Jesus, Matthew 5:43-44:
You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and
hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you
On War and Peace
Psalm 20:7:
Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in
the name of the Lord our God.
Hosea 1:7:
I will save them - not by bow, sword or battle, or by
horses and horsemen, but by the LORD their God
Psalm 33:16-17:
No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior
escapes by his great strength. A horse is a vain hope for
deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot
save.
1 Samuel 17:47:
it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the
battle is the LORD's
General Omar N. Bradley:
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We
know more about war than we know about peace, more about
killing than we know about living. We have grasped the
mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.
Anonymous:
Peace is the deliberate adjustment of my life to the will
of God.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon:
"I am always glad to hear of a soldier becoming a
Christian; I am always sorry to hear of a Christian
becoming a soldier. If there be anything clear in the
Scriptures, it does seem to me that it is for a Christian
to have nothing to do with carnal weapons. May the day
come when war shall be regarded as the most atrocious of
all crimes, and when for a Christian man either directly
or indirectly to take part in it shall be considered as an
abjuration of his principle."
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834 - 1892) in 1857:
The great crime of war can never promote the religion of peace.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon:
( "Joy Born at Bethlehem, " December 24, 1871,
Metropolitan Tabernacle).
".... if there be anything which this book denounces and
counts the hugest of all crimes, it is the crime of war.
Put up thy sword into thy sheath, for hath not he said,
'Thou shalt not kill,' and he meant not that it was a sin
to kill one but a glory to kill a million, but he meant
that bloodshed on the smallest or largest scale was
sinful."
Charles Haddon Spurgeon:
( "Joy Born at Bethlehem, " December 24, 1871,
Metropolitan Tabernacle).
"What pride flushes the patriot's cheek when he remembers that his nation can murder faster than any other people. Ah, foolish generation, ye are groping in the flames of hell to find your heaven, raking amid blood and bones for the foul thing which ye call glory. A nation's joy can never lie in the misery of others. Killing is not the path to prosperity; huge armaments are a curse to the nation itself as well as to its neighbors. "
Broadway Declaration, 1932 - Broadway Tabernacle (Congregational/UCC), New
York
Recommended statement, to be kept in church records,
for members, reported in June 15, 1940 Pentecostal Evangel (Assemblies of God)
with a recommendation for adoption by other A/G
congregations
I have quietly considered what I would do if my nation
should again be drawn into war.
I am not taking a pledge, because I do not know what I
would do when the heat of the war mood is upon the
country. But in a mood of calm consideration I do today
declare that I cannot reconcile the way of Christ with the
practice of war.
I do therefore set down my name to be kept in the records
of my church, so that it will be for me a reminder if war
should come; and will be a solemn declaration to those who
hold to this conviction in time of war that I believe them
to be right and I do desire with my whole mind and heart
that I shall be among those who keep to this belief.
I set down my name to make concrete my present thought
upon the question of war, and declare my purpose to think
and talk with others about it, that my belief in the way
of Christ shall become operative in this and in other
questions which now confuse our thought and action.
Paul, 2 Corinthians 10:3-4:
We do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight
with are not the weapons of the world
Assemblies of God, 1917
Resolution Concerning the Attitude of the General Council of the Assemblies of God Toward any Military Service which Involves the Actual Participation in the Destruction of Human Life.
While recognizing Human Government as of Divine ordination and affirming our unswerving loyalty to the Government of the United States, nevertheless we are constrained to define our position with reference to the taking of human life.
WHEREAS, in the Constitutional Resolution adopted at the Hot Springs General Council, April 1-10, 1914, we plainly declare the Holy Inspired Scriptures to be the all-sufficient rule of faith and practice, and
WHEREAS the Scriptures deal plainly with the obligations and relations of humanity, setting forth the principles of "Peace on earth, good will toward men." (Luke 2:14); and
WHEREAS we, as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, believe in implicit obedience to the Divine commands and precepts which instruct us to "Follow peace with all men," (Heb. 12:14); "Thou shall not kill," (Exod. 20:13); "Resist not evil," (Matt. 5:39); "Love your enemies," (Matt.5:44): etc. and
WHEREAS these and other Scriptures have always been accepted and interpreted by our churches as prohibiting Christians from shedding blood or taking human life;
THEREFORE we, as a body of Christians, while purposing to fulfill all the obligations of loyal citizenship, are nevertheless constrained to declare we cannot conscientiously participate in war and armed resistance which involves the actual destruction of human life, since this is contrary to our view of the clear teachings of the inspired Word of God, which is the sole basis of our faith.
-Weekly Evangel, August 4, 1917, p. 6.
Assemblies of God, October 1940
"military service is incompatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and .... a Christian cannot fully follow the teachings of his Lord and Master if he engages in armed conflict."
Dwight L. Moody:
American Evangelist
"There has never been a time in my life when I felt I
could take a gun and shoot down a fellow being. In this
respect I am a Quaker."
(Moody also was a conscientious objector during the
Civil War.)
Gandhi:
"The only people on earth who do not see Christ and His
teachings as nonviolent are Christians"
Declaration of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal,
1945
"Individuals have international duties which transcend the
national obligations of obedience. Therefore [individuals]
have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes
against peace and humanity from occurring"
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The Chance For Peace" Address
April 16, 1953
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every
rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from
those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and
who are not clothed.
C. S. Lewis
When souls become wicked, they will certainly use this
possibility to hurt one another … It is men, not
God, who have produced racks, whips, prisons, slavery,
guns, bayonets, and bombs.
often quoted by Rush Limbaugh:
The purpose of the military is to kill people and break
things.
Dalai Lama:
War is obsolete…. Of course the mind can
rationalize fighting back.… but the heart, the
heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in
yourself, the heart and the mind, and the war would be
inside you.
General George Patton:
The object of war is not to die for your country but to
make the other bastard die for his.
Gandhi:
I am willing to die for the independence of India, but
there is no cause for which I am willing to kill.
Benjamin Franklin:
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
Boake Carter:
In time of war the first casualty is truth.
Jeannette Rankin:
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
William T. Sherman:
War is cruel and you cannot refine it.
Georges Clemenceau:
War is too serious a matter to leave to soldiers.
Hermann Goering
(Deputy for Adolph Hitler)
The People Don't Want War, at the Nuremberg Trials
after World War II.
Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some
poor slob on the farm want to risk his life in a war when
the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm
in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war:
neither in Russia, nor England, nor for that matter in
Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the
leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is
always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether
it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a
parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no
voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them
they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for
lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It
works the same in any country.
U.S. President George W. Bush:
A war has been declared; you are either on one side or
another. You are either for doing what is necessary to
capture or kill those who control and fund and harbor the
terrorists, or you are for not doing this. If you are for
not doing this, you are for allowing the terrorists to
continue their attacks on America. You are saying, in
fact: I believe that it is better to allow more Americans
-- perhaps a great many more -- to be murdered than to
capture or kill the murderers.
Origen:
Against Celsus 8.73, c. 240 AD
And as we by our prayers vanquish all demons who stir up
war, and lead us to the violation of oaths, and disturb
the peace, we in this way are much more helpful to the
kings than those who go into the field to fight for them.
King Aethelfrith (d. 616 AD), pagan invader of
Christian Wales and northwestern Britain:
referring to Celtic Christian monks.
"If they are calling on their God against us, though they
bear no arms, they still fight us by pursuing us with
hostile prayers.”
Context: The Celtic Christians of northwestern Britain
and Wales had been burned out, raped, pillaged,
terrorized, and invaded by the pagan Anglo-Saxon King
Aethelfrith. By Aethelfrith’s testimony, they
pursued him with “hostile” prayers, calling on
the Lord of Hosts to fight for them. Aethelfrith was
killed in battle shortly afterward, and his immediate
successors converted to Christianity, founding York
Minster, monasteries, and Christian education all over the
north of England.
Abraham Lincoln:
Abraham Lincoln is said to have hosted a dinner for former
Confederates in the short time after the war before he
died. In the receiving line he greeted them warmly, and a
Northern woman came through and said, "Mr. President,
These are your enemies. You shouldn't invite them to
dinner, you should destroy them." Lincoln smiled and
replied, "Madam, don't I destroy my enemies when I make
them my friends?"
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity:
War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest
pacifist, though I think he is entirely mistaken. What I
cannot understand is this sort of semipacifism . . . which
gives people the idea that though you have to fight, you
ought to do it with a long face as though you were ashamed
of it. It is that feeling that robs lots of magnificent
young Christians in the Services of something they have a
right to, something which is the natural accompaniment of
courage -- a kind of gaiety and wholeheartedness.
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity:
We may kill if necessary, but we must not hate and enjoy
hating. We may punish if necessary, but we must not enjoy
it. Even while we kill and punish we must try to feel
about the enemy as we feel about ourselves -- to wish that
he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or
another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. Wishing his
good, not feeling fond of him or saying he is nice when he
is not.
Ezekiel 33:11
Say to them, 'As surely as I live, declares the
Sovereign LORD , I take no pleasure in the death of the
wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and
live.
Romans 12:19-21:
Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's
wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will
repay," says the Lord. On the contrary: "If your enemy is
hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to
drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his
head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with
good.
Albert Einstein
The pioneers of a warless world are the young men who
refuse military service.
John F. Kennedy
War will exist until that distant day when the
conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and
prestige that the warrior does today.
Justin Martyr
2nd Century church leader
We who were filled with war and mutual slaughter...changed
our warlike weapons into plowshares and our spears into
implements of tillage.
Cyprian
Early Christian leader in North Africa, who was
martyred 26 September 304
If murder is committed privately, it is a crime, but if it
happens with state authority, courage is the name for it.
Christians are not allowed to kill, but they must be
willing to be put to death.
Lactantius
A Christian apologist of the fourth century
It can never be lawful for a righteous man to go to war,
since his warfare is in righteousness itself; nor to
accuse anyone of a capital charge, since it makes no
difference whether you put a man to death by word or by
sword, since it is the act of putting to death which is
prohibited.. It is always unlawful to put a man to death.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
NYC April 4, 1967
As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry
young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and
rifles would not solve their problems, maintaining my
convictions that social change comes most meaningfully
through nonviolent action. But, they asked, and rightly
so, what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation
wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its
problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their
question hit home, and I knew that I could never again
raise my voice against violence on the oppressed in the
ghettos without first having spoken clearly to the
greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - our own
government.
1 John 3:15
Whoever hates his brother is a murderer: and you know that
no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
1 John 3:20, 21
If anyone says, I love God, but hates the brothers or
sisters, he is a liar...Whoever loves God must also love
the brothers and sisters.
Jimmy Carter, December 2002
"War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how
necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not
learn to live together in peace by killing each other's
children."
Joshua Yoder; Partridge, Kansas, March 2005
"Evil men are not the enemy; they are victims of The
Enemy. Iraqi terrorists and Taliban warriors are lost
human souls who need Christ's love and redemption."
Jesus, Matthew 5:38-42
You have heard it said of old, an eye for an eye, and a
tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, that you resist not
evil with evil; but whosoever shall smite you on your
right cheek, turn to him the other also.
I Thessalonians 5:15
See that none render evil
for evil to any man; but ever follow that which is good,
both among yourselves, and to all men.
Proverbs 25:21-22:
If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is
thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will
heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward
you.
Tertullian (~A.D. 200)
The soldier of the government must be taught not to kill men. If ordered
to, he shall not carry out the order, nor shall he take the military
oath. If he does not accept this, he must be rejected for baptism.
Saint Martin of Tours
4th Century
I am a soldier of Christ; it is not lawful for me to
fight.
Maximilian
A soldier, martyred at Antioch, Jan. 353
I am a Christian and cannot fight.
Origen
Alexandrian theologian of the 3rd Century
A.D.
We (Christians) no longer take up the sword
against nation, not do we learn war any more, having
become children of peace, for the sake of Jesus, who is
our leader.
Jesus to Peter in the garden, Mt 26:52
Put up your sword into its place: for all they that take
up the sword shall perish by the sword.
Tertullian
Sometime around 200AD
When Christ disarmed Peter in the garden, he disarmed all
Christians.
Jesus, Matthew 5:43-44:
You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and
hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you