DID THE EARLY CHRISTIANS MURDER IN OBEDIENCE TO GOD?

The early Christians are praised for being non-violent which is strange considering how they took the Old and New Testaments seriously as the word of God despite the pages being plastered with genocide and murder endorsed by God explicitly.

 

Matthew 5:21 has Jesus referring to the teaching of God that murder is forbidden and that whoever murders must be subjected to judgment. By judgment he means capital punishment. Jesus goes on to say the Sanhedrin should have the right to administer such physical punishment to those who call their brother a fool. The Sanhedrin is declared then to have the right to do what it does which implies support for its claim that it has the divine right to decree executions by stoning.

Acts 10 has a serving military man baptised into the faith.  It reads, At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly.

This man simply had to have persecuted those who opposed the divine Roman Emperor and the gods. 

Did the early Christians carry out, or at least wish they could commit, the murders and mutilations that were commanded in the Law of Moses? For people of the Roman Empire to support a religion that would not sanction fighting believing the end of Rome and the world was nigh would mean certain death for it was high treason. Either the Church was bribing Rome to let it have its freedom or the Church did believe in killing which was why it escaped and Paul had the freedom to preach.

The Bible gives no hint that the laws of God commanding the killing of murderers, homosexuals and adulterers etc in the Old Testament were temporary civil laws. It does not say they were only state laws. If they are moral laws then they are still valid for today's Christians.

Read what Peter, Jesus' apostle said in the Acts of the Apostles. The context is how Jesus was supposedly murdered as a result of Jewish scheming. "Now, fellow Israelites, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Messiah would suffer. Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus. Heaven must receive him until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. For Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you must listen to everything he tells you. Anyone who does not listen to him will be completely cut off from their people.’" Peter adds the command about being cut off to that text. In the Law, it does not appear beside that command but it does appear in relation to other subjects such as sabbath breakers. Cutting off appears in the Law of Moses which apparently refers to somebody being thrown out of the community and left to die in the wilderness. Most authorities regard it as referring to direct execution. Peter refers to a complete cut off which is clearly a euphemism for murdering them. Peter is endorsing Moses as commanding that those who turn to Jesus and then away from him must be executed. The method would have usually being stoning. Jesus referred to that verse about the prophet too. Peter by saying Moses and Jesus are both to be obeyed totally is indicating that both want rebel Christians put to death. He does not say it can be done but that it must be aimed for and done when possible. No sect ever claims it can just go out and execute as if the government was not there.

Sometimes Gehenna in the Bible is a figure of Hell and other times it means what the Jews meant by it. Gehenna is the valley of Hinnom. South of Jerusalem it was a smoking, worm-infested dump for the corpses of criminals. Jesus claimed that people who sinned gravely belonged there, “I say to you…whoever says, You cursed fool! [You empty-headed idiot!] shall be liable to and unable to escape the hell (Gehenna) of fire” (Matthew 5:22, Amplified Bible). He approved of killing them and dumping their bodies for he gave no hint that he didn’t mean it literally or was referring to the perpetual torment of Hell and not to Gehenna the dump outside the city of Jerusalem. Despite some translations of the scriptures the Geena shouldn’t always be translated hell but Gehenna. Unwarranted interpretations of Jesus’ words is putting human opinions over God. If we respect God’s word we will have to accept that Jesus didn’t mean Hell when he said Gehenna here. Jesus hadn’t revealed or hinted about Hell yet so this was the real Gehenna. You can avoid Hell by repentance but you cannot avoid Gehenna if the law of the land sends you there and Jesus stressed that there was no escape. The Law of Moses did not go that far so Jesus was saying that those who use that insult must be executed and dumped there. This was in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount!

The Church started off as Jewish Christianity. The Church was made up of Christians who lived as Jews and observed the Jewish rite of circumcision and the Law for years. The Church was brought to the brink of schism when it decided that non-Jews who wanted to enter the Church did not have to keep the whole Law.

In Acts 21:20, 21 we read that James the apostle and his presbyters said, “You see, brother [Paul], how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews, and all of them are enthusiastic upholders of the [Mosiac] Law. Now they have been informed about you that you continually teach that all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn back from and forsake Moses, advising them not to circumcise their children or pay any attention to the observance of the [Mosiac] customs.” Christians who were thirsting for the blood of apostates and gays and adulterers were welcomed into the Christian fold. This shows that the Church approved of them. The Church did not make one moral code for Jewish believers and another for non-Jews (Acts 10:34) so all were expected to be willing to kill whoever the Law decreed should be dead. But there is more. Paul was asked to prove that he was not an opponent of the Jewish Law by undertaking some ceremonies and he did that (Acts 21:24-26). Paul was tried before the Sanhedrin and found not guilty of teaching that the Law was abolished for Jews (Acts 23:9,29).

Christianity still holds that the Bible’s stoning laws are just and perfect (1 Timothy 1:8). No decent person would mentally submit to such an evaluation. It is scary that nice people could have another side thanks to Moses and Jesus Christ. Anybody who says that the laws are not Christian and to be abhorred and who claims to be a Christian is a fraud. Once you repudiate the Bible you are repudiating the authority of Jesus and putting your own opinion in his place. Liberal Christianity is simply not Christianity.

In the Bible, there are allusions to murders commanded by Christians. The early Church warned that all who didn’t submit to her Jesus and her would be destroyed (2 Peter 2:12). No maybes here therefore this is a vow to murder them if possible.

Many Christians still believe in capital punishment because of the Bible. Some who don’t understand their religion don’t. Some claim to believe in the Bible and refuse to accept capital punishment – they are those who only want religion the way they want it to be. The Catechism of the Catholic Church shows that capital punishment is still endorsed by the Catholic Church. If the New Testament never mentions capital punishment as many say and they still believe in it then they have no authority to disprove of the legal killing of gays and apostates. They cannot sincerely condemn illegally killing them for God’s law comes first and they approve of the apostles preaching the gospel and nearly getting themselves killed – when a Christian says that it is okay to break the law of the land against suicide and fanaticism to preach the gospel in dangerous places how can they forbid murdering or beating up somebody because the Bible says so and in spite of the civil illegality. The Christian and War by Robert Moyer says that God never abrogated capital punishment (page 7). When it was not abrogated it was kept it in force. This tells us that capital punishment for kidnappers, adulterers and homosexuals and apostates must still be obligatory or else God will lash out at us.

The Catholics and most of the Protestant cults believed in Moses’ laws for centuries and embarked on a long career of large-scale torture and butchery. The high-levels know that our arguments are right for they got them first. Bible Christianity is dangerous.

We justly accuse all those who prove of the murdering commanded in the Bible of approving of human sacrifice for any needless killing done in God’s name is a human sacrifice no matter what else it is called. They say there is a purpose? If there is, then why punish anybody who says that the Holy Spirit told them that they committed their crime for a mysterious divine purpose. This incomprehensible purpose crap is just a dose of bigotry mingled with whitewash.

It is unchristian to let anybody who God wants dead live.

God kills so God can permit people to kill for him. When God, who alone matters, in Christian theology lives then you should die for God if you have meaning that then capital punishment cannot be wrong full stop.

The Bible should be banned and burned to keep it away from the ignorant public because of its barbaric and sanguinary statutes and inciting people to acts of cruelty. Acts of depravity and murder still happen on account of the Bible’s teachings. But we can be sure that the state won’t do anything about this for it is smitten with some of the delights of Christian injustice and ill nature and is often tricked by the clergy into believing that the more religion there is the less crime.

The Empire had no bother getting new soldiers and the Christians were in a minority and so it was only natural that not many of them would have been in the army. The early Christians who were in the army up to 167 AD were unlikely to have got involved in warfare for the army was just used to supervise the boundaries of the Empire and so there was very little warfare (page 16, The Christian and War - Norris). This gave the illusion that Christians did not fight. At Militene it is known that not all the soldiers who joined Christianity left the army. Christian soldiers fought by the River Danube under the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Justin Martyr wrote that Christians ceased to hate and make war with their enemies. But that is not saying that war was wrong in itself even when you were the innocent party. Some say it does ignoring the fact that nothing should be used as evidence when you don’t know the reason for it. The Christians were more interested in making converts than getting tied up in waging war. The Egyptian Church Order and the Hippolytean Canons and the Testament of Our Lord forbade soldiers to kill even when they were legally commanded to. But the Torah only allowed killing for the sake of God. These soldiers would have been killing for a pagan state. Although Christians were to support the state they were not to go that far. The rules do not prove that Christians were totally against killing. There were a few Christians who came out against killing full stop but there had been dissenters from the beginning.

The early Christians kept to themselves and out of state affairs and kept out of the army because of the pressure to practice idolatry so their reluctance to get involved in public life does not prove that they believed in strict pacifism (page 211, The Jesus Event).

The New Testament never once changed the Law of Moses so when it calls Christ Lord which is the same as lawgiver who must be obeyed (Acts 2:36; Matthew 28:18 and James 4:12) commonsense says that the law of Christ and the Law of Moses are one and the same.

God writing with Paul in Romans 13:5 says that the judges and rulers of the state represent God and they alone have God’s authority to carry out executions. But in areas where there were no rulers set up or where anarchy prevailed the Christians could presumably carry it out themselves. Paul wants his followers if they want to kill to persuade the government to let them but not to plan the downfall of the government by any illegitimate means. One thing is for sure, if a Christian kills an adulterer or homosexual the true Christian cannot condemn her or him for this killing but only for the illegality of the killing. Thus the person would be entitled to a small penalty than the penalty for death. A Christian book, Kennedy’s Murder, admits that killing Lee Harvey Oswald for killing Kennedy was not wrong by itself but only the fact that it was illegal brought in the wrongness (page 4). One thing is for sure when the Bible commands that when two men are caught together the people have to purge this evil from their midst it means that if we cannot kill them we have to take their jobs homes and rights from them. Anybody who does not purge is declared to be disobedient and in danger themselves for the Law ends with a heap of threats of divine retribution against anybody who disobeys it.

 

The First Epistle of John says it does not advise praying for those who sin unto death.  Is that referring to those who sinned unto death according to the Law of Moses such as adulteresses and those who adored false Gods?  They were not forgiven but stoned to death by divine command.  Today Christians say that such sin still deserves death but God instead of asking us to execute them does it himself.