ULDAH MINISTRY

No,73　　November. 2001

【PATH OF PEACE】

　 The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. They seized Peter and John, and because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. … "What are we going to do with these men?" they asked. "Everybody living in Jerusalem knows they have done an outstanding miracle, and we cannot deny it. But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn these men to speak no longer to anyone in this name. Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John replied, "Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God's sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard." … On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. "Sovereign Lord," they said, "you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: " 'Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One.' Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your servant Jesus, whom your anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus." After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.
Acts 4:1~31

In Abraham's days there was a king of Salem (King of Peace) and priest of the God Most High, called Melchizedek meaning 'king of righteousness'. He appeared once in history as one who had neither beginning of days nor end of life with no ancestry, parents or successor and he is understood to remain a priest for ever. This is in sharp contrast with other Old Testament priests, whose genealogies are particularly emphasised. Melchizedek showed his friendship with bread and wine and blessed Abraham. Abraham accepted his priesthood and offered a tenth of everything, i.e., tithe, which meant that Abraham had regarded Melchizedek as a greater order of priesthood than the Levitical priests. This Old Testament priest and king, Melchizedek prefigured Jesus Christ, as the one who was supposed to inaugurate a new spiritual and internal order of priesthood superior to the old Levitical physical and external order. Therefore Christ was to be the eternal priest and king. Consequently, after His death on the cross and resurrection, Jesus entered heaven as the living One and is alive for ever more. Indeed, the trains of Jesus' participation in the Father's plans; incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension and out-pouring of the Holy Spirit have made His priestly and kingly office perfect and eternal, once for all so that all those who come to God through Him will be saved and live eternally.
Jesus, realising that His time had come and carefully timing His arrival in Jerusalem to four days before the Jewish Passover Feast, entered the city, sitting on the colt as a 'King of Peace' according to Melchizedek's order and also as the Son of David. His whole life demonstrated righteousness and peace. After Pentecost, the day of the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit, Jesus' disciples, started full of the Spirit, proclaiming the gospel boldly, from Jerusalem to all Judea, Samaria and further to the ends of the earth. Their fearless and energetic activities accompanied by God's miracles and healings became a real threat to the so-called nominal religious leaders; 'the rulers, elders and teachers of the law,'(v.5) in Jerusalem. i.e., the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish court, consisting of seventy elders and the high priest. Most of its high-priestly party was dominated by Sadducees who did not accept the concept of resurrection at all. This was one of the reasons why the Sanhedrin was so furious at Jesus' disciples' preaching of the resurrection of the dead. Another reason was more political, in that the Jewish leaders were anxious to keep good relations with the Romans, who were then the ruling power of the land and any messianic movement would have been a threat to their tactics. The way of life of the Sadducees was compromising to the world. Despite their animosity against the gospel, however, no legal fault could be found in the apostles and instead, they were faced with the undeniable testimony of the healed in the name of Jesus Christ through Peter and John and also with many witnesses. They therefore had no choice but to release the two apostles without further legal punishment but with caution against further evangelism. In the midst of their examination, the apostles were not intimidated by the Jewish authorities' command , 'not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus' but they boldly declared that they must obey God rather than men. Though human authorities should be respected as apostle Paul taught: 'Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. … Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. … Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. … Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of conscience.' (Romans 13:1~5, Line added), Peter and John made it clear here that there was an exception when the law of authority conflicted with the law of God (vs. 19,20). It is needless to say that priority should be put on obedience to God's law.
On their release from custody, their fellow believers in Christ turned to raise their voices together in praise and prayer to God, the Creator who is in control of the world. Living in such a wicked world, where 'the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain and the kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against His Anointed One, Christ,' they recognised their need to receive their boldness from the Lord and to speak His Word out loud to resist the enemies' threat. The only way forward for them was to ask the Lord to work through His salvation by healing, signs and wonders through His servants, His faithful followers. Such level of commitment to prayer in response to a crisis exemplified by the first-century Christians is remarkable and we should indeed follow suit as we enter this era of political, economical and social chaos. Jesus had beforehand taught His disciples that the day of persecution would come upon His followers and it was already coming true: 'Be on your guard against men; they will hand you over to the local councils and flog you in their synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles … . Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved …' (Matthew 10:17~23). Jesus also said, 'a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. … I have told you this, so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you. …' (John 16:2~4, Line added).
In the days of Jesus, violence was one of the common ways of crushing all forms of oppositions and achieving political goals. Sadly it still appears so even today, in what is considered as a more civilised age. Under the regime of the Romans many were crucified outside the city gate to the extent that there was sometimes a shortage of the wooden crossbeam which was used to be fixed to an already standing upright post at the place of the Skull, "Golgotha", so as to form a shape of a cross. As we are regrettably getting immune to seeing violent scenes of killings, wars and crimes all over the world through the highly developed mass media today, so the people in first-century Palestine were used to violence and readily accepted it. However, in the midst of such aggressive and threatening circumstances Jesus was completely different from others. Knowing that the way of violence and force cannot change men's hearts nor bring any solution to problems but rather end up creating more complexity and chaos, Jesus utterly rejected the use of violence. It is good for us to recall how Jesus reacted to an act of violence by Peter, one of His disciples, who cut off the ear of one of the high priest's servants when Jesus was arrested. Though Peter's action was natural and instinctive for a man trying to defend his master, nevertheless, it was far from the way of God's kingdom, which Jesus had emphatically presented in His ministry. As Jesus taught: "what goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean', but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean'. … But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man 'unclean'. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.' (Matthew 15:11 … 18,19), the root of all problems is within men themselves, which can not be solved by the use of swords. Spiritual battles cannot be fought with outward means, i.e., physical weapons. Human history has shown time and time again how the use of violence never solves any problems but instead brings up new if not more serious problems. Despite this, we are so slow to learn the futility of relying on what appeals to our reasons most.
The Crusaders in the Middle Ages shamelessly invaded Palestine, justifying themselves in the name of Jesus with bright red crosses on their shields and swords. In contrast to Jesus' genuine teaching, they did not mind killing people to further their own ends and interests. Having said this, at that time the Bible had not yet been translated into their own languages and therefore the ordinary people probably were not well informed of biblical teachings. However, the Crusaders could have still appealed to their conscience whether or not they were able to defend the gospel, the spiritual Word with carnal weapons. On top of that, during the Second World war churches not only turned a blind eye and a deaf ear (out of fears planted by the threat of communism as well as fascism) to the plight of the European Jews in the Shoah but there are plenty of evidence that they, whether Catholics or Protestants, in fact actually supported the fanatical Nazi regime. Churches' traditional, theologically erroneous teachings such as the "charge of deicide" and anti-Jewish "supersessionism", which saw the Church superseding Israel as God's chosen, have well served to justify Churches' irrevocable wrongs throughout two thousand-year church history. Bruce Farnham's remarks might lead us, Christians into a genuine repentance and to change our attitudes and deeds against violence: "So one can quite understand if the cross has negative associations for some people for historical or political reasons. In fact, for many living in so called 'Christian' countries, it has become an almost meaningless symbol. You see crosses on top of churches, in village squares, in little boxes by the roadside, round people's necks ―but if you asked people what the cross meant, they would probably have only the vaguest idea or none. It has become superstition, or a lucky charm, or just a bit of decoration.' ("The Way of Jesus") If God has indeed started sending a clear signal to the people in this world to come out of the wicked and greedy world economic financial system by allowing the enemy to destroy the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, as prophesied in Revelation ch.18, so will He be doing the same to the apostate religious system, which has fallen away from Jesus' teachings in the present world, as also prophesied in Revelation ch.17. If we refuse to join any war to kill human-beings as Jesus demonstrated in His earthly ministry, we might be able to remain in Jesus' teachings.
It is crucial for all genuine followers of Jesus to return to His teachings in the Bible alone and to understand why He came to earth. He came to teach and lead His followers to enter the eternal kingdom of God. The way of God's kingdom is completely different from that of this world. The former is the way of eternal peace and unfailing love but the latter is the way of perpetual conflict and deep hatred. Violence cannot be accommodated in God's kingdom. Therefore it should be utterly impossible for Jesus' followers to pursue the path of violence or to join wars and not to be bothered about killing people in however indirect ways. If self-professed pious people claim not to mind killing others to defend their beliefs, it betrays the fact that their god is none other than the devil. In respect to the way in which we can distinguish Christ's followers from the devil's, the first letter of John is very clear: 'Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. … Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. No-one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother. … Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous. … Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.' (3:4~15, Lines added)
If we really understand Jesus' teaching of the kingdom of God where for the first time justice is to be literally exercised under the righteous kingship of Jesus Christ, why do we resort to mere human strategies of waging war against the terrorists or religious opponents or any kind of enemy, at the cost of breaching God's law and Jesus' teaching? If we know that we cannot expect total justice on this side of the world we will be inclined to depend on God's impartial and ultimate judgment upon all human-beings alone, instead of striving after imperfect and unfair human justice. Around us there are full of injustice, exploitations, oppressions, selfishness, ruthless dictators, lawless terrorists, insatiable worshippers of Mammons, self-seeking politicians, self-righteous religious leaders and so on. All those are just products of human evil, each individual's sin. Therefore, as everybody is responsible for the consequences of the evil societies, and indeed, 'there is no-one righteous, not even one,' so there cannot be justice exercised by anyone in this world.
On the day of Jesus' triumphant entry to Jerusalem, He mounted a wild donkey and rode into the city in meekness and humility. It was a symbolic move as a "King of Peace", far from a political military king who would ride on horses. His action symbolised that He came not to build an earthly kingdom but a heavenly kingdom. The majority of those who welcomed Jesus as their king, standing along the road to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, enthusiastically shouting, "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" were also those who within the same week stood in the courtyard of Pontius Pilate, furiously shouting, "Crucify him!" because their expectation of having their mighty military king had been betrayed. How unreliable and changeable human's heart and justice were! However, Christ's obedience to the Father and His teaching were consistently the same from the beginning to the end whether or not the others stood with Him. Now, the Lord might be challenging His followers with the question of whether we would persistently stand firm in Him to the end or compromise with the worldly way on the days ahead. In other words, we are free to choose either the way of peace and prayer or the way of war and violence.

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This month a money gift has been sent to FREDERIC's ministry in Nairobi, Kenya. Pray for the Lord's guidance and protection upon him and his congregation especially at this time when the country has been threatened by Anthrax microbes. Also pray for blessings upon his family, for quick recovery of his wife and for the sound growth of their son now that their fourth child HARERIMANA HANIEL was safely born on 23rd September.
Let us share with Mrs. TSURUKO TACHIBANA's excitement of her baptism with the Holy Spirit. After her long devout Christian life the Lord has poured out His shower of bliss upon her, who will be eighty years old next January! Pray for her new phase of ministry being furthered in Los Angels, the USA.

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