There’s one thing that most unbelievers – especially Muslim terrorists – don’t quite get about Christians: if you kill a holy man, you turn him into a martyr, and his word will echo through centuries.
And if you don’t kill him, he comes back much stronger in the love of Christ.
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, carrying a gold cross and sporting a white eye patch, returned triumphantly to the pulpit on Orthodox Palm Sunday – of all days – and delivered a fiery sermon, calling out Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in an impassioned defense of freedom of speech and religion.
The New York Post reported:
“I say to our beloved, the Australian government, and our beloved Prime Minister, the honorable Mr. Albanese, I believe in one thing and that is the integrity and the identity of the human being. This human identity, this human integrity, is a God-given gift, no one else. Every human being has the right to their freedom of speech and freedom of religion.”
Bishop Emmanuel said all religions – Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Atheists – had the right to express their beliefs.
“Also the Christians have the right to express their beliefs, and for us to say, that free speech is dangerous, that free speech cannot be possible in a democratic country, I’m yet to fathom this. I’m yet to fathom this. We should be able as civilized human beings, as intellectuals, we should be able to criticize, to speak, and maybe, at some certain times, we may sound, or we may come across offensive to some degree, but we should be able to say, ‘I should not worry for my life to be exposed to threat or to be taken away’. A non Christian can criticize my faith, can attack my faith. I will say one thing, ‘may God forgive you, and may God bless you.”
He said it is unacceptable to state that freedom of speech ‘is causing dramas and dilemmas’ and that it should be censored. He asked: ‘Then where is democracy?’
“Then, where is humanity, where is integrity, where are the morals, where are the ethics, where are the principles, where are the values which the Western world, more so, have been fighting for human rights, which is the value of the human.”
After a 16-year-old Muslim terrorist stabbed the bishop during a live-streamed sermon, the video of the attack quickly spread online.
Australian eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant ordered social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to take down posts commenting on the attack.
X has stated it will challenge the take-down order.
The recent attacks in Australia are a horrific assault on free society. Our condolences go out to those who have been affected, and we stand with the Australian people in calling for those responsible to be brought to justice.
Following these events, the Australian eSafety…
— Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) April 19, 2024
Bishop Emmanuel: “May this holy and blessed day, the day of Hosanna, Palm Sunday according to the [Orthodox] church calendar, may the Lord Jesus bless every Christian who is celebrating Palm Sunday today, and those who have celebrated it earlier.” he said to his congregation.
He said ‘love never fails’: “This is our Christian faith, but above all this is our Christ, who is all. And always taught to love one another, because God is love, and the Lord Jesus, he is God, revealed in the flesh, period. He taught us to love everyone, without any differentiation. This will never change.”
The Bishop also delivered a message to his attacker, forgiving him, showing the power of Christianity in real time, to all the world to hear.
“I’ll say it again, this young man who did this act, almost two weeks ago, I say to you, ‘my dear, you are my son and you will always be my son’. I will always pray for you, I will always wish you nothing but the best.”
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