181 Who Are the Terrorists?

There are some passages in the Bible that don't make much sense to the average, main stream believer, and only start making sense to you if you mean serious business about following God. As a result, as I've brought out before, most Christians choose to ignore them.
The average church goer does not know what it is to be persecuted, maligned or slandered for their faith, nor even of the division that Jesus has been known to bring to people, even among families. If, however, you happen to belong to a small religious minority with somewhat controversial views, things may look quite different.
If you're used to newspapers, magazines, and TV hosts distributing lies and twisted half-truths about your own community since decades, you become more aware of the actual degree of accuracy (or rather, the lack thereof) in modern journalism, and one grows increasingly suspicious of "news" over alleged "terrorists." You somehow know from reading the Bible that the day may not be very far off when they're going to start calling you a terrorist, too.

Every now and then God is good to me and sends along some conformation of something I happen to believe (as outlandish as some of it may be), and I come across an article by some established journalist or writer stating exactly what I've been feeling all along.
In his article, "The Lynch Mob Mentality," Glenn Greenwald voices exactly my sentiments on the "terrorists" issue. It's always encouraging when there's another lone voice piping up somewhere that gives you the kind of feeling on, "Right on, Bro!"
Just for someone out there who doesn't swallow the propaganda that's being spewed at us by the dragon of the mass media that gives us - possibly the "terrorists" of tomorrow - a glimpse of hope, even if only a glimpse..., as far as the level of awareness of our fellowmen is concerned (although we generally have stopped daring to hinge our hopes on frail flesh and blood long ago...)

Another neat little confirmation of some of my utterings I came across recently was this article, in which Pastor Jeff Vanderstelt is quoted as telling his fellow-clergy that "The job of pastors, teachers and apostles is to equip the saints for works of ministry, not to do the ministry for the saints," which is one of the points I tried to make with my recent "NewLeaf" post on "Effective Evangelism."

The key word here being "equip."
If what we're mainly interested in is equipping folks with the truth and the spiritual weaponry found therein to counter evil without worrying who will get the credit or even the money for it, we're probably a lot closer to Jesus' original idea of an apostle.
Unfortunately, being so outrageously different from the "established method" will inevitably put your group or church in the camp of the outcasts, black-labeled and maligned, since something has just got to be wrong with those who just want to give folks Jesus, His Word and Holy Spirit without insisting on stuffing them in the box of the good old established church system and "the way we've always done it..."

In other words, if any Christian should decide to actually practice the "equipping of saints for works of ministry" as preached above, he is very likely to discover one of those truths he may have thus far considered outdated: "And all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution" (2Tim.3:12). The Devil doesn't mind just one more preacher in a million, preaching to another congregation in a million that will limit their faith life to listening to a sermon per week, but he will certainly hate your guts and fight you tooth and nail once you really start doing the job God intended for us to do...

Let's see how readily you will join the rest of the world in labeling others "terrorists," "radicals," "fanatics" or "extremists" then.