Without the Law of Apostasy, Islam Wouldn't Have Survived

 Raymond Ibrahim is a Christian scholar of Islam.  One of his books which is written with the average person in mind is The Sword and the Scimitar, which tells the true history of Islam from original sources. Some have theorized that Islam arose because of the divide between those who believed that Christ was divine, and those who thought he was just a great man. But understand that those who thought he was a great man only are doing the work of the devil. Orthodox Christianity believes that he was true man AND true God. This belief is supported in the Bible, but it is not the topic today.

Instead, I want to write about a YouTube video of Raymond Ibrahim talking with Winston Marshall. The YouTube video is part of a longer interview that you can find on YouTube as well. But it takes over an hour to watch the whole thing. Twenty seconds into this 13 minute segment, Ibrahim discusses the death of Muhammed and the second generation of Islamic leaders. The important thing to note is that war was waged against breakaway groups of Arabs for apostasy. Note what Ibrahim says: "Muslim clerics will tell you that without the law of apostasy, which is that you kill anyone who tries to leave Islam, Islam would have died out." Let that sink in. The only way Islam can survive is by intimidating and killing anyone who tries to leave. It reminds of the Left, where countries ruled by the Communists kill anyone who tries to leave. Hmmm. I wonder if there is a common thread there.

Gentle readers will want to watch the whole video because what you hear is typically the opposite of what really happened. In light of this history, the crusades make perfect sense, at least from the perspective of secular rulers whose land is being overrun by Muslims. But of course God does not need defending. In any case, He doesn't live in church buildings, nor is He tied to any one land. Rather, He is present wherever one or two are gathered in His name.

Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son who asks for his inheritance now. In the story, the prodigal son is the apostate and the father is God. The father gives it to his son, who goes off and wastes it on wine, women and song. Eventually, in a lucid moment, as he has become a swine herder, he realizes that his father's servants have it better off than he does. He thinks to himself that he will throw himself on his father's mercy and appeal to his father to become his servant. To make a long story shorter, the father had a great party to celebrate his son, who was lost and now is found. This is how the Christian God treats the apostate person. Islam's "god" kills them. I would rather throw myself on the mercy of Christ than to be at the mercy of Islam's "god."

The Left Is Doing the Work of the Devil

 Ted Noel has an article today at the American Thinker that is quite explicit in telling the truth about the unseen realm and its influence on the material world around us, entitled Evil Is Real And Has Embedded Itself In the American Left. I was especially happy to note that Noel cites Michael Heiser's Supernatural. One can read the Bible from cover to cover, as I do each year, but without some guidance, such as Michael Heiser, there are parts you will not understand. The people for whom the Bible was originally written knew this background material and had this worldview. We do not and need additional help. But once it is explained, you can read it with more understanding, and it really does make sense. Of course, to truly makes sense, one needs to read it with the eyes of faith.

Noel begins by noting that a number of people seem to be throwing around the term "evil" with reference to Charlie Kirk's murder without understanding what evil really is. Many may be, for all I know. I have not tossed it out lightly, but I haven't defined it either. It seemed obvious, but maybe not be so.

With the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the word “evil” is being tossed around. It seems to be little more than a verbal equivalent to “fascist,” “racist,” and a handful of other words that are used without a second thought for what they actually mean. We are appropriately repulsed by the act, so we call it evil. But few of us truly understand that these “horrific” acts have a fundamental connection to the realm we cannot see. Yes, I’m going to discuss theology, because there is no other proper explanation for the acts of the assassin and any co-conspirators. Argue all you want, but it is the truth, and the truth remains the truth, whether you agree or not.

...snip...

If you steal my stuff, I’ll get upset. But it’s the state statute that makes it criminal, and that law was created by a legislative body that has the right to make laws governing our behavior. It has the higher authority required for law-making. The law against theft echoes “Thou shalt not steal” from the Ten Commandments for a good reason. Good laws follow God’s moral commandments.

Good and evil are actually descriptions of loyalty to God or rebellion against God. It’s just that simple, and evil’s as old as creation. We all know the story of the snake in the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The “shining one” (literal Hebrew) tempted Adam and Eve, and the rest is history. But this doesn’t tell us the back story. (Bible geeks can read Ezekiel 28:1-19 and Isaiah 14:1-20. Just don’t let theologians tell you those are just metaphorical. They’re real.)

Noel, better than I have, makes the point that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, YHWH is real, the Devil is real, the unseen realm is real. The war that goes on in the unseen realm has become obvious to us in the material world.

“Evil,” in the simplest public sense, is service to fallen elohim. They operate to destroy, while YHWH creates and enhances. Every left-wing politician, commentator, and useful idiot is in open rebellion against YHWH, and thus in league with the fallen elohim. They ridicule the two divinely created genders. Christian values are belittled as repressive. Simply failing to bow to the evil ones is an “aggression.” Free speech that disagrees is “violence.”

Many are coming to realize that the Left has fully sold out to evil. The sequence is simple. Some of God’s celestial created beings rebelled. They were given a chance to straighten up and fly right, but instead subverted the humans they were tasked with protecting. YHWH declared their death sentence if they did not repent, but they doubled down. Huge numbers of gullible people have followed their lead, not recognizing that that choice is the source of their troubles.

Peace and fulfillment are good and come from serving YHWH, not the fallen gods. The war has now broken out into the open. The only real question is in the details, but the outcome is certain. As my wife’s license plate frame says, “I know the future. God wins.” Our allegiance will determine our ultimate fate.

Please read Ted Noel's article. The late Michael Heiser can be found at a number of places on Youtube. Additionally you can read an excellent book by Heiser called The Unseen Realm which explains much of what Noel writes. Even if you don't believe, it is good to know this understanding of Christianity.

The Left Will Not Stop, You Must Understand

Mike McDaniel has an important reminder for normal Americans in a post at the American Thinker today entitled After Charlie Kirk's murder, what now?. That reminder we'll get to in a moment, but I wanted to bring you along, as McDaniel does, rather than just blurt it out.

Who could have imagined one day we’d be saying: “I think murder is a bad thing. What’s your opinion?”

The Ten Commandments tell us we shall not kill, but the correct translation is “murder.” It’s a distinction the Bible makes abundantly clear. Killing is sometimes justified; murder is not. The Left rejects God and God’s Word, and every bit of necessary behavior, every bit of morality that flows from it, while simultaneously thinking themselves morally and intellectually superior.

When vile, drugged felons are killed in self-defense, or commit suicide by cop, they become instant unholy social justice martyrs—so long as there is political advantage in their faux canonization. The ascension of such demons as Michael Brown and George Floyd is celebrated by rioting looting, arson, assault and murder, which fuels the further degradation of civilized society.

When a Godly man like Charlie Kirk is assassinated, no one elevates him to sainthood. They mourn a life well lived, a man worthy of emulation, a man who accomplished much in a short life. The mourning is brief because people of faith know there is more than this life, and they celebrate that such a man lived. There is no rioting, no looting, no one is harmed. There are prayers. memorials and candlelight vigils, which leftists mock and try to disrupt.

Normal Americans and radical Leftists are not the same. Not even remotely. Oh, the left often imitates normal behavior, but they are not normal. In the strictest sense, they are not possessed by demons, but they are often in thrall to demons because they get what they most desire by being willing to do the demon's work. And what is the demon's work? Undoing the good that God has created.

There is embedded in McDaniel's piece a X post by one Kevin Bass that explains what McDaniel is saying very succinctly. I don't know Kevin Bass, but what he says rings true based on what others who were leftists and have left that world behind have also said: the Left will never stop until it achieves victory. The only two options are to be crushed or to crush them. Got that? To live in peace we must defeat them. But since someone will always find the devil's ways advantageous, we must always be vigilant and ready to crush them.

Make no mistake, this is a war of good versus evil on this plane of existence. But there is another plane, a spiritual one which once you get a glimpse of it, you can't unsee it. I think this is what St. Paul meant in 1 Corinthians 13:12 "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." The battle rages there as well.  As soldiers in God's army, we cannot fight as they fight, but must fight as He would have us fight:

Some argue now that Republicans are—barely—in power, it’s necessary to weaponize the DOJ against Leftists, to abuse power and treat them like they treated us. To so crush them they’ll beg for mercy and promise never to misbehave again if we’ll only stop doing to them what they did to us.

They’re not like us; they glory in that.

What we must do is fully restore the rule of law, which eschews tribalism, which demands individual responsibility, which treats everyone as equal under the law and guarantees individual liberties, the liberties the Left gleeful revoked under Biden’s Handlers.

Letitia James isn’t being prosecuted because she badly abused the law to get Donald Trump, but because there is compelling evidence she broke the law, and that’s something a state Attorney General can’t do. The same is true of Lisa Cook and Adam Schiff, because members of the Federal Reserve and Senate can’t break the law either. They’re our hired hands, not our rulers. It’s not political retribution, but the equal application of justice from which leftists thought they were immune.

Normal Americans need only keep their hard-earned understanding in mind as they keep a much closer eye on America’s domestic enemies, because they know Bass is right. When Leftists demand Normal Americans refrain from doing to them what they did to Normal Americans they’re admitting their sins and their never-ending intentions.

Again, I urge gentle readers to go read McDaniel's post.

The Truth About Guns

 Michael C. Hurley has an article at the American Thinker today, entitled The Gun Control Canard. Hurley is an attorney, and in some ways his writing reminds me of another attorney and writer on the Second Amendment named Jeff Snyder, who wrote A Nation of Cowards. That book is long out of print, and I have lost my copy of it. But I remember reading it and thinking that Snyder made the best case for the Second Amendment that I could remember.

I often present arguments from a Christian and religious worldview because...well...I am a Christian. (Not a very good Christian, mind you.  None of us are.  I like to think of Church as being a sinners' anonymous club.)  But Hurley presents the same arguments from a rational and a more neutral perspective, and it is equally compelling:

Facebook can be a place where silly people say silly things, and I have at times been one of them. But after the recent “transgender” shooting at Annunciation School in Minneapolis, in a moment of gravity I decided to post something obvious to me that seemed less obvious to others: that a boy who thinks he is a girl—or a horse or a dog or a cat or anything else that he is not—is unwell. It may be just a phase that, with time and maturity, he will outgrow. But this delusion, if it persists, does not cease to be a delusion. It becomes something evil and malign, which, if fostered and encouraged, will grow to greater evil and malignancy. For this reason, I contended, we should no more “affirm” or celebrate mental illness in the form of gender dysphoria than we would tell a young girl suffering from anorexia, “yes, you really are fat and need to lose more weight.”

You see what I mean. You wouldn't advice a girl with anorexia to lose more weight. So why do we think we should tell the delusional person that thinks they were "born in the wrong body" that they in fact were? The Left is clearly playing us, and we should acknowledge the Left's deceit and seek help for a loved one who is delusional. Going along with the gag is proving that you don't really care about that person.

Voices on the left are wont to show that America has the highest rate of gun-ownership and one of the highest rates of gun-related homicides of any country in the world. Their notion is that one is the cause of the other, which is rather much in doubt.

First, some perspective: If you have traveled anywhere overseas, you know that America has more of everything, and not just guns. We have more varieties of peanut butter than anyone, more supermarkets than anyone, and more cars full of more people at the supermarkets buying more peanut butter than anyone. That’s just unbridled capitalism, and America does capitalism better than anybody. If you’re an American company selling fishing rods, fly swatters, window treatments, or shotguns, your mission is to make more of them, and sell more of them, and do it faster and better than anybody. That’s what Henry Ford taught us. That’s the American Way. It’s why we’re (still) the biggest economy on the planet, and it’s also why we have the most TVs and the most guns. But it’s not the reason why we have more gun crime.

Just as Charlie Kirk was shot, he was answering a question about what percentage of mass shootings have involved transgender shooters, the questioner’s intended point presumably being that the percentage is rather low. To this question, Charlie was heard to ask, “counting or not counting gang violence?” Charlie’s life ended with those words, and that is the very place where we should begin the present debate about gun control.

America’s gun crime is not a problem of Cousin Jerry taking his deer rifle down to shoot up the local Piggly Wiggly. Our high rate of gun violence is greatly skewed by the rate of inner-city gang violence. These casualties arise mostly from turf-wars among gangs selling narcotics and using unregistered or stolen guns, which is to say they would be completely unaffected by any law or “good citizen” program to register or confiscate firearms. Anyone convinced of the power of gun-control laws to stop gun crime should ask whether laws against possession of narcotics have stopped the influx of illegal drugs over the last sixty years.

The best way to reduce gang-related gun crime is to imprison the gangbangers, which big-city Democrat mayors have long refused to do because of the racial optics involved, and which President Trump is now attempting to do over the howling objections of many on the left because of the racial optics involved. But as Charlie Kirk surely knew, once the rate of gun crime in America is corrected for gang-related violence, the overall incidence of mass shootings becomes less remarkable and the relative number of transgender shooters somewhat more remarkable in turn.

Putting gangbangers in prison, for the most part black and Hispanic gang members, may seem to be racially motivated, but of course it isn't. They cause most of the crime. The defense of doing so is that the gangbangers largely prey on hard working black and Hispanic communities. These people are often silent, but they deserve to live free of crime. But so long as big city mayors tolerate gangbangers in their city, the citizens who are preyed upon must be allowed to defend themselves.

We might once have thought that the need to arm oneself against the government was a relic of colonial history, but consider how different the history of the 20th century would have been had the Nazis encountered a cocked and loaded gun behind the door of every Jewish home. And no less needed today are weapons to defend ourselves when the government refuses to act, as we saw during the “Summer of Love” following the death of George Floyd, when police departments across the country were inexplicably defunded and ordered to stand down in the false name of “racial equity.”

Gentle readers are urged to go read Hurley's article. We need more writers like him on our side.

Losing Our Humanity and Soul

 Yesterday evening, Susan Quinn had a post at the American Thinker, with which I mostly agree. The title of the post is Let's not lose our humanity. In other words, while we may decry the murder of Charlie Kirk, we should not devolve into demonizing our enemies (for so they have declared themselves) nor return evil for evil.

I agree with Quinn right up to the point where she says we should hate the sin, not the sinner. This is nowhere in the Bible, though it is one interpretation of Jesus' preaching in the Gospels. There is such a thing as righteous hatred, and in Psalms 5, David captures it:

4 For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness,

Nor shall evil dwell with You.

5 The boastful shall not stand in Your sight;

You hate all workers of iniquity.

6 You shall destroy those who speak falsehood;

The Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.

As faithful Christians, we should hate what our God hates. And because we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we should hate ourselves as well. But through Christ's death and resurrection, we can confess our sins and God will forgive us. Next, what should we do about Charlie Kirk's murder and the rest of the fetid pile of deceit and unreality the Left has rammed down our throats? First, of course, we should pray for our enemies.  Not of course that good things should come to them.  They have put themselves in the outer reaches of hell.  No, but we should ask the Lord to turn their hearts away from harming us. Christ instructed us to bring our concerns before Him. We should do so and not worry about how we sound. Theologians can make up pretty sounding prayers.  We should say what is on our minds.  This is private, between us and Him. We must recognize though that He may have a purpose we don't understand yet, so we just keep praying. Prayer is powerful, and it is a privilege we get to do because we are children of God.

We should use the law where applicable to restrain our enemies (for so they have declared themselves). This is beginning to happen, as those who knew about it, or those who helped the assassin carry it out are being investigated. We can hope that some of them will be charged with being complicit in Kirk's murder. And those who celebrated his murder are being fired or otherwise dealt with as well. NGOs and foundations who are funders of violence and mayhem should as well be charged as accomplices in the crimes of the left. We should keep it up. After all, murder, assassination, violence and intimidation are never right. Persuasion is the only way.

Finally, we need to recognize that our enemies (for so they have declared themselves) are at least delusional, and at worst violent and insane. We need to protect ourselves and our loved ones from attack.  That means carrying the means of protecting ourselves wherever we go, for one never knows where it may happen.  We should train or selves and teach our children situational awareness. We should also pray that we never have to use our weapons while being prepared to use them for self-defense at a moment's notice. Our God is not a pacifist and doesn't expect us to be either.

I liken our righteous anger and hatred not to passionate raging fire, but to ice cold fury. We demand that our government wield the sword of justice fairly and righteously. While cosmic justice awaits the return of Christ, we can and should approximate it as much as possible. Please read Susan Quinn's essay and of course the comments as well.

Righteous Hatred

 Following up on the Charlie Kirk assassination, J. R. Dunn has a post at the American Thinker entitled In praise of divisiveness in which he figuratively slaps the faces of those conservatives who say we need to reach out. Dunn says we should do no such thing, and he is correct.

The left-wing response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk is appalling, but it’s only to be expected, coming from a network of thugs, psychopaths, and their enablers.

But even more infuriating is the knee-jerk response of many in the conservative community. I’m talking about all the rhetoric concerning “divisiveness,” and “we have to reach out,” and “we need to put our differences aside and work together,” and so forth.

I won’t name names here. That’s beside the point. And in any case, the answer is as simple as it gets: No.

We do not need to “get together.” We do not need to “reach out.” We do not need “unity,” or any of the other marshmallow-soft euphemism for surrender and cowardice.

We reject all that for the simple reason that to accept it would be moral suicide.

In Psalm 5 we learn that God hates those who commit iniquity. We should also hate those who commit iniquity. Does that mean conservatives should deliver tit for tat? No, of course not. We can not become them. We can not harden our hearts. Instead, we must use the law to ruthlessly prosecute these thugs, psychopaths and their enablers. At the same time, we cannot cede any ground to them. For what have we to do with them? Does God cede any part of His kingdom to the Devil? We should imitate our LORD and savior who hates unrepentant sinners.

By their fruits ye shall know them. Among those fruits is what they do to kids:

They murder them while they’re still in the womb – and, in point of fact, after they’ve left the womb, if the abortionist messes up, after which they’re taken to an isolated room and left to die alone. They allow them to brought into the country by criminal gangs and then trafficked as peon labor, welfare profit points, and sex toys. Some of them are killed in the process, but we’re not supposed to discuss that. They drug and mutilate thousands of children after convincing them that they’re the wrong sex, all in hopes of validating a severe neurosis as a “sexual preference.”

That’s just the children. Add in how they victimize adults, and it becomes too much to bear. And yet we’re supposed to bond with, connect to, associate with this human garbage, in order to do what?

To make things better? How is that possible? How can anything good come out of collaboration with evil of this magnitude? You cannot associate with evil without being corrupted yourself. And anyone who advises this as the proper course of action has already been corrupted.

But, you say, you don't want to see people in prison for ideology. But focus here. They have not just expressed ideology, as repulsive as that is. They have taken it to the extreme of murder. But, you say, doesn't God forgive? Well, yes, if a person confesses his sins and truly repents. It has happened. For example, Bella Dodd repented of the Communist Party and her participation in it and became a Roman Catholic. Whittacker Chambers at least repented of Communism and testified before Congress.  I do not know about his religious beliefs, though. And in more recent times, David Horowitz renounced his upbringing as a Red Diaper Baby to found Frontpage Magazine.

So, yes, God forgives people who repent and have a contrite heart. And we should too. But the left has no intentions of repenting. When they commit violence, vandalize, burn, loot and other forms of uncivil behavior, they need to be punished. These are not legitimate forms of protest, they are violent acts intended to intimidate us.  Be strong in the face of intimidation and deliver righteous hatred to them.

Where were you on 9/11

 I have been following news of the Charlie Kirk assassination and the hunt for his killer, but I have not forgotten that this is the anniversary of September 11, 2001.  Sultan Knish, AKA Daniel Greenfield a great piece entitled It's Not Over in which he advises that the war on America and the West, which the Muslims have thrust on us, is not over. Indeed, while Greenfield doesn't say so, it will not be over so long as people are on this earth. For the battle is not just here, on the earthly plain, but it is also on the heavenly plain.

Greenfield asks where were you? For myself, I was at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. I was in my cubicle at the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, when an analyst went by saying the Twin Towers had been hit by a plane. I rushed down the hall to watch it on the television in the Milcon office. The second plane hit, and I knew this was not an accident; that someone had planned it.

I remember when the plane came crashing into the Pentagon, and I went up on the top floor of the parking structure to see the smoke rising across the river. It was a terrible day. The loss of life was tremendous.  I don't think I had ever thought about the need for a carry permit before, but I certainly began thinking about it then. Later that month, Mrs. PolyKahr and I were on a field trip and discussed getting our permits, which we subsequently did.

Frankly, the world has not gotten any more peaceful in the last 24 years. Carrying is a burden, both physical and mental, but it seems worth it to me to be prepared. A gun is just a tool, like your keys, your phone, your wallet and credit cards and cash.  Learn it, carry it, and pray you never have to use it.