If you’ve watched the news on any television channel, or read the headlines of any major news web site over the past month, you’ve no doubt heard about the mass beheading of Christians in Iraq by ISIS. How do we make sense of these senseless killings? Is this behavior limited to extremist militants only or is there a wider danger? I’d like to address these issues in this article.
We in the Western world have been pretty much protected from such brutal attacks and are more likely to think, “that’s over there’ and subsequently we take little note of it. We sit back, enjoying our Western way of life and think that nothing like that could possibly happen here.
Americans Isolate Themselves from Foreign Threats
There are a couple of things wrong with that type of thinking. First of all, it’s isolationist. We think that because we live in a law-abiding western culture, nothing like that could happen here. We isolate ourselves from what’s going on with a false confidence in our way of government and the superiority of our security forces. After all, these are just Muslim extremists. In the meantime, our brothers and sisters are being slaughtered in Iraq and other nations.
There is an air of arrogance with such thinking. We think we in the West are superior due to our massive intelligence networks and the power of our defense systems. We think we’re just to smart and too equipped to worry about such things.
Westerners Think They Are Protected
Secondly, the attitude that we are protected in the West is misinformed as the 9/11 attack on the Word Trade Center proves. While our government is able to gather enough intelligence to thwart most major terrorist attacks, it’s not able to stop them all. You can read a list of Muslim terror attacks in the United States over the past 35 years here: http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/pages/americanattacks.htm
As time goes on, more and larger terrorist attacks will occur because the goal of Islam is to forcefully convert the whole world to their god Allah. The Koran states that every Muslim’s duty is Jihad. This ‘religion of peace’ is nothing but forced submission to obtain that ‘peace.’ Peace by subjugation is the driving force behind every totalitarian regime; when will we wake up to admit that?
Westerners Misinterpret the Ignominy of the Threat
We are taught by Islamic think-tanks such as CARE that Islam is a peaceful religion that has been invaded by terrorists. Yet neither CARE not any other major Islamic organization decries the attacks. Instead they continue to play the victim and justify what’s happening on the premise of defending their faith.
If you didn’t know it already, the Koran’s stated goal is the Islamization of the entire world. Islam is both a religions system and a political system. Sharia law is their plan for governance of all the countries of the world. They are infiltrating every country they can and they will not stop until they succeed.
There are literally hundreds of Muslim terrorist ‘sleeper cells’ in the United States, England and other European nations. They are committed and willing to do anything they can to further Jihad. At any given time these sleeper cells can ‘wake up’ and carry out the horrific acts they have already planned. Their goal is to convert the United States or destroy it. They are willing to do as much destruction as necessary to force conversion. If conversion doesn’t happen, they will destroy whatever and whomever they can.
Senseless Killings are Not Senseless to the Killers
With the goal of the global dominance of Islam in mind, the subjugation of the entire world to Allah through forced conversions, we can see the ‘sense’ in these senseless killings. The brutal slaughters are not senseless at all when you consider the motives of those who commit them. To them, they are simply doing what Allah wants — killing those who refuse to become Muslim. While these killings are senseless to us, they make perfect sense to Muslims who truly believe what the Koran teaches.
John 1:2 (Jesus) They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time comes, that whosoever kills you will think that he does God service.
Jesus said it himself — the time is coming when people will put you to death, thinking they are serving God in doing so. That time is upon us people and the threat continues to grow at an alarming pace.
How to React Sensibly to the Growing Threat of Islam
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Edmund Burke
The first step is to realize that Islam itself is a threat. I’m talking about the whole institution of Islam, not just the terrorist groups within it. The peacemaker portion preaches peace while the military arm makes sizable advances. It’s the typical Trojan horse scenario. It’s like the good cop – bad cop technique used by the police; one seems to be on your side while the other clearly is not, so the suspect confides to the ‘good cop’ just to find out he was on the same side as the bad cop. This is what’s happening in the Western world right now with the ‘peaceful’ Muslim groups and the ‘radical’ Muslim groups. They are two sides of the same coin. They are not two opposing parties.
The second step is to get so steeped in the Scriptures that you can handle the spiritual attack, which boils down to a war of words. The realm of spirit communicates through thoughts; thoughts that agree with God’s Word are from God, those thoughts that do not are from the opposite source, Satan. No matter what name you put on a belief system, if it’s in disagreement with God’s Word, it’s originating from the prince of darkness, not the prince of peace. Don’t be fooled by lies. The Koran states it’s goal and those Muslims who deny it to others are simply lying to gain a foothold.
The third step is to take a bold stand for our Lord Jesus Christ and speak the truth in love. If you don’t inform that Muslim friend that Mohamed was false profit, who will? Why leave it up to chance? Somebody has to be real and once you understand how real the deception is, you just have to do something about it if you love people as God does. God wants all to be saved and come unto the knowledge of the truth. He’s not happy that anyone should perish.
I Love Muslims and Want Them to Believe the Truth
I understand the nature of deception. If something was devoid of truth nobody would believe it. Error is almost always a mixture of truth with lies. You end up believing the lies because they are sandwiched in with truth, ever so sparingly.
I love Muslims to life. I speak with them every chance I get and I go into depth about what they believe and how the Bible says the opposite in most cases. If I didn’t love them I wouldn’t bother because I’m putting my own life on the line in doing so.
Yes, this is Western culture so the threat is minimized at this time, but I would be no different if I was in Iraq. I stand for and with my Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of all men and women regardless of what they believe right now and what they’ve done in the past. I greet each person with the love of Christ and the open invitation to learn the truth about that which the Koran degrades — the Bible.
Make Sense of What’s Happening by Gaining God’s Point of View
What is presently happening around the world has been foretold by God in His Word for over 4000 years. We should not be surprised nor should we be fearful. Our God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is superior to any threat and he is in total control.
As the end of the age unfolds, we shall see God move in tremendous ways through His children, the born-again believers who walk by the spirit and not by the flesh. I pray you are part of that massive end-time witness and I also pray for your protection. God bless you who take a stand for God and our Lord Jesus Christ in these last days. Yours is an eternity filled with more blessings than you can count.
THE HUMAN MIND
(Please stop the fight, let’s use our minds)
RESOURCE
There is something that we humans do that has helped us to achieve great progress in every area of our lives both corporately and as individuals. This thing is a fruit of our very nature as given us by God.
It is because God put this propensity in us that He guarantees us (Gen1:28) that we can and should:
1. Be Fruitful on the earth,
2. Multiply on the earth,
3. Replenish the earth,
4. Subdue the earth,
5. Dominate the earth and the entire animal kingdom.
It is this thing that enabled man to make progress from the stone age to the iron age, to the jet age and ultimately to the present computer age technology.
Whereas our ancestors travelled on foot, taking them days and weeks to traverse major communities, we today can go round the entire planet in question of hours not days. The list is endless as to the benefits of this precious thing in our lives. And what is this mysterious something that each of us is capable of?
It is the use of our minds to generate great ideas through the processes of curiosity, investigation, research and analyzing of issues of life as we encounter them.
It is God’s extension of His continuous creative agenda. It is by this means and this means alone that God has empowered man to develop himself over the centuries. Where there has been less of such mental processes, there has also been less development and progress in positive directions.
That means God fully expects us to exploit to full capacity all the possibilities that are available to us through the use of our minds to think. No wonder Napoleon Hill said ‘Think and grow rich’, and Makers of Toyota product said ‘Good thinking, Good products’. That is why formal education is so vital to train the human mind to think.
APPLICATION
How ever my focus is to apply the foregoing facts to address a very serious problem that humanity is facing today. This problem which is threatening to overwhelm all humanity is traceable to the disastrous departure from the use of our rational minds to analyze issues and ideas that are being imposed upon us. It is non other than human religious beliefs and I am convinced that this needn’t be so, granted that God is not the author of confusion.
But false religious beliefs or what I like to call malicious religious doctrines are tormenting the world today because the God given capacity of the human being to investigate and research issues and ideas is being relegated or outright forbidden.
I liken these false religious teachings to computer malware that are intelligently and deliberately developed to cause trouble. A ‘Trojan horse’.
If we had no religious beliefs at all among men and all humanity lived only by our verifiable knowledge of the laws of nature which we gathered empirically over the centuries, we would not have had all the conflicts we are experiencing today.
For instance, there are no conflicting schools of thought about electricity and its principles and applications today because all postulations about it are so verifiable any where on planet earth that there are no arguments or conflicts about it. We simply just apply them from nation to nation with satisfactory results everywhere.
But when it comes to religious beliefs, postulations or doctrines, firstly there are many out of the box issues to deal with. Things which sometimes defy the laws of nature and thus seem to be beyond our means of natural verification. This is so because we are talking about God here who is invisible but omnipotent and all knowing. This therefore tends to throw a new challenge to humanity. Secondly we are aware of the existence of an adversary called Satan, who is also invisible, but not omnipotent nor all knowing. The conflict between these two supernatural beings mentioned above have been the reason for all the opposing religious beliefs in the world today.
However the God who created all things does not really have any rival or opponent that can defeat Him, therefore His Kingdom and His truths supersede those of the enemy.
And if this God is going to hold all men responsible for what doctrine they follow in life, then He is duty bound to make His ways and doctrines accessible and understandable to all men.
So if it be true that He has faithfully laid His true bare for all to access and follow to eternal life, how do we access it you might ask? By the same scientific method of using our minds correctly without bias to analyze and investigate all that comes to us.
Yes! the true doctrines of God and the falsehood of satan are still verifiable by the same processes of curiosity, investigation and research, done with humble sincerity.
That’s how powerful the mind God gave us is and Satan knows this.
Therefore because satan knows that his lies can be detected by humans if they apply their minds to careful analysis, investigation and research, he is always prone to dissuade the thorough mental process by intimidation.
This is a major character of false teachings today as always in all ages, that is, the inducement of fear, distraction from or forbidding of careful investigation.
The world today is full of millions of souls propelled more by fear than by a clear understanding of what they believe. Obedience by fear and not from a convinced understanding has painted our world today red with human blood. This is sabotage.
All truths that are worthy of being called truths are of God, and all else that are contrary to these are not of God. If therefore all truth be of God and all lies be of the devil, do you think that God who gave us our creative, analytical and investigative minds (that have benefitted mankind so much in all other areas) will be displeased if we try to verify His word to ascertain its correctness?. No, no, never. Rather it is to be expected that God should be pleased with such an attitude. It is the devil that is displeased with such attitude and so he warns his victims not to research his lies, lest they be discovered and the victims escape into the the truth.
So it is that humanity is adept in the use of the mind to ascertain the laws of nature through forensic investigation and research to great benefits, but are so gullible when it comes to ascertaining spiritual information because of either fear or share mental laziness.
I make bold to say and put it to you that just as using our God given minds have helped humanity to improve themselves greatly, the correct use of our minds to analyze religious beliefs thoroughly without fear is what we need to overcome the tension in the world today as we know that false religious beliefs are behind most of these conflicts. Ignorance of the real truths of God is killing the world and souls are perishing into hell who think they are heaven bound, holding unto false teachings.
Oh yes true religious beliefs will not only survive intense scrutiny but will be validated by it.
Again I say why does rational man cease to be rational when it comes to poisonous religious dogma, but rather becomes gullible? The answer is fear. But where does this type of fear come from? It can only come from a malicious source. Definitely not from God, for God has taught us to profit by the use of our minds to investigate, research, study, discover and apply detail knowledge.
The following scriptures from the Christian Bible bear witness to the fact that God favors the wise use of our minds in spiritual and temporal things to ascertain truth and prosper by it. (This is probably why Christianity or christian nations favor higher education and research greatly).
1. Joshua 1:8. (God says to Joshua, ‘Thorough investigation of My words will reveal the secret of
good success to you)
2. Proverbs 4:7 (God says to seek Wisdom, Knowledge and understanding)
3. Psalm 19:1-2 (The heavenly bodies are teaching wisdom, this supports space science)
4. Matt. 7:7, John 5:39 (Jesus commands to Seek & Search; promising sure discovery)
5. 1Thess.5:21 (Direct command to Investigate all things to discover and hold unto the truth)
6. 2Tim.2:15 (Direct command to study)
7. Acts 17:11 (Meticulous study and investigation is praised).
For the benefit of all humanity, I am going to site a case study that shows the gullibility or sheer intellectual laziness of man induced by fear which has made the entire human race to relapse into amnesia or willful ignorance.
AN OBVIOUS CONTRADICTION
It is about an obvious historical contradiction that is begging to be investigated and the records set straight. It concerns a very notable historical figure that is connected to three major religions of today, namely; The man Abraham.
Abraham had two sons, first Ishmael, then about 14 years later, Isaac.
Ishmael was born to Abraham by an Egyptian slave girl of Sarah, Abraham’s real wife. Ishmael came about because Sarah despaired of ever having children being very old, so advised her husband Abraham to go into Hagar.
When eventually God kept His promise and Sarah later gave birth to Isaac at age 90, she regretted her earlier action and now would not want Ishmael and his mother to hang around to inherit Abraham’s vast wealth as a first born. Abraham was grieved but God told him to do as Sarah said promising to bless Ishmael greatly but maintained that His covenant shall be with Isaac. So Abraham sent them away in peace and not in acrimony. Ishmael must have paid many family visits in between because it was recorded that Ishmael joined Isaac 75 years later to bury Abraham.(Genesis 25:8-9).
A fews years after the teenage Ishmael left with his mother, God told Abraham to take Isaac his son to mount Moriah and offer him as a sacrifice. This is the way the story was recorded in some of the holy books of the major religions of today. But others had a different contradictory version of the story to the effect that rather than Isaac, it was Ishmael that was taken to mount Moriah for sacrifice.
Now considering the prominence of these major religions of today, it is amazing that nobody is blushing about such an obvious and embarrassing error about such a notable Family as Abraham’s.
How comes that we are all comfortable to let these two conflicting accounts be side by side without attempting to resolve it. Isn’t it obvious that both can not be correct? I do not say we should fight over it, that’s hardly a scientific way of ascertaining truth. I say we should research it forensically. Who knows, the research findings could solve a problem or two in our world today.
Seeing that if one account is right, the other is absolutely wrong; are we waiting until judgement day to find out the truth? Or do we conceive that heaven actually regards that these two accounts are both right?
I would have suggested that the United Nations Organisation (UNO) should assemble a high powered fact finding research team comprising of religious scholars, scientists and historians etc, to get to the bottom of this matter. This could be instrumental to achieving world peace.
I find our refusal to use our minds on this matter to research this to its logical conclusion to be a betrayal of our God given investigative minds that has helped humanity so much in other matters.
I put it to you that if we indeed remain docile about this issue and refuse to investigate it, we the human race are succumbing to a ‘fear’. We have already seen that this kind of fear does not come from God, for God designed us to prosper through researching and investigating issues to logical conclusions and not leaving them unresolved.
But if the UNO will not be persuaded to embark on such a mission, then the onus falls on every individual soul, especially those of the major religions concerned to investigate properly what they are believing or following. The eternal security of their precious souls may be at stake.
Here is why I think so.
We know that God in relating a story to mankind will not tell a lie, right? Right, then don’t you think which ever is false in these two accounts of the story of Abraham’s family is a deliberate and calculated lie?
So if Satan who is known as the ultimate father of lies managed to inject a lie into sacred writings, then just think, will that be the only lie he injected? If given an inch hold, does he not take a mile?
I leave the rest to your imagination.
Our individual lives and destinies depend on what we do with all the information and data we pick up in this life. All shall stand before God in judgement on the last day as individuals, not in any groupings, not even as families. Refusal to investigate what we are made to believe could be disastrous. Remember God is never displeased with an investigative attitude. It is the devil who has things to hide that is afraid of it.
(Please stop the fight, let’s use our minds)