Pruning Where Culling Was Perceived

The roots yearn to live.
Cutting down the living only sprouts more to thrive.

To 'prune' something is to 'cut away from a tree, shrub, etc.'.

To 'cull' something is to 'reduce the population by selective slaughter'.

Pruning is usually in reference to removing branches or stems from a plant, bush or tree, and such activity increases growth, increasing numbers.

Culling is usually in reference to wild animals, and such activity reduces growth, reducing numbers.

These two words, as with other words, can be attributed to other things by using metaphor.

There's a stump on my street where a young palm tree once stood, measuring maybe 15 to 18 feet high.

One day a delivery truck carrying a nearby business' inventory accidentally backed into this tree.

The tree, being pushed over by the truck, snapped and broke less than two feet from the ground and fell into the street.

A few days later city employees came and took away the tree and leveled the breaking point, leaving a stump in the ground.

I was wondering why the city didn't uproot the stump.

I thought to myself perhaps it was too costly to do so.

I walk by this stump every day, sometimes more than twice a day.

A few weeks pass and I was surprised to see new shoots sprouting all around the leveled stump, some even sprouting from the roots surrounding the stump.

Where a single tree stood, in due time several trees may replace the one.

I was reminded of an ancient phrase:

Plures efficimur, quoties metimur a vobis; semen est sanguis christianorum.

The English translation from the Latin:

We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed. 

- Apologeticus, 50, s. 13.

Other translations of the message:

‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church / Christians.’ 

‘As often as we are mown down by you, the more we grow in numbers; the blood of the Christians is the seed.’

A Christian from North Africa (Berber) who coined that phrase was Tertullian.

Tertullian was born in 2nd century Carthage (modern day Tunisia) and was witness to the slaughter of Christians at the hands of the Romans (that time's imperial, regional and local government).

That faithful man was most likely inspired to coin that phrase after meditating on this message:

Yeshua replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves Me must follow Me; and where I Am, My servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves Me.” 

- John 12: 23-26

Although the Roman empire eventually adopted the faith and outlawed the worship of paganism and of various gods, men fighting over power and wealth is a sad constant on the earth.

In due time, that era's empire was attacked by another system of government and men...nothing surprising when reading world history.

A new government following different ideas occupied the thrones of the world, at that time, in that place...and that pattern continued until the vestiges of yet another empire, that time the Islamic, occupied these same earthly thrones.

As in Tertullian's day, and still Today, the witnesses in heaven watch the slaughter of the faithful who have placed their hope, faith and love in Yeshua Christ as their Lord and Savior.

Although the power lines between heaven and earth, between the Lord and His faithful, change seemingly with the changing of the wind, the attachment of His love does not.

Today, the faithful continue following His example of love, peace and dialogue with the imprudent all the way to heaven through suffering and death, just as that passage from John reveals.

Those who desire to inherit the earth do so according to their ideas, yet all they inherit is shame, ignorant boasting, and eventual torment.

Another Christian man was cut down in recent times, in Cairo, Egypt, about 700 miles from where- and over 1800 years since- Tertullian witnessed the killing of the innocent.

Saaman Shehata was in the flesh a Coptic priest, and was cut down, his blood running into the ground...as have thousands upon thousands of the faithful both there and all over the earth.

The same pattern of slaughter follows the cast that Christ set in motion ever since His blood ran into the earth from the floggings to the Cross...and His blood gave seed to the faith...as does the blood of the faithful Today.

Wayward souls Today still think they are conducting a service to God when attempting to stamp out the kingdom that God through Christ established, desiring instead to establish their latter version of 'justice' on earth...by means of violence, fear, intimidation and more death.

...in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or Me. I have told you this, so that when their time comes you will remember that I warned you about them... 

- John 6: 2b-4a

The wicked perceive themselves culling when they are simply pruning instruments.

Other wayward souls Today negate the notion of God and inflict verbal punishment on the faithful with their daggers of poison-laced words.

Ravenous wolves, brute beasts and wild dogs these all are...inheriting only the dust of the earth they've been made from.

Their time of 'triumph' and 'enjoyment' is a but a dried mist, a forgotten glimpse, a dismal attempt against Providence.

If they only knew they fulfill at least two other roles: bringing judgment and condemnation upon themselves, and bringing glory to the faithful when His Spirit is released from their temple.