and will twist the scriptures in order to use their events to justify war no matter how many men, women, and children it murders – in shot, to justify reigning with blood and horror upon the Earth. Such Satanic ideas have long been the daily bread of the Natural Man. But when one studies the actual teachings of the scriptures (as opposed to simply assuming that because a “good” person did something then it must be right) and listens to the teachings of the Prophets of God we find that their teachings are the exact opposite. Repeatedly they teach that war is evil, that we do not need violence because God will protect us, and command us to renounce war in all its forms and justifications in order to live the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This LDS Classic from President Joseph F. Smith preaches these exact truths.
Tag: just war lies
Nonviolence In Christianity And The Apostasy From Peace: The Complete Series
In the series of articles gathered herein I accomplished three things.
First, I demonstrated the historic fact of Christian nonviolence by examining the writings of a variety of Christian leaders over a period of 300 years. In all that time not a single Christian leader whose works have survived ever taught anything other than the complete renunciation of violence and war as a central tenet of Christianity, a commandment given by Jesus Christ.
Secondly, for my Latter-day Saint readers I showed similar teachings as taught in our modern beliefs and church leaders. The teaching of early Christian leaders on this subject are not simply applicable to our lives today, they directly relate to what we believe in such a way that our modern teaching echo and are elucidated by these ancient writings.
Thirdly, and finally, I wrote a short explanation of the loss of the truths as Christianity, in a moment of Great Apostasy, abandoned centuries of Christian truth and teaching in order to construct a false and heretical doctrine that would justify the pursuit of power, prestige, and wealth by those who claimed to be Christian but who were in fact heretics and apostates corrupting Christianity into a tool of the state.
If we hope to use the full power of Christianity to help solve the problems of the world we must reject the foundation upon which all injustice is based, violence, and return to truths that made Christianity so powerful to start with, Christ-like love, service, forgiveness, and peace.
The Ten Basic Principles of War Propaganda
While most people are familiar with the concept of propaganda, they actually have a very limited understanding of just what propaganda is and how it works. If pushed to provide an example they might talk about World War I posters or something akin to them, maybe even the idea that governments might lie to people. But very few have the ability to recognize what propaganda is, what makes it effective, and how it is used to manipulate them into doing what those in power want the masses to do. This article aims to correct this limitation by providing a tool that people can use to analyze the claims and actions of the State and recognize when it is using propaganda to try and mislead or exploit the people. In this article I outline ten basic principles of propaganda, explain each element, and provide examples of them in action both historically and currently. Then, recognizing when they’re being manipulated by those in power the reader will be able to resist such exploitation, refute the lies of those in power, be able to defend their liberties from the warmongers, and able to cause positive change in the world to truly establish peace for everyone living in it.
The Apostasy From Peace
Having just spent the last month demonstrating the historical fact that Christians practiced a form of what we would today call nonviolence, rejected being in the military, and taught the importance of loyalty to the universal church of Christ over and beyond all worldly political authorities and powers all as part of fulfilling Christ’s commandments to love and serve our enemies and to do nothing but good, even to those who evil to us, we are still left with a singular, important question.
What happened?
How did we get from that to where we are today? How did we get from a faith focused on self-sacrifice, love, and service to one that justifies violence, war, and subservience to the powers of the world in all their evils? How did we go form Christians being literally kicked out of church for joining the military to Christians treating the military as some sort of sacred calling?
This article not only explains how this occurred, but also how this process robbed Christianity of one of its most radically Christ-like and powerful truths and how reclaiming that truth is essential to transforming the Earth and establishing the Zion of Christ.