by Thomas Ivan Dahlheimer

Old and New Testament scriptures have been misinterpreted by
Christians, causing the Christian religion to become an imperialistic
war-mongering religion, whose adherents have believed that they were
instructed by God to invade the homelands of non-Christian peoples,
take possession of their lands and resources, annihilate many of the
indigenous inhabitants as well as subjugate and exploit the remaining
innocent indigenous peoples.

The indigenous peoples of the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand
bear a tragic witness to what Christian nations have done, as have
also the indigenous peoples of Africa and Asia. In a fifteenth
century papal bull Pope Nicolas V instructed European Christian
nations to "invade, capture, vanquish" and "subdue" Indigenous
Peoples, "subjugate" them and "reduce their persons to perpetual
slavery" and "to take away all their possessions and property." And
according to a United Nations World Conference Against Racism
document, he also "declared war against all non-Christians throughout
the world".

An Old Testament directive to the Jews says: "But as for the towns of
these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance,
you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall
annihilate them - the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites ... -
just as the Lord your God has commanded." (Deut 20:16-17)

"And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets,
Joshua said to the people, "Shout! For the Lord has given you the
city [Jericho]. The city and all that is in it shall be devoted to
the Lord for destruction. And they utterly destroyed all that was in
the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and
ass, with the edge of the sword." (Joshua 6:16-21)

Thus says the Lord of hosts, "... Now go and attack Amalek, and
utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both
man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey" (1
Sam 15:2-3). (Saul did not carry this command fully in that he spared
some cattle as booty. For this action God rejected Saul as king of
Israel (verses 8-9, 13-15, 26), and gave the kingdom to David,
although even David killed only men and women in the conquered lands
of other nations and spared the cattle. (1 Sam 27:8-9, cf. 2 Sam 8:2)

Arise and thresh, O daughter Zion, for I will make your horn iron and
your hoofs bronze; you shall beat in pieces many nations ... (Micah
4:13).

For the nation and kingdom that will not serve you shall perish;
those nations shall be utterly laid waste (Isa 60:12).

Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, and the ends
of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of
iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. (Psalm 2:8-9)

And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a
kingdom [of Israel which] ... shall crush all these kingdoms and
bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever. (Dan 2:44)

Orthodox Jews to this present-day believe that their promised messiah
will come and fully restore the Kingdom of Israel - and then God will
violently annihilate all nations that will not serve their nation and
messiah.

And many Christians believe that Jesus Christ will return to rule and
reign over the entire world from Israel - and that all nations will
[then] not only serve him but also the nation of Israel.

In the New Testament Jesus sometimes appears like a lamb, this image
of Jesus is associated with only his first coming. The scriptures say
that during his second advent when he will come with power and glory
he will be like a "lion" (Rev 5:5, cf. Micah 5:8). The Old Testament
hope of the restored kingdom of Israel, destroying or ruling other
nations is transferred in the New Testament to Christ and his mighty
angles: "when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty
angels, in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not
know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus".
(2 Thess 1:7-8)

The day of wrath is coming to root out the sinners from the earth. On
that day, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give her
light." (Is.13:10)

According to Christian scriptures after all sinners have been rooted
out from the earth the following statement will become reality: "I
heard the voices of a huge crowd, answer: Alleluia! The reign of the
Lord, our Almighty God has begun!" (Rev.19:7) "The kingdom of the
world has become the kingdom of our God, and of his Christ!"
(Rev.11:15)

From the beginning of the Christian religion, Christians were suppose
to imitate Jesus appearing as a lamb. However, the Christian mission
has been (to some extent and for a long time) wrongly orientated to,
both, the violent war-mongering Jewish pursuits of the past, pursuits
associated with their Old Testament directives, to either annihilate
or conquer other nations (such as indigenous people's nations), and
the vengeful mission of Jesus Christ, that the scriptures say will
occur during his second advent, when he and his mighty angles will
inflicting vengeance on the people who do not obeyed his gospel.

Wrongly interpreting Old and New Testament dictates, the Western
Christian nations have often put themselves in the position of the
chosen Israelites while putting other nations in the place of the
Amelikes, Hittites, Canaanites etc. and have, therefore, felt
justified in partially or totally destroying them with "a rod of
iron" like a potter's vessel.

President George W. Bush told an audience of his: "When William
Bradford stepped off the Mayflower in 1620, he quoted the words of
[the Hebrew prophet] Jeremiah 51:10: 'Come let us declare in Zion the
word of God.'" Bush also said: "The founders of my country saw a new
promised land and bestowed upon their towns names like Bethlehem and
New Canaan." In other words, the indigenous peoples of the New World
were viewed by the founders of the United States as new Canaanites of
the new Land of Canaan, a promised inheritance and everlasting
possession, for some new "chosen people" (white Euro-American
Christians).

Thomas Jefferson proposed that the Great Seal of the United States
depict the Israelites moving into the promised land, guided by clouds
and fire, thereby drawing an analogy between the chosen people of the
Old Testament and the white Euro-American Christians, who were to (to
some extent) treat the new Canaanites (this lands indigenous peoples)
the way the Israelites treated the Canaanites when they invaded and
took possession of their homelands.

The mental model of a chosen people and a promised land provides a
convenient rationalization whereby one people feels entitled and
justified, by divine right, to take over, possess, and profit from
the lands of other peoples.

In a United Nations World Conference Against Racism document there
are the words: "In the fifteenth century, two Papal Bulls set the
stage for European domination of the New World and Africa. Romanus
Pontifex, issued by Pope Nicholas V to King Alfonso V of Portugal in
1452, declared war against all non-Christians throughout the world,
and specifically sanctioned and promoted the conquest, colonization,
and exploitation of non-Christian nations and their territories."
This document also declares: "...the subjugation of the native
peoples of the New World was legally sanctioned. 'Laws'
of 'discovery', 'conquest' and 'terra nullius' made up the 'doctrines
of dispossession'..." "These doctrines allowed Christian nations to
claim 'unoccupied lands' (terra nullius), or lands belonging
to 'heathens' or 'pagans'."

In the 1823 U.S.A. Supreme Court ruling Johnson v. M'Intosh,
Associate Justice Joseph Story, who was on the Supreme Court at the
time of the Johnson ruling, published a book in which he drew a
specific connection between Christianity, the pope (the Vatican) and
the "principle" of "discovery" adopted by the Supreme Court. And,
around this same time, Supreme Court Judge John Marshall also
identified the Christian doctrine of discovery behind the Johnson
ruling...revealing that the Israelites' Old Testament directed
mission "to destroy or rule other nations with a rod of iron" was (by
a misunderstanding of the New Testament directive) turned over to
Christians, as God's "new Israelites", who, according to Romans 2:
29, were "inwardly Jews", (they being white Europeans) wrongly
believing that they had a God-given right and mission "to colonize
(conquer, subdue and possess) the lands of the red indigenous nations
and peoples" (the new Canaanites), who were not "inwardly Jews"
(Christians) at the time of their discovery by the ethic cleansing
and genocidal war-mongering white European Christian imperialists and
colonist, who became white Euro-America Christians with the same evil
intentions.

"A number of inferences follow from the Chosen People-Promised Land
model (Deuteronomy 20:10 - 18) such as, indigenous peoples are to be
removed (Indian Removal Act), put into a condition of servitude
(enslavement of the Indians of California in the Spanish-Catholic
missions), exterminated to make room for the chosen people of the
United States (massacres at Sand Creek and Wounded Knee, spreading
deadly deceases, including the decease of alcoholism) - a decease
that is still destroying many indigenous peoples.

For centuries Christian nations - while going in the way of their
misguided Chosen People-Promised Land world domination,
imperialistic, war mongering mission - have been brutally terrorizing
one Muslim nation after another. In the Middle Ages they came to
Muslim countries as crusaders. They colonized many Muslim countries
and tried to destroy their cultures and religion. The French
Christians killed about a million Muslims in Algeria because they
wanted independence from their white European Christian colonist
oppressors. Our Christian nation has killed hundreds of thousands of
Muslim Iraqis. Christian Serbs killed hundreds of thousands of
Muslims and raped thousands of women in Bosnia and Kosovo. Israel has
been for half a century destroying the Palestinian Muslim people with
the help of arms as well as financial and moral support provided by
our [American] Christian nation.

Muslims ruled Spain for about 850 years and during this time they
lived with Jews and Christians in a spirit of tolerance and
cooperation. But the moment Christians took over and the Muslims
became the weaker segment of the population, the hate in the
Catholics' hearts came out with a vengeance. Muslims were either
killed, converted, or forced to leave Spain and their heritage was
destroyed.

In South Africa the inhuman system of apartheid was maintained by the
church-going white community with the blessing of the churches and
indeed the apartheid was practiced by the churches themselves.

In Rwanda the tribe that perpetuated a holocaust of another tribe
follows the Catholic religion. The most cruel tyrant in history
[Hitler] came from a Christian country and there has been no shortage
of other somewhat less ruthless dictators in Christian countries,
especially in South America and Africa. Western Christian nations
fought two world wars with tens of millions dead and untold misery
for the living. For each victory in these two wars the church bells
rang in the victorious countries. The first nation to make a weapon
of mass destruction and the only one to use a weapon of mass
destruction is a Christian nation [America], and it was used to
annihilate innocent civilians. And no apology has been offered to the
nation that was bombed.

And where is the document that presents a papal granted moral right
for indigenous peoples to own land and be independent sovereign
nations? What has the Roman Catholic hierarchy and other Christian
Church leaders had to say about the 60,000,000 to 80,000,000
indigenous inhabitants of the Western hemisphere who had perished by
the end of the 16th century? And what have they had to say about the
probable 100,000,000 native peoples who have been killed in the
course of the on-going Christian 'civilization' of the Western
hemisphere?

In the Book of Revelation it is prophesied that "the great Babylon"
will be cast down like a great millstone hurled into the sea. I
believe that the "great Babylon" is the immoral and apostate
Christian culture of Western nations. During a Mass at the start of a
month-long synod of Roman Catholic bishops from around the world,
come amid growing concern about the decline in church attendance and
interest in religion in many Western nations Pope Benedict XVI
said: "Today, nations once rich in faith and vocations are losing
their own identity under the harmful and destructive influence of a
certain modern culture."

And during a mass at Yankee Stadium, Pope John Paul II said: "It is
not right that the standard of living of the rich countries should
seek to maintain itself by draining off a great part of the reserves
of energy and raw materials that are meant for the whole of
humanity." In the summer of 2004, Pope John Paul II lectured American
bishops about how their people were "hypnotized by materialism,
teetering before a soulless vision of the world."

The Western Christian nations' globalization mission, by which
economies of different countries are oriented to a global market and
are controlled by mostly American influenced multinational and global
financial institutions, is not only an economic process; it is also a
cultural process that creates a monoculture - a culture ruled by the
rich and powerful. It destroys the earth's life supporting eco-
systems and radically exploits third world nations. It steals their
natural resources and makes their masses of poor people wage slaves
who work for almost nothing. From the perspective of poor and
indigenous peoples, it is nothing else but another variety of the
evil Western Christian nations' colonialism and imperialism.

For too long the U.S.A. has been sickened by what American Indian
historian, Jack Forbes terms soul-sickness. It is a disease that
historically has allowed a majority of Euro-American Christians to
believe that God has chosen them to lead the rest of the world into
the light, permitting the United States to employ massive military
might in achieving that so-called mandate. It is the Bush-Cheney
doctrine, a doctrine that has drawn the particular ire of the entire
world - because it permits the United States to unilaterally attack
any nation with massive force or to attack any target within any
nation, regardless of civilian casualties. This soul-sickness is what
sustains the myths of this nation. It is what defines this nation.

It can be no irony that those that initiated the invasion and
occupation of Iraq - in defiance of the UN - were the United States,
Britain & Spain. In the past 500 years, these predominately Christian
nations are the world's leading imperialists and colonialist nations.
Essentially, they have been the world's architects of the policies of
dehumanization - feeling entitled by God and blinded by greed to
trample over the lands, bodies and rights of peoples [of color]
worldwide.

The story of the Christian Inquisition against the Hindus in Goa is
also a dismal record of Christian barbarism and cruelty; tyranny and
injustice; avarice and corruption, repression of Hindu thought and
culture, and promotion of obscurantism. The conversion of Hindus of
Goa to Christianity was one of the main activities of the Portuguese
Rulers in close association with the Missionaries -- Society of
Jesus, Franciscans and others. Fraud, force and favoritism were the
standard methods of 'saving souls' or 'conversion' employed by the
Christian missionaries in Goa. From available data we can see that
more than 200,000 Hindus were tortured and killed and more than
500,000 Hindus were forcibly converted to Christianity from 1560 to
1812.

Perhaps because of all these anti-Hindu acts, Mahatma Gandhi wrote
very clearly in his autobiography "The Story of My Experiments with
Truth": "I had started disliking Christianity. This was not without
any reason. In those days Christian missionaries used to stand in a
corner near the High School in Rajkot and used disgraceful words
against Hindus and their Gods/Goddesses. I could not bear this."

Christians need to be aware of their history, and be cognizant of the
anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism which is endemic to the Christian
tradition and has been the legacy of Christianity for almost two
thousand years.

The Orthodox Church and the Easter Catholic Churches honor John
Chrysostom as a saint (feast day, November 13) and count him among
the Three Holy Hierarchs (feast day, January 30). He is recognized by
the Roman Catholic Church as a saint and a Doctor of the Church.
Churches of the Western tradition, including the Roman Catholic
Church, the Church of England, and the Lutheran church, commemorate
him on September 13. In the 4th century he proclaimed in homilies
that the Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus and
decide and added that they continued to rejoice in Jesus' death. He
compared the synagogue to a pagan temple, representing it as the
source of all vices and heresies. He described it as a place worse
than a brothel and a drinking shop; it was a den of scoundrels, the
repair of wild beasts, a temple of demons, and the cavern of devils,
a criminal assembly of the assassins of Christ.

Martin Luther, a German theologian and religious reformer, initiated
the Protestant Reformation. In his 1543 book, "On the Jews and their
lies" Luther took Jewish hatred to a new level when he proposed to
set fire to their synagogues and schools, to take away their homes,
forbad them to pray or teach, or even to utter God's name. Luther
wanted to "be rid of them" and requested that the government and
ministers deal with the problem. He requested pastors and preachers
to follow his example of issuing warnings against the Jews. He goes
so far as to claim that "We are at fault in not slaying them" for
avenging the death of Jesus Christ. Hitler's Nazi government in the
1930s and 40s fit Luther's desires to a tee.

Without the centuries of Christian oppression and contempt of Jews,
Nazi ideology could not have taken hold nor could it have been
carried out. And Christian anti-Semitism ultimately played a dramatic
role associated with the cause of World War II.

The same notion of creating space for the "master race" is as germane
to the ideological framework of Hitler's Lebensraumpolitik as it is
to the U.S. government's doctrine of Manifest Destiny: In each
instance, the extermination of "inferior races" is justified in the
interest of making way for a "superior race" of peoples. According to
Hitler biographer John Toland, the Führer is known to have "expressed
admiration for the 'efficiency' of the American genocide campaign
against the Indians, viewing it as a forerunner for his own plans and
programs." The "depopulation of the New World" was a "salient
precursor" to the Nazi Holocaust. The Christian instigated and
promoted American Indian Holocaust is the prototype for the
extermination of the Jews in Europe.

While the Christian German nation's Nazi Holocaust of the Jews was
indeed unique in scope and in kind to the twentieth century, the
colonizing European Christian nations' holocaust of the Western
hemisphere's indigenous peoples, combined with the colonizers'
successor Christian nations' holocaust of the Western hemisphere's
indigenous peoples, was far and away, the most massive act of
genocide in the history of the world.

Christian history is a great scandal to the human race. Christianity
has NOT been a religion of love, peace and justice, although it can,
should and will (I believe) become a religion of love, peace and
justice.