The Smiting Apostle: An Ear for an Ear, a Tooth for a Tooth.
“Then said Jesus unto him, put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” (Matthew 26:52)
Did Jesus mean: “Put up your sword” because
You are not the police, and you can’t take the law into your own hands. But If you were a member of the police, as a Christian, you could kill.
You have the right to kill, but because the Son of Man must be crucified, you must not exercise that right today.
Those who smite with the sword can expect to be killed themselves, so in the interests of self preservation, it is best not to. But it has nothing to do with your salvation.
Those who smite with the sword will perish eternally in the Lake of Fire.
Until the time of Constantine in 325 A.D, the Church unanimously held that only #4 was true. Since then, especially since Augustine, who held that not only were Christians obligated to kill in war, but that a Christian government had the right and duty to torture and kill Christians in order to save their souls--since then, the church’s “feet have been swift to shed blood, the way of peace have they not known.”
The Luther-Calvin-Catholic-Baptist interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount is this: The Jesus who preached the Sermon on the Mount was a good man, but until all men are like him, we must keep our swords sharp. In essence, the Sermon on the Mount is how the world should be. Unfortunately, the real world is the complete opposite. And until the other person stops threatening me, I need to get him before he gets me. You put up your sword first, then we can talk about what I do with mine.
Which means (in light of the "impossible" teachings of the Sermon on the Mount):
1. The Sixth Commandment-- Jesus teaches that you shouldn't just kill people without a good reason to do so, but that you are allowed to use violence when necessary. The Sermon on the Mount thus teaches no more than restraint.
2. The Seventh Commandment--where Jesus teaches that if the innocent woman remarries she commits adultery--here Jesus only warns against easy divorce. No more. This being the case:
How have we gone beyond Moses here? The Pharisees would have agreed with all of this, for it was no more than a strict adherence to the law of Moses. Is the teaching of Jesus no more than a restoration of the Law of Moses as practiced in the time of Moses (with allowance for "hardness of heart")? In which case the Sermon on the Mount adds nothing new. So, is the Gospel no more than "you may kill," but, just make sure you are born again when you do so? You may divorce, but now if you do, you will be forgiven? When Paul says, "such were some of you," he meant no more than, "nothing has changed except that now you know that you cannot be punished for such things"? Luther would not have liked to put in such terms, but he would not have disagreed. Calvin would have called that easy-believism and his remedy was the old way: punish sin as crime with fire and sword. The Anabaptists held that Jesus meant what he said, and that people have to be "reborn" into such an "impossible" kingdom. Which is why they excommunicated those whom they knew to be otherwise "by their works." This was not an option for either Luther of Calvin, because how can you excommunicate a commoner for sins openly practiced by the politicians who turned the church into 'the king's chapel?" How do you excommunicate Herodias? Get rid of excommunication and you don't have to. And once you make Caesar the head of the church, the notion of the church as a Remnant makes no sense. Caesar will have you go out to the highways and byways and compel them to come in, without "having their heads shorn or their nails pared." You will not Make Israel Great Again with a Remnant. He just ordered Bethany Adoption to accept LGBTQ or lose government funds. And the most dignified body in the whole world, the US Senate, is currently having somber discussions about gender mutilation, groveling before a man in a dress. Church MAGA knows that one wrong word here could cost them the next election. The President is thumbing his nose at God here, adjusting the fable of Gay and Gomorrah to the times. "Ye, hath God said?" Newsweek Magazine (2012) made Obama the first homosexual President, and during his campaign Biden vowed to promote Transgenderism. And proud Senators dance around the issue by talking about Genital Mutilation? We know precisely what they really think, and it has nothing to do with Genital Mutilation. These Senators would just have somberly questioned Senator Incitatus, Caligula's horse Senator. Cowards!!! Is this not the greatest charade and fraud ever in the history of the world? These creatures will soon teach grade school. He will now demand to sit next to Herodias in church.
The problem with the Sermon on the Mount is that it charges an innocent woman with adultery if she remarries, and "no adulterer," Paul teaches, "shall enter the kingdom of heaven." This is so unreasonable, cruel, and inhumane that it could not be true--hence, the Sermon on the Mount must (as Evolutionists say of Genesis 1 and 2) be read as a form of poem, not to be taken literally, but as teaching some sort of lofty moral which may at certain moments appeal to the better angels of our natures. Like the Apostles said in utter astonishment: if what we just heard is to be taken literally, "who then can be saved"? Moses they knew and could agree with, but who would ever attempt to live like this? Which is why Peter did not hesitate to put poor Malchus' ear to the ground. The Apostles had not yet moved beyond Moses. Even when he heard, "Ye shall receive power," he probably saw no further than Jerusalem filled with Roman heads. But that that power should be no more than men "pricked in their hearts," would have seemed baffling. But that was 99.9999999 percent of what that power was (the wind and tongues were no more than background noise in comparsion): the Second Creation to fit men for the Kingdom of God.
Like the seven sons of Sceva (Acts 19), the modern court chaplains leapfrogged over the Gospels and turned Paul into the new Moses who they saw as sympathetic to the old Regime of violence and divorce-adultery:
"Then certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth."
And being willfully ignorant of the Gospels they were able to twist Paul into a doctrine of the new Moses, not unlike what they heard from their father who was a Jewish chief priest. A Lutheran-Calvin-Baptist doesn't read the Bible without first consulting his "Jesus whom Luther-Calvin preaches," in order to get all the "preforedamnations" right. Luther called on Germany’s Princes to slaughter the revolting peasants, and even said they would be considered martyrs if they died in the process. 100,000 poor peasants died. "Ye have heard it said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Luther never thought he did wrong, and never felt the need to repent. Was Luther a murderer? If so, how shall a murderer enter the kingdom of God? When Calvin ruled Geneva, the city had regular torture-executions, the most famous being the heretic Severetus, whom Calvin (it is often pointed out by his defenders) asked only that he be killed, and not slowly burned at the stake. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." His contemporaries called Calvin a murderer. Was he a murderer? If so, how does a murderer enter the kingdom of God? This is what happens when you leapfrog over the Gospels and turn Jesus into Moses whom Paul preaches. Today his followers defend him by saying that he did no more than what everyone else did. Back then you settled matters with fire and sword. Everyone tortured their enemies to death. Even Puritans did it. Everyone did it. "An eye for an eye" was still the rule of the day, back then. It's what the Pauline seven sons of Sceva would have done. Zwingli died in uniform on the field of slaughter. He died “killed, trying to kill.” "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." John Knox was kicked out of Continental Europe, because he thought the Reformation was going too slowly, and called for the assassination of Catholic rulers. This was too much for even the Calvin-Lutherans. Because Puritans were politicians, they had to frequently behead, burn, and torture their opponents. They even beheaded their own king. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Will such men enter the kingdom of God? Or can you smite as long as you do so as a politician? As Cardinal Richelieu, who caused thousands of Frenchmen to disappear, said, when asked on his deathbed: "Father, wouldn't you like to forgive your enemies before you die?" "I have no enemies," he replied, "but the enemies of the State." Since the State is ordained of God, obedience requires that God's enemies be your enemies. And the State is ordained by God to punish its enemies with the sword. How simple is that? His young followers, knowing what God said about forgiveness, trembled at the thought of a man dying in such a state. Is it any wonder that their followers cannot understand a verse of Scripture without running to the "books and traditions of the elders." For what they read is exactly the opposite of what they hear preached: Jesus whom the seven vagabond sons of Sceva preached. Most have stopped reading altogether, lest they become even more confused. Or they fill their heads with conspiracy theories and Q.
Closer to our day, when the Sepoys of India rose up against their British oppressors, Charles Spurgeon took to the pulpit Sunday morning in his rented stadium and preached to a massive crowd--immediately, "Hell opened her mouth without measure": full sermon here
“Britain's wrath is stirred; a black cloud is hanging over the head of the mutinous Sepoys! Their fate shall be most dreadful, their doom most tremendous, when England shall smite the murderers, as justly she must. There must be Judicial punishment enacted upon these men, so terrible that the earth shall tremble, and both the ears of him that heareth it shall tingle....Long have I held that war is an enormous crime; long have I regarded all battles as but murder on a large scale: but this time, I, a peaceful man, a follower of the peaceful Saviour, do propound war.”
"I, a peaceful man, a follower of the peaceful Saviour, do propound war."
"The peaceful Saviour " here refers to the crown jewel of the Gospels, the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus lays out the nature of the Kingdom of God. It is so unrealistic that most people conclude that it has to be Utopian. When pagans are asked about Jesus this is what they remember. It's what they see when they are asked to read the Bible as literature in the classroom. It inspires universal admiration, a world to be dreamed of, or perhaps a lofty appeal to the better angels of our nature. As is often said, "Jesus was a good man, but until all men are like him, we best keep our swords sharp." The arch-enemies Hitler and Churchill disagreed on everything else but this: that Europe's fatal flaw lay in her un-warlike religion. They read the Sermon on the Mount and concluded that no one who read it could mistake it for what it was. They envied the warlike nature of Islam. When they read the Bible they marveled that people with such religion would fight at all. Hitler could never be persuaded otherwise, despite the arguments of his Lutherans. Churchill's family even feared he would convert to Islam. Why? Because when they read the Sermon on the Mount they saw it for what it was, and no amount of verbal depravity could convince them otherwise. In the end Luther-Calvin-Zwingle-Knox simply leapfrogged over it, erected a religion of decrees and preforedamnations on the writings of Paul and served him up as a new Moses to their followers--and blood flowed again like a river. Hitler and Churchill would have none of it. Just reading it would ruin any soldier. Which is why Luther-Calvin gave up and simply leapfrogged over it, like the vagabond sons of Sceva. But now their followers are left trying to comfort themselves with the law of Moses, and find themselves being overcome like the sons of Sceva. What good will the Beatitudes do you, if you are told they are for some other time? When Spurgeon "propounds war," he knows he is destroying the Sermon on the Mount. Now where do you go for comfort, for it reads like the 23 Psalm to the "weary and heavy laden." When you destroy the Bible in one place, Satan is just waiting to destroy it in every other place, the next time you "walk through the valley of the shadow of death." "Ye hath God said?" he will hiss, "but back there He also..."
"An eye for an eye , a tooth for a tooth." Rising up against Cain, when you see him rise up against you. Get him, before he gets you. Kill and be killed. Nothing new here. This is exactly like it was among them "of old time." What is this but "sheep's clothing, when inwardly they are ravening wolves." When you preach violence, do you not show "what spirit you are of?" What is being preached here is the right to take vengeance. Spurgeon was in no mood to forgive. He didn't think he had to forgive. This is precisely what Jesus says will exclude you from the kingdom of God. You cannot strike back. You are allowed to flee, or appeal unto Caesar. Luther-Catholic-Calvin went one step further and joined hands with Caesar, making themselves un-persecutable. Up to now he called wars fought by legitimate governments "enormous crimes" and nothing less "but murder on a large scale." Why? It's what any pagan who reads the Bible will tell you Jesus taught. They would deem such preaching beside the point, because it could never be put in practice, but they would admire it nonetheless. And this is what Spurgeon saw when he read the Bible without "the traditions of his elders," who can as easily show you how to switch wives as to kill your enemies and still enter the kingdom of heaven. But does anyone see anything less here than the bloody fang of Cain? Spurgeon saw nothing to repent of here. How then shall God judge Cain, if a man like this can pass for a Christian? Or is it enough to say "once saved, always saved" here? You, "a peaceful man," yet "propound war?" I, a peaceful man can now strike down my enemies when I deem it necessary to do so? After all, as Jesus said, "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Can everyone do this now? If people think Spurgeon preaches hate, can they now also strike him down? So we are all men of peace, until we decide we are not? War is an "enormous crime" until it is not? War is no more than "murder on a large scale," until Spurgeon decides it is not ? Cain was a man of peace, until he decided to "propound war." We know of only one man he killed, so obviously, he was a man of peace otherwise. That is, until, he decided once again to "propound war." Is this what Spurgeon's "peaceful Saviour" taught? This man gloried in being called the Prince of Preachers. As soon as he died, his church collapsed, because it was no more than a monument to himself. He spent his entire life keeping his church in a state of infancy, and living like a billionaire. He had all the gifts in himself. As soon as he died, they fell by the wayside. "We have preached in your name....depart from me, ye that work iniquity." "For by their works, ye shall know them."
Secular historians call Spurgeon's preaching here pure blood lust, and before the sermon ended the slavering dogs of Hell were in full howl and rising. The British Army in India responded by unleashing a murderous campaign against anyone close at hand. Spurgeon never felt the need to repent. Was this murder? Or must you actually thrust in the knife to commit murder? David is said to have murdered Uriah, when Uriah was actually killed by Israel’s enemies on the battlefield. There is not a single shred of evidence that either Hitler or Stalin as much as lifted a gun at anyone, much less kill them. They are considered the greatest mass murderers in history.
So, who among these “smote with the sword?” And who among these (not a single one--except David--ever uttered a word of repentance) “shall perish with the sword.” Or does it matter, as long as “they’re saved.”
When the famous evangelist Dwight L. Moody was asked if he would fight in the Civil War he said: “on this issue I’m a Quaker.” In other words, he personally could not kill. But it was not his business to preach that you could not? Personal salvation had nothing to do with whether you killed or not. War is war. He was a Quaker here. But that was his own personal conviction. To each his own. He grew impatient at the slow business of the church so he started his own Sunday School Brand and even had Abraham Lincoln drop in to show his support. Moody was with him when Richmond fell. He loved preaching to huge Union armies. But killing was a matter Christians could differ on, as long as he could advance Brand Moody. How do you preach to a soldier about to kill on the morrow, with the blood of yesterday still on his clothes? If the Apostles asked you, “shall we smite with the sword,” what would you say? Do it in a Christian way?
The Anabaptists gave a very quick answer here. “Smite, and you cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox saw in this answer the accusation of murder. Their descendants see in this answer the accusation of murder. If this is so, they are like Cain, rejected by God, and like Cain they respond with murderous fury. This is why Cain had to kill Abel. The sight of Abel was to him a "token of perdition." The Anabaptists were to their murderers a "token of perdition." This is why they persecuted and killed the Anabaptists. This is why they will persecute and kill them in the future, until the cup of their iniquity is full. After they drove the Anabaptists out of Europe, God gave the Luther-Calvin-Catholics over to the most brutal war in human history, the awful judgement of God because they rejected the Sermon on the Mount--the Prince of Peace--when they slaughtered "the peacemakers" whom God Blessed. In thirty years of rape, famine, and killing, 8 million people died, 60% of the population. They went at each other like rabid dogs, until Europe looked like the altar of Hell. For war, as General Sherman said, "is (the altar of) pure Hell." The last century of murder (the World Wars) was no more than a continuation of Augustine/Luther/Calvin/Zwingli/Spurgeon war doctrine, the awful judgment of God for rejecting the Sermon on the Mount--the Prince of Peace--when they slaughtered "the peacemakers" whom God Blessed. When they are not killing each other, their preachers call war "a great crime," and "murder on a large scale." Until things change, when they again, as "peaceful men, followers of a peaceful Saviour, do propound war." "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," exactly like it was among them "of old time." They are as against war, as they are against divorce-adultery. They are for the teaching of the Bible, until they are not against it, until they are for it again, until...... Or, as they say, each case is different, "case by case." In five hundred years, there has not been a single war, or one case of divorce-adultery, that they have not been able to justify. But they all vehemently preach that they are against war, and just as vehemently preach that they are against divorce-adultery. Like the Pharisees of old, "they say and do not," for "their feet are swift to shed blood," and for 500 years now, they have secretly "allowed divorce for every cause." They have not separated one marriage that even they themselves are forced to call "adulterous." And this is why LGBT is now entering their churches in droves. This also is God punishing sin with sin. What is at stake here, is what happens to the Bible when you use it in this way. As with Evolution, so here. No one in his right mind thinks that the first two chapters of Genesis teach anything other than 6 day Creation. You can either pretend you don't believe that or accept Darwin to get that government post. Or accept a janitor's job. Only the latter will allow you to say, "Blessed are the poor in spirit.....," or "the Lord is my shepherd." "What profit is it then, being a Jew? Chiefly, because unto them have been declared the oracles of God." Luther-Calvin-Spurgeon went to war without the Sermon on the Mount. They left it behind, fearing to add blasphemy to disobedience. "The oracles of God" will do you no good, if you can no longer believe them. The glory of the Christian faith is that the Bible is written in such a way that the most simple minded person can "be made wise unto salvation," by simply reading it. People love the Sermon on the Mount because it reads like a lullaby, its meaning is too simple to miss. But now come the king's chaplains who need to adjust it for war. You will be left holding a bag of meaningless religious tricks, and you will give up trying to make sense of it. No one who reads it doesn't at times think it reads like a suicide pact, as Jesus explains later: "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." Right there is the true sense of the Sermon on the Mount, and of the Christian life. Unless you are willing to leave all at the foot of the Cross, you will never be saved. For people who have left it all, the Sermon on the Mount is like mother's milk. For those who haven't, pure unending frustration. Repentance usually comes down to one thing. The last thing you are unwilling to surrender is what constitutes your idol--it could be as small as a hairpin. You cannot be saved until you do. "One thing thou lackest, (Mk. 10:21). The young man walked away "sorrowfully." Jesus did not call him back. The gate remains "narrow" for everyone, "the eye of a needle." This man was a camel. Today the church is full of these camels.