I’ve been saved, born again, following Jesus or however you wish to phrase it for 33 years now.

Why do you ask?

What can this possibly mean?

“This is My solemn warning to all who hear the prophecies in this book: if anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him every plague mentioned in the book; if anyone cuts anything out of the prophecies in this book, God will cut off his share of the Tree of Life and tyhe Holy City, which are described in the book. The One who guarantees these revelations repeats His promise: I shall indeed be with you soon.”

As for the rest, it’s obvious we are different in our attitudes and beliefs. Go in peace.

But if most Americans WERE mistaken about the definition of jihad, that’s not a strike against the word, but rather a strike against most Americans (IF that were true, and I don’t know that it is). Still, it would seem that terrorism is the context in which McLaren is using the term, here.

I don’t know why you find that objectionable, though.

McLaren is suggesting that many Christians view the book of Revelation as representing a more brutal Jesus than the Gospels and that is often the case (that is, that many Christians DO view Revelation that way).

I would suggest that they do so mistakenly.

I am an Orthodox Christian, specifically Greek, but I also have a fair amount of experience of the spirituality of the Church of Antioch, an Orthodox church that uses Arabic, and yes, jihad means spiritual struggle. But since for most people, indeed for most Christians (who aren’t aware of Orthodox concepts, let alone Arabic Orthodox ones), jihad means only one thing, terrorism. And it is also in this frame of reference that somebody joined together the word jihad with the Name of Jesus. This I find highly objectionable.

But that’s an aside.

There are few things which I find reprehensible in print, but this is one of them—to link the Name of Jesus to anything as ugly, as false, as condemnable, as “Jihad”.

And as for describing Jesus as one who “holds mankind like a spider over the mouth of hell”, this is absurd and totally ignorant, regardless of who said it. Why? Because Jesus Himself says,

If anyone hears My words and does not keep them faithfully, it is not I who shall condemn him, since I have come not to condemn the world, but to save the world: he who rejects Me and refuses My words has his judge already: the word itself that I have spoken will be his judge on the Last Day. (John 12:47-48 JB)

What then will a catholic Christian do, if a small portion of the Church have cut itself off from the communion of the universal faith? What, surely, but prefer the soundness of the whole body to the soundness of a pestilent and corrupt member? What, if some novel contagion seek to infect not merely an insignificant portion of the Church, but the whole? Then it will be his care to cleave to antiquity, which at this day cannot possibly be seduced by any fraud of novelty…

And from the same Church father, what is antiquity?

…antiquity, if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers…

I need not quote anymore from Vincent’s Commonitory for you or for Fr Neo. I’m sure you are both just as familiar with it as I am. But the fact is, that the churches of today (in North America at least, but very possibly everywhere, except in martyr lands), which can be considered “the whole” are infected in large part by novelties from subtle to grandiose, forcing in many places the true followers of Christ and true members of His Church out into the wilderness, sometimes isolated, sometimes in small groups. Whether they remain inside the visible structures of the Church or whether they have removed themselves from them, or been expelled, they seek to believe and live out that faith “once for all delivered to the saints” which was “notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers.”

Notice where our discussions have led us? Now, we examine the great divide that cuts between not philosophy and politics only, but the substance of things unseen, for those who have eyes but do not see, ears but do not hear. Let’s hope to find ourselves among those whom Christ Himself addresses in His letters to the seven churches, and whom John the Revelator announces as “those who have ears to hear,” that we may listen to what the Spirit IS saying to the churches.