HOW JESUS' KINGDOM IS SIMILAR AND QUITE DIFFERENT FROM AL-QAEDA
 
by Robert Brow (www.brow.on.ca) Kingston, Ontario February 2008

 Jesus recruited and trained disciples to preach the love of God.
 Al-Qaeda recruits and trains disciples to make known the judgment of
 Allah on his enemies. The means are killing and maiming those who will
 not submit. Jesus' disciples are to learn the cost of loving everyone
 including their enemies.
 
 Al-Qaeda plans its work in secrecy. Christians publish the Gospels in
 all the major languages of the world, and these explain exactly the
 dangers that will be faced and how the work is to be done. The
 Beatitudes describe the kind of person who will live this out. The
 parable of the Sower pictures how many drop out from commitment to the
 kingdom and only a few become really fruitful.
 
 Jesus' kingdom (known as the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven)
 has grown slowly over two thousand years. Jesus said it would begin
 like a grain of mustard seed, but it would become a great tree with
 birds nesting in its branches . Like yeast in three measures of flour
 the whole of our society will be leavened (Matthew 13:31-33). The
 influence of Al-Qaeda grew very rapidly in the past fifty years to the
 point of being able to topple huge office buildings in New York.
 
 What does the future hold for these two very different movements?
 Christian churches now flourish in most major cities. The number of
 those willing to engage in the risks of Jesus' kingdom still keeps
 increasing. What remains to be seen is how long it will take for the
 moral sense of reasonable people to refuse the way of killing and
 maiming, and choose to live by the love that Jesus taught.
 

Robert Brow
browr@sympatico.ca
www.brow.on.ca