Today we woke to the up to the sad truth that Democrats have declared war. They are demanding unconditional surrender. No only from the church but from innocent citizens. Their war compels believers to look again at what the Bible says about evil laws and evil leaders.
Doesn’t the Bible tell us to obey them no matter what? Absolutely not. And it is shocking how many believers do not know their Bible or have been given false teaching. There is no verse in the Bible that tells you to obey evil government or laws. And again, if we don’t realize that now, before we sit back and let our nation be destroyed.
Christians during the American Revolution understood that the Bible does not teach us to obey evil laws or leaders. There would be no America if Christian Colonists believed they should obey the evil laws of England.
Let me prove to you beyond any doubt that the Bible tells us what we must do in the face of wicked government and laws.
First, I will expose a pathetic heresy that many believers commonly accept as truth. This is a widespread excuse for submitting when we should disobey.
Here is an example of someone who wrote me while under the influence of this false teaching:
“Out of curiosity, how do you justify your argument against obeying the government when you read Romans 13:1-7. The government Paul was talking about was even more oppressive than anything we can imagine. You could truly be martyred for your faith under the Roman government. And, what was Paul’s response? Did he call for governmental reform? Did he call for us to protest the government? Did he demand his rights and call on the government to recognize his rights? None of the above, he said, in the face of a brutal government, to obey. He didn’t say obey if your rights are recognized, he said obey. The church of today has to realize that the government is not our arena as Christians. Never, in the history of the church, has God used the government to bring about change.”
This defense of submission to evil government is riddled with error and falsehoods. Here are my responses to selected quotes:
1.“You could truly be martyred for your faith under the Roman government.” First the writer tells us to obey evil laws, but then mentions martyrs. They never would have been martyred had they not broken the law by being Christians.
2. Then he asks, “Did (Paul) call for governmental reform? Did he call for us to protest the government? Did he demand his rights and call on the government to recognize his rights? None of the above…” The truth is, Paul did all of the above. “Paul said to them, “They have beaten us openly, uncondemned Romans, and have thrown us into prison. And now do they put us out secretly? No indeed! Let them come themselves and get us out” (Acts 16:37).
3. And finally, the zinger—the heresy that has sidelined the Body of Christ in the hour when we are most needed: “The church of today has to realize that the government is not our arena as Christians. Never, in the history of the church, has God used the government to bring about change.” Totally untrue. William Wilberforce was a Christian who used his faith in Jesus to abolish slavery in England. In fact, believers throughout history have created child labor laws, health regulations, and have exposed injustice, and corruption. It is safe to say that Christians are more responsible for influencing government, bringing about reform by forcing laws to be changed, and standing up for justice, than any other group in history.
So how did this writer get it so wrong? By doing what so many do. Isolating one set of verses, taking them out of context, and arriving at a conclusion that looks holy, but is in fact, pure and simple fear.
Let’s look at the verses that have been violated:
“Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore, you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor (Romans 13:1-7).
It seems to say that we are to honor government in every form, right? Wrong. To demonstrate what Paul is saying I offer this example. Say some parents leave the house, and leave the oldest child in charge. The child is given strict instructions not to open the door for anyone, except for a postal messenger whom they are expecting to deliver an important package that day.
The parents tell the child, “He will have blonde hair. He is wearing blue jeans and a white shirt. Don’t let anyone else in.” So later, a man with black hair, a blue shirt, and black slacks knocks on the door claiming to be the messenger with the package. Do they let him in? Of course not.
Lost in all the quoting of this verse on submission to government is the most important part: The description of the ruling authority. The Bible tells us what they are wearing! Look at the description:
1.They are not a terror to good works. Any government that terrorizes the innocent is not of God. How can you say that Hitler was God’s will for Germany? Hitler and other tyrants are in fact the ones being warned that there were God appointed governments who would destroy them: “But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.” That is why the just powers of the world rose up and destroyed the Nazis.
2. They praise good works. Authorities that are endorsed by God do not hate or oppose Christian activity. They are the ones who—even if they are not Christian themselves—do not insult soul winning or fight the work of God. They are the cops, teachers, politicians who are glad that children are getting out of gangs and off of drugs.
3. You must be subject for the sake of conscience. When it becomes tricky, is when government is a mixture of right and wrong. Jesus said of the Pharisees, “Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, but do not do” (Matthew 23:3).
Do what they say, but don’t partake of their hypocrisy. Watch them for that moment when they cross the line and come between you and your God. Just as our conscience should drive us to obey the law, we should also know when our conscience tells us not to obey an evil law.
Here’s when Peter reached that tipping point, speaking to those very same Pharisees: “So they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said to them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:18-20).
And again, in Acts 5:29, “Peter and the other apostles answered and said: “We ought to obey God rather than men.””
God not only does not endorse evil government: He will have no part in it.“Can a corrupt throne be allied with you—a throne that brings on misery by its decrees? The wicked band together against the righteous and condemn the innocent to death” (Psalm 94:20). There is your answer. A corrupt throne (government) cannot be allied with God.
The Amplified Bible (1974) puts it this way: “Can a throne of destruction be allied with You, one which frames and devises mischief by decree [under the sacred name of law]?” How much clearer can it be than this? It proves that laws can be evil and cannot be allied with God.
In fact, evil laws are the worst form of sin. They provide legitimacy to evil. Matthew Henry said, “Iniquity is daring enough even when human laws are against it, which often prove too weak to give an effectual check to it; but how insolent, how mischievous, is it when it is backed by a law! Iniquity is not the better, but much the worse, for being enacted by law; nor will it excuse those that practice it to say that they did but do as they were bidden.”
Notice how at the end, Henry says we can’t use the excuse that we were just obeying the law. That is why Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
The laws being created by Democrats, using the coronavirus as an excuse, are far worse than the virus itself because, unlike the virus, those new laws become permanent. It is time for the church to wake up and take action, beginning with voting the evildoers out of office and quit calling our submission a godly thing, when it is just a cowardly thing.
“WHO WILL RISE UP FOR ME AGAINST THE EVILDOERS? WHO WILL STAND UP FOR ME AGAINST THE WORKERS OF INIQUITY?” (Psalm 94:16).
Men and women who have effected the world in profound ways walked with God through the valley of the shadow of death. David spent years living in caves running for his life. Jonah encountered God in the belly of a fish. Paul was jailed and beaten numerous times in his ministry. Then of course there was Jacob who walked with a limp after wrestling with God returning from his exile. Prayerfully none of us will experience these kinds of obstacles in our walk with God but the fact remains, we are able to help people from the encounters we have had with the Lord in the difficult times of our lives. This last year we can say all of us have passed through some of those deep places in life. Has the Lord met you during this season? When difficulties arise one of two things happen, we draw close to the Lord and find help or our heart begins to harden and the Lord seems far off. Here is how Watchman Née describes walking through these deep places.
“Only deep can answer deep. Nothing that is merely of the shallows can respond to the depths, and only what goes deep in us can meet the deep needs of others. If we want to help those who are passing through floods, we must have been through floods ourselves. Have we a history of God’s secret dealings, or does what men see represent all we have got? Many of us are shallow. We only seem to grow outwardly, with nothing in reserve. If we choose to live on the surface of things, we may be of some help to folk in need, but the happiness we bring them will pass. We shall not have been able really to meet them where they are. Paul had a secret he kept for fourteen long years, and what help has its eventual disclosure brought! When we have found God speaking to us in the depths, then it is we possess treasures of darkness to share with others in their hour of trial.”
So how would you characterize your Christian experience? Have you taken a deep dive because of the challenges of life or are you paddling in the shallows? Two things will happen when you dive deep. First, God will meet you and you will experience peace and comfort in your storm. Secondly, you will have authentic power and compassion to minister to the hurting in your world. So what are you waiting for? Take a deep dive, the Lord is waiting for you there.
Pastor Kent Christmas – Powerful Prophetic Release – China Crippled
“I am going to cripple China for what they have done to the nations, because they have tried to remove Me from the earth, I am also going to deal with their leaders, and there is going to be a release of the presence of God and revival in the nation of China.”
“The Lord says, “What I am doing now, what you are seeing is not resurrection of something old.” But God said: “I am birthing something new in the earth that you have not seen. In My mercy…I have been silent, because I have been giving evil men time to repent. But just now as evil has declared war on Me and on the Church, so do I declare war on you…I am sending My word forth into the earth and it will not return unto Me unfulfilled, but all that I have declared over the decades saith the Lord is going to come to pass in this hour, and it will come quickly. For you are in the third day,..and in this day is a day of resurrection of the glory and of the power of the Holy Ghost. My servants, who are My prophets that have spoken my words to the nations have not prophesied in their own name, they have not spoken fables, but they have declared what “thus saith the Lord” in My name. Know this,” says the Lord of Hosts, “I will not ‑‑ I will not,” says God, “let evil men and so‑called believers who are full of unbelief make Me a liar, for I am not a man that I should repent…for I am still God and when I send forth My Word it goes forth as a sword,..and it is going to pierce the very strongholds of the power of darkness. Just as I came to the earth the first time as God in flesh, so am I now coming to you and to this nation and across the earth in this Christmas season to give you a gift that you will never forget.
“What you have been watching in the media is the spirit of that woman Jezebel trying to replace the woman called the Church in the earth. But the voice of the Church in this hour are My prophets…and they will not be silenced, and the Word of the Lord that I have released in this hour: though it looks impossible…it will come to pass. For all that I have declared to you…will not come by the power of men, it will not come through politics or law or even Supreme Courts…but it will come forth by the power of the Holy Ghost in this hour. Just as Jezebel in the days of Elijah drove the prophets into caves, so she in 2020 drove My Church into hiding. But just as I was only in the cave for three days…so is My Church coming out of the cave and coming out of hiding. For the voice of righteousness will not be silenced, says the Lord, and you will not muzzle Me…I will not sit down as a small child in a corner and yield to a power that is not as great as I, for I am still God,” saith the Lord.
“In the year 2021 of January, the angel Michael is sounding the ram’s horn as a call to war against false religion and counterfeit churches in the earth. Every pastor in church that has crawled into bed with this spirit…I am now going to uncover and I am going to judge…For there are many buildings that are built that have the word “church” on them and a cross,..but they do not honour My name. They are not about My presence and they do not care for the poor and those who have been laden with sin. But in this day I am raising up a Church that is glorious, without spot, wrinkle or blemish. Just as the Devil has tried to put despair and intimidation on My people I now release from My Throne-room…a holy garment of bonus on them,” says the Lord.
“For there is a spirit of power and authority that is going to rise on you, and I put the spirit of fear and intimidation on those that have tried to shut up the house of the Lord. And as I am watched, hallelujah,..the houses of the enemy become silent. There is now a sound of the Lion of Judah that is getting ready to come up out of the house of the Lord. You will no longer be known as a house that is heavy and in despair, but there is joy,..for even as I came to the earth the first time and the angels shouted there is joy in the earth, so am I coming to you in this Christmas season,” saith the Lord. “I have not forgotten what I have promised you, and though it looks impossible, and though the media says it will not happen, and though they have already crowned one man a king, I say to you, he is a false king, for the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords is yet to be raised up, for the Throne-room of the Lord will not be occupied by an imposter, but it will be set upon by the glorious God of all eternity.
“Know this,” saith God, “Have I not always told you that though I tarry long when you pray, that when I do come I will show up quickly? What I am getting ready to do in the next few weeks…will be a quick work. It will not be done in part, it will not leave a back door for an enemy to come through. But this time,..I am going to finish what I started, and for four years the Glory of the Lord shall descend upon the earth in a way that you have never seen it,…for I have waited to show Myself in this time of destiny, because I wanted the enemy to show himself first. Now that he is uncovered, you are going to see the anointing of Elijah being released in the earth,..and harvest will begin.
“Just as I had to wait until Goliath’s sword could be put in the hand of David before the enemy was destroyed; just as I waited for Jordan to flood before Israel could cross over; just as I waited for Mordecai to be promoted until Haman’s gallows were built, know this: the enemy has built a gallows to hang the Church, but I am getting ready to reverse,” saith God,
“What has been declared in this nation and I am going to take the weapon that the enemy formed against the house of the Lord, and I am going to cause the enemy to be destroyed by the very weapon that he forged in the fires of hell to destroy the people of God. In the next four years I am giving the nations to the Church as their inheritance. Not just a few, not just a bit, not just those that are not under the Iron Curtain. I am invading the Muslim nations. I am invading the Communist nations. I am tearing down the iron curtains,.. I am also taking the wealth of the wicked and I am transferring it to the saints of the most high. I did not cause you to be poor. I take pleasure in the prosperity of My servant – land, titles, deeds, money, businesses, wealth and inventions – are now being released out of the heavens onto the saints of the most high, for what I am going to do will not be a cheap move, but it will be the riches of glory being displayed on the earth for what I am going to do accomplish,” says God.
“What I am now going to do will be like an explosion of My Power and My Glory in the earth. I am going to cripple China for what they have done to the nations, because they have tried to remove Me from the earth, I am also going to deal with their leaders, and there is going to be a release of the presence of God and revival in the nation of China. Just as hell released a global epidemic in the earth to advance the purpose of Satan, I am now releasing in every nation My Presence and My Glory to bring forth the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. As you have seen wave of a death in the earth, now shall you see life and divine healing released in the earth, and the shout that is coming out of the people of God is going to tear down the ancient strongholds that have ruled the nations. So get the ready,” says God, “not months from now but you are on the precipice…of the greatest outpouring of the Glory of God, and today I lift off you,.. the spirit of heaviness, and I release upon you the garment of praise. Shout unto the Lord, for this is the hour in which My mercy has been released upon My people,” saith God. ” Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah!”
In the Korean War (1950-53), a U.S. Marine named Michael had an encounter with his namesake and patron saint, to whom he had prayed every day since his youth for protection. Below is a revised (for literary effect) version of soldier Michael’s letter to his mother, which was verified by the Navy chaplain Walter Muldy. (Sources: Opus Sanctorum Angelorum: Angel Stories; TFP Student Action)
†
My company and I went out on patrol on a foggy wintry day.
A new soldier had joined our group and was marching alongside me.
I turned to him and said, “I have never seen you before. I thought I knew every man in the outfit.”
The new soldier replied, “I just joined at the last minute. My name is Michael.”
“Is that so?” I said, surprised. “That’s my name, too!”
“I know,” he said. “Michael, Michael, of the morning….”
Those are the beginning words of my daily prayer to St. Michael, my patron saint as well as the patron saint of soldiers and police officers. How could this new soldier know my name, much less recite this same prayer? Still, I thought to myself, I had taught the prayer to the other soldiers. Perhaps, this was how the soldier knows it.
We walked in silence for a time. Suddenly, the new soldier Michael warned: “We are going to have some trouble up ahead.”
In the fog, Michael and I got separated from our company. Then, it began to snow. Later the fog lifted, the snow stopped and the sun came out. We walked over a little hill, and there were seven North Korean soldiers waiting for us with raised rifles 30-40 yards away.
I shouted, “Get down!” and threw myself on the ground just as the enemy soldiers began firing. But Michael just stood there, although he should have been killed instantly.
I got up to push Michael to the ground, but received a bullet to the chest.
I felt Michael’s strong arms around me. As he was laying me on the ground, I looked up and saw, not the new soldier, but St. Michael standing there in a blaze of glory, his face shining like the sun. He had a sword in his hand that flashed with a million lights!
That was the last thing I saw before I passed out.
When I awoke, I was surrounded by my company, who were attending to my wound.
I asked them, “Where is Michael?”
But nobody had seen this new soldier, Michael. Moreover, my sergeant said he had seen me walking alone. They wanted to know how I’d done it — how I had managed to kill all seven of the enemy troops without firing a shot.
You see, the seven North Korean troops had all been dispatched with the stroke of a sword.
Mark 4: 35-41: “And the same day, when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side. And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship. And there were also with him other little ships. And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith? And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
Dostoyevksy’s novel is the culmination of grey morality
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is not only the most famous novel in Russian literature, but one of the most renown in world fiction. It tells the story of Rodion Raskolnikov, a twenty-three year old peculiar, student who leaves law school prematurely due to financial burdens and lives in a small, destitute flat in Russia’s then-capital Saint Petersburg.
Raskolnikov hatches a plan to murder Alyona Ivanovna, an old pawn-broker hag for her money. However, despite all his planning and internal moral justification for the impending crime, he isn’t prepared for the mental anguish that follows when he realises it isn’t all black and white, but dirty shades of grey.
Crime and Punishment exceeds the linearity of being a murder-mystery and actually peaks as a novel with its focus on philosophical notions instead. To truly appreciate Dostoyevsky’s work, it’s imperative to understand this philosophy behind it. In 19th century Russia, nihilism was growing, equating to a notion of people no longer believing in God. With the disregard of this upper-being’s existence, someone more powerful than mortal humans that’d shape their ethics and morals with a religious code, it left an unanswered question; who would replace this creed? The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche provided a solution in his 1883 book Thus Spoke Zarathustra, with the concept of an “Übermensch” – which, in English, translates to ‘superman’ and ‘overman’.
Nietzsche believed that in the wake of these new revelations about God and what ethical tenets humans should abide by, it’s now the task of extraordinary ‘super’ men to take up the mantle and create the new values that humanity would follow – i.e. they become someone who shapes society so drastically they’re God-like consequently. Dostoyevsky, being religiously conservative, stuck by the conventional view that there was still an existing God who shaped human morals. Whilst Nietzsche wrote that “God is dead”, Dostoyevsky instead stated that “If there is no God, everything is permitted”. Much of Dostoyevsky’s strong religious faith can be linked back to the time he was almost executed, and his following years in a Siberian labour camp:
Having been sentenced to death by Tsar Nicholas I for being part of an underground group of intellectuals, Dostoyevsky was taken along with twenty-one others to Semyonovsky Square to be shot. However, as he was third in line, new orders were issued by the Tsar: he stated that as opposed to execution, all prisoners were instead to be sentenced to Siberia for four years hard labour. The trauma behind this near-death experience was so severe that a prisoner, Grigoryev, lost his mind and never recovered. This brush with death and his duration in Siberia made Dostoyevsky believe that it gave his existence a purpose. He began to see the need for a thing that exceeds the common person, a thing that humanity should strive for and zealously praise, but never fully obtain. In a sense, he was so convinced in the belief of a God, that he wrote Crime and Punishment as a testament to his disregard of Neitzsche’s nihilistic Übermensch theory and to religion’s power in the path of redemption.
Raskolnikov epitomises Dostoyevsky’s perception of the flaw in Nietzsche’s theory. This is done so in many ways, most notably by Raskolnikov’s hubris and disdain for society, whom he deems as sheep following the herd. Raskolnikov himself believes that he is an Übermensch destined for greatness and the novel mentions that he had even previously written an article about this idea – this acting as Crime and Punishment’s way of relaying it to the reader. He cites historically-extraordinary figures as templates to be inspired by and to follow, such as Napoleon:
“I simply hinted that an ‘extraordinary’ man has the right… that is not an official right, but an inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep… certain obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the practical fulfilment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to the whole of humanity).”
“… legislators and leaders of men, such as Lycurgus, Solon, Muhammad, Napoleon, and so on, were all without exception criminals, from the very fact that, making a new law, they transgressed the ancient one, handed down from their ancestors and held sacred by the people, and they did not stop short of bloodshed either, if that bloodshed – often of innocent persons fighting bravely in defence of ancient law – were of use to their cause.”
Unlike Napoleon’s campaigns of war with the French army, Raskolnikov’s test of Übermensch endurance is of course about whether or not he should murder Alyona Ivanovna. Following Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s idea of the extraordinary man – which parallels Neitzsche’s Übermensch – ‘elite Hegelian men’ are inherently good and should always try to eradicate all that is bad in society, with a quasi-Machiavellian emphasis on if the ends justifying the means (the ends, of course, only being for good and not for one’s self).
Though Hegel’s theory is perhaps fundamentally naïve, following it, all the signs of Alyona being bad for society are there: she hoards money, doesn’t give back to any charitable cause except for appearances sake and routinely abuses her disabled, half-sister, Lizaveta, who slaves away tirelessly for her. Raskolnikov also assumes Alyona’s money could be used to benefit society: for example, he could continue his law studies and thus form a career that helps humanity, or alternatively, altruistically give away to the poor and needy.
“I SIMPLY HINTED THAT AN ‘EXTRAORDINARY’ MAN HAS THE RIGHT… THAT IS NOT AN OFFICIAL RIGHT, BUT AN INNER RIGHT TO DECIDE IN HIS OWN CONSCIENCE TO OVERSTEP…“
Even though these seem like individual thoughts at first, it’s not until he hears a student have an exact same hypothetical conversation with a police officer about Alyona that his resolute on the matter is complete:
“Kill her [Alyona], take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives in exchange – it’s simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence? No more than the life of a louse, of a black-beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm.”
So with Hegelianism to convince himself, and the student forming society’s wider-justification, Raskolnikov is willing to commit murder. However, it is in fact these very same influencing factors that foreshadow the reality that Raskolnikov is not who he thinks he is, and it’s this hypocrisy that Dostoyevsky uses to show perhaps the transparency of the theory. This hypocrisy comes from the fact that the process of becoming ‘extraordinary’ includes a complete mental dissociation/independence from the will of others, and to be able to do what one feels is right without a need for gratification – essentially, being completely cut off from humanity. Though, the ultimate test of Raskolnikov’s will doesn’t even come until after he’s committed his crime.
Going to Alyona’s flat with a stolen axe, he brutally murders her. Half-way through the robbery, the entirely-innocent Lizaveta walks in and so is consequently also killed. Even though he escapes with the money and successfully eludes the judicial system, it’s now a matter to try to do the same for his conscience. In the days and weeks after the murders, Raskolnikov begins to enter fits of delirium, and remorse, he subconsciously maybe wants to be caught.
The guilt consequently eats at him and it’s through this that he begins to realise that he isn’t the Übermensch he’s made himself out to be. This tear away from humanity proves to be so fierce and tough for Raskolnikov that he can’t handle the disconnect, and it eventually leads him to confess to the authorities so he can be sentenced to prison. Although he fails his test to become an extraordinary man, he now is able to enact redemption for his crime in the eyes of society, and God, and importantly, can reconnect with humanity again to start anew. It’s almost symbolically a way of reinserting God into their position as the upper-being, showing that no human could replace them.
Though Raskolnikov was all about a person internally battling with their-self about trying to fulfil an idea of what they should be – and therefore the unrealistic expectation to try to be a thing that exceeds God (at least in Dostoyevsky’s eyes), it is perhaps Svidrigalov who represents an even greater flaw with the Übermensch theory. Svidrigalov is almost an exaggerated caricature of the same theory, an Über-übermensch of sorts. See, with this idea of there being no God, and thus no wider moral code, Svidrigalov knows that he can exert his will all he wants and can continue doing so as there is no greater will beyond his own.
This philosophy leads him to sexually-assault a fifteen-year old and cause the demise of one of his servants because he knows he can simply get away with it without wider, afterlife punishment. It’s a complete paradox to Hegelianism because unlike Hegelianism, which supposedly is meant to be humanity at its very best, Svidrigalov is it at its worst. It’s this lack of definitiveness that equates to the flaw that Dostoyevsky maybe wanted to point out after all.
Crime and Punishment can inherently be reduced down to a scenario: is an act of murder justifiable if the consequences will help better society? And following this, Neitzsche’s Übermensch can also be put to the same standing: essentially that there is no black and white, only shades of grey. Sure, society could create and abide by its own new doctrine themselves and set out to make sure it’s only for humanity’s betterment, but with the gamble of the evil alternative, perhaps it’s a risk too big to take. This is why Dostoyevsky saw the need of a boundary, religion, that was more than humanity’s will, as it allowed it to remain in moderation consequently.
Even throughout history when we look at people who mightn’t have necessarily been familiar with Nietzsche’s theory, but had themselves similar self-illusions of grandeur, we can see that it’s not all so simple. Whilst Napoleon was successful in helping establish France as a republic and assisting in overthrowing the aristocracy, he turned into the very thing he once aimed to abolish, becoming a dictator and declaring himself the First Emperor of France. It’s examples like these that form the argument for figures like Fyodor Dostoyevsky as to why there is truly no being that can exceed God, because if there is no God, everything is permitted.
Last night I had a dream where I saw John F. Kennedy and his daughter Caroline. JFK looked like he was in his thirties; Caroline looked like she was in her twenties. They were both smiling. JFK was dressed in a coat and tie and had a slight stubble of beard. Even though JFK was dressed in a coat and tie, the fact that he was unshaven made him look like he was relaxed and informal. The key thing was that JFK and his daughter Caroline were smiling–they were happy about something.
I believe this dream means that JFK and his daughter were very happy to hear that President Donald Trump won re-election in the 2020 Presidential Election in a massive landslide.
The interesting thing is that last evening at around 5 PM, the Holy Ghost fell very heavy on me while I was watching an interview with General Michael Flynn. I went to bed at around 10:30 PM and the Presence of God was very strong all night long. I didn’t sleep at all because the Presence of God was so strong–but I am not tired.
“For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day.”
For months, I have inwardly debated writing something about the times we are living in and have— until now— come out on the side of keeping my thoughts to myself. But I just read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s commencement address to Harvard in 1978, and the prescience and relevance to our own era are too uncanny not to comment on. He could give the same speech today, and we would have no idea it was written over thirty years ago.
Solzhenitsyn wrote The Gulag Archipelagofrom his experience in the prison camps under Communist Russia. It is a scathing critique of Communism, and Solzhenitsyn pulls no punches. Even in his speech at Harvard, he states unequivocally,
“I hope that no one present will suspect me of expressing my partial criticism of the Western system in order to suggest socialism as an alternative. No; with the experience of a country where socialism has been realized, I shall not speak for such an alternative. The mathematician Igor Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliantly argued book entitled Socialism; this is a penetrating historical analysis demonstrating that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.” [emphasis mine]
However, this Harvard speech is targeted at the West rather than the East (his book does plenty of the latter). He is disgusted by the West’s materialism and reliance on freedom without any sense of responsibility or accountability. His main argument is that, by embracing the humanism put forth during the Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment (“…the pro-claimed and practiced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of all.”), the West has neglected the spiritual self for the purely physical, and this has had dire consequences for us.
“Everything beyond physical well-being and the accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtle and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any higher meaning. Thus gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today. Mere freedom per se does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and even adds a number of new ones.”
Because we have emphasized freedom, we have become confused about what that word means. It is not uncommon to hear demands for free things– like education and healthcare– out of the same mouths that are demanding lesser or no penalties for crimes. Freedom does not guarantee that we will be given anything; we are responsible for acting morally when given freedom. But that concept has been bulldozed for one demanding more more more while demanding that even less be asked of us.
“And yet in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted on the ground that man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding one thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual be granted boundless freedom with no purpose, simply for the satisfaction of his whims.
[. . .]
It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations.
On the other hand, destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society has turned out to have scarce defense against the abyss of human decadence, for example against the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror. This is all considered to be part of freedom and to be counterbalanced, in theory, by the young people’s right not to look and not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.”
Evil has been given free rein for the very reason we have refused to acknowledge it. If we were to bring it up in everyday conversation, it would be dismissed as superstitious residue from an obsolete religion, one with no relevance to our modern-day lives. The truth is much more serious, and we ignore our spiritual selves at our peril: “But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their decisive offensive. You can feel their pressure, yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?”
It is easy to avoid the spiritual side of existence. We have plenty of distractions, plenty of other people’s lives to obsess over. But though we may feel entitled to these distractions and even to the details of other people’s lives, Solzhenitsyn believes that we would do far better to exercise our self-restraint and our right not to look, “not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life has no need for this excessive and burdening flow of information.” [Marxist mainstream media, social media]
The sad thing is, I can think of very few who have no need for the “excessive and burdening flow of information.” It is incessant, and it is very often wrong. Yet this is what we base our opinions and sensibilities on– this misleading, unreliable, factually-confused barrage of information that we have insufficient filters for and an inability to entirely contain. Then policies are made in alignment with these unverified ideas, and the domino effect has begun.
“Without any censorship in the West, fashionable trends of thought and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable, and the latter, without ever being forbidden have little chance of finding their way into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad. There is no open violence, as in the East; however, a selection dictated by fashion and the need to accommodate mass standards frequently prevents the most independent-minded persons from contributing to public life and gives rise to dangerous herd instincts that block dangerous herd development.”
We cling even tighter to these ideas because we believe they are legitimized by society’s acting on them. But we are just part of the herd, being pushed along with no idea of where we are going. We believe there is safety in numbers, and we don’t want to know what it’s like to be alone by ourselves.
Therein lies the danger. We need to stop eating the lies we are fed; we need to start fighting for something deeper than material happiness and more eternal than this finite life. There is a lot wrong with the world right now, but it is not what we are being told is wrong. Solzhenitsyn saw clearly what our weaknesses are. If we haven’t gotten better in the thirty years since he showed them to us, what will it take for us to finally understand?
OPEN LETTER to the President of the United States of America Donald J. Trump
Sunday, October 25, 2020 Solemnity of Christ the King
Mr. President:
Allow me to address you at this hour in which the fate of the whole world is being threatened by a global conspiracy against God and humanity. I write to you as an Archbishop, as a Successor of the Apostles, as the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America. I am writing to you in the midst of the silence of both civil and religious authorities. May you accept these words of mine as the “voice of one crying out in the desert” (Jn 1:23).
As I said when I wrote my letter to you in June, this historical moment sees the forces of Evil aligned in a battle without quarter against the forces of Good; forces of Evil that appear powerful and organized as they oppose the children of Light, who are disoriented and disorganized, abandoned by their temporal and spiritual leaders.
Daily we sense the attacks multiplying of those who want to destroy the very basis of society: the natural family, respect for human life, love of country, freedom of education and business. We see heads of nations and religious leaders pandering to this suicide of Western culture and its Christian soul, while the fundamental rights of citizens and believers are denied in the name of a health emergency that is revealing itself more and more fully as instrumental to the establishment of an inhuman faceless tyranny.
A global plan called the Great Reset is underway. Its architect is a global élite that wants to subdue all of humanity, imposing coercive measures with which to drastically limit individual freedoms and those of entire populations. In several nations this plan has already been approved and financed; in others it is still in an early stage. Behind the world leaders who are the accomplices and executors of this infernal project, there are unscrupulous characters who finance the World Economic Forum and Event 201, promoting their agenda.
The purpose of the Great Reset is the imposition of a health dictatorship aiming at the imposition of liberticidal measures, hidden behind tempting promises of ensuring a universal income and cancelling individual debt. The price of these concessions from the International Monetary Fund will be the renunciation of private property and adherence to a program of vaccination against Covid-19 and Covid-21 promoted by Bill Gates with the collaboration of the main pharmaceutical groups. Beyond the enormous economic interests that motivate the promoters of the Great Reset, the imposition of the vaccination will be accompanied by the requirement of a health passport and a digital ID, with the consequent contact tracing of the population of the entire world. Those who do not accept these measures will be confined in detention camps or placed under house arrest, and all their assets will be confiscated.
Mr. President, I imagine that you are already aware that in some countries the Great Reset will be activated between the end of this year and the first trimester of 2021. For this purpose, further lockdowns are planned, which will be officially justified by a supposed second and third wave of the pandemic. You are well aware of the means that have been deployed to sow panic and legitimize draconian limitations on individual liberties, artfully provoking a world-wide economic crisis. In the intentions of its architects, this crisis will serve to make the recourse of nations to the Great Reset irreversible, thereby giving the final blow to a world whose existence and very memory they want to completely cancel. But this world, Mr. President, includes people, affections, institutions, faith, culture, traditions, and ideals: people and values that do not act like automatons, who do not obey like machines, because they are endowed with a soul and a heart, because they are tied together by a spiritual bond that draws its strength from above, from that God that our adversaries want to challenge, just as Lucifer did at the beginning of time with his “non serviam.”
Many people – as we well know – are annoyed by this reference to the clash between Good and Evil and the use of “apocalyptic” overtones, which according to them exasperates spirits and sharpens divisions. It is not surprising that the enemy is angered at being discovered just when he believes he has reached the citadel he seeks to conquer undisturbed. What is surprising, however, is that there is no one to sound the alarm. The reaction of the deep state to those who denounce its plan is broken and incoherent, but understandable. Just when the complicity of the mainstream media had succeeded in making the transition to the New World Order almost painless and unnoticed, all sorts of deceptions, scandals and crimes are coming to light.
Until a few months ago, it was easy to smear as “conspiracy theorists” those who denounced these terrible plans, which we now see being carried out down to the smallest detail. No one, up until last February, would ever have thought that, in all of our cities, citizens would be arrested simply for wanting to walk down the street, to breathe, to want to keep their business open, to want to go to church on Sunday. Yet now it is happening all over the world, even in picture-postcard Italy that many Americans consider to be a small enchanted country, with its ancient monuments, its churches, its charming cities, its characteristic villages. And while the politicians are barricaded inside their palaces promulgating decrees like Persian satraps, businesses are failing, shops are closing, and people are prevented from living, traveling, working, and praying. The disastrous psychological consequences of this operation are already being seen, beginning with the suicides of desperate entrepreneurs and of our children, segregated from friends and classmates, told to follow their classes while sitting at home alone in front of a computer.
In Sacred Scripture, Saint Paul speaks to us of “the one who opposes” the manifestation of the mystery of iniquity, the kathèkon (2 Thess 2:6-7). In the religious sphere, this obstacle to evil is the Church, and in particular the papacy; in the political sphere, it is those who impede the establishment of the New World Order.
As is now clear, the one who occupies the Chair of Peter has betrayed his role from the very beginning in order to defend and promote the globalist ideology, supporting the agenda of the deep church, who chose him from its ranks.
Mr. President, you have clearly stated that you want to defend the nation – One Nation under God, fundamental liberties, and non-negotiable values that are denied and fought against today. It is you, dear President, who are “the one who opposes” the deep state, the final assault of the children of darkness.
For this reason, it is necessary that all people of good will be persuaded of the epochal importance of the imminent election: not so much for the sake of this or that political program, but because of the general inspiration of your action that best embodies – in this particular historical context – that world, our world, which they want to cancel by means of the lockdown. Your adversary is also our adversary: it is the Enemy of the human race, he who is “a murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44).
Around you are gathered with faith and courage those who consider you the final garrison against the world dictatorship. The alternative is to vote for a person who is manipulated by the deep state, gravely compromised by scandals and corruption, who will do to the United States what Jorge Mario Bergoglio is doing to the Church, Prime Minister Conte to Italy, President Macron to France, Prime Minster Sanchez to Spain, and so on. The blackmailable nature of Joe Biden – just like that of the prelates of the Vatican’s “magic circle” – will expose him to be used unscrupulously, allowing illegitimate powers to interfere in both domestic politics as well as international balances. It is obvious that those who manipulate him already have someone worse than him ready, with whom they will replace him as soon as the opportunity arises.
And yet, in the midst of this bleak picture, this apparently unstoppable advance of the “Invisible Enemy,” an element of hope emerges. The adversary does not know how to love, and it does not understand that it is not enough to assure a universal income or to cancel mortgages in order to subjugate the masses and convince them to be branded like cattle. This people, which for too long has endured the abuses of a hateful and tyrannical power, is rediscovering that it has a soul; it is understanding that it is not willing to exchange its freedom for the homogenization and cancellation of its identity; it is beginning to understand the value of familial and social ties, of the bonds of faith and culture that unite honest people. This Great Reset is destined to fail because those who planned it do not understand that there are still people ready to take to the streets to defend their rights, to protect their loved ones, to give a future to their children and grandchildren. The leveling inhumanity of the globalist project will shatter miserably in the face of the firm and courageous opposition of the children of Light. The enemy has Satan on its side, He who only knows how to hate. But on our side, we have the Lord Almighty, the God of armies arrayed for battle, and the Most Holy Virgin, who will crush the head of the ancient Serpent. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom 8:31).
Mr. President, you are well aware that, in this crucial hour, the United States of America is considered the defending wall against which the war declared by the advocates of globalism has been unleashed. Place your trust in the Lord, strengthened by the words of the Apostle Paul: “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13). To be an instrument of Divine Providence is a great responsibility, for which you will certainly receive all the graces of state that you need, since they are being fervently implored for you by the many people who support you with their prayers.
With this heavenly hope and the assurance of my prayer for you, for the First Lady, and for your collaborators, with all my heart I send you my blessing.
God bless the United States of America!
+ Carlo Maria Viganò
Tit. Archbishop of Ulpiana Former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America
"Be reckless immediately, fling it all out on Him. You do not know when His voice will come, but whenever the realization of God comes in the faintest way imaginable, recklessly abandon. It is only by abandon that you recognize Him. You will only realize His voice more clearly by recklessness."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain.”
T.S. Eliot
"Remember the faith that took men from home/
At the call of a wandering preacher."
Leonard Ravenhill
"Preachers make pulpits famous; prophets make prisons famous."
Warren Wiersbe
“To listen to Tozer preach was as safe as opening the door of a blast furnace.”
Ambrose Rigge
“Your fruit has been the fruit of Sodom, and your grapes the grapes of Gomorrah; you have long cumbered the ground, even until it is weary with you, and is ready to vomit you up; therefore bow yourselves unto the mighty God of Jacob, before he cuts you down, and casts you into the fire of his jealousy forever.”
George Fox
“And as your ears are attentive to the Lord’s voice, that speaks from heaven, iniquity’s mouth is stopped in you, the throne of iniquity is thrown down in you; that is, the wicked spirit and power, where iniquity sits; and the chambers of imagery are thrown down in you, where all thoughts and imaginations are.”
I Stand With Israel
Judges 15: 16
“And Samson said, With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jaw of an ass have I slain a thousand men.”
Isaiah 42: 13
“The LORD shall go forth as a mighty man, he shall stir up jealousy like a man of war: he shall cry, yea, roar; he shall prevail against his enemies.”
Jeremiah 51: 20
“Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms.”
Ezekiel 21: 31-32
“And I will pour out my indignation upon thee, I will blow against thee in the fire of my wrath, and deliver thee into the hand of brutish men, and skillful to destroy. Thou shalt be for fuel to the fire; thy blood shall be in the midst of the land; thou shalt be no more remembered: for I the LORD have spoken it.”
John 5: 39-40
“Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.”
I Corinthians 4: 20
“For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.”
II Timothy 2: 4
“No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.”
