Thus, the Catechism of the 21st Century Military Media Church of Christ:
Q: How is the Peace of Christ demonstrated to the world?
A: At the end of a rifle barrel.
We are far, far removed from the earliest surviving Catechism, the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, dating from approximately 200:
A military man in authority must not execute men. If he is ordered, he must not carry it out. Nor must he take military oath. If he refuses, he shall be rejected. If someone is a military governor, or the ruler of a city who wears the purple, he shall cease or he shall be rejected. The catechumen or faithful who wants to become a soldier is to be rejected, for he has despised God.
Is it any shock, therefore, when we watch the above Gospel of War video, that our Lord Jesus Christ, envisioning our day and the worse days to come, wondered aloud to His followers:
When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?
How the church has fallen! From martyrdom to murder. . .
We can trace the fall from 27 October 312, with the Roman Emperor Constantine's counterfeit conversion at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. Ascribing his war victory to the Christian God, Constantine freed the church from persecution.
Enticed by the grace of the ruler of the world, the church of the weak and the reviled could not follow the example of its Lord:
The devil taketh Him up to an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and saith unto Him, all these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then Jesus saith unto him, get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.
What Satan failed in tempting the Lord with, he succeeded with the church. A church of strangers and pilgrims, weak and scorned, allowed itself to be seduced by Satan through Constantine's favors. The church sold its martyr's soul for the glories of the world, and prostituted itself as the whore of Babylon by becoming the Emperor's de facto state religion.
For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
A church that had formerly renounced war married war, and for seventeen hundred and three years has dishonored its founding Martyr by justifying war.
The church has tried to serve two masters, but has only validated Jesus' teaching on this impossibility.
Only a heretic church can advertise a rifleman as a *True Believer*. . .
If there be any of faith on earth, let them pray this rifleman be converted, lest he suffer the horror of Matthew 7:22-23:
Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? And in Thy name have cast out devils? And in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.
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