To My Fellow Christians Celebrating a Bloodbath that Ends in Victory for the Modern State of Israel
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The current Middle East conflict, which began on October 7, 2023, appears to be escalating further. Another country is being brought into it.
In the midst of that, please keep in mind our Christian brothers and sisters in this conflict. The American media and most politicians like overlooking the Christians and making this all black and white what is happening in the region.
Your pastor may even be doing the same.
The brightest sounding people pride themselves on how intelligent they sound when they know so many details about the region, so much data, but for all the data, they do not have the slightest big picture accuracy about the region.
That amounts to no wisdom, lots of facts. It is a very complicated region, that cannot be painted as black and white for even a moment. There are so many layers interacting at any given time.
I encourage anyone reading this to tour the region for a few weeks without a tour guide. How truly important that detail is. The tours that go to the region tend to be massive propaganda campaigns, selectively showing off in Potemkin-village-style, exactly the right perspective to exactly the right people.
An Overlooked Detail About Lebanon
Lebanon, for example, was once a Christian majority country. Did you read that in the news? Did your favorite know-it-all media commentator mention that? Lebanon is over 40% INDIGENOUS Christians (though those are hard numbers to precisely determine). It is a country that was founded by Christians. It remains a strongly Christian influenced country.
They mostly follow the Orthodox ritual, many of them are in communion with the Vatican, because they sought its protection from the Muslim Ottoman Turks four centuries ago. These are the true voice in the wilderness against the spirit of the anti-Christ that pervades Islam (and Judaism). The spirit of the anti-Christ, mentioned in the Bible, is one that wishes to convince all that the Messiah (or Christ) has not come in the flesh, and that He certainly is not Jesus of Nazareth.
The English word Messiah is derived from the Hebrew word for Savior. The word Christ is the Greek-derived word meaning approximately the same, literally “the anointed one.”
There is a spirit that wants to convince everyone that Jesus Christ has not come. It is mentioned in the Bible. This spirit is an enemy. Neither Habib the shoe salesman nor Schlomo the fruit vendor are your enemies. Stop investing yourself in this stupid flesh and blood war. Stay focussed on the spiritual war.
When you don’t, some bad stuff happens as a result:
1.) You miss out on important things in your life,
2.) You help support some really bad stuff.
You Think You Have A Hard Life?
You think you have a hard life? Try being a Christian in Lebanon, from a family that has been Christian since Paul walked the earth. Watch the Muslims show up in the region for the first time a few hundred years later as marauders, laying waste to much around you over and again, eventually settling in as rulers.
Through that all you stay faithful to God as a dedicated Christian. Your whole family for centuries stays faithful. You persevere and prosper through that all. Not only do the Muslims occasionally treat you like garbage, but once 1948 comes along, the Jews who you used to get along with pretty well suddenly have lots of weapons and start treating you like garbage too.
Then, for the next 75 years, the one place on earth that you thought was a sensible Christian country — the United States — basically supports a massive genocide campaign against all Christians in the region — including you. Churches that are a thousand years old are turned to rubble. Constant conflict exists where there had been relative peace. They arm the most preposterous groups, almost as if the goal was to eradicate all Christians from the region, for there would be no other logic to arming some of these groups. Trade is totally harmed. Education is hampered. Having a family becomes borderline impossible. You’ve got to move from your family land where your family has lived for hundreds of years. Then leave. Then leave again.
You wonder what any Christian in America could possibly be thinking behaving this way. Are they even thinking? How can they be so rich and arrogant with their money? How can they be so celebratory? How can they possibly think this is a region of Muslims and Jews? How can they be so brainwashed? How can they pray the jingoistic and bellicose prayers they are praying in church every Sunday and have a clear conscience? Do they even know the love of Christ? Have they ever studied the Sermon on the Mount? Do they have no sense of responsibility as a Christian?
You might be asking questions like this if you were a Christian living in Lebanon.
If Only Every Church In America Could Have This Experience…
If only every Christian church in America could have a Christian family from Lebanon visit for a month, this conflict would look much less black and white. Or, they could just have a look around YouTube for such accounts, and seek out the information, but that would be too challenging to their confirmation biases, wouldn’t it.
You think your life is hard? You think you are one crying in the wilderness? Try being a Lebanese Christian, that has many of the Christians in the United States celebrating what is ultimately his destruction and pushing for the funding of the aggressive behavior that turns his life into a nightmare.
You could just brush that aside and call it “collateral damage,” as the Pentagon and media and Hollywood have taught you to heartlessly do.
How many prayers have been said for that Christian in Lebanon in your church since October 7, 2023?
Has there been even one?
It’s Not Just Lebanon Where Christians Call Home And Are Subject To Genocide
And there are indigenous Palestinians who are Orthodox Christians. The Israeli government attacked the Saint Porphyries Orthodox Church in Gaza, one of the oldest churches in the world.
If anyone is indigenous, Middle Eastern Christians are the original inhabitants, the indigenous ones. They voluntarily converted to Christianity during the Roman era, sometime between the 1st and 4th centuries AD. It was not by force or coercion.
The (Christian) Copts in Egypt, speak the original language of the pharaohs. They also used the Greek alphabet. Egypt’s Islamic conquest in the 7th century and the forceful conversions to Islam, reduced the Copts to a minority. They are constantly being discriminated against, from the ID laws, the apostasy laws (Muslims are forbidden to convert to Christianity), and their churches are often blown up. Imagine as a Christian what it is like living in a country where on Fridays it is not unusual to hear as part of the Muslim call to prayer that your Muslim neighbor has a right to kill you without fault. Imagine what living through that “normal” each day is like.
You think you are one crying in the wilderness?
The Assyrian Christians in Iraq, have been viciously attacked by the Kurds, by ISIS and by the Turkomen. All that after the US invasion.
The Orthodox Christians in Syria have been massacred by the Islamist "rebels,” backed by the neocons.
There are Orthodox Christians in Palestine, Israel and Jordan, often murdered by the Israelis and the Muslims.
You think you are one crying in the wilderness? Try being a Christian in one of these places and having the heavy hand of the “Christian” American government destroy your life and having the fury of the “Christian” American armory reign down upon you, often at the behest of people who hate Christ with a passion. You think you are one crying in the wilderness?
An Important Slice Of Regional History
In Asia Minor, a thousand years ago, the invading Muslim Turks (Seljuks, Danishmends, Ottomans) forcefully converted most of the indigenous, Orthodox Christians. The rest, were reduced to second class citizens, paying jizya (a heavy tax). Russia’s insistence on protecting the Orthodox populations of the Ottoman Empire, forced the Anglo-French to curiously invade Russia during the Crimean War (1850s).
Russia also demanded the Ottoman sultan reduce taxation and restrictions of movement on his Orthodox Christian subjects. That created an unprecedented prosperity and demographic comeback, that instigated the genocide of Asia Minor and Black Sea (Pontic) Greeks and other Christian groups, in the 1911-1923 period, a genocide designed and executed by the Young Turks.
Perhaps you can think of such details anytime anyone uses positively the term “Young Turk.”Or perhaps you can consider the long history of the Russian people as protectors of freedom the next time someone tries to tell you otherwise. Perhaps you can get more comfortable with history and with the happenings of the world than to call everything you fear “Hitler,” and everything that does not go immediately to war against your fears “Neville Chamberlain.” Or perhaps such conversations that feel out of your depth are a good time to remain silent.
Who Is Promoting These Views?
Christians are suffering badly in Palestine and in Lebanon and throughout the region. They are stuck in between two much better armed religions who are both stuck in the darkness that preceded Jesus.
Why would our 1.) State Department, 2.) Defense Department, 3.) Intelligence Services, 4.) Media, 5.) Hollywood, 6.) Academia, 7.) Major Corporations, and 8.) Churches (yes, churches) want Americans to overlook this systemic genocide of a religious minority significantly perpetrated by their own government?
That is certainly a question that one would do well to answer before onboarding the perspectives of any of those eight groups here mentioned.
I Know What It Is Like To Be Stuck In The Darkness
Yes, Christians in the region are stuck in between two much better armed religions who are both stuck in the darkness that preceded Jesus.
Don’t get me wrong when I say that — I don’t hate Muslims. I don’t hate Jews. I just know the darkness they walk in, because I used to walk in the same darkness. I needed Jesus. They need Jesus.
I love them.
I can see their pain.
I minister to them. I want their pain to end. I love them. I really, really love them.
I hate the darkness. I love them.
All Christians are called to love their fellow man, especially those who do not like you back.
They don’t need peace talks or more weapons or to have prayers on a successful war or support or protests or any other thing that thousands of American churches are praying for. They need Jesus. And the very people who can bring them Jesus — the Christians in the region — we are ignorantly supporting the bombing of.
If we were truly invested in the call of the Gospel, what we should be doing is figuring out how to get as many resources as possible not to the arms dealers and other merchants of death, but we should be figuring out how to get as many resources as possible to those in the region who know the Lord and who share the Lord, and to pray for that work, rather than getting caught up in the latest squabble between two groups of people who have squabbles.
If you are lost in the darkness, these are exactly the squabbles you get into. Why are people who claim not to be lost in the darkness (American Christians) then entering into these same squabbles.
And not just that…
In an election year no less, this stupid squabble has become the key issue in the United States political scene in hopes that all the other stupidity in the country is ignored.
You are being played bro. The eight groups listed above are playing you. And you are falling for it.
They Are Running Another Coup On You
In 2020, they ran a coup on you partly with the distracting George Floyd protests as the backdrop. In 2024, they are running a coup on you with these distracting Middle East protests as the backdrop. From December 1, 2019, to Inauguration Day January 20, 2021, was the first color revolution they ran on you. And you are now living through the second.
Quit being distracted by things that are not fundamental. Turn off anyone who is engaged in that distraction.
Fox, Newsmax, Mark Levin, talk radio, your favorite “alternative voice” podcast. You need to turn them off if they are living in this distraction.
You need to understand America has vital problems. Modern Israel v. Modern Palestine is not one of them. It is distracting you from vital work that needs doing in your life. You have work to do in your life.
God did not call you to watch the news all day and to get angry about what the professional hypnotists on the news want you to get angry about. When you do that, recognize that you are sitting down with a witch every time you sit down in front of the news and inviting him to practice witchcraft on you.
There is work to be done in your life, in your home, in your community, and in your country. Go do it. Do it in that order. Don’t let your mind wander onto topics you can not impact please.
Don’t Forget This Prayer
If you are to pray for a “side” in the conflict, don’t forget to pray for the Christians who have the unlimited funding of the most powerful military in the world dropping bombs on them, and that those bombs are being sent with the imprimatur that it is God’s work. How perverted and twisted specific passages of the Bible must be interpreted in order to call that support of Christian genocide “God’s work.”
So much of what I see Christians saying around this conflict is just shameful, and based on a handful of Old Testament verses touted by people that are all too comfortable overlooking the ministry of Jesus.
This isn’t some stink-foot hippie atheist saying this to you. This isn’t an Antifa degenerate saying this to you. This is a man who reads his Bible, who fasts, who prays, who gives, who loves the Lord, and who takes the calling of the Bible seriously — that the disciples of Christ are here to give hurting humans the only solution that will forever solve their pain. That is the job of every Christian.
The Jews and the Muslims need Christ. They don’t need our weapons. They don’t need our unprincipled cheerleading. They need Christ. If you are a Christian picking sides as humans kill each other, please remember the horror of what is happening, and stay focussed on what Christians are to stay focused on: Christ.
-Allan Stevo
I don't understand how any Western intellectual, let alone a Christian, can condone bombing (i.e. killing without warning or a chance at repentance); and economically, for those who are not religious, I don't see a way to approve taxpayer money being spent on wholesale murder of people who have nothing to do with the US.
Couldn’t agree more. What I don’t understand is how no one is looking for an off-ramp to the conflict. There will be no winners nor any peace ☮️ coming from this war. This whole conflict is about “economics” - which is the driving force behind most wars. It’s a suckers bet. The only beneficiaries will be the monied elites who are funding the conflict. However, there is a major flaw in their strategy… both sides have nukes. These fools are playing with fire that potentially can consume them. As was noted, the only solution is to turn to Jesus. Pax