Justin Scherrer

“On reaching their new dwelling places in Ottoman territory, the boys were “either persuaded or forced to be circumcised and made Muslim.” Nor were these merely symbolic or superficial acts: “The first thing they are made to learn is the Turks’ false religion, which they know so well as to put us to shame.”28 Having learned to submit, they were next subjected to a draconian training system not unlike the ancient Spartan agoge: “They make them drudge day and night, and they give them no bed to sleep on and very little food.” They were allowed to “speak to each other only when it is urgently necessary” and were made to “pray together without fail at four prescribed times every day.” As “for any little offense, they beat them cruelly with sticks, rarely hitting them less than a hundred times, and often as much as a thousand. After punishments the boys have to come to them and kiss their clothing and thank them for the cudgelings they have received. You can see, then,” concluded the Italian observer, “that moral degradation and humiliation are part of the training system.”29 Ironically, however—and as with other historically Muslim institutions that have been whitewashed¶—this abduction, forced conversion, and jihadi indoctrination of Christian children is portrayed by several leading academics “as the equivalent of sending a child away for a prestigious education and training for a lucrative career.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“The resurrection of the dead to the glory of the new Jerusalem and a renewed earth marks the end of the wilderness. Therefore, today, in the here and now, the call of God to His church is the call to go to Him into the wilderness and to dwell with Him there while we wait the completion of His redemptive work in the world, culminating in the new creation.”
― D.J. Marotta, Liturgy in the Wilderness: How the Lord's Prayer Shapes the Imagination of the Church in a Secular Age

“From the imagination springs desires; from desires flow actions, which over time wear grooves into habits; from habits develop beliefs that justify; and from beliefs come doctrine.”
― D.J. Marotta, Liturgy in the Wilderness: How the Lord's Prayer Shapes the Imagination of the Church in a Secular Age

“Today churches look at resumés and never examine the home. In the New Testament church, a man’s home was his resumé.”
― Voddie T. Baucham Jr., What He Must Be: ...If He Wants to Marry My Daughter