…and what is to be done.
Through a link from a post by Chuck Baldwin: I Hope America’s Evangelicals Are Sleeping Well, I found the following: ‘Death to Christians’: Violence steps up under new Israeli gov’t
Jerusalem – Nothing about the attack or what happened since surprised Miran Krikorian. The Armenian owner of Taboon and Wine Bar in the Old City of Jerusalem was not surprised to receive a call the night of January 26 that a mob of Israeli settlers was attacking his bar in the Christian Quarter and shouting “Death to Arabs … Death to Christians.”
Attacks against Christians in Jerusalem have been on the rise.
A couple of days later, Armenians leaving a memorial service in the Armenian Quarter say they were attacked by Israeli settlers carrying sticks.
It isn’t only Armenian Christians:
Hostility by fundamentalist Jews towards Jerusalem’s Christian community is not new, and it is not just Armenian Christians who suffer from it. Priests of all denominations describe being spat at for years.
At the beginning of the year, 30 Christian graves at the Protestant Mount Zion Cemetery were desecrated. In the Armenian Quarter, vandals spray-painted “Death to Arabs, Christians and Armenians,” on the walls.
And keep this in mind the next time you hear something from Christians United for Israel:
At the Church of the Flagellation, someone attacked a statue of Jesus with a hammer.
About a century ago, the Christians made up a quarter of the population of Jerusalem; today, they represent less than one percent. Consider that under Ottoman Muslim rule, the Christians were better protected than under the rule of Israeli Jews.
There are thirteen churches in Jerusalem; a small population divided so many ways. It has come to the point where the fragmented Christian population is starting to understand that they must come together if they are to survive.
Christians in Jerusalem are starting to increase engagement within and between communities.
“The new generation is growing up with the idea that Christians must cooperate with each other in the city to keep the Christian presence,” said Dzernian. “If we keep saying that we will work alone, we will lose in the end.”
“Occupation makes people very cold, very separate. ‘I am [Syriac], I am Catholic, I am Orthodox, I am Evangelist’,” remarked Hani the restaurant owner. “But with the threats, the violence, the vandalism, now the people are coming together. The churches are waking up. We were blind for 50 years, but no more.”
I find this entire story very applicable to Christians in the West – really, the United States – today. So much arguing, hostility, etc., between denominations and traditions. Fighting about trees and losing sight of the forest. We will continue to have less influence until we come to the point of Jerusalem’s Christians, it seems.
But by this, I don’t mean to include all who label themselves as Christians. Those who cheer on the war machine, those who bow down at the call of masks and close churches at the whim of some politician, those who see the state of Israel – even with this persecution of Christians – as a state worthy of Christian devotion, those who cannot understand that God made them male and female; I exclude them all. None of these will be useful in this fight.
Which brings me, once again, to Doug Wilson: A Ham Sandwich With 34 Slices of Felonious Cheese. The first part of this is just hilarious; he is speaking of the charges against Trump:
Not only is this banana republic stuff, it is not even competent banana republic stuff. Trump himself would tell you that if you are going to be a banana republic, you ought to be the best banana republic, putting all the other banana republics in the shade. All the other banana republics ought to seem worthless in comparison. But no, DA Bragg had a better idea. Why not a lame sauce banana republic?
This is beyond risible. This is what happens when any one of the 3 Stooges finally graduates from law school, and a well-connected relative gets them a cushy job as a prosecutor.
But that isn’t the important part. At the end, he sets up the path forward:
…I have been saying “don’t take the bait” for long enough that a number of you have asked, in various ways, “Okay, but if we shouldn’t take the bait, what do we take?” It is not enough for me to be telling you all what not to do, what should you do?
He says, sure – vote, go to the county commission meetings, speak out. But this isn’t the important stuff. He gets to the important stuff – and saying better what I have been saying for some time:
But that is not where the real action is. The real action is within the church.
I have been saying this in the context of moving this society toward liberty. I have been saying this as the means by which the meaning crisis is addressed.
The main thing that Christians need to do now is get engaged with the government of the church they belong to. They should petition the elders to have the pastor address the sins of our generation from the pulpit.
Which comes back to my paragraph above: what are the sins of this generation? Cheering on the war machine, bowing down to masks and to closing churches, worshipping the state of Israel, ignoring the order in which God created man and woman – and the purpose of each in His creation. That’s my list. Here is Wilson’s:
Ask your elders to have your pastor preach on the sins of cowardice that have afflicted the leadership of the evangelical movement for a generation or more. There should be some recognition in it that the whole lockdown/masking issue as applied to the church was simply a tyrannical beta test, used to gauge the softness of the church. Turns out it was pretty soft. Ask your elders to have the church recognize that we are in a time of cultural revolution, and to state from the pulpit that your congregation stands against it, and that when the time of testing comes, your church will not comply.
And, he concludes with the same idea I propose – that not all Christian churches will take on this task:
And if you say to yourself, “this kind of thing will be really difficult to get them to say,” you at least now know where the actual problem is.
Exactly.
Conclusion
To tie these two stories together: we, like today’s Christians in Jerusalem, will soon enough figure out that denominational differences are irrelevant given the fight we are in and given the enemy of those arrayed against us. The sooner this realization penetrates, the better. Better for liberty, better to fight against the meaning crisis.
Which brings me back to the verse for our day:
Ephesians 6: 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
http://bionicmosquito.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-road-ahead.html