Some time
ago, Laurence Vance published a compilation of excerpts from the famed British
Baptist pastor, Charles Spurgeon, on the subject of the proper Christian
attitude regarding war and peace. These sermon excerpts are as germane to
Americans today as they were to the citizens of Great Britain in the mid to
late 1800’s when Spurgeon delivered them.
I tried
to warn listeners of my radio talk show on how then President George W. Bush
was turning Christian people throughout the United States into warmongers.
Because Bush claimed to be a born-again Christian and had successfully garnered
the support of so many conservative evangelical Christians, he was able to
shift the entire spiritual paradigm of the country. But that’s what wolves in
sheep’s clothing do. Phony Christians do more destruction than overt
unbelievers. Phony conservatives do more destruction than overt liberals.
Ever
since the two administrations of G.W. Bush, America’s conservative Christians
have become infected with a serious malady; it’s what Vance correctly calls
“war fever.” And the evangelical church in America is eaten up with it. And now
that we have another Republican warmonger in the White House, war fever has
reached epidemic proportions among evangelical Christians.
The
United States and its coalition allies have killed tens of thousands (a very
conservative number) of innocent men, women, and children in its so-called war
on terror. The doctrine of American hegemony (not to mention the
globalist/Zionist doctrine of “Greater Israel”) has turned the Middle East into
a giant killing field. Through perpetual bombings, drone attacks, missile
attacks, etc., President Trump has killed more innocent civilians in the first
five months of his presidency than ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, Iraq, Afghanistan,
Libya, Iran, Syria, Russia, China, and North Korea combined. And that fact does
not take into account the billions of dollars in U.S. weapons sales to
terrorist states such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey that account for thousands of
additional deaths. Barack Obama and G.W. Bush did the same thing, of course.
Trump is merely carrying on the same international crimes of empire as did the
two presidents that preceded him.
And just
who are the biggest cheerleaders for war? You guessed it: evangelical Christians.
When
Donald Trump unjustly, unconstitutionally, illegally, and immorally ordered the
bombing of Syria for what was clearly a false flag chemical attack in that
country, evangelical Christian leaders immediately jumped in to provide
spiritual cover for Trump. And this they will continue to do for the next four
years.
See this
analysis by a Marine Corps colonel and veteran combat pilot on how U.S.
government reports of Assad using chemical weapons against his own people in
order to justify the U.S. missile attack against Syria were totally FAKE:
But in
the eyes of the so-called Religious Right, ANY war a Republican president sends
the U.S. military into is a just war–no matter how unjust the war really is.
Evangelical Christian pastors are unabashed apologists for war. It is safe to
say that a majority of conservative Christians have become rabid warmongers.
They cheer for war; they promote war; they glorify war; they worship those who
wage war; and they enthusiastically vote for neocons like Lindsey Graham and
John McCain because of their support for war.
For
Christian conservatives to talk about the bloodthirstiness of Muslims is
laughable. Islamist jihadists don’t hold a candle to the sheer numbers of
innocent people who have been killed (and are daily being killed) by the
American empire. At the same time, conservative Christian pastors constantly
trumpet more and more war, more and more killing. These pastors would do well
to familiarize themselves with the “Gospel of peace” (Romans 10:15; Ephesians
6:15) as proclaimed by the “Prince of Preachers,” Charles Haddon Spurgeon.
Laurence
Vance introduces Charles Spurgeon this way:
Charles
Haddon Spurgeon (1834–1892) was an English Baptist minister who served
as pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London from 1861 until his
death. But Spurgeon was no ordinary minister. He was a pastor, a preacher,
a teacher, an author, an editor, and the overseer of a pastor’s college, a
Christian literature society, and an orphanage. He is still widely revered
today among Baptists (and others as well) as one of the greatest Baptist
ministers in history.
Spurgeon
preached his first sermon as a teenager and, in 1854, was called to the
pastorate of the historic New Park Street Church, Southwark, London. During his
thirty-eight-year tenure, the church increased from 232 to over 5,000. [And
remember, this was in a day when the only attraction to the church was the
preaching of God’s Word: no rock music; no smoke; no colored lights; no
espresso machines; no twenty-minute sermonettes, etc.] During the remodeling of
the Park Street chapel to house the growing congregation, Spurgeon preached at the
5,000-seat Exeter Hall, a public auditorium. But because the remodeled chapel
was still too small to accommodate the crowds, the church began construction of
the Metropolitan Tabernacle, which sat 5,500 and had standing room for 500
more. In the interim, Spurgeon preached to thousands at the Surrey Gardens
Music Hall. He was truly one of the most popular preachers in history. When he
died in 1892, 60,000 people filed past his casket in the Tabernacle.
Spurgeon
lives today through his sermons. From 1855 until his death, his Sunday morning
sermons were published weekly. By 1865, Spurgeon’s sermons were
selling 25,000 copies every week. They would eventually be translated into
more than twenty languages. The sermons were then collected in one volume and
reissued at the end of each year in book form. After Spurgeon’s death, the
series continued until 1917 using his Sunday evening sermons. The six volumes
of the New Park Street Pulpit (1855–1860) and the fifty-seven volumes of
the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (1861–1917) contain 3,561 sermons, 25
million words, and fill 41,500 pages. Many of these volumes are available
online, and most are in print.
Unlike
some Baptist preachers today who shamelessly serve as spokesmen or apologists
for [war], Spurgeon was not the least bit excited about war and war fever.
Vance
quotes Spurgeon:
“Long
have I held that war is an enormous crime.”
“So
combustible are the materials of which this great world is made, that I am ever
apprehensive of war. I do not account it wonderful that one nation should
strive against another, I account if far more wonderful that they are not all
at arms. Whence come wars and fightings? Come they not from your lusts?”
“Sin is
the mother of wars.”
“It is
astonishing how distance blunts the keen edge of anything that is disagreeable.
War is at all times a most fearful scourge. The thought of slain bodies and of
murdered men must always harrow up the soul; but because we hear of these
things in the distance, there are few Englishmen who can truly enter into their
horrors. If we should hear the booming of cannon on the deep which girdles this
island; if we should see at our doors the marks of carnage and bloodshed; then
should we more thoroughly appreciate what war means. But distance take away the
horror, and we therefore speak of war with too much levity, and even read of it
with an interest not sufficiently linked with pain.”
“He is
the God of peace, for he is the restorer of it; though wars have broken out
through sin. He is the preserver of peace. Whenever I see peace in the world, I
ascribe it to God, and if it is continued, I shall always believe it is because
God interferes to prevent war.”
“The
church, we affirm, can neither be preserved nor can its interests be promoted
by human armies. We have all thought otherwise in our time, and have foolishly
said when a fresh territory was annexed to our empire, ‘Ah! what a providence
that England has annexed Oude’–or taken to itself some other territory–‘Now a
door is opened for the Gospel. A Christian power will necessarily encourage
Christianity, and seeing that a Christian power is at the head of the
Government, it will be likely that the natives will be induced to search into
the authenticity of our revelation, and so great results will follow. Who can
tell but that, at the point of the British bayonet, the Gospel will be carried,
and that, by the edge of the true sword of valiant men, Christ’s Gospel will be
proclaimed?’ I have said so myself; and now I know I am a fool for my pains,
and that Christ’s church hath been also miserably befooled; for this I will
assert, and prove too, that the progress of the arms of a Christian nation is
not the progress of Christianity, and that the spread of our empire, so far
from being advantageous to the Gospel, I will hold, and this day proclaim, hath
been hostile to it.”
“Did you
ever hear of a nation under British rule being converted to God? Mr. Moffat and
our great friend Dr. Livingstone have been laboring in Africa with great
success, and many have been converted. Did you ever hear of Kaffir tribes
protected by England, ever being converted? It is only a people that have been
left to themselves, and preached to by men as men, that have been brought to
God. For my part, I conceive, that when an enterprise begins in martyrdom, it
is none the less likely to succeed, but when conquerors begin to preach the
gospel to those they have conquered, it will not succeed, God will teach us
that it is not by might. All swords that have ever flashed from scabbards have
not aided Christ a single grain. Mahommedans’ religion might be sustained by
scimitars, but Christians’ religion must be sustained by love. The great crime
of war can never promote the religion of peace. The battle, and the garment
rolled in blood, are not a fitting prelude to “peace on earth, goodwill to
men.” And I do firmly hold, that the slaughter of men, that bayonets, and
swords, and guns, have never yet been, and never can be, promoters of the
gospel. The gospel will proceed without them, but never through them.”
“While,
however, we shall anxiously watch the contest, it will be quite as well if we
mingle in it ourselves. Not that this nation of England should touch it; God
forbid. If tyrants fight, let them fight; let free men stand aloof. Why should
England have aught to do with all the coming battles? As God has cut us off
from Europe by a boisterous sea, so let us be kept apart from all the broils
and turmoils into which tyrants and their slaves may fall.”
“The
Church of Christ is continually represented under the figure of an army; yet
its Captain is the Prince of Peace; its object is the establishment of peace,
and its soldiers are men of a peaceful disposition. The spirit of war is at the
extremely opposite point to the spirit of the gospel.”
“War is
to our minds the most difficult thing to sanctify to God. The genius of the
Christian religion is altogether contrary to everything like strife of any
kind, much more to the deadly clash of arms. . . . Now I say again, I am no
apologist for war, from my soul I loathe it, and I do not understand the
position of a Christian man as a warrior, but still I greatly rejoice that
there are to be found at this present day in the ranks many of those who fear
God and adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour.”
“For if
there be anything which this book [the Bible] denounces and counts the hugest
of all crimes, it is the crime of war.”
“What,
then, is to be done? Shall we unite with the clamorous patriots of the hour and
sacrifice peace to political selfishness? Or shall we in silence maintain our
own views, and despair of their ever being received by our own countrymen?
There is no need to take either course: let us believe in our principles, and
wait till the present mania comes to an end. We would persuade all lovers of
peace to labour perseveringly to spread the spirit of love and gentleness,
which is indeed the spirit of Christ, and to give a practical bearing to what
else may become mere theory. The fight-spirit must be battled with in all its
forms, and the genius of gentleness must be cultivated. Cruelty to animals, the
lust for destroying living things, the desire for revenge, the indulgence of
anger–all these we must war against by manifesting and inculcating pity, compassion,
forgiveness, kindness, and goodness in the fear of the Lord. Children must be
trained with meekness and not with passion, and our dealings with our
fellow-men must manifest our readiness to suffer wrong rather than to inflict
it upon others. Nor is this all: the truth as to war must be more and more
insisted on: the loss of time, labour, treasure, and life must be shown, and
the satanic crimes to which it leads must be laid bare. It is the sum of all
villainies, and ought to be stripped of its flaunting colours, and to have its
bloody horrors revealed; its music should be hushed, that men may hear the
moans and groans, the cries and shrieks of dying men and ravished women. War
brings out the devil in man, wakes up the hellish legion within his fallen
nature, and binds his better faculties hand and foot. Its natural tendency is
to hurl nations back into barbarism, and retard the growth of everything good
and holy. When undertaken from a dire necessity, as the last resource of an
oppressed people, it may become heroic, and its after results may compensate
for its immediate evils; but war wantonly undertaken, for self-interest,
ambition, or wounded pride is evil, only evil, and that continually. It ought
not to be smiled upon as a brilliant spectacle, nor talked of with a light
heart; it is a fitter theme for tears and intercessions. To see a soldier a
Christian is a joy; to see a Christian a soldier is another matter.”
“Many of
our bravest soldiers are on the side of peace, and in the present crisis have spoken
out more boldly on the right side than we might reasonably have expected of
them. This must be duly acknowledged and taken into account, and we must speak
accordingly.”
See
Vance’s column here:
When is
the last time you heard words such as these coming from the pulpits of today’s
evangelical churches? And when Vance quoted Spurgeon saying, “Many of our
bravest soldiers are on the side of peace,” I thought of the words of King
David. He said, “I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.” (Psalms
120:7 KJV) I know that feeling very well.
I am also
reminded of the words of Major General Smedley Butler (USMC). General Butler
wrote a book entitled “War Is A Racket.” This book is a
classic treatise on why wars are conducted, who profits from them, and who pays
the price. Few people are as qualified as General Butler to advance the
argument encapsulated in his book’s sensational title. When “War is a Racket”
was first published in 1935, Butler was the most decorated American soldier of
his time–including receiving TWO Congressional Medals of Honor. He had lead
several successful military operations in the Caribbean and in Central America,
as well as in Europe during the First World War. Despite his success and his
heroic status, however, Butler came away from these experiences with a deeply
troubled view of both the purpose and the results of war. I consider General
Butler’s book “War Is A Racket” to be MUST READING.
The
spirit of war will never be extinguished from our country until it is first
extinguished from our churches. A sizeable percentage of all of the
evangelical/fundamentalist churches in America today are splits and splinters
off of other churches. Christians will fight at the drop of hat. They will split
a church at the drop of a hat. They are filled with the spirit of war.
But Jesus
said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” (Matthew 5:9) As long as God’s people
continue to abandon the spirit of peace and embrace the spirit of war, we will
never be able to sing “God Bless America” without abject hypocrisy, knowing
that God will never bless those who are not peacemakers.
Reprinted
with permission from Chuck Baldwin.
Chuck
Baldwin is a radio broadcaster, syndicated columnist, and pastor dedicated to
preserving the historic principles upon which America was founded. See
his website.
Copyright © 2017 Chuck Baldwin
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