PHARISEE WATCH: Airing Commentaries
Three Letters and Answers
Editor

PASTOR BILL HOLLAWAY wrote:

I am looking at your web site, and am in agreement that the war in Iraq is a farce, and should never have happened.  The one thing that struck me though, is your attitude to the people and churches that you feel are against you.  You quote love your enemy in many places as an argument against war, but what you are saying about people who differ from your beliefs is not showing love.  I think that you love people that agree with you, and that your pickets, is the closest thing to war that you can come to.  I hear such anger against some of the pastors mentioned, that I find it hard to believe that if you had the means to blow up their churches, that you wouldn’t do it.  War can be fought in many ways, and people dying are not the only ill effect of war.  Be careful that you are not the very hypocrite and Pharisee that you think you are fighting against.

Bill Holloway

 

and

RONALD KUKAL wrote:

I read your messages with great interest.  I am a survivor of the deliberate attack on the USS Liberty by the Israeli Defense Force on June 8, 1967.  The Liberty survived an onslaught by the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) of magnificent proportions.  They tried to kill every last one of us but it didn’t happen.   I have asked myself over and over for the past thirty eight years: “Where was God that day?  I know exactly where he was.  He was with the men of the Liberty. 

The New Testament says there is no difference now between the Jew and the Greek.  I believe that with all my heart, and if the Jews had God in their back pocket that day then the Liberty would have went down with all hands aboard.  IT DIDN”T HAPPEN.  The New Testament is real, it is true, and those that continue you on trying to fulfill the old covenant are just asking for trouble.

Ronald Kukal

rkukal@vcn.com

Sheridan, WY

REV JAMES NELSON KETSEABAH Writes:

Beloved in Christ

I shall be very grateful if I could be granted a membership to the Straitgate Project to help carry your vision with you in this part of the world.

I hold the view that to change the world, we need to change the children and the youth of our time. I have started your project here in Ghana but through schooling. I shall therefore be very glad if you will grant us membership and send for our immediate use all or some of the literatures on the subject.  Our mailing address is;

Strait Gate Int’l School,

Gomoa Dominase, Box MS457,

Achimota , Accra .Ghana.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Best regards,

Rev James Nelson Ketseabah

(minor corrections made to all letters)

CHARLES E. CARLSON ANSWERS:

To Reverend Katseabah,

We sent our first package to Ghana today, and we hope to provide whatever you need to teach what we have learned about the corruption our Bible and the misdirection of Christian leaders.  Please tell us more about your Strait Gate Int’l School, and what you need more of.  It is no coincidence that we both picked our good name from Matthew 7:13.

To Pastor Holloway,

You say:

“I am looking at your web site, and am in agreement that the war in Iraq is a farce, and should never have happened.”

Pastor, I am afraid your choice of words belays your message.  To paraphrase Shakespeare, you are praising the war with faint damnation.

You call the destruction of Iraq a “war.” But it is in fact an unprovoked attack followed by an occupation.  You say, “it should never have happened,” but it did not “happen” it was planned, sold, and orchestrated just as a symphony is planned and performed.  The same is true of the destruction of Iraq.  Finally, “the war” is not a “farce,” as you call it.  A farce is a bad comedy.  There is nothing to be treated lightly about what has happened to the Iraqis or the Americans in Iraq. 

Pastor Holloway, millions of church laymen have seen for themselves that there is something very wrong with the demand for the Serial Wars, but most have failed to do anything material about it because they lack leadership.  Pastor, have you privately informed your own elders and deacons about how you feel?  Have you started a study group about it?  Did you proclaim that it is morally wrong from the pulpit?  Neutrality in time of slaughter is not good enough for those who say they follow the Lord Jesus Christ! 

Project Strait Gate challenges church leaders because you alone are the most responsible parties! 

You have even suggested that we are capable of violence because we know our minds and speak it.  I suggest you read again Pharisee Watch Judeo-Christians: the Primary Enablers of Serial Wars.  Being peaceable does not mean compromising what is right, and being loving does not mean being tolerant of sin or evil.  We interpret Biblical love as loving the person, but hating the sin.

Jesus himself spoke in very strong words against the religious leaders of his day (Matthew 23).  Yet, we know he loved them because Jesus is love. 

Paul also set an example of uncompromising love when he “opposed Peter to his face” in front of the church because he was refusing to eat with Gentile believers and was misleading others into doing the same, racism in the church. (Galatians 2:11-21).

The suggestion that we are violent because we are plain spoken is in itself dangerous to democratic freedom.   As we write, Americans face the threat of passage of the Democrat Party’s hate crimes bill Senate Bill S16 called, “The Equal Rights and Equal Dignity for Americans Act.”  While such “Anti-Hate” legislation gives the impression of protecting the civil rights of minorities from bias-motivated violence or intimidation, it actually leads to loss of free speech.  It would make it illegal to speak openly, as we do, about Judeo-Christian churches, and it would allow the Anti-Defamation League to determine what words are “hate speech.”

Hate crimes could make it illegal for Ronald Kukal, a survivor of the USS Liberty, to safely speak out in truth against the policy of the State of Israel, as he did in his letter. -end

We are grateful to all writers.  Those who say nothing bother us the most.  Where there is dialogue, there is hope.

Last week we sent out first time letters to 38,000 new potential readers, mostly college students.  It is our goal to reach that many new readers each week.  We thank those who have helped. -Charles E Carlson

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