The intolerance of tolerance

“Our Western Nations have both forgotten God and forgotten where they have come from.
Now they are attempting to complete the process of severing the roots of Western civilization,
destroying its root system poisoning its soil and ruining its entire spiritual,
moral and social ecology”
Os Guinness

Only a renewal of Biblical Christianity will save Western civilization…
otherwise, we are doomed to go the way of the great Roman and Greek civilizations.
David Robertson

(gulls enjoying a morning looking for fish / Rosemary Beach, Fl /Julie Cook / 2019)

It seems that our favorite cleric from down under…
you know the one…the one who use to be from merely across the pond
but who is perhaps technically now under the pond rather than across it,
has recently offered some wonderful insight into our latest cultural woe…
that being Cultural Marxism.

We’ve talked about this before.

And we’ll just keep on talking about it because it is a real and present evil..
one that is currently burrowing its way into our lives…and please note
that is a fact and not merely right-winged hysteria.

You may recall that the Rev. David Roberston resigned his post as head pastor
at St Peter’s Free Chruch (reformed Presbyterian) in Dundee, Scotland after
27 years in order to move to Sydney Australia.
He continues to write, preach and blog away just as he continues to be
what I like to call a modern-day Christian soldier…

The post that I’m referencing today is actually a post that is based on the notes used
for a recent talk, David gave at the New South Wales Parliament Round Table Forum.

He opens the post with a small disclaimer to his readers…

David states that he is a white, middle-aged male who hails from a historically
imperialistic nation.
He notes that he also has, and most likely still, considers himself a socialist
as well as a Christian.
He also extols that he went to school not to merely get a degree in hopes of
procuring a job, but rather that he went to school in order to learn.

“I think education is in and of itself a good thing and should not be about
social engineering in some kind of Brave New World dystopia.”

So I will state my own disclaimer.

I am a white, late middle-aged, woman who hails from a leading
world power, democratic nation.
I am a Christian.
I am college-educated.
And I am from the South of this said democratic nation.

I think folks like to call where I hail from the Bible belt of the Nation.
But I don’t know if that is still applicable as no one seems to be a local
anymore but rather imports.
Imports who don’t give two hoots about Bibles or belts.

I am not a socialist but rather a moralistic conservative.
I don’t know if that’s a thing or not, but it pretty much sums me up in a nutshell.
Moralistic.
Conservative.
Oh, and don’t forget, a woman.
All that girl power out there should give me points where the
moralistic and conservative aspect take points away…
or so say the current culture gods.

David pulls heavily from a couple of books for his notes.
One of the books is actually a book I’ve alo pulled heavily from as well,
Melvin Tinker’s book The Hideous Strength

I learned of this little book actually from David and his posted review of
the book some time back.
It was written in 2018 and is based on the fictional a work of C.S.Lewis of
the same title, That Hideous Strength.

The other book David pulled from is Rob Smith’s book Concocted Conspiracy or Revolutionary Reality
A book I am not familiar with.

And so yes, before we begin, we all know that I’ve written about the ills of Marxism
before just as has David…
however, David is offering us a bit of an updated timely reminder as he also throws in
the recent dangerous push of identity politics.

David notes that
“Marxist theory leads to three aims –
the abolition of private property, the abolition of the family
and the abolition of the Church.”

I think most of us over the age of 50 will agree,
all but maybe Bernie Sanders, that Marxism is a scourge.

However a scourge it may be, sadly our youthful progressive liberal culture seems
hell-bent on implementing it and won’t rest until it does—

This misguided and out of touch with reality post-Christian, progressive
youthful culture is equally supported by many of our own Democratic hopefuls
running for President of the United States, along with their fellow House
Democratic members who seem equally hell-bent on the Marxism quest.

Why am I now thinking that the word pandering must be somewhere behind all of this??

Think the Fab 4…but again, we digress.

Marxism, as history has so blatantly demonstrated, does not work– end of sentence.
Nor will it ever work in a conventionally democratic nation.
Again, end of sentence.

And once again, as previously stated, history emphatically teaches us this.

And yet we are apparently such slow learners, as well as products of amnesia,
that it appears we’ve all but forgotten our own history lessons.

Think the Soviet Union and Karl Marx.

Think 1987 as President Reagan tells the current sitting leader of
the Soviet Union, ” Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”….

It took from about 1917 until 1987 but that wall did indeed come tumbling down.
However, I fear most of our youthful progressives wouldn’t be able to
actually name said wall of which we speak, and as to why we even speak about it…
but I digress.

Oh and I forgot… we might just be able to thank our heavily angst-ridden liberal colleges
and the equally liberal professors for this lapse in history teaching as they have been
busily rewriting that very history…one event at a time.

But David explains what this lastest Marxist and totalitarian scourge will eventually
do to life as we know it if we as a society continue on this same trajectory.

Things that were once embraced will be rejected and that which was once accepted as
normal behavior will be forbidden.
Look at what the PC culture is doing, has done, to Christianity and morality
along with your right to hold on to such as sacred and true.

“Another tool is the totalitarian (as opposed to the Christian) view of tolerance.
Things which are perceived as preventing freedom or happiness cannot be tolerated.
“certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed,
certain policies cannot be exposed, certain behaviour cannot be permitted without making
tolerance an instrument for the continuation of servitude”.

Political correctness is driven by two things,
group identity and the discounting of truth as valuable.
Some groups are beyond criticism.
Some truths cannot be said.

And it appears that Christianity, the Judaeo / Christian tradition,
the traditional family, traditional Western Civilization, differing opinions,
white males, morality, truth, conservativism, etcetera…
have all fallen into that category of that which may no longer be uttered…

All the while, abortion, gender fluidity, transgenderism, fake news, liberalism, safe rooms,
LBGTQ_____ (fill in the blanks with any letter that pleases you), atheism, racism, fascism,
‘isms’ of every shape, size, and description… are all the rage as are those
who embrace such…
Embrace anything other than the aforementioned and then you my friend will be ridiculed,
sued, attacked, heckled, disgraced, run out of business, run out of town and gleefully obliterated.

Yet David offers one last piece of closing wisdom in which we all must reach…

“You cannot have the fruits of Christianity if you do not have the root of Christ.”

Cultural Marxism in Modern Society…

Be careful to whom and to what you show favoritism towards…

As our country is in the process of rejecting its Christian roots,
it now appears that we are losing the fruits as well.
Rev. David Robertson

A week or so ago, I wrote a post featuring the words of our good friend from
across the pond, the Scottish Presbyterian Pastor David Robertson.
David was writing about how a fellow ‘man of the cloth’ had come under fire
for merely quoting from David’s blog, The Wee Flea…

He cited David’s words and in turn David reports that:
“It was described as a ‘rant by a furious vicar’.
Why?
He was just challenging the current fashion to indoctrinate children with the basic
tenets of Queer theory.
Not least the belief that gender is not connected with biology and can be changed.”

When writing a weekly column in his church’s newsletter, the News media outlets
went bonkers over this poor vicar’s desire to quote David .

Well…
shhhhhh…don’t tell anyone, but I actually quote from David’s blog quite often!
And I’m doing so again today.

Chalk it up to the delirium of grandmotherhood duty coupled by worry or simply
from wanting to speak the Truth…but it appears as if I’m quoting again…
today…

Ooops.

David observes that we are finding ourselves living in “the end of rationality”
and I for one, totally concur.

It’s as if our culture has been attacked by some massive rabid raccoon and is now suffering
terribly from a fatal case of hydrophobia…aka, rabies.

For it seems clearly apparent that our uber progressive liberal and anti-Judeo Christian society
is on an insatiable quest of being increasingly intolerant to any deviation from what David
notes as a New Orthodoxy.
It is this, “State’s” new doctrine—nothing more and nothing less.

Why do I hear leather goose-stepping boots reverberating in my brain?

David observes that even the Church is sadly now compliant as this poor Anglican vicar’s
superiors and diocese quickly distanced themselves from him and his newsletter, of which
quoted from David’s blog, by publicly stating that the vicar’s views are not “their” views.

David continues…
“It is just assumed that anyone who disagrees is out-dated,
doesn’t understand and is on ‘the wrong side of history’;
whereas those who are intelligent, virtuous and on ‘the right side of history’
can admire the finery of the Emperor’s new clothes.
But those who have eyes can see that the Emperor is naked.”

“…we are no longer concerned with what is right and wrong, but rather our ‘values’.
Although just quite how we arrive at these values and what they are based on,
is left unspoken.
You can have your views but if they go against ‘our values’,
you had better not express them. Or the Secular Inquisition will
investigate and insist on your recantation or punishment.

David closes his post with this startingly observation as well as a revelation…
The liberal/progressive thought police may not be as obvious as the
Saudi Arabian religious ones – but they are even more dangerous.
Using the tools of mockery, ignorance, superiority, and intimidation,
they have the ability to overwhelm and destroy any opponent.
The Church here has a tremendous opportunity –
not just to stand up for ourselves, but to speak up for those who cannot speak up
for themselves.
Who will stand in the gap?
Who will face down the new authoritarians and fight for freedom?
Peter Hughes has done so. As have others – including the Vatican.
Will Christians stand together with them?

And so the question is posed my friends…what will we as Christians do?
Will we simply capitulate and keep quiet or will we stand up against
this rabid “New State”?
Will we keep quiet so as not to rock the boat and our tidy little existence or
will we dare to speak what we know is the Truth?

“So everyone who acknowledges me before men,
I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven,
but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”
Matthew 10:32-33

The Religious Thought Police are Here

new left, not so new-raison d’etre

“But society cannot be indiscriminate where the pacification of existence,
where freedom and happiness themselves are at stake: here, certain things cannot be said,
certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed,
certain behaviour cannot be permitted without making tolerance an instrument
for the continuation of servitude.”
Herbert Marcuse

As we revisit our friend Melvin Tinker and his book
“That Hideous Strength: How The West Was Lost
The Cancer of Cultural Marxism in the Church, the World and The Gospel of Change”,
we pick up where we last left off…reviewing some of the writings of the likes of individuals
such as Herbert Marcuse.

Who was Herbert Marcuse you ask?

He was a German-born American philosopher, sociologist, and Political Theorist.

Marcuse was a key figure in the Frankfurt Shcool of Critical thinking.

According to Tinker–
“In 1923 a week-long symposium was organized by Felix Weil in Frankfurt,
Germany in which they laid out a vision for a Marxist think-tank and
research centre.
The original name for the centre was the Institue for Marxism (Institut fur Marxismus),
but a more innocent sounding title was subsequently given,
The Institute for Social Research (Institut fur Sozialforschung).
Since that time the ISR has usually been known simply as the Frankfurt School.”

Besides his time spent in the Frankfurt School, Marcuse also spent time working for the
US government in the Office of Strategic Services which was a precursor to the CIA.

But what is actually more relevant and crucial to us today regarding Marcuse,
as we witness a sinister surge in this new cultural Marxism grabbing hold of
our Western Civilization, is that Marcuse is known as the ‘father of the New Left’.

The New Left…??

Perhaps The New Left is an oxymoron—not new at all.

Have we not been inundated with all things of the New Left ever since the midterms?
Does the new darling of that New Left Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ring a bell?
So perhaps we’re actually discerning that this “new” left isn’t so new after all…

Tinker responds to Marcuse’s opening quote —
“Notice all those ‘cannots’?
Who do you think they are applied to?
Mainly people like Christians.
This is a new totalitarian-tolerance while all the time masquerading as a new freedom.
As such the new tolerance must extinguish the old tolerance and those people and
institutions which traditionally expouse it such as the church.
Furthermore, for neo-Marxism to have a raison d’etre
there must be repressed groups which need liberating,
People are required to see themselves as victims of the liberal society of which they are a part.

PC or not PC? That is the question
It is cultural Marxism which lies behind the all-pervading political correctness of our age.
Those of both the political right and left acknowledge this.
Pat Buchanan of the right wrote, ‘Political Correctness is cultural Marxism, a regime to punish dissent
and to stigmatize social heresy as the Inquisition, punished religious heresy. Its trademark is intolerance.’

Similarly from the more liberal publication Newsweek:
PC is, strictly speaking, a totalitarian philosophy …
Politically, PC is Marxist in origin…There are…
some who recognize the tyranny of PC but see it only as a transitional phase,
which will no longer be necessary once the virtues of tolerance are internalized.
Does that sound familiar? Its the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In 1930 Max Horkheimer became the director of the ISR which is when neo-Marxism was
launched in earnest.
Horkheimer was convinced that the major obstacle to the spread of Marxism was traditional
Western culture with its Judeo-Christian heritage.
Here there developed a revisionist neo-Marxist interpretation of Western culture under the rubric,
Critical Theory, the goal of which according to William S. Lind ‘was not truth but praxis,
or revolutionary action: bringing the current society and culture down through unremitting,
destructive criticism.’
Truth, according to this view, was locked into its own particular point in history and so was
historically relative (of course that would apply to Critical Theory itself
a fact which was conveniently overlooked).

“unremitting destructive criticism…” along with ‘facts that are conveniently overlooked‘.
With the New Left’s biggest obstacle being Western Culture and its Judeo-Christian heritage…??

If you think that none of this is relevant or affects you, your life, your routines, your beliefs…
you best think again.

No, this New Left is really not so new at all—
yet it continues on relentlessly, with a growing fevered pitch,
to desperately turn your world upside down.
To de-establish the established.
To neuter the bedrock of Western Civilization…that being
her Judeo-Christian foundation.

And there is no one who is more giddy about this revved-up assault
then that of our old ancient foe.

Split
Divide
Eliminate
Conquer

You and I will soon have two choices, that is if those two choices aren’t already standing before us…
Stand firm in our faith…
or…
appease and apologize…
and in turn, lose our souls.

First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and
following their own evil desires.
They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised?
Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”
But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was
formed out of water and by water.
By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.
By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire,
being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years,
and a thousand years are like a day.
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.
He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief.
The heavens will disappear with a roar;
the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.
Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be?
You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.
That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.
But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth,
the home of righteousness.
So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this,
make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.
Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation,
just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him.
He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters.
His letters contain some things that are hard to understand,
which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this,
be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from
your secure position.
But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To him be glory both now and forever!
Amen.
2 Peter 3:3-18:1

death of your own culture, right under your own eyes…

“What we have in the Tower of Babel episode is in effect a rival cosmology to that of God’s;
it is an unmaking and a remaking of the world, a blasphemous human “let us’
over and against the Holy ‘let us’ of the Triune God.”
Melvin Tinker

(Le Mont-Saint-Michel / Julie Cook/ 2018)

I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday–
so as I sat in the waiting room along with all those others who were also waiting,
I was actually hard at work.

I learned a long time ago to make the most of any and all “empty” moments.
Call it multitasking or simply the survival skill of having been a working mother…
I was sitting in a corner, book open in my lap while my yellow highlighter was going to town.
I was almost disappointed when the nurse came out and called me back.

I was in the midst of the slow continuation of working my way through the marvelous,
albeit short, book by Melvin Tinker
That Hideous Strength: How The West Was Lost
The Cancer of Cultural Marxism in the Chruch, the World and The Gospel of Change

Below I want to offer you the two page’s worth of enlightenment that I managed to read
and highlight before the nurse came to get me—

It is so much on the money that I had to contain myself from shouting out
a big ‘AMEN” as I read.
Had I done so, the folks waiting around me might have thought I was out of my
meds….meds for things like sudden and unexpected outbursts—
appropriate and not…
but little did they know I was reading words of an alarming truth that is sinisterly
consuming our very lives.

“We saw how for Lewis, the ideology of his day, which he sought to expose and debunk,
was naturalistic materialism.
One of the main ideologies of our day is a variant of this, namely, neo-Marxism,
sometimes called cultural Marxism or libertarian Marxism.

A philosophy of human liberation.
It seeks to overcome human alienation, to emancipate man from repressive social institutions,
especially economic institutions that frustrate his true nature, and to bring him into harmony
with himself, his fellow men, and the world around him so that he can overcome his estrangements
and express his true essence through creative freedom.

But the liberty which the cultural Marxists have in mind is not the liberty
of classical liberalism– equality under the law or even equality of opportunity.
Unlike the classical Marxist whose main focus was economic inequality,
theirs is an equality cutting across the whole of human experience.
It was Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School who argued that traditional societies promote what
he called a ‘repressive tolerance” because they do not deal with the latent inequalities of humans;
the fact that some are cleverer, wiser or harder working than others,
who are then to be considered to be oppressed because of their perceived deficiency.

As Andrew Sandlin writes:
Libertarian Marxism is all about liberating humanity from the social institutions and conditions
(like the family and church and business and traditional views and habits and authorities)
that prevent the individual from realizing his true self,
his true desires and aspirations, from being anything he wants to be–full autonomy…
Libertarian Marxism is the Marxism of our culture and time.

Peter Berger calls the ‘plausibility structures’ of a society,
that is those background assumptions, beliefs and ways of thinking and acting which are taken as given.
It is the presumption which declares “Of course, everyone now days knows that…’
The aim is to get people to think and feel for themselves that certain values and practices,
such as same-sex marriage, are common sense, fair or even natural.

Over the last 60 years or so in the West there has effectively occurred the death of on culture,
rooted in the Judeo-Christian world view, and the rise of another more secular one.
Philip Rieff observes that,
“The death of a culture begins with its normative institutions fail to communicate ideals in ways
that remain inwardly compelling.’ Once the ideology of neo-Marxism, you talk instead about ‘equality,’
‘liberation’ and ‘tolerance’–the things of which the Chruch of England speaks endlessly)
the revolution is more or less complete.
The upshot of this is that if these beliefs and practices are considered plausible,
Christian beliefs and practices become implausible more less by default,
in which case it will not do simply to argue for the cogency of the Chrisitan faith for
most people will think that there is nothing to argue about.
Many of us don’t spend that much time thinking how we might argue against flat-earthists—
we simply assume they are mistaken, out of touch and an irrelevance;
so it is with many people’s view of Christianity.

Changing the view of Christianity, one Marxist at a time…
we’ve been warned….

Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether
I come and see you or am absent,
I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit,
with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel,
Philippians 1:27

is the devil is in the details…

“Till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed,
See this sword?
The prince of darkness sold it to me.”
Karl Marx “The Fiddler”

“If Marx, Bruno Bauer and Feuerbach associate to found a
theological-political review,
God would do well to surround himself with all his angels
and indulge in self-pity, for these three will certainly drive him out of heaven…”
quoted from D. McLellan, Marx before Marxism, MacMillian)

Yesterday I wrote a post about salvaging a few books left over from college and the rather
prophetic connection associated with one of those books.
It was during the purge of the attic that I found and opted
to recuse a few of these old reads.

You may have noticed one of the books in yesterday’s photo and found yourself wondering
about it.

It is a small book with a very unsettling title that seems to be more accusation than title.
It was written in 1976 and is a book I’ve actually had since high school.

“Was Karl Marx a Satanist?”
by Richard Wurmbrand.

I’d imagine that most folks seeing such a book, given our current state of political affairs,
would most likely roll their eyes as if to say,
“it figures you conservative religious types would think such.”

But if anyone should know whether Marx was a Satanist or not would be Richard Wurmbrand.

The Philadelphia Herald once stated that “He (Wurmbrand) stood in the midst of lions,
but they could not devour him.”

His biography reads like the script of some sort of beyond reality novel…

Richard Wurmbrand was born the youngest of four boys in a Jewish family on March 24, 1909,
in Bucharest, Romania.
Gifted intellectually and fluent in nine languages,
Richard was active in leftist politics and worked as a stockbroker.
On Oct. 26, 1936, Richard married Sabina Oster, who was also Jewish.
They placed their faith in Jesus Christ in 1938 as a result of the influence of a
German carpenter named Christian Wölfkes.
Richard was ordained as an Anglican, and later Lutheran, minister.

During World War II, Richard and Sabina saw opportunities for evangelism among
the occupying German forces.
They preached in bomb shelters and rescued Jewish children out of the ghettos.
Richard and Sabina were repeatedly arrested and beaten and, at least once,
nearly executed.

Sabina lost her Jewish family in Nazi concentration camps.
In 1945, Romanian Communists seized power and a million Russian troops poured into
the country. Pastor Wurmbrand ministered to his oppressed countrymen while engaging
in bold evangelism to the Russian soldiers.

That same year, Richard and Sabina attended the Congress of Cults,
organized by the Romanian Communist government. Many religious leaders
came forward to praise Communism and to swear loyalty to the new regime.

Richard walked up to the podium and declared to the delegates, whose speeches were
broadcast to the whole nation, that their duty was to glorify God and Christ alone.
Between 1945 and 1947, Richard distributed 1 million Gospels to Russian troops,
often disguising the books as Communist propaganda.
Richard also helped arrange the smuggling of Gospels into Russia.

On Feb. 29, 1948, the secret police kidnapped Richard as he traveled to church and took
him to their headquarters.
He was locked in a solitary cell and labeled “Prisoner Number 1.”

In 1950, his wife, Sabina, was also imprisoned.
She was forced to serve as a laborer on the Danube Canal project,
leaving their 9-year-old son, Mihai, alone and homeless.

He was then taken in by Christian friends, who risked imprisonment to care for the
child of a political prisoner.
Sabina was released after three years, and Richard was also later released,
only to be re-arrested and then released in an amnesty in 1964.

In December 1965, two organizations paid a $10,000 ransom to allow the
Wurmbrand family to leave Romania.
Reluctant to leave his homeland, Richard was convinced by other underground church
leaders to leave and become a “voice” to the world for the underground church.
Richard, Sabina and their son, Mihai, left Romania for Norway and then traveled on to England.

Richard began his ministry of being a voice for persecuted Christians in the West,
where he also wrote his testimony of persecution, Tortured for Christ.
Later, Richard moved to the United States, and in 1967 the Wurmbrands officially began
a ministry committed to serving our persecuted Christian family called Jesus to the
Communist World (later renamed The Voice of the Martyrs).
This work continues today in more than 60 countries where Christians are persecuted.
TorturedforChrist.com

During his imprisonment, according to The Telegraph,“Wurmbrand was beaten on his body
and on the soles of his feet, given mind-altering drugs and forced to watch the humiliation
of fellow prisoners.

Through everything, he refused to recant.

For three years he was held in solitary confinement in a cell some 35 ft underground;
he kept sane by preaching himself a sermon every night,
fixing more than 300 of them in his brain with mnemonics and rhymes.
After his release, he published 22 as a book, Sermons in Solitary Confinement (1969).

Only once did he have anyone else to speak to – a prisoner in the next cell to whom he
communicated in Morse by tapping on his cell wall and whom he converted to Christianity.
Sabina Wurmbrand meanwhile was forced to work as a slave labourer;
at one stage, while building a canal, she was reduced to living on grass.
After her release in 1954, she was denied work for refusing to divorce her husband.
When later informed that he had died in prison,
she refused to believe it even when strangers called on her claiming to be former prisoners
who had attended his funeral.

In May 1966 when Wurmbrand testified in Washington before the Senate's Internal
Security Subcommittee, he stripped to the waist to show 18 deep torture wounds
covering his body.

Wurmbrand was a fiery, almost explosive man who never fought shy of controversy.
Although he always spoke about his oppressors with understanding,
he was passionate in his belief that "Communism is the greatest crime in humanity"
and was highly critical of those who sought dialogue with Communist regimes.
In 1967, on a visit to Britain, he roundly condemned British churches for their lack of
interest in the plight of Christians under Communism:
"What is happening in China?" he demanded.
"All the churches have been desecrated and closed, but nobody protests."

The British churches, he believed,
had been compromised by their membership of the World Council of Churches which included
members of the officially-approved Russian and Romanian churches.
(why do I now see Bishop Gavin Ashenden in my mind's eye nodding in agreement?)
He recalled how, during his incarceration,
he had been asked whether he would like to become a bishop -
so that he could help to influence the World Council of Churches in "our" favour.

So if anyone knows Communism, The Soviets, as well as Socialism, on an intimate level...
it would be Richard Wurmbrand.

In his book "Was Karl Marx a Satanist", Wurmbrand does not merely make a case for such
a notion but rather states, after meticulous research,
that which is not conjecture but is rather a definitive fact.

And so the answer is yes.
And in turn, we now know that the father of communism and socialism was a practicing Satanist.
(Read the book in order to glimpse the known and little-known documentation which
details Marx's practicing involvement)

Ironically Marx was once an ardent Christian during his youth, but it at some point
during his time in college, there is a grave transformation.
One from a heartfelt warmth to a bitter unfeeling cold.

For time's sake, I will leave the reading and study to you for the details of the whys,
whens, and wheres---just know that Wurmbrand offers copious documentation.

Wurmbrand notes that "All active Satanists have ravaged personal lives.
This was the case with Marx, too."

Arnold Kunzli, in his book K. Marx--A Psychogram (1966), tells of this life,
which led to the suicide of two daughters and a son-n-law.
Three children died of malnutrition.
His daughter Laura, married to the socialist Laforgue, also buried three of her children.
Then she and her husband committed suicide together.
Another daughter Eleanor, decided with her husband to do the same.
She died.
He backed out in the last minute.
The families of Satanists are under a curse.

I find it interesting that in western civilization we are witnessing a resurgence, along
with a keen interest and desire, of and for all things 'ism' within our culture,
chief among them being that of Socialism

Socialism is the growing darling of the Democratic party...
a tantalizing trinket from Pandora's box no longer found in the outer fringes of the party
but rather a dangerous siren singing her alluring song while making headway deep
into the rooted elect.

And this rooted elect has little to no need for the tenents of a Judeo Christian society.

"exactly as Satanists do; unlike atheists, they do not deny the existence of God, except to deceive others;
they know of His existence but describe Him as wicked"

Am I saying that Socialists are Satanists?
No.
But what I am saying is that the birth of socialism, and that of her first cousin communism, has
their roots in the heart and mind of one man who embraced the darkness.

I would utter caution in this race to embrace the latest resurgence of isms in Western Civilization.

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
John 8:12

Ostriches and ducks

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.
Arthur Conan Doyle

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Mahatma Gandhi

( two images, one ostrich up close and personal and a female mallard both courtesy the web)

“Faith and Christian witness are presently confronted by such great challenges that only by working together will we be able effectively to serve the human family and enable the light of Christ to reach every dark corner of our hearts and of our world. May the journey of reconciliation and peace between our communities continue to draw us closer, so that, prompted by the Holy Spirit, we may bring life to all, and bring it in abundance (cf. Jn 10:10).

I would now like to turn to my native tongue to express feelings of profound sorrow. Today I read about the execution of those twenty-one or twenty-two Coptic Christians. Their only words were: “Jesus, help me!”. They were killed simply for the fact that they were Christians. You, my brother, in your words referred to what is happening in the land of Jesus. The blood of our Christian brothers and sisters is a testimony which cries out to be heard. It makes no difference whether they be Catholics, Orthodox, Copts or Protestants. They are Christians! Their blood is one and the same. Their blood confesses Christ. As we recall these brothers and sisters who died only because they confessed Christ, I ask that we encourage each another to go forward with this ecumenism which is giving us strength, the ecumenism of blood. The martyrs belong to all Christians.”

This is an excerpt, courtesy of Vatican Archives, taken from an address given by Pope Francis earlier this week when meeting with members from the (Reformed) Church of Scotland. The Pope ventured away from the agenda at hand in order to offer his concern, outrage, and prayers regarding the beheading of the 21 Coptic Christians at the hands of ISIS.

Before the World could catch its collective breath, ISIS once again carried out another egregious and malicious act of terror and murder this week by publicly taunting then burning alive 45 men from a western town in Iraq—this while the Obama Administration readied themselves to host a summit discussing “extremism”. . .

The definition of extremism, according to Merriam Webster is: advocacy of extreme measures or views : radicalism

The definition of terrorism, according to Merriam Webster is: the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal

The White House has, as has other Western European leaders, yet to acknowledge what the Pope so painfully stated Monday, that the killing of the 21 Copts was an act of violence against Christians.
The White House is also having a rather difficult time calling the violent acts of barbarism what they are—sadistic, callous cold murder carried out by the whims of Islamic Terrorists. They are Islamic and they are terrorists and they wage a jihad in the quest of a Caliphate in the name of Mohammed and Allah. . .

Yet this is not to say that the “Islamic terrorists” speak for or are representational of the Islamic Faithful. The concern however is that other Muslim Nations and Muslim leaders and Muslims in general have merely tried to ignore and distance themselves from the “extremists”. . .With some quietly agreeing that Western Society is indeed partly, if not fully, to blame for the current crises. Unfortunately however the insidious ooze of hate and radicalism is seeping into corners thought to be once off limits and even impenetrable. It appears as if it is in bad form for Muslims to rile against their Muslim kin as it is better to ignore and hope the ugliness will simply go away. . .

A holy war—an oxymoron if ever there was such a thing. A word phrase of extreme opposites in one spoken breath.
Is there such a thing as a “holy war?”—
Yes—but it is of a Divine nature, as the Heavenly Host wages war against Satan and all that is evil and full of darkness. It is what transpired as Jesus descended into Hell, only to rise victorious 3 days later. Yet Satan continues to walk this earth and still works to wield his madness as we remain in the crosshairs, as the earth remains under his dominion—the battle wages, yet the war has been won. . .

And yet it sadly becomes ingrained in the twisted minds of modern man that he can carry out such a “holy war”

The White House urges calm, reminding us not to jump to conclusions or God forbid we insult anyone.
We find ourselves drowning in a sea of political correctness as people are having their heads cut off and are burned alive in cages. We preen and strut in our technological 21st century modernism and pinnacle of civility all the while as thousands of people are tortured and murdered by means of medieval madness–all in the name of a radical religion, hate or simply both. . .the question remains seemingly unanswered.

Why do I feel it is just me who finds this all so terribly troubling? Especially the comment made by ISIS following the beheading of the Coptic Christians that they, ISIS, would now carry their “war” all the way to Rome.

We can choose, like many Muslims, to ignore the current actions of a group of marauding thugs, as it is, who are “over there”. . . We can sit around a large table and talk about if we just create jobs then we could nip this extremism in the bud.
Really??
We can choose to ignore the fact that the very Judeo / Christian foundation that has been the basis of our existence for centuries is truly threatened—that there are those who wish to see it destroyed.

It would be one thing if this was what various leaders, early on, considered to be just a rag tag group of thugs rattling sabers. . .Rather what we are witnessing has startlingly emerged to be a large and spreading cohesive, and well orchestrated, growing group of “radicals” hoping to achieve their Caliphate or that which is actually known as a governing body with direct descending political and religions powers from Mohammed himself. The ideas such as creating jobs for disenfranchised youth around the globe and maintaining overt politically correct terminology in hopes that no one will take offense to our growing alarm or concern will sadly not do one single thing to stop this growing threat to our very way of life.

Two things—may we be mindful that if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck–therefore we may conclude that it is indeed a duck. . .

Also. . . may we never be caught with our heads buried in the sand. . .