Should Christians Fight In Wars ?

[Strangelove]

There is no power of authority on earth that has not been given that authority of power by God.
Even the Caesars and Roman army that was during the time of Christ.

If you were German and lived in Nazi Germany in the 30's, would you follow the Third Reich and do everything they told you to do. As a Christian what would you do?

Nazi German, by your logic was ordained by God. Does that mean that you would submit to it?

 

[Strangelove]

Christ also tells us that there will be wars and rumors of wars.
But not one time does Christ tell any believer they should not be a soldier.

He says to love others.

To love your ENEMIES even. LOLZ. If you kill your enemies are you loving them? This isn't rocket science Sis.

Thats why He didnt need to make a list of every occupation that Christians shouldn't do. His commandments cover everything. Thats the beauty of them.

Doc.

 

[Strangelove]

I would try to prevent the killing but not by killing the killer. Innocent Childeren have eternity with God if they are killed. But what happens the the "evil men" when i kill them? Will they have eternity with God? Will they be saved?

This may sound strange to you but the death of a Christian is not a tradgedy, But the death of a man who is in rebellion against god is indeed a tradgedy an eternal tradgedy, especally when you and i know a murderer can be forgiven and have eternal life thought Jesus. Where there is life there is hope. Kill that man and you take away any hope for Him.

This an absolute GENIUS comment.

No-one said it was gonna be easy to walk with Christ

God bless you Adstar.

I'm gonna leave it to the Lord whether or not some of you guys volunteer to work for the beast system when the tribulations come.

Who knows? Maybe it would be useful to have some Christian Ambassaders in the system. I think when the time comes and the hard choices need to be made....the Holy spirit will move in you and most of you will make the Christ-like choices.

Yes I'm certain you will.

Love Doc.

 

[jasoncran]

I would try to prevent the killing but not by killing the killer. Innocent Childeren have eternity with God if they are killed. But what happens the the "evil men" when i kill them? Will they have eternity with God? Will they be saved?

This may sound strange to you but the death of a Christian is not a tradgedy, But the death of a man who is in rebellion agains god is indeed a tradgedy an eternal tradgedy, especally when you and i know a murderer can be forgiven and have eternal life thought Jesus. Where there is life there is hope. Kill that man and you take away any hope for Him.



Not 1 of those lawmen where Christians and they did not have to kill the men who where threatening Paul. Paul's time to die was not there and then He had a longer mission to complete. If the Holy Spirit moved me to do likewise i would. But again no one was killed in that incident.




Because at that time the message of Jesus was being given to the Jewish people. Not to the gentiles.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days

then you have superpowers to stop a person with a knife and somehow stop them without lethal force.

uh, when the verse that they took him by force, what do you envision. romans lollygaging and slowly and just strolling in and saying here paul.

or riding in town and taking paul from the prison, and the jews who wanted to get him trying their best to take him out ere the romans could away.

the romans of that time werent known for being nice nor gentile with persons when they had to use force.

i'm sorry , i have done martial arts for yrs and no amount of it will stop a knife as effective as a gun would.

a big knife will hack through your hands or arms(if a machete).if that wasnt the case then okinawa shouldn't haven fallen into the hands of the japenese hundreds of years ago.

i am sorry, i will leave this thread, i had to make my point. but what you have said to a degree is naivate if you think that you will last against a big guy or even a small with a kinife in hand and you dont have a gun.

nor do i feel that when you call the cops and they kill him or harm that assailant while arresting him you have the right to say that i'm free of violating that command.

if you just bruise your enemy is that not also tit for tat?

 

[Strangelove]

then you have superpowers to stop a person with a knife and somehow stop them without lethal force.

YES. I have superpowers! It's called picking up the kid and RUNNING!

....and then hiding and praying.

They call me The Running Man. ((Movie coming out soon ))

Lolz.

Like Adstar so elequently pointed out. By killing the killer you condemn him to hell. If he kills you, he sends you to heaven. How's your faith?

Jason. Ask Jesus for guidance on this issue. He wont give you a direct answer but He will move the Holy Spirit in you and allow you to make the right decisions when the time comes.

17:1 And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials,
and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto
thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many
waters:

17:2 With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and
the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of
her fornication.​

Dont be the one doing the dirty work for the Kings.

 

[jasoncran]

of course, if you can run do so, but that isnt alway possible.

so, your telling me and all to do this.

dont work for the govt, nor live off what the govt gives you.

newflash, the social democratic states pay for your healthcare and your pension.

if the govt gives you money dont take it?

the law enforcer's job is to protect. they do it, but sometimes you have no other means to stop the bad guy and cant run as the cops cant be everwhere all the time.

btw a true pacifist doenst fight at all.

i was a pacifist(not that extreme) and also anti-military

so you would rather have an antichristian or unbeliever over you then a christian who would govern with integretiy
the same about cops, and military.

why do yall think that we always kill in war?

i helped more then i shot
lets see the score

6 muslims helped
0 muslims killed.

hmm i helped a man get a job and feed his large family, gave his dad money when the govt didnt have it out of my own pocket.

there are ways to show compassion, it can be done anyplace and anytime.

 

[Strangelove]

6 muslims helped
0 muslims killed.

hmm i helped a man get a job and feed his large family, gave his dad money when the govt didnt have it out of my own pocket.

there are ways to show compassion, it can be done anyplace and anytime.

May God bless you and keep you in the compassion of Christs teachings.

 

[Adstar]

then you have superpowers to stop a person with a knife and somehow stop them without lethal force.

uh, when the verse that they took him by force, what do you envision. romans lollygaging and slowly and just strolling in and saying here paul.

or riding in town and taking paul from the prison, and the jews who wanted to get him trying their best to take him out ere the romans could away.

the romans of that time werent known for being nice nor gentile with persons when they had to use force.

i'm sorry , i have done martial arts for yrs and no amount of it will stop a knife as effective as a gun would.

a big knife will hack through your hands or arms(if a machete).if that wasnt the case then okinawa shouldn't haven fallen into the hands of the japenese hundreds of years ago.

i am sorry, i will leave this thread, i had to make my point. but what you have said to a degree is naivate if you think that you will last against a big guy or even a small with a kinife in hand and you dont have a gun.

nor do i feel that when you call the cops and they kill him or harm that assailant while arresting him you have the right to say that i'm free of violating that command.

if you just bruise your enemy is that not also tit for tat?

I am not naive. I am prepared to accept being killed before i would kill another person. It's no loss for me. I would get an early mark out of this world. I don't love this world.

If i thought that calling the police would end in my attacker being killed by those police I would not call for them.

Having read Acts 21 with the incident with Paul, he never called for the centurions, they came running because of the uproar and made their intervention. There was no danger of them killing the mob because they grabbed Paul and put him in chains. They where going to scourge Paul.


All Praise The Ancient Of Days

 

[Drew]

Except that nowhere in scripture does God tell a soldier that they should not be a soldier. Neither in the OT or the NT.

But you seems content to step in His shoes and claim something He never did.
Why is that?

I have fully addressed your argument here. I believe my argument addresses your point in full and is clear enough to understand. I see no point in repeating what I have already posted, but I will say this: The fact that Jesus does not rebuke soldiers does not mean that He approves of what they do. If Jesus rebuked every activity He did not approve, He would never have found time to do anything else.

 

[Drew]

Except that nowhere in scripture does God tell a soldier that they should not be a soldier. Neither in the OT or the NT.

But you seems content to step in His shoes and claim something He never did.
Why is that?

I suggest that Jesus does indeed "rebuke" war-making when He makes this statement:

Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. <SUP id=en-NIV-24103 class=versenum>51</SUP>With that, one of Jesus' companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

"Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?

Now, this is not an explicit declaration that war-making is wrong - but it comes pretty close. I think you would be hard-pressed to try and argue that Jesus is not saying (here) that the use of the sword is not the way to solve problems.

 

[Drew]

On the "there is a time for war" argument. As has already been argued, it is naive to take every word in the Bible as if it expresses a truth. So, in short, the fact that the writer of Ecclesiastes says "there is a time for war" doesn't make it so. As a friend once said "just because those kittens were born in the oven doesn't make them biscuits"

There are lots of things that Bible writers express that clearly do not line up with the word of God. As I have already shown, the author of Ecclesiastes laments that the work that we do is wasted - all is vanity. Clearly this is not actually the case - Paul tells us that our labours in this world are indeed important. Job writes about men go into the ground and there they lie, never to rise. Excuse me? Is that really true? Of course not.

We need to be more sophisticated in our Bible-reading. Just because it is all inspired scripture does not mean that each and every utterance or statement is an expression of truth. We have Paul wishing that certain Jews would castrate themselves. Clearly this is not the expression of the will of God. Paul is either speaking with intentional exaggeration, or he is expressing his own personal feeling, which, clearly, is not an expression of the will of God.

So let's remember - the writer of Ecclesiastes is almost certainly expressing his own personal views at various points in his book where it is otherwise clear that what he is saying simply cannot line up with the truth. All is not vanity, despite what the writer says.

 

[Lewis]

Sissy, I think you read and have a very good understanding of Scripture, we might not agree on something one day, but on this topic, you have my support 100% And also it does not even sound right to be living in a fallen world without a army of some sort, and to think that we should is being very unrealistic. And to sit up there and say that we should not fight back is being very unrealistic.

 

[Sissy]

I would try to prevent the killing but not by killing the killer. Innocent Childeren have eternity with God if they are killed. But what happens the the "evil men" when i kill them? Will they have eternity with God? Will they be saved?

No, the evil won't have eternal life.
No one is guaranteed to have a long lifetime.
All the more to stress the importance of the good news to folks NOW.
Which is what John the Baptist continually stressed. The time to repent is NOW.
And the parable of the wealthy man and Lazarus expresses the same thought. No one should be under the delusion that they will have more time to repent.

This may sound strange to you but the death of a Christian is not a tradgedy,

Doesn't sound strange to me. A Christian has eternal life. The second death has no power over them.

Should we send all the children and Christians to the front lines to be killed first, so the evil ones can have more time?

There is always two sides to consider,
We shouldn't pick one and say, "This is the way it should always be, PERIOD".
I believe that is the reason the Holy Spirit gave us such passages as Ecclesiastes 3 (there is a time for everything).
You have to look at all the options and count the cost.
And the Lord tells us that war is one of the times when the cost must be counted.

• Luke 14

(28) For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?
(29) Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him,
(30) Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.
(31) Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?
​

But the death of a man who is in rebellion against God is indeed a tradgedy an eternal tradgedy, especally when you and i know a murderer can be forgiven and have eternal life thought Jesus. Where there is life there is hope. Kill that man and you take away any hope for Him.

There are two sides of this coin to consider.
They are also a threat to the faithful, as witnessed throughout scripture.
The allure and deception of evil is strong and will turn the hearts of many.

So, the flip side question is ..... do we allow evil to live and risk turning the hearts of our children, causing more to be damned?
The remedy God often chose was to kill the evil ones so they would not infect the others.

By killing the evil ones, it is not the killer who condemned him to eternal death. The evils ones condemned themselves.

Not 1 of those lawmen where Christians

We don't know that.
As pointed out already, there was at least one Roman centurion who was faithful while still having the occupation of a soldier.
How many more there were, we do not know.

Because at that time the message of Jesus was being given to the Jewish people. Not to the gentiles.

Not entirely accurate.
Very early in Jesus' ministry, He witnesses to the Samaritan woman at the well.

 

[Sissy]

On the "there is a time for war" argument. As has already been argued, it is naive to take every word in the Bible as if it expresses a truth.

Wow.

The author of Ecclesiastes was the Holy Spirit.

 

[Sissy]

I suggest that Jesus does indeed "rebuke" war-making when He makes this statement:

Then the men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. <sup id="en-NIV-24103" class="versenum">51</sup>With that, one of Jesus' companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear.

"Put your sword back in its place," Jesus said to him, "for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?

As already expressed, an individual is a vigilante.
It was the civil authorities who were to execute justice.

Now, this is not an explicit declaration that war-making is wrong

Right. It's not about war at all.

- but it comes pretty close.

Close?
Are we playing horse-shoes with the word of God now?

Satan came "close" to truth many times.

I think you would be hard-pressed to try and argue that Jesus is not saying (here) that the use of the sword is not the way to solve problems.

Actually, even if this incident were about war (which it wasn't) and a forbidden use of a sword at any time (which it wasn't); Jesus would have stopped it for any reason because there was an appointed time that He must be turned over and die.
NOTHING was going to prevent that appointed time, whether it be war, peace, sword, or a nice box of chocolates.
It was not the TIME for Peter to use the sword (which by the way, why would Jesus have let Peter even have a sword if he were to never use it. And Jesus even told him to have one - Luke 22:36).

 

[Drew]

Wow.

The author of Ecclesiastes was the Holy Spirit.

No. Things cannot be as simple as this. The author of Ecclesiastes makes numerous statements about the vanity of life. This is not the voice of the Holy Spirit! This is the voice of a man who does not have the entire picture.

Sissy, a direct question for you: If things are as you say - that the Holy Spirit is behind everything in Ecclesiastes, are you saying that God is saying this:

That which has been is that which will be,
And that which has been done is that which will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun

If this is to be understood as the expression of divinely inspired truth, then please explain how, if "that which has been" is indeed "that which will be", then how do you explain this:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away,

Which writer is correct, sissy? They certainly both can't be right. The author of Ecceliastes believes that things never change - that the future will be the same as the past. The author of Revelation sees that there will be a radical transformation to the world in the future.

I think the author of Revelation has the truth here and that the author of Ecclesiastes has only a partial understading of the big picture of what God is doing.

But I will be interested to see how you defend the view that, since the Holy Spirit is the author of both books - that, one the one hand, nothing ever changes, but on the other, that there will be a new heaven and a new earth.

 

[Sissy]

[/COLOR][/FONT]
I have fully addressed your argument here. I believe my argument addresses your point in full and is clear enough to understand. I see no point in repeating what I have already posted, but I will say this: The fact that Jesus does not rebuke soldiers does not mean that He approves of what they do. If Jesus rebuked every activity He did not approve, He would never have found time to do anything else.

If the fact that Jesus never rebukes a soldier for being a soldier were the the only case presented, you might have a right to be skeptical.

But it has not been the only case presented.

 

[Sissy]

Drew,

2 Peter 1:21
(21) For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
​

If one is not under the conviction that all of scripture is the word of God, then there is no "proof" from scripture could be convincing.

One could pick and chose any portion of it they wish to be from God or not.

If one takes this approach, then they could just as easily say that Paul (or any other writer) was not moved by the Holy Spirit, but was just giving his opinion.

 

[Strangelove]

Sissy are you avoiding me?

Can we pick and choose which God ordained civil authorities we want to submit to?

Were Christians right to follow Hitler? Or Stalin for example and carry out there commands and agendas?

 

[Sissy]

Sissy are you avoiding me?

No, trying not to avoid anyone.
But I have grandkids today, and don't have time to answer every post today.
I will try to get to as much as I can.