Rap, rap, rap, rap.
Something about the urgency and the firmness of the knocks on your front door tell you that whoever is standing out there needs help. Even though your digital clock gleams 1:38 a.m., you are immediately out of bed and the adrenalin flow sweeps the drowsiness from your mind.
Rap, rap, rap, rap.
Whoever is standing outside means business! Not a trace of hesitancy in those knocks!
You open the door to find the young lady from three houses down the street standing there with an anguished look in her eyes. “Oh, I am sorry to bother you in the middle of the night. But will you please help me …”
Her story spills out. Here in the Guangxi region of China, government officials have been putting the pressure on to enforce the one-child limit. She has already had two children and paid several fines, and is now expecting the third. And just this evening a friend who works in the enforcement department has dropped in after dark to secretly inform her that tomorrow they plan to take her for a forced abortion if she doesn’t volunteer to do it herself.
Now she is at your door asking for refuge. You know that helping to hide her is against the law.

A few Quakers and Mennonites framed this first public antislavery statement in North America, in 1688. It was a statement that clashed with the kingdoms of this world.

Would you, as a disciple of Jesus, help her? Even if it was illegal to help her?

A confrontation of values

It is a clash of kingdoms. No, our war does not involve guns and ballistic missiles. This war is a collision of values and virtues. God said, “Go forth and multiply and fill the earth,” and no murderer shall be a part of heaven. The opposing kingdom says, “We are fearful of overpopulation. You will kill your baby or we will kill it for you.”
And the battle is on. Christ’s kingdom against the kingdoms of this world. Christ’s righteousness against the self-righteousness of those who choose their own standard of right and wrong instead of submitting to the righteousness He has spelled out in His teachings.
As citizens of Christ’s kingdom, Christians are caught up in the clash with the values of earthly kingdoms in many fronts. One continuing thorny issue with the kingdoms of this world has been of self-defense and war. Jesus’ ethic is to overcome evil with good. The kingdoms of this world try to quell evil with punishment and revenge. A very recent example of this is the revenge killing of Osama bin Laden. Jesus’ method of conquering Osama would have been to win his heart by love, changing it from strife and warfare to one of peace and love. The kingdoms of this world “triumphed” over the hatred of Osama with a revenge killing.
But sad to say, it is very likely that the revenge will be revenged, and the hatred will be perpetuated. Hatred does not conquer hatred. Only love conquers hatred.

The clash in history

An example of a historical clash of kingdoms occurred when Europeans kidnapped (or bought kidnapped) Africans and shipped them to various parts of the world as slaves. Such morally twisted values can never be accepted by disciples of Jesus, and some of these disciples began to speak up. In 1688, the first antislavery statement in what would later become the United States of America was issued. A group of Mennonite/Quakers near Philadelphia wrote a letter addressed to other Quakers, reproving them for accepting slavery. The following is a portion of the letter, set in modern English:

These are the reasons why we are against the traffic of humans: Is there anyone that would like to be sold or made a slave for all of his life? Read the rest of this entry »

Sword or pen?

You see two men, armed to the teeth, warring for righteousness.
One is looking left, the other right (on purpose, for the composite I made).
They are real historical figures, etched as a relief in stone.
On the left is John, on the right is Peter.  No, they are not John and Peter the apostles.
They are men you likely never heard of- John Zizca and Peter Chelcicky.
John and Peter hailed from medieval times, in the early days of the 1400s.  Both of these Bohemians-now called the Czech Republic-had a zeal for God, and a desire that the church of Jesus recover from the Roman Catholic apostasy.
John picked up his sword to defend against the Catholic crusaders.  Peter picked up his pen.
See the above picture.
One-eyed John Zizca was a formidable man to war against.  Five times he and his peasant warriors repelled Catholic crusaders who had come to squelch the “heresy” that Read the rest of this entry »

Now, then, “strive to enter in at the strait gate,” being penetrated with the deepest sense of the inexpressible danger your soul is in, so long as you are in a broad way, — so long as you are void of poverty of spirit, and all that inward religion, which the many, the rich, the wise, account madness. “Strive to enter in;” being pierced with sorrow and shame for having so long run on with the unthinking crowd, utterly neglecting, if not despising, that “holiness without which no man can see the Lord.”
Strive, as in an agony of holy fear, lest “a promise being made you of entering into his rest,” even that “rest which remaineth for the people of God,” you should nevertheless “come short of it.” Strive, in all the fervour of desire, with “groanings which cannot be uttered. Strive by prayer without ceasing; at all times, in all places, lifting up your heart to God, and giving him no rest, till you “awake up after his likeness” and are “satisfied with it.”
To conclude. “Strive to enter in at the strait gate,” not only by this agony of soul, of conviction, of sorrow, of shame, of desire, of fear, of unceasing prayer; but likewise by ordering thy conversation aright, by walking with all thy strength in all the ways of God, the way of innocence, of piety, and of mercy.
Abstain from all appearance of evil: Do all possible good to all men: Deny thyself, thy own will, in all things, and take up thy cross daily. Be ready to cut off thy right hand, to pluck out thy right eye and cast it from thee; to suffer the loss of goods, friends, health, all things on earth, so thou mayst enter into the kingdom of heaven!
Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount- John Wesley