Christian Wars - A Misnomer

Christians, God's children, have for years taken a beating by those who make the claim
that Christians have been responsible in part, at least, for religious wars that killed tens of
thousands of people during the Crusades and in Europe itself during the Middle Ages.
There never was any truth to it and never will be.

Just because a Catholic claims to be a Christian does not make him one. Just because a
Protestant makes the claim to be a Christian does not make him one - not now, not back
then, not ever. Neither Catholics nor Protestants are Christians. Neither group has ever
been willing to accept what the New Testament teaches that it takes for a man to become
a Christian. I will deal with each group in this article in due time. Until then I ask the
reader to use a little common sense.

Name one passage in the New Testament that teaches that a Christian ought to organize
with other Christians and go to war and kill those of another religion in order to establish
the faith in a geographic locality. Jesus told Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world. If
My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be
delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here." (John 18:36 NKJV)

He told the one who sought to protect him by physical force at the time of his arrest, the
one who used his sword and cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest, to "Put your
sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword." (Matt. 26:52
NKJV) And then again, "But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps
you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also." (Matt. 5:39 NKJV)

Yes, we all know the multitude of passages in the New Testament teaching us to love our
fellowman, to be kind and tender hearted, longsuffering and forbearing, and yet we
seemingly are unable to put two and two together and say that hey, there is something
wrong here. Would true Christians in the tens of thousands voluntarily offer themselves
up to go to war to destroy pagans? Do we not know the Bible teaches we are to teach and
convert them rather than destroy them?

And yet what is so obvious is not seen by us for we have come to fully accept a perverted
gospel as being the genuine thing. Paul dealt with a perverted gospel in the book of
Galatians but we seem to think that was a one time historical event only and that the
gospel has never been perverted since then.

What I have said above is simply reason and common sense. If you have ever read your
New Testament you know these things are true. Do you really think a true Christian
could call for such wars and true Christians answer the call to arms for such wars? Let us
go kill the pagans. Do you believe that?

You might subdue by force of arms those of another religion but you could not convert
them that way, not to Christianity. One can only become a Christian by genuine faith and
sincerity of heart. Force of arms cannot change hearts.
The Catholic church is not the New Testament church and the Catholic religion has
nothing to do with Christianity. The Catholic church cannot exist without going outside
the pages of the Bible for authority and when they do so that authority comes from mere
men. The New Testament knows nothing about Popes, or praying to Mary, or
indulgences, or burning people at the stake, or authority residing in the church, or a
thousand and one other things practiced by the church either today or in days gone by.

I remind the reader it was the Catholic church who sought to have the Bibles burned and
kept out of the hands of the average man and woman. Now I ask you do you think the
God of heaven looked with favor on that and was behind it?

The Catholic hierarchy reminds one much of the scribes and Pharisees of New Testament
times. The desire is to be seen as special. "But all their works they do to be seen by men.
They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments. They love
the best places at feasts, the best seats in the synagogues, greetings in the marketplaces,
and to be called by men, 'Rabbi, Rabbi.' But you do not be called 'Rabbi'; for One is your
Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren. Do not call anyone on earth your father; for
One is your Father, He who is in heaven." (Matt. 23:5-9 NKJV)

Verse 9 certainly has no meaning to a Catholic - "do not call anyone on earth your father."
The Pope even makes the claim he can speak for God. When one researches the history
of Catholic Popes he will find many who were far, far from righteous by any standard
you might want to use. But, when you can convince people that the Bible is an
insufficient guide and that only you (the Catholic hierarchy) can lead them spiritually you
can pretty much develop your religion anyway you desire and if it profits you well you
deserve it don't you? You are worthy are you not?

This is not an attack on the average Catholic man or woman. Catholicism is basically a
religion one is physically born into, an inherited religion, and in that sense far more like
Judaism than Christianity. One is not born again (John 3:3-5) into the Catholic church.
If one has never known anything else, or been exposed to anything else, it is not a strange
thing that he takes for granted what he has been told from childhood. And, who can help
what he is born into? (This is not to say no one ever converts to Catholicism but only
that the vast majority are born into it.)

However, when one gets older he/she does become responsible before God. John said,
"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God;
because many false prophets have gone out into the world." (1Jn 4:1 NKJV) There will
be some, maybe many, who will say I am one of those false prophets because of the
things I have written here but you know what, they will have to go outside of the pages of
the Bible for their proof.

There is not a Catholic on earth that can take the New Testament and the New Testament
alone and get today's Catholic Church out of it. I venture even further - they know better
than try and will not try. They live not by what the Bible says but by what the Catholic
hierarchy has handed down from one generation to the next and that outside the pages of
the New Testament. They thus become their own authority and have convinced people it
is God's will that it be so.

However, Protestants have their own problems and it centers around one thing. They are
wedded to the idea that a man is saved by faith alone and that the new birth, born of water
and the spirit, has nothing to do with becoming a Christian. The new birth involves
baptism in water for the remission of sins and that they will not accept. Water to them is
only symbolic.

It was not symbolic to Peter on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2:38 for he said it was for the
remission of sins. I have said it before in other articles I have written and say it here
again - you cannot find a denominational preacher (a Protestant) that will get up in the
pulpit and preach what Peter preached on the day of Pentecost and that only. He will not
preach it because he does not believe it.

It doesn't matter what Peter said about baptism (1 Peter 3:21), it does not matter what
Ananias told Saul (Acts 22:16) concerning arising and being baptized and washing away
his sins, and it doesn't even matter what Jesus said in Mark 16:16, "He who believes and
is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned." (NKJV) We
will just explain it all away. It does not matter that in every account in the book of Acts
of a conversion that baptism was mentioned. There is no proof that will be sufficient for
a Protestant.

This is no place for me to write an article within an article and so I will not go into the
proof of the necessity of baptism in order to make one a Christian beyond what I have
just written. I would encourage the reader to read the many other articles I have already
written on the subject where I have dealt with the proof in depth. The reader can find
those articles if he so desires on this article directory.

Here is the point - neither the Protestants nor the Catholics who involved themselves in
the religious wars of many years ago were Christians. They had not done what the Bible
teaches that a man must do to become a Christian. We might deal with that briefly.

All agree that a man must come to have faith that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and
the Savior of the world. (Heb. 11:6, Rom. 10:9, 1 Cor. 15:1-4, John 3:18, John 3:36, John
8:24, John 11:26-27, and a whole host of other passages far too numerous to mention
them all).

The Bible also teaches that a man must repent of his sins. Faith alone will not save one
(John 12:42, James 2:19, James 2:24). The Bible teaches it is repent or perish, "I tell you,
no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish." (Luke 13:3 NKJV) "I have not
come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance." (Luke 5:32 NKJV) See the
following passages - Acts 26:20, 2 Cor. 7:10, 2 Peter 3:9, Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19, Acts
17:30.
A man then must confess his faith in Jesus as the Christ, the son of God and Savior of the
world. Rom. 10:9-10, "That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe
in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the
heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto
salvation." (NKJV)

Those in John 12:42-43 were condemned for this very failure, "Nevertheless even among
the rulers many believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him,
lest they should be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the praise of men more than
the praise of God." (NKJV)

Timothy "confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses." (1 Tim.
6:12 NKJV) Why? Because God required it and because no man can be baptized into
Christ (Gal. 3:27) who is a non-believer. It cannot be known that you are a believer
unless you confess it.

Jesus confessed his deity on more than one occasion but one such occasion was in Mark
14:61-62, "But He kept silent and answered nothing. Again the high priest asked Him,
saying to Him, "Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" Jesus said, "I am. And you
will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming with the clouds
of heaven." (NKJV) This is the confession upon which the church is built contrary to
Catholic doctrine.

When Peter made the confession that "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God"
(Matt. 16:16 NKJV) that foundational truth is that upon which the church (the saved) was
built. "For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus
Christ." (1Cor. 3:11NKJV) That foundation is solid only because he was and is the Son
of God.

Finally, to become a Christian, or as the Bible sometimes phrases it, a new creation, one
must be baptized into Christ. Outside of Christ there is no salvation for he is the Savior
of the body and that body is his body, the church. (Eph. 1:22-23, 5:23) There is not a
man on earth who can find a Bible passage that teaches how a man enters that body other
than through baptism. "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as
many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ." (Gal 3:26-27 NKJV)

Rom. 6:3 "Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into His death?" (NKJV) "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one
body." (1Co 12:13 NKJV) What body? The body of Christ. Inside Christ there is
salvation. Inside Christ there is the remission of sins. Thus Peter on the Day of
Pentecost in Acts 2:38 told those believers in the crowd that day to, "repent, and be
baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins." (KJV)

This put them inside the body of Christ of which he is the Savior. The reader might ask
himself one question. How is one baptized in the name of Jesus Christ if Jesus Christ
never commanded it? Jesus said, "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he
who does not believe will be condemned." (Mark 16:16 NKJV) Protestants rephrase it
and say he who believes and is not baptized will be saved or at least it makes no
difference which is to say the same thing.

Yes, Catholics say they baptize - baptize infants. No infant has ever needed salvation for
they have no sin nor are they conscious of such nor can they be. Furthermore, sprinkling
is not now and never has been baptism, unless one wants to go outside the pages of the
New Testament and get his authority from man rather than God. Baptism is immersion
and the word itself means that very thing.

Yes, there were many religious wars killing thousands upon thousands in history but we
ought to cease the nonsense about Christians having any responsibility for it. Tell the
truth. Blame the real instigators - the Catholics and the Protestants - neither of which
were Christians. Do not blame God's own people or else you may some day be held
accountable for your false charges against his own people.