We flourish or flounder relative to the things we believe. Every spiritual blessing is imparted through what we believe and know about our Lord (2 Peter 1:2-3). Consequently, our welfare depends upon discerning fact from fiction, what the Bible teaches from what it doesn’t teach. Here is an example of how one renowned influencer distorted Scripture for his own malign purposes:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited." (Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922)
Actually, he hated Christianity and persecuted Christians. He was even able to deceive many churches to support his national and racial policies and to close their eyes to the worst oppression? He posed as a champion of righteousness, twisting Scripture to bolster his claims. Why did segments of the Church believe him? They either didn’t know Scripture or didn’t care about it. In either case, Christ wasn’t first in their lives. Instead, their tastes and fears held the reigns at a great expense to all.
In Contrast to hatred, the Apostle Paul had written: Romans 9:3–5 “For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever.”
