Court: Christians can be ordered to violate beliefs

“How does one respond to this insanity!”(?)


How does one respond to cancer in their body? The answer to these questions is the same. Need I say more?

The founders of this country had religious convictions, and they understood that vengeance is not a Christian prerogative. However, they also knew that removing the burden of tyranny from the people of this country was self-defense, not vengeance. They partitioned king George, and he refused to listen to them. The current government had also been partitioned by the people, and they too, refuse to hear the people.

The founders, being Christian, or believers of God in other forms, knew that to take vengeance was wrong, but they also knew that self-defense against tyranny was not.

In scripture we find this; “If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.” (Romans 12:18)

This instruction to be at peace with all people is conditioned upon the objective possibility of doing so. The subjective impossibility of the Christian's being unable to restrain himself, or some such thing, is not in view here at all. The impossibility allowed by God in Paul’s teaching is a negation of the precept of peace would lie only in the kind of a situation where truth and duty would require resistance. Peace with some people under some circumstances is impossible without the sacrifice of honor and duty where protection of country and family became their duty and obligation.

The Constitution could not contain the 30,000 pages of the founders’ letters that explained their intentions, and thoughts on the laws written in the Constitution. Further understanding of the Constitution can be found in; “Virginia Statute For Religious Freedom”, “The Declaration of Independence”, and the many letters of the founders in the Library of Congress.org, as well as the books that contain them at Gutenberg E-Books. Examples;

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” - Thomas Jefferson

“A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined but should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their government.”....George Washington

"The several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government" -- Thomas Jefferson

But most are the same, Arizona. But few see it;

"From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts." (James 4:1-3)

Some Commentators say it is startling that James would refer to the disputes and wranglings of church members in such terms as "wars and fightings", and then ask; “but is this not actually the nature of them?” They then say; "James cannot be thinking of wars and fightings between nations."

However, James was indeed talking about wars and fightings between nations, and all in the name of God. The first World War was based on Germany’s belief that they were special, and World War two carried the same belief in the German government under Hitler. It is the belief that carried in the thoughts of some Muslims, that their terrorist attacks are the will of Allah, their God, and their director of their Holy War. It is another clue that points to the apostation of religion in these last days. When did the last days begin?

“Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.” (1 John 2:18)

The invasion of Christian personality by evil influences contrary to it is a recurring problem in every generation; every Christian must fight and win the war spoken of in these verses. The idea that James is here speaking only of religious teachers and their disputes, and another notion to the effect that James, writing to Jews of the Diaspora, directed these teachings against the wars of Jews with each other - both ideas, are untenable. The words of this section are applicable today, being sorely reflected in countless situations all over the world.

The kind of wars and fightings just mentioned is precisely that of pleasures warring against the soul's true interests "in your members," meaning not "between members of the church" exclusively (though this is included), but within men themselves, individually.
Paul explained this condition to Timothy, and how it has come into being;

“For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;” (2 Timothy 3:2-4)

We see this around us day in and day out of our lives. Today it is mostly the government that shows this, but isn’t it the same as the priesthood (Israel’s government) was in the days Jesus walked this earth. There are many such lists of sins in Paul's writings; and none of them is exhaustive or complete. What is given here in the twenty earmarks of an apostate world is a general description of the type of characters meant. The government’s desires are not met and they do not have; so they kill. They covet and cannot obtain; so they fight and wage war, sometimes in the name of God. The frustration and misery of the selfish, pleasure-craving soul are eloquently portrayed in these scriptures.

There is no hint here that if they had prayed for the ability to gratify their lustful pleasures God would have given it; rather, that their willful selfishness had dried up the springs of prayer within themselves. God answers prayer, but not all prayer, especially not in giving the ungodly the ingredients for selfish gratification. The Bible reveals exactly whose prayers are answered. He hears the cry of the righteous (Psalms 34:15); he hears those who call upon him in truth (Psalms 145:18); and he hears the penitent (Luke 18:14): those who ask "in his name" (John 14:13), those who ask "believing" (Mark 11:24), and those who ask according to God's will (1 John 5:14). As Gibson observed, here again "is an evident allusion to the sermon on the mount (Matthew 7:7-9)."

And; “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:7-8)

The power and wrath of the eternal God are ever against those who persecute his people. Lactantius has twenty pages of the most interesting discussions of the awful punishments, judgments, and miseries that befell the famed persecutors of the church, giving in detail the things that happened to Nero, Domitian, Decius, Valerian, Aurelian, Diocletian, etc. All these things took place shortly after the beginning of this era after the death of Christ. This also portrays Revelation 20:3, and the war that ensued during the imprisonment of Satan. That war lasted roughly 350 years, but as the old Rome died, the new Rome was born.

Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius was an early Christian author (AD. 240 – AD. 320) who became an advisor to the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine I, guiding his religious policy as it developed, and tutor to his son.