martyrs:
And they cried with a loud voice, saying, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" And white robes were given unto every one of them, and it was said unto them that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants and also their brethren, who were to be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.
Excellent post Woody..and a Piper ping!
Spreading mormon lies I see. The verse you quote is talking about self washed persons who have not been washed by the Holy Spirit. They were never saved. Peter most definitely affirms that once God has saved a saint, that they will be preserved forever:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you and peace be multiplied.For the LORD loveth judgment, and forsaketh not His saints; they are preserved for ever, but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away, reserved in Heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Huh?
Yes. Some of them are apostates. The streets of hell are still paved with the skulls of bishops; little has changed since St. Augustine's time.
Since Vatican II, Catholics could certainly do so.
Could certainly do what?
Someone ought to acquaint this author with the fact that Catholics are still being killed for their faith ... in places like Sudan, East Timor, and Pakistan.
And his odd assessment of Vatican II is ... odd.
Of course, it is also not within my power to live for my faith either!
And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. - Luke 9:23,24
Behold I will corrupt your seed and spread dung upon your faces Malachi 2:3
I will take your eyes and give them to your neighbour and he shall lie with your wives 2 Sam 12:11
But God will shatter the heads of his enemies Psalms 68:21
Saul has slaid his thousands David his ten thousands 1 Sam 21:11
I will greatly multiply your pain in child bearing Genesis 3:16
I will strew your flesh upon the mountains and fill the valleys with your carcass.I will drench the land even to the mountains with your flowing blood Ezek 32:5...
That your God is a soul hunter Im sure but the muslims are right Allah is God the Father I would also add the names Satan and Seth,no Ill not be a soul under his counter hes a LUNATIC.
The church built on the 7 hills of Revelation shows its true colors.....
I have always seen His cross was His submission to the Fathers will...and that was what he asks of us..to "pick up that cross" submit to our God..
You know Jery I have always had a "whatever" attitude to my life since I became a Christian....I really believe that I can do all things through Christ that strength me.....I do not need to know what the future holds....You are right we neithor live nor die in our own strength
The question might be rephrased meaningfully as follows: if faithfully doing the will of God would result in your temporal death, would you nevertheless accept God's will over your own?
Indeed, he looks after His own:
I speak the truth in Christ -- I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost--that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.I am not a part of national Israel because they are not God's chosen people. I am a part of spiritual Israel by the election and choice of the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. I am a spiritual Jew and a son of David.For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites and to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; of whom are the fathers, and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.
It is not as though the Word of God hath taken no effect. For they are not all Israel, who are of Israel; neither because they are the seed of Abraham are they all children; but, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called."
That is, they who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; rather, the children of the promise are counted as the seed.
I'm glad you agree with me and the Bible on this point that God really does take care of His own. But, just so you know that He will redeem 144,000 jews in the last days:
Revelation 7:4 And I heard the number of them that were sealed: there were sealed a hundred and fortyfour thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.That your God is a soul hunter Im sure but the muslims are right Allah is God the Father I would also add the names Satan and Seth,no Ill not be a soul under his counter hes a LUNATIC.
The Muslims are wrong, eternally dead wrong. Allah is not the Father. Satan is not the Father. Seth is not the Father. Such blasphemey will be rewarded:
Break their teeth, O God, in their mouth; break out the great teeth of the young lions, O LORD!Before your pots can feel the thorns, He shall take them away as with a whirlwind, both living, and in His wrath. The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance; he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked, so that a man shall say, "Verily there is a reward for the righteous; verily He is a God that judgeth on the earth."
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