Tag Archives: Devil

Are you missing the lessons taught by the Sandy Hook massacre?

“When there are no words in any dictionary to describe what happened in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut Friday, when things happen that surely not even the cruelest imagination could comprehend [oh yeah?], it is certainly time to go back to some kind of cultural Square One and reconsider everything to which we have somehow become inured.”

Those are the words of a regular columnist who writes for our local newspaper.  He’s right! But that certainly isn’t going to be what happens, obviously.  Rather it seems American society is going to have another round in the culture wars between Democrats and Republicans over gun control. It is only politically correct to focus on the tools used in the Sandy Hook slaughter and other massacres rather than looking more deeply into why North American society is spawning these young mass murderers. The guns are not creating the mentality and willingness to do such evil. They are just the means.

If the politicians really wanted to help our society become more peaceful they might instead peel off a few layers from our dysfunctional post-modern society in order to get a little closer to our cultural Square One—to discover the truth about why things are going wrong.

For instance why not consider the omnipresent use of violence in its many forms as our “entertainment.” Media producers are practically addicted to featuring conflict and fighting, blood and gore in our movies, TV, video games and in what passes as “sports.”

Or then again, maybe our public guardian angels might find the courage to turn over a few rocks to investigate the scurrying prescription drug bugs who are pushing their wares onto truly astounding numbers of youth and adults in order to “cure” them of mental disorders like depression, hyper-activity, schizophrenia, anxiety, and much more.

These days if our witch doctors can conjure up some term to describe an undesirable mental state, then some big pharma firm will soon have a potent psycho-active drug to sell to cheaply dope up the person with the new label. This makes private and public health care providers happy because it keeps their costs down. But have you ever read the extensive list of nasty, dangerous side-effects of these drugs?  The economic-political commentator Doug Casey makes this observation about the use of these psycho-active drugs among those who have committed mass murder:

I predict that they’ll find that the 20-year-old killer, Lanza, was on Ritalin, Zoloft, Prozac, or some similar psychiatric drug. Most mass murders are proven to have been on these drugs, and the medical records are sealed for many other killers, so we can’t find out (Casey Daily Dispatch, “Doug Casey on the Fiscal Cliff,” Dec. 19, 2012, http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/doug-casey-fiscal-cliff).

But whether we’re talking about the pervasive presence of violence in entertainment, Prozac nation, or the American fetish for guns galore—these are just the outer layers of the onion. They are merely consequences. Side shows. Perhaps contributing causes, but not the deep down rotten root that led to the massacre at Sandy Hook.

But really, for the Western world, where do we find our cultural Square One? The real cause for what’s going wrong in our society? To find out we need to go back to the Bible. In the past a preacher might have said, “Blow off the dust on your Bible.” But, I dare say, that now many people no longer even have a copy of the Bible in their homes and even if they do, they don’t know—or care—what it says.

The Bible is a revelation. Which is to say, it contains divinely revealed knowledge that would otherwise be impossible for us to discover on our own. And this Bible begins with a book of beginnings called Genesis. This is our cultural Square One:

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man [and eventually, his wife, too] whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life [symbolizing spiritually discerned revelation] was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil [symbolizing materially discerned understanding]. The Lord God took the man [Adam, that is to say Mr. Dust who was Adam Lanza’s namesake] and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die….” Genesis 2:8-9, 15-17 English Standard Version

The serpent [the Devil] was the shrewdest of all the wild animals [an insult] the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?” [Here the Devil uses a classic red herring ploy to deceive.]

“Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied. “It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’” [This tree meant humanity was taking to itself the prerogative to determine what was “right” and what was “wrong” in their own eyes apart from God and His revelation that was then directly given to them, but which is now preserved for us in the Holy Scriptures.]

“You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman [Big lies are the easiest ones to swallow. A snake first covers its victim with saliva before swallowing it whole. Neither our bodies nor our souls are immortal. See Ezekiel 18 verses 4, 20, and 27. We are merely physical beings subject to eventual death, cessation of all life unless God should intervene]. “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.” Genesis 3:1-5 New Living Translation

Humanity as whole ever since has built societies based on their own material understanding, determining for themselves what is right or wrong apart from God’s revelation. The only exception being that of a man called Abraham and those relatively few of Abraham’s descendants who were illuminated by the divine revelation given to them. These individuals would become known as the “children of God” who took their inspiration from their Heavenly Father to, firstly, love Him with all their hearts, souls, and minds, and, secondarily, to love their fellow human being, their “neighbours,” as themselves.

A society that forgets to put a love for the God of the Bible in first place among all their priorities will most certainly soon forget to prioritize a genuine love for their human neighbours as well.

Those who take to themselves the right to determine right from wrong in opposition to the revelation of God—they have as their “father” the Devil—the being that first tricked their ancestors into eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good but also of Evil. The result is our present society, which is an inseparable, delusion having aspects that are both evil and good. The Sandy Hook massacre is a prime evil result that comes from one who rejects the divine revelation about loving with all his heart the God who created him. Adam Lanza also forgot if he ever knew that he was made in the Creator’s own image and likeness with a job here on Earth: to love his little and big neighbours as himself.

Those who have eaten the wrong “fruit” just don’t and won’t get it.  They can’t get at the root of what caused the massacre at Sandy Hook and all the other mass murders going on. Jesus of Nazareth put it this way when arguing with those who insisted on rejecting divine revelation:

Why can’t you understand what I am saying? It’s because you can’t even hear me! For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies. So when I tell the truth, you just naturally don’t believe me! John 8:43-45 New Living Translation

God gives us all free moral agency. From which Tree in the garden will you eat?

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Twisted Honour

The lead story in Canada for the last couple of days has been about the guilty verdicts for four first-degree murders that the jury brought down on Mohammad Shafia, his polygamous second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, and his oldest son, 21-year-old Hamed Mohammad Shafia.

They murdered Mohammad’s barren number one wife Rona, and Mohammad and Tooba’s three daughters. From the perspective of the heartless Shafia family killers, the four family members they slew, (Zainab 19, Sahar 17, and Geeti 13 and step-mom Rona 50) deserved what they got because they had “betrayed Islam”, and sullied the family’s honour. Mohammad Shafia, who was in his own eyes a devout Muslim man devoid of those weak infidel Christian virtues like mercy, kindness, patience, and forgiveness was dishonoured by the “perverse” behaviour of those he killed.

Self-righteous man that he was, Mohammad Shafia was even caught on a police wiretap after the four murders wishing out loud that the devil would crap on his reviled daughters’ graves.

But more specifically, how had Shafia’s daughters offended him? It seems Zainab offended by marrying in the family’s mosque (but the Imam Ali Falih Altaie never registered the marriage) a young Muslim man from a family who did not meet with the Shafia’s approval. Sahar deserved death because she had a Christian boyfriend and had some pictures taken of her wearing short skirts. Geeti, apparently, was murdered because she was rebellious, skipped some classes at school, and was breaking the family’s code of silence by asking school authorities to be taken into the foster child care system.

As for the spurned wife, Rona, maybe Mohammad Shafia just got tired of using her for a punching bag? Maybe he thought she was too old or too expensive or taking up too much room in the family’s Montreal house? It’s hard to tell because I haven’t read anything in the various news stories that satisfactorily explains to me just what was Mohammad’s evil motive in her case.

Maybe it was just like a farmer knocking off the heads of a few annoying chickens in the coop. If you’re going to kill three birds what’s the big deal about doing a fourth? After all, a lot of Muslim men just think of their women as chattel. Do with them what you will, as Islam plainly teaches that women are inferior to men. However, thank God, we don’t have Islamic Sharia law in Canada. So at this new year’s opening session in parliament, Canada’s justice minister, Rob Nicholson, during question period, called the Shafia murders “barbaric” and “unacceptable,” and pledged to protect women and other vulnerable people from such violence.

The Shafia family Imam, Ali Falih Altaie, in an effort to deflect any impression that he, his congregation, or Islam in general would support the practice of honour killing as carried out by the bloody Shafias said:

It’s unforgivable, actually, and unacceptable by any religion.
Only people who have lost their brain do that… It’s unbelievable.

I don’t want to put down the Imam, Altaie, as his on-the-record comments about the murders are to his credit, but I must contradict him. Why? Because in reality, honour killing though perhaps unacceptable in Western Islam, is indeed widely practiced in the rest of the Muslim world.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that perhaps as many as 5,000 women and girls a year are killed by members of their own families. But according to the journalist Robert Fisk, numerous women’s groups in the Middle East and Southwest Asia suspect the number of victims is about 20,000 women and girls annually. See Robert Fisk: The crime wave that shames the world,” London: The Independent. Retrieved 8 September 2010.

Fisk notes the gruesome nature of these murders in Muslim-dominated areas:

It is difficult to remain unemotional at the vast and detailed catalogue of these crimes. How should one react to a man – this has happened in both Jordan and Egypt – who rapes his own daughter and then, when she becomes pregnant, kills her to save the “honour” of his family? Or the Turkish father and grandfather of a 16-year-old girl, Medine Mehmi, in the province of Adiyaman, who was buried alive beneath a chicken coop in February for “befriending boys”? Her body was found 40 days later, in a sitting position and with her hands tied…

Or the young woman found in a drainage ditch near Daharki in Pakistan, “honour” killed by her family as she gave birth to her second child, her nose, ears and lips chopped off before being axed to death, her first infant lying dead among her clothes, her newborn’s torso still in her womb, its head already emerging from her body? She was badly decomposed; the local police were asked to bury her. Women carried the three to a grave, but a Muslim cleric refused to say prayers for her because it was “irreligious” to participate in the namaz-e-janaza prayers for “a cursed woman and her illegitimate children.”

This horrific practice of “honour killing,” according to some sources is increasing in those parts of the world heavily influenced by Islamic-Arabic-South Asian cultures.

The founder of Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth made a point of strongly teaching against “honour killings.” By deed as well as by words he made the point in John 8:1-12 (New Living Translation):

Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”
They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust. When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman.
Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
“No, Lord,” she said.
And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.” Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”

For any Muslims reading this, here is the truth about “honour killings” in Arabic:

8:1-12 John
Arabic Bible: Easy-to-Read Version (ERV-AR)
ﻳﻮﺣﻨﺎ 8
المَرْأةُ الَّتِي أُمْسِكَتْ فِي الزِّنا
1 أمّا يَسُوعُ فَذَهَبَ إلَى جَبَلِ الزَّيْتُونِ. 2 وَفِي الصَّباحِ الباكِرِ ذَهَبَ إلَى ساحَةِ الهَيْكَلِ ثانِيَةً حَيْثُ جاءَ إلَيْهِ الجَمِيعُ، فَجَلَسَ وَبَدَأ يُعَلِّمُهُمْ. 3 وَأحضَرَ مُعَلِّمُو الشَّرِيْعَةِ وَالفِرِّيْسِيُّونَ امْرأةً أُمْسِكَتْ وَهِيَ تَزْنِي. وَجَعَلُوها تَقِفُ وَسَطَ النّاسِ. 4 ثُمَّ قالُوا لِيَسُوعَ: «يا مُعَلِّمُ، أُمْسِكَتْ هَذِهِ المَرْأةُ مُتَلَبِّسَةً بِجَرِيْمَةِ الزِّنا.» 5 وَقَدْ أوْصانا مُوسَى فِي الشَّرِيْعَةِ بِأنْ نَرْجُمَ مِثلَ هَذِهِ المَرْأةِ، فَماذا تَقُولُ أنتَ؟» 6 قالُوا هَذا لِيَمْتَحِنُوهُ، فَيَكُونَ لَهُمْ ما يَتَّهِمُونَهُ بِهِ.
لَكِنَّ يَسُوعَ انْحَنَى وَبَدَأ يَكْتُبُ عَلَى الأرْضِ بِإصْبِعِهِ. 7 وَلَمّا ألَحُّوا فِي السُّؤالِ، وَقَفَ وَقالَ لَهُمْ: «حَسَناً! مَنْ كانَ مِنْكُمْ بِلا خَطِيَّةٍ، فَلْيَكُنِ البادِئَ بِرَمْيِها بِحَجَرٍ.» 8 وَانحَنَى مَرَّةً أُخْرَى وَأخَذَ يَكْتُبُ عَلَى الأرْضِ.
9 فَلَمّا سَمِعُوا هَذا، بَدَأُوا يُغادِرُونَ المَكانَ واحِداً بَعْدَ الآخَرِ بَدْءاً بِالأكْبَرِ سِنّاً. وَبَقِيَ يَسُوعُ وَحْدَهُ مَعَ المَرْأةِ الواقِفَةِ أمامَهُ. 10 فَوَقَفَ يَسُوعُ وَقالَ لَها: «أيْنَ هُمْ؟ ألَمْ يَحكُمْ عَلَيْكِ أحَدٌ؟» 11 قالَتْ: «لا أحَدَ يا سَيِّدُ.» فَقالَ لَها يَسُوعُ: «وَلا أنا أحكُمُ عَلَيْكِ. فَاذْهَبِي وَلا تَعُودِي إلَى الخَطِيَّةِ فِيما بَعْدُ.»
يَسُوعُ هُوَ النُّور
12 ثُمَّ وَاصَلَ يَسُوعُ كَلامَهُ لِلنّاسِ فَقالَ: «أنا هُوَ النُّورُ لِلعالَمِ. مَنْ يَتْبَعُنِي لا يَمْشِي أبَداً فِي الظُّلْمَةِ، بَلْ يَكُونُ مَعَهُ النُّورُ الَّذِي يَقُودُ إلَى الحَياةِ.»

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When the Land of the Rising Sun coveted the Sun’s power

They’re called the Fukushima Fifty. This is a relatively small group of lower to mid-level managers, technicians, firemen, and electrical workers who are struggling to stop a nuclear disaster at the earthquake and tsunami-damaged Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant. The Fukushima Fifty were left holding the bag for the political and economic elites who made the decision in the first place to use nuclear power to generate electricity.

However, the designation “Fukushima Fifty” is actually something of a misnomer. In reality there are about 200 men divided into four shifts of 50 who are actually engaged in the round-the-clock struggle to restore human control over four of the six damaged nuclear reactors as well as to re-establish safe storage for a vast quantity of spent reactor cores that are stored at the power plant.

Reliable information is sketchy. But already some of the original Fukushima Fifty, maybe five, have died. Another dozen or so have sustained injuries and have been replaced. Those still desperately trying to fix the Dai-Ichi nuclear power plant realize, however, that they are merely dead men walking due to the enormous quantities of radiation that their bodies are receiving. But in their quiet Japanese stoicism, the Fukushima Fifty carry on. Their duty is clear. Spare their nation and the rest of the world from the worst of the possible consequences of our collective human misjudgement, or die trying.

The self-sacrificing courage of the Fukushima Fifty is worthy of praise. These are brave men. They are heroes. Yet, the ability of some humans to muster great courage in the face of terrible danger is not the issue.

What lead us to believe in the first place: “We can control the Sun’s power of nuclear reaction. We can become rich from the energy that comes by splitting the building blocks of the universe! Indeed, aren’t we Homo sapiens, wise men? If we can think it, we can most certainly do it!” The real issue of our time is our human pride. Far too many of us think we can take to ourselves the prerogatives of God without reaping the awful, horrendous consequences that come from such arrogance.

Still, for some time now people in a variety of nations have argued against the wisdom of employing nuclear energy to fuel our economic growth and comfortable lifestyles. But these voices of caution have been largely ignored and a massive new construction program for greatly enlarging nuclear power generation is being planned in many nations.

Yet for the Land of the Rising Sun in particular, their embrace of nuclear energy to generate massive quantities of electricity was always a bargain with the Devil. They should have known better. After all, they had first experienced the pointy edge of the Sun’s nuclear power at Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War. And haven’t the Japanese always known that their homeland composed of islands on the Pacific Rim is a veritable supermarket of natural disasters?

Nevertheless, the Japanese like the Americans, Canadians, Brits, Russians, French, Germans, Indians, Chinese, Iranians, and all the rest have thought they could safely control this power of the Sun.

Humanity has long been disposed to thinking that we can be our own gods and decide for ourselves what is good or evil rather than accept divine revelation as our guide to morality as well as to economics.

“And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life also was in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil…. And the LORD God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it [guard it, i.e. protect it from despoliation or contamination so that it would continue to be life-supporting]. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree in the garden. But you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it in dying you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:7-9, 15-17).

From the time of our earliest ancestors we have resisted the instructions given to us by the Creator God of the Universe. The land surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant probably cannot be safely inhabited for 10,000 years after the nuclear meltdown of 1986. While the human death count from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster varies widely according to different analyses (4,000 to 200,000 cancer deaths), the question remains how can the use of nuclear power be reconciled with the divine command to “dress and keep ” our life-sustaining earthly garden of Eden?

And what will be the toll in Japan? How much of Japan will become uninhabitable due to the contamination of nuclear radiation? How many people will die of cancers? The price for presumptuously taking to ourselves the prerogatives of God will be increasingly costly not only in Japan, but throughout the world.

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Black Swans, Auschwitz, Egypt, and the normalcy bias

Sixty-six years ago on January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet Red Army troops. Today this day is remembered around the world as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. During WWII more than a million Jews and many others were exterminated at that concentration camp run by the Nazi SS under the command of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, one of the German dictator Adolf Hitler’s chief executioners.

To seek to really understand what went on at Auschwitz is to desire an insight into the evil twisted minds of the tarnished, fallen spirits and their morally corrupt human stooges of that time who together ruled in Nazi-occupied Europe during WWII.

Today, many modern secular people and even the supposed religious ones have a hard time coming to grips with the idea that humanity has long had a very real, tenacious spiritual enemy. This Adversary, this Satan, and his companions in darkness have always delighted in sowing misery, suffering and death  from generation to generation.

For Satan creating Auschwitz for Jewish extermination was just his perverted idea of fun, a sort of final solution theme park.

Don’t believe it? Well, notice what Jesus of Nazareth said about the source of motivation of those individuals who would eventually crucify him:

For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44 New Living Translation).

The Nazis were some of the biggest liars, deceivers, and murderers in history. But, of course, they weren’t the only ones. All of humanity’s oppressors have drawn the inspiration to do what they’ve done from the same well of malevolence.

But there is another part to this tragedy. Why did so many German Jews just hang around in Germany after Adolf Hitler rose to power during the early 1930s? Didn’t they believe what Hitler wrote in his book Mein Kampf? Didn’t they believe what their eyes told them as the Nazi storm troopers marched through their streets, harassing them, beating them up, throwing rocks through their windows, burning books? Why didn’t they catch on as the Nazis passed increasingly discriminatory, oppressive laws against them?

Of the 550,000 Jews living in Germany in 1930, some 100,000 fled from Adolf Hitler’s Reich by 1935. But 450,000,  stayed. They thought the dictator’s bark would be worse than his bite. Life was good. They were comfortable, and materialistically well off. They considered that there had long been anti-Semitic attitudes, and occasionally unpleasant incidents. Things probably wouldn’t get much worse, they thought.

Most German Jews in the early 1930s suffered from a normalcy bias. They didn’t understand that history is littered with Black Swans, those unexpected events that can’t be planned for or otherwise rationally anticipated. The European Jews of 80 years ago couldn’t believe their world would collapse into a horrific deadly nightmare. They couldn’t imagine that the civilized, cultured German nation would carry out a ruthless, systematic campaign of extermination against them—even to the point of rendering their body fat into soap and using their skins for lampshades!

Those doomed Jews thought tomorrow would be like yesterday and that life would continue to be more or less normal as it had been. They had a normalcy bias. By the time they perceived that they were mistaken, it was too late for most to escape their rendez-vous with Auschwitz’s ovens.

We are experiencing another Black Swan moment unfolding before our eyes right now. Seething change is sweeping the Islamic Middle East. You can bet that right now Satan is concentrating his attention on fanning the flames of resentment, hatred, and the spirit of murder in Egypt and everywhere else throughout that region where the religion of Mohammed dominates.

Ordinary, long-suffering Egyptians are tired of the corrupt, venial, authoritarian government of Hosni Mubarak. They want reform and change. But they have no apparent leaders and no plan on how to actually accomplish their frustrated desires for a better life. Wishful-thinking accompanied by spiritual blindness renders an individual or a whole nation like 1930s Germany a prey to clever manipulators.

18Where there is no vision [no redemptive revelation of Jesus Christ], the people perish; but he who keeps the law [of God, which includes that of man]–blessed (happy, fortunate, and enviable) is he (Proverbs 29:18, Amplified Bible).

The Egyptians are going to be misled, deceived, and used by Satan just like the hard-pressed, desperate German people were in the 1930s by those agents of darkness who promised them jobs and prosperity through the manufacture of weapons of warfare and the building of public works, like the death camps at Auschwitz. But the end for the Germans, the Jews, and practically everyone else in Europe was not good, but evil, disaster, and death on an unprecedented scale!

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Is Islam of the Devil?

Terry Jones, leader of a small Protestant church (Dove International Outreach Church in Gainesville, Florida) with about 30 members managed to capture worldwide attention, some would say notoriety, over his plan to burn copies of the Koran, the Islamic holy book on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed almost 3,000 people.

Mr. Jones asserts that Jesus would have approved of his plan for “Burn a Koran Day”– if he had gone ahead with his symbolic protest. Some people have dismissed Terry Jones’ proposal to burn the Koran as merely an attention-seeking stunt by that preacher to help promote his book entitled “Islam Is of the Devil.”

Nevertheless, this non-event did occupy a significant amount of space in the media both in the West and the Muslim world. As of Sept. 13th, 16 protesters (14 Muslim Indians in Kashmir  plus two Afghanis in Afghanistan) and two Indian policemen have been killed, and scores injured as demonstrators attacked government buildings and burned a Christian school in a protest against the Koran burning that never took place.

One reader of Canada’s National Post newspaper blogged this reaction to a story about the widespread fears of Muslim violence voiced by many Western leaders such as Barak Obama who seem to be more willing to appease Muslim anger through self-censorship rather than defend their own citizens’ free speech rights:

“A Christian’s reaction to someone who burns a Bible: “I forgive you!” A Muslim’s reaction to someone who burns a Koran: “I will kill you!” Now you understand the basic difference between Christianity and Islam.”

Muslims presently account for 22% of the world’s population or 1.5 billion people. By the end of the 21st Century due to their polygamy and greater birth rate, they will account for about 50% of the world’s population.

Unfortunately, Islam and the Koran allow for neither freedom of conscience nor freedom of expression. Just ask yourself, “How many Christian cultural centres/house of worship have been built in or near the historic Ground Zero (Saudi Arabia) of the Islamic politico-religious movement during the last 50 years in order to take care of the spiritual needs of hundreds of thousands of Christian ex-pats working there? The answer is ZERO! And, did you know that any Saudi Arabian Muslim who converts to Christianity is automatically sentenced to death! Should freedom-loving Christians be concerned about such Muslim hypocrisy? Is Islam of the Devil as Pastor Terry Jones maintains?

For secularists this is an impossible question to ask much less answer since their knowledge and experience is limited to mere materialism. Consequently, spiritual understanding is beyond the grasp of most of our Western politicians. However, there is a Middle Easterner who can and did answer this question. His name is Jesus of Nazareth who is popularly called the Christ by Christians.

Surprising, we can simply answer the question of Islam’s moral parentage by answering the question as to Jesus’. Was Jesus the Son of God as well as the Son of Man?

The official Islamic point of view is as quoted:

“And they [Christians] say: ‘The Most Merciful [God] has taken [for Himself] a son.’ Assuredly you [Christians] utter a hideous thing, whereby almost the heavens are torn, and the earth is split asunder and the mountains fall in ruin; that they [Christians] ascribe unto the Most Merciful a son, when it is not suitable for [the Majesty of] the Most Merciful that He should take a son. There is none in the heavens and the earth but comes unto the Most Merciful as a slave,” (Koran 19:88-93).

The official Christian response is given in the gospel of the apostle John who personally worked with Jesus of Nazareth and wrote down his teachings. I will quote this passage substituting the name of one monotheistic people, the Jews, who claim Abraham as their ancestor (through Isaac and Jacob) for another, the Muslims,  (through Ishmael and Esau). See if this helps you answer this question.

John 8:31 (NKJV) Then Jesus said to those Muslims who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. 32 And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

33 They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’?”

34 Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. 35 And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. 36 Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.   

37 “I know that you are Abraham’s descendants, but you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you. 38 I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with your father.”

39 They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.”

Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham. 40 But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this. 41 You do the deeds of your father.”

Then they said to Him, “We were not born of fornication; we have one Father—God.”

42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. 43 Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me. 46 Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? 47 He who is of God hears God’s words; therefore you do not hear, because you are not of God.”   48 Then the Muslims answered and said to Him, “Do we not say rightly that You are a Samaritan and have a demon?”

49 Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon; but I honor My Father, and you dishonor Me. 50 And I do not seek My own glory; there is One who seeks and judges. 51 Most assuredly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he shall never see death.”

52 Then the Muslims said to Him, “Now we know that You have a demon! Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and You say, ‘If anyone keeps My word he shall never taste death.’ 53 Are You greater than our father Abraham, who is dead? And the prophets are dead. Who do You make Yourself out to be?”

54 Jesus answered, “If I honor Myself, My honor is nothing. It is My Father who honors Me, of whom you say that He is your God. 55 Yet you have not known Him, but I know Him. And if I say, ‘I do not know Him,’ I shall be a liar like you; but I do know Him and keep His word. 56 Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.”

57 Then the Muslims said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?”

58 Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” [Jesus was saying that pre-existing His human birth that He was the God of the Old Covenant who delivered the ancient Israelites from the oppressive hands of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. See Exodus 3:14.]

59 Then they took up stones to throw at Him; but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the [mosque], going through the midst of them, and so passed by.

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