1 Maccabees 7:8-11. This is the beginning of the passage I blogged about in There is No Truth or Justice in Them. Here we learn that King Demetrius chose Bacchides to find Judas Maccabeus and all his friends and punish them. Alcimus, the evil high priest, is sent with him, along with a large military force, to "take vengeance on the sons of Israel." When they get to the land of Judah, Alcimus sends messages to Judas and his brothers "with peaceable but treacherous words." But, seeing that Alcimus and Bacchides come with a large force, Judas and his brothers "paid no attention to their words."

Sometimes evil just overplays its hand. Often, in fact! Judas knows what evil looks like, so when he sees the large force coming from a new king he has no reason to trust, he knows not to pay any attention to the peaceable words they send. They are treacherous, it is obvious. There is no sense in wasting time talking to them, or risking the possibility of someone being swayed by their lying words.

How many of us though, don't know what evil looks like and have been so fooled by its twisting of Christian teaching to love all that we can look evil right in the eye, with all its arrayed forces behind it, and still allow ourselves to believe its treacherous words?! Too many, I'm learning. Love is not tolerance and acceptance of whatever another wants to do, although that is what the devil is teaching us it is, and that is causing the downfall of our entire society. Love is willing the good of the other, even if that means telling them them truth when they do not want to hear it and will punish you for speaking it.

We need to wake up and see evil for what it is just like Judas and his brothers did, before it is too late (it may already be too late, I'm afraid!).