Military Service - Removing The Fog of Religion

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Military Service

Q & A
Military Service and Serving God?

Q: According to some, our Savior says that you cannot serve God and the Military.  Apparently this is something the Christ said when he said that you cannot serve two masters.  What so you have to say about what our savior said?

A:  I believe you are referencing --

(Mat 6:24)  No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

The word, mammon, is an Aramaic word that means, wealth.  The context and the lesson has nothing to do with serving in the military.  And, looking at the record of military service among the patriots of Israel, King David being one, it would be hard to say that our Savior, YaHshua, meant this to be applied to Military service.  Of course, some would argue that that was then but our Messiah was talking about the New Covenant.  The problem with that argument would be the fact that the New Covenant had not been instituted yet.  He was talking about greed, serving the scramble to be wealthy, to bending whatever was necessary to build personal wealth, and how this can and does get in the way of serving our Creator and our Savior.

The final argument, that should put this to rest is the record we have after the New Covenant was instituted by the Blood from our Savior, YaHshua.  This would the the recorded account involving one of the lead Apostles, Peter, his latin name, originally known as Simon, and later as Chepas, when he went into a Gentiles house and preached YaHshua to that whole house and baptized that whoe house into the name of our Savior, YaHshua.  And to whom did this household belong?  A Roman military man, a man of high rank, Cornelius

(Act 10:1)  There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band,
(Act 10:2) A devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway.

Go to this recorded account in your own bible, read it all in context and then ask yoursel -- Where does it say that Cornelius must resign his military service?  Where does the Apostle tell Cornelius that He cannot baptize him because he is in service to the military, and cannot be in service to two masters?  It doesn't.  In fact, if anything it confirms that a person serving in the military is not to be denied baptism.  Not only that, this officer in the Roman military was a Gentile.  Later, Peter catches a lot of foul words for having gone into a Gentiles home -- Acts 10:28 -- something considered to be against JEWISH Law.  But notice, no one said anything against Peter baptizing this Military Man and his whole family.  

Nebuchadnezzar -- a Servant of YaHWeH?
A small aside to all of this -- some leaders of nations could be classed as Servants of God.  If Nebuchadnezzar can be called a Servant of YaHWeH, then a lower level military man or woman could also qualify as servant of the Living God.  Read it, please -- Jeremiah 25:9.  And, guess what?  Nebuchadnezzar wrote declaration to the honor of YaHWeH and that declaration, authored by Nebuchadnezzar became part of the Book of Daniel 4:34-37 -- Nebuchadnezzar's own words, his own writing.  

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