National Prayer Breakfast
Thursday, February 5th, was the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. for 2015. Part of what the President said is cited below:
Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. Michelle and I returned from India—an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity—but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs—acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhi, the person who helped to liberate that nation.
So this is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith. In today’s world, when hate groups have their own Twitter accounts and bigotry can fester in hidden places in cyberspace, it can be even harder to counteract such intolerance. But God compels us to try. And in this mission, I believe there are a few principles that can guide us, particularly those of us who profess to believe.
And, first, we should start with some basic humility. I believe that the starting point of faith is some doubt—not being so full of yourself and so confident that you are right and that God speaks only to us, and doesn’t speak to others, that God only cares about us and doesn’t care about others, that somehow we alone are in possession of the truth.
The Apostle Paul says to pray for those who are in authority (1 Tim. 2:1-2), and this writer is going to pray that our president may open his eyes and see that his words are full of fallacies. Some might even say, “Nonsense!” To attempt to say that a few extremists have hijacked the Muslim faith shows a profound ignorance of the history of the world. Does Obama have any idea why the Crusades were fought in the first place? The answer is that they were trying to prevent the Muslims from conquering Europe. War for Muslims is not an aberration; it is the means by which they became dominant. Within 100 years of taking up the sword (630-730), Muslims had conquered all of North Africa to the Straits of Gibraltar. Then they conquered Spain and were targeting all of Europe when stopped by the French. In the east, their empire stretched to the frontiers of China. All of these acquisitions were obtained through war, which is the Muslim philosophy. These were not a few misguided souls back then; they were following Muslim philosophy. Obama (and others) refuse to acknowledge the nature of the religion.
All they would have to do is take note of what happens to civil rights even now in nations in which Muslims are the majority. Jim Crow, which he is always crowing about, is a birthday party compared to the lack of rights afforded women under Shari’a law. Have people been intolerant of one another in the name of religion? Sure. Intolerance is one thing, but Islam is a way of life that has been and always will be intolerant of anyone who is not a Muslim! It is not that the President cannot or does not know the facts regarding these things. He refuses to acknowledge the truth. It is no wonder that many think he is the first Muslim president. He snubs the Israeli prime minister, insults Christians, and tries to make it sound as though there are only a few Muslims that are out of whack. An American journalist is beheaded on camera, and after a brief announcement about it, he plays golf.
The Crusades and the Inquisition
Nowhere in the Scriptures are God’s people authorized to take up the sword in the name of Christ. In fact, Jesus told Peter to put away his sword when he tried to defend Him from ungodly men (Matt. 26:51-52). Jesus told Pilate that if His kingdom were of this world, then His servants would fight. (What would be the odds of their winning, too?) But the kingdom of Christ is not an earthly kingdom (no matter how much the premillennialists try to make it one.) No authority exists for Christians arming themselves with physical weapons and fighting against those of other religions. Paul disputed and reasoned with spiritual enemies, but he did not don Roman armor and go spoiling for a fight. He even describes the Christian armor, but it is all spiritual, though it corresponds to what Roman soldiers wore.
How appropriate is it to lay the Inquisition at the feet of Christians! It was not Christianity that conducted it; the Roman Catholic Church can take credit for that. It is probable that most of those who were put to death believed in true Christianity—or at least knew that Catholicism was false. A mere perusal of Wikipedia provides this summary.
The Inquisition is a group of institutions within the judicial system of the Roman Catholic Church whose aim is to combat heresy. It started in 12th-century France to combat religious sectarianism, in particular the Cathars and the Waldensians. Other groups which were investigated later include the Spiritual Franciscans, the Hussites (followers of Jan Hus) and Beguines. Beginning in the 1250s, inquisitors were generally chosen from members of the Dominican Order, to replace the earlier practice of using local clergy as judges. The term Medieval Inquisition covers these courts up through the 14th century.
In the Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the concept and scope of the Inquisition was significantly expanded in response to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
The Inquisition basically tried to eradicate anyone who disagreed with the Roman Catholic Church. It is estimated that 2,200 individuals were put to death over a 400-year period. Although this is tragic and would never had occurred in any religious group following the New Testament, America lost more innocent victims on September 11, 2001. Imagine! We lost more victims in one day than in four centuries of the Inquisition.
Those killed in religious wars, however, pale in comparison to those killed in non-religious wars. Is it not estimated that Hitler killed more than six million for his own sociological, sociopathic purposes? And Stalin is thought to have killed from three to seven times as many to perpetuate godless communism. Come to think of it, Obama supports the more than 55 million deaths of babies in the womb during the past 43 years.
The Truth
The President claims that if Christians think they are the only ones who have the truth, they are not humble, but it is a matter of certainty that produces confidence.. One hears college professors make this same pitch, and what they mean by it is that: 1) truth does not exist; and 2) even if truth did exist, we cannot know it. These are not definitions of humility but arrogance. They are tantamount to saying, “I know that truth does not exist.”
Was Jesus full of Himself when He claimed to be the Son of God? Were the apostles arrogant when they defined sin? One of those definitions of sin includes homosexuality (Rom. 1:26-28; 1 Cor. 6:9-11). Who is the one who is humble—Paul, or Barak Hussein Obama, who boasts about his LGBT agenda? It is not that truth does not exist; some just do not want to acknowledge it.
No one ever said that God speaks only to us. The Bible was given to all the world, and it was written by about 40 men over a period spanning almost two millennia. The Qur’an was written from memory by the followers of Muhammad in less than five years. The Bible contains numerous prophecies that were fulfilled from 400 to 4,000 years later. Muhammad had one prophecy he made which he himself fulfilled. Yes, we are confident that we are right about religion, but it is not because we are full of ourselves; we have examined the evidence. Furthermore, our Book does not tell us to kill anyone who does not agree with us.
It is because the Lord cares about all people that we try to share Christianity with all nations. But there is a problem, Mr. President. Muslims do not have the same spirit of good will. They will insist that Christians not meet for worship on the first day of the week or that Christians cannot talk to Muslims about Jesus or the gospel. They want the right to build mosques and spread the message of Islam in the United States, but they will not reciprocate in countries where they are in charge. “Is that just a few extremists, Mr. President?” No, it is the philosophy of Muslim nations where they have control.
The President is citing events that occurred 500 to a thousand years ago in order to do what—try to convince us that Isis and Al-Qaeda are just aberrations? The Inquisition and the Crusades are no longer being fought. They did not represent Christianity when those evils were practiced. But the Muslims have been the way they are now for nearly 1,300 years, and what evidence is there that they will stop any time soon? Even more pacifistic Muslims are afraid to stand up to them because they rule by terror and fear.
The President’s arguments were not only fallacious, his comments were insulting to Christians—especially since those put to death in the Inquisition were in many respects like we are. He also insulted us with respect to the truth, the Word of God, by which he too shall be judged (John 12:48). How ironic that a President defends Islam but intentionally slights Christianity!