but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.

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2 Corinthians 10:5 (ESV)

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

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Philippians 1:7 (ESV)

It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

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Philippians 1:15-16 (ESV)
Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel.

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Titus 1:9 (ESV)

He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it.

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I fully acknowledge this isn't everybody's calling, and one may be a more useful tool in several other ways, but we should at least be able to acknowledge that with some people God uses trials; in others it is an emotional experience; in others it is through reason.

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We can't fault a person who demands reason. They're no better or worse than those who are reached in other ways.

not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.

Isaiah 54:5

“For your husband is your Maker,

Whose name is the Lord of hosts;

And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel,

Who is called the God of all the earth.

Hosea 2:7

“She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them;

And she will seek them, but will not find them.

Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband,

For it was better for me then than now!’

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“Then I passed by you and saw you, and behold, you were at the time for love; so I spread My skirt over you and covered your nakedness. I also swore to you and entered into a covenant with you so that you became Mine,” declares the Lord God. “Then I bathed you with water, washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I also clothed you with embroidered cloth and put sandals of porpoise skin on your feet; and I wrapped you with fine linen and covered you with silk.

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Wail like a virgin girded with sackcloth

For the bridegroom of her youth.

Again it's clear, the Lord loves Israel as his wife.
I don't think it's a coincidence and to me at least, it is beautiful and harmonious.

Israel is the bride of the Father
The Church is the bride of the Son.

Some will scoff. Some will call it blasphemous, but I believe this concept is critical to understanding so many other things.

This love of Israel, so pure and beautiful is the very reason the lord of THIS world hates Jews so very much and visits as much calamity on them as he can muster.

When I say this or that religion, I am talking about leaders.

I know there are devout, good intentioned followers in every denomination and faith.

Further I do not contend that EVERY leader was bad.

There were lots of leaders whose hearts and intentions were/are pure.


So, in the same way I feel that this supernatural hatred of the Jews reinforces the notion that they are indeed the Chosen, I feel that the trouble in the church also demonstrates that same kind of animosity from the fallen one.

If we look throughout the history of the church we can see example after example of Satan doing all he can to derail it.

Even from the very beginning the church was perverted by the Romans. Truths twisted and lies told. Ungodly men put in charge and touted as vessels of God.

Have you ever read the historical accounts of the Popes? My goodness they were some evil evil men.
By the time of Martin Luther they had perverted the NT maybe even more so than the Jewish leaders during Jesus's time had perverted the OT.

In every single instance of some new exciting revelation from God, there's Satan immediately cutting it's effectiveness in half or worse.

There may be others I've missed but I'll point to the Protestant reformation as the 2nd example.

By this time, the Roman Catholic Church had become really awful. They had invented a concept called purgatory where souls were held in limbo if they had died with some unconfessed sin(s).

They would literally charge folks money in order to get them out of purgatory, so their souls could pass over into Heaven.

"Oh dang! Grandma died last week and she hadn't been to confession in over 8 weeks? Ouch. That's gonna run you about $300".

Remember that before the invention of the printing press only priests had easy access to the Bible.

It's no coincidence that the printing press came around 1440 and just 75 years later a 34 year old Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to that door.

Additionally with the fall of Constantinople in the 1450s, Western Europe had much more access to original Greek and Hebrew texts which had been kept by the Eastern empire.

The combination of these two events (printing press and access to original manuscripts) allowed for more accurate translation in many different languages as well as quicker dissemination of these newer translations.

While the Protestant reformation was certainly a pivotal and great thing for Christianity in general, again we see Satan right there to diminish this success greatly.

Now at roughly the same time Martin Luther was nailing his 95 theses there were others who were having similar Revelations revealed to them.

One in particular was Huldrych Zwingli. He and Martin Luther were in agreement about SO MUCH. They could have come together and the Reformation would have had much more impact much more quickly. But, instead they were essentially enemies.

There were several, what you and I would consider minor differences of opinion, but the one that REALLY ensured they would never partner was the interpretation of the Eucharist. One believed that when the priest prayed over the Eucharist it literally transformed into the body of Christ, while the other said no, it's only symbolically the body of Christ.

Hmmm? How sad.

Of course one of the Catholic Churches biggest arguments against translating the Bible into the common tongue was that the lay person wasn't equipped to read and understand it for themselves. Even those with a pure motive could see this resulting in chaos. They weren't wrong.

For all the good that came along with the Reformation, the chaos afforded the Catholic church a great opportunity to belittle the new movement and therefore retain much of the power it should have rightly lost.

Throughout the next several centuries we would see other examples where new revelations of truth would be turned into even more chaos and infighting rather than bringing greater edification.

Not only did Satan hinder every opportunity for greater edification but he was/is still able to feed upon the wickedness of man's sinful nature and twist bits of truth into depraved "reasons" for supposedly devout men to commit atrocities upon one another.

Nowhere else do we see this to such an exaggerated degree, because Satan knows it is true and will ultimately result in his demise.