The word martyr means witness. We use the word today to mean anybody who witnesses to their religion with blood, that is, by being killed for it. But long long ago, one could still be called a martyr if one nearly died for the faith.
Jesus Christ was a martyr
if it is true that he died for his claim to be the holy one of God. Some would deny that Jesus testified to the
goodness and duty of dying rather than abjuring one’s faith saying he had to
die to save the world. But he didn’t
have to be nailed to a cross for that and must have chosen this terrible way to
die to call his followers to die for their faith. It is certain that Christianity commands
death in the name of faith when it is considered necessary.
When faith, and faith is
not complete certainty, can require you to die then it is clear that it is a
sin to worship God and intend your worship to go to the true God if your God is
the wrong one. You must intend to give
only the God you believe in, your worship.
If that is the case then activities like ecumenism are wrong. The only dealings you should have with other
religions is to convert them and destroy their
influence.
Jesus told the apostles that he gave them a new commandment to love one
another as he loved them (John 13:34-36).
This is different then from the Old Testament commandment, “Love your
neighbour as yourself” for it was an old commandment. Jesus accepted the Old Testament command so it
seems that he meant we have to love one another enough to die for one
another. The preceding sentence has
Jesus saying he will only be around a little while so that was probably what he
had in mind. The line after also says
that Jesus will sacrifice himself to death and Peter says he will sacrifice
himself too. The Law also commanded
people to die for others say in war. So
why does Jesus say it’s a new commandment?
Could it be that the gospel is obliquely saying that Jesus wants people
to die UNNECESSARILY for others? That is
the only explanation. If the apostles
committed suicide by getting themselves martyred then we cannot rely on them at
all. Jesus said that the whole world
would know they are his disciples by their love and obedience to the new
commandment. But the apostles lived
obscure lives and died deaths that are masked in legend. This prophecy proved false. It was only in the second century that
stories of this remarkable suicidal fanatical love of the apostles appeared
which tell us plenty about when this ludicrous gospel was written.
According to the
tradition of the Church, the first Christian martyr was Stephen who we can read
about in the book of Acts. Stephen was
accused of heresy by the Jews. He preached
heresy to them at his trial and they stoned him to death. He could have recanted to save his life but
he did not. But all he had to do was
choose his words carefully so as to avoid antagonising them. Stephen held that the gospel must be
proclaimed even when the price is death and when Jesus took him into Heaven for
being so reckless it shows that the primitive Church got too much trust. The writer of Acts probably would not write
about him so glowingly if he were considered a bad example.
It is interesting that
Stephen could have saved his life by choosing his words more carefully and by
defending himself. Paul was arraigned on
the same charges and got off. Stephen
wanted to die. True martyrs for the
Christian cause only die because they have to, to avoid cursing Christ, not
because they have pulled their deaths on themselves. The Church has always opposed suicide except
in martyrdom. It would seem that he was
not a true saint but the New Testament says that the divine truth must be told
even when you can get killed for it. If
you can’t pretend to hate Christ to save yourself from certain death you cannot
hide Christ to save your life and especially when it is saving yourself from
possible or even probable execution.
Since the time of the
so-called martyr Stephen there have been many martyrs. There have been many Catholics martyrs and
many Protestant ones too. Tradition has
it that Peter died on a cross in
Revelation
The Apocryphal Second Maccabees which is canonical scripture in the Catholic
Church and therefore infallible tells us that Razis
committed suicide and that was a noble death for it was better to undergo it
than to suffer outrages at the hands of his enemies (14). This is a kind of martyrdom for it would not
have been noble unless it was ultimately done for God who is Number One. The Church claims that what Razis did was evil in God’s sight because it was a kind of
euthanasia though it will not condemn Razis for that
would expose an error in its heretical Bible.
The Book of Mormon
implies that martyrdom is right for it commends sticking to the faith in spite
of persecution (Second Nephi 26:8; Third Nephi
The Koran says that those
who are slain in the cause of God do right to fight for him and will be
rewarded. If we are to wage war over God
then it shows that faith comes before life – the principle underlying the
doctrine of approval for martyrdom (The Imrams or Sura 3, Pilgrimage or Sura 22,
Muhammad or Sura 47).
Could the martyrs
threatened by death not have pretended to have lost their faith and insincerely
blaspheme God or Jesus to save their lives?
One reason Christians
give as to why they couldn’t is that lying is wrong.
If God exists then he
speaks to us in the heart. Most God
faiths claim that he actually revealed their doctrines to holy prophets. Christianity claims that the paramount revelation
of God came to pass in the coming of Jesus Christ. The message in all this is that we are
expected to believe God.
We cannot tell lies if
God is truth. Not even a little one to
save the world from being blown to bits in a nuclear war. Because if God ever permits lying we will not
know when to believe him and are given their right to ignore what he says. His ways are strange so he might lie for a
purpose that escapes us so we end up not knowing what to believe.
Another reason is that
God wants all to hear the gospel so it is best never to deny the faith for he
might be working on your persecutors to convert them through you. To hide or deny the faith would be denying
his power. If you preach and it does not
work then you know that it is God’s will that you die to witness to your faith. You can’t assume that it would be better if you
lied in order to preach the gospel to a more receptive audience or a bigger
one. God’s ways are not ours. Christians teach that death is better than
Hell. It is better for you to die than
to obscure a faith that warns about how to avoid Hell. You are taking the right to know away from
your persecutors if you refuse to spill your blood to testify what danger they are
in.
The main reason is that
it would be expressing approval for the blasphemies of the persecutors. It would be telling them they are right to
insult God which is wrong even if they don’t know how wrong they are. This is the same as blaspheming God
yourself. If you say five people should
do it, in relation to motive and intent it is the same as committing the sin of
blasphemy yourself five times. Being
murdered is the lesser evil because blasphemy is the same as committing a
mortal sin five times. Getting murdered
is not a sin when it is what would be one sin against five.
If suicide by martyrdom
is right then it is right to kill yourself when you think that your faith is
evaporating. It would be immoral to live
if your faith comes first. Religion
cannot even be consistent in its doctrine on martyrdom. It is hateful how it condones something when
it suits it. The martyrs could be agents
of the devil when they die for an evil principle that life is for faith and not
faith for life.
It is hardhearted of
Christianity to insist that it is right to die for your faith when the
alternative is to betray it when she won’t permit euthanasia. Unbearable and incurable suffering is a
better reason to die.
The martyrs of the Church
were nothing but idiots for dying for blind faith. There is no evidence for the veracity of the
Christian or any religious revelation so anybody who dies for religion is unintelligent
and/or fanatical. And the martyrs should
have died for the religion that had the best or most evidence for it if they
were so keen to be false heroes but few religionists care about truth and ever
look into the evidence and then they die for the creed that became a curse for
them.
Doubt is always
sincere. Yet faith has pronounced it to
be sinful! You cannot commit a
well-meaning sin. The martyrs are dying
for evil. They are trying to serve the
Devil by spilling their blood. There is
no excuse. Religion is committing
attempted murder every time it gets a convert.
Anybody could die for their faith and it is hoped by religion that if it
came to that that the convert would be ready and religion plans to make them
ready.
To allow suicide and then
to avoid denying the faith and to forbid euthanasia is not logical.
The thought of
slaughtering a willing or unwilling victim on an altar to appease or please God
or the gods or the Devil horrifies most people.
Many manifestations of
paganism did it in the past.
Devil-worshippers are accused of it today.
Christianity, Judaism and
Islam denounce and prohibit human sacrifice.
But yet they can permit a less obvious kind of it or teach doctrines
that command it.
Christianity claims that
Christ sacrificed himself on the cross for the world. The Epistle to the Hebrews calls him the High
Priest because of that.
So, here we have a
religion that says that human sacrifice is wrong even though it is the very
abomination that it is based on.
Christians say that
nobody else has the right to sacrifice themselves like Jesus did. First, because God
commanded Jesus alone to die for the world. Second, because Jesus alone could die to save
the world.
God would not have
commanded Jesus unless Jesus alone had the power to save. The first reason depends on the second reason
and vice-versa. But any person with a
clear conscience could be the saviour.
If God loves the person he loves the person infinitely for God is
infinitely perfect in goodness.
Therefore, a person can offer an infinite price to God by offering her
or his life. I am sure I exist but I am
not so sure that Jesus did or that he really was the saviour if he did. Therefore, I should make my peace with God
and kill myself in order to ensure that the world is saved. So, to believe Christianity that a sinless
human sacrifice was required calls each person to suicide or the sacrificing of
your own life.
And the sacrifice does
not need to be sinless at all for a sinner is still infinitely valuable.
The Christian Church
commands its victims to decide to die when offered a choice between sinning
against the faith or denying it and death.
This is telling them to offer themselves as human sacrifices for it is
better to insincerely deny the faith than to die. To die is to deny the faith in a deeper way
because then you cannot do anything to help it.
Judaism follows the Law
of Moses which is in the first five books of the unholy Bible. These books endorse the torture and murder of
apostates from God’s religion, homosexuals and kidnappers to name but a few
categories. These killings are senseless
therefore the killings are really about human sacrifice. Unnecessary killing in the name of God is
really human sacrifice no matter if it is called execution or not.
Pope John Paul II now
forbids capital punishment though tradition and the Bible command it. Catholics say that he is not saying capital
punishment is wrong full stop but only that it is not necessary today and the
Bible regulations are only meant to be carried out if the Church runs the state
which it does not. The capital laws of
the Bible were never necessary and God could not object to Christians using the
state to kill people their God wants dead like heretics, homosexuals and
adulterers. For him to object now, would be the same as saying he was wrong to go so
far. If killing those people was right
then, then it is always right. The pope
is both condoning the crime of capital punishment and saying he does not –
another crime. The Catholic view that
capital punishment was encouraged by God to protect the state and its members
is misleading because the Bible laws could have done that without commanding
the killing of those people and also because the Bible says these killings are punishment. Now
could they be punishment if you need them to protect others? That would not be punishment but
self-defence. The laws of the Bible had
nothing to do with protecting but about showing the people who was boss, God
and about God getting his own back on those who ignored his law.
In Genesis 22, human
sacrifice is declared not to be intrinsically immoral in the sight of God. God tells Abraham to take his son, Isaac, up
Leviticus 27:27-29 was
thought to command human sacrifice.
Verse 27 talks about
redeeming, buying things back.
Verse 28 says that
nothing devoted to God by the owner, be it man or beast or field, can be
brought back.
Verse 29 says that no one
who is doomed to death can be ransomed or saved but must be put to death. The Amplified Bible puts notes in brackets to
cover up what this really says. It would
have us believe that the verse is about people doomed to death because they
have committed a capital crime and is saying that you cannot save a person from
it by money in justice.
The verse afterwards says
that all that is offered to God is holy.
I believe that Leviticus
is really permitting human sacrifice here and does not intend the meaning alleged
by the Amplified Bible and the believers.
The context, the verse
before and after, does not mention the death-penalty but what is offered to God
as a sacrifice, not necessarily a dead sacrifice. Sacrifices can be alive when offered and then
killed as blood sacrifices. And it is
certain that the Law sees death as the only suitable fate for such
offerings. The Law makes a difference
between the death penalty and sacrifice because the first is only for those who
have been wicked to punish them while sacrifice is overtly religious
.
The context is about holy
sacrifices and criminals could hardly be one of these for not all of them
repent.
The sacrifices will be
slaves, children and wives who were thought to be a man’s property.
Ransom means to buy
back. How can you buy back a capital
criminal for he has not been sold?
Islam commands
unnecessary killing. It wants adulterers
and murderers put to death which is the same as asking that they be
sacrificed. God will not be pleased by
the victims but he will be pleased by the act of killing them so a person does
not necessarily have to be wonderful to be a real offering to God.
No true disciple of the
Devil would kill anybody as a human sacrifice.
We would all be tempted to murder and suicide if they were the ultimate
crimes. The Devil runs Hell yet he wants
us to live to do his will on earth which we cannot do if we are dead. We can do more evil on earth than in
hell. The doctrine that Satan has a
hunger for human sacrifice is a religious calumny. The holy are the most likely to cause loss of
life.
In seventeen century
France, the evil hunchbacked priest, Abbe de Guibourg seems to have slaughtered babies in the house of
the witch, La Voisin, during Black Masses. Eventually, the pair were
exposed in the famous affair of the poisons.
Madame de Montespan, the mistress of Louis
XIV, was implicated.
The Devil would have
preferred the elements in religion that causes suffering to those silly mercenary charades of
religion.
CONCLUSION
The requirement of
Christians that people die for the faith shows a preference of belief over
people. People are sacrificed for
belief. Martyrs cannot be understood as
anything else but human sacrifices to God.
The WWW
Why Did the Apostles Die? Dave Matson,
www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1997/4Why97.html
How Did the Apostles Die?
www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1997/4/4front97.html
Steven Carr discusses the Christian and apostolic martyrs
www.bowness.demon.co.uk/martyrs.htm
www.bowness.demon.co.uk/martyrs2.htm
Challenging the Verdict
A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ
http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/CTVExcerptsOne.htm
http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/CTVExcerptsTwo.htm
http://human.st/jesuspuzzle/CTVExcerptsThree.htm#Twelve
The Martyrdoms of Peter and Paul, Peter Kirby
http://home.earthlink.net/~kirby/
The Martyrdoms: A Response, Peter Kirby
www.bowness.demon.co.uk/martyrs3.htm