The Death of Optimistic Liberalism.

It's completely dead, you know. The universal brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God has died a well deserved death.

The rise of pure evil has dealt a fatal blow to this monstrous dream and optimistic folly. The first blows came from the wars of the twentieth century--Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and others. But these were at least Christian economic heresies. There was an implicit suicidal impulse, of course, and these systems died because of this impulse, but hope remained among the true believers, for they thought that the failure was because of bad planning selfish capitalism in the West which brought about the ruin of these better systems, which were based upon the inherent goodness of men and altruism. They thought they could win and still bring in the utopian society where there would be economic freedom for all, no national boundaries, and brotherhood and fraternity. The ideal of the French Revolution would be achieved, Brotherhood, Equality, Liberty. Narrow religious prejudice, racial prejudice, and parochialism would be banished from the earth for the brotherhood of man.

The whole dream of the Enlightenment which spawned this whole utopian fantasy was based upon theological heresies involving the nature of God and the nature of man. The new world would not need any religion, but if one is necessary for the ignorant, the only one that could be tolerated would be the false worship of a god who was indifferent to evil and good and made no distinction between them; one who was not involved in the world, loving all men and who will not judge the world in righteousness, making no distinction between the sheep and the goats.

Because there is no such thing as evil, there must be no punishment for criminals but redemption and forgiveness. Children must not be punished, for this damages self-esteem, and they must all consider themselves the children of God, no matter what their deed are. All people are of equal worth, no matter how they choose to live their lives, and have the right to food, shelter, medical attention, and civil liberties. The ideas have been wearing pretty thin, and are on the point of being swept away, by the pure evil that now faces the world, which will ultimate bring disillusionment and the crashing down of the tottering institutions that are no longer in touch with reality.

When women are willing to take their babies onto airplanes and use them as a cover for suicidal bombings [see following article]; when people are willing to murder their own people along with the infidels, then we are dealing with a mindset that is strange to Western civilization that was nurtured in the womb of Christianity. Pure evil has arisen in the womb of fundamental Islam. The love of death, the glorification of suicide, the willingness to kill millions in undifferentiated slaughter is an inversion of the great truths of the teachings of Christ and the Christian heritage of the West. Christ never taught His people that the way to heaven was by murder and death and revenge, but by faith the forgiveness of sins, praying for your enemies, and doing good to all men. Christians have not always lived up to these ideals, but their failure is their own, and those who did not practice Christian ideals have been condemned by other Christians. The spirit of Resurrection and Life in Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead, is totally the opposite of the spirit that drives Islam.

For a thousand years, the church was attacked by Islam, from the time that Muslim invaders came out of Arabia, conquering Palestine and Northern Africa, converting the populations by the sword, destroying churches, slaughtering Christians and priests and ministers and bringing all into bondage to the "obedience" of Islam. It was only by the heroics of Charles Martel and a great Christian Army at Tours, France, in 732, that Europe was spared, but for the next thousand years, Christianity had to endure constant pressure from the various Sultans and Satraps who called themselves the Army of God. Not only Christian Byzantium, but also Christian Russia, constantly were at war with Islam, who had taken by force lands belonging to these peoples.

The sad thing, is that in the name of the brotherhood of man, the schools in the West have not taught the true history of the wicked advance and tyranny of Islam and crushing of freedom in these lands. Instead they have focussed on the Crusades, which were a legitimate and proper response of the Christian West against the evil of Islam, in spite of the excesses and foolishness by which they were conducted.

Europe faced a most dreadful peril after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the way was open into the heartland of Europe for the Eastern Roman [Greek] Empire had been a buffer protecting Europe since the early Islamic conquests. Europe was torn by wars and petty quarrels and did not truly understand its peril which came to a head by the Ottoman advance in the 17th century. The high water mark of this advance was reached before the walls of Vienna in 1683, when a combined army of Polish, Austrian, and German troops under the command of Jan III Sobieski, head of Poland-Lithuania smash the "Army of God" and Islam retreated to Asia Minor. Islam never recovered from this defeat and the Ottoman Empire went into a long decline until it was partitioned after the World Wars of the twentieth century, during which it sided with the forces of evil, supporting Hitler and the Axis Powers. Islam oppresses its women, sends its children on suicide missions, is venomously anti-semitic, and know nothing of religious or civil liberties.

There is nothing in the teaching of Mohammed that even resembles Christ's teaching to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God's the things that are God's." In Islam the church is the state and the state is the church. The kingdom of Allah is an earthly kingdom and it must be obeyed without question.

There is no freedom of conscience and no idea of a personal God. In so many ways it is the antithesis of the Christian faith. Until the Protestant Reformation, Muhammad was considered the Anti-Christ until Luther transferred that honor to the Papacy. Luther, perhaps, was wrong on that one.

The present terrorism that Islam has launched against the West is nothing new and is not the fault of the West. The wickedness is in the hearts and minds of those who are in bondage to the devil, alienated from the life of God that is in Jesus Christ. This struggle will not be over in our lifetime or in the lifetime of our children. The attack will be upon the bodies of Christians, but the true enemy of Islam is the Lord Jesus. Because He is in heaven and beyond the reach of all Satanic power, His people will suffer the wrath of the enemies of Christ, but the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, for their war is not against flesh and blood but against the very God who created the heavens and the earth. They shall not prevail, but will fail just as they have throughout history. Hate and murder cannot overcome grace and life.

But liberalism is dead. Men are not all brothers. Although all men descend from Adam and are under the curse of sin and death, Jesus Christ by His grace and resurrections has brought life and immortality to light. Those who believe are the true sons of God. Those who do not believe are of their father the devil, no matter what their pretenses. As Jesus said to Anti-Christ in HIs day: "Ye are of [your] father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." (John 8:44 AV)

There are liars and murderers today, who do the works of their father the devil. This is reality and those who refuse to accept it will perish with them.

"...what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? (2 Corinthians 6:14-15 AV)

There can be no neutrality or triangulation in this conflict.