Gooding, David: 4 - Leading God's Nation

We spent last session reconnoitering the enemy who was involved in the second oppression of Israel. Now we turn to the deliverer and inquire about his tactics in dealing with this particular enemy. So let us first read scripture. Judges 3, verse 14 onwards. And the children of Israel served Eglon, the king of Moab, eighteen years. But when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised them up a savior, Ehud the son of Jera, the Benjamite, a man left-handed. And the children of Israel sent a present by him unto Eglon, the king of Moab. If you have a modern translation, it probably reads tribute instead of present. For the word for present is, yes, uh, can mean a present, but is a euphemism for what Moab required, of course, that is a constant presence, namely tribute. And, uh, you'll see Israel sent this tribute to him by, uh, unto Eglon, the king of Moab, and sent it by Ehud. And Ehud made him a sword which had two edges of a cubit length, and he girded it under the ra- under his raiment upon his right thigh. Now notice the military significance. The man was left-handed, or as the Hebrew has it, shut of his right hand. He was left-handed. And therefore he gird his dagger, a short sword, under his raiment to disguise it, but put it on his right thigh. Gentlemen, if you are used to using swords, you have your sword, if you're right-handed, at your left, so that you can easily grab with your right hand and haul it out and use it. If you are left-handed, you will put the sword on your right side. Yes? And that would be very significant in what now happened, because when he came to the king, there was a king sitting in his seat and all the rest of it, you see. Mm-hmm. If the king had seen him move his right hand over to his left side, the king would immediately suspect some foul play going on here. But if the king saw him putting forth his left hand, it, it, it, he wouldn't realize the man is left-handed anyway. Ah, and didn't see until it was too late, of course, what he was about to do. Yeah. And he offered the present unto Eglon, king of Moab, verse seventeen. Now Eglon was a very fat man. And when he had made an end of offering the present, he sent away the people that bear the present. But he himself turned back from... And now I shall ask you to attend to your translations. What do your translations say now? We turned back from where? Let me have your votes on your translation. Quarries? You've got quarries. Other people have quarries? Stone. Pardon? Stone images. Stone images, yes. Idols. Oh, you what? Idols. Idols. Sculptured stones. Sculptured stones, yes. Pasalim, the word means something carved out with a knife. And so the older translations thought it meant quarries that had been carved out by what metal instruments they had in those days. But others have thought, and I would agree with them, that it's not quarries, it is stone images carved out with a knife, and hence called pasalim, uh, the things carved out with a knife. They would have been stone images. They may al- also have been the boundary marks, which in the ancient world were regarded as sacrosanct and tended to be not just boundaries, but carved images to the gods, the god of the boundary. But who knows? He turned back, therefore, from the carved images that were by Gilgal and said, I have a secret errand unto thee, O king. And he said, keep silence. And all that stood by him went out from him. And Ehud came unto him, and he was sitting by himself alone in his summer parlor. And Ehud said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he arose out of his seat. And Ehud put forth his left hand and took the sword from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly. And the haft also went in after the blade, and the fat closed upon the blade, for he drew not the sword out of his belly, and it came out behind. Then Ehud went forth into the porch and shut the doors of the parlor upon him and locked them. Now when he was gone out, his servants came, and they saw and behold the doors of the parlor were locked, and they said, surely he covereth his feet in his summer toilet, uh, summer chamber. In other words, that's a euphemism for going to the toilet. And they tarried till they were ashamed, and behold, he opened not the doors of the parlor. Therefore they took the key and opened them, and behold, their Lord was fallen down dead on the earth. And he had escaped while they tarried and passed beyond the, the carved images and escaped to Serah. And it came to pass when he was come that he blew a trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim, and the children of Israel went down with him from the hill country, and he before them. And he said unto them, Follow after me, for the Lord hath delivered your enemies, the Moabites, into your hand. And they went down after him and took the fords of Jordan against the Moabites, and suffered not a man to pass over. And they smote of Moab at that time about ten thousand men, every lusty man, every man of valor, and there escaped not a man. So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel, and the land had rest four score years. After him was Shamgar, the son of Anath, which smote with the Philistines six hundred men with an oxgoad, and he also saved Israel. I read that verse to remind you, gentlemen, that in addition to the major judges, there were the lesser judges. We shall not have time to consider them. So now we come to this report of Ehud and his strategies, doze. And we might notice one or two things. We're told he was a Benjamite, and what that means and what its significance is, we'll leave for the moment. That he was a man left-handed, we have seen how that affected, uh, his use of his dagger. And that he turned back, uh, to say, uh, from the quarries, the, the images, carved images that were by Gilgal. Now, which of the Gilgaals it is, who knows? But Gilgal is a famous name because when they came across the Jordan, then Joshua made no- knives of stone, stone knives, flints, and circumcised the people that had come out of Egypt. For all those that were under twenty and came out of Egypt and were born in the wilderness had not been circumcised. Uh, sorry, those that were born in the wilderness had not been circumcised. So when Joshua got them into the land, then he circumcised them, and they called the name of the place Gilgal. And if this is the same Gilgal down in that part of the country, you see, where Joshua first came over, then excuse my term, but I'm going to talk about the right and the wrong use of the knife. The wrong use of it to carve out idolatrous images, typical of Moab, of course. The right use of the knife for the circumcision that God imposed upon Israel. The right and wrong use of the knife. Then his decision, though he took the, the present in, it was tribute, but to keep on offering the tribute as Moab demanded is to remain a slave to Moab. You can call it a present if you like, but it was tribute, it wasn't voluntary. It was imposed. And Ehud came to the point when he decided that they had to put a stop to it. He went in, and at the crucial moment, you'll see, he said, I have a message from God unto thee. And the king rose, being an old pagan, he respected gods of any kind. He was a polytheist himself. And he rose from his seat or attended to, and Ehud drew his sword and put it through his belly. Now, he has been much criticized as Ehud, and my friend who comes from Singapore and is a Malay Chinese, or Chinese Malay, tells me that in those parts the believers think that this is a very bad example, that Ehud acted a lie and said, I've a word of God to you, when he hadn't got any word from God at all. This was a lie, therefore, and deceived the king and put a dagger through his belly, and this wasn't a nice way of fighting. Gentlemen, I leave it with you, uh, what you might answer to the Far Easterners who think in those terms. And you may discuss it next week or at the end of this session, if you please. So he dealt with the king and then escaped. And, uh, you see, they locked the door that gave the Moabites, uh, uh, uh, well, it gave the Israelites time, which was, uh, of the essence, that he might go and rally the troops of Israel, tell them what had happened, and now was their chance to make their stand. So that, uh, uh, that while when he locked the doors and the Moabite servants of the king thought that the man was, uh, gone to the toilet or something, and so they didn't disturb him for a while, was vital in the actual campaign. And when they found the king had been murdered, was now dead, you'll see, the Moabites on the west side of Jordan panicked and tried to get back to the east of Jordan, where the majority territory of Moab lay, east of Jordan. And Ehud, sensing that they would do that, the ones on the west of Jordan would do that, they would try to get back home, uh, counseled his followers to take the fords, and that is precisely what happened. Though they were few in number, to take the fords when the Moabites could only come across in single file, one after the other, made it easy for, for, uh, uh, Ehud and his friends to pick them off as they came across. So that is the story. What shall we make of it? Well, Well. I have talked about Ehud being a Benjamite, though I didn't attempt to say what significance it had. I have talked about his being right ha- uh, left-handed. I talked about the turning point in this campaign, the carved images that were by Gilgal, the right and wrong use of the knife. I pointed out that he greeted the king with the words, I have a message from the Lord unto you. And pointed out that he then put the dagger through his belly, yes? Now, I'd like you really to forget all that. Because if you don't, you're about to, you will think and surely say that what I'm about to put before you is, um, absolute fancifulness run riot. So to guard myself against any such, uh, impression, uh, let's see, I'd like you to forget everything you've heard about Moab and eagles and daggers and things and what have you, because I want now to read a part of the New Testament. And the place is Philippians chapter three. Have you had time to forget all about Ehud and Moab, and please all about that, forget that completely. Mm. Now we'll read Philippians three. And this is Paul dealing with what you might so call an opposition, an enemy, if you like. But let's read it. Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed, is not irksome, but for you it is safe. Beware of the dog. Beware of the evil workers. Beware of the concision. What on earth is that? For we are the circumcision. I say. Huh. What on earth is the concision to start with? And what's the difference between concision and circumcision? Well, if I said that, uh, uh, uh, concision was the wrong use of the knife, and circumcision was the right use of the knife, you would know what I mean, wouldn't you? The question is what Paul means by it. Beware of the concision, the wrong use of the knife. For we are the circumcision. Well, let's get the right use of the circumcision then. This is right. Who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in... Gentlemen, what is he talking about? Confidence in what? No confidence in the flesh. Well, at least we're on, on, on equal terms with Paul now. He's talking about the same enemy, if he's talking about the flesh anyway, surely. Well, he says he is. Though I myself might have confidence even in the flesh, if any other man thinketh to have confidence in the flesh, yet I more. What's he mean to have confidence in the flesh? He doesn't mean flesh now in a literal sense, does he, but in the spiritual sense of the term. Confidence in the flesh is distinct from confidence in God. The flesh that is not subject to the Spirit of God, neither indeed can be. Man in the flesh, trusting in himself, in his own efforts, in his own abilities. That's the same from trusting in God. And if it's a question of having confidence in the flesh, in one's own fleshly attainments and efforts, well, I was circumcised, literally circumcised, the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law of Pharisee, as touching zeal persecuting the church, as touching the righteousness which is in the law found blameless. How be it what things were gained to me, these have I counted loss for Christ. This is Paul telling us what his conversion involved. You'll see, before he was converted, it wasn't an outrageous, licentious man. Far from it. He wasn't living in the flesh in the sense of debauchery and immorality and drunkenness and drugs, but he was living in the flesh. That is in confidence in his own effort. Outwardly, his effort was towards keeping the law of God in all its particular details. He put his whole strength into it, but from the motive of doing it, his own effort. Uh, building for himself a righteousness which is of the law, by his own effort. This is religious flesh, gentlemen. And many follow that way, don't they? For Paul, it made putting f- his faith in literal circumcision. The ceremony in which a little bit of the literal flesh is cut off. But putting your faith in it for, for salvation. It becomes an altogether false thing, doesn't it? Salvation is not by literal circumcision or any ritual. Christian or otherwise. And to put our faith in religious exercise for salvation is false. It is the wrong use of the knife. It is the wrong use if you put your trust in circumcision, literal circumcision, for salvation, and you teach it's necessary for salvation. This is an utter perversion of things. It is concision, he says. Mutilation. So far from being a right thing to put your faith in literal circumcision for salvation. It's utterly false. It's the wrong use of the knife, to excuse my expression. It's mutilation, says Paul. It is not true circumcision. What is true circumcision? Well, we are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God, glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Conversion to Christ for Paul meant giving up faith in all his own attainments for salvation. And trust in Christ, glorying in Christ, worshiping by the Spirit of God, and putting no confidence in the flesh, that is his own unaided efforts to deserve salvation. Excuse my phrase, the right and wrong use of the knife. How be it, what things were gained to me, verse seven, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yea, verily, and I count all things to be lost for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death, if by any means I may obtain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not that I have already obtained or am already made perfect, but I press on, if so be that I may be apprehended, but I may apprehend that for which also I was apprehended by Christ Jesus. Salvation by faith solely does not mean that thereafter we stagnate. We press forward, of course. But notice the experiences involved in pressing forward. He says, now therefore, the brethren, I count not myself to apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Now therefore, do remember who it is that is writing this. This is Saul of Tarsus, but as he tells us in verse five, he happened to be a Benjamin. Oh, really? He was a Benjaminite, or so he says. A small detail, but I forget that as well. But he was actually a Benjaminite, you see. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And he says now, verse fifteen, let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded. And if anything you are, if in anything you are otherwise minded, even this shall God reveal unto you. Oh, go steady now, do. God shall... God shall reveal something to these guys? What's Paul now claiming? He has a message from the Lord? And there will come a message for the Lord to them? You want to look out because when Ehud said that to the king of, uh, of Moab, I have a message from the Lord to you, there followed a dagger through his belly, so do be careful. If anybody be otherwise minded, the Lord will reveal it to you, will he really? Well, anyway, brethren, uh, only whereto we have already attained, by that same rule, let us walk. Brethren, be you imitators for together of me, and mark them which so walk, even as you have us for an example. For many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is perdition, whose God is the belly. Who mind earthly things. Whose glory is in their shai- shame, who mind earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven. Our politia. Not in a world under the curse of God. Certainly not in the Jerichos of this world. Our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall fasten anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself. So, gentlemen, I've read in your ears the most of Philippians chapter 3. Ask you to notice it was written by a Benjaminite. That the enemy is the flesh. How he dwells on the right and wrong use of the knife, so to speak, in religious context, the concision and the circumcision. How he defines what true circumcision is, it's to have no confidence in the flesh, but all confidence in Christ and in the Spirit of God. How he invites believers to walk like he walks, like those who follow his example, and has to point out to them that if they're anything different-minded from him in this matter, then they can expect God, if they are believers, to reveal it to them. Though he warns them that there are some who don't walk like he does, whose God is their belly. I'm sure your modern translations don't allow you that, uh, rather humble, homespun term. What have you got there? Whose God is what? Belly. Pardon? Yeah, it's the same in the ESV. Their God is their belly. Oh, their God is their belly. Anybody else got a different translation? Stomach. Stomach. Their God is their stomach. That's a euphemism, yes. Their stomach, their appetites, their sensuality. Yeah, that's right, you see. Yes. Because God is their belly. Well, anyway, gentlemen, whatever you think of my analysis of this second captivity and the tactics that, uh, Ehud used and so forth and so on, I do commend to you, of course, Philippians three in its own right. Or even if my exposition of, of, uh, uh, Judges is quite wrong at that point, yet I do appeal to Philippians three. It's talking about the same enemy. It's talking about the right and wrong use of the knife in religious circumstances. It has a message from the Lord, and Paul's diagnosis of the trouble, that God is their belly. So, just let me put. These curious similarities between the passage in Judges and the details of Philippians three. That the enemy in Philippians three is the flesh is stated explicitly. That the flesh, in what sense is the point? That Paul bewails literal circumcision as a means of salvation and talks of it as concision, mutilation, it's a very strong term, the wrong use of the knife, as distinct from the right use. And what is the right use? The true circumcision is not, you see, physical circumcision, which was at best only a symbol. True circumcision is a spiritual thing, an attitude of heart, in which we don't cut off a little piece of the flesh of our bodies, in which we do repent of putting our faith in our own efforts, which is what Bible means often by the flesh, but put our faith solely in Christ and in the Spirit of God. In our spiritual development thereafter, we accept our union with Christ, which will mean understanding what he means by being conformed to his death, that we might attain to resurrection. This is a question of knowing Christ. But it does mean a c- a sense, in a sense of death, leading on to resurrection. Old Jordan again. Israel came across Jordan at the flood. They didn't go across any fjords, by any chance. They went down to the riverbed and came up the other side. You know the story. Moabites preferred to tiptoe across the forts. And we notice his Paul's complaint that certain people, apparently professing to be Christians, but they're enemies of the cross of Christ. They won't have death to the flesh. They put their confidence in the flesh. Their trust in the food laws, their trust in literal circumcision, their super- supposed superiority over Gentiles because of these external rituals. It's a perversion of true circumcision. Talks about the need for God to reveal his truth to them. And laments those whose God is their belly. Thank you very much. Well, now that's all I have to say for the moment, but our, uh, manager, uh, commander in chief has just informed me that we're allowed to go on to four fifteen. So if you have questions and suggestions and anything else to raise, let's hear from you now. Hello? Can you repeat the questions when they, when you're asked? Yes, I will repeat them when I'm asked them, yes. I'll start. You said earlier on about, um, my first session about obviously, um, different now for Christians that they're not like to use violence or the sword Mm-hmm. to kind of promote. Um, does that mean that Christians shouldn't go to war, and does it mean that Christians can't use force to not the defense of themselves, but the defense of others? Mm-hmm. So now, gentlemen, we have a very serious question. And some of you are still taking notes, so let's, let me allow you to finish taking your notes so that you may concentrate on this question, because it is a serious practical question. Well, now, if we are ready, let me just now repeat the question that has been asked. I said in our first session that Christ forbids us, his people, to use the sword either to protect or to forward his kingdom. I was, of course, basing myself on what he said in the garden when Peter drew his sword to protect the Lord Jesus, and he rebuked him and told him to put up the sword into its place, do you see? And what is more, he healed the man whose ear Peter had cut off. Warned Peter and company, they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Our Lord repeated the same thing when he was interviewed privately by Pontius Pilate, according to the final verses of John chapter eighteen. When Pilate asked him, are you a king? And our Lord first, uh, asked him, um, who had told him this. Because the word king was a very loaded term, and our Lord's reply would depend on what Pilate understood by the term king. Pilate told him it was the Jews that had to made the accusation that he was a king. Therefore, they were meaning the term king in a political sense. They were saying that Jesus Christ was claiming to be king in a political sense, political messianism, as it is called. Beloved by many Jews, like the Maccabees onwards, who sought to defend Israel and deliver Israel from the Gentile oppressors by the use of the sword. You'll see. And there were in our Lord's time people that had that same view, and as I remarked earlier, people of that view managed to sway the nation in AD sixty and rose- rose in physical revolt against the Romans, brought on themselves utter disaster, of course. And the high priests, who were Sadducees, and were maintained in their position by the Roman authorities, for the Roman authorities even took care of the high priest's robes, and at the great festivals of religion, gave the high priest's robes to the man they approved of. The high priests were very wealthy men. They were blue blooded. And they didn't want somebody to come along, a hothead like Jesus Christ, and stir up the c- the crowds to political revolt against Rome. They saw that if somebody did it, Rome would just steamroller them. But then they accused our Lord to Pilate of being an insurrectionist like that. And that was quite false, of course. And our Lord therefore, uh, conquired of Pilate, in what sense are you supposing I'm king? Not king in the sense that my, the rulers of my nation have accused me of being to you. If I were a king of that sort, he said, my king, I, my servants would have fought in the garden so that I shouldn't be delivered from the, to the Jews. But they didn't fight. And of course, the Roman officer who was in charge of the squad of troops that came with the Jews to the garden to arrest Christ, the Roman officer, the chiliarch, would have seen what happened, would have heard what Christ said, and would have reported it to Pilate, that Christ had forbidden his disciples to use any force, even to protect him. Pilate knew, therefore, that Jesus was telling the truth. And went out and told the Jews that I find no crime in him. You have falsely accused him. He's not a political insurrectionist. But then our Lord explained to Pilate on that grounds. My kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom is not from hence. That's why my servants mustn't fight. You're a king then, said Pilate to him. Well, yes, says Christ, but a king in this sense, for this end was I born, and for this cause I came into the world. Now, on what does he build his kingdom? That I might witness to the truth. Anyone that is of the truth will hear my voice. And now, gentlemen, I, I think you see why, among other things, our Lord forbids us the use of the sword, either in evangelism to make converts or in protecting the church. You cannot convince people of the truth by means of the edge of the sword. Uh, you can say you will believe this, and if you don't, I shall have your head off. And many people have done it, of course. Done it, alas, in the name of Christ. But you don't convince people of the truth that way round. It is a spiritual thing, isn't it? And therefore our Lord forbids us to use the sword. Either to defend, as in the Garden of Gethsemane, or to promote his kingdom, with which agrees the words of the apostle, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God. And the armor that we are to use, given at the end of Ephesians chapter six, None of the pieces is a literal weapon. So far then, so good. But now we have another, a very big question before us. Does that mean that quite apart now from the gospel, promoting it and defending it, promoting the church and defending the church. Apart from that, are we as Christians allowed to take the sword to defend innocent people from, uh, evil dictators and so forth and so on? Are Christians allowed to be policemen? And if they see a, a known criminal about to kill a victim, are they allowed to shoot the criminal to stop him destroying an innocent person? And if Hitler proposes to murder uh five million Jews. Are we allowed to fight him by force of arms? To stop him. On this matter, gentlemen, I leave it to your own conscience, because this is a very serious question, and different believers hold different views. During the last war, I myself was a conscientious objector. And I'm aware that many of my fellow believers, and not least the Irish, don't take that view, but take the opposite view. I hold it to be a matter of conscience. Do you see? When it comes to the armies of this world, it's okay, I understand the point of view that says that the Hitlers of this world may be s- must be stopped. But the matter is never so straightforward in international politics. Any more the present war in Iraq is a matter simply of saving Iraqis from an evil dictator. The motives are very mixed. I take my cue from our blessed Lord himself in that sense. There will come a day when he will come forth in judgment and put this world right. Then it will be a Christian thing for the armies in heaven to follow him and join in. I am myself not persuaded that it is a Christian thing, that there is somehow now a Christian way of defeating the enemy, of slaughtering him. But having said that, I regard the majority view of the church as sincerely held, that in these respects, when it's nothing to do with the gospel but simply a matter of justice and protecting the innocent, that it would be pleasing to God, uh, to join the armed forces or to be a policeman or something of the other sort, do you see? And thus, uh, um, protect the innocent. That is my view, but let us hear now your views on the matter. Romans 13. Yes. The magistrate was a very sword in game, and Mm. has his instructions to be under the part of people that are of God. Oh yes. Um, so the state went to war, say, against Hitler, and switch conscription and everything, does the the government bear responsibility? Oh. Well, yes, I think it is helpful, uh, to notice eh, the use of the term in Romans three. It's talking about the magistrates, not the generals in the Roman army, the magistrates. That is the civil government, and he bears the sword, and at God's appointment he bears the sword. This is a divinely ordered institution, and that the magistrate with the sword is, uh, again those that do wrong, so to speak, and therefore this is a good, uh, thing, and a proper use, and a God-ordained use, necessary in this fallen world. We are to be in subjection to the magistrates, yes? Uh, not merely out of fear, but for conscience sake. Mm. So yes, that is so. And if Christians feel as citizens they're called to be magistrates under their then government, by all means, I- I'm not- I would not criticize them. Nor would I accuse the average Tommy in the British Army of, uh, uh, doing bad and sinful things. When the soldiers came to John the Baptist, they heard him talking about repenting. What do we have to do to show that we're genuinely repentant? He didn't say the first thing you'll do is to leave the- but leave the army. No. He said they must, they must not use their position as soldiers, uh, to injure the ordinary civilian population and steal from them and so forth and so on. But he didn't tell them they have to leave the army. And I would never begin to, to accuse the average Tommy in the British Army of being a murderer or something. Nor would I say that the Christian in the army is disobeying the Lord, if the Lord so, if he feels that he can do this to the Lord's glory, let him do it. I personally would have a conscience. I couldn't do it in that sense to the glory of the Lord. Mm-hmm. But he doesn't say to them, don't kill. Mm-hmm. He says don't shake people up, don't. That's right, civilians. He's talking about civilians, yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. But he doesn't say don't kill. Yes. Which is the first thing we think about, I possibly join the army and to stop Hitler, but I wouldn't want to kill anybody. But that's not That's nonsense, you will see, because, uh, the army, they talk about you must be prepared to lay down your life. The generals in the army don't ask young men to go to lay down their lives. That's the last thing they want them to do. They want them to join the army to kill other people, of course. The question arises, however, doesn't it, gentlemen, that in the wars of gentiles... Look at what the British did to Dresden at the end of the last, uh, of the Second World War, and to, uh, uh, the other Hamburg, but not Hamburg, Dresden and the other place, you know what I mean. When they deliberately bombed the civilian population by the hundreds of thousands, because they got desperate. And whereas it is the Geneva Convention that you mustn't attack in the, uh, uh, uh, civilians, you can't help sometimes collateral damage, as they call it. But when England got desperate with the V two s and the V one s coming over England, and the nation nearly losing its nerve, then Churchill and Company ordered the deliberate bombing of civilians. You'll say, and I who have been in East Germany before the wall came down, met believers. They told me what it was like when they had to lay down a, a, a, a light railway to bring the dead into the center of the city and make great piles of the civilian dead and burn them in the middle of the city. I find it very difficult myself personally to think that I could have been a bomber on that particular errand and plastered those bombs and then gone down and preached them the gospel. But as I say, others will hold a different view from me. I- I- I'm not saying that they're sinners if they did. Because I- I- I can see their side of the argument. And that's what I mean by saying it's a matter of conscience. But let's hear the other side, yeah, yeah, you see, I'm trying to be fair with you and to say- It's, uh, unlikely that the, the average pilot on bomber on board the plane had any idea of the strategic significance of presence. I guess for them, they were just following orders, weren't they? Well, they they had no, they had no option. Yeah. If they had refused to fly and bomb it, they would have been court-martialed with very serious results. In that sense, they can't be held responsible in that sense, you see. The Spaniards used to get at me. In the seventies. I used to go a lot to Spain, you see, and Spain was still under, under Franco. Mm. And anyway, that's a long story. But the Spaniards would get at me, you see, and ask me these same questions. And they were all for that you should join the army. It's right for a Christian to do, to join the army, you see, and wondered why I didn't. Well, I s- I used to say to them, well, my dear friends, you have a question about Gibraltar, don't you? Who owns Gibraltar? Spaniards feel very keenly about that. These wicked English. Gibraltar, two inches from mainland Spain, and belongs to Spain, surely, and the British have got it and won't give it up. Ooh. And from time to time, Franco would close the road from the mainland to to Gibraltar so that you couldn't use the air- the airport that was is on Gibraltar, you see. All sorts of trouble. I say, suppose eventually Spain declared war on England to get back Gibraltar, and I was sent as an RAF pilot to bomb you. And having bombed you, I landed. Would you then accept it that I preached the gospel to you? Happy? Well, they wouldn't have been happy for that, no. But there, gentlemen, I- I- I- I'm not seeking to, to, uh, uh, uh, to impose my views, merely telling you what my own conscience is, you see. I am, in that sense, strictly apolitical. In the bad old days, you see, when to preach the gospel in error anywhere like it was in their minds a political thing. You're wanting us to become Protestants, and the gospel is Anglo-Saxon, and all this, and their long memories of all that England did to them in the bad old days and treated them desperately badly. I wanted to be free to tell the Southern Irish I didn't mind who owned Northern Ireland. As far as I was concerned, I could have the lot. And I wasn't asking them to become Protestants, that certainly I wasn't. Because Protestants, to their mind, is a political term, and since the Reformation onwards, Protestantism has been by the sword to fight the Roman Catholic authorities. And Luther, and of course Calvin, and Zwingli, were all for using the sword against the opponents of true Christianity, and did so. And held up the example of Israel that used her armies to defend the faith. So they copied this bit about the Old Testament too. And they looked upon, uh, uh, Christianity as a state religion. So just as in Israel, you couldn't be a member of Israel politically without being a member of Israel religiously. So to be a member of the, uh, uh, Israel politically, you had to be circumcised. And therefore you had to be circumcised as the Old Testament had it, as a babe of eight days old, you had to be circumcised. If you weren't, you couldn't be regarded as a true Israelite. This was enforced by the law. And at the Reformation, many of the leading reformers, the magisterial reformers, as we call them, took that view, that the church is Israel. So everybody in Geneva under Calvin had to be a Christian. Parents had to bring their children to be baptized, and if they didn't, they could be condemned to death. Christianity was not only a spiritual thing, it was a political thing. And you got out your armies to fight the Catholic kings, to protect the faith. It wasn't long after that, of course, that the magistrates used their power to have Christians executed if they refused to accept infant baptism and insisted on believers' baptism. Luther took people like Mennonites who believed in baptism of believers, trussed them up like chickens and threw them into the rivers. That surely was a misuse of state power and the sword. How you make Christianity, so to speak, into a government, that always defeats me. But you see how confused my thinking gets. I'll just be honest with you, gentlemen, and hope you'll pray for me still. But the use of the sword to promote Christianity and the use of politics to promote and protect Christianity, gentlemen, it has been a ginormous obstacle to the gospel down the centuries. Ask the Waldensians, the Vaudois. Inquire of Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, put into prison because the state wouldn't give him permission to preach. Ask the early Baptists in Coventry. The church records of the first church in, in a Baptist church in Coventry are in code. Because of the danger, because the Christian state was against them. At least in my mind. Hello there. Oh, I thought you ought to go and ask a question. Yes? Yes. I've sometimes heard that the reason why Islam is gone by as a religion is because it is now what Christianity was. Yeah, it's the old, uh, Islam borrows a lot, of course, as you know, even in the Quran, it borrows a lot from the people of the book. That is the Jews. So they've got a lot of stories from the Old Testament, generally with a funny twist. But with Israel, and with Israel still in the land. Jewish religion and the state of Israel are meant to be one and the same thing. Though it's becoming very difficult for Israel now because so many of the Israelis are straight out atheists anyway. But you see, that is still the, the, the viewpoint of Israel, is the view, uh, the view of, um, medieval Christendom, and is the view of, um, of Islam, and therefore, if in Judaism you heard that that certain city had gone over to idolatry, you ascertained if that were true, and if it were true, you took out the armies, gave it a chance to repent, and if they wouldn't repent, you s- executed them. Hence the auto dafees in Spain and the, the inquisitions against believers, run by the church and the government. Hence in Spain under Franco, the persecution of believers. La. Many of my friends, I could tell you some stories about it. Oh, ah, yes. It gets very complicated, gentlemen. And in it all, as a preacher of the gospel, as a teacher of the gospel, I personally want to be free of all politics. This is not a political message. And I have told my Catholic friends in Ireland, I don't mind who owns, uh, Ireland. You can have the lot tomorrow if you like, I don't mind. What I am interested in is the gospel, which is not a Protestant thing anyway. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm surprised you haven't quoted at me the Lord's words. When I sent you without staff or purse, did you lack anything? No. Righto, but now I'm telling you that you better take both of them, and if you don't have a sword, sell your shirt and get a sword. Isn't that what he says? What does he mean? I thought you might quote it at me. But perhaps on the next occasion you'll tell me what he meant. So I think we better perhaps bring this to an end, Mr. Chairman, sir. But let me announce that another big question has been put to me, and it's relevant to our, our witness for the Lord. And that is, as I gather it as follows, it Matthew will, will refine it better for the next occasion. That is, what are we to say when the friends to whom we talk talk point to the Old Testament and all the slaughtering that that went on, commanded by Jericho put to death. How can we stand by a Bible that tells of that kind of thing and think it comes from God? Have I got your, roughly got your question, Matthew? Slaughter, but also the amount of wives they had, all sorts. And all the wives they had. That's another serious matter, yes. All the things we heard about things today, we would say that's immoral. Yes, that's right. But yes, it seems to be. Accepted. Yes, do, do raise it, gentlemen, do. Uh, Matthew, if you're here, God willing, uh, in a fortnight's time, uh, do remind us, and we'll have a session on it because this is vastly important. To read books like Joshua and Judges of all this slaughtering that went on. Of course, Muslims, though they deny it in Britain, but would approve of it. But we wouldn't in Christianity, surely. So how do we answer our friends? And then on this matter of men with endless wives and so forth and so on. Mm-hmm. Yes. Good. Well, we ought to bring our session to a halt, I think.