Defenders Of The West - Vlad Dracula

Vlad Dracula laid the foundations of the modern state of Romania. Just like Skanderbeg, Vlad would not only go on to be honored in his homeland of Romania, but his fame would spread around the world, indeed, much more so than the Albanian warlord. That is where their similarities end, for whatever fame Skanderbeg currently enjoyed in the West still revolved around his heroic resistance against the Turks. Today, Dracula is best remembered as an undead bloodsucker. With the publication of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula in 1897, it was deja vu all over again. For if the fifteenth-century Saxons had transformed Vlad into a maniacal but still human sadist, the twentieth-century Irish novelist transformed him into a vampire, a citizen of the night, fluttering about in the darkness in search of his latest victim before retiring for the day in a coffin.

From the Court of Matthias Corvinus began history's earliest propaganda campaigns, or, in modern parlance, "fake news," with the aid of his Transylvania Saxons. The first set of stories against Vlad detailing his diabolical cruelties appeared in December 1462, complete with fantastical, lurid engravings; thanks to the new movable-type printing press invented a few years earlier by Johannes Gutenberg, these tales quickly spread throughout Europe. Appearing under titles such as The Frightening and Truly Extraordinary Story of a Wicked Blood-Drinking Tyrant Called Prince Dracula, these pamphlets became instant best sellers.

No depravity was spared Vlad; the stories discussed in graphic detail how he boiled people alive and shredded others like cabbage. Force parents to eat their children [and the list goes on and even worsens, which I don't care to mention]. Most historians dismiss these early stories attributed to Matthias Court as obvious propaganda. Reading the first German set, one can see why. From beginning to end, line after line, the entirety of the text depicts Dracula engaging in one vile or bizarre act after another, with nary a word of explanation or context. He supposedly did it all because he was a sadist, an immoral monster, in short, the devil's son, as the name Dracula, originally "Dragon's Son," came to mean following the publication of these stories.

In short, Dracula did resort to cruel punishments, though the lurid early descriptions in the German publications are largely fictitious. It can't be emphasized enough that although impalement has now been synonymous with Vlad III Dracula, most of his contemporaries, not just the Turks, practiced it. Stephen the Great and the legal written codes of the Saxons of Transylvania prescribed impalement as a suitable punishment for a variety of crimes. Ironically, these accounts would be sensationalized to cast Vlad as a sadistic terrorist, which is often left out.

An excerpt from Chapter 8 by Raymond Ibrahim

Power In The Bood

 There is pow'r, pow'r, wonder-working pow'r

In the blood of the Lamb;

There is pow'r, pow'r, wonder-working pow'r

In the precious blood of the Lamb.

"Where is that blood? Is it just something you have to imagine? Did Jesus find a way to actually give you His blood so that the wonder-working pow'r of the blood can actually come into you physically where you are?

That's the wonderful thing about the Lord's Supper: Christ's body and blood aren't something we have to imagine. How precious it is that Christ comes to us with the very body and blood born of Mary that was shed on the cross, and He gives it to us in a way that doesn't freak us out or gross us out. He gives you His body and blood under the bread and the wine, and with the promise of 'For you, for the forgiveness of your sins.'"

-Pr. Will Weedon

Was Forgiven, Am Now Forgiven, And Will Be Forgiven

The way Lutherans deal with forgiveness is that we can say we have been forgiven, that we are forgiven now, and will be forgiven. There is, in which we live in light of a past reality, an event that has brought us forgiveness in baptism. However, that doesn't mean we aren't forgiven daily, because Jesus tells us to pray in the Lord's Prayer, 'Forgive us our sins.' We are not saying, I thank you; you forgave my sins.

Continually, this life of faith is one in which God counts us as righteous because of Jesus, because we continue to be in Christ or remain connected to Jesus. Faith is that which brings me Jesus; insofar as I am connected to Jesus, I receive His righteousness.

Scripturally, we can speak of all our sins already being forgiven, and we can speak of our sins being forgiven daily. We also have this future aspect of justification that is true for us in a more real sense on the Last Day.

-Dr. Jordon Cooper

Baptism of Our Lord

Holy Baptism gets its power to be what it is and do what it does only because Jesus is baptized. Baptism would never have the power to do anything more than simply be a symbolic ritual if the One who takes away the sins of the world had not united Himself to us in this way. Jesus is the Word made flesh; as Luther famously put it, 'Apart from the Word in the water, the water is just plain water, and there is no baptism, but with the Word of God, it is a baptism.' That is life-giving water, rich in grace, and a washing of the new birth of the Holy Spirit.

When Jesus was baptized, the power of God entered into the water with the baptized people of God. It was like putting a live, high-voltage cable into the water where everyone was bathing, and it was instant death for everyone who was in the water. Apart from the cable in the water, it's just plain water, and nobody gets hurt by it. But when the cable goes into the water, it becomes deadly water.

When Jesus was baptized, He brought His death on the cross into the water with Him, and when you were baptized, you were united into His death, so His death became your death. Listen to this - you died while you were still alive! When Jesus was baptized, He brought His resurrection from the dead into the water with Him, and when you were baptized, you were united to His victory over sin, death, and the power of the devil. Listen to this - you rose from the dead before you were buried in the ground (Romans 6:3-4)."

-Rev. Paul Nielsen  

Dinner Table

Stop and think about it. At your dinner table, your heavenly Father is going to actually be giving you food that sustains your earthly life. You're going to go on living because something has died. I'm not just talking about your meat but even about your vegetables; something dies. It gives its life to go into you so you can go on living, and this is a gift to you from your Father in heaven. And so, you approach this gift with reverence and awe. You get to go on living; something else has given life up for you. An image of something far, far greater in the church, having a table where we receive supernatural food from the Father."

-Pr. Will Weedon

Religion or Relationship?

Part of our post-modern, politically correct world is constantly changing our vocabulary. Certain words become bad, and one of them is religion. The sad thing is the one place where Christians have participated in post-modern political correctness the most enthusiastically is in trashing the word religion. It's a thoroughly biblical word, and what has been put in its place is relationship. We hear it again and again, Christianity is not a religion; it's a relationship. Implying rather strongly that religion is a bad thing and relationship is a good thing. Is that necessarily true or an either-or?

You won't find the word relationship if you read through all of Scripture. What you will find are words like fellowship and communion. What does fellowship mean? What does communion mean? Communion and fellowship are communal things that take place, not individual. So, in this relationship, if you want to say there is individual faith, we are brought into a collective body - the body of Christ, His Church. And within that body is how we communion with Christ and one another.

What's odd about this relationship idea is that Scripture is very clear on how we have that relationship with Jesus; he calls it communion. What is communion? That's the Lord's Supper; that's the fellowship. Jesus is coming to us in His body and blood in the bread and wine to give us His life, salvation, and forgiveness of sins. You can't get any closer to Christ than that. So when we see how the New Testament speaks, it blows this whole idea; "it's not a religion; it's a relationship" out of the water. Even the relationship they think and want to have with Jesus is nothing compared to the communion we individually and collectively have with Christ.

Pr. Richard Futrell

Do This In Remembrance of Me

 Most Protestant churches don't have an altar; they have communion tables. You will almost always see "In remembrance of me on that table." To them, that is the most important thing, thinking back on Jesus' sacrifice for you. If you take that as Jesus meant, how do we know what Jesus meant? Jesus was a Hebrew and spoke in Aramaic, not Greek, even though the New Testament was written in Greek. He spoke Aramaic, and in Aramaic and Hebrew, the word 'remember' means 'continue the action,' bringing the reality of the past into the present and continuing the action.

-Rev. Dr. Charles Spomer