Author: Arun Shourie
Publisher: Rupa
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 432
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8129107848
Description
Just as in the first millennium, the Cross was planted on the soil of Europe, and in the second on that of the Americas and Africa, we can pray that in the third Christian millennium a great harvest of faith will be reaped in this vast and vital continent, declared the Pope in Ecclesia in Asia that he released in Delhi in November, 1999. The synod is an ardent affirmation of faith in Jesus Christ the Saviour, and it remains a call to conversion, he told the assembled Bishops and Cardinals, He fervently endorsed the call of this Bishops, the heart of the Church in Asia will be restless until the whole of Asia finds its rest in the peace of Christ, the Risen Lord.
How come our secularists insist that conversion is not the aim of the Church when the Church repeatedly and explicitly declares that the singular aim of all its activities is to convert non-Christians to Christianity, and thereby harvest souls for Jesus? When it explicitly declares that a conversion is genuine to the extent that the new convert brings in other converts? How does the Church pursue this goal in the face of the Supreme Court’s emphatic verdict that the freedom to propagate does not include freedom to convert, that conversion is in fact an assault on the freedom of conscience that our Constitution guarantees to the persons the proselytizers target?
But how can we disregard the command in the gospels of our Lord Jesus Christ to do So? The missionaries exclaim. How come missionaries, having projected their Lord as superior on the ground, inter alia, that he was a figure of history while our Gods are just mythical figures, how come these very missionaries now suddenly turn around and say, But it is the figure of faith you have to focus on? What happens when we do focus on Jesus as a figure of Faith?
For 500 years the Church has heaped calumny on our Gods-Krishna was a thief, Rama Lied, Shiva, How does the god of their scripture measure up on their own criteria? Having created the entire universe, with its infinite space and time, with its innumerable galaxies, why, as Tom Paine Asked, is He so obsessed with whether this puny little man on this speck of an earth is worshipping any entity other than Him? Why is He so totally ineffective in getting even his chosen people to worship Him and Him Alone? On the telling of the Christian scripture itself, is He compassionate, all-knowing, all-powerful?
God eclipsed by his son. The Son eclipsed by the Church. Having condemned us for 500 years as idolaters, how come the Church has its devotes worship idols of Mary and Jesus? And the relics of its saints?
Holding as they do that salvation is possible only through Christianity, that all non-Christians are condemned to eternal hell-fire, how do missionaries don the cloak of ecumenism? What did Vatican-II actually says? If all faiths lead to salvation, what is the ground for conversion? Forget other faiths, how come the Pope, talking of fellow-Christians, talks of the rapacious wolves of Protestantism?
How do the claims of missionaries - that Jesus was the Son of God, that he was born to a virgin at the intercession of God, that he was crucified - stand in the face of the emphatic declaration in that other scripture which is also said to have been sent down directly by God, the Quran, that to ascribe a Son to God is to blaspheme God?
A book that shows up the claims of missionaries, that nails their design, that bares their technology and sets out what should be done. A must for our times, a must for strengthening our country.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
THEIR DESIGN
An echo chamber
Body counts: big, and compelling business
Is the Vatican also unknown?
Their singular objective vs. the law of the land
Igniting reaction
THE FIGURE OF HISTORY
But how can we disobey the command of our Lord?
They have God as their author
The uncertain build-up to the climax
Silence as evidence
THE FIGURE OF FAITH
The figure of faith
Another figure of faith, another can of conundrums
THE BOOK THEY HAVE, AND WE DON’T
Truth keeps pace with need!
Dictated? Inspired? Written? Collated? Edited?
All to a predetermined purpose
THEIR ALMIGHTY IMPROVEMENT OVER OUR GODS
I, the Sovereign Lord, Almighty
An extreme condition
What the faithful must do to the altars and idols of other religions
The primitive, the superstitious becomes the divine, the sublime – when they do it!
And then they will know I am the Lord
Kill, He commands, Destroy; they kill, they destroy ; He kills them for killing, for destroying!
Ever the unrequited lover
All-powerful?
THE ALMIGHTY DISPLACED
The ascent of Jesus
The ascent of the Church
FROM OUR BRETHREN TO RAPACIOUS WOLVES IN ONE SHORT LEAP
Deification-at-second-remove, its uses and consequences
A FEW THINGS TO DO
A few things to do
INDEX