Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames. CHRISTIANITY IS PRO-CHURCH-BURNING

Quite often in the history of the Church, Christians took it upon themselves to burn down the churches of other denominations and the Temples of the pagans. As long as the Bible advocates Church burning when the Churches are considered heretical, we are entitled to say Christians are promoting it. If you choose to regard an evil book as God's word you are advocating that evil even if you say you are opposed to that evil.

St Martin loved to smash pagan idols and St Ambrose commended the burning down of a synagogue as a pious and noble act but both were outraged when the Church introduced the idea that it was a duty to murder heretics (page 73, The Crisis of Moral Authority, SCM Press, London, 1985). The Spanish heretic Priscillian seems to have been the first heretic whose execution was procured by the Church. When it was okay to burn heretics or whatever it was only natural that it would be just as good to attack heretical places of worship and heretical books.

One major outburst of such activity happened in the Eastern Church after the council of Nicea in 787 AD. The Church kissed and prayed before icons, pictures of Jesus and the saints. This practice was denounced as idolatry by the iconoclasts - which means destroyers of icons. The worshippers of images were called iconodules. The latter began a campaign of destroying the icons and even burning down Churches which had them, everywhere.

After the reformation, Calvinists smashed stained-glass windows and statues in Catholic Churches and burned many of the Churches down to the ground.

The Dutch Protestant group, the Sea-Beggars, murdered priests and nuns and attacked Catholic Churches in the sixteenth century.

Churches are burned in Northern Ireland every year.

All this was done in order to stamp out idolatry or what was thought to be idolatry for it was felt that to let the Churches be was not commend the worship of what was not God. A person who believes that God exists must put God first and if that entails torching up churches so be it.

Many Christians argued that interfering with idols is wrong for it offends the worshippers and does not really curb false worship. If you smash the image of the virgin in the parish Church another one will be adored in its place.

The Bible says that we should be loyal to God and expect to offend others. Jesus said that his true followers would be hated (Luke 6). So church-burning is not sinful because it hurts. When feelings don’t matter there is no deterrent from burning churches down.

Church-burning forces the congregation to hear and know why the culprits did it like no other way can and God expects his word to be spread no matter how we do it. It attacks the strength of the heretical Church.

If God comes first and it is certain from even a quick reading of the Bible that idolatry is the sin he hates the most even above murder then it is right to destroy a statue even if it means that one person less will adore it by leaving it alone, is the same as doing it yourself. The idolaters are forcing you to sin so you have the right to stop them.

God can put thoughts in their minds to guide them so that if they are angry and offended it is because they want to be meaning that it is no sin to offend them. It is heresy to deny that God does not guide. And it is blasphemy to say such a thing. Jesus said he was the light of the world.

In Deuteronomy 7 we read that God wants seven pagan nations to be utterly destroyed by his people. In addition, they have to tear down their altars and burn their idols. The people are not even allowed to keep the gold and silver that the images are made of or to let an idol into their house. God said that he wanted this because he needed to prevent the risk of his people falling into idolatry (Exodus 34). So, when God commanded people he had no reason to think would be lead into it to avoid the slightest temptation by means of such drastic action it proves that nobody can say it is only compulsory under certain serious conditions. He said he was a jealous God and meant this literally from the fact that he would not tolerate any pagan monuments or symbols near his chosen people. He wants us to be jealous for him for we cannot be good unless we are like him. We have to be jealous towards any religion that is not the true religion of God. Catholics and Protestants have to be jealous of each other and try and get one over on the other if they want to be near to their God. The further the religion is away from the true religion in theology the more jealous we have to be.

In Deuteronomy 13, God commands that the cities where pagan gods are worshipped by Israel should be burned to the ground and never never be rebuilt. He says he means a city where the people are led astray to follow other gods.

There is no evidence from the New Testament that says these laws are done away. It is no use to say that God made these rules because he wanted to set up a county ruled by himself for it was still run by human beings. God gave the Law and left men in charge. Israel was not a theocracy in the sense that God made all its decision for it. God told Israel to hate idols (Deuteronomy 7:26). They did not have to hate them even if they had to destroy them which shows that God believed that idols should be destroyed because they are idols and not just because they are a temptation to sin. God could not do away with a moral law when its validity is not based on consequences alone.

An idol was not worshipped just because it was a lump of metal or stone but because the God was thought to live in it or the image was thought to have been transubstantiated into God.

God said that the destruction of an idol proved that it was not a God. He rejected the pagan doctrine that if such a thing happened it was because the gods permitted it for a purpose. So, God’s doctrine tells us that we ought to smash up idols and burn Churches of false religions to show the worshippers that they were wrong. The Bible-believer has to trust God even when reason shouts, “Don’t”, which it will because even things which are sacred to God can be destroyed.

A Christian must be expected to get fired from her or his job, if that job entails selling idols, rather than just sell the idol.

It is better to be an Atheist for Atheism is a kind of idolatry. It is putting self and people before God. Atheists don’t care if God is mocked by idol-worshippers for he is an idol, albeit a mental one, himself. Those who decry idolatry must examine themselves in case they are the worst idolaters of the lot.