A War Going On
by Craig Smith
Last year sometime the NZ Race Relations
Commissioner (did you know we had one? His name is
Joris De Bres) called for submissions on a Draft
National Statement on Religious Diversity. This
statement was endorsed by the National Interfaith
Forum in Hamilton in February 2007. (Have you even
heard of such an event? It is an annual event.) The
Statement on Religious Diversity made a more
publicized appearance at the Asia-Pacific Interfaith
Dialogue held at Waitangi on 29 May 2007 when our
Prime Minister addressed the Forum by saying in part,
“My government works hard to ensure that all
ethnicities and faiths are valued and included in 21st
century New Zealand,” while Brian Tamaki of Destiny
Church introduced his own Statement on New
Zealand’s Religious Identity, the Waitangi Declaration,
which opened with the words, “We formally recognize
New Zealand as a Christian nation.”
In the NZ Census of 2006, 51% said they were
Christian, 32% said they were of no religion, 13% did
not say what they were, and all the other religious of
the world only added up to 5%. And yet the
Government spends our tax dollars through the Human
Rights Commission (HCR) to focus on ways they can
manipulate the 51% majority into thinking they should
accommodate that 5% minority. Here’s how:
“The Human Rights Commission facilitates the New
Zealand Diversity Action Programme which includes a
national interfaith network and a range of government
and community interfaith projects (www.hrc.co.nz/diversity).
There is a national interfaith website
(www.interfaith.org.nz), a network of regional interfaith
councils and a number of national councils such as the
Council of Christians and Jews and the Council of
Christians and Muslims. There is an annual National
Interfaith Forum in February and a National Religious
Diversity Forum at the [annual] New Zealand Diversity
Forum in August… The 2006 forum [in Wellington]
was attended by faith community representatives and
members, government ministers, key government
department chief executives and local government
representatives. The forum addressed three issues:
government and faith community cooperation,
education and the development of a statement on
religious diversity.”1
There is clearly something cooking here. You cannot
even get to the interfaith.org.nz home page unless you
are authorised. And as you explore the Human Rights
Commission’s website pages on religious Diversity
(two good starting places are: http://tinyurl.
com/23zu3z and http://tinyurl.com/ywqtsm) you will
find that these initiatives to bring religious
communities together and foment harmony and
tolerance come for the most part from the central
Government rather than from Christian churches. Even
more worrying is the official commentary of the last of
the eight points in the New Zealand Statement of
Religious Diversity that was presented at the Asia-
Pacific Interfaith Dialogue in Waitangi:
“8. Cooperation and Understanding. Government
and faith communities have a responsibility to build
and maintain positive relationships with each other,
and to promote mutual respect and understanding. The
right to religion, like all rights, entails responsibilities.
This statement delineates the responsibilities of faith
communities in relation to government and other faith
communities. These responsibilities include fostering
relationships with other religious communities that
promote not just tolerance but understanding, respect
and cooperation. Likewise government, both local and
national, has a parallel responsibility to seek to develop
and sustain good relationships with religious
communities in New Zealand.”This represents the quiet
approach of the enemy to undermine and subvert the
robust and victorious nature of Christ’s Church here on
earth. It is often hard even to recognise this stuff as
subversive, but it clearly is. It starts off by saying, “The
right to religion, like all rights, entails responsibilities.”
Since when does anyone need the central government in
Wellington to affirm that we have a right to religion? Does
Parliament tell Christians what our religious
responsibilities are? The government’s approach to
this, you see, is that they are the dispenser of rights, a
position they took up in 1990 with the NZ Bill of
Rights Act and re-emphasised with the Human Rights
Act of 1993: as far as the state is concerned, rights are
bestowed upon the populace (and revoked) by a simple
majority vote in Parliament. In addition, this
government statement wants Christians to respect,
understand and cooperate with those religions which,
sadly, blind people to the truth of their need of
redemption through Christ. It says we have a
responsibility to do so. (Will this be backed up in law
one day if we don’t?) We Christians as individuals
should always treat other people, even in-your-face
reprobates, as image-bearers of God and with all due
respect. But we do not treat false religions as anything
other than a blindness that leads to hell. In addition,
our Lord makes some fairly exclusive comments in the
Scriptures such as, “He who is not for Me is against
Me; he who does not gather with Me scatters,” (Luke
11:23); “All authority in heaven and on earth has been
given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to
observe all that I have commanded you,” (Matthew
28:18-20); “He who believes in the Son has eternal
life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life,
but the wrath of God rests upon him,” (John 3:36); “I
am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the
Father but by Me,” (John 14:6). It is our privilege to
show respect and understanding to the lost, pointing
out that they are lost due to their false religions.
Another approach of the enemy is the aggressive
attack. This is easier to recognise and oppose.
Elizabeth McKenzie, President of the NZ Association
of Rationalists and Humanists, wrote a submission on
15 December 2006 addressing this Statement on
Religious Diversity in which she commented directly
on this point number eight by saying, “I think that
homogenising the population by removing separate
religious schools and the option of home schooling for
the religious would go further in reaching this goal
than a Statement on Religious Diversity.”
Elizabeth sure recognizes where the battlefield lies: in
the hearts and minds of the children, the next
generation. Her answer is to get religion out of
education, including home education, and presumably
let the state and rationalists and humanists continue to
do it in the school institutions and in the home. I
submit to you that she says such an approach would
homogenise the population (make us all the same as
her) since state education is coming from the same
stable as her favourite horses of rationalism and
humanism.
Folks, there is a war going on. We must not go into
denial and decide to ignore it and just enjoy the good
life, for then we and our children will become
casualties. This war started at least as far back as the
Garden of Eden. There are only two sides to this war.
And the war will go on until one side wins.
Now, we already know Who wins, and in fact, He has
already won the war at the Cross of Calvary. We are all
now engaged in mopping up exercises, offering terms
of peace, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to those rebels
who still sniper at us Christians. When our Commander
in Chief comes on Judgment Day, He will show no
mercy to these rebels…as ambassadors of Christ we do
what we can to show them the need to surrender to
Christ, repent, lay down their arms and take up the
Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God and the other
parts of the Christian Soldier’s armour and fight with
us.
Sure, we appear to be outnumbered at present and
losing the battle. That may be, but it is only a
temporary situation. There were only 120 in the upper
room on the Day of Pentecost, but more than 3,000 by
the end of the day. Since then, Christianity globally has
only grown, though there have been localized setbacks.
These phony peace initiatives wrapped in phony
religious garments such as this “National Statement on
Religious Diversity” is designed to neutralise, to
castrate the potency of fully-Biblical, Christ-centred
Christian Faith. We must not have a bar of it.
But we must understand our situation in New Zealand:
three times recently the MPs voted against the wishes
of the overwhelming numbers of voters: in
decriminalizing prostitution, establishing civil unions
and criminalizing parents who correct their children.
We must understand that what used to be underground
(homosexuality and prostitution) is now paraded in the
streets; and what once was talked of openly on the
streets (that children need to be smacked and that
homosexuality is a perversion) is now being driven
underground.
Let me quote from R.J. Rushdoony’s Institutes of
Biblical Law, page 164: “In the Marxist scheme, the
transfer of authority from the family to the state makes
any talk of the family as an institution ridiculous. The
family is to all practical intent abolished whenever the
state determines the education, vocation, religion and
the discipline of the child.” Have we not seen most if
not all of these things right here in NZ of late? And NZ
has added a Families Commission to further destroy
and marginalise and render irrelevant the Biblical norm
of family being husband and wife joined in holy
matrimony under God with the children God gives
them.
Christianity, Biblical Law, the Christian Faith applied
to all of life and individual consistent Christians are all
under attack here in NZ. Those who do not recognise
that a war is on and who fail to take up arms will suffer
the obvious consequences.
Notes:
1. Building Bridges: The Third Asia Pacific Regional Interfaith Dialogue
Waitangi, New Zealand, May 29-31, 2007 at http://tinyurl.com/23zu3z.
From Keystone Magazine
July 2007, Vol. XIII No. 4
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