Northern Europe, AD 692
Radbod is my name, chief of the Frisian tribe. Your historians have recorded a part of my life. I was ready to be baptized into the Christian faith by Bishop Wolpan when I asked him, “Where are my dead forefathers at present?” His reply was, “In hell, with all other unbelievers.” Your historians have recorded my words to him. “Mighty well, then will I rather feast with my ancestors in Woden, than dwell with your little starveling band of Christians in heaven.” Let me ask you, Christian, are you all still as cold and callused as Bishop Wolpan? If you believe as he did, you make pagans like me look kinder and more concerned than you and your God. Do you still offer no better hope than Bishop Wolpan?
Arabia, AD 700
My name is Ali. I followed the traditions of my father who followed the traditions of his father. This is the way it has always been in our lands. Our God is Allah. There is none else and His prophet is Mohammed. I was taught this from my father and my tribe. I knew nothing else. We did not have books in our tents. They were useless to us since we did not know how to read. Even the founder of our faith, Mohammed, could not read. I know it is difficult for the modern Western mind to realize most of the peoples of the world could not read anything, let alone the Christian Bible.
Many members of modern Christian sects spend thousands of hours combing their Bibles trying to be certain their lives will be acceptable to their God when they die. If this diligence is needful, then the vast majority of mankind is lost. Furthermore, your God would be guilty of not giving mankind the tools needed to prepare themselves for the afterlife. He did not provide us with teachers, the time to study, nor the Bibles to read. Your Scriptures say God is not a respecter of persons. Then why didn’t He provide me all these things you possess? Is it possible for an all-powerful, miracle working God to not be able to provide all these things equally for all mankind if their very life after death depended upon it? Surely He could do such a thing, but He didn’t. This tells me your God is either a respecter of persons or the traditional churches’ understandings of God’s requirements are inaccurate.
Some of you tell me, that even though I could not read, although I did not have a Bible, I am still without excuse. Somehow your God still made a way to give me the gospel.
Hear then, the gospel which I was fed. I was told by my elders Christians were great idolaters. From what little I saw of them, this was true. Why, they ate a piece of bread and said it is a man who died hundreds of years ago. They worshipped dead saints and put their body parts in jars and hid them under their altars. They told us to kiss a stick with an image of a dead man on it. They did and still do many strange things like this and then tell us if we do not join their church and eat this piece of bread which they say is their God, then we will be tortured by their God forever. They say their God is love and yet they killed many Arabs for their properties. These Christians even kill each other, both sides claiming to do it for the cause of their God!
I am not a learned man, but I have some common sense. In my opinion, these Catholics, as they call themselves, must be demon possessed! They have gone mad. Is it any wonder that we Arabs seek to drive them from the earth? There are many of you whose ancestors fought these madmen and now many of you moderns have joined forces with them. Your Protestant evangelists send converts to the Catholic Church by the millions. Tell me, Christian, how can I have hope in such madness? Can you not see how insane you appear to the rest of us? Can you not see how difficult it is for us to have hope in your inconsistency and hypocrisy?
Many modern Christians say that unless I accepted their Christ, I will be endlessly tortured and then you have the nerve to call Islam a cruel religion. To that kind of Christian I would ask, which Christ is the real one? In my day there were two kinds of Christians, those who worshipped statues, their Pope, and the bread and those who worshipped icons, their Patriarchs, and the bread (Roman Catholic and Orthodox). However, the modern Christians, they have multiplied their gods by the thousands. They have divided into so many different sects over thousands of different rituals, rules, and concepts of their God, that my head spins from confusion. Then they say my eternal life depends upon making the right choice! I am a simple man, even childlike in many ways. Christendom is too complicated for me. I am not good at puzzles.
The Christian Bible says do not follow Paul, or Apollos, or any other man, yet Christians have divided themselves between thousands of different men’s voices. Do I not rightly say this is confusion? Pray tell me dear Christian, how can I find hope in such a mass of hypocrisy!?
American Inca Empire, AD 1000
I am called by the name of Zuma. I died in a great battle. The year before I died I made my fame. It was I who captured a warrior from another tribe whose heart was offered to the gods to resurrect the New Year. My act was very noble and moral, highly honored among my people. Some of you Christians even say that one can attain heaven through righteous acts, being moral, being a good person. Will my act be counted as a good deed by your God? You see, good and moral, is quite different from one culture to another. To some societies, it is considered good to kill people of other societies. You only need to look to your Bible for examples. So then, to you, Christians, who tell us that doing good will bring one to heaven, who decides whether the act is good or not? Will you, a Greco-Roman Westerner? Or may we choose the standard of our choice like you have? If whether one is good determines their fate, then for what purpose did Jesus Christ die?
Now I have heard another quite foolish teaching among some Christian sects. They say that God must give everyone on earth a chance to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior because He would become a “respecter of persons” if He did not give the invitation to everyone before they died. Therefore, they say that God sends angels to them. The angels deliver the “Gospel.” If they accept it, they are then “saved.” This reasoning is often used for loved ones who showed no sign of ever being “saved,” or “born again.” It is also used for civilizations like mine who did not hear the gospel from missionaries since our part of the world did not see Christian missionaries until long after we were dead. Foolish Christian, think! If this fable was true, then your archaeologists should have uncovered hundreds of civilizations with signs of some believing in Jesus Christ. This is not reality. Only where there were Bibles and missionaries does one find traces of Christianity.
Those who have been fed this sort of nonsense are usually told by some missionary of a tale about finding an African native who believed in Jesus Christ through an angel. This “witness” of course is never telling the story, it always comes from a third party. Oh, Christian, please allow your mind to dig a little further than these myths and tales perpetuated by ministers of fear. If this “angel gospel” were true, then archaeologists would find traces of Christian civilization in every corner of the world in all periods of time! However, this is not the case.
Paul, the apostle, made it very clear in his letter to the Romans that the gospel would be delivered by “sent preachers” not angels (Romans 10:14,15) What need would there be of Bibles, missionaries, tracts, etc., if everyone had an angel appear to them? Wouldn’t an angel have greater effect than those the church has sent forth to preach? Look to the crusades, the money hungry televangelists, and the power thirsty priesthood. Can you see how confusing their gospel message is? Surely angels would be much more effective than these mortals chained to their own lusts and special varieties of doctrine. Archaeology tells us the message of Christ is only found where a “sent one” went. Whether he was sent by God or by “the elders of tradition,” is not for me to decide. In light of archaeology, a reasonable person would surely put no faith in the “evangelist angel” myth. Why is it so hard for you moderns to think, to reason past the lame excuses you are fed on Sunday morning? By the way, the missionaries sent to us by Spain, Portugal, and other “Christian” countries did not bring us “good news.” They took our gold and gave us their diseases in exchange. They “converted” us at the end of the barrels of their muskets, not with Paul’s gospel. Was that my hope?!
Southern Europe, AD 1213
Maria, (named after the blessed Virgin), is who I am. I was a concubine to one of the cardinals in Rome. I did many shameful things. The cardinal reassured me that all he made me do was for the cause of Christ. I received communion every Sunday. There are many thousands of us belonging to Priests throughout Europe. Why even some of the Popes have lovers and concubines. Many of you modern Christians say that people like me will have their part in the lake of fire. My priests told me I must obey them or be excommunicated. Modern Christians are so quick to condemn people like myself saying the Scriptures make it clear not to follow any man, but only the Word of God, by which they mean the Bible. But I say to you, you may be doing the very thing you condemn me for. Perhaps you are a slave to tradition much more than you realize. From God’s Holy View, you may thereby be committing spiritual adultery by cohabiting with churches who have replaced the true image of God with false images of God created by demons through religious men and women who are full of lusts of the eyes, lusts of the flesh and the pride of life. You may discover at the end of your days, that your spiritual fornication with false religious systems may be a greater sin than my own sex sins.
Have you no comprehension of how few people in this world throughout the course of mankind have ever seen a Bible much less ever read one? I, as well as most of those who have come into this world, was illiterate!! Even if I was literate, it was forbidden for a common person to have a Bible. Do you not quote, “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word?” Do you not read, “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe on Him in whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:14,15). Tell me, do you think my master, the cardinal, was a “sent one?” Do you have any idea of the kind of “gospel” I heard from my master, the cardinal? The only kindness he ever showed me was after he had his way with me in bed! And tell me, dear Christian, what will become of all my illegitimate children who hate anything to do with God because of what has happened to them in the name of Christ!
So tell me, Christian, from your great knowledge of the Scriptures which were denied me, is there hope for me? I never heard of this “born again” jingle you Evangelicals throw around. Do you have any hope to sell, my friend? You object to my use of the word “sell?” Believe me, in the church of my generation, there was nothing free, except my body, which I had to freely give to the cardinal. Hope, Christian, can you sell me some hope?!
Kagoshima, Japan, AD 1550
My name is Kim. I was perhaps among the first in the history of Japan to hear about Jesus Christ. This was over 1500 years after Jesus walked this earth. For hundreds of years, while monks and priests canvassed Europe Christianizing all those nations, we Japanese heard nothing from your God. All our ancestors died without hearing of the one Name in which men might be saved. What is their hope?
According to the missionary who shared his “good news” with me, they have no hope. He, himself wrote in his diary in 1552, “One of the things that most pains and torments these Japanese is that we teach them that the prison of hell is irrevocably shut. For they grieve over the fate of their departed children, of their parents and relatives; and they often show their grief by their tears. So they ask us if there is any hope . . .and I am obliged to answer that there is absolutely none. The grief at this affects and torments them wonderfully; they almost pine away with sorrow . . . I can hardly restrain my tears sometimes at seeing many so dear to my heart suffer such intense pain about a thing which is already done and can never be undone.”
The man who wrote these words is Saint Frances Xavier, who was canonized as a Saint by the Roman Catholic Church. You see, he did not bring us hope-he brought us tears and torment!
Some Christian evangelists excuse the fact that few Japanese convert to the fact that we are involved in deep pagan ancestry worship cults. They say that the demons which hold us to our ancestors are strong. How cruel! The tears “Saint” Frances Xavier saw were not a manifestation of demons-they came from a deep love of our family and all our brothers and sisters who had gone to the grave before us!! They came from love!! How is it that so many Christians can confuse love with demons?
Japan will never become a Christian nation until the Western Church abandons its heathen doctrines and its cruel and demonic ways! You say you are not heathens? Do I need to remind you, Christian Americans, how many innocent civilian Japanese you killed in Hiroshima? Oh, by the way, you had Christian missionaries preaching your “good news” in the two cities in which you burned to death tens of thousands of Japanese.
Since the day your first missionary set foot upon Japanese soil, you have not given us “good news.” We are still waiting for the “Good News.” We are still waiting for hope. We are still waiting for a message which will open the graves of our ancestors, whom we love dearly-a message which goes to the graves and delivers the captives from their bondage. We are still weeping over our ancestors. We are also weeping over the fact that such a beautiful person as Jesus could be marred and smeared by His own people with such a hideous doctrine as everlasting sufferings. Suffering we understand, but everlasting torture for never having heard the name of Jesus is beyond the grasp of my sense of justice. We remain weeping, waiting for a better hope.