I remember at a young age watching the original sci-fi television series, V: The Final Battle. The humanoid, lizard-like aliens used to terrify me when they revealed their truer natures in such ways as a scaly arm, forked tongue, or the classic reptilian eye. While these images were upsetting to me at the time, the story itself was not. I always favored the Resistance fighters and their desperate stand against the alien invaders, small in number though they were. Indeed, I have always loved heroic stories of resistance and the rise of great leaders during times of conflict, both historic and imagined. To be sure, there is something stimulative about a group of people rising up against corruption, control, and moral depravity - an act that encourages the contrarian within all of us to similarly stand firm against evil's damning thrust. Sadly, those presently occupying Wall Street are not real contrarians, but hired agitators who have chosen to replace neural executive functioning with that of lower activity. In such a degenerative state, they are as sheep, servile prey to the cunning serpents hiding behind the shadow of political office. And in their bleating cries and painted passions these 'occupiers' surrender their honor to be manipulated as tools rather than live as master carpenters. So apparent is the collective exchange of their first principles and values that one might well imagine them donning plastic ear tags like cattle known only by number rather than their given names. It is as saddening as it is likely.
As I've stated in earlier posts, evil cannot prosper while righteousness stirs and one need only open a true history book to read of those persons and nations who chose to stand firmly against invading armies and the iron rule of tyrants. Recall my older post, 732 A.D., which outlined the valiant efforts of Charles Martel and his saving heroics before a massive Muslim army at Europe's gate. In such reported cases of high valor we can find the inspiration and motivation to persist in our own defense of the truth and freedom at no matter the cost or odds placed against us. So how can we fortify ourselves against the siren songs of the wicked? What is our mandate from heaven as children of God? How shall we conduct ourselves during this mortal sojourn?
On the road to success there stands twenty-two signposts, or principles, running parallel with the Ten Commandments, that serve to remind us of our duty and responsibility to be virtuous and upright in all things. The former rules for personal, spiritual and national excellence were set forth long after Moses descended from Sinai though both codes promise our protection and the power to resist evil insofar as we heed them fully. These twenty-two principles were written in the sixteenth century by Desiderius Erasmus in his Enchridion Militis Christiani: A Guide for the Righteous Protector, which expectedly echo the words of Christ found in the holy scriptures. It is a well known fact that to experience victory, one must possess valor, and in order to sustain such strength of mind, under all circumstances, one must entertain and emit the highest saving attribute of the One who rose above all things - that of virtue or moral excellence. Without such moral clarity, we are as the blind Samson, mighty in strength but without poise and bearing. And in today's dimming world, the light of truth needs to shine as a beacon in rescue of all those feeling lost and hopeless in the darkness. Each rule listed below represents a single shaft of light lancing through today's dark clouds, a guide for those looking for a better life and the hopeful return of a once proud nation. Additionally, these principles, or rules for Christian conduct, are as true today as they were back in the 1500s. The following were extracted by Sergeant Chris Pascoe, Michigan State Police, and referenced in Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's book, On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace.
First rule
INCREASE YOUR FAITH.
Even if the entire world appears mad.
Second Rule
ACT UPON YOUR FAITH.
Even if you must undergo the loss of everything.
Third Rule
ANALYZE YOUR FEARS.
You will find that things are not as bad as they appear.
Fourth Rule
MAKE VIRTUE THE ONLY GOALS OF YOUR LIFE.
Dedicate all of your enthusiasm, all your effort, your leisure as well as your business.
Fifth Rule
TURN AWAY FROM MATERIAL THINGS.
If you are greatly concerned with money you will be weak of spirit.
Sixth Rule
TRAIN YOUR MIND TO DISTINGUISH GOOD AND EVIL.
Let your rule of government be determined by the common good.
Seventh Rule
NEVER LET ANY SETBACK STOP YOU IN YOUR QUEST.
We are not perfect - this only means we should try harder.
Eighth Rule
IF YOU HAVE FREQUENT TEMPTATIONS, DO NOT WORRY.
Begin to worry when you do not have temptation, because that is a sure sign that you cannot distinguish good from evil.
Ninth Rule
ALWAYS BE PREPARED FOR AN ATTACK.
Careful generals set guards even in times of peace.
Tenth Rule
SPIT, AS IT WERE, IN THE FACE OF DANGER.
Keep a stirring quotation with you for encouragement.
Eleventh Rule
THERE ARE TWO DANGERS: ONE IS GIVING UP, THE OTHER IS PRIDE.
After you have performed some worthy task, give all the credit to someone else.
Twelfth Rule
TURN YOUR WEAKNESS INTO VIRTUE.
If you are inclined to be selfish, make a deliberate effort to be giving.
Thirteenth Rule
TREAT EACH BATTLE AS THOUGH IT WERE YOUR LAST.
And you will finish, in the end, victorious!
Fourteenth Rule
DON'T ASSUME THAT DOING GOOD ALLOWS YOU TO KEEP A FEW VICES.
The enemy you ignore the most is the one who conquers you.
Fifteenth Rule
WEIGH YOUR ALTERNATIVES CAREFULLY.
The wrong way will often seem easier than the right way.
Sixteenth Rule
NEVER ADMIT DEFEAT EVEN IF YOU HAVE BEEN WOUNDED.
The good soldier's painful words spur him to gather his strength.
Seventeenth Rule
ALWAYS HAVE A PLAN OF ACTION.
So when the time comes for battle, you will know what to do.
Eighteenth Rule
CALM YOUR PASSIONS BY SEEING HOW LITTLE THERE IS TO GAIN.
We often worry and scheme about trifling matters of no real importance.
Nineteenth Rule
SPEAK WITH YOURSELF THIS WAY:
If I do what I am considering, would I want my family to know about it?
Twentieth Rule
VIRTUE HAS ITS OWN REWARD.
Once a person has it, they would not exchange it for anything.
Twenty-first Rule
LIFE CAN BE SAD, DIFFICULT, AND QUICK: MAKE IT COUNT FOR SOMETHING!
Since we do not know when death will come, act honorably everyday.
Twenty-second Rule
REPENT YOUR WRONGS.
Those who do not admit their faults have the most to fear.
As we engrave these guidelines on our hearts and in our minds and live up to them with exactness, we will come to know the same peace and strength Christ received during His Gethsemane, whereby we, like Him, may be counted worthy to receive our own ministering angel to come and strengthen us in victory to "become as yet, conquerors of their [our] enemies" (Jacob 7:25).
When we choose to live virtuous lives our focus sharpens and the very blood within us will heat and liven our souls so that we may stand firm and confident against all that is base and wrong. If we can abide the day, and stand up for ourselves and our convictions by making virtue our primary goal, then we are truly an unconquerable army and real masters of light. Meanwhile, the more basilar among us, those that lounge together in abject hatred for God, liberty, and the free market system will not be able to endure for long. In truth, their forked natures are of the same kin as the deceptive 'Visitors' from V - cold-blooded, humanoid impostors seemingly dressed as sheep but beneath are of the same ignoble order and genus only the vigilant can recognize as that of reptile.
Long live the fighters
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
The Sound of Flies
How tragic that the "breath of life" which God put into man to make him live has today turned more lofty, a 'shared breathing' of enraged conspirators who together defile and pollute the air with their amoral, anti-law, and anti-Christ foundations, beliefs whereon if men build, they will surely fall. Our world is full of such agitators - members of secret organizations and combinations who eschew the good in favor of wickedness and perverse conduct. In their plotting, they seek the same vengeance and retribution as "the Avenger" first did in Henry Van Dyke's short story, Ashes of Vengeance, when he declared after his long imprisonment, "I ask only the right to revenge my sufferings upon those who have inflicted them." The tragic irony is that the pagan political elite are the ones who bring suffering upon themselves because of the eternal principle that wickedness never leads to happiness. Yet in order to understand the roots of their deception and hatred toward God, free enterprise, and individual sovereignty, one must be able to discern and recognize the illusory tactics of the politically occult.
"And it came to pass that there were sorceries, and witchcrafts, and magics: and the power of the evil one was wrought upon all the face of the land...for behold no man could keep that which was his own, for the thieves, and the robbers, and the murderers, and the magic art, and the witchcraft which was in the land." (Mormon 1:19, 2:10)
"For those who did not belong to their church did indulge themselves in sorceries, and in idolatry or idleness, and in babblings, and in envyings and strife; wearing costly apparel; being lifted up in the pride of their own eyes; persecuting, lying, thieving, robbing, committing whoredoms, and murdering, and all manner of wickedness; nevertheless, the law was put in force upon all those who did transgress it, inasmuch as it was [still] possible." (Alma 1:32)
Our own nation is being infiltrated by proponents of occultism and dark action. Their secret works are hidden behind such codified headings as secular humanism, postmodernism, rationalism, or the more widely accepted term of progressivism. In these views, there is little to no room for God as the physical laws of the universe cannot be superseded by any non-material or supernatural entities. Because of this, there is no basis for law or for man as unique and important because no God means the wages of sin are without consequence. Consequently, man is left spiritless and undifferentiated, part of the same collective ego mass by which we are but cogs in a machinelike universe. How devilishly devised for enslavement! Such absurdity reduces "we the people" to mere aggregates of matter, void of shape, personality, and purpose whereby salvation can only come through collective means rather than by the individual's own free will and choice. Advocates of this same deluded stink-mix send away any belief or notion about God from their lives as they would a fart. Believing themselves to be the gods of men they rely solely upon the application of reason and methodology of science to explain the origin of man and his finite potential. Sadly, such foolish doctrine has been swallowed whole by our court system where morality is more fit to be legislated from the bench rather than taught by scripture reading and righteous family influence.
James Billington, in his work Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, revealed that the "rational" socialists and revolutionaries of "the left" were from the beginning "deeply mixed up in such things as occultism, irrationalism, and pornography." In it he exposes "progressives" for who they really are - immoral anti-Christ's who worship themselves as gods, thus denying their actions as evil in their own right. Like the honeybee, they attempt to cross-pollinate their standards for rule and dominion onto others, preying on the weak and unassertive. But in their scheming, they become prisoners of their own cosmically-inflated egos, afflicted by paranoia, evil fantasies, and peculiar ideas.
"If you are corruptible and your imagination is confined to worries about loss of power, you exist in a self-destructive system. Eventually, as all life does, you must encounter something you did not anticipate, and if you have not strengthened your creative resources, you will have no new ways for adapting to change. Adapt or die, that's the first rule of survival.
The limited vision of noncreative people is not difficult to understand. Creativity frightens the unimaginative. They don't know what's happening. Things new and unexpected arise from creativity. This threatens "things as they are." And (terrible thought) it undermines illusions of omnipotence." -Frank Herbert
When these materialized souls speak of a god, he is not a person, but a collection of forces. And when they profess themselves to be speakers of the truth they lie, for their words have no real fixed meaning. Sorceries, witchcrafts, and magic, then, become the mediums by which they strive to deceive the souls of men. Through the dark arts they attempt at obtaining godlike powers in order to unmake reality in an effort to recreate a second one, which is devised as an illusion. They accomplish this by attacking the natural order of things, such as marriage being between a man and a woman, in favor of the unnatural - same-sex marriage (2 Timothy 3:1-5). They care nothing for the opportunity for same-sex couples to be married only at the satisfaction that comes from reducing God's influence even more on the earth. Sophistry, then, is the spell of choice cast by today's magicians, verbal charms meant to deceive and steal the hearts of men heard as intellectual sounding names to dupe the gullible. Here's a list of spells: postmodernism, epistemological relativism, antifoundationalism, pragmatism, situational ethics, sensitivity training, pluralism, mulitculturalism, interfaith, evolutionary humanism, transhumanism, positivism, rationalism, and progressivism. In their totality, these modern-day enchantments are all the revolutionary ideals of the void that is the American Political Left, with Obama himself playing the part of Merlin.
"In short, the age of irrationalism, lawlessness, hedonism, megalomania, and utopia-madness commenced when the rational personal God, His Revelation, unchanging Truth and Universal Moral Law were cunningly displaced by naturalistic evolutionism, astral-plane spirit-revelations, pantheistic-conceptions of god-forces, christ-consciousness, animated 'thinking' dead matter , 'force and voice ideas,' inverted morality and moral relativism, Orwellian doublespeak, and terrible-willed megalomaniacs claiming to be supermen and god-men. These are the unifying factors of Bolshevism, Nazism, and America's Progressive Liberalism." -Linda Kimball
On the same note, President Calvin Coolidge, in his speech delivered on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 5, 1926, warned of the dangers of 'pagan materialism':
"Here was the doctrine of equality, popular sovereignty, and the substance of the theory of inalienable rights....When we take all these circumstances into consideration, it is but natural that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence should open with a reference to Nature's God and should close...with an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world and an assertion of a firm reliance on Divine Providence...In its main feature the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. "
Now, as Christianity continues to be attacked at all fronts, our resolve ought to be even greater, to defend our principles and our God without reservation or fear. If we choose to do nothing, then the hideous specters of madness, wickedness, unnaturalness, and blasphemy will haunt every level of society, including our own homes to our eternal detriment. Or, as has been described, "...under the guiding hands of legions of daydream-believers, barbarian true-believers, megalomaniacs, and the outright possessed, the West is falling through a rabbit hole into a dark fantasy realm located on the other side of the Looking Glass — a kingdom of madness, horror, murder, and mayhem run by Red Queens, Mad Hatters and barbarians."
Obama and the sinister left are as the corruptible kings of old, who, in Psalms 2:2, "set themselves and the rulers to take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his Anointed." In their willful blindness, they have anointed themselves as rulers of men with the same specious spells and incantations that deceived Cain before his committing the first murder. Crowing with pride, today's "wizards of smart" are more airy than solid in their convictions, choosing darkness rather than light, evil for good, reputation over character. Made dizzy by political spin and excessive compromise, these occupants of government buzz around as flies over a dungheap, happy in their filth and at the refuse of surrendered freedoms. Justly, the Lord has promised that in their willful transgressions, "their hope shall be blasted, and their prospects shall melt away as the hoar frost melteth before the burning rays of the rising sun." And also "because their hearts are corrupted, and the things which they are willing to bring upon others, and love to have others suffer, may come upon themselves to the very uttermost." (D&C 121:11, 13)
None of these things are new nor should they cause any of us to fall to the floor in utter astonishment as they have existed among men since the beginning. Occultism is not some strange thing studied only by rebellious teens during sleepovers. The art of politics is the ability to deceive, amass power, and obfuscate the general public into believing that their best interests are in mind while the wool is carefully and craftily pulled over their eyes. And, like every great magic trick, the magician is only as powerful as the audience believes him to be. In magic terms, Obama showed us "the pledge" in 2008 [hope and change] followed by "the turn" [uncontrolled spending, submission to foreign leaders, and government growth] and then "the prestige" or grand finale [government control over property rights, personal defense, and religion] by which he hopes to hold his inanimate ilk in submission by keeping back any explanation into what made his presidency, or "trick", so successful. In truth, the doing away of religion provides a new powerful pull in the direction of the black arts from which tyranny, secret societies, and master magicians the world over arise as saviors during times of economic and geo-political crisis. And in place of Christ who said, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," many choose to lean toward nihilism, spellbound by the easy voice of the adversary who says,
"Hearken unto us, and hear ye our precept; for behold there is no God today, for the Lord and the Redeemer hath done his work, and he hath given his power unto men; behold, hearken ye unto my precept; if they shall say there is a miracle wrought by the hand of the Lord, believe it not; for this day he is not a God of miracles; he hath done his work." (2 Nephi 28:5-6)
Following are two excellent statements made about the need for wholesome religion and obedience to God and His commandments:
"Those who hope that a decline in traditional religion would inaugurate a new Age of Reason ought to think again....Apparently, when Christianity loses its grip on large numbers of people, deviant religious alternatives arise, and get hold of some of the unchurched... Persons with no religious affiliation are often among the first to toy with novel or exotic supernatural notions and are not the secular rationalists we might want to think them. Cults flourish precisely where the conventional churches are weakest...(also), numbers of unchurched people seek private contact with the supernatural....a further decline in the influence of conventional religion may not inaugurate a scientific Age of Reason but might instead open the floodgates for a bizarre new Age of Superstition." - Bainbridge and Stark
"If we and our posterity...live always in the fear of God and shall respect His Commandments...we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country.... But if we...neglect religious instruction and authority; violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity." -Daniel Webster
As I mentioned earlier, many occupants in government are as the fly, spending their time among the spoil of man's surrendered freedoms. And throughout history, the fly has been known to signify the devil. Urbain Grandier, a French Catholic Priest sentenced to death because of witchcraft and sexual whoredom, was burned at the stake for his dark actions. Appropriately, during the delivered sentence, one attending monk asserted that he had seen "a huge fly buzzing around Grandier's head" as if it was "that demon himself who, after taking the form of one of his subjects, had come to carry off the magician's soul." Remember that men's hearts are easily deceived by pretended piety and good intentions in the same way King David's third son, Absalom, stole the masses by painting himself as a dear friend and righteous judge of the people, kissing any man who came nigh to him to do him obeisance - all while plotting to overthrow his own father for the throne. (2 Samuel 15:2-6)
The obvious question then is: How can we permit ourselves to elect, let alone be overrun, by such malignant egoists without offering resistance? With open eyes have we let ourselves be dragged down into this present national disaster. Similar to the German disaster that was World War II, Hans Bernd Gisevius, former diplomat and covert opponent of the Nazi regime said this about the self-enslavement of so many of his people under Nazi rule:
"All of us, and not alone the Nazis, strayed into dangerous, evil ways. Passive acceptance, intellectual subservience, or, in religious terms, failure to pray against the evil, may constitute a kind of silent support for authoritarian rule. We were guilty of failure to understand, of willful blindness, of misguided obedience, of paltry compromising, of exaggerated caution or of persistent shirking of the logical conclusions. One of the vital lessons we must learn is the ease with which a people can be sucked down into the morass of inaction; let them as individuals fall prey to overcleverness, opportunism, or cowardliness and they are irrevocably lost."
Nowadays, fatalism is fashion. The soul, mind, free will, conscience, are all considered rights of the past. Let King George III's disease, porphyria, the fitting pathological condition for the wicked, blister and scar the skin of the ungodly until they are forced into a stupor by the direct sunlight of revealed truth; to serve as reminders that there exists above them a just and even still merciful Father whose Firstborn Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, alone paved the way for man's redemption. So, the grand question remains: In whom do we place our trust? In God or man? Over the last 70 years (and throughout earth's history), we have had signs enough. If we are attuned to the truth and receptive of it, then the answer to the above question becomes even more apparent...and audible.
May we not let our hearts be deceived by the grand flair of the magician's robe or his showy manipulations. Rather, let us give ear to the buzzing of the fly.
Long live the fighters
"And it came to pass that there were sorceries, and witchcrafts, and magics: and the power of the evil one was wrought upon all the face of the land...for behold no man could keep that which was his own, for the thieves, and the robbers, and the murderers, and the magic art, and the witchcraft which was in the land." (Mormon 1:19, 2:10)
"For those who did not belong to their church did indulge themselves in sorceries, and in idolatry or idleness, and in babblings, and in envyings and strife; wearing costly apparel; being lifted up in the pride of their own eyes; persecuting, lying, thieving, robbing, committing whoredoms, and murdering, and all manner of wickedness; nevertheless, the law was put in force upon all those who did transgress it, inasmuch as it was [still] possible." (Alma 1:32)
Our own nation is being infiltrated by proponents of occultism and dark action. Their secret works are hidden behind such codified headings as secular humanism, postmodernism, rationalism, or the more widely accepted term of progressivism. In these views, there is little to no room for God as the physical laws of the universe cannot be superseded by any non-material or supernatural entities. Because of this, there is no basis for law or for man as unique and important because no God means the wages of sin are without consequence. Consequently, man is left spiritless and undifferentiated, part of the same collective ego mass by which we are but cogs in a machinelike universe. How devilishly devised for enslavement! Such absurdity reduces "we the people" to mere aggregates of matter, void of shape, personality, and purpose whereby salvation can only come through collective means rather than by the individual's own free will and choice. Advocates of this same deluded stink-mix send away any belief or notion about God from their lives as they would a fart. Believing themselves to be the gods of men they rely solely upon the application of reason and methodology of science to explain the origin of man and his finite potential. Sadly, such foolish doctrine has been swallowed whole by our court system where morality is more fit to be legislated from the bench rather than taught by scripture reading and righteous family influence.
James Billington, in his work Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith, revealed that the "rational" socialists and revolutionaries of "the left" were from the beginning "deeply mixed up in such things as occultism, irrationalism, and pornography." In it he exposes "progressives" for who they really are - immoral anti-Christ's who worship themselves as gods, thus denying their actions as evil in their own right. Like the honeybee, they attempt to cross-pollinate their standards for rule and dominion onto others, preying on the weak and unassertive. But in their scheming, they become prisoners of their own cosmically-inflated egos, afflicted by paranoia, evil fantasies, and peculiar ideas.
"If you are corruptible and your imagination is confined to worries about loss of power, you exist in a self-destructive system. Eventually, as all life does, you must encounter something you did not anticipate, and if you have not strengthened your creative resources, you will have no new ways for adapting to change. Adapt or die, that's the first rule of survival.
The limited vision of noncreative people is not difficult to understand. Creativity frightens the unimaginative. They don't know what's happening. Things new and unexpected arise from creativity. This threatens "things as they are." And (terrible thought) it undermines illusions of omnipotence." -Frank Herbert
When these materialized souls speak of a god, he is not a person, but a collection of forces. And when they profess themselves to be speakers of the truth they lie, for their words have no real fixed meaning. Sorceries, witchcrafts, and magic, then, become the mediums by which they strive to deceive the souls of men. Through the dark arts they attempt at obtaining godlike powers in order to unmake reality in an effort to recreate a second one, which is devised as an illusion. They accomplish this by attacking the natural order of things, such as marriage being between a man and a woman, in favor of the unnatural - same-sex marriage (2 Timothy 3:1-5). They care nothing for the opportunity for same-sex couples to be married only at the satisfaction that comes from reducing God's influence even more on the earth. Sophistry, then, is the spell of choice cast by today's magicians, verbal charms meant to deceive and steal the hearts of men heard as intellectual sounding names to dupe the gullible. Here's a list of spells: postmodernism, epistemological relativism, antifoundationalism, pragmatism, situational ethics, sensitivity training, pluralism, mulitculturalism, interfaith, evolutionary humanism, transhumanism, positivism, rationalism, and progressivism. In their totality, these modern-day enchantments are all the revolutionary ideals of the void that is the American Political Left, with Obama himself playing the part of Merlin.
"In short, the age of irrationalism, lawlessness, hedonism, megalomania, and utopia-madness commenced when the rational personal God, His Revelation, unchanging Truth and Universal Moral Law were cunningly displaced by naturalistic evolutionism, astral-plane spirit-revelations, pantheistic-conceptions of god-forces, christ-consciousness, animated 'thinking' dead matter , 'force and voice ideas,' inverted morality and moral relativism, Orwellian doublespeak, and terrible-willed megalomaniacs claiming to be supermen and god-men. These are the unifying factors of Bolshevism, Nazism, and America's Progressive Liberalism." -Linda Kimball
On the same note, President Calvin Coolidge, in his speech delivered on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 5, 1926, warned of the dangers of 'pagan materialism':
"Here was the doctrine of equality, popular sovereignty, and the substance of the theory of inalienable rights....When we take all these circumstances into consideration, it is but natural that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence should open with a reference to Nature's God and should close...with an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world and an assertion of a firm reliance on Divine Providence...In its main feature the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. "
Now, as Christianity continues to be attacked at all fronts, our resolve ought to be even greater, to defend our principles and our God without reservation or fear. If we choose to do nothing, then the hideous specters of madness, wickedness, unnaturalness, and blasphemy will haunt every level of society, including our own homes to our eternal detriment. Or, as has been described, "...under the guiding hands of legions of daydream-believers, barbarian true-believers, megalomaniacs, and the outright possessed, the West is falling through a rabbit hole into a dark fantasy realm located on the other side of the Looking Glass — a kingdom of madness, horror, murder, and mayhem run by Red Queens, Mad Hatters and barbarians."
Obama and the sinister left are as the corruptible kings of old, who, in Psalms 2:2, "set themselves and the rulers to take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his Anointed." In their willful blindness, they have anointed themselves as rulers of men with the same specious spells and incantations that deceived Cain before his committing the first murder. Crowing with pride, today's "wizards of smart" are more airy than solid in their convictions, choosing darkness rather than light, evil for good, reputation over character. Made dizzy by political spin and excessive compromise, these occupants of government buzz around as flies over a dungheap, happy in their filth and at the refuse of surrendered freedoms. Justly, the Lord has promised that in their willful transgressions, "their hope shall be blasted, and their prospects shall melt away as the hoar frost melteth before the burning rays of the rising sun." And also "because their hearts are corrupted, and the things which they are willing to bring upon others, and love to have others suffer, may come upon themselves to the very uttermost." (D&C 121:11, 13)
None of these things are new nor should they cause any of us to fall to the floor in utter astonishment as they have existed among men since the beginning. Occultism is not some strange thing studied only by rebellious teens during sleepovers. The art of politics is the ability to deceive, amass power, and obfuscate the general public into believing that their best interests are in mind while the wool is carefully and craftily pulled over their eyes. And, like every great magic trick, the magician is only as powerful as the audience believes him to be. In magic terms, Obama showed us "the pledge" in 2008 [hope and change] followed by "the turn" [uncontrolled spending, submission to foreign leaders, and government growth] and then "the prestige" or grand finale [government control over property rights, personal defense, and religion] by which he hopes to hold his inanimate ilk in submission by keeping back any explanation into what made his presidency, or "trick", so successful. In truth, the doing away of religion provides a new powerful pull in the direction of the black arts from which tyranny, secret societies, and master magicians the world over arise as saviors during times of economic and geo-political crisis. And in place of Christ who said, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," many choose to lean toward nihilism, spellbound by the easy voice of the adversary who says,
"Hearken unto us, and hear ye our precept; for behold there is no God today, for the Lord and the Redeemer hath done his work, and he hath given his power unto men; behold, hearken ye unto my precept; if they shall say there is a miracle wrought by the hand of the Lord, believe it not; for this day he is not a God of miracles; he hath done his work." (2 Nephi 28:5-6)
Following are two excellent statements made about the need for wholesome religion and obedience to God and His commandments:
"Those who hope that a decline in traditional religion would inaugurate a new Age of Reason ought to think again....Apparently, when Christianity loses its grip on large numbers of people, deviant religious alternatives arise, and get hold of some of the unchurched... Persons with no religious affiliation are often among the first to toy with novel or exotic supernatural notions and are not the secular rationalists we might want to think them. Cults flourish precisely where the conventional churches are weakest...(also), numbers of unchurched people seek private contact with the supernatural....a further decline in the influence of conventional religion may not inaugurate a scientific Age of Reason but might instead open the floodgates for a bizarre new Age of Superstition." - Bainbridge and Stark
"If we and our posterity...live always in the fear of God and shall respect His Commandments...we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country.... But if we...neglect religious instruction and authority; violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity." -Daniel Webster
As I mentioned earlier, many occupants in government are as the fly, spending their time among the spoil of man's surrendered freedoms. And throughout history, the fly has been known to signify the devil. Urbain Grandier, a French Catholic Priest sentenced to death because of witchcraft and sexual whoredom, was burned at the stake for his dark actions. Appropriately, during the delivered sentence, one attending monk asserted that he had seen "a huge fly buzzing around Grandier's head" as if it was "that demon himself who, after taking the form of one of his subjects, had come to carry off the magician's soul." Remember that men's hearts are easily deceived by pretended piety and good intentions in the same way King David's third son, Absalom, stole the masses by painting himself as a dear friend and righteous judge of the people, kissing any man who came nigh to him to do him obeisance - all while plotting to overthrow his own father for the throne. (2 Samuel 15:2-6)
The obvious question then is: How can we permit ourselves to elect, let alone be overrun, by such malignant egoists without offering resistance? With open eyes have we let ourselves be dragged down into this present national disaster. Similar to the German disaster that was World War II, Hans Bernd Gisevius, former diplomat and covert opponent of the Nazi regime said this about the self-enslavement of so many of his people under Nazi rule:
"All of us, and not alone the Nazis, strayed into dangerous, evil ways. Passive acceptance, intellectual subservience, or, in religious terms, failure to pray against the evil, may constitute a kind of silent support for authoritarian rule. We were guilty of failure to understand, of willful blindness, of misguided obedience, of paltry compromising, of exaggerated caution or of persistent shirking of the logical conclusions. One of the vital lessons we must learn is the ease with which a people can be sucked down into the morass of inaction; let them as individuals fall prey to overcleverness, opportunism, or cowardliness and they are irrevocably lost."
Nowadays, fatalism is fashion. The soul, mind, free will, conscience, are all considered rights of the past. Let King George III's disease, porphyria, the fitting pathological condition for the wicked, blister and scar the skin of the ungodly until they are forced into a stupor by the direct sunlight of revealed truth; to serve as reminders that there exists above them a just and even still merciful Father whose Firstborn Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, alone paved the way for man's redemption. So, the grand question remains: In whom do we place our trust? In God or man? Over the last 70 years (and throughout earth's history), we have had signs enough. If we are attuned to the truth and receptive of it, then the answer to the above question becomes even more apparent...and audible.
Long live the fighters
Monday, August 8, 2011
Standard and Poor
So Standard and Poor's ( S&P) have finally acted and downgraded the United States Economy and credit rating from a AAA rating to an AA+. What this means is that our ability to issue debt will come at a much higher interest rate, compounding the debt burden on us and the nation's total debt, which already exceeds $15 trillion dollars! In other words, spending more will require significant spikes in interest rates (perhaps even greater than Obama's ego). And throughout this present economic turmoil, our own President looks on amorously at his own reflection in the dirty pool of apathy, self-aggrandizement, and the refuse of consumed "Prez Obama" hamburger wrappers. How tragic that so many people still choose to live and learn the hard way. Like the famous poem by Joseph Malens, "The Ambulance Down in the Valley," our painted government represents the same deluded ego mass who prides itself in repairing the results rather than stopping the cause. Such foolish thinking is the very reason why our nation is in such dire straits at this time. Preferring the ambulance to sit below in the valley rather than to construct a fence from above as a safeguard for the people [and in this case our very nation], Washington's close lean over the cliff of bankruptcy, unemployment, war, and poverty, has left us vulnerable to all forms of external influence, where only the slightest push by a wayward gust or foreign/domestic despot can send us straight down to slavery. As Benjamin Franklin once warned, "Think what you do when you run in debt; you give to another the power over your liberty." The Founding Fathers viewed debt as evil, because it really is a form of bondage.
What is even more deplorable, is that on the way down, in place of flailing limbs and open hysterics, Obama and his undead followers will be more synchronous and steady during their olympic back double somersault tuck dive toward the valley below. Like the kingmen of the Book of Mormon, who loved power over liberty, there exists among us the very same ilk who rejoice at our present economic and moral downturns. Such modern-day devils laugh at man's descent toward insolvency from his core values and principles that in truth are the only things that can really bring him personal, national, and spiritual security and victory. In their madness at the people of liberty (the Tea Party, i.e. American citizens) they find reason to celebrate their being subjugated, pleasuring themselves in a slavish adoration of Italy's "The Tomb of the Diver" where sport, fancy, and oiled treatment makes them even more slippery subjects, easily maneuvered and influenced without question. It is as sorrowful as it is tragic but there are still those among us who choose to line up in stride on bended knee before the court jesters of government, replacing their own individual kingship and sovereignty with that of an iron shackle. The solution then to our current economic situation is the same remedy for all of life's problems, developing the will power to make the change to where our time is spent away from stores and the noxious atmosphere of government programs and toward denouncing uncontrolled spending and stopgap solutions on both fiscal and moral issues.
It ought to be requisite then that the nest of serpents which have spewed poisonous venom into our financial market, beginning with our own impious President, should be the one(s) to ring the opening bell on Wall Street each and every morning in full view of a disgruntled nation whose once virtuous and prosperous course has been merrily altered toward the edge of utter despondency. While at the bottom, stirs the valley of despair and defeat where the miserable cry out for succor as the rich man did for Lazarus while in torment and flame (Luke 16:24). And with his "good things" now gone, the self-serving man's only remnant of wealth will be the frayed purple linen of his clothes to expose his scales and abject nakedness, an appropriate end to an improper and squandered life. Still, and more sorrowfully, the rising cries of the defeated are legion, joined in unison in favor of a new model of an American nation as a "poor" one - deprived of spirit and virtue, the ever waving standard of the fallen.
Long live the fighters
What is even more deplorable, is that on the way down, in place of flailing limbs and open hysterics, Obama and his undead followers will be more synchronous and steady during their olympic back double somersault tuck dive toward the valley below. Like the kingmen of the Book of Mormon, who loved power over liberty, there exists among us the very same ilk who rejoice at our present economic and moral downturns. Such modern-day devils laugh at man's descent toward insolvency from his core values and principles that in truth are the only things that can really bring him personal, national, and spiritual security and victory. In their madness at the people of liberty (the Tea Party, i.e. American citizens) they find reason to celebrate their being subjugated, pleasuring themselves in a slavish adoration of Italy's "The Tomb of the Diver" where sport, fancy, and oiled treatment makes them even more slippery subjects, easily maneuvered and influenced without question. It is as sorrowful as it is tragic but there are still those among us who choose to line up in stride on bended knee before the court jesters of government, replacing their own individual kingship and sovereignty with that of an iron shackle. The solution then to our current economic situation is the same remedy for all of life's problems, developing the will power to make the change to where our time is spent away from stores and the noxious atmosphere of government programs and toward denouncing uncontrolled spending and stopgap solutions on both fiscal and moral issues.
It ought to be requisite then that the nest of serpents which have spewed poisonous venom into our financial market, beginning with our own impious President, should be the one(s) to ring the opening bell on Wall Street each and every morning in full view of a disgruntled nation whose once virtuous and prosperous course has been merrily altered toward the edge of utter despondency. While at the bottom, stirs the valley of despair and defeat where the miserable cry out for succor as the rich man did for Lazarus while in torment and flame (Luke 16:24). And with his "good things" now gone, the self-serving man's only remnant of wealth will be the frayed purple linen of his clothes to expose his scales and abject nakedness, an appropriate end to an improper and squandered life. Still, and more sorrowfully, the rising cries of the defeated are legion, joined in unison in favor of a new model of an American nation as a "poor" one - deprived of spirit and virtue, the ever waving standard of the fallen.
Long live the fighters
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Always, Always
General Robert E. Lee once declared, "It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we would grow too fond of it." These truthful words are as viable today as they were back in 1862 when he first made them. And why? Because truth is truth. And thankfully, there are still many of us who do not delight in bloodshed and war in the same way General Lee described. Still, it seems as if our very natures deny this truth in open favor of controlling and limiting the potential of others. What is more is that our nation is currently engaged in at least three known conflicts - Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. And while it seems reasonable to conclude that our own country may soon experience war upon its own soil, at least we have not yet begun distinguishing ourselves by blue or gray uniforms. So why the delay? Especially when both political parties portray themselves as only painted fire rather than the real thing in their shared convictions? What remains in us that promotes such a strong disliking for war and all levels of conflict? Where may we find the greatest peace?
As mentioned in my earlier post, 732 A.D., we are a "brink species." I entertained the notion that the ideas and passions of men have always seemed to bring us to the brink of things - to the brink of discovery, to the brink of despair, or to the brink of war. I commented that as a people we seem to lean toward the edge of life, trotting along its cliffs with seemingly little care and caution for the small side step toward our own demise. However, as I've continued to contemplate this phenomenon in man, I have come to realize that there exists an equally opposing force by which we can experience greater steadiness and value from the corrupting influences of the world that pull toward personal and spiritual ruin, especially in times of great controversy, strife, and conflict. This balancing power, so great in its hold yet tender in its expression, the solid beam of light forever lancing through life's darkest storms, is called love.
As mentioned in my earlier post, 732 A.D., we are a "brink species." I entertained the notion that the ideas and passions of men have always seemed to bring us to the brink of things - to the brink of discovery, to the brink of despair, or to the brink of war. I commented that as a people we seem to lean toward the edge of life, trotting along its cliffs with seemingly little care and caution for the small side step toward our own demise. However, as I've continued to contemplate this phenomenon in man, I have come to realize that there exists an equally opposing force by which we can experience greater steadiness and value from the corrupting influences of the world that pull toward personal and spiritual ruin, especially in times of great controversy, strife, and conflict. This balancing power, so great in its hold yet tender in its expression, the solid beam of light forever lancing through life's darkest storms, is called love.
To illustrate this point, permit me to share the meaningful words written by a great man, Viktor Frankl, who, in his seminal work, Man's Search for Meaning, described firsthand the outside limits of evil and its destructive effects while a prisoner in Auschwitz death camp during World War II. Even then, despite his excruciating hardships and the constant coldness brought on by an encircling death, he persisted on through the icy winds of starvation, fatigue, and pain in the deep and quiet contemplation of his beloved. He writes:
"Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I hear her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved."
He continued on with these final words about his wife and of the power of love to bridge both life and death:
"Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds it deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying."
There is an old saying that "true love never runs smoothly," and that to value each other's highest selves we must be able to endure the "thorns and the thistles" of this life not with fear and frustration but with a "perfect love." Thus, it is requisite that we experience trials. Adversity is the hammer thrust upon our personal and marital anvils that molds and shapes our characters into the way He would have us become. Such times of crisis not only refine our deepest selves, but they also define who we really are. And in order to know ourselves better, we must ever evaluate the strength and commitment we possess in our own vowed relationships. In the words of William George Jordan,
"When the nation is passing through a crisis, it is only by loyally working together that the people emerge again into the sunlight of peace and prosperity. What is true of the nation is true of the family. There is a soul tonic in the pervading consciousness of a last resource in each other's devotion no matter how high the waves of sorrow may roll, or how threatening their foaming invasion. This is the spirit of pulling together through a crisis that leaves a golden trail of strange happiness in the memory of a vanquished sorrow that threatened to submerge us. When conditions are darkest it is no time for blame of either; it is the hour when each should forget self in seeking to inspire the other. When conditions are darkest, the lamp of love should be kept burning brightest."
History is replete with stories about love and its happy and tragic ends; unions given form in secret or in truth to the movement or stopping of an empire. Indeed, there is truly something to be said about this most powerful of human emotions and of its sweet tenderness that haloes us through our darkest moments. Reverently, we must give thanks to Him who, after blood and nail, made love what it really is - an infinite source for peace, hope, and deliverance. Love, then, is the key to heaven and the only means whereby men can truly be saved, both temporally and spiritually. In my opinion, a man's stature is only as large as his ability to love and the manner in which he chooses to convey such righteous passions. Indeed, the highest chivalry manifested toward another consists of many qualities and attributes seemingly unbecoming in today's world - honor, gentleness, courtesy, and faithfulness. Such righteous demonstrations are not easily put out in the same way a fervid glance of the Cross is never really forgotten. When expressed in its highest form, love's ardor can turn the tide of war, heal nations, mend families, and even overcome the pains of death as the widow of Nain experienced by the Savior's compassionate hand:
"And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain; and many of his disciples went with him, and much people.
Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her.
And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.
And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.
And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother." (Luke 7:11-17)
A true patriot and disciple of Christ is emboldened by love and upon the joy that comes from selfless service and affection for his neighbor and that of his countrymen, no matter the debt to be paid. I would imagine that the widow of Nain never faltered in her personal testimony of the Savior after witnessing the compassion He delivered her in the form of her live son. But had her confidence waned while on her widowed walk through life's thorny briers, when the tugging and scraping was at its sharpest, she had only to look upon her son to be reminded of God's perfect love. Oh how insignificant life's problems would become if, for a moment, we stopped to consider heaven's peace in the eyes of our own spouse. Such joy and understanding can only come to those who actively seek its venture. For this reason, true greatness is love and to speak of it consistently, in thought, word, and deed brings more light to the world than even the greatest star. And of greater measure, in terms of love and affection, can a man be closer to the gods than when he speaks warmly of his darling wife. Such deep devotion, as Viktor Frankl so lovingly demonstrated, is our anchor during the storms of life, the stabilizing force that holds our focus through wind and rain by which all things are kept centered and well-balanced.
So, while we devote many things to life in the form of time, money, talents, and energy, are we keeping ourselves balanced in the way we demonstrate our innermost convictions and passions? More specifically, do we devote ourselves fully to our wives, our families, and our nation? In times such as these, when the world appears tilted, and our very freedoms seem to be teetering upon the same edge, what are we to do? Do we falter and fail in our commitments to be upright men in all things? Or, like Jacob of old, are we willing to serve seven more years as gift to our God, our country, and family as well as for our own "Rachel" because of the love we have for them [her]?
As mentioned earlier, love is the equally opposing force that helps center us in times of struggle and hardship. It propels us upward not downward, away from the brink of everlasting punishment and sorrow where "the Painted" mourn for all they could have been. Invariably, we must all face trouble, care, sorrow, and grief. It is how we face it, how we battle, how we stand the strain, that really counts. And if we have that loving someone to stand bravely by us, a peaceful sense of calm will fill our hearts as the long wave of conflict rises over us just as it did for Sullivan Ballou in 1861. Camped with his regiment in Camp Clark, Washington D.C., he wrote home to his wife, Sarah, under a moonlit sky on the eve of battle, unsure of its outcome but restored to confidence by his undying devotions for her, God, and country in what has become one of the most heartfelt and touching historical documents of our time. The letter writes:
"When the nation is passing through a crisis, it is only by loyally working together that the people emerge again into the sunlight of peace and prosperity. What is true of the nation is true of the family. There is a soul tonic in the pervading consciousness of a last resource in each other's devotion no matter how high the waves of sorrow may roll, or how threatening their foaming invasion. This is the spirit of pulling together through a crisis that leaves a golden trail of strange happiness in the memory of a vanquished sorrow that threatened to submerge us. When conditions are darkest it is no time for blame of either; it is the hour when each should forget self in seeking to inspire the other. When conditions are darkest, the lamp of love should be kept burning brightest."
History is replete with stories about love and its happy and tragic ends; unions given form in secret or in truth to the movement or stopping of an empire. Indeed, there is truly something to be said about this most powerful of human emotions and of its sweet tenderness that haloes us through our darkest moments. Reverently, we must give thanks to Him who, after blood and nail, made love what it really is - an infinite source for peace, hope, and deliverance. Love, then, is the key to heaven and the only means whereby men can truly be saved, both temporally and spiritually. In my opinion, a man's stature is only as large as his ability to love and the manner in which he chooses to convey such righteous passions. Indeed, the highest chivalry manifested toward another consists of many qualities and attributes seemingly unbecoming in today's world - honor, gentleness, courtesy, and faithfulness. Such righteous demonstrations are not easily put out in the same way a fervid glance of the Cross is never really forgotten. When expressed in its highest form, love's ardor can turn the tide of war, heal nations, mend families, and even overcome the pains of death as the widow of Nain experienced by the Savior's compassionate hand:
"And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain; and many of his disciples went with him, and much people.
Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her.
And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.
And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.
And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother." (Luke 7:11-17)
A true patriot and disciple of Christ is emboldened by love and upon the joy that comes from selfless service and affection for his neighbor and that of his countrymen, no matter the debt to be paid. I would imagine that the widow of Nain never faltered in her personal testimony of the Savior after witnessing the compassion He delivered her in the form of her live son. But had her confidence waned while on her widowed walk through life's thorny briers, when the tugging and scraping was at its sharpest, she had only to look upon her son to be reminded of God's perfect love. Oh how insignificant life's problems would become if, for a moment, we stopped to consider heaven's peace in the eyes of our own spouse. Such joy and understanding can only come to those who actively seek its venture. For this reason, true greatness is love and to speak of it consistently, in thought, word, and deed brings more light to the world than even the greatest star. And of greater measure, in terms of love and affection, can a man be closer to the gods than when he speaks warmly of his darling wife. Such deep devotion, as Viktor Frankl so lovingly demonstrated, is our anchor during the storms of life, the stabilizing force that holds our focus through wind and rain by which all things are kept centered and well-balanced.
So, while we devote many things to life in the form of time, money, talents, and energy, are we keeping ourselves balanced in the way we demonstrate our innermost convictions and passions? More specifically, do we devote ourselves fully to our wives, our families, and our nation? In times such as these, when the world appears tilted, and our very freedoms seem to be teetering upon the same edge, what are we to do? Do we falter and fail in our commitments to be upright men in all things? Or, like Jacob of old, are we willing to serve seven more years as gift to our God, our country, and family as well as for our own "Rachel" because of the love we have for them [her]?
As mentioned earlier, love is the equally opposing force that helps center us in times of struggle and hardship. It propels us upward not downward, away from the brink of everlasting punishment and sorrow where "the Painted" mourn for all they could have been. Invariably, we must all face trouble, care, sorrow, and grief. It is how we face it, how we battle, how we stand the strain, that really counts. And if we have that loving someone to stand bravely by us, a peaceful sense of calm will fill our hearts as the long wave of conflict rises over us just as it did for Sullivan Ballou in 1861. Camped with his regiment in Camp Clark, Washington D.C., he wrote home to his wife, Sarah, under a moonlit sky on the eve of battle, unsure of its outcome but restored to confidence by his undying devotions for her, God, and country in what has become one of the most heartfelt and touching historical documents of our time. The letter writes:
"My very dear Sarah:
The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days - perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more. Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full of pleasure - and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine 0 God, be done. If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing - perfectly willing - to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.
But, my dear wife, when I know that with my own joys I lay down nearly all of yours, and replace them in this life with cares and sorrows - when, after having eaten for long years the bitter fruit of orphanage myself, I must offer it as their only sustenance to my dear little children - is it weak or dishonorable, while the banner of my purpose floats calmly and proudly in the breeze, that my unbounded love for you, my darling wife and children, should struggle in fierce, though useless, contest with my love of country?
I cannot describe to you my feelings on this calm summer night, when two thousand men are sleeping around me, many of them enjoying the last, perhaps, before that of death -- and I, suspicious that Death is creeping behind me with his fatal dart, am communing with God, my country, and thee.
I have sought most closely and diligently, and often in my breast, for a wrong motive in thus hazarding the happiness of those I loved and I could not find one. A pure love of my country and of the principles have often advocated before the people and "the name of honor that I love more than I fear death" have called upon me, and I have obeyed.
Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.
The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me - perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar -- that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.
Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have oftentimes been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you and my children from harm. But I cannot. I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms with your precious little freight, and wait with sad patience till we meet to part no more.
But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the garish day and in the darkest night -- amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours - always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.
Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for thee, for we shall meet again.
As for my little boys, they will grow as I have done, and never know a father's love and care. Little Willie is too young to remember me long, and my blue eyed Edgar will keep my frolics with him among the dimmest memories of his childhood. Sarah, I have unlimited confidence in your maternal care and your development of their characters. Tell my two mothers I call God's blessing upon them. O Sarah, I wait for you there! Come to me, and lead thither my children."
As we truly love, and give our full selves to our cherished wives and freedoms, then, like Jacob, will our many years of selfless service and unwavering devotion "seem unto us but a few days" because of the highest feeling we have had for them and for Him - always, always.
Long live the fighters...and lovers
As we truly love, and give our full selves to our cherished wives and freedoms, then, like Jacob, will our many years of selfless service and unwavering devotion "seem unto us but a few days" because of the highest feeling we have had for them and for Him - always, always.
Long live the fighters...and lovers
Friday, July 29, 2011
The Underground Men
To deal, or not to deal: that is the question. How strong is our will to remain free? Why must deals be made in every political situation? When will leaders understand that the "let's make a deal" philosophy does not work, especially with dictators? Does God make deals with the devil? Does He work in darkness with him? Absolutely not! One cannot make a pact with the devil without taking a part of the devil with him. Such is the case with today's politicians and all workers of terror who consider themselves to be not just "above God" and His commandments but also evil as well - as if the stroking of Medusa's hair would produce no bite! Seeking the applause of the world, these parrot-men of today only call out the non-controversial while remaining silent in the presence of overwhelming evil. That is like crying over spilled milk while the whole house is on fire. Today, we find ourselves dealing with manic compromisers rather than statesman who ascribe to their weaker wills instead of their first principles. For example, Congressman Boehner chose to play golf with the President as a means to talk about the current debt ceiling fiasco, or more likely, be swooned into a deal. What!? Such lighted settings among the political elite are specifically designed to heighten the suggestibility of weaker wills instead of an awareness of deception and trickery. To compromise in this way begins the slippery descent down the pyramid of choice, where at the bottom the now servile fool is farther away from his highest beliefs. So subtly are the moral strings of corruptible men plucked, pulled, and loosened until finally the once principled tune of freedom and virtue becomes nothing more than an unwanted sound. Unmelodiously, Congressman Boehner allowed himself to be played.
"We do not compromise principle. We do not surrender our standards regardless of current trends or pressures. As a church [people], our allegiance to truth is unwavering. Speaking out against immoral or unjust actions has been the burden of prophets and disciples of God from time immemorial. It was for this very reason that many of them were persecuted. Nevertheless, it was their God-given task, as watchmen on the tower, to warn the people. We live in an age of appeasement - the sacrificing of principle. Appeasement is not the answer. It is never the right answer." -Ezra Taft Benson, God-Family-Country
Secretary (President) Benson continues with the words of John A. Widtsoe:
"A milk-and-water allegiance kills; while a passionate devotion gives life and soul to any cause and its adherents. The troubles of the world may largely be laid at the doors of those who are neither hot nor cold; who always follow the line of least resistance; whose timid hearts flutter at taking sides for truth. As in the great Council in the heavens, so in the Church of Christ on earth, there can be no neutrality. We are, or we are not, on the side of the Lord. An unrelenting faith, contemptuous of all compromise, will lead the Church and every member of it, to triumph and the achievement of our high destiny. The final conquerors of the world will be the men and women, few or many matters not, who fearlessly and unflinchingly cling to truth, and who are able to say no, as well as yes, on whose lofty banner is inscribed. No compromise with error.... Tolerance is not conformity to the world's view and practices. We must not surrender our beliefs to get along with people, however beloved or influential they may be. Too high a price may be paid for social standing or even for harmony.... The Gospel rests upon eternal truth; and truth can never be deserted safely."
We must also not forget that virtue lives on after death, and, so do all the unforsaken vices. It is unbecoming of righteous men to lay their first principles before the golden calfs of worldly desire and for the senseless fame of equal flesh. As Gary North described in his book, Conspiracy: A Biblical View, "God does not lodge absolute sovereignty in any human institution. Men are sinners, and no single institution [or thing] can safely be entrusted with absolute sovereignty. Absolute power would corrupt sinful men if it were available, but it isn't. Nevertheless, some men seek it, and this search is a sign of their own corruption and a means of corrupting them further."
Surely, there can be no excuse for sin just as there can be no happiness found in doing iniquity. Any fool who subscribes to the opposite is unfit for the Kingdom and a traitor not only to himself, but also to his country and to God. The righteous contrarian does not apologize for his beliefs. He embraces them. They are one with him - woven tightly through every fiber of his being to be undone only by sin's entering in. And while many people seem to surrender their rights and freedoms at every whim and occasion, the more justified approach expressed by the dedicated citizen ought to be the same as what King Leonidas of Sparta said before the Persian Army when asked to surrender his weapons: "Molon lave," meaning, "Come and get them." To be sure, "an indignation against evil is an element in all truly noble character. A complacency towards sin, with a constant apology for it, or palliation of it, or excusing it, is a weakness, or rather it is an iniquity, and may make us partakers of the offense." - James McCosh
In 1949, Dwight Eisenhower made this searing statement about freedom and American honor:
"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, have a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government."
And so he bowed.
Our own President and Commander in Chief practically fell to his face in reverent awe before the Saudi Arabian king, King Abdullah bin Abdul Azziz, as if he really were a king. Surely Balaam's ass showed greater wisdom and regard in its saving response to Balaam than Obama did to our own national sovereignty with his undignified ankle grab. Still, our nation is about to take a serious and unsalutary course toward immense suffering - all at the cost of our freedoms, and all because our chosen leaders have chosen to bow rather than stand. How does this happen? Why do our eyes close to such unworthy and foolish behavior? Perhaps, in many ways, it is because we are the children of disobedience ourselves. Why else could we have elected a far left radical as President of the "free world?" History has taught that the tyrant always wants to shine alone in his glory - as if the sun could only light a single blade of grass from the rest of the world. In front of such egos, we must not lower our convictions but instead raise them high as a hammer about to fall upon the anvil of arrogance and self-aggrandizement. And since Obama's open march into office, all those who have raised their voices against him and the establishment are laughed at, defamed, ridiculed, and mocked, ofttimes exchanging their hammer for a feather. "Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?" (Galatians 4:16)
One of my favorite books is the journal of Frederich Percyval Reck-Malleczewen, a German citizen who witnessed firsthand the moral decline of his people under the rule of Adolf Hitler. Later denounced for rivaling "German purity," he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp and shot in the back of the neck in 1945. His entries were later compiled and given the appropriate title of Diary of a Man in Despair. This steadfast contrarian to the Nazi establishment made the following statements about evil and the pull of his people toward the nature of the beast, even hell itself:
"My life in this pit will soon enter its fifth year. For more than forty-two months, I have thought hate, have lain down with hate in my heart, have dreamt hate and awakened with hate. I suffocate in the knowledge that I am the prisoner of a horde of vicious apes, and I rack my brains over the perpetual riddle of how this same people which so jealously watched over its rights a few years ago can have sunk into this stupor, in which it not only allows itself to be dominated by the street-corner idlers of yesterday, but actually, height of shame, is incapable any longer of perceiving shame for the shame that it is.
Yet when I voice a long-held theory of mine, that behind all this horror and this unprecedented denial by a basically well-meaning people of all decency - that behind it, there lies concealed a cosmic process, a gigantic psychosis and the unleashing of a horde of demons, I am laughed at. I am called a fabricator of nightmares, and am told that a certain amount of physiological coarsening is always observable in people during wartime [moral crisis]. I have witnessed the festivities. I heard the clamor, saw the enraptured faces of the women, saw, also, the object of this rapture. There was no light in it, none of the shimmer and shining of a man sent by God. And through it all this bovine and finally moronic roar of "Heil!"... hysterical females, adolescents in a trance, an entire people in the spiritual state of howling dervishes. These people are insane. In their immense vanity, Satan's own have overreached themselves, and now they are in the net, and they will never free themselves again. That is the fact, and this it is that rejoices in my heart. I hate you. I hate you waking and sleeping. I hate you for undoing men's souls, and for spoiling their lives; I hate you as the sworn enemy of the laughter of men.... Oh, it is God's deadly enemy which I see, and hate, in you. In every one of your speeches you make a mockery of the Spirit, which you have silenced, and you forget that the private thought, the thought born in sorrow and loneliness, can be more deadly than all your implements of torture. You threaten all who oppose you with death, but you forget: our hatred is a deadly poison. It will creep into your blood, and we will die shouting with joy when our hate pulls you down with us into the depths."
The moment Obama bowed before an unrighteous king was the moment the flaxen cord around our nation's neck became a chain. Indubitably, "the devil laugheth and his angels rejoice" at such careless submission. Appropriately, philosopher James McCosh stated, "It is said that in moving his finger a man starts a force which may take the round of the universe; it is certain that, in performing a particular act [bowing before dictators] or in uttering a word, good or bad, he may put in motion a moral potency which may reach over widely scattered nations, and go down through many generations."
So, where have all the good men gone? How can the works of darkness continue to exist in the light? Perhaps they are away from the corruptive influences of the world, living beneath the higher heads of power who refuse to bend low enough to hear the united voice of freedom and truth. Can you hear their songs of redeeming love about God and His Christ, the cry of patriots? Or, do you acknowledge the low, concerted droning of the bees?
"The grain has gone to seed,
Transformed are the nations,
Our lives are a degradation
While the bad boys laugh.
What has happened before
Has become true once more:
The good have disappeared,
The bad are everywhere.
Once this misery is
Broken as is ice,
People will speak of it
As of the Black Death.
Then the boys on the moor
Will make a figure of straw,
Will turn pain to delight,
And the old horror into light."
-Gottfried Keller
One of my favorite movie scenes is contained in the film, El Cid, which vividly portrays the historical account of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, a Spanish war hero and nobleman who stood in defiance to tyranny and the Muslim advance against Spain around the year 1094 A.D. In 1072, Sancho, the rightful successor to his father, King Ferdinand, was assassinated. It was deeply suspected that his brother, Alfonso, and sister, Urraca, had been involved in his murder. Though when all of Sancho's power ended up being passed to Alfonso himself, he demanded all of his subjects to kneel in fealty in a public display of allegiance to settle the matter of conspiracy and doubt against him. What ensues is one of the most poignant and moving scenes ever depicted in the history of film. While everyone falls prostrate before the king, Rodrigo does not. He remains standing - firm and absolute in his conviction of the truth and of Alfonso's hand in corruption. He could not kneel in good conscience before Alfonso unless he swore fealty himself to God before everyone present that he had nothing to do with the death of his brother, something he reluctantly does. In the end, Rodrigo fights for Alfonso and commands the armies of Spain in a dramatic defeat of the Moorish advance at Valencia. We would all do well to consider how the valiant actions of one man can alter the course of history and the heritage of his people beginning with our same refusal to bow before any earthly king and tyrant.
Similarly, in ancient Sparta, the Board of Ephors consisted of five Spartan citizens who represented a check and balance over the nation's dual kingship, casting the deciding voice whenever the kings disagreed on a particular matter. To do so effectively, every month these individuals would remind the kings of their moral responsibilities and limited power with the following phrase, "We who are as good as you, will continue to obey you only as long as you obey the law; if not, not." Or, in other words, "if you do not obey the law, then we will not obey you." In like manner, Robert E. Howard's Puritan hero, Solomon Kane, also reveals man's divinely appointed purpose, to vanquish evil at all costs by making low that which is falsely assumed to be high. Alma, the mighty prophet and missionary in the Book of Mormon described this mandate in plain detail:
"And now, as the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just - yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them - therefore Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the word of the God." (Alma 31:5)
"And this he did that he himself might go forth among his people, or among the people of Nephi, that he might preach the word of God unto them, to stir them up in remembrance of their duty, and that he might pull down, by the word of God, all the pride and craftiness and all the contentions which were among his people, seeing no way that he might reclaim them save it were in bearing down in pure testimony against them." (Alma 4:19)
And thus WE STAND in defiance to the evils of men until that great day when our Lord and Master, even Jesus Christ, descends from heaven, at which point every knee will bow and tongue confess that He is the Christ! Until that time, may our blades remain true and straight, fixed to the hands of the valiant and pointed in the direction of our enemies who cannot ever strike down the truth (or ourselves) while we stand united. Like the Greek General Xenophon declared, "I am sure that not numbers or strength bring victory in war; but whichever army goes into battle stronger in soul, their enemies generally cannot withstand them."
Intentionally, the path to Godhood is not made with the skulls of the wicked, but rather the blood, sweat, and tears of the Christian soldier. The pure in heart walk the path of justice, not vengeance, just as the 16th century artist Albrecht Durer so masterfully carved in his copper image of the "Knight, Death, and the Devil" (1513) wherein the Knight is embarked on a righteous mission, determined in his purpose and looking ahead, drawing on his faith to give him the moral courage to confront evil. In it he sits upright upon his horse, not hung carelessly forward before Death and the Devil himself in foolish fealty. He remains focused, armed, ready, willing.
However, the works of men are not always as pure. There is much evil in the world that seeks after our own destruction, both individually and as a nation. But the ungodly can never overcome us as long as we choose to stand and maintain the will to resist. The proper counter-measure is to learn the truth and resist evil no matter the odds and no matter the cost. If you prefer the more ignoble existence like that of a sheep, then you must understand the painful price you pay - submission, cowardice, shame. The time is soon at hand when evil men, even our own chief judges and leaders who sit in excess and pride, will be brought to awareness from their Borg-like alcoves by the sound of drums in their own yards. God will not allow evil to prosper while righteousness stirs. Wickedness never was happiness and a heaven hell cannot make. As the Great Shawnee Warrior and Statesman, Tecumseh, once said,
"Live right so when it comes your time to die,
you will not be like those whose hearts are filled with
the fear of death, who weep and pray for a little more
time to live their lives over again in a different way.
Sing your death song and die like a hero going home."
The war between good and evil is not made at a distance. It is at our very doors, before our very eyes. Therefore, to produce the greatest effect, both psychologically and emotionally, our manner of delivery must be made at short range, with bayonets fixed. Then, when the enemy is on the run, will we be able to answer the call of the ancient Psalm, "Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?" (Psalm 94:16) We are to stand, not bow. Rise, not fall. Fight, not withdraw. Then the wicked will one day be brought low as the dust from the weight of their own boastings and godless actions and great and terrible shall be their fall.
"And he shall spread forth his hands in the midst of them, as he that swimmeth spreadeth forth his hands to swim: and he shall bring down their pride together with the spoils of their hands.
And the fortress of the high fort of thy walls shall he bring down, lay low, and bring to the ground, even to the dust.
For he bringeth down them that dwell on high; the lofty city, he layeth it low; he layeth it low, even to the ground; he bringeth it even to the dust." (Isaiah 25:11-12; 26:5)
Like the Areopagus in Athens during the apostle Paul's day, the same inscription, "TO THE UNKNOWN GOD," will be found among the rubble - a reminder of what happens when the Spirit of Liberty is put off and the Prince of Peace rejected. And when the cloud of smoke and dust clears and the howlings cease, there will come up the majestic sound of a marching host declaring Him, even Jesus Christ, as the only One to worship, to stand before that great gulf and with one voice shouting down the following words:
"If you banish God from the earth, we will meet Him under the earth. And then we, the underground men, will once again mount and sing a song to God, who is Joy...."
Long live the fighters
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Vox Populi
I am absolutely appalled at the irresponsible actions of our "un"- President, Barack Hussein Obama, who saw fit to donate $100 billion to the United Nations (U.N.), a 38% increase over our prior distributions upon its corrupt and contaminated collection plate. This idiotic move on the part of our President is a smack in the face to the millions of Americans still out of work and on those still doing their best to make ends meet. And from where will this supposed surplus of funds come from that Obama has so slavishly offered to the den of thieves? The US taxpayer. But rest assured, China has graciously pulled from its continuously bulging pockets a whopping $14 million to the U.N. Unbelievable.
We are not a democracy or a dictatorship. We are a Republic wherein the power to make and/or change law is vested in the individual people. As Robert E. Hales stated in his revealing book, Secret Combinations Today,
"In a true republic, the voice of each man and woman is registered on an issue. In an expanded republic, [such as ours] an elected representative represents the position of those who elected him or her. Here, the actions of the elected representatives are determined by a Constitution." He then goes on to say, "Elected representatives must know that they must not listen to nor heed the voice of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Tri-Lateral Commission, the United Nations, the Federal Reserve Board, the International Monetary Fund, or other foreign or domestic parties and interests when those voices go contrary to the traditional American values and constitutional rights of the people. We, the people, are the ones they must represent and the voice they must follow."
Obama did not seek our approval for such an act. He thought it would be in his own best interest to downgrade and submit our national sovereignty even further to a collection of governments which rule with police-state methods. He ought to be reminded of Congressman Crockett's teachable moment when a humble member of his constituency gently confronted his misunderstanding of the Constitution and the proper role of government. (See my earlier blogpost entitled, A Republic Gone Bad) I believe that to weaken and undermine the Constitution is the gravest mistake a President could make. Either our current President follows bad advice or a mistaken judgment of the facts, or he is a traitor himself. In truth, he has already proven himself to be a traitor to his own words with respect to the raising of the debt ceiling. Here are his words declared in March 2006 regarding the same matter:
Yes! We do! Five trillion dollars later and Obama is still cloudy and confused about our nation's economic downturn and his personal role toward its sharp decline. It must be surmised then that our President is more of a puppet than a leader - a hollow figure through which the hand of corruption so suitably slides. Similarly, like wolves in sheep clothing, the tyrants of the world and corrupt politicians of the same ilk talk hope and change but act with hatred and utter contempt for the liberty and welfare of their countrymen. Their mission is to preserve power and control rather than peace and moral excellence. How then can any true freeman remain silent and refuse to take an active interest in such things amidst the decay of our nation's moral fabric? And whose corrupted hand surrounds and includes our President so fittingly? The appropriate answer is the United Nations. And where is the outcry? Why do so many people persist in celebrating the "good intentions" of Obama and the U.N. while the nation burns and decays from within? Such ignoramuses are as dangerous as they are insane.
"Where's the manly spirit
Of the true-hearted and unshackled gone?
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit their names alone?
Is the old Pilgrim spirit quench'd within us?
Stoops the proud manhood of our souls so low,
That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us to silence new?
Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging,
In God's name let us speak while there is time;
Now, when the padlocks for our lips is forging,
Silence is a Crime."
-John Greenleaf Whittier
The time has come for our world to shake - to reel to and fro like a scroll, ridding itself of evil and corruption once and for all. Like panning for gold in a river, the earth needs to sift herself, separating the lighter sand masses of corrupt and unprincipled minds from the golden nuggets of virtue, the waste from the resource, the weak from the strong. Our free market system does not exist to fund despots, human rights violators, and tyrants, though such governments are exactly the kind of organizations our subordinate leaders see fit to support. Our continued support of an anti-American, anti-freedom organization like the United Nations ought to end. It must end. The world has grown dark and only America and Israel stand as the last remaining outposts for freedom, a shining city on a hill calling out to the peoples of the world to come together in peace beneath the banner of liberty and the warm, unending light of divine providence and protection. As the ancient apostle declared:
"The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light." (Romans 13:12)
The longer we forget God and trust in our own hands rather than His, the more His wrath is kindled. Are we sagging in our convictions and parroting the cry to 'stand by the President' and the U.N. in all things as if he [they] could do no wrong? Can we not feel our nation's descent toward totalitarian rule? If we do not stand up for truth while error is constantly being preached around us then we ought to "crouch down" as Samuel Adams once forcefully declared, and "lick the hands which feed" us while the chains set lightly upon our shoulders, blotting out our names from the annals of history as honorable and freemen of America. I recently lamented over the fact that during the week of July 4th there were a number of flag burnings and acts of vandalism by numerous residents of communities throughout the country. This is unbecoming of a free society and shameful. Such individuals should not be afforded any constitutional rights for a defense when their offensive actions in effect burned and tattered the Constitution itself. Such persons ought to be tried, convicted, and deported with extreme haste. Their cries and pleas for mercy would not be long kept once they see what the world is really like outside freedom's borders. Then we will see a flag soaked in tears rather than gasoline as Eldridge Cleaver, the once former leader of the Black Panther Party realized after finally embracing freedom's light. He said, "I'd rather be in jail in America than free anywhere else." Yet despite our earned freedoms, we have continued to allow the same corrupt organization and politicians to mock and defy our very liberties on our own soil and at our own expense, both financially and morally, since the U.N.'s establishment in 1952.
Senator Barry Goldwater once said this about the UN:
"The time has come to recognize the U.N. for the anti-American, anti-freedom organization that it has become. The time has come for us to cut off all financial help, withdraw as a member, and ask the U.N. to find a headquarters location outside the United States that is more in keeping with the philosophy of the majority of voting members, someplace like Moscow or Peking."
Amen, Senator. Amen.
Former Secretary of Agriculture and Prophet to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Ezra Taft Benson, said this about the U.N. and its disorganized and unharmonious actions:
"Supporters of the U.N. often tell us how wonderful it is that all nations can come together under a single room and air their problems in open debate. The implication, of course, is that this procedure is a way of "blowing off steam," a safety valve that somehow reduces the international tensions that otherwise might lead to war. How utterly absurd! Consider what would happen if every time a small spat arose between a husband and wife they called the entire neighborhood together and took turns airing their complaints in front of the whole group. Would there be much real chance of reconciliation? Instead of working out their problems together, the necessity of saving face, proving points and winning popular sympathy would likely drive them further apart. Not only that, by the time the issue was put to a vote, the neighbors would be forced into taking sides. Suddenly their own ranks would be divided and they would return to their own homes to continue a quarrel that, previously, wasn't even known to them. What starts out as an argument between two people now infects the entire neighborhood with bitterness and dissension.
Exactly the same kind of thing happens daily as the U.N. diplomats stand in front of the General Assembly, shake their fingers at each other, hurl insults at each other, and then ask all nations of the world to choose up sides. Far from being a procedure calculated to preserve peace, this kind of madness can only increase the likelihood of war. Quiet diplomacy always has been and still is far more conducive to real international progress than diplomacy on the stage."
And let us not forget the second and more serious component of effective diplomacy, Roosevelt's proverbial "large stick."
Secretary [President] Benson stated further:
"The U.N. has become a professional politician's paradise...it is becoming a world legislature, world court, world department of education, world welfare agency, world planning center for industry, science and commerce, world finance agency, world police force, and world anything else anyone might want - or might not want."
The only world government I am in favor of is the one which Jesus Christ Himself will establish upon the earth soon after his triumphant return. Until then, any other collective group or body of corrupted politicians and diplomats who assume that they have unlimited power over their subjects so as to authorize doing absolutely anything can all go to hell. The voice of the people is the sovereign power.
The United Nations is not a legislative body nor can it ever have the power to do so on our behalf. It is a venal chamber paved and held up by the mortar of mass deception and the resigned souls of apathy - a catacomb for the weak and corruptible. In it is deceit and from it bellows pure wind.
As many have come to know, the Lord is merciful to those who call on His name in righteousness and take upon themselves His holy name, even Jesus Christ, to be valiant defenders of the faith and the cause of truth and liberty. To such He offers protection, power, and the strength to endure our sufferings well. However, He will not permit the works of darkness to continue on unabated within His promised and chosen land, even the United States of America, "so long as a band of Christians remains to possess the land." And as long as wickedness reigns supreme, in public office as well as in the private affairs of our own homes, His wrath will be kindled.
As I mentioned earlier, the earth needs to be shaken. Like the Psalm says, "the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because He was wroth." (Psalms 18:7) Such quakes and commotions happen all the time throughout the world. Many start and end far from land while others strike at the very heart of nations. Still, there are those who persist in their wicked habits as if there were no consequence to sin, like a man building a house of sand along a fault-line. Just as a dog will shake itself dry after being weighted down with water, so will the earth one day shake and tremble the evil away from before her face until only the righteous remain. God wants a firm mind, steadfast and immovable - not a shakable one in hard times. He will not tolerate compromise or retreat on moral issues. He will not support tyranny over freedom. He does not support corrupt officials and organizations (and those who vote for them) who deal in secret rather than openly. The United Nations and others of the same ilk will not stand the test of time. And when that fateful day arrives, when the earth moves and trembles, wherever it may originate, I would not want to be found anywhere near Turtle Bay, Manhattan.
We should get out of the U.N. and get the U.N. out of the United States. By the voice of the people it must be done.
Long live the fighters
We are not a democracy or a dictatorship. We are a Republic wherein the power to make and/or change law is vested in the individual people. As Robert E. Hales stated in his revealing book, Secret Combinations Today,
"In a true republic, the voice of each man and woman is registered on an issue. In an expanded republic, [such as ours] an elected representative represents the position of those who elected him or her. Here, the actions of the elected representatives are determined by a Constitution." He then goes on to say, "Elected representatives must know that they must not listen to nor heed the voice of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Tri-Lateral Commission, the United Nations, the Federal Reserve Board, the International Monetary Fund, or other foreign or domestic parties and interests when those voices go contrary to the traditional American values and constitutional rights of the people. We, the people, are the ones they must represent and the voice they must follow."
Obama did not seek our approval for such an act. He thought it would be in his own best interest to downgrade and submit our national sovereignty even further to a collection of governments which rule with police-state methods. He ought to be reminded of Congressman Crockett's teachable moment when a humble member of his constituency gently confronted his misunderstanding of the Constitution and the proper role of government. (See my earlier blogpost entitled, A Republic Gone Bad) I believe that to weaken and undermine the Constitution is the gravest mistake a President could make. Either our current President follows bad advice or a mistaken judgment of the facts, or he is a traitor himself. In truth, he has already proven himself to be a traitor to his own words with respect to the raising of the debt ceiling. Here are his words declared in March 2006 regarding the same matter:
"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."
Yes! We do! Five trillion dollars later and Obama is still cloudy and confused about our nation's economic downturn and his personal role toward its sharp decline. It must be surmised then that our President is more of a puppet than a leader - a hollow figure through which the hand of corruption so suitably slides. Similarly, like wolves in sheep clothing, the tyrants of the world and corrupt politicians of the same ilk talk hope and change but act with hatred and utter contempt for the liberty and welfare of their countrymen. Their mission is to preserve power and control rather than peace and moral excellence. How then can any true freeman remain silent and refuse to take an active interest in such things amidst the decay of our nation's moral fabric? And whose corrupted hand surrounds and includes our President so fittingly? The appropriate answer is the United Nations. And where is the outcry? Why do so many people persist in celebrating the "good intentions" of Obama and the U.N. while the nation burns and decays from within? Such ignoramuses are as dangerous as they are insane.
"Where's the manly spirit
Of the true-hearted and unshackled gone?
Sons of old freemen, do we but inherit their names alone?
Is the old Pilgrim spirit quench'd within us?
Stoops the proud manhood of our souls so low,
That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us to silence new?
Now, when our land to ruin's brink is verging,
In God's name let us speak while there is time;
Now, when the padlocks for our lips is forging,
Silence is a Crime."
-John Greenleaf Whittier
The time has come for our world to shake - to reel to and fro like a scroll, ridding itself of evil and corruption once and for all. Like panning for gold in a river, the earth needs to sift herself, separating the lighter sand masses of corrupt and unprincipled minds from the golden nuggets of virtue, the waste from the resource, the weak from the strong. Our free market system does not exist to fund despots, human rights violators, and tyrants, though such governments are exactly the kind of organizations our subordinate leaders see fit to support. Our continued support of an anti-American, anti-freedom organization like the United Nations ought to end. It must end. The world has grown dark and only America and Israel stand as the last remaining outposts for freedom, a shining city on a hill calling out to the peoples of the world to come together in peace beneath the banner of liberty and the warm, unending light of divine providence and protection. As the ancient apostle declared:
"The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light." (Romans 13:12)
The longer we forget God and trust in our own hands rather than His, the more His wrath is kindled. Are we sagging in our convictions and parroting the cry to 'stand by the President' and the U.N. in all things as if he [they] could do no wrong? Can we not feel our nation's descent toward totalitarian rule? If we do not stand up for truth while error is constantly being preached around us then we ought to "crouch down" as Samuel Adams once forcefully declared, and "lick the hands which feed" us while the chains set lightly upon our shoulders, blotting out our names from the annals of history as honorable and freemen of America. I recently lamented over the fact that during the week of July 4th there were a number of flag burnings and acts of vandalism by numerous residents of communities throughout the country. This is unbecoming of a free society and shameful. Such individuals should not be afforded any constitutional rights for a defense when their offensive actions in effect burned and tattered the Constitution itself. Such persons ought to be tried, convicted, and deported with extreme haste. Their cries and pleas for mercy would not be long kept once they see what the world is really like outside freedom's borders. Then we will see a flag soaked in tears rather than gasoline as Eldridge Cleaver, the once former leader of the Black Panther Party realized after finally embracing freedom's light. He said, "I'd rather be in jail in America than free anywhere else." Yet despite our earned freedoms, we have continued to allow the same corrupt organization and politicians to mock and defy our very liberties on our own soil and at our own expense, both financially and morally, since the U.N.'s establishment in 1952.
Senator Barry Goldwater once said this about the UN:
"The time has come to recognize the U.N. for the anti-American, anti-freedom organization that it has become. The time has come for us to cut off all financial help, withdraw as a member, and ask the U.N. to find a headquarters location outside the United States that is more in keeping with the philosophy of the majority of voting members, someplace like Moscow or Peking."
Amen, Senator. Amen.
Former Secretary of Agriculture and Prophet to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Ezra Taft Benson, said this about the U.N. and its disorganized and unharmonious actions:
"Supporters of the U.N. often tell us how wonderful it is that all nations can come together under a single room and air their problems in open debate. The implication, of course, is that this procedure is a way of "blowing off steam," a safety valve that somehow reduces the international tensions that otherwise might lead to war. How utterly absurd! Consider what would happen if every time a small spat arose between a husband and wife they called the entire neighborhood together and took turns airing their complaints in front of the whole group. Would there be much real chance of reconciliation? Instead of working out their problems together, the necessity of saving face, proving points and winning popular sympathy would likely drive them further apart. Not only that, by the time the issue was put to a vote, the neighbors would be forced into taking sides. Suddenly their own ranks would be divided and they would return to their own homes to continue a quarrel that, previously, wasn't even known to them. What starts out as an argument between two people now infects the entire neighborhood with bitterness and dissension.
Exactly the same kind of thing happens daily as the U.N. diplomats stand in front of the General Assembly, shake their fingers at each other, hurl insults at each other, and then ask all nations of the world to choose up sides. Far from being a procedure calculated to preserve peace, this kind of madness can only increase the likelihood of war. Quiet diplomacy always has been and still is far more conducive to real international progress than diplomacy on the stage."
And let us not forget the second and more serious component of effective diplomacy, Roosevelt's proverbial "large stick."
Secretary [President] Benson stated further:
"The U.N. has become a professional politician's paradise...it is becoming a world legislature, world court, world department of education, world welfare agency, world planning center for industry, science and commerce, world finance agency, world police force, and world anything else anyone might want - or might not want."
The only world government I am in favor of is the one which Jesus Christ Himself will establish upon the earth soon after his triumphant return. Until then, any other collective group or body of corrupted politicians and diplomats who assume that they have unlimited power over their subjects so as to authorize doing absolutely anything can all go to hell. The voice of the people is the sovereign power.
The United Nations is not a legislative body nor can it ever have the power to do so on our behalf. It is a venal chamber paved and held up by the mortar of mass deception and the resigned souls of apathy - a catacomb for the weak and corruptible. In it is deceit and from it bellows pure wind.
As many have come to know, the Lord is merciful to those who call on His name in righteousness and take upon themselves His holy name, even Jesus Christ, to be valiant defenders of the faith and the cause of truth and liberty. To such He offers protection, power, and the strength to endure our sufferings well. However, He will not permit the works of darkness to continue on unabated within His promised and chosen land, even the United States of America, "so long as a band of Christians remains to possess the land." And as long as wickedness reigns supreme, in public office as well as in the private affairs of our own homes, His wrath will be kindled.
As I mentioned earlier, the earth needs to be shaken. Like the Psalm says, "the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because He was wroth." (Psalms 18:7) Such quakes and commotions happen all the time throughout the world. Many start and end far from land while others strike at the very heart of nations. Still, there are those who persist in their wicked habits as if there were no consequence to sin, like a man building a house of sand along a fault-line. Just as a dog will shake itself dry after being weighted down with water, so will the earth one day shake and tremble the evil away from before her face until only the righteous remain. God wants a firm mind, steadfast and immovable - not a shakable one in hard times. He will not tolerate compromise or retreat on moral issues. He will not support tyranny over freedom. He does not support corrupt officials and organizations (and those who vote for them) who deal in secret rather than openly. The United Nations and others of the same ilk will not stand the test of time. And when that fateful day arrives, when the earth moves and trembles, wherever it may originate, I would not want to be found anywhere near Turtle Bay, Manhattan.
We should get out of the U.N. and get the U.N. out of the United States. By the voice of the people it must be done.
Long live the fighters
Monday, June 13, 2011
8 minutes
I've been thinking about the Sun a lot lately and its life-giving light. So powerful and full of brightness, its effects cannot be ignored nor underestimated. In fact, it has become a daily routine of mine to look up at it at least once - though for a brief moment - to remind myself that there is a higher glory than the one we presently walk upon, a majestic orb too set on fire for exposed eyes to behold for more than a second. Centered about 93 million miles from our planet, the Sun still emits an all-encompassing shine that commands the movement of all those who look upon it with deferential respect. For this reason, it can also be said that sunlight quickens us. And throughout Earth's history, there have been many cultures, such as Pharaonic Egypt, who worshipped the Sun as an exciting entity. Light, they believed, was thought to be "the gaze of God." Circa 1370 B.C., the then Pharaoh of Egypt, Akhnaton, or Son of the Sun, proclaimed that there was only one God, Aton, symbolized by the Sun and signifying the universal force of light throughout the world over all things. Of such reverence the once great Egyptian hymn is written (with many similarities to Psalms 104):
"When you are risen on the eastern horizon
You have filled every land with your beauty...
Though you are far away, your rays are on Earth."
Surely there is something to be said about our nearest star!
When was the last time you witnessed a sunrise? A sunset? Have you every really considered the brilliancy and awe of such an event? Or rather, contemplated on the awesome influence its light brings into our world and into our lives? Indeed, there is something truly awe-inspiring about our closest star and its life-giving properties. If you doubt it, go look outside your window. Everything you see is visible and defined because of the Sun. As the only star in our Solar System and single source of heat and light, we would do well to acknowledge the Sun's pivotal role in our lives from time to time. To be more exact, it would behoove us to reflect on the power of light itself and its "activating" and "reactivating" properties within us.
Hugh Nibley, a world renowned LDS scholar and historian, made this statement about light in his book Temple and Cosmos:
"Without light, matter is inert and helpless. It must be improved by the action of light. You've got to put into it some animating principle. Whenever that acting principle is withdrawn, the matter at once falls back into its original lifeless, inert condition."
He then talks about it not being enough to arrange matter in order and system, referring to God's first creative processes as one of organization and order into the universe. "If you organize it," he says, "you've just got a geometrical structure or something similar, but it's still inert." Again, light is the activating agent by which all things become. What is meant by this is light has revelatory properties. Just as we can only see when a room is lit, we are limited, or rendered helpless, when light is withdrawn. Imagine what your life would be like if you were to live in total darkness for one full day. How about one hour? What thoughts and feelings would arise within such a vacuum? Think of how you would react once the time expired and light was once again introduced. After a minute of readjustment the finer details of your surroundings would become clearer and more defined. This natural process is no different than the manner in which we learn and grow. Just as our eyes respond immediately to the presence of great light, so are our minds influenced by pure intelligence when it is before us.
If light brings matter to life then it would follow that in darkness there would be death, or more fittingly, spiritlessness. As mentioned previously, the Sun quickens our world and our own individual selves, enlivening our spirits and all forms of matter to grow and to improve. Interestingly enough, through a process called photomorphogenesis, or "light-mediated development," a plant's conducted sunlight from its uppermost surface to its lower roots serves as a map for such things as how high it will grow, when it will flower, set fruit, and when to age. But if light is able to bring about such great things, why are there still so many disbelievers in God who seek shelter from its influence? Even more, why does virtue so often languish in the shadow while vice triumphs in the sunshine? The answer is readily visible: Fear.
Recall the quiet moments of the night, when the floorboards are heard creaking, the stairwell stirs and snaps, even the windows seem to shake. To many frightful minds a haunting seems afoot reflected by panicked gasps and spousal nudging. But such reactions only reflect an uncertainty of things as they are not supposed to be. In other words, we expect our world to remain constant and static, always the same as if the weather had an accuracy rate of 100%. And truthfully, the sounds that invariably go bump in the night are almost always just that. But despite this higher probability, frightful images still surround our covered faces, leaving us feeling exposed and vulnerable to all levels of influence. To be sure, these fearful moments make our condition even more intolerable yet assuredly improved by our knowledge of a nearby light switch. Surprisingly, many remain frozen in the dark, wallowing in their unpleasantness, afraid of what might actually be revealed to them by light's scrutinizing ray. What is more, just as the Earth radiates absorbed sunlight back into space in equal measure, so does it also sustain its own body core temperature. Carl Sagan, the once famous astronomer and writer, spoke of the Earth glowing "in its own eerie, cool infrared light...not as sunlight reflected...but as the planet's own body heat." The resultant glow is a direct reflection of the amount of sunlight absorbed. To put it more simply, the more light we can permit to come in ourselves, such as through faithful discipleship, the more of it we can radiate back into the world and in the lives of others. Hence, the hotter we are, the greater is our "glow in the dark." Such steadying brightness quickly dissipates the mists of fear and despair. Feeling more sure of our place and ultimate destination, we are now fit to successfully overcome the temptations and snares of the evil one for God's Word will serve as "a light unto my path."
Yet in resisting evil we would also do well to consider the good and its higher, though seemingly less defended purposes. Accordingly, M. Scott Peck made this statement about the problem of evil and the mystery of goodness:
"It is a strange thing. Dozens of times I have been asked by patients or acquaintances: "Dr. Peck, why is there evil in the world?" Yet no one has ever asked me in all these years: "Why is there good in the world?" It is as if we automatically assume this is a naturally good world that has somehow been contaminated by evil. In terms of what we know of science, however, it is actually easier to explain evil. That things decay is quite explainable in accord with the natural law of physics. That children generally lie and steal and cheat is routinely observable. The fact that sometimes they grow up to become truly honest adults is what seems the more remarkable. Laziness is more the rule than diligence. If we seriously think about it, it probably makes more sense to assume this is a naturally evil world that has somehow been mysteriously "contaminated" by goodness, rather than the other way around. The mystery of goodness is even greater than the mystery of evil."
Indeed, there is much good in the world and even greater cause to celebrate its ultimate victory. Typically, when we think about "the world" we consider that which exists outside ourselves such as our neighbors, town, city, or country. However, to the honest man world peace and goodness are sustained and lived within the walls of his own home. This is the place where such vitalizing principles ought to shine the brightest. And if it dims, the good man will not avoid the pain that comes from self-examination, but will rejoice in it until his vision clears and sharpens. Conversely, the wicked man is as "the ghosts of the tribe" in Robinson Jeffers poem, Apology for Bad Dreams, where they "crouch in the nights beside the ghost of a fire, they try to Remember the sunlight, Light has died out of their skies." This lesson reveals an important truth about the presence of light and its absence. When we engage in riotous living and reject the truth in its highest form, choosing to be carried on the stink-wind of popular sentiment, we have no promise. We revert to our most basic state that thrives on pleasure rather than principle. Without this latter guiding light, we are as a blind man attempting to navigate a car on Paris's grand circle road, Place Charles de Gaulle. Surrounded by temptation, with every road promising the same limited happiness, the corruptible man, so beset by indecision, remains in the same self-defeating cycle. In this progress is halted and seemingly displaced, similar to that of an unfree ghost.
The poet and playwright, Henrik Ibsen, spoke of human nature and its associated problems in much the same way:
When confronted with the truth, many "choose not to say" or "see" the light. Christ saw this all too frequently among the disbelievers, namely the Pharisees and Sadducees, who were "unable to answer Him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask Him any more questions." (Matthew 22:45) Like sunlight, which breaks forth like a searchlight suddenly turned on against sin and corruption, "there seems to have been in the presence of Jesus a spell of mystery and of majesty which even His most ruthless and hardened enemies acknowledged, and before which they involuntarily bowed." (Farrar, The Life of Christ) Furthermore, "it was to this that he [Jesus] showed His escape when the maddened Jews in the Temple took up stones to stone Him; it was this that made the bold and bigoted officers of the Sanhedrin unable to arrest Him as He taught in public during the Feast of Tabernacles at Jerusalem; it was this that made the armed band of His enemies, at his mere look, fall before Him to the ground in the garden of Gethsemane. Suddenly, quietly, He asserted His freedom, waved aside His captors, and overawing them by his simplistic glance, passed through their midst unharmed. Similar events have occurred in history, and continue still to occur. There is something in defenseless and yet dauntless dignity that calms even the fury of a mob. They stood-stopped-inquired-were ashamed-fled-separated."
"The evil hate the light," Dr. Peck similarly declared, "the light of goodness that shows them up, the light of scrutiny that exposes them, the light of truth that penetrates their deception." The slavish life, the one chained up by external forces such as drugs, alcohol, pornography, and infidelity cannot subsist without our justifying the dark arts with such careless comments as "all is well" and "there is no harm in this." But in the process of self-examination and ultimate nature change, we allow the light to fill our minds and bodies in large measure, absorbing it not as a tiny soft beam we see coming furtively from under a closed door, but rather breaking forth "out of obscurity" as an all-encompassing, all-consuming glow. Hebrews 12:29 states, "For our God is a consuming fire." Thus, by biblical definition, it is heaven, not hell, that is the source for light, heat, purity, and refinement, all of which comprise the central properties of fire. Additionally, the Prophet Joseph Smith saw in vision the heavens opened and declared the following in Doctrine and Covenants 137:
1- The heavens were opened upon us, and I beheld the celestial kingdom of God, and the glory thereof, whether in the body or out I cannot tell.
2- I saw the transcendent beauty of the gate through which the heirs of that kingdom will enter, which was like unto circling flames of fire;
3- Also the blazing throne of God, whereon was seated the Father and the Son.
Conversely, hell would be chill, isolating, barren, and utterly dark. This notion was eluded to very well in a favorite movie of mine called Sunshine, where a group of astronauts (humanity's last hope) are sent to commandeer a nuclear ship left to reignite the dying sun. I really love this film. There is a scene at the beginning where a member of the crew is viewing the sun from the observation deck. Appearing at only 2% brightness but still magnificent, he asks the computer to behold the sun at 4%, a sight he is told would cause "irreversible damage" to his retinas. As an alternative, he is told he can view the sun at 3.1% for a period of not longer than 30 seconds, which he does. The following scene is nothing short of incredible. Attached below is the actual image from the movie:
As depicted above, at just 3.1% brightness we cannot even begin to fathom the total light produced by our Sun. I marvel at what it would be like to witness such glory in full compared with the supreme majesty of God and His Christ. Soon after his lighted experience, the doctor explains to the rest of the crew his feelings about what occurred. He states:
"The point about darkness is...you float in it. You and the darkness are distinct from each other because darkness is an absence of something, it's a vacuum. But total light...envelops you, it becomes you."
This is why sin is so isolating in contrast to choosing the right which is more inclusive. In choosing the darkness we attempt to cover ourselves from the piercing exposure of our conscience, which serves as an inner mooring during times of mental conflict. In much the same way, the glaringly evident truths which remind us of a loving Creator and Savior are rejected wholesale by the "Mr. Hyde" part of our personalities. In awe of our own shadows, we seem to focus more on the product of light in our cast outlines than the truer features revealed by self-examination and contemplation. When the latter occurs, we are more fit to marvel at the grand majesty of the Sun and the power of God to envelop us with His light, thereby becoming one with Him.
In his short essay on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, John A. Sanford notes that the evil part of Jekyll's personality, that of Mr. Hyde, eventually destroyed itself [himself] by suicide. "For it tells us that evil eventually overreaches itself and brings about its own destruction. Evidently evil cannot live on its own, but can exist only when there is something good upon which it can feed." Indeed, a thing cannot be fully understood without also considering its counterpart, such as the light from the darkness. It is requisite then that we know our enemies, but it is even more dangerous to share our beds with them. A careful examination should never include conversion. As described earlier, the point about darkness is that you seem to float in it, as it is an absence of something. To clarify this point, Hugh Nibley stated that,
"The ultimate form of damnation is "to be like the demons of the air." Satan is the prince of the air (Ephesians 2:2-3), because he has no place for his foot - no sure footing, no base of operations anywhere. As the Pistis Sophia says, "To be deprived of the ordinaces is like being suspended in air, having no place for his foot."
Similarly, in the Book of Mormon, we read of Lehi's Vision where he beheld many profound things,
26 - ...on the other side of the river of water, a great and spacious building; and it stood as it were in the air, high above the earth.
27 - And it was filled with people, both old and young, both male and female; and their manner of dress was exceedingly fine; and they were in the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers towards those who had come at and were partaking of the fruit.
33 - And great was the multitude that did enter into that strange building. And after they did enter into that building they did point the finger of scorn at me and those that were partaking of the fruit also; but we heeded them not.
34 - These are the words of my father: For as many as heeded them, had fallen away. (1 Nephi 8)
Soon after, Lehi's faithful son, Nephi, is able to receive further light and knowledge about the same vision and the meaning of that great "floating" structure:
36 - And it came to pass that I saw and bear record, that the great and spacious building was the pride of the world; and it fell, and the fall thereof was exceedingly great. And the angel of the Lord spake unto me again, saying: Thus shall be the destruction of all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, that shall fight against the twelve apostles of the Lamb. (1 Nephi 11)
Herein lies the futility of evil and the efforts of those who attempt to last while in sin. For evil cannot sustain itself for long just as a plane cannot stay airborne indefinitely. It has no foundation. But with the sure light of truth and virtue, the sinner can once again find solid ground, enveloped by light and the tight embrace of a loving Father in Heaven. The following scriptures reveal additional insight into this promised state:
-While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light. (John 12:36)
-Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. (Psalms 119:105)
-And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. (2 Samuel 23:4)
-Therefore, gird up your loins, that you may be the children of light, and that day shall not overtake you as a thief. (Doctrine and Covenants 106:5)
-Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 5:14)
-That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day. (Doctrine and Covenants 50:24)
In one particular verse in the Book of Mormon, the word light occurs six times with reference to King Lamoni's conversion after the preaching of Ammon:
6- Now, this was what Ammon desired, for he knew that King Lamoni was under the power of God; he knew that the dark veil of unbelief was being cast away from his mind, and the light which did light up his mind, which was the light of the glory of God, which was a marvelous light of his goodness - yeah, this light had infused such joy into his soul, the cloud of darkness having been dispelled, and that the light of everlasting life was lit up in his soul, yea, he knew that this had overcome his natural frame, and he was carried away in God. (Alma 19:6)
In Elder Lynn A. Mickelsen's talk entitled, Light and Growth, he speaks about our spiritual lives and the growth we may determine based on how we follow the Savior. "If we become stiff-necked and cease to look to His light, or if we allow sin to damage our receptors for light, we will die spiritually. But if we obey the commandments, we come closer to God and gain greater light. This increase in light stimulates the "photomorphogenesis" of our spiritual lives and governs our spiritual progress."
As stated earlier, light has animating and reactivating processes. It awakens us each morning and satisfies our lawns. It warms us when we are cold and fills us with joy after a wild storm. It also purifies us from the bitterness of sin insofar as we do not throw it back. Thus, it is imperative that we become lighted, living disciples of Christ. Are we growing toward the light or withering from it? May we let light be the controlling force in our lives. If the old saying is true that, "Light is darkness - lit up," then we ought to consider the way we presently view the problems of the world and our individual responsibilities toward their solution. Then, as our awareness grows, so will our perspective on life shift from that of eye-level to sky-level, where we can more appropriately follow wisdom's paths to its brightest and highest point.
"When you are risen on the eastern horizon
You have filled every land with your beauty...
Though you are far away, your rays are on Earth."
Surely there is something to be said about our nearest star!
When was the last time you witnessed a sunrise? A sunset? Have you every really considered the brilliancy and awe of such an event? Or rather, contemplated on the awesome influence its light brings into our world and into our lives? Indeed, there is something truly awe-inspiring about our closest star and its life-giving properties. If you doubt it, go look outside your window. Everything you see is visible and defined because of the Sun. As the only star in our Solar System and single source of heat and light, we would do well to acknowledge the Sun's pivotal role in our lives from time to time. To be more exact, it would behoove us to reflect on the power of light itself and its "activating" and "reactivating" properties within us.
Hugh Nibley, a world renowned LDS scholar and historian, made this statement about light in his book Temple and Cosmos:
"Without light, matter is inert and helpless. It must be improved by the action of light. You've got to put into it some animating principle. Whenever that acting principle is withdrawn, the matter at once falls back into its original lifeless, inert condition."
He then talks about it not being enough to arrange matter in order and system, referring to God's first creative processes as one of organization and order into the universe. "If you organize it," he says, "you've just got a geometrical structure or something similar, but it's still inert." Again, light is the activating agent by which all things become. What is meant by this is light has revelatory properties. Just as we can only see when a room is lit, we are limited, or rendered helpless, when light is withdrawn. Imagine what your life would be like if you were to live in total darkness for one full day. How about one hour? What thoughts and feelings would arise within such a vacuum? Think of how you would react once the time expired and light was once again introduced. After a minute of readjustment the finer details of your surroundings would become clearer and more defined. This natural process is no different than the manner in which we learn and grow. Just as our eyes respond immediately to the presence of great light, so are our minds influenced by pure intelligence when it is before us.
If light brings matter to life then it would follow that in darkness there would be death, or more fittingly, spiritlessness. As mentioned previously, the Sun quickens our world and our own individual selves, enlivening our spirits and all forms of matter to grow and to improve. Interestingly enough, through a process called photomorphogenesis, or "light-mediated development," a plant's conducted sunlight from its uppermost surface to its lower roots serves as a map for such things as how high it will grow, when it will flower, set fruit, and when to age. But if light is able to bring about such great things, why are there still so many disbelievers in God who seek shelter from its influence? Even more, why does virtue so often languish in the shadow while vice triumphs in the sunshine? The answer is readily visible: Fear.
Recall the quiet moments of the night, when the floorboards are heard creaking, the stairwell stirs and snaps, even the windows seem to shake. To many frightful minds a haunting seems afoot reflected by panicked gasps and spousal nudging. But such reactions only reflect an uncertainty of things as they are not supposed to be. In other words, we expect our world to remain constant and static, always the same as if the weather had an accuracy rate of 100%. And truthfully, the sounds that invariably go bump in the night are almost always just that. But despite this higher probability, frightful images still surround our covered faces, leaving us feeling exposed and vulnerable to all levels of influence. To be sure, these fearful moments make our condition even more intolerable yet assuredly improved by our knowledge of a nearby light switch. Surprisingly, many remain frozen in the dark, wallowing in their unpleasantness, afraid of what might actually be revealed to them by light's scrutinizing ray. What is more, just as the Earth radiates absorbed sunlight back into space in equal measure, so does it also sustain its own body core temperature. Carl Sagan, the once famous astronomer and writer, spoke of the Earth glowing "in its own eerie, cool infrared light...not as sunlight reflected...but as the planet's own body heat." The resultant glow is a direct reflection of the amount of sunlight absorbed. To put it more simply, the more light we can permit to come in ourselves, such as through faithful discipleship, the more of it we can radiate back into the world and in the lives of others. Hence, the hotter we are, the greater is our "glow in the dark." Such steadying brightness quickly dissipates the mists of fear and despair. Feeling more sure of our place and ultimate destination, we are now fit to successfully overcome the temptations and snares of the evil one for God's Word will serve as "a light unto my path."
Yet in resisting evil we would also do well to consider the good and its higher, though seemingly less defended purposes. Accordingly, M. Scott Peck made this statement about the problem of evil and the mystery of goodness:
"It is a strange thing. Dozens of times I have been asked by patients or acquaintances: "Dr. Peck, why is there evil in the world?" Yet no one has ever asked me in all these years: "Why is there good in the world?" It is as if we automatically assume this is a naturally good world that has somehow been contaminated by evil. In terms of what we know of science, however, it is actually easier to explain evil. That things decay is quite explainable in accord with the natural law of physics. That children generally lie and steal and cheat is routinely observable. The fact that sometimes they grow up to become truly honest adults is what seems the more remarkable. Laziness is more the rule than diligence. If we seriously think about it, it probably makes more sense to assume this is a naturally evil world that has somehow been mysteriously "contaminated" by goodness, rather than the other way around. The mystery of goodness is even greater than the mystery of evil."
Indeed, there is much good in the world and even greater cause to celebrate its ultimate victory. Typically, when we think about "the world" we consider that which exists outside ourselves such as our neighbors, town, city, or country. However, to the honest man world peace and goodness are sustained and lived within the walls of his own home. This is the place where such vitalizing principles ought to shine the brightest. And if it dims, the good man will not avoid the pain that comes from self-examination, but will rejoice in it until his vision clears and sharpens. Conversely, the wicked man is as "the ghosts of the tribe" in Robinson Jeffers poem, Apology for Bad Dreams, where they "crouch in the nights beside the ghost of a fire, they try to Remember the sunlight, Light has died out of their skies." This lesson reveals an important truth about the presence of light and its absence. When we engage in riotous living and reject the truth in its highest form, choosing to be carried on the stink-wind of popular sentiment, we have no promise. We revert to our most basic state that thrives on pleasure rather than principle. Without this latter guiding light, we are as a blind man attempting to navigate a car on Paris's grand circle road, Place Charles de Gaulle. Surrounded by temptation, with every road promising the same limited happiness, the corruptible man, so beset by indecision, remains in the same self-defeating cycle. In this progress is halted and seemingly displaced, similar to that of an unfree ghost.
The poet and playwright, Henrik Ibsen, spoke of human nature and its associated problems in much the same way:
"I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us."
"The evil hate the light," Dr. Peck similarly declared, "the light of goodness that shows them up, the light of scrutiny that exposes them, the light of truth that penetrates their deception." The slavish life, the one chained up by external forces such as drugs, alcohol, pornography, and infidelity cannot subsist without our justifying the dark arts with such careless comments as "all is well" and "there is no harm in this." But in the process of self-examination and ultimate nature change, we allow the light to fill our minds and bodies in large measure, absorbing it not as a tiny soft beam we see coming furtively from under a closed door, but rather breaking forth "out of obscurity" as an all-encompassing, all-consuming glow. Hebrews 12:29 states, "For our God is a consuming fire." Thus, by biblical definition, it is heaven, not hell, that is the source for light, heat, purity, and refinement, all of which comprise the central properties of fire. Additionally, the Prophet Joseph Smith saw in vision the heavens opened and declared the following in Doctrine and Covenants 137:
1- The heavens were opened upon us, and I beheld the celestial kingdom of God, and the glory thereof, whether in the body or out I cannot tell.
2- I saw the transcendent beauty of the gate through which the heirs of that kingdom will enter, which was like unto circling flames of fire;
3- Also the blazing throne of God, whereon was seated the Father and the Son.
Conversely, hell would be chill, isolating, barren, and utterly dark. This notion was eluded to very well in a favorite movie of mine called Sunshine, where a group of astronauts (humanity's last hope) are sent to commandeer a nuclear ship left to reignite the dying sun. I really love this film. There is a scene at the beginning where a member of the crew is viewing the sun from the observation deck. Appearing at only 2% brightness but still magnificent, he asks the computer to behold the sun at 4%, a sight he is told would cause "irreversible damage" to his retinas. As an alternative, he is told he can view the sun at 3.1% for a period of not longer than 30 seconds, which he does. The following scene is nothing short of incredible. Attached below is the actual image from the movie:
As depicted above, at just 3.1% brightness we cannot even begin to fathom the total light produced by our Sun. I marvel at what it would be like to witness such glory in full compared with the supreme majesty of God and His Christ. Soon after his lighted experience, the doctor explains to the rest of the crew his feelings about what occurred. He states:
"The point about darkness is...you float in it. You and the darkness are distinct from each other because darkness is an absence of something, it's a vacuum. But total light...envelops you, it becomes you."
This is why sin is so isolating in contrast to choosing the right which is more inclusive. In choosing the darkness we attempt to cover ourselves from the piercing exposure of our conscience, which serves as an inner mooring during times of mental conflict. In much the same way, the glaringly evident truths which remind us of a loving Creator and Savior are rejected wholesale by the "Mr. Hyde" part of our personalities. In awe of our own shadows, we seem to focus more on the product of light in our cast outlines than the truer features revealed by self-examination and contemplation. When the latter occurs, we are more fit to marvel at the grand majesty of the Sun and the power of God to envelop us with His light, thereby becoming one with Him.
In his short essay on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, John A. Sanford notes that the evil part of Jekyll's personality, that of Mr. Hyde, eventually destroyed itself [himself] by suicide. "For it tells us that evil eventually overreaches itself and brings about its own destruction. Evidently evil cannot live on its own, but can exist only when there is something good upon which it can feed." Indeed, a thing cannot be fully understood without also considering its counterpart, such as the light from the darkness. It is requisite then that we know our enemies, but it is even more dangerous to share our beds with them. A careful examination should never include conversion. As described earlier, the point about darkness is that you seem to float in it, as it is an absence of something. To clarify this point, Hugh Nibley stated that,
"The ultimate form of damnation is "to be like the demons of the air." Satan is the prince of the air (Ephesians 2:2-3), because he has no place for his foot - no sure footing, no base of operations anywhere. As the Pistis Sophia says, "To be deprived of the ordinaces is like being suspended in air, having no place for his foot."
Similarly, in the Book of Mormon, we read of Lehi's Vision where he beheld many profound things,
26 - ...on the other side of the river of water, a great and spacious building; and it stood as it were in the air, high above the earth.
27 - And it was filled with people, both old and young, both male and female; and their manner of dress was exceedingly fine; and they were in the attitude of mocking and pointing their fingers towards those who had come at and were partaking of the fruit.
33 - And great was the multitude that did enter into that strange building. And after they did enter into that building they did point the finger of scorn at me and those that were partaking of the fruit also; but we heeded them not.
34 - These are the words of my father: For as many as heeded them, had fallen away. (1 Nephi 8)
Soon after, Lehi's faithful son, Nephi, is able to receive further light and knowledge about the same vision and the meaning of that great "floating" structure:
36 - And it came to pass that I saw and bear record, that the great and spacious building was the pride of the world; and it fell, and the fall thereof was exceedingly great. And the angel of the Lord spake unto me again, saying: Thus shall be the destruction of all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, that shall fight against the twelve apostles of the Lamb. (1 Nephi 11)
Herein lies the futility of evil and the efforts of those who attempt to last while in sin. For evil cannot sustain itself for long just as a plane cannot stay airborne indefinitely. It has no foundation. But with the sure light of truth and virtue, the sinner can once again find solid ground, enveloped by light and the tight embrace of a loving Father in Heaven. The following scriptures reveal additional insight into this promised state:
-While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light. (John 12:36)
-Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. (Psalms 119:105)
-And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain. (2 Samuel 23:4)
-Therefore, gird up your loins, that you may be the children of light, and that day shall not overtake you as a thief. (Doctrine and Covenants 106:5)
-Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 5:14)
-That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day. (Doctrine and Covenants 50:24)
In one particular verse in the Book of Mormon, the word light occurs six times with reference to King Lamoni's conversion after the preaching of Ammon:
6- Now, this was what Ammon desired, for he knew that King Lamoni was under the power of God; he knew that the dark veil of unbelief was being cast away from his mind, and the light which did light up his mind, which was the light of the glory of God, which was a marvelous light of his goodness - yeah, this light had infused such joy into his soul, the cloud of darkness having been dispelled, and that the light of everlasting life was lit up in his soul, yea, he knew that this had overcome his natural frame, and he was carried away in God. (Alma 19:6)
In Elder Lynn A. Mickelsen's talk entitled, Light and Growth, he speaks about our spiritual lives and the growth we may determine based on how we follow the Savior. "If we become stiff-necked and cease to look to His light, or if we allow sin to damage our receptors for light, we will die spiritually. But if we obey the commandments, we come closer to God and gain greater light. This increase in light stimulates the "photomorphogenesis" of our spiritual lives and governs our spiritual progress."
As stated earlier, light has animating and reactivating processes. It awakens us each morning and satisfies our lawns. It warms us when we are cold and fills us with joy after a wild storm. It also purifies us from the bitterness of sin insofar as we do not throw it back. Thus, it is imperative that we become lighted, living disciples of Christ. Are we growing toward the light or withering from it? May we let light be the controlling force in our lives. If the old saying is true that, "Light is darkness - lit up," then we ought to consider the way we presently view the problems of the world and our individual responsibilities toward their solution. Then, as our awareness grows, so will our perspective on life shift from that of eye-level to sky-level, where we can more appropriately follow wisdom's paths to its brightest and highest point.
Now, if the sun is out, go take a quick look at it to be reminded of its power. With the naked eye, the event won't last long. It only takes about 8 minutes for sunlight to reach the Earth. Perhaps it's taken you approximately the same amount of time to read this entire post. Maybe you've learned something. It's possible that the rays of truth have already started conducting themselves through you. The question then remains: Has your spiritual self been reactivated? And if so, how long will you permit the light to work within you?
8 minutes?
Long live the fighters
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