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newcenturion
Member



Joined: 2011/12/9
Posts: 11


 Thoughts on defense?

As the weeks roll by and I see more and more stories coming out of the middle east, Asia, and Africa about islamic and communistic persecution and murder of fellow Christians; it brings to thought what line do we allow it to come. I can only speak from an American perspective and with a view that sees little to no persecution. So what are your thoughts on how to defend yourselves and your family? Do you give yourself up to death or do you fight back? Again as an American, we are somehow engrained to fight at the drop of a hat. Sometimes I wonder why the African Christians do not take up arms and go after Boko Haram. This wouldn't necessarily be a religious war or a struggle over power but a fight to survive. Thoughts?

 2013/12/2 21:37Profile









 Re: Thoughts on defense?

I would fight back to defend my family and their lively hood. I would say if someone wants your things, depending on what it is, would be less fighting for. Stuff can be replaced but family is different. IMO.

 2013/12/2 21:57
Lysa
Member



Joined: 2008/10/25
Posts: 3699
East TN for now!

 Re: Thoughts on defense?


I think we say we would fight because as Americans that seed has been sown from the founding of this Nation.

But upon reading your questions, I started thinking about what the Christians in these other nations are doing. Are they fighting to defend themselves and their families?

Christians in other countries are of another mindset and their situations are different from ours. We cannot judge them according to our American values. Pray for them that are persecuted.

God bless,
Lisa


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Lisa

 2013/12/2 22:26Profile
Sidewalk
Member



Joined: 2011/11/11
Posts: 719
San Diego

 Re: Defense

This is something I wrote a while back as I mused on this very topic. My thoughts go to North Korea frequently, knowing we have precious family members of faith living there in critical danger every waking moment. Tyranny such as exists there is the result of defense failure, I believe men are designed to live in freedom, but that evil in the world will always oppose that.

The following was not written as a Christian piece, but a Christian combat vet wrote it.


So much more than Guns

When the Founding Fathers considered the elements of the constitution, they took a very long look at human history. What they saw was a pattern of tyranny and oppression that stretched back into the dark recesses of known civilizations, where most of their ancestors lived under the heavy hand of whatever governmental system held power. Freedom was scarce in those annals, and the Fathers were determined to design a system with the most potential to guarantee the freedom they desperately wanted for themselves and their progeny.

When the Second Amendment was crafted it was not just about the guns, but rather the recognition that governments gravitate toward tyranny. Freedom is scary to governors, and quite inconvenient. Freedom suggests that only reason can be used to persuade a man to do something, a free person has the option to either comply or refuse. Governmental officials hate that, and are irritated by those who do not just obediently fall in line.

The two ways I can get you to do something are reason and force. The Second Amendment was a way the founders saw to maintain a balance of force between the citizenry and the government, and reason was the currency. In like manner, the provisions of the bill of rights were all written in the negative, not telling the people what they must do but telling the government what it could not do. This was critical to the survival of a free society, but the constant pressure toward ordered tyranny demands an intense vigilance on the part of the governed. Given our reluctance to keep vigilance the current governmental departures from constitutional restraint should surprise no one.

The balance of reason and force underpins the Second Amendment. The founders knew the proclivity of government to descend to tyranny, but by keeping a fully armed citizenry that process might be held in check. Government would have to use reason and be accountable in order to secure citizen cooperation, or they would face a well-armed rebellion. It was not, as we were told years ago, a provision so that sportsmen could go hunting in the government regulated lands and seasons.

It seems the gun control issue comes up in full force whenever there is another mass shooting. Some clamor for either more restrictive gun laws or banning and confiscation altogether. We do not hear much demand that more citizens should move about with personal firepower as a deterrent to these crimes, for some reason conventional wisdom thinks it is better to let the shooters have their way until police are summoned to end the carnage. Anecdotal evidence disagrees, as the stories of concealed carry permit holders- citizens, have often brought a swift end to some of these murderous rampages. I maintain that those who think the removal of citizens' weapons will result in a safe and peaceful society, have not taken a long term historical perspective or considered the implications of what it would be like to live where only the government has guns. They are deluded if they think giving up their ability to defend themselves will make them safe.

But it goes deeper than that.

In such a society, the people and the government become natural enemies, and the strong will of necessity oppress the weak. Taxes will be whatever government decides, populations will endure whatever onerous regulations are placed upon them, and ultimately and only those who are productive will be granted permission to live. As for the elderly, the weak, the mentally challenged- well, there just won't be funds to provide care. Again, history has been here many times before and Obamacare isn't the first societal system with death panels. Any public resistance will be just noise in the streets, a roar without teeth to bite.

The debt accrued under this president has guaranteed a bleak future for America. There has been a massive theft that may have exceeded anything before in human history. From the poor he has stolen the potential to rise from poverty by showering them with toys and trinkets, a welfare mindset, and the idea that the rich are stealing from them. Mind-numbing nonsense.

From the middle class, the cash. Confiscatory taxes, mountains of regulations, the plundering of the value of their wealth. Trapped in payment hell, they have no where to go. In pursuit of the American dream, they are making payments on the American nightmare.

Maybe the worst is what he has stolen from the rich, the evil rich. These are the special members of a society driven to greatness, to invent and produce things that will bring to themselves wealth and prestige. Greedy? Maybe. But the nature of capitalism working in freedom has a built-in restraint, because competition limits anyone's ability to plunder. That's another issue. But what wealth minded people have lost is fiscal stability and regulatory restraint so that they can build their dreams and hire people to help make it happen. When governmental types define and demonize the ambitious calling it greed, they drive them away from the marketplace and they make other choices. Capitalism is a coward, running to wherever the freedom to grow is greatest. Some leave to work out their dreams in other countries, some abandon altogether, many "cash out" taking what they have accumulated and leaving employees to go job hunting. The desire to protect what they have overcomes the desire to create more. Business death settles in.

How do you even measure these losses? It is like a tiny bug that nestles in and fastens itself to a warm body and begins sucking the blood to live. The host knows it is there, but the effect is so minimal it just accepts the thing and learns to live with it. Then over time the parasite grows, taking ever more blood to keep itself going, and develops the attitude that it is more important than the host, and bigger, too.

Sound familiar? There are so many today who have come to love the parasite, railing in contempt at those who think the parasite should be much smaller. They cuddle the parasite, feeling the warmth of its body, not remembering that the warm blood inside the parasite came from them in the first place!

Back to the Second Amendment, it is my opinion that a governmental move to make the possession of firearms illegal will be a red line, and would result in a very serious rebellion that could completely alter the American way of life. An unarmed American population would quickly evaporate business and industry resulting in widespread joblessness and hunger on a scale never known within these borders. There is a reason the third world lives in perpetual poverty, the weak live at the whim of the strong, and the strong live at the whim of the stronger. No one risks to create business and wealth under these circumstances, because they have no way to defend it.

The Second Amendment is a hidden treasure that so far has allowed wide potential for wealth and the good life 300,000,000 people. May the citizens of the United States of America have the wisdom and clarity to recognize this, and keep it for generations to come.


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Tom Cameron

 2013/12/2 23:40Profile









 Re:

Nigeria Christians 'to defend churches from Boko Haram'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16350635

Some african churches are defending themselves against demonic slaughter of their wives and children and burning of their villages.

 2013/12/3 0:14
murrcolr
Member



Joined: 2007/4/25
Posts: 1839
Scotland, UK

 Re:

I'm in Lagos, Nigeria as I type this post.

When I first came into Nigeria the violence seemed mostly in the Christian South of Nigeria, at this time there was a Muslim president. However since Johnathan Goodluck (Christian) won the national presidential elections, the violence and kidnappings in the south have stopped, with many of the militants joining the Nigerian armed forces, but at the same time Boko Haram has appeared in the North and the violence started there.

I get the feeling that this violence has more to do with political ambitions rather than religion. However one of the things you don’t see reported in the news is the retribution that Muslim in southern Nigeria face I have read stories of bombs being thrown into mosques, during prayer and Muslims being murdered to, although not to extent you see in the North.


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Colin Murray

 2013/12/3 10:39Profile









 Re:

One sometimes wonders what the face of Christianity would look like today if Protestants had not fought back at various times against the Catholic church's senseless killings during the Dark Ages/Middle Ages.

"On April 9, the Duke of Savoy issued a new edict, enjoining the Waldensians to put down their arms within eight days and go into exile between April 21 and 23. If able, they were free to sell their land and possessions to the highest bidder.

Waldensian pastor Henri Arnaud, who had been driven out of the Piedmont in the earlier purges, returned from Holland. On April 18 he made a stirring appeal before an assembly at Roccapiatta, winning over the majority in favor of armed resistance. When the truce expired on April 20, the Waldensians were prepared for battle.

They put up a brave fight over the next six weeks. But when the Duke retired to Turin on June 8, the war seemed decided: 2,000 Waldensians had been killed; another 2,000 had "accepted" the Catholic theology of the Council of Trent. Another 8,000 had been imprisoned, of which more than half would die of starvation, deliberately imposed, or of sickness within six months.

But about two or three hundred Vaudois fled to the hills and began carrying out a guerilla war over the next year against the Catholic settlers that arrived to take over the Vaudois lands. These "Invincibles" continued their assaults until the Duke finally relented and agreed to negotiate. The "Invincibles" won the right for the imprisoned Vaudois to be released from prison and be provided safe passage to Geneva. But the Duke, granting that permission on 3 January 1687, required that the Vaudois leave immediately or convert to Roman Catholicism. This edict led to some 2,800 Vaudois leaving the Piedmont for Geneva, of which only 2,490 would survive the journey."

http://oldwaldensianpaths.blogspot.com/p/brief-history-of-waldensians-waldensian.html

The Crusades Never Ended, They Went Covert

Catherine De Medici instigated the butchering of 75,000 French Protestant Huguenots on August 24, 1572. In 1598 Henry IV issued the Edict of Nates to protect them. By manipulating the rescinding of the protective Edict of Nantes in 1685 by the Jesuit confessor to King Louis XIV (using religious blackmail), another HALF MILLION FRENCH HUGUENOTS were butchered by the vile French Catholic Dragonades. In 1655 again, British Protestant hero Oliver Cromwell threatened to invade France and crush the French Crown for a new massacre being waged upon the French Vadois Protestants of valley of Piedmont by six Catholic Regiments by the Duke of Savoy.

How Oliver Cromwell resisted the Catholics

The massacre of the poor Irish protestants on October 23rd 1641 - the "Feast" of Ignatius Loyola. How fitting a day for a massacre by these bloodthirsty swine. It is estimated that 150,000 Irish Protestants were butchered in the streets and in their homes. This slaughter took place over an eight-year period. Finally, once again it was Oliver Cromwell who finally invaded Ireland and attacked the Jesuit base at Drogheda and in a rage exterminated the entire Catholic village of 2000. Only this invasion finally ended the massacre of the Protestants. The present day Irish Protestants are still at war with the fanatical Irish Catholic Jesuits, and this is why they need the continued protection of the British Army.

http://www.voxfux.com/features/jesuits1.html

 2013/12/3 17:30
burn4Him
Member



Joined: 2006/3/15
Posts: 13
Michigan

 Re: Thoughts on defense?

Quote:
Sometimes I wonder why the African Christians do not take up arms and go after Boko Haram. This wouldn't necessarily be a religious war or a struggle over power but a fight to survive. Thoughts?



1 Corinthians 15 puts these sufferings and deaths in the proper context. I believe God would have us all consider the purpose, priorities and hope Paul revealed and embodied in the midst of persecution.


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Kevin

 2013/12/3 17:51Profile
newcenturion
Member



Joined: 2011/12/9
Posts: 11


 Re:

All good thoughts. I wasn't intending on putting my American perspective through others eyes but just curious on how brethren from around the world feel about defending themselves from persecution.

 2013/12/3 18:46Profile
ginnyrose
Member



Joined: 2004/7/7
Posts: 7534
Mississippi

 Re: Thoughts on defense?

All the replies on this thread talk about groups that were massacred, killed in battle while defending themselves, etc. But not all believers operated this way. Some opt to take it patiently, believing it wrong to kill another. This position is called "Biblical Non-resistance". There is a long thread here on SI that deals with this issue, written by a former war veteran, Pastorfrin, "We Need to Talk about Peace".
It can be found here: https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?forum=35&topic_id=15338&viewmode=thread&order=0


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Sandra Miller

 2013/12/3 19:30Profile





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