Militant

by Pastor Mark Downey

Scripture Reading: Numbers 25:5-13

The question that faces Christendom in general and Identity Christians in particular is: what are you going to do when faced with racial violence?  Because of the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman incident, one pastor recently declared “The race war has begun.”  But, as I’ve said before, the race war of black on White crime has murdered, raped or robbed over a million White victims in the last 30 years.  What I would like to hear declared is that a Holy War has begun and it can begin within our movement, because whether rightly or wrongly portrayed, the Christian Identity movement has been labeled militant and radical.  I would prefer the moniker of ‘zealous’ for the Word of Truth.  A zealous Christian is not someone who is prone to violence, but is no one’s doormat, and discriminates who walks through his door, allowing mud to be tracked into the house.  The current trend of home invasions would be met with the zealous use of a shotgun.  But, it is not just our home that is under attack, but the whole house of Israel.

Everything in the Bible is there for a reason and the story of Phinehas is no fluke or anomaly.  It’s a model for the zealous believer in the God of Israel.

by Pastor Mark Downey

Scripture Reading:  Numbers 13:26-32

Jesus gave His Disciples a lawful command to arm themselves and it was as appropriate then as it is now. The countries they were going in to were wrought with dangers, infested with robbers and wild beasts. There’s nothing new under the sun. Wild beast roam the streets of America and rob people of their valuables. I choose today’s Scripture reading in Numbers as a lesson in how not to stand your ground with the exception of Joshua and Caleb. In fact, when God gave our ancestors the Promised Land, He sent them out to observe the gift He had given them. But, what did they do? They complained about how weak and powerless they were compared to the inhabitants of the land. In other words, they were afraid to stand on the ground that God had given them. As a consequence, they spent the next 40 years in the wilderness and never did enter the land of promise. Did White Christian Americans let the savage Indians stop their westward migration from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans? No, they were familiar with the Bible story and saw the American frontier as their promised land.

The pioneers sold their possessions and bought a covered wagon, with provisions and guns to protect them in their journey to find their plot of God’s green earth to settle and raise their families. The thought that God was setting them up for defeat was the last thing on their minds. The only thing on their minds was the “High praises of God in their mouth and a two edged sword in their hand” (Ps. 149:6).

by Pastor Mark Downey

Scripture reading:  Luke 22:35-38

Trayvon, Trayvoff… Trayvon, Trayvon, Trayvoff. Sung to the tune of the popular TV commercial “clap-on, clap-off.” Now there may be some who think I’m being insensitive and disrespectful to the memory of negro Trayvon Martin of which so much media hype, clamoring and hysteria has taken place in the last few weeks. A Mexican looking guy [I have since learned that he is a Peruvian] shoots and kills a negro. So what’s the big deal? It happens all the time and vice versa i.e. blacks shooting Hispanics. To find out what the big deal is one must probe a little deeper into the motives for what these miserable wretches in the media are trying to accomplish. Jesus knew them well saying, “Woe unto you scribes… you’re the children of them that killed the prophets.”

by Pastor Mark Downey

I should probably clarify the difference between a rebellion and a revolt.  It’s always a revolt when anyone resists the existing establishment – such is the nature of propaganda.  The same idea is conveyed today by calling someone a “terrorist” or “enemy combatant”, which are loophole terms to circumvent the Geneva Convention in the use of torture and most assuredly God’s Law of warfare. 

Rebellion is usually in the sense of an individual and thus a ‘rebel’, whereas a revolt is a collective rejection of authority.  Rebellion suggests treason against lawful authority.  The idiosyncrasy of these terms seems to get blurred when traitors usurp lawful authority and become the establishment.  I Samuel 15:23 uses the word ‘rebellion’ rather than revolt and it likens it to the sin of witchcraft.  The Hebrew word for rebellion means bitterness and is directed against God.  The same passage ends by saying, “Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, He hath also rejected thee from being king.”  It’s not the same thing as ‘resistance to tyranny.’  This begs the question: do we obey God by resisting tyranny?  The American Revolution was fought under the banner of this concept.

by Pastor Mark Downey

I once heard a tax protester say that there needs to be a tax revolt, because taxes are so revolting.  If only Jimmy Durante were around today, he could look in any direction of the political spectrum and say that classic line, “What a revoltin’ development this is.”  Our founding fathers said, “No taxation without representation.”  Did Jesus pay taxes? 

We have an important object lesson in Mt. 17:24-27 where Christ and Peter are in Capernaum and a tax collector comes up to Peter and asked him if his Master pays tribute.  We can deduce from these passages that the annual collection had its origin in the maintenance of the Temple and thus an ecclesiastical tax, but over time had become a civil tax of earthly kings.  This tax was voluntary, but expected to be paid or in modern terms “voluntary compliance’.  Isn’t it strange that they would put people in jail for not volunteering? 

by Pastor Mark Downey

In Charles Dicken’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, a well known classic line stated, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  I’ve been hearing for years that these are trying times and that it’s an exciting time in which we live.  I’m guilty of repeating these clichés, but I don’t find it very exciting when my patience is tried.  Nevertheless, Scripture saith, “Tribulation worketh patience” (Romans 5:3).  So, men and brethren, what shall we do? 

We live in a day and age in which there are some very smart and wise people as well as despicable idiots; the best and the brightest vs. the worst and the dullest.  We live in an era of true believers and also rancid atheists.  It is a winter of freezing blizzards and a summer of scorching drought.  We put all our cards on the table, yet have nothing to wager – nothing to win and nothing to lose.  Millions think they will be raptured off to heaven and millions resign themselves to the pits of hell.