no compulsion - the latest......

Servetus wrote: For more details, and to satisfy my own curiosity, I clicked on the link but the story wouldn�t load. I would guess that this punishment for not attending Friday prayers is coming from the Wahhabist, which is to say, �puritanical� strain, or sect, of Islam (with its Saudi-modeled mutawah, or religious police, and all that).  At any rate, this reminds me of those Christian �Puritan� colonialists (of America) who made church attendance mandatory, and, for that matter, of John Calvin�s theocratic Geneva, which apparently and at times did the same thing.  Extraordinary, what was historically done with this: �And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. [bold emphasis mine]� (Luke 14:23)   Servetus

The Protestant Puritans, who destroyed Catholic Armies in the English Civil War and thereby ended the bloody 30 Years War that murdered 7.5 Germans in and around the Protestant "Lutherlands", created the most powerful nation in Earth's History.  That is an unambiguous fact.

Today, Church attendance is lax and America is coming apart at the seems, in perfect clockwork validation of Deuteronomy 32:8:

When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance,
       when he divided all mankind,
       he set up boundaries for the peoples
       according to the number of the sons of God.

Anybody see how that works?  Protestant Puritan America won all its wars.  The Protestant Puritans booted the Red Coats out of New England practically before the Declaration of Independence was even signed.  From 1777 onwards, there was peace, and narry a Red Coat, in New England.  By 1850, Protestant Puritan America had expanded from the East Coast of North America all the way to the Pacific Ocean in the West.  That's 3000+ miles of expansion in 75 years, an average rate of 40 miles per year.  That is huge phenomenal growth, and bespeaks of a powerful driving force behind it.

Today, there are far more ultra-leftist God-denying closet Communists, Satanists, and other clueless ignoramuses who accuse God's Word of having no power, even though they know nothing of the Scriptures with which to compare against reality.  The History of America is abject proof of Deut 32:8: Fear God, put God First and Foremost, and Struggle Earnestly to do His Will, or look like a bunch of weak clueless ignoramuses, who profane what they cannot seem to comprehend.

The Industrial Revolution, modernization, steam, rockets, TVs, Computers, and all modern technology was developed by Protestant Nations.  That is the power of true, earnest, sincere struggling to do God's Will.  Even as Father Abraham was Blessed by Almighty God for his earnestness in following Almighty God's Will, so too are great feasts and banquets prepared (Matt 22:1-14) for all those who earnestly strive for Almighty God.  Almighty God sees, hears, and knows all before even it ever registers in anyone's conscious mind.  The Power and the Truth of Almighty God should, by rights, be over-abundantly clear for those who perk up their ears and open up their eyes.  Choosing of one's own free will (from limited understanding) not to do so should not technically be blamed on Almighty God.

Steam Technology:

1654, Germany � Otto von Guericke (Protestant, Lutheran)

1690, France � Denis Papin (Protestant, Calvinist Huegenot)

1697, Russia � Peter the Great of Russia visits capitals of Europe in disguise and returns determined to Westernize (="Protestantize") his country.

1698, Britain � Thomas Savery (Protestant, collaborated with Newcomen, utilized Papin's ideas)

1712, Britain � Thomas Newcomen (Protestant, Baptist)

1782, Britain � James Watt (Protestant, Presbyterian Covenanter)

Television

1922, America � Vladimir Kosma Zworykin (Protestant nation)

1923, England � Edwin Belin (Protestant nation)

1927, America � Philo Taylor Farnsworth (Protestant nation)

Computer

1941, Deutschland � Konrad Zuse (Protestant nation)

1944, America � Howard H. Aiken (Protestant nation)

Industrial Revolution � Causes (Wikipedia)

Another theory is that the British advance was due to the presence of an entrepreneurial class which believed in progress, technology and hard work.¹ The existence of this class is often linked to the Protestant work ethic (see Max Weber) and the particular status of dissenting Protestant sects, such as the Quakers, Baptists and Presbyterians that had flourished with the English Civil War.

Engines of Our Ingenuity

http://www.uh.edu/engines/powersir.htm

The [Catholic] French kings -- the Louises -- didn't reflect that view just in their fetish for elaborate clocks and clockwork toys. Their mercantile economic system reflected a clock-like concept of economic control.

The mercantile idea was that nations stipulate trade balances ahead of time. The nation is assumed to have colonies to provide raw materials and gold. A working class manufactures goods within the country. Those goods are then used by the [Catholic] aristocracy, and they're sold back to the colonies. The wants of the working class are to be minimized and its population increased.

That formula was calculated to drive over-regulated populaces into revolution. In England, revolution took the form of a growing realization that technology could free the working classes. English tradesmen saw that the people who made goods could own those goods. That violated the clockwork mercantile equation. And, sure enough, it's in this gathering revolution that feedback suddenly welled up again.

The revolution began among dissident Protestant English tradesmen. First they built a network of canals. Then they began producing and moving goods about, far from London and away from central government control. Their revolution was quiet and thorough. Commoners laid hold of invention. After the blacksmith Newcomen invented the steam engine, the game began in earnest.

Catholic Nations were always Imperialists.  Fascist Italy, who invaded Libya in the 1920s, was under the thrall of Mussolini, who was a staunch Roman ally.  Hitler, who successfully destroyed Deutschland, heartland of the Protestant Reformation, was also a Roman Catholic and backed by the RCC.  The CATHOLIC CONQUISTADORS brutalized the Native Americans (nobody seems to realize that the literal blood descendants of Hernan Cortez still rule Mexico today).  Protestant England defeated Catholic France in 120 years of constant war, from Queen Anne's War (1689-97) up through Napoleon's bloody wars (1804-1814), which killed ~5,000,000 Europeans, precisely because Protestant England, as a freer society, was more CAPITALIST than IMPERIALIST France, and had a richer and more robust Economy, so it was able to keep funding its wars and win out in the end (much as the Soviet system collapsed under its own weight compared to America's CAPITALIST economy).

Many people hate "Capitalists".

But everytime they do, they are also, as it would happen to happen to happen, hating "Protestants".  By virtue of fighting for the Strength and Freedom to earnestly worship Almighty God alone, neither joined with nor subordinate to the worship of kings and monarch, Protestant nations won the Freedoms to become Capitalist.  The Bulwark of Capitalism (Deutschland, England, America) is also the Bulwark of Protestantism, and it's no coincidence.  Hating Capitalists = Hating Protestants.

And Rome is quite happy about that.  Quite happy indeed.  Catholic Bishops support Abortion in Protestant America, and once-Protestant babies die in the womb.  Catholic Bishops support illegal immigration into Protestant America, which floods America with CATHOLIC Latin Americans.  Arnold Schwarzenegger, a staunch Catholic, from Catholic Austria, married to a Catholic Kennedy (a staunch arch-leftist closet-Communist family), is in good standing with his Church, and, as it would happen, also opposes any efforts by Californians to wall off their lands from the Tsunami of Illegal Catholic Aliens pouring into their midst.

Catholic Counter-Reformation (New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia):

Another point to be noticed is that, though we assign certain dates for the beginning and end of the period under consideration, there has never been any break in the striving of the Church against the heresies which arose in the sixteenth century. In this sense the Counter-Reformation began in the time of Luther and is not even yet closed.

But Bismarck, one of the comparatively insignificant issues is this: if my sea-tossed, wayfaring Mayflower happens to land upon the shores of an ideal Puritanical Colony, am I going to be compelled to attend church and to listen to sermons (like those Muslims in this thread�s opener who are being forced to attend Friday prayers)?

By the way, and for those who might not know, I take my name from the 16^th Century Spanish physician and (in my opinion) martyr, Michael Servetus, at times derogatorily called �the Moor [or Muslim]� by his antagonistic contemporaries, whose biographer once said of him that he was �the only Christian ever to have been burned by Catholics in effigy and by Protestants in actuality.�  If I don't always agree with his viewpoint, or opinion, I nevertheless identify with him as a character.

Servetus (the 2nd)

Skipping Friday prayers is a major sin for Muslims and it is punishable under the state�s Syariah laws, said Kelantan Bar Committee chairman Datuk Wan Harun Shukri Noordin.

Skipping prayers.....a major sin?? Hmm!! never heard of it before. So, bro Fredi, you are quite good at in picking on some Muslims' weaknesses. I must admit. However, rest assure you will never find such things originating from the Islam itself.

Reference to gospel according to Luke by bro Serv. is an interesting one, though, here the reference is distinctively not about Christians themselves but sources of present day Christianity.

�servetus - your allusion to the parable in luke is not appropriate.� 

Fredi, your assertion here is even more inappropriate than my allusion .

�read it again ��

With all due respect, I don�t need to.  How I read (or understand) it is not the issue.  How St. Augustine, John Calvin and the Puritans (among others) read it is the issue.  And despite �historical verbiage,� there are those within the UsofA who are, to this day, wary of certain far-right political alliances and of the rise of theocracy.  Here, then, is a case in point:  http://www.theocracywatch.org/

Serv