A METHODIST VIEW OF THE RECENT AND ON-GOING PARIS CRISIS!!

PARIS CRISIS - A METHODIST VIEW

Yes, CRISIS (Greek for 'judgement'), the only word for recent events...

Accordingly, never did the UK's religious establishment appear more cowed and inept than in Sunday's 'Songs of Praise'. Apart from the Catholic Cardinal's gasp that the Paris butchery was 'a blasphemy against God', nothing of substance was said. The programme drowned in a sea of pious 'candle-lit' sentimentality and political correctness. The clergymen should have issued calls to repentance, as Christ would have done (see Luke 13: 1-5). In answer to the question, "Where was God?" the Anglican Archbishop should have said, "He was there in judgement." Not to ignore Christ's point that the victims were not worse sinners than the rest of us, the band at the Bataclan theatre was performing satanic songs just as the audience was sprayed with bullets. The Cardinal should also have said that Islam itself is a blasphemy against God and humanity. Inspired by violent jihadism predating the medieval Crusader response, its infidel ideology inspired the atrocity. Furthermore, as faithful Old Testament prophets would say, since God raised up the pagan Babylonians to punish decadent Israel, so - as John Wesley would say (see below) - God is using evil Islam (eventually to be destroyed as the Babylonians were) as the scourge of the decadent West. 

O that we had leaders like John Wesley (probably disowned by today's Methodists), who correctly diagnosed the threat we face while pointing to the only remedy that can save us. READ ON...

WESLEY ON ISLAM

Dr Alan C. Clifford

Throughout his long and effective ministry, John Wesley (1703-91) frequently lamented the damaging impact of nominal Christianity.  Truthless, faithless, loveless and lifeless Christians provide the best excuse for others to reject the claims of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  What Paul said of the Jews has often sadly been true of Christians: 'The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you' (Romans 2: 24).  How often have modern Muslims taunted so-called 'western Christians' for the moral decadence of their affluent and immoral lifestyle! This is not a new or exclusively Muslim criticism either.  Regarding the corruption of the early Eastern Church just before the 7th century rise of Islam, John Wesley remarked that ‘Surely Mahometanism was let loose to reform the Christians!’ (Journal for 5 August 1754).  If God permitted the rise of Islam to bring judgement on corrupt Christian civilization, the current Muslim menace may be viewed in the same way.

Of course, secular prosperity tends to encourage the cancer of religious nominalism and indifference.  Christ's parable of the Rich Fool says it all (see Luke 12: 13-21).  Affluence easily robs believers of spiritual sincerity and vitality, and even morality.  But what has been true of Jews and Christians, is also true of Muslims.  They too have been seduced and 'softened' by the material comforts available in the West and can be just as charming and cultured - and corrupt - as some nominal Christians.  They often distance themselves from the past and present violence of Islam in the same breath as reminding Christians of their equally violent past.  

However, there is a problem.  While the Bible condemns the selfish materialism and persecuting tendencies of Christians (chiefly Roman Catholics but sometimes Protestants too), the Qur'an [Koran] urges physical violence in the name of Allah and the spread of Islam.  While so-called moderate Muslims in the West seem to pose little physical threat to their non-Muslim neighbours, they are not consistent with the profile of a good Muslim according to the Qur'an.  The terrible truth is that what happened in the USA on September 11, 2001 and all subsequent atrocities is fully consistent with Qur'anic teaching.  Thus, the nominally Christian and secularized, sodomized West faces two challenges.  First, the spiritual and moral debilitation of its own decadent and hypocritical Christianity (creating a void which many uninformed and cynical westerners fill with Islam); and second, the full and frightful consequences of Islamic revival and progress, boosted by the 'swarming' migrants to Europe.  Despite the disclaimers of many ‘moderate’ Muslims following the horrors of 9/11, Paris and Mali, John Wesley would remind us today of the true character of Islam.  We ignore his words at our peril:

Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it...have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth; that numberless cities are raised from the foundation, and only their name remaining; that many countries, which were once as the garden of God, are now a desolate wilderness; and that so many once numerous and powerful nations are vanished from the earth!  Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind.

The Doctrine of Original Sin, Works (1841), ix. 205.

How far and wide has this miserable delusion spread over the face of the earth!  Insomuch that [Muslims] are considerably more in number (as six to five) than Christians.  And by all accounts, ... these are also, in general, as utter strangers to all true religion as their four-footed brethren; as void of mercy as lions and tigers; as much given up to brutal lusts as bulls or goats: so that they are in truth a disgrace to human nature.

The General Spread of the Gospel, Works, vi. 261.

These facts dictate that the Islamic religion should be fearlessly and fervently opposed.  John Wesley’s brother Charles even composed a hymn on the subject.  Perhaps not one of his best, and long since deleted from Methodist hymn books, a strong case may be made for its revival.  Its ‘non PC' poetry is refreshingly direct and timelessly true: 

For the Mahometans

Sun of unclouded righteousness,

With healing in thy wings arise,

A sad benighted world to bless,

Which now in sin and error lies,

Wrapt in Egyptian night profound;

With chains of hellish darkness bound.

2  The smoke of the infernal cave,

Which half the Christian world o’er-spread,

Disperse, thou heavenly Light, and save

The souls by that Imposter led,

That Arab thief, as Satan bold,

Who quite destroy’d thy Asian fold.

3  O might the blood of sprinkling cry

For those who spurn the sprinkled blood!

Assert thy glorious Deity,

Stretch out thine arm, thou triune God!

The Unitarian fiend expel,

And chase his doctrine back to hell.

4  Come, Father, Son and Holy Ghost,

Thou Three in One, and One in Three!

Resume thy own, for ages lost,

Finish the dire apostasy;

Thy universal claim maintain,

And Lord of the creation reign! 

Charles Wesley 

Hymns for the People called Methodists (1874), 443

We may well surmise what John Wesley would say about the recent brutal activities of ISIL: it would surely be: "I told you so!"  Doubtless he would add that unless the spineless and spiritless West truly turns to Christ with head and heart, lip and life, talk and walk, then what has happened elsewhere will continue happening.  May the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon us!

Of course, a greater judgement than Islam could ever inflict on the world is coming.  We await the return of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who will judge the world in righteousness.  Then Muslims, merely nominal Christians and others who have rejected Christ as God, Lord and Saviour will tremble in dread and despair.  Still, in this eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute, mercy is available for everyone - including penitent Muslims, as John Wesley eloquently reminds us:

He willeth not that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance; by repentance, to faith in a bleeding Lord; by faith, to spotless love, to the full image of God renewed in the heart, and producing all holiness of conversation.  Can you doubt this, when you remember, the Judge of all is likewise the Saviour of all?  Hath he not bought you with his own blood, that ye might not perish, but have everlasting life?  O make proof of his mercy, rather than his justice; of his love, rather than the thunder of his power!  He is not far from every one of us; and he is now come, not to condemn, but to save the world.  He standeth in the midst!  Sinner, doth he not now, even now, knock at the door of thy heart?  O that thou mayest know, at least in this thy day, the things that belong unto thy peace!  O that ye may now give yourselves to Him who gave himself for you, in humble faith, in holy, active, patient love!  So shall ye rejoice with exceeding joy in his day, when he cometh in the clouds of heaven.

The Great Assize, Works, v. 173.

Dr Alan C. Clifford

NORWICH REFORMED CHURCH

www.nrchurch.co.nr