Faith and Firearms: Should Christians Own Guns?

[OakWood]

 

 

 

 

Why is it that when this topic is discussed those on the side of using violent means for protection of self, family and liberty of nation use logic instead of showing where Jesus, Paul, Peter or John taught to fight others?

I guess because it's a given that Jesus is just as present in the Old Testament as He is in the New. Grace did not change the fact that there is sometime a need for war... all the way to the end of the book in Revelation.

It's not hard for me to figure.

Ah the old fig tree. Got it.

It is easy to see in the Old Testament so no need to prove it in the new.

Sorry I can't accept that.

if you take the position of the complete pacifist that you seem to be talking about here, we would not be a free nation.

Where did I say I take any position? I simply am asking questions and seeking answers. You assign a position to me by reading into my post using speculative imagination it appears.

I want someone to defend their position of agression using the New Testament.

You declare that we could not be a free nation without the use of violent force. How can you declare such as true?

 

 

The First Century Christians were persecuted until the Church was established. Five hundred years or so later Islam came along and decimated two-thirds of the Christian World before Christians decided to fight back. If they had not fought back, Christianity would have become almost extinct and Christ would have died in vain.

Europe would have not been a Christian Europe, there would be no Christian architecture, no Christian culture and we would all have been reading the Q'uran. It's unlikely that America would have ever been discovered and if it was it would have been colonized by Muslims and under the rule of Sharia law..

In the 1930s Nazi Germany started persecuting Jews culminating in the murder of 6 million of them. Hitler had an agreement with the Arab leader Mohammed Amin al-Husseini to eventually murder all the Jews in the Middle East as well. If Christian nations had not fought and destroyed the Nazis most of the World's Jewry would have been wiped out.

 

Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword let him sell his garment and buy one..

Luke 22:36

[Bible2]

gdemoss said in post 28:

 

I want someone to defend their position of agression using the New Testament.

 

You declare that we could not be a free nation without the use of violent force. How can you declare such as true?

 

The U.S.'s founding fathers rebelled against YHWH when they rebelled against the King of England. For YHWH has commanded Christians not to rebel against established governmental authorities (Romans 13). If the people of America had only been more patient, like, for example, the people of Canada and Australia were more patient, they could have obtained liberty from the King of England without having to have waged war against him, and without having to have caused the completely unnecessary early deaths of so many people during the American Revolutionary War, and then the War of 1812.

 

Also, in a similar vein, it is curious that people often condemn Chamberlain for handing an ethnically-German part of Czechoslovakia over to Hitler, when the war-makers themselves would later turn around and hand over not only all of Czechoslovakia, but all the rest of eastern Europe, to Stalin. So who bowed to a despot more than the war-makers themselves, and even after they had caused the completely-unnecessary deaths of over 40 million people in a war?

 

Someone might ask: "So we should have just let Hitler continue the slaughter of innocents in the Holocaust?" The answer would be no, and the war wasn't fought over the Holocaust, but over the political control of countries. Also, even if it had been fought over the Holocaust, should over 40 million people be killed in a war to save 6 million alive? Instead, what could have saved them alive would have been an American offer to receive as immigrants all the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and disabled people whom Hitler thought were weakening Germany. Hitler could have agreed to let them all go, for he would have seen it as a way for them to (in his mind) weaken his ultimate rival America instead.

 

Also, who supports the idea of a shooting war to stop the current Holocaust of millions of aborted babies who are being brutally murdered around the world each year? Who are more innocent than these little ones? And yet where are the war-makers put who try to defend these innocents by killing anyone who would harm them? They are put in prison, as murderers.

[Bible2]

OakWood said in post 32:

 

Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword let him sell his garment and buy one..

 

Luke 22:36

 

Luke 22:36b means every believer should obtain the sword of the Holy Spirit, which is the Word of God (Ephesians 6:17, Hebrews 4:12). The "two swords" which are enough for all believers (Luke 22:38) represent the 2 parts of God's Word: the Old Testament and the New Testament. Luke 22:36b can't mean every believer should obtain a physical weapon, for otherwise 2 physical weapons wouldn't have been enough for all the apostles (Luke 22:38). And Luke 22:36b can't mean any believer should obtain a physical weapon to attack other people with, even in self-defense. For believers are elsewhere commanded not to defend themselves when they are attacked, but to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39). For those who take up a physical weapon to attack other people, even in self-defense, will perish by a weapon (Matthew 26:52).

[other one]

I'm sure glad we are not neighbors...

[OakWood]

 

OakWood said in post 32:

 

Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword let him sell his garment and buy one..

 

Luke 22:36

 

Luke 22:36b means every believer should obtain the sword of the Holy Spirit, which is the Word of God (Ephesians 6:17, Hebrews 4:12). The "two swords" which are enough for all believers (Luke 22:38) represent the 2 parts of God's Word: the Old Testament and the New Testament. Luke 22:36b can't mean every believer should obtain a physical weapon, for otherwise 2 physical weapons wouldn't have been enough for all the apostles (Luke 22:38). And Luke 22:36b can't mean any believer should obtain a physical weapon to attack other people with, even in self-defense. For believers are elsewhere commanded not to defend themselves when they are attacked, but to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39). For those who take up a physical weapon to attack other people, even in self-defense, will perish by a weapon (Matthew 26:52).

 

 

I see you've conveniently edited my comment and missed out the bits about Christendom defending itself and defending others throughout history. You've also misunderstood scripture.

 

Jesus did not tell Peter to get rid of his sword, only to put it away. He must have known that Peter carried a sword (many Jewish men at the time did), but never before had he told him to get rid of it. If he wanted him to why didn't he tell him to get rid of it when he first met him? Why wait until he had lashed out in anger to tell him to put it away?

Peter was rebuked for lashing out. He used his anger to try and solve a problem that could not be solved that way. The expression 'those who live by the sword die by the sword' means that those who use violence to solve all their problems will face death by violence. This has absolutely nothing to do with self-defense.

 

You're also confusing the phrase 'turn the other cheek'. The phrase applies to interpersonal relationships and not to 'justifiable war'. It means that you should not attack in revenge because there is no point in it. You can't undo what has been done, so don't try to lash out in anger - it does not mean that you can't defend yourself.

You are foolish if you believe that Christians can't defend themselves. If everybody was like you, the word of the Lord would have disappeared from this World a long time ago because it would not have been protected. Cowardice and passivity protects nothing.

Don't forget the Old Testament and how God sent the Jews to war.

In case you had forgotten, the God of the Jews is the same God as the God of the Christians!

[Bible2]

OakWood said in post 32:

 

Five hundred years or so later Islam came along and decimated two-thirds of the Christian World before Christians decided to fight back. If they had not fought back, Christianity would have become almost extinct and Christ would have died in vain.

 

Note that God will make it so that there will be no way for us to physically fight back successfully against the future Antichrist. For Daniel 12:7b means that at Jesus' 2nd coming, he will come to a church which has been completely defeated physically by the Antichrist. For during the Antichrist's future, literal 3.5-year worldwide reign, he will be allowed to make war against the church and to overcome it physically in every nation (Revelation 13:5-10, Revelation 14:12-13, Revelation 20:4-6, Matthew 24:9-13). It is only when the Antichrist has completely broken all the physical power of the church that the future tribulation of Revelation chapters 6 to 18 and Matthew 24 will end (Daniel 12:7b), and Jesus' 2nd coming will immediately occur, at which time he will physically resurrect and rapture (gather together) the church (Matthew 24:29-31; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-8, Revelation 19:7 to 20:6). At his 2nd coming, Jesus will tread the winepress of God's wrath alone (Isaiah 63:3, Revelation 19:15-21), and so he/God will get all the glory for defeating the power of evil on the earth (Deuteronomy 32:39-43), for he/God won't share this glory with the church (cf. Isaiah 42:8-14, Isaiah 26:18).

[Bible2]

OakWood said in post 32:

 

The First Century Christians were persecuted until the Church was established.

 

Do you mean politically established, under the Roman Empire?

 

If so, note that, before it came into power politically, Christianity survived its terrible persecution by the Roman Empire, not by fighting back physically, but by continuing to pray and preach and peacefully convert the Roman Empire.

 

Similarly, Christianity is surviving, and even growing, in atheistic China, precisely because the Christians there do not employ violence. If they did take up arms, the Communist state would only use that as an excuse to attempt to crush Christianity out of China altogether.

 

OakWood said in post 32:

 

Five hundred years or so later Islam came along and decimated two-thirds of the Christian World before Christians decided to fight back. If they had not fought back, Christianity would have become almost extinct and Christ would have died in vain.

 

Note that during the Middle Ages, the Islamic Caliphate allowed Christians and Jews to keep their religion, so long as they simply submitted politically, and paid a tax. The Jews even thrived in Islamic countries during the Middle Ages. It wasn't until a church that believed in violence reconquered Spain, for example, that the Jews there began to be slaughtered in the name of religion (i.e. under the Spanish Inquisition perpetrated by Christians). Similarly, the ISIS-type Muslims of today believe it is okay to kill people who don't convert to their religion. Likewise, the Crusades were no different than Islamic Jihad: mistakenly thinking it is okay to wage war in order to defend or expand one's religion, or to "take back" lands which were once under the political control of one's religion. As if that is what religion is supposed to be about.

[Guest shiloh357]

Sorry Bible2, but your position would only allow dictators and tyrants to rule the world.    Hitler would have conquered the world if everyone in America was like you.   Fortunately, people like you don't run the show and should never be elected to any public office.

 

People who hold to your pacifist nonsense only enable evil to prosper.

[Bible2]

shiloh357 said in post 39:

 

. . . your position would only allow dictators and tyrants to rule the world.

 

Actually, pacifism as it spreads eventually undercuts tyrants, for it robs tyrants of soldiers willing to fight their wars for them.

 

shiloh357 said in post 39:

 

Hitler would have conquered the world if everyone in America was like you.

 

Hitler would have conquered nothing if the German people of his time had been pacifists.

[Guest shiloh357]

That is where you are wrong.   Human beings are inherently evil.  There is no reasonable expectation that the whole world would be pacifists.   If Hitler had made it to the US,  people like you would have surrendered our country to a dictator.

 

Thank God pacifists are few and far between.