Warning: A Little Long, But Timely

"Because I live, you shall live also."  (Jesus)

The headlines of an Israeli newspaper today read, "Seven Rockets Hit Israel, Seriously Wounding a Farmer."  And the millennia old hatred justs keeps progressing to the final days-------- and make no mistake; they are coming.  This is what I recently wrote to a person who thought I was a little too "warlike." 
     "The war evil has been here from almost the beginning.  Poor old
     Chamberlain lives in infamy for trying to appease this.  It can't be
     done.  We have a free country today, because some were willing to
     die for that freedom.  The Arab/Islamic culture has always hated
     the Jew and the West, and they hate the US today because we are
     the only friend Israel has.  Though I hate war and killing, and, I      might add, love the Arab/Muslim, I cannot advocate pacifism in light      of such a reality."

I am thankful that I have the blood of Thomas Sherwood running in my veins.  He was a Quaker, and you know that Quakers are pacifists.  But as the evils of slavery and the attempts to destroy the United States of America through violent means raged on, he came to the same conclusion as Dietrich Bohnhoeffer.  If someone is committing a crime and you stand by, and by your refusal to do anything, aid it, you are just as guilty.  He joined the Ohio 79th, a volunteer unit which fought with General William Sherman, to free the slaves, to preserve the Union.

During our first trip to Israel in 1993, a "palestinian" Arab attacked our guide.  Before I thought, or assessed the situation, the next thing I knew, I had that attacker up against a wall with my arm under his chin.  I am not a fighter. When I was a kid, I never fought.  But in that brief second, I simply reacted.  Later, I thought, "He could have had a knife, a gun, accomplices, and I would be dead."  But what of it?  Many died that I might live.  What of life is so valuable?

Jesus died that you and I might live.  Are you willing to die that others might live?  This is true, Biblical, Covenantal, Kingdom living.  "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it."  Jesus spilled His Blood, died, and rose from the grave, that we might live-------------------------- and follow, in the words of the popular book, In His Steps.

Father, in Jesus' Name, deliver me from self preservation "christianity," to humanity preservation Christianity.  Amen.


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