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It is of course disparate. Naturally Ambon is Jerusalem, nor is the TV Picture, I Know what you did Last Summer in the same field as the United Nations, or the World Conscience (such as it is).

Their lack of identity however is the very reason for their companionability, as we shall see.

In Ambon, while the UN is vainly appealed to for help, lest not only the 3000 people reportedly killed in the Moluccas since January 1999, but the 100,000 reputed Christians in Ambon be murdered as well, whatever may be their real position relative to the Lord. They ARE people. They are NOT Muslim. There appear to be those who think that if this is to be so, then they must much better be dead. It is a strange philosophy, that of the modernised scimitar.

Thus we read that Jihad troops "have forced large numbers of Christians to leave their homes and take up residence on a tiny portion of Ambon island in the region of Paso. "

This would not seem very commodious. Then,

• "Muslim troops are attempting to isolate the enclave by overtaking an airport near the town of Laha. If successful, they likely will begin a final push on Ambon City to drive all Christians from the island... Witnesses to these attacks have reported that the jihad forces have met little to no resistance from local police forces or government troops stationed on the island.... In fact, the Indonesian government has confirmed that troops and police have actually taken part in several attacks against civilians... The Christian community places little faith in the remaining Indonesian military or local police to provide any protection from the Muslim  militants... Christian survivors have reported that military units have openly taken part in attacks on Christian villages."

The UN has been appealed to for peace-keepers or ships to remove the afflicted from the island (before death does).

So does the merciful Allah have his way, for a time, as in Iran for so long, and with such distinction, in the liberalities of liberty in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Afghanistan (see  Benevolent Brightness or Brothy Bane 82, p. 206 , with Scoop of the Universe 42) and Algeria. If they are not Muslim, the furore of the intemperate is this: Rid them from the earth, or at the very least, the earth from them! To be sure, there are more mellow Moslem voices, but the religion follows its undoubted rules as often shown on this site (cf. SMR 50-53, 91, 829-831, 986-994, 1080-1082 and see Indexes, Moslem). It is true that judgment will eventually overtake all, except the determinate mercy in the Lord Jesus Christ is to be found, but that is NOT the same as the USE of violence to seek to INDUCE 'faith' which, when so forced,  is merely an insult to God, a depravity for man and an insolence against truth (cf. SMR pp. 65ff., 912ff., 978ff., 986ff., and 1186Aff.).
 
 

But where does it start - this  violence ? It is in the human heart, ably assisted by Satan in multitudinous instances. As Jesus declared:

" 'There is nothing which enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man... Are you thus without understanding also ? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not enter his heart  but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods?' And He said, 'What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come form within and defile a man' " - from Mark 7:15-23.

As for Satan, consider Revelation 12:7-12,15. Knowing that "his time is short" and maddened with his own inability to rule heaven, he contributes very ably indeed to the persecution of Christians and to the deceitfulness of violence even in angelic clothes as a taskmaster (II Cor. 11:4,13ff.). 'Another Jesus' such as the Moslem invention, is a speciality, and roughhousing can reach to the levels of atrocity, indeed on the part of other creators of other Jesuses, such as Rome (see SMR pp. 986ff., 912ff., 924ff.). After all, if the truth does not support you, and you MUST have whatever it is, such as this world that you want, then violence does occur to many as the way! and they use it.

But what of the film, "I Know what you did Last Summer", in our heading ? Alas, it is all very sad. Here were some young people, equipped with force (a car and active bodies) who driving back from a celebration, and looking forward to impending College education, the fitting fulfilment of the family professional intentions in due course, strike a man in the night as they are driving home. The impact of the car seemed to have killed him, and the mingled certainty of one of the girls that of COURSE the doctor/police should be called, and of another with more sensitive feeling, is in line with the extreme reluctance, not to say repugnance of another lad, who is appalled at the driving force of the fourth. HE ? He wants to get rid of the evidence. He has been drinking. There is liquor aboard. WHO will believe that a sober person was driving ? Was not the man perhaps a lunatic ? Fancy walking at night so blithely across a highway by the coast! Perhaps they would be doing the ... world a service if they removed him. After all, he WAS dead, so ...
 

Slowly his vehemence and ferocity of survival kit desire is thrust, in one case with some physical violence against one of the girls, to intimidate; and it moves into their hearts. Soon as a friend comes around the corner in another vehicle from the celebrations, there is haste to consider. The man is removed from sight. In due course he is tossed into the ocean. But this, it is not without a sudden movement just as fear, tension and guilt are moving into their hearts to the extreme, showing him not quite dead. But the movement of lust for self, self-fulfilment, college education, no dangers of prison, no ruined reputations, no DANGERS of the same, it is filled by now with momentum. Down goes the body. Then the realisation afoot that there is something called murder leads to a rapid re-evaluation of the BEGINNING of the matter. THIS is different from the earlier brilliantly confused concept of a good, clean, nice guy removal of human trash from the earth. This is KILLING! It is horrible.

Down goes one of them in pursuit of the ... body ? life ? but it is too late. Vehemence and force of speech and action come to light. There is, roars the leader of the evil thing, to be a consensus, a commitment, a covenant! Right! NO ONE is to say anything about this, ever.

So their guilt comes like a typhoon, and the beginnings of sorrow, in seedy consciences and mistaught lives, comes to fruition in the glorious service of self by violence, and youth, some with comparatively tender hearts, become monsters.

THAT is what the film has to say to our point.

But what is that ? It is that there has always to be a BEGINNING. It is a noose if it is folly and not repented of; it is a net, it is an ambush of life, the life of the one DOING THE EVIL. He or she seems to be DOING it, but is in reality GETTING it. VILE VIOLENCE is being done TO THE HEART OF THE ONE TURNING EVIL. Folly rises up like a fountain, and its waters are poisoned with guilt, severed from truth, empty of mercy.

So Europe as the learned Professor Hosmer has pointed out in his History of the Jews, has had its fill from long ago, of afflicting the Jews, in nice little pogroms, larger ones, official ones, commercial ones as with the sun king, Louis XIV, whose name stinks because of it, where they can be reaped of riches from time to time, or Roman ones, as in France with Richelieu and his delightful violences and the general thrust to remove Protestants from France (that is, people who do not allow ANY MAN to be MASTER of their souls, but Christ, the only Mediator - Matthew 23:8-10, I Timothy 2). Jew, Christian or what you will, it is violence to 'faith' for 'faith'.

It is not moral judgment, but mere religious rampancy.

So now in Jerusalem, the net is set. But let us for a moment turn first to Ambon in the Philippines. A state of emergency has been declared, we read. Little marvel for that! When 100,000 people are menaced with death, perhaps the case of South Africa can be emulated, and all sorts of sanctions and actions brought to bear, to deliver these spiritually coloured people, professing Christians, from that form of discrimination which after it is well begun, seizes houses (theft), evicts their owners (extortion), moves their bodies to convenient locations (kidnapping for the children) and then looks at the little matter of necessary deaths (murder)! Quite religious, in the format of the religions of violence, as you see.

An Australian government Minister concerned, approached by a Professor, born in the area in Indonesia, and concerned for relatives and others, did not feel any REAL need to act. No, said he, there was plenty of room, and there was other location available to which these Christians could move... Perhaps he would like to try 'moving' in the midst of hostility, with all the realisation of his property value which would apply in such a case, himself ? No action. So the net, the noose, tightens, but not merely or even chiefly on the victims. It is on the heart which disregards. To be sure, this is not the same as the one who DOES the violence, but is it not winking at it ? To be fair, the situation was then not QUITE as bad as now, but it was assuredly developing enough to warrant the agile concern of the Professor whose approach was so sadly neglected, on behalf of those menaced.

Step by step, in Ambon as in Jerusalem, as in the lives of the young, taught the fallacious myth of value in survival of the fittest, that redundant tautology, which merely means that the violent sometimes live a little longer, though as with Hitler, not necessarily, and that people like to imagine, contrary to the evidence, that it helps the race to develop.

It develops festering hatred, evil thoughts, theft and pillage, laziness and exploitation, and if this is the desire, then there is the religion which supports such things. Many businesses likewise, they have nice principles nicely presented, as in Russia with its 'freedom' of religion, UNLESS it affects the State, which having that ultimate place of divinity, is ALWAYS affected. However it is not the word alone which rules, but the work. The term 'hypocrite' is freely usable where a clear and determinate proposition is equally clearly and determinately violated in a measure of consistency which gives lie to the assertion. Mercy that so harrows without ground, it is no mercy at all.
 
 

Here the Palestinian mode or apparent module proceeds:  to attack Jews, to throw stones in (apparent) weakness at the young soldiers so that they HAVE to defend their State, their horrifically afflicted nation, and then to declaim against them when someone or other, having attacked, is repulsed and hurt or even killed. The restraint of these young soldiers is a veritable marvel, in view of the ceaseless contempt, attack, danger and volatility of the chanting aggressors, be they equipped as they may be. The exploitation of the appearance of the thing is a wonder of journalistic mal-address.

Thus as one tight-lipped Jewish delegate remarked on television in the last few days, it is not at all what it seems. Israel is surrounded by a massive plurality of Moslem peoples, with VAST SUPERIORITY of numbers, of land, of opportunity. Is ISRAEL LIKELY to invade Syria and Egypt and Jordan and Iran and Iraq and Armenia and Georgia, and yes, Libya and Morocco and Algeria ? Are these nations trembling at the bring of extinction (again), as the people of Israel might have some reason to do ? Are they near to being encircled, and can those nations be overthrown in a few deft moves into a slender territory bordering the sea, to which some of them have before now consigned the Jews, but in vain; but not without trying for a fulfilment ?

Has the world turned blind, or is it merely surviving ? Is the UN without sight, vision, or is it merely conniving ? or arriving ? What is it that makes it apparently so HARD to see that the tiny, the miniscule, the almost non-existent (comparatively) nation of Israel is the one being overshadowed by violence from the past in Europe, in Germany in particular but BY NO MEANS ALONE, by hatred and persecution, by expatriation and extortion, and that the whole assemblage of Moslem nations is barking like incensed blood-hounds, and their words are not minced as the yowls rise and rise yet again, in this year and in that, in this crisis and in that ? Is it necessary to be reminded that the British were close to the Jordanians, the Arab legion, but this did not overcome the little enclave of Jews, like the Christians in Ambon in their vulnerability! They however had a history and a place as a nation, and had been PROMISED by the power which had mandate over it, a HOMELAND for the Jews.

So the beginnings in Europe in the many centuries before Hitler, have grown to the consummation in Hitler, but now there is the aftermath. Like a great stone rolling down a severe incline, like the movements of the youths mentioned in I Know what you did Last Summer, the world in general, but more particularly the militant Moslem contingent in the Middle East, amply supported by the violence beyond it from others of their 'faith', so acts or fails to act, that the torments appointed and apportioned to Israel, as if by right, continue. Now, it is announced, there is to be a Palestinian State with the tiny enclave of Israel; and doubtless it could be used,  just as in the present situation, the land already granted, can be used as a nearer site for violence and taunting and missiles and exploitation of the patience of the Jews who are NOT, repeat not, to retaliate as they might. Rather they simply seek somehow to contain and control the combination of use of the Palestinians in their weakness, by the surrounding people of that religion, in their might, to overcome the Jews by propaganda and menace, until they yield.

There is, in fact,  no theorising in all this. ARAFAT has REPEATEDLY CLAIMED that JERUSALEM is to be the capital of the Independent Palestinian State. Hitler may or may not have wanted London for the capital of the Independent Nazi State of Britain, but one can imagine that Churchill would be inclined to contest the case. It would not seem ... right!

However the UN would internationalise the place, and it apparently seems very fitting that the Jews should be tried to the utmost by this apparent violence-diplomacy cross-bred method. After all, the Lord, who gave to them the land unconditionally, but with MANY conditions about the procedure (which have been eloquently fulfilled, and are BEING fulfilled to this hour while Israel in its unbelief, suffers consequences SUCH AS THESE), is not satisfied. It was to believing Abraham that the place was ceded, and the faithless are at odds with the basic premises; though the Lord for His NAME'S sake (Ezekiel 36-37, SMR Appendix A) has brought them back, and will bring many of them back to Himself, but not by force. So the turmoil continues, but the lesson is the same.
 
 

It is the same to youth, to Islam, to Indonesia. It is the same to one, to all. You CANNOT mock God and escape. You are not, whether RC, Protestant, Moslem or whatever, some sort of serenely different thing, which does not need to be concerned about truth, justice, mercy and kindness. You are HUMAN, and a creation of the GOD WHO ACTS (Isaiah 64:4, Psalm 57). You can fold your conscience in mud for your religion, or your career, or your lust, or your tradition, or your psyche's fulfilment, or what you will, but it is all one in this: it is sin. Make peace with your God therefore WHERE He may be found (Isaiah 55). Take the waters that quench the thirst which can turn the soul into a pit, when unsated; receive the mercy which is to be SHOWN TO OTHERS as well as received for yourself (Matthew 5:7-8), and admit the sovereignty of YOUR king, for though He came as  Jew in His plan of salvation, first to the Jews, it was then consummated to all. What does the Jewish prophet Isaiah say (49:6),

• "It is too small a thing that; You should be My Servant
• To raise up the tribes of Jacob,
• And to restore the preserved ones of Israel;
• I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles,
• That you should be My salvation to the ends of the earth."

He moreover is the One in whom that rest may be found, which needs no violence to secure its aims and ends (Isaiah 11:10), and as it is written, so it is found by His people, one by one, that "His resting place is glorious", as also seen in Matthew 11:27ff..

There IS NO REST for the wicked (Isaiah 57:19-20), for it is the Lord Himself who creates "the fruit of the lips, Peace, peace to him who is far off and to him who is near".

It is alas the case that many who are far off, are also way out: but there is, the Lord be praised, a way in (John 10:9). Those who prefer not to take it, discriminate aginat their own selves. For these, we lament.

The waters of the troubled sea are the picture of the writhing frothing of the foolish, who do not heed Proverbs 1, and 8:35-36. The Lord is to be SOUGHT and FOUND and He is found where He has placed the KEY, which is CHRIST, whose death on time, in place, according to schedule in all things, is the harbinger of His life, on time, in place, according to schedule in all things (cf. II Peter 1, SMR pp. 886ff., Ch.9), which adorns His people.

The snares of the young, the noose of the violent, about their own necks, the net for Jerusalem, it is all one. It is all flying lightly as a feather, in naked and oblivious vulnerabliltiy, towel streaming, over the top of the cliffs that lead to death. When it comes to such things, the victor is the vanquished, and the vanquished who believes in the Lord, prevails.

That of course is no excuse for Ambon, for Jerusalem, or for the mistreatment of youth, in its usually misplaced education either in philosophy or in arms, of survival, of seeking one's own, of being one's own person, of striding to 'success' with one's arms (of whatever kind) intact for thrusting one's will into the midst, nicely if that will help the result, but always selfishly, and without the living God, or the slightest idea of His conditions of life (Matthew 5), which make this world and its ways look like a snake pit, a robber's dump, a heap: by comparison. Happy indeed has this world been to know the saints, many of whom it has killed, as it killed Christ before them, while it continues on its assured path to perdition (John 16:2, 15:20-21).

Repent then, and seek and find the Lord. There is no other way. It is the way glorious, empowered and purified, intact and eternal. It is then (Isaiah 33:6) that

"wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of your times,
And strength of salvation:
The fear of the Lord is his treasure."