The True Message of the Torah and the New Testament - Love of Almighty God

Submitted by M. Tovey (United States), Dec 15, 2010 at 11:04

While we have had some time to digest each other's perspective on the issue of 'puritanical' influences on old time American politics, in the meantime we have a more contemporary dilemma to focus on as it pertains to religious influences on politics closer to your home. See the story:

"Dec. 15 -- Suicide bombers attacked worshippers at a mosque today in southeastern Iran, killing at least 38 on the eve of a mourning holiday marked by Shiites around the world.

Today's twin bombings took place at the Imam Hussein Mosque in the port city of Chahbahar, near the Pakistani border. The director of the morgue, Fariborz Ayati, told the state news agency IRNA that 38 bodies have been delivered there and that "a number" of women and children were among them. More than 100 people were wounded, IRNA said.

While no one has claimed responsibility for today's attacks, the area is home to a Sunni Muslim militant group that's used multiple suicide bombers to attack Shiites in the past. The group, Jundallah, or "Soldiers of God" in Farsi, says it's avenging alleged discrimination against Iran's Sunni minority. Last month, the U.S. officially listed Jundallah as a terrorist group.

Ashoura is one of the most important festivals in Shiite Islam, mourning the death of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson Hussein, whom Shiites consider his rightful successor. Believers mark a 10-day period leading up to the holiday by attending mosques and sometimes engaging in self-flagellation -- beating themselves with chains or spiked whips during mourning parades. Today's attack hit worshippers attending services on the holiday's eve.

Hussein is believed to have been killed in Karbala, Iraq, in the late seventh century. His grave, upon which one of Iraq's grandest shrines is built, draws millions of pilgrims on Ashoura each year. Across the Islamic world, thousands of other Shiite mosques and shrines are named after Hussein, including the one bombed today.

Suicide bombings are relatively rare in Iran compared with neighboring Iraq or Pakistan, but the country has suffered an increasing number of such attacks in the past year. Last July, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at another Shiite mosque in the same province, killing at least 28 people. Jundallah claimed responsibility for that attack."

Now what derivative of religious thought are we to take from this latest of many episodes of religious intolerance? This has absolutely NOTHING to do with American influences, and yet it does speak to the same mindset you allude to, that of a religious adherence to the exclusion of other beliefs. Just as the false application of religious practices were deemed a cause of misconduct regarding indigenous peoples in territorial America, so too we find in this Iranian narrative that no one is pursuing the love of Almighty God and faith in Jesus Christ for the common love of the brotherhood of mankind.

If we do not seek the peace of Almighty God through His love as demonstrated by Jesus Christ, then these crimes of religious expression will continue until Almighty God finally says enough. And neither America on this side of the world nor the Asian influences raging against Christianity will be able to survive the unbelief and the judgment that follows; and only the Holiness of Almighty God and the purity of His love will survive. It is in that love this believer wants to be found and that is what is being missed by those who mistakenly try to take Christianity to task in unbelief.

Read the Christmas story in the Gospel of Luke and understand that is it the LOVE of Almighty God that desires to embrace humanity by His sending Jesus Christ to redeem mankind. Judgment only comes when that love is rejected. But ask yourself this: why would anybody knowingly reject the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ over the misunderstanding of Christianity by unbelievers? Only Almighty God knows the answer to that; and the question should be asked of Him by any who would want to know the truth.

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