Don't get what Christ said confused with being a pacifist because the next time He comes after the rapture is will be according to vengeance.
But He will do it. Vengeance is His. The saints may be with Him, but that is it. He doesn't need them to have vengeance. He will just speak and it is done.
I played ASA softball Division A for a church that was mocked by other teams every single game for a half dozen years and we just turned the other cheek. We had a great softball team and beat the pants off many of them to become the state champs, but one day they went too far and God said, no more turning the other cheek. One by one we took care of all the mockers and big mouths that couldn't back up what they say. One game ended in a donnybrook because of these scoffers and God was well pleased with our actions. You would not believe the respect that we got after that and the number of people that came to Christ as good fruit. The presence of God backed us up because God is not a pacifist.
As for your actions, .......I do wonder if you are not asking Him if that was all right.
1 Timothy 3:
2A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
3Not given to wine,
no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient,
not a brawler, not covetous;
4One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;
Titus 3:
6If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly.
7For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God;
not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine,
no striker, not given to filthy lucre;
8But a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate;
9Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.
In the eyes of every American christian, you did right, even though you turned the other cheek as long as you did, but I am not so sure when the straw that broke the camel's back makes it okay to brawl. You never did explain what that last straw was. Is it something that can be preached as a guide or will others apply it in different ways as an excuse to brawl thus becoming a slippery slope for brawling?
I cannot say that I have never gotten into a fight. I cannot say that I have never gotten into a spiritual dark forces kind of a fight either.... course the battle was His. "I had asked the Lord how did it happened?" in regards to my last fight, and He told me that I was trying to please man. At face value, I did not know what He had meant right away, but then a moment later, I was trying to accomplish a necessity for the success of the business as I was getting tired of all the unruly disrespecting my authority as a warehouse manager as well as my person for being hard of hearing... getting in the way of things for me to accomplish the necessary task... so I was trying to please man.
As Jesus taught to overcome eveil with good, can you quote any of His sayings that it is okay to do what you did? I am not sure there are any. Thus I wonder in regards to that situation... if the Lord would have had you done it differently. As a public witness, I do wonder what you had all taught as a team.... that there is a limit.. that there is a time when one can brawl.
For the lives of your family and neighbor, it is love to subdue the trespasser, theif, home invader.. but the Lord would provide an escape to avoid such needless threats to personal injury and thus putting your family at risk afterwards when you could have vacated the premises, contact a neighbor, and call the police. Of course, when the moment is upon you, then I trust God to have me deal accordingly because it is not in me that is in my flesh to take that offense Christ-like, but living the christian life is of God and not of us. He has enabled me to take on even worse offenses at a later job than I ever did at the former for fighting... and believe me, that place would have been a site for postalism if Christ had not been in me. In that dog eat dog outfit of false images and defrauding the workers of their rightful wages through ego tripping over others in a Pharissitic style for the love of money, I cannot believe no one has blown the place up yet and all of its chain stores straight donw to the Home Office.
But goes to show how God allows the sun to shine on the evil as well as the good as Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. He led me to suffer being defrauded and to leave a place that sows to the flesh of hatred, variance, strife, and etc. I thank Him for helping me to lose my life for His name's sake as my enemies continue to hound me at other two workplaces to find fault and cause offenses where I cannot make peace. Oppressed by a superior enemy, I do hate my life.
So why was all of this was happening? Why has the privacy of my life and the professionalism in my career be open to the hounders? As Joseph was thrown into slavery by his own brothers... as the eyes of the enemy were constantly on the Psalmist, so I find my life like Baruch as my life is a prey unto others so I was not to seek a life for myself anymore because evil is about to fall on all flesh.
Yeah, I take that to mean that the great tribulation is coming.. and thus before that.. the rapture.
Several times in my life I had asked God why I was here as seemingly pointless as my existence was and is. Several times I got the same answer.. "So that they may know why they were left behind."
I boast of nothing but in the Lord for He has delivered me through many offenses to bring me Home by His grace as I trust him to continue to do so to His glory as My Good Shepherd and My Saviour.
To think of how that sinner that had thrown black slaves overboard to save the sinking ship he was on, if anyone had killed him for it right then... there would be no hymnal called Amazing Grace.
Anyway, have you asked Jesus about the softball brawling incident? I really have to wonder what it was that broke that camel's back to brawl. Not exactly the same as someone's life being in danger.
