“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the Sons of God.” (Mathew 5: 9, King James version)
The Concordant Literal New Testament translates “Blessed” as “Happy are the peacemakers…” Either Happy or Blessed leave little room to dispute the meaning, and it is one of the most ignored passages in the Bible because It Is so difficult to live in our age. It is so easy to turn our backs on mass killing far away, but Is there a greater sin than the deliberate and organized killing for money?
Military persons may have little choice once they are in. Millions of Americans carry their Bibles to church but feel no responsibility for paying for organized killing. We Hold These Truths is all about peacemaking, and we ask other Jesus followers to hear our message. You are receiving it after Christmas because we don’t want to interfere with your “happy” days, but we do want to be a “peacemaker.”
To begin, we need you to join us in teaching other Christ Followers about a Christmas Eve example I read in Yahoo news. Newsweek
and Yahoo News. Both tell us our President has just pardoned four men, in prison for the murder of fourteen Iraqis’ in “The Baghdad Massacre” of 2007. Were those who did the killing on a military mission? No, they were private mercenaries, paid by Blackwater, a contractor a for-profit corporation, hired by the US government to carry out secret war acts.
Many Americans would assert that those 14 killed were probably Muslims, and don’t qualify for what St. Mathew said. But when Jesus and his follower spoke the words of peace, Apostle Mathew did not rule out the often brutal occupier who murdered Jesus at the behest of the Pharisees. No, there are eight Beatitudes in Mathew, Chapter 5, and not one implies hatred of the Romans.
The killers of the Iraqis were paid to carry out dirty jobs our military is forbidden to do. This is why the four were tried in a civilian court, not in a military court marshal! Not one American in the hundred even knows that there is a “Blackwater,” working for the CIA and others. It has now renamed itself “Academi”, a clever peace-ruse that sounds like an institution of higher learning.
What about “Happy are the Peacemakers?” Was the apostle Matthew wrong when he said “peacemakers will be called the sons of God?” What will murders for cash be called? We Hold These Truths is now in its 18th year of asserting “Blessed are the Peacemakers.” We know doing so by itself can not bring peace, but we also believe that God can use us, which is why we do not quit exposing Warmakers! We hope you will start by reading our website, WWW. WHTT.org and that it will lead you on Jesus’ blessed path for peace.
We teach, and we do accept help. www.whtt.org, PO box 35, Wheat Ridge Co 80033
Charles E. Carlson
Peacemakers? Wow.
I come from a stock of people from the Balkans and I learned from extended family of 2 brothers in some family in the former Yugoslavia during WW2 who had killed each in some town. Fighting for different political factions the brothers were totally and completely unaware of each other and didn’t recognize who they had there sites on and thus killed his own blood relative in a gunfight. At their funeral days later the mother was inconsolable burying her 2 sons.
If that my friends doesn’t sum up the history of Christianity in the 20th Century. Actually the best illustration of this would be the American Civil War where at West-point there was a visible division of brothers who just days earlier where in chapel together singing hymns and praying breaking bread with one another.
What were the words of Christ? Something about being faithful even unto death and he will give you the crown of eternal life? Do we actually believe that or are our man made political philosophies more important?
Lastly, because of the story of the two brothers above i had a conversation with a pastor once about a story appearing in a magazine about one of our chaplains in Iraq during the war there. To me the most useless office in the church is that of a Military Chaplain and i asked this pastor we are a missionary church. We send our missionaries to the four corners of the world. tell me after we have saved and converted people to the true faith if a war were to break out do we turn around and kill the very ones we saved? To that he replied with an expression of anger ‘well I’m sure something would be done to prevent that from happening, DON’T YOU THINK?
It seems to me the only true peacemakers would be the nuns walking the front line and picking up the dead and dying?