Spiritual Persecution Quotes

There was a time when skepticism was an act of rebellion. Since to a degree I both believe in evolution and have faith, I can only conclude that, as prophesied, to have faith will someday be an act of rebellion.

I am very happy to see the enemy wish to avoid our coming to him. – Napoleon

Every exceptional bias against Christianity I find to be evidence for its validity.

The stronger the persecution, the more significant the spiritual vitality of the believers.

The world has always teemed with a wide variety of spiritual thought and many differing journeys of the heart. But too often the world has used these differences as a weapon. How much agony has been wrought by what should be a thing of beauty - religious passion?

...our pilgrimage among house churches in persecution convinced us that God may actually want to use them to save us from the often debilitating, and sometimes spiritually-fatal, effects of our watered down, powerless western faith.

The chopping block was not confined to one era, nor one form or country. There were many types of martyrdoms, spiritual as well as physical ones; visible and invisible, the block took on many forms and could be encountered anywhere, any time.

The Gnostics, a mystic order and school in the early church, taught Reincarnation plainly and openly, bringing upon themselves much persecution at the hands of the more conservative.

For the Supernatural, entering a human soul, opens to it new possibilities both of good and evil. From that point the road branches: one way to sanctity, love humility, the other to spiritual pride, self-righteousness, persecuting zeal. And no way back to the mere humdrum virtues and vices of the unawakened soul.

Sometime the witch hunting takes on atrocious dimensions — the Nazi persecution of Jews, the Salem witch trials, the Ku Klux Klan scapegoating of blacks. Notice, however, that in all such cases the persecutor hates the persecuted for precisely those traits that the persecutor displays with a glaringly uncivilized fury. At other times, the witch hunt appears in less terrifying proportions—the cold war fear of a "Commie under every bed," for instance. And often, it appears in comic form—the interminable gossip about everybody else that tells you much more about the gossiper than about the object of gossip. But all of these are instances of individuals desperate to prove that their own shadows belong to other people. Many men and women will launch into tirades about how disgusting homosexuals are. Despite how decent and rational they otherwise try to behave, they find themselves seized with a loathing of any homosexual, and in an emotional outrage will advocate such things as suspending gay civil rights (or worse). But why does such an individual hate homosexuals so passionately? Oddly, he doesn’t hate the homosexual because he is homosexual; he hates him because he sees in the homosexual what he secretly fears he himself might become. He is most uncomfortable with his own natural, unavoidable, but minor homosexual tendencies, and so projects them. He thus comes to hate the homosexual inclinations in other people—but only because he first hates them in himself. And so, in one form or another, the witch hunt goes. We hate people "because," we say, they are dirty, stupid, perverted, immoral.... They might be exactly what we say they are. Or they might not. That is totally irrelevent, however, because we hate them only if we ourselves unknowingly possess the despised traits ascribed to them. We hate them because they are a constant reminder of aspects of ourselves that we are loathe to admit. We are starting to see an important indicator of projection. Those items in the environment (people or things) that strongly affect us instead of just informing us are usually our own projections. Items that bother us, upset us, repulse us, or at the other extreme, attract us, compel us, obsess us—these are usually reflections of the shadow. As an old proverb has it, I looked, and looked, and this I came to see: That what I thought was you and you, Was really me and me.

The devil is outrageous only against prayer, and those that exercise it; because he knows it is the true means of taking his prey from him. He lets us undergo all the austerities we will. He neither persecutes those that enjoy them nor those that practice them. But no sooner does one enter into a spiritual life, a life of prayer, but they must prepare for strange crosses. All manner of persecutions and contempts in this world are reserved for that life.

The Catechism explained that praying for the souls of the dead is a tradition going back to the first Christians and to the Jews before them. On the walls of the catacombs, where the earliest Christians worshipped, there were scrawled prayers for friends who’d died during persecutions. The living sent their love for the deceased into the spiritual world, like adding water to a stream that would eventually float their lost friends home.

Jesus never expected us simply to turn the other cheek, go the second mile, bless those who persecute us, give unto them that ask, and so forth. These responses, generally and rightly understood to be characteristic of Christlikeness, were put forth by him as illustrative of what might be expected of a new kind of person – one who intelligently and steadfastly seeks, above all else, to live within the rule of God and be possessed by the kind of righteousness that God himself has, as Matthew 6:33 portrays. Instead, Jesus did invite people to follow him into that sort of life from which behavior such as loving one’s enemies will seem like the only sensible and happy thing to do. For a person living that life, the hard thing to do would be to hate the enemy, to turn the supplicant away, or to curse the curser… True Christlikeness, true companionship with Christ, comes at the point where it is hard not to respond as he would.

When our lives are congruent with the Lord’s will, we are empowered spiritually. Remember what Joseph Smith was taught in Liberty Jail? If we let ‘virtue garnish [our] thoughts unceasingly; then shall [our] confidence wax strong in the presence of God’ (D&C 121:45). That is what we want as we seek to strengthen our faith. We want our confidence to be strong in God’s presence. We don’t want to shrink away because we are filled with shame. We want the kind of faith that caused Amanda Barnes Smith to immediately ask God for help in a time of extreme need. She did so in full confidence that He would answer because by then she had been hated and persecuted for His name’s sake. And so she knew her life was pleasing to her Heavenly Father! I believe this is what Paul meant when he said, ‘let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need’ (Hebrews 4:16). That kind of confidence, that kind of boldness comes from having actual knowledge we are living as God would have us live, doing what God would have us do. Here is another reason why these tender mercies and divine signatures are so important to us. They not only teach us about God’s nature, which strengthens our faith, but they are also a confirming witness that god is pleased with us—sometimes even delighted with us.

The Beatitudes reveal the profile of the Christian, the character of the one who has had a life-changing encounter with the grace of God. In light of God's overwhelming goodness, the sinner sees his own poverty of spirit and mourns not only for his own sin but also for the spiritual sickness of the world. Therefore, he grows meek and longs for all the more earnestly for true righteousness. Therefore, he practices mercy and enjoys purity and makes peace. Therefore, he gladly endures persecution for the sake of Jesus.

Persecution for Christians is not a possibility, it's a promise, it's not a maybe, it's a surely! Following Jesus can mean finding the trouble you've been looking for!

From the fires of persecution, can come sparks of light.

Persecution happens when we stand in the face of our enemy. Friendship with the world is to conspire with that same enemy.

Again and again pantheists have arisen from within all three religions, sometimes disguising their views carefully enough to avoid persecution - sometimes being condemned as heretics.

I have met with many souls who were afraid to speak their minds; from a vague anxiousness to a choking reaction. This restriction may come from a past life where this person was threatened, beaten, strangled, tortured or killed for expressing something unpopular or for declaring some truth. Heretics, those who took controversial positions, especially against the established Church, were the victims of terrible persecutions - and worse. Heretic ironically comes from the Greek hairetikos, meaning 'able to choose.' Thousands were condemned, then, for their ability to choose differently. And so, then and now, we all must choose standing safely with the system or defiantly and dangerously against the herd mentality/ machine/system – yes, perennial lessons of conformity or individuality. History can attest that Free Will and liberality are not always welcome in certain groups and societies. We must not be dissuaded, we can still shine our light.

Believers, in order to sound spiritual or godly, will say they are willing to die for Christ. While this may sound noble, what God is really looking for are people who are willing to live for Christ.

The testimony of anti-communist dissidents is clear: Only in solidarity with others can we find the spiritual and communal strength to resist. The longer we remain isolated in a period of liberty, the harder it will be to find one another in a time of persecution. We must see in our brothers and sisters not a burden of obligation but the blessing of our own freedom from loneliness, suspicion, and defeat.

So-called gnosis’ was an enormous temptation in the early Christian Church. By contrast, persecution, even the bloodiest, posed far less of a threat to the Church’s continuing purity and further development. Gnosticism had its roots in late antiquity, drew on oriental and Jewish sources, and multiplied into innumerable esoteric doctrines and sects. Then, like a vampire, the parasite took hold of the youthful bloom and vigour of Christianity. What made it so insidious was the fact that the Gnostics very often did not want to leave the Church. Instead, they claimed to be offering a superior and more authentic exposition of Holy Scripture, though, of course, this was only for the ‘superior souls’ (‘the spiritual’, ‘the pneumatic’); the common folk (‘the psychic’) were left to get on with their crude practices. It is not hard to see how this kind of compartmentalizing of the Church’s members, indeed of mankind as a whole, inevitably encouraged not only an excited craving for higher initiation, but also an almost unbounded arrogance in those who had moved from mere ‘faith’ to real, enlightened ‘knowledge’.

Meanwhile, Mme Mao and her cohorts were renewing their efforts to prevent the country from working. In industry, their slogan was: "To stop production is revolution itself." In agriculture, in which they now began to meddle seriously: "We would rather have socialist weeds than capitalist crops." Acquiring foreign technology became "sniffing after foreigners' farts and calling them sweet." In education: "We want illiterate working people, not educated spiritual aristocrats." They called for schoolchildren to rebel against their teachers again; in January 1974, classroom windows, tables, and chairs in schools in Peking were smashed, as in 1966. Mme Mao claimed this was like "the revolutionary action of English workers destroying machines in the eighteenth century." All this demagoguery' had one purpose: to create trouble for Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiao-ping and generate chaos. It was only in persecuting people and in destruction that Mme Mao and the other luminaries of the Cultural Revolution had a chance to "shine." In construction they had no place. Zhou and Deng had been making tentative efforts to open the country up, so Mme Mao launched a fresh attack on foreign culture. In early 1974 there was a big media campaign denouncing the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni for a film he had made about China, although no one in China had seen the film, and few had even heard of it or of Antonioni. This xenophobia was extended to Beethoven after a visit by the Philadelphia Orchestra. In the two years since the fall of Lin Biao, my mood had changed from hope to despair and fury. The only source of comfort was that there was a fight going on at all, and that the lunacy was not reigning supreme, as it had in the earlier years of the Cultural Revolution. During this period, Mao was not giving his full backing to either side. He hated the efforts of Zhou and Deng to reverse the Cultural Revolution, but he knew that his wife and her acolytes could not make the country work. Mao let Zhou carry on with the administration of the country, but set his wife upon Zhou, particularly in a new campaign to 'criticize Confucius." The slogans ostensibly denounced Lin Biao, but were really aimed at Zhou, who, it was widely held, epitomized the virtues advocated by the ancient sage. Even though Zhou had been unwaveringly loyal, Mao still could not leave him alone. Not even now, when Zhou was fatally ill with advanced cancer of the bladder.

Two things can be true. First, most of America’s founding fathers believed in some deity, and many were devout Christians, drawing their revolutionary inspiration from the scriptures. Second, the founders wanted nothing to do with theocracy. Many of their families had fled religious persecution in Europe; they knew the threat posed by what George Washington, several weeks into his presidency in 1789, described in a letter to the United Baptist Churches of Virginia as “the horrors of spiritual tyranny.” Washington was hardly alone: From skeptics like Benjamin Franklin to committed Christians like John Jay, the founders shared John Adams’s view that America was conceived not “under the influence of Heaven” or in conversation with the Creator, but rather by using “reason and the senses.

Lord God, if I feel hated by the world, You have told me to keep in mind that it hated You first. You said that if I belonged to the world, it would love me as its own. As it is, I do not belong to the world, but You, awesome and magnificent God, have chosen me out of the world. That is why the world hates me. Help me to remember the words You spoke to me: “No servant is greater than his master.” If they persecuted You, they will persecute me also. If they obeyed Your teaching, they will obey the teaching of Your disciples also. (John 15:18–20)

It is no wonder that Mary loves our day and age. Thanks to persecution, we are giving more to her Son than any other age or day since Calvary. The Nazis in Germany, Austria, and Poland; The Reds in all the Balkan lands, Russia, and now in China, have done more for heaven than ever did the Roman Caesars, the kings and queens of England, or the madmen of the French Revolution. They have done more for the earth, too. For while peopling heaven with martyrs, they have also spread far and wide the grace of Christ Jesus, thanks to the oneness of His mystical body.

It seems that there is a general rule in the moral universe which may be formulated, 'The higher, the more in danger'. The 'average sensual man' who is sometimes unfaithful to his wife, sometimes tipsy, always a little selfish, now and then (within the law) a trifle sharp in his deals, is certainly, by ordinary standards, a 'lower' type than the man whose soul is filled with some great Cause, to which he will subordinate his appetites, his fortune, and even his safety. But it is out of the second man that something really fiendish can be made; an Inquisitor, a Member of the Committee of Public Safety. It is great men, potential saints, not little men, who become merciless fanatics. Those who are readiest to die for a cause may easily become those who are readiest to kill for it. ...For the supernatural, entering a human soul, opens to it new possibilities of both good and evil. From that point the road branches: one way to sanctity, love, humility, the other to spiritual pride, self-righteousness, persecuting zeal. And no way back to the mere humdrum virtues and vices of the un-awakened soul. If the Divine call does not make us better, it will make us very much worse. Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. Of all created beings, the wickedest is one who originally stood in the immediate presence of God. There seems no way out of this. It gives a new application to Our Lord's words about 'counting the cost'.

For the Supernatural, entering a human soul, opens to it new possibilities both of good and evil. From that point the road branches: one way to sanctity, love humility, the other to spiritual pride, self-righteousness, persecuting zeal. And no way back to the mere humdrum virtues and vices of the unawakened soul.

The stronger the persecution, the more significant the spiritual vitality of the believers. Surprisingly, all too often, persecutors sense the activity of God before the believing participants even realize the significance of what is happening! In the case of Dmitri, the officials could sense the threat of what he was doing long before it even crossed his mind.)

Every disciple is a believer, but not every believer is necessarily a disciple. Anything short of discipleship, however, is settling for less than what God really desires for us. Loving God more than anyone or anything else is the very foundation of being a disciple. If you want to live your Christian life to its fullest, then love Jesus more than anyone or anything else. Either you will have harmony with God and friction with people, or you will have harmony with people and friction with God. You become a disciple in the biblical sense only when you are totally and completely committed to Jesus Christ and His Word. As a true disciple, your life won’t only be characterized by practical results and a hunger for Scripture, but you also will have love for others — especially fellow believers. Without all of these characteristics, you can’t really claim to be His disciple. A person who has been with Jesus will boldly share his or her faith. A person who has been with Jesus will be a person of prayer. A person who has been with Jesus will be persecuted. If for you, the Christian life is all about feeling good and having everything go your way, then you won’t like being a disciple. Being a follower of Christ is the most joyful and exciting life there is. But it also can be the most challenging life there is. It’s a life lived out under the command of someone other than yourself. Most prayers are not answered because they are outside the will of God. Once we have discovered God’s will, we can then pray aggressively and confidently for it. We can pray, believing it will happen, because we know it is not something we have dreamed. A forgiven person will be a forgiving person. A true disciple will harbor no grudge toward another. The disciple knows it will hinder his or her prayer life and walk with God. It is far better to sit down for an hour and talk genuinely with one person than to rattle off trite clichés to scores of people. Attending more Bible studies, more prayer meetings, reading more Christian books, and listening to more teaching without an outlet for the truth will cause us to spiritually decay. We need to take what God has given us and use it constructively in the lives of others. You were placed on earth to know God. Everything else is secondary. The more we know God, the more we should want to make Him known to a lost world. Your life belongs to God. You don’t share your time and talents with Him; He shares them with you! He owns you and everything about you. You need to recognize and acknowledge that fact.

The worship of the “Great Mystery” was silent, solitary, free from all self-seeking. It was silent, because all speech is of necessity feeble and imperfect; therefore the souls of my ancestors ascended to God in wordless adoration. It was solitary, because they believed that He is nearer to us in solitude, and there were no priests authorized to come between a man and his Maker. None might exhort or confess or in any way meddle with the religious experience of another. Among us all men were created sons of God and stood erect, as conscious of their divinity. Our faith might not be formulated in creeds, nor forced upon any who were unwilling to receive it; hence there was no preaching, proselyting, nor persecution, neither were there any scoffers or atheists.

Many persecuted believers have thrived in the desert of prison. Perpetua, a third-century Christian who was imprisoned and martyred for her faith, said of her prison cell: “The dungeon became to me as it were a palace, so that I preferred being there to being elsewhere.” Do not be fearful of dry times in your spiritual life. Tap into the Bridegroom, seeking only His living water and you will thrive.

Also, asceticism is all right when it is the proper means of attaining some special end. It is when it produces eructations of spiritual pride, and satisfied vanity, that it is poisonous. The Greek word means an athlete; and the training of an athlete is not mortification of the body. Nor is there any rule which covers all circumstances. When men go "stale" a few days before the race, they are "taken off training," and fed with champagne. But that is part of the training. Observe, too, that all men go "stale" sooner or later; training is abnormal, and must be stopped as soon as its object is attained. Even so, it too often strains vital organs, especially the heart and lungs, so that few rowing "Blues" live to be 50. But worst of all is the effect on the temper! When it is permanent, and mistaken for a "Virtue," it poisons the very soil of the soul. The vilest weeds spring up; cruelty, narrowmindedness, arrogance—everything mean and horrible flowers in those who "Mortify the flesh." Incidentally, such ideas spawn the "Black Brother." The complete lack of humour, the egomaniac conceit, self-satisfaction, absence of all sympathy for others, the craving to pass their miseries on to more sensible people by persecuting them: these traits are symptomatic.

The human species is an animal species without very much variation within it, and it is idle and futile to imagine that a voyage to Tibet, say, will discover an entirely different harmony with nature or eternity. The Dalai Lama, for example, is entirely and easily recognizable to a secularist. In exactly the same way as a medieval princeling, he makes the claim not just that Tibet should be independent of Chinese hegemony—a “perfectly good” demand, if I may render it into everyday English—but that he himself is a hereditary king appointed by heaven itself. How convenient! Dissenting sects within his faith are persecuted; his one-man rule in an Indian enclave is absolute; he makes absurd pronouncements about sex and diet and, when on his trips to Hollywood fund-raisers, anoints major donors like Steven Segal and Richard Gere as holy. (Indeed, even Mr. Gere was moved to whine a bit when Mr. Segal was invested as a tulku, or person of high enlightenment. It must be annoying to be outbid at such a spiritual auction.) I will admit that the current “Dalai” or supreme lama is a man of some charm and presence, as I will admit that the present queen of England is a person of more integrity than most of her predecessors, but this does not invalidate the critique of hereditary monarchy, and the first foreign visitors to Tibet were downright appalled at the feudal domination, and hideous punishments, that kept the population in permanent serfdom to a parasitic monastic elite.

Thus the truth—that his life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis, which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man—this truth, in order to force a way to man’s consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth.

Legalism The weight we are describing is called legalism. It is a form of religious perfectionism that focuses on the careful performance and avoidance of certain behaviors. It teaches people to gain a sense of spiritual acceptance based on their performance, instead of accepting it as a gift on the basis of Christ. Why were the leaders of Jesus’ and Paul’s day spreading legalistic teaching? Was it simply a matter of being right? It’s more serious than that. Look at Galatians 6: 12-13: Those who desire to make a good showing in the flesh try to compel you to be circumcised, simply that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For those who are circumcised do not even keep the Law themselves, but they desire to have you circumcised, that they may boast in your flesh. You see, living with Jesus as your only source of life and acceptance is a confrontation to those who seek God’s approval on the basis of their own religious behavior. This, then, explains the pressure you feel to perform religious behaviors in spiritually abusive contexts. If you perform as they say you must: (1) it will make them look good; (2) their self-righteousness will escape the scrutiny of the cross of Christ as the only means to God’s favor; (3) it will allow them to examine you instead of themselves; (4) they will be able to “boast in” or gain a sense of validation from your religious performance. Can you see the abusive dynamic described in chapter one? Here we have religious people trying to meet their own spiritual needs through someone else’s religious performance. And it’s all cloaked in the language of being holy and helping others to live holy lives.

Ancient Rome, who through the edicts of her Emperors Theodosius in the 4th century A.D. and Justinian in the 6th century A.D. abolished the Mysteries of the African Continent; that is the ancient culture system of the world. The higher metaphysical doctrines of those Mysteries could not be comprehended; the spiritual powers of the priests were unsurpassed; the magic of the rites and ceremonies filled the people with awe; Egypt was the holy land of the ancient world and the Mysteries were the one, ancient and holy Catholic religion, whose power was supreme. This lofty culture system of the Black people filled Rome with envy, and consequently she legalized Christianity which she had persecuted for five long centuries, and set it up as a state religion and as a rival of Mysteries, its own mother. This is why the Mysteries have been despised; this is why other ancient religions of the Black people are despised; because they are all offspring of the African Mysteries, which have never been clearly understood by Europeans, and consequently have provoked their prejudice and condemnation. In keeping with the plan of Emperors Theodosius and Justinian to exterminate and forever suppress the culture system of the African continents the Christian church established its missionary enterprise to fight against what it has called paganism.

The most glorious triumphs of the Church have been won in times of persecution. The early church was persecuted for about three hundred years after the crucifixion, and they were years of growth and progress. But then, as Saint Augustine has said, the cross passed from the scene of public executions to the diadem of the Caesars, and the down-grade movement began. When the Church has joined hands with the State, it has invariably retrograded in spirituality and effectiveness; but the opposition of the State has only served to purify it of all dross. It was persecution that gave Scotland to Presbyterianism. It was persecution that gave this country to civil and religious freedom.

We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man’s right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society, and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true, that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority. ...Because it is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it. Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever? ...Because experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. ...What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not. Such a Government will be best supported by protecting every Citizen in the enjoyment of his Religion with the same equal hand which protects his person and his property; by neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor suffering any Sect to invade those of another. [Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, 20 June 1785. This was written in response to a proposed bill that would establish 'teachers of the Christian religion', violating the 1st Amendment's establishment clause]

Yet, if we will look upon things a little spiritually, such persons are more to be pitied, than either hated or feared; as being, though cruel to others, yet more to themselves, hurting others in their bodies, and bodily states; themselves in their hearts, † and consciences before the Lord, which is far the greatest damage. And upon this ground it was, that the ancient father desired Scapula, that he would pity himself, if he would not pity the Christians, whom he cruelly persecuted, seeing the most hurt came to himself thereby. When, therefore, we thus suffer any heinous injuries of any kind by any, we must pray the Lord both to deliver us out of their hands, and them out of the devil's, whose instruments they are, in so doing. † Augustine -- John Robinson, The Works of John Robinson: Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers, Essay 34: "Of Injuries", p. 146

Stephen, listen, I hate what I'm going to say, but by God, it's got to be said to you somehow! You're courageous and fine and you mean to make good, but life with you is spiritually murdering Mary. Can't you see it? Can't you realize that she needs all the things that it's not in your power to give her? Children, protection, friends whom she can respect and who'll respect her—don't you realize this, Stephen? A few may survive such relationships as yours, but Mary Llewellyn won't be among them. She's not strong enough to fight the whole world, to stand up against persecution and insult; it will drive her down, begun to already—already she's been forced to turn to people like Wanda. I know what I'm saying, I've seen the thing—the bars, the drinking, the pitiful defiance, the horrible, useless wastage of lives—well, I tell you it's spiritual murder for Mary.

and outward enemies of the State. The latter were the savages, the former the Quakers; the energy expended by the early Puritans in resistance to the tomahawk not weakening their disposition to deal with spiritual dangers. They employed the same — or almost the same — weapons in both directions; the flintlock and the halberd against the Indians, and the cat-o’-nine-tails against the heretics. One of the longest, though by no means one of the most successful, of Hawthorne’s shorter tales (The Gentle Boy) deals with this pitiful persecution of the least aggressive of all schismatic bodies. William Hathorne, who had been made a magistrate of the town of Salem, where a grant of land had been offered him as an inducement to residence, figures in New England history as having given orders that “Anne Coleman and four of her friends” should be whipped through Salem, Boston, and Dedham.

Then, too, the dissemination of the truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one and the same manner, namely, those in power, feeling that the recognition of this truth would undermine their position, consciously or sometimes unconsciously perverted it by explanations and additions quite foreign to it, and also opposed it by open violence. Thus the truth—that his life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis, which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man—this truth, in order to force a way to man's consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth.

A man who is awake in the open field at night or who wanders over silent paths experiences the world differently than by day. Nighness vanishes, and with it distance; everything is equally far and near, close by us and yet mysteriously remote. Space loses its measures. There are whispers and sounds, and we do not know where or what they are. Our feelings too are peculiarly ambiguous. There is a strangeness about what is intimate and dear, and a seductive charm about the frightening. There is no longer a distinction between the lifeless and the living, everything is animate and soulless, vigilant and asleep at once. What the day brings on and makes recognizable gradually, emerges out of the dark with no intermediary stages. The encounter suddenly confronts us, as if by a miracle: What is the thing we suddenly see - an enchanted bride, a monster, or merely a log? Everything teases the traveller, puts on a familiar face and the next moment is utterly strange, suddenly terrifies with awful gestures and immediately resumes a familiar and harmless posture. Danger lurks everywhere. Out of the dark jaws of the night which gape beside the traveller, any moment a robber may emerge without warning, or some eerie terror, or the uneasy ghost of a dead man - who knows what may once have happened at that very spot? Perhaps mischievous apparitions of the fog seek to entice him from the right path into the desert where horror dwells, where wanton witches dance their rounds which no man ever leaves alive. Who can protect him, guide him aright, give him good counsel? The spirit of Night itself, the genius of its kindliness, its enchantment, its resourcefulness, and its profound wisdom. She is indeed the mother of all mystery. The weary she wraps in slumber, delivers from care, and she causes dreams to play about their souls. Her protection is enjoyed by the un-happy and persecuted as well as by the cunning, whom her ambivalent shadows offer a thousand devices and contrivances. With her veil she also shields lovers, and her darkness keeps ward over all caresses, all charms hidden and revealed. Music is the true language of her mystery - the enchanting voice which sounds for eyes that are closed and in which heaven and earth, the near and the far, man and nature, present and past, appear to make themselves understood. But the darkness of night which so sweetly invites to slumber also bestows new vigilance and illumination upon the spirit. It makes it more perceptive, more acute, more enterprising. Knowledge flares up, or descends like a shooting star - rare, precious, even magical knowledge. And so night, which can terrify the solitary man and lead him astray, can also be his friend, his helper, his counsellor.

Memory is the essential cornerstone of humanity. There would be no spiritual platform for enactment of public policy directed at uplifting the poor without remembrance of our munificent traditions and customs. Without the ability to recollect the why and wherefores, there would be no tolerance or wondrous love. Without oral memories of the instructions issued by our prophets and patriarchs, there would be no reminder of their charitable calling. Memories prompt us magnanimously to provide for and protect our family, love our neighbors and enemies, and pray for unsavory souls whom persecute us. Without memories of our prior actions and omissions, there would be no confession, and no repentance. Without memories of our personal transgressions, there would be no tolerance for other people. Without memories of heroic action of our predecessors, there would be no sterling examples to exemplify and guide honorable human behavior. Memories are what we rely upon to understand what it means to be human. Shared memories of affection and kindness and recollections of selfless acts fuse the ties of families. Collective memories establish community culture.

These other voices make me constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn’t pay attention to me. Without realizing it, I find myself brooding about someone else’s success, my own loneliness, and the way the world abuses me. Despite my conscious intentions, I often catch myself daydreaming about becoming rich, powerful, and very famous. All of these mental games reveal to me the fragility of my faith that I am the Beloved One on whom God’s favor rests. I am so afraid of being disliked, blamed, put aside, passed over, ignored, persecuted, and killed, that I am constantly developing strategies to defend myself and thereby assure myself of the love I think I need and deserve. And in so doing I move far away from my father’s home and choose to dwell in a “distant country.” Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God. A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me. It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down. Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves.

No one pours liquid into a cracked and broken vase which can hold nothing. Your heart is divided into as many pieces representing the cares you hold: each care is a broken piece; and do you think that God will pour his grace into such a useless vessel? Ask the wise man, who says: “The heart of a fool is like a broken vessel, and not all wisdom shall it hold.” [47]   God instills this devout and very sweet wisdom of which we speak into the hearts of the righteous, the golden vessels and cups from which he drinks our good desires, symbolized by the goblets from which King Solomon drank which were all gold. A golden vase cannot easily be broken, neither can the heart of the just be divided between different interests without urgent necessity. However, the hearts of unreflecting men are like the ill-baked clay vessels which David was given in the desert when persecuted by Absalom.[48] This clay vessel is broken because the man's exterior and worldly actions are not referred to God nor performed purely for his sake, but some are done to please men, others by the inspiration of the devil, others for pleasure or vainglory, so that his heart being divided, cannot retain the grace of devotion or the sweetness of the heavenly liquor.

An extreme optimism is a condition precedent of Democracy, and democratic scepticism itself is optimist. There is no despair on account of the loss of Truth. It is believed that a mechanical counting of votes must always lead to good results. Behind Democracy stands the optimistic dogma of the natural goodness and loving-kindness proper to human nature. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the spiritual father of Democracy and it was infected at its roots by his sentimental notions about humanity. It simply will not see that there is also a radical evil in human nature, and does not allow for the fact that the will of the people can follow iniquity, that the majority may be for error and untruth, leaving truth and rightness to a weak minority. There is no guarantee that the general will shall be turned towards the good, that it will seek freedom rather than the complete destruction of freedom. The Revolution in France was begun by the proclamation of the rights and liberty of man; under the Terror all liberty was completely done away with. When, in pure affirmation of itself, the unenlightened popular will refuses to submit itself to any superior being, and claims arbitrarily to direct the destinies of human societies, it easily enters on persecution of Truth, denial of the true, and quenching of all spiritual freedom.

In a sense the rise of Anabaptism was no surprise. Most revolutionary movements produce a wing of radicals who feel called of God to reform the reformation. And that is what Anabaptism was, a voice calling the moderate reformers to strike even more deeply at the foundations of the old order. Like most counterculture movements, the Anabaptists lacked cohesiveness. No single body of doctrine and no unifying organization prevailed among them. Even the name Anabaptist was pinned on them by their enemies. It meant rebaptizer and was intended to associate the radicals with heretics in the early church and subject them to severe persecution. The move succeeded famously. Actually, the Anabaptists rejected all thoughts of rebaptism because they never considered the ceremonial sprinkling they received in infancy as valid baptism. They much preferred Baptists as a designation. To most of them, however, the fundamental issue was not baptism. It was the nature of the church and its relation to civil governments. They had come to their convictions like most other Protestants: through Scripture. Luther had taught that common people have a right to search the Bible for themselves. It had been his guide to salvation; why not theirs? As a result, little groups of Anabaptist believers gathered about their Bibles. They discovered a different world in the pages of the New Testament. They found no state-church alliance, no Christendom. Instead they discovered that the apostolic churches were companies of committed believers, communities of men and women who had freely and personally chosen to follow Jesus. And for the sixteenth century, that was a revolutionary idea. In spite of Luther’s stress on personal religion, Lutheran churches were established churches. They retained an ordained clergy who considered the whole population of a given territory members of their church. The churches looked to the state for salary and support. Official Protestantism seemed to differ little from official Catholicism. Anabaptists wanted to change all that. Their goal was the “restitution” of apostolic Christianity, a return to churches of true believers. In the early church, they said, men and women who had experienced personal spiritual regeneration were the only fit subjects for baptism. The apostolic churches knew nothing of the practice of baptizing infants. That tradition was simply a convenient device for perpetuating Christendom: nominal but spiritually impotent Christian society. The true church, the radicals insisted, is always a community of saints, dedicated disciples in a wicked world. Like the missionary monks of the Middle Ages, the Anabaptists wanted to shape society by their example of radical discipleship—if necessary, even by death. They steadfastly refused to be a part of worldly power including bearing arms, holding political office, and taking oaths. In the sixteenth century this independence from social and civic society was seen as inflammatory, revolutionary, or even treasonous.

What is Satan's paramount intent? Quite simple, it is this: denying the world access to Jesus! Satan's greatest desire is for the people of this planet to leave Jesus alone. Satan desires that we turn away from Jesus - or that we never find Him in the first place. If Satan cannot be successful at that, he desires to keep believers quiet, to diminish or silence our witness, and to stop us from bringing others to Christ. It is that simple. Once we understand the nature of the spiritual battle and the strategy of the Enemy, we see clearly the role that believers have been called to play. We also see the importance of our choices regarding witness and faithfulness and obedience. At the beginning of every day, we choose. It is simply a matter of identification. Will we identify with believers in persecution - or will we identify with their persecutors? We make that choice as we decide whether we will share Jesus with others or keep Him to ourselves. We identify ourselves as believers by taking a stand with, and following the example of, those in persecution. Or we identify with their persecutors by not giving witness of Jesus to our family, our friends, and our enemies. Those who number themselves among the followers of Jesus- but don't witness for Him - are actually siding with the Taliban, the brutal regime that rules North Korea, the secret police in communist China, and the Somaliland and Saudi Arabias of the world. Believers who do not share their faith aid and abet Satan's ultimate goal of denying others access to Jesus. Our silence makes us accomplices.

The contemporary Christian Church, precisely, has understood them in this' 'wrong way, to the letter, 'like the Jews,' exoterically, not esoterically. Nevertheless to say 'like the Jews' is an error. One would have to say 'as the Jews want.' Because they also possess an exotericism, for their masses, represented by the Torah and Talmud, and an esotericism, in the Cabala (which means: 'Received Tradition'), in the Zohar ('brightness'), the Merkaba or Chariot being the most secret part of the Cabala which only initiated rabbis know and use as the powerful tool of their magic. We have already said that the Cabala reached them from elsewhere, like everything else, in the Middle Ages, even though they tell us otherwise, using and transforming it in concordance with their Archetype. The Hasidim, from Poland, represent an exclusively esoteric sect of Judaism. Islam also has its esoteric magic, represented by Sufism and the sect of the Assassins, Hassanists, oflran. They interpret the Koran symbolically. And it was because of contact with this sect of the 'Old Man of the Mountain' that the Templars felt compelled to secede more and more from the direction of Rome, centering themselves in their Esoteric Kristianity and Mystery of the Gral. This was also why Rome destroyed them, like the esoteric Cathars (katharos = pure in Greek), the Bogomils, the Manichees and the gnostics. In the Church of Rome, called Catholic, there only remains a soulless ritual of the Mass, as a liturgical shell that no longer reaches the Symbol, which no longer touches it, no longer puts it into action. The Nordic contribution has been lost, destroyed by prejudice and the ethnological persecution of Nordicism, Germanism and the complete surrender to Judaism. Zen Buddhism preserves the esotericism of Buddha. In Japan Shinto and Zen are practiced by a racially superior warrior caste, the Samurai. The most esoteric side of Hinduism is found in Tantrism, especially in the Kaula or Kula Order. So understood, esotericism is what goes beyond the exterior form and the masses, the physical, and puts an elite in contact with invisible superior forces. In my case, the condition that paralysed me in the midst of dreaming and left me without means to influence the phenomena. The visible is symbol of invisible forces (Archetypes, Gods). By means of an esoteric knowledge, of an initiation in this knowledge, a hierarchic minority can make contact with these invisible forces, being able to act on the Symbol, dynamizing and controlling the physical phenomena that incarnate them. In my case: to come to control the involuntary process which, without knowing how, was controlling me, to be able to guide it, to check or avoid it. Jung referred to this when he said 'if someone wisely faces the Archetype, in whatever place in the world, he acquires universal validity because the Archetype is one and indivisible'. And the means to reach this spiritual world, 'on the other side of the mirror,' is Magic, Rite, Ritual, Ceremony. All religions have possessed them, even the Christian, as we have said. And the Rite is not something invented by humans but inspired by 'those from beyond,' Jung would say by the Collective Unconscious.

If people have no respect for God, no love for their Maker, I would ask the question another way: Why not pillage, rape, persecute and murder? If it feels good, and they can get away with it, why not? If God is dead or does not exist, as these people believe, why are not all things permitted? Why should they restrain themselves? Because it’s just wrong? Because it’s not the way civilized people behave? Because what goes around comes around? Because they’ll end up feeling terrible inside? Within tidy circles of properly socialized and reasonable people, such appeals can seem like they actually have the power to restrain people from doing what they otherwise feel like doing. But in the real world outside the philosophy seminar room, oppressors frankly don’t care that you think it’s just wrong. Who are you, they ask, to foist your random moral intuition on them? Who are you to tell them or the lords of the Third Reich what civilized people should and should not do? If what goes around tends to come around, then there’s no moral problem, only a practical problem of making sure it doesn’t come around to you. They think, Fine, if being brutal makes you feel terrible inside, then don’t do it. But it makes me feel powerful, alive, exhilarated and masterful, so quit whining — unless you want to try to stop me. This description of a dark Nietzschean world of self-will — a vacuum devoid of moral authority or spiritual resources for good — used to sen excessively melodramatic to me. But then I got out more. The world is truly full of brutal oppression because humans have rejected their Maker, the source of all goodness, mercy, compassion, truth, justice, and love.

The Deepening Though in the wake of 9/11 Americans gathered in houses of worship across the land and it appeared as if there would be a national return to God—it never came. In place of the revival was a spiritual and moral apostasy that was unprecedented in its scope and accelerating pace. There was now increasing talk concerning the end of “Christian America.” Polls noticed a growing departure from biblical ethics and values. The turn was most pronounced among the younger generation, portending a future of even greater moral and spiritual departure. In the fall of ancient Israel the nation decided it could rewrite morality and change what was good and evil, sin and righteousness—so too in America. What had once been recognized as right was now attacked as evil, and what had once been recognized as sin was now celebrated as a virtue. Morals, standards, and values that had undergirded not only the nation’s foundation, but also the foundation of Western civilization and civilization itself, were increasingly overturned, overruled, and discarded. And those who would not go along with the change—who merely continued to uphold that which had once been universally upheld—were now increasingly marginalized, vilified, condemned by the culture and the state, and persecuted. And not only did the blood of unborn children continue to flow, as it did in ancient Israel, but the number of those killed was now well over fifty million, a population of many Israels. The nation’s moral descent had now reached the point where the government was seeking to force those who held to God’s Word to go against that Word, punishing resistance with fines, damages, and condemnation. Any deviation from the new ethics of apostasy was swiftly punished. At the same time, the name of God increasingly became the object of attack, mockery, and blasphemy.

I, *** CALL on world believers of righteousness to wage 'all-out war' on the World Government, the infidels... Jihad is obligatory, not only for the Muslims! All world believers of righteousness are required to pledge allegiance to Allah! World believers of righteousness must fight the enemies of Allah through uncompromising... I urge the believers to fight; if there be of you twenty steadfast, they shall overcome two hundred; and if there be of you a hundred, they shall overcome a thousand of those who disbelieve- O you who believe, fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you and let them find firmness in you. And know that Allah is with those who keep their duty. Behold, if you are in doubt as to my religion, (know that) I serve not those whom you serve besides Allah, but I serve Allah who causes you to die; and I am commanded to be of the believers- Seest thou not those who change Allah's favour for disbelief and make their people to alight in the abode of perdition- And those who flee for Allah's sake after they are oppressed, We shall certainly give them a good abode in the world; and the reward of the Hereafter is much greater... And on the day when We raise up a witness out of every nation, then permission (to offer excuse) will not be allowed to make amends. I exhort you only to one thing, that you rise up for Allah's sake by twos and simply; then ponder! There is no madness in your companion. He is only a warner to you before a severe chastisement. We have adorned the lower heaven with an adornment, the star- They cannot listen to the exalted assembly and they are reproached from every side. And whoever turns himself away from remembrance of the Beneficent, We appoint for him a devil so he is his associate. They are times appointed for men, and (for) the pilgrimage. And it is not righteousness that you enter the house by their backs but he is righteous who keeps his duty. And go into the houses by their doors; and keep your duty to Allah, that you may be successful. And fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you but be not aggressive. Surely Allah loves not the aggressors. Fight not with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it; So if they fight you (in it), slay them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers. And fight them until there is no persecution, religion is only for Allah. But if they desist, then there should be no hostility except against the oppressors. Death, man must face... ... death does not bring the life of a man to an end; it only opens the door to a higher form of life. Just as from dust is evolved the man, from the deeds which he does is evolved the higher man. Fear thou not; for I am with thee; be not dismayed; for I am thy...! I will strengthen thee; yea; I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteouness; Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be confounded; they shall be as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall perish... And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this! I give unto you power to tread on evil and over all the power of the devil, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. I come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. A Call For The Overthrow Of The World Government! Kill Them All! COMPTON 6:66

To understand fully the causes which drove so many thousands into schism and heresy, leading to wars and persecutions, and the establishment of the Inquisition, it is necessary{6} to cast a glance at the character of the men who represented the Church before the people, and at the use which they made, for good or for evil, of the absolute spiritual despotism which had become established. In wise and devout hands it might elevate incalculably the moral and material standards of European civilization; in the hands of the selfish and depraved it could become the instrument of minute and all-pervading oppression, driving whole nations to despair.

The greatest writers of the Whig party, Burke and Macaulay, constantly represented the statesmen of the Revolution as the legitimate ancestors of modern liberty. It is humiliating to trace a political lineage to Algernon Sidney, who was the paid agent of the French king; to Lord Russell, who opposed religious toleration at least as much as absolute monarchy; to Shaftesbury, who dipped his hands in the innocent blood shed by the perjury of Titus Oates; to Halifax, who insisted that the plot must be supported even if untrue; to Marlborough, who sent his comrades to perish on an expedition which he had betrayed to the French; to Locke, whose notion of liberty involves nothing more spiritual than the security of property, and is consistent with slavery and persecution; or even to Addison, who conceived that the right of voting taxes belonged to no country but his own. Defoe affirms that from the time of Charles II. to that of George I. he never knew a politician who truly held the faith of either party; and the perversity of the statesmen who led the assault against the later Stuarts threw back the cause of progress for a century.

Slogon: A Call For The Overthrow Of The World Government! 666 I, Compton Gage, CALL on world believers of righteousness to wage 'all-out war' on the World Government, the infidels... Jihad is obligatory, not only for the Muslims! All world believers of righteousness are required to pladge allegiance to Allah! World believers of righteousness must fight the enemies of Allah through uncompromising... I urge the believers to fight; if there be of you twenty steadfast, they shall overcome two hundred; and if there be of you a hundred, they shall overcome a thousand of those who disbelieve- O you who believe, fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you and let them find firmness in you. And know that Allah is with those who keep their duty. Behold, if you are in doubt as to my religion, (know that) I serve not those whom you werve besides Allah, but I serve Allah who causes you to die; and I am commanded to be of the believers- Seest thou not those who change Allah's favour for disbelief and make their people to alight in the abode of perdition- And those who flee for Allah's sake after they are oppressed, We shall certainly give them a good abode in the world; and the reward of the Hereafter is much greater... And on the day when We raise up a witness out of every nation, then permission (to offer excuse) will not be allowed to make amends. I exhort you only to one thing, that you rise up for Allah's sake by twos and simply; then ponder! There is no madness in your companion. He is only a warner to you before a severe chastisement. We have adorned the lower heaven with an adornment, the star- They cannot listen to the exalted assembly and they are reproached from every side. And whoever turns himself away from remembrance of the Beneficent, We appoint for him a devil so he is his associate. They are times appointed for men, and (for) the pilgrimage. And it is not righteousness that you enter the house by their backs but he is righteous who keeps his duty. And go into the houses by their doors; and keep your duty to Allah, that you may be successful. And fight in the way of Allah against those who fight against you but be not aggressive. Surely Allah loves not the aggressors. Fight not with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it; So if they fight you (in it), slay them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers. And fight them until there is no persecution, religion is only for Allah. But if they desist, then there should be no hostility except against the oppressors. Death, man must face... ... death does not bring the life of a man to an end; it only opens the door to a higher form of life. Just as from dust is evolved the man, from the deeds which he does is evolved the higher man. Fear thou not; for I am with thee; be not dismayed; for I am thy...! I will strengthen thee; yea; I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteouness; Behold, all they that were incensed against thee shall be confounded; they shall be as nothing; and they that strive with thee shall perish... And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this! I give unto you power to tread on evil and over all the power of the devil, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. I come not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. A Call For The Overthrow Of The World Government! Kill Them All! Compton Gage

we tend to believe that Western forms of democracy and the concomitant civil rights will usher in the kingdom of God and create an environment where persecution will simply not happen anymore. We tend to believe that spiritual brokenness can be healed through political means. Wars have been fought—and continue to be fought—based on the belief that Western styles of government and the kingdom of God are, essentially, synonymous. This is a dangerous, nonbiblical assumption.

The bishop of Alexandria, Demetrius, indignant that Origen, a layman, should presume to instruct bishops, censured him and recalled him to Alexandria, and though Origen submitted, eventually excommunicated him (231). The peculiar charm of his character and the depth and insight of his teaching devotedly attached to him men who continued his teaching after his death. This took place in 254, as a result of the torture to which he had been subjected five years before in Tyre during the Decian persecution. Origen saw the Church as consisting of all those who have experienced in their lives the power of the eternal Gospel. These form the true spiritual Church, which does not always coincide with that which is called the Church by men.

The societal preaching and creation wherein many people try to rationalize evil intentions and actions by making them appear noble and beneficial; that pursuit of power and wealth is the persecution of truth, justice, and love; that society is centered around selfishness and greed, having and consuming, instead of principles of love, respect, and integrity; that fame is an admirable quality, even if often not based on real achievements; that virtue means obedience, even if wrong, is all adversely impacting human inner being and existence as authentic and loving.” — from AUTHENTIC SELF-LOVE (2017)

Finally the faithful are to admonished to acquiesce in the simple and absolute will of God. Let him, who thinks that he occupies a place in society inferior to his desserts, bear his lot with patient resignation; let him not abandon his proper sphere, but abide in the vocation to which he has been called. Let him subject his own judgement to the will of God, who provides better for our interests that we can even desire ourselves. If troubled by poverty, by sickness, by persecution, or afflictions and anxieties of any sort, let us be convinced that none of these things can happen to us without the permission of God, who is the supreme Arbiter of all things.

You lose nothing by having Faith, but Faith on its own is a big risk. So, when you choose a life of Faith, you need to be ready for fulfilled promises and any form of persecution.

So if people who are being persecuted and killed are considered overcomers, where did we get the idea that overcoming means to eradicate sickness and poverty?

He was probably never married. Some suppose that he was a widower. Jewish and rabbinical custom, the completeness of his moral character, his ideal conception of marriage as reflecting the mystical union of Christ with his church, his exhortations to conjugal, parental, and filial duties, seem to point to experimental knowledge of domestic life. But as a Christian missionary moving from place to place, and exposed to all sorts of hardship and persecution, he felt it his duty to abide alone.357 He sacrificed the blessings of home and family to the advancement of the kingdom of Christ.358 His "bodily presence was weak, and his speech contemptible" (of no value), in the superficial judgment of the Corinthians, who missed the rhetorical ornaments, yet could not help admitting that his "letters were weighty and strong."359  Some of the greatest men have been small in size, and some of the purest souls forbidding in body. Socrates was the homeliest, and yet the wisest of Greeks. Neander, a converted Jew, like Paul, was short, feeble, and strikingly odd in his whole appearance, but a rare humility, benignity, and heavenly aspiration beamed from his face beneath his dark and bushy eyebrows. So we may well imagine that the expression of Paul’s countenance was highly intellectual and spiritual, and that he looked "sometimes like a man and sometimes like an angel."360 He was afflicted with a mysterious, painful, recurrent, and repulsive physical infirmity, which he calls a "thorn in the flesh, " and which acted as a check upon spiritual pride and self-exultation over his abundance of revelations.361  He bore the heavenly treasure in an earthly vessel and his strength was made perfect in weakness.362  But all the more must we admire the moral heroism which turned weakness itself into an element of strength, and despite pain and trouble and persecution carried the gospel salvation triumphantly from Damascus to Rome.

This holy Doctor has written many noteworthy things, especially, as you must always remember, that a good Christian gives thanks in the midst of persecutions, and unless you do so, you have even less right to call yourself a good religious than a good Christian.

A biblical theology of persecution creates a framework for understanding God’s sovereign purpose in allowing the evil dominions of darkness to inflict suffering on His children.

On this view, then, Paul envisions an eschatological, end-of-time Antichrist, a man characterized by sin and destruction who will assume a place of influence and authority within the professing Church from which he will persecute God’s people and foment a spiritual apostasy (cf. Matt. 7:21-23; 2 Tim. 1:15; Rev. 3:1; 11:7-13; 20:7-10), all of which must come to pass before the Lord Jesus can return in fullness.

As did ancient Israel, America progressively redefined what was right and wrong, adopting a new morality to replace the old. It now called evil “good,” and good “evil.” What it had once celebrated, it now condemned, and what it had once worshipped, it now reviled. And on the other hand, what it had once condemned, it now celebrated and what it had once reviled, it now worshipped. American culture grew increasingly carnal, materialistic, coarse, vulgar, and self-indulgent. Instead of being “a light to the world” as its founders had envisioned, America was now saturating the world with pornography. And while Israel had killed thousands of its children on the altars of its new gods, America killed not thousands but millions of its unborn children on the altars of its pleasures and convenience. Its collective hands were covered in blood. As for those within America who refused to go along with its moral and spiritual apostasy, those who remained faithful to God and His ways, they were now increasingly marginalized in the nation’s newly apostate culture, mocked in its media, vilified in its public discourse, and increasingly in danger of persecution. America, brought into existence and dedicated by its founders to be a vessel of God’s purposes, had now transformed into its very opposite: a civilization turned in upon itself, at war against its own foundations, and at war with God. Those who founded America not only foretold its future blessings—but also gave warning. It was this: if America ever turned away from God, then the same judgments that fell upon ancient Israel would fall upon America.3 The appearance of the same harbingers in America that had once appeared in the last days of ancient Israel matches their prophecies.

This may be at once the curse and the blessing of the modern age, that the ready availability of printed books—and now, electronic versions easily downloadable from virtually anywhere on earth—has enabled teachings to be preserved and passed down, passed around, and disseminated to anyone with even a glimmer of interest. It's a curse, because this ready availability cheapens the teaching by making it that much easier to obtain without all the psychological preparation of periods of intense study, fasting, purification, and other conditioning techniques. The effect of this is noticeable on social media and websites in which serious studies of various forms of esoteric tradition are airily dismissed by casual readers who have difficulty understanding their specialized terminology due to a lack of years of preparatory instruction or even a basic classical education, but still feel competent enough to pass judgment. Yet books are what we have in lieu of the secret society, the midnight initiations, the training by an experienced guru. Books also have preserved essential information from being lost due to persecution by enemies or opponents, or to execution or death by natural causes of lineage holders in sacred traditions (the Chinese invasion of Tibet comes to mind, and the decimation of various sects in Iraq and Afghanistan by the Taliban, the Islamic State, and others beginning with the oppression of the Kurds under Saddam Hussein). A deeper question than we can address adequately in this place is what happens to a tradition if its human teachers are all dead, unable to pass on the oral instruction or the psycho-spiritual techniques of initiation?

Blessed are the meek, for they are barricaded from the shots of the devil's artillery and the persecutions of this world by sacks of wool. They are like glass vessels packed in hay or straw to preserve them from jarring. Meekness is the strong shield by which the arrows of wrath are broken or turned aside. The meek are clothed in very soft cotton which defends them perfectly without offence to anyone.

Despite the fact that Christianity initially was a non-violent radical movement of God's people, many today who claim to be of Christ seem to see war as needed and even God ordained. Such blasphemy is hardly new. Since the days of Constantine (I) when the State and the Church made an unholy alliance, the deception of redemptive warfare has been clung to as if it were a life belt. Yet, ever since the time of Jesus the Messiah and prophets before Him many radicals (often persecuted and outcast) have questioned the morality of war. Now in the 21st Century generations are also rising up against the war machine among both the secular and spiritual sector of society. They recognise that war is for power, economy and pride, not justice or peace. Long may the voices in the wilderness be heard, as they prepare the way for the Lord, who when he comes again will be the undoing of evil and the establisher of a kingdom not of this world that will live in peace forever!!!

To understand fully the causes which drove so many thousands into schism and heresy, leading to wars and persecutions, and the establishment of the Inquisition, it is necessary{6} to cast a glance at the character of the men who represented the Church before the people, and at the use which they made, for good or for evil, of the absolute spiritual despotism which had become established. In

The church is assailed by Islamic fundamentalism in the East and secular fundamentalism in the West. I hate going into book stores because the religion section is soiled with volumes filled with ultraliberal, antiorthodox propaganda, wishy-washy nonsense of spiritual fuzzy-wuzzy feelings, biographical ramblings of Christian apostates, and greedy charlatans promising wealth and prosperity as if God were some kind of slot machine. I’m not bothered so much that people write these books, but I’m deeply troubled by the fact that so many people buy them. The world is cold, brutal, and dark, and it is only getting worse. If this is the hour approaching the millennium, I tremor to think what a tribulation might be like! Evidently postmillennialists do not receive email updates from Christian parachurch groups that minister to the persecuted church like Voice of the Martyrs and Barnabas Fund because Christians in Sudan, Iran, and North Korea know full well that the millennium ain’t getting closer from their point of view.

Romans 12:9-21 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Man's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses. Man cannot live by bread alone. To flourish, he must live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. We should concentrate all our thoughts on the realm of the Spirit. Through making the word of God the standard of our lives, we are able to do so. Then we will begin manifesting the spiritual power of the children of God. Nothing can defeat us, or make us unhappy. We may be troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. We will rise above every earthly circumstance because our thoughts are in the realm of the Spirit. Whatever may happen around us is inconsequential because we are aware of the Reality -- God.

Therefore, it is perfectly clear and natural that the principal task in the life of a Christian, the essence of the spiritual life, is a constant, never-ending battle with evil, which does not relax, even for a moment. But with what evil should a Christian constantly do battle? Can it be that his calling consists of incessantly observing, watching for the appearance of evil in the people surrounding him and to judge, rebuke, and punish them for this evil? The majority of people act in just such a way, which is why judgment of others and mutual attacks upon one another for evil acts, or only apparently evil acts, are increasing without limit. And this is what makes contemporary life a living hell. Each person seeks out evil in other people, reproaching, attacking and berating them, not noticing the evil in their own soul. Clearly, the Apostle’s warning is being fulfilled: If you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another (Gal 5:15). What, then, should we do? And with what evil should the Christian engage in battle? A Christian should fight every type of evil wherever it appears, but this battle with evil should, in the first place, be a battle in his own soul. The battle with evil should begin with oneself, and only then will it be correct, reasonable, and sound. One who has fought and rooted out evil in his own soul will much more easily wage a battle with evil in the souls of other people; and the less evil remains in the soul of the soldier of Christ, the more successful this battle will be. This great truth has been completely forgotten by contemporary people who have turned away from Christianity and think that they can benefit humanity by persecuting and harassing others for things that they perceive to be evil, but which may not necessarily be so, all the while themselves remaining evil in their own souls. “A battle with evil in my own soul” is a true Christian’s fundamental motto, and it is the one true principle, the one sound and reliable foundation on which one can build the well-being of humanity. Neither mutual persecution or oppression for different political convictions, nor the brutal annihilation of dissenting individuals with which modern leaders are occupied, but the destruction of evil in one’s own soul is that which is necessary. This is the only way to avoid the terrible abyss of destruction into which humanity is on the verge of careening. All

CONCLUSION TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES The church at Ephesus represents the danger of losing our first love (2:4), that fresh devotion to Christ that characterized the early church. The church at Smyrna represents the danger of fear of suffering and was exhorted, “Do not fear what you are about to suffer” (2:10). With persecution against believers worldwide so strong today, the church can take heart that Christ is aware of her suffering. The church at Pergamum illustrates the constant danger of doctrinal compromise (2:14–15), often the first step toward complete defection. The modern church that has forsaken so many fundamentals of biblical faith needs to heed this warning! The church at Thyatira is a monument to the danger of moral compromise (2:20). The church today may well take heed to the departure from moral standards that has invaded the church itself. The church at Sardis is a warning against the danger of spiritual deadness (3:1–2), of orthodoxy without life, of mere outward appearance. The church at Philadelphia commended by our Lord is nevertheless warned against the danger of not holding fast (3:11), and exhorted to keep “my word about patient endurance,” to maintain the “little power” that they did have and to wait for their coming Lord. The final message to the church at Laodicea is a telling indictment, a warning against the danger of lukewarmness (3:15–16), of self-sufficiency, of being unconscious of desperate spiritual need. Each of these messages is amazingly relevant and pointed in its analysis of what our Lord sees as He stands in the midst of His church. The

One of the most accurate ways to detect and measure the activity of God is to note the amount of opposition that is present. The stronger the persecution, the more significant the spiritual vitality of the believers.

Our psychological and spiritual vigilance is very important during a time of persecution

Believers saw it as a holy battle, a spiritual warfare at its height. Believers saw themselves in a spiritual war with demons and did not see flesh and blood. When being persecuted they had pity and love for the persecutors.

There had been a riot or two already. But persecution was not to be feared. It would no doubt cause apostasies, as it had always done, but these were deplorable only on account of the individual apostates. On the other hand, it would reassure the faithful; and purge out the half-hearted. Once, in the early ages, Satan's attack had been made on the bodily side, with whips and fire and beasts; in the sixteenth century it had been on the intellectual side; in the twentieth century on the springs of moral and spiritual life. Now it seemed as if the assault was on all three planes at once. But

Because of our spiritual union, Christians are drawn together by an internal force. They love one another, they care for one another, and they feel closest to heaven when they are assembled together. In the past, persecution, distress, and various threats could not deter Christians from regularly assembling. Christians of old often met in the forests, fields, or even in dark dens or caves. They did not mind traveling many miles in difficult conditions. All they knew was that they loved the Lord, and desired to meet with the brethren to worship the living God collectively, and enjoy the fellowship of the saints.

Saying, “I don’t agree with you,” or going so far as to say, “I think your belief structure is childish,” does not amount to persecution. Insensitivity is not the same as harassment or oppression.

Paul tells us: “because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction” (1 Thessalonians 1:4 – 5). The gospel they believed and received wasn’t just a theological construct or a churchy platitude. Sure, it came through spoken and written words, and it was preached, taught, and shared. But it also came in power. Often Christians are either “word” people or “power” people. On the one hand, we may lean toward a rationalized Christianity. This type of Christianity holds to the gospel Word without gospel power. It preaches, teaches, catechizes, studies, memorizes, and shares the word but with little effect. It possesses “wise and persuasive words” but not “demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Corinthians 2:4). This kind of Christianity can master systematic, biblical, and historical theology without being mastered by Christ. It can identify idols but remains powerless to address their power. Why? Because it replaces the power of the Spirit with the power of knowledge. On the other hand, there is an equal danger in spiritualized Christianity. Such Christianity prays, sings, shouts, and claims victory over a lost world without lifting a finger to share God’s gospel. It is not enough to pray for power; we must proclaim God’s Word. The power of the Spirit works through the proclaimed Word. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ. My pastor during college, Tom Nelson, always said: “Don’t just stand on a shovel and pray for a hole.” Spiritualized Christianity tends to stand and pray, emphasizing private or emotional experiences with God. What we need is prayer and proclamation, power and Word. The Thessalonians had word and power, they grew in understanding and experience, but they also had full conviction. It is not enough to have spiritual power and good theology. These must also be coupled with faith, an active embrace of God’s promises in Christ, which brings about conviction. Full conviction comes when we are set free from false forms of security and experience Spirit-empowered faith in the word of Christ. It springs from genuine encounter with Christ. Full conviction transcends intellectual doubt and emotional experiences, and in the silence of persecution it says: “Christ is enough.” True security, deep security, comes through the reasonable, powerful, Christ-centered conviction that Jesus is enough, not only for us but for the world. When we falter, the church is present to exhort, encourage, and pray for one another to set apart Christ as Lord in our hearts. May we toss out the penny stocks of the fear of man to invest deeply in the limitless riches of Christ.

APRIL 15 BREAK AND DIVIDE EVERY DEMONIC CONFEDERACY I WILL NOT be silent when those who hate me have lifted up their heads and taken crafty counsel against My people. They have consulted together against My children and put a confederacy in place to cut you off so that you will be remembered no more. I will deal with them as I dealt with the enemies of the Israelites, and they will become refuse on the earth. They will be like the whirling dust and the chaff that blows before the wind. I will cause them to confounded and dismayed forever, and I will put them to shame that they may perish. For My name alone is the Lord, and I am the Most High over all the earth. PSALM 83 Prayer Declaration Father, I break and divide every demonic confederacy against my life in the name of Jesus, and I loose confusion into every demonic confederacy directed against my life, family, and church. Persecute them with Your tempest, and make them afraid of Your terrible storm. Let them be confounded and troubled forever. Let them be confused and attack each other until they perish.

MAY 3 IN MY POWER YOU WILL REBUKE AND BIND THE PRINCES OF DARKNESS BELOVED, MEDITATE ON My statutes, for they will be your delight and counsel when demonic princes sit and speak against you. When they persecute you without a cause, let your heart rejoice in My Word as one who finds great treasure, because My Word will bring great peace to you and My righteous judgments will keep you from stumbling. My Holy Spirit has given you the power to rebuke and bind the princes of darkness. You do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. I am with you, and My power will give you the victory. PSALM 119:23–24, 161–165; MATTHEW 12:28; EPHESIANS 6:12 Prayer Declaration Father, in Your Spirit’s power I will bind the prince of the power of the air. I command all principalities of darkness to fall at the name of Jesus. I rebuke and bind all demonic princes that would speak against me and persecute me. I will rejoice in Your Word and in Your promise of great peace and righteous judgment. I cast out Beelzebub and all his demonic princes, and I rise victorious in Your power.

As for those in their midst who refused to go along with their moral and spiritual apostasy, those who remained faithful to God and His ways, they were now marginalized, mocked, vilified, and, finally, persecuted. The nation that had been brought into existence to be a vessel of God’s purposes had now transformed into its very opposite—a civilization turned in upon itself, at war against its own foundations, and at war with God. This is the setting and the stage, the nation to which the warnings, the signs, the harbingers, and manifestations of national judgment are sent—one of which is the sign of the Shemitah.

Step One Preparing The Mind Anytime athletes compete, they condition themselves that they may win the prize. An athlete is well self-disciplined, and temperate in all things. They tell their bodies what to do rather than letting their bodies tell them what to do. They have self-control and self-discipline in every aspect of life including their diet, in sleeping, in their behavior, in their conduct, and in their exercise. They keep a goal in mind with a plan of attack, and a determination to win. They exercise their bodies with a plan to optimize themselves in strength to overcome. For example a runner will be more concerned with leg exercises and the parts of the body which help run. They will train for endurance more so than strength, whereas some other athletes may be concerned with upper body strength only. Likewise we need to be conditioned in all things and well-disciplined to exercise ourselves towards godliness. Our target workout is not upper or lower body, but the spiritual body with soundness of mind. Without self-discipline it is impossible to memorize the amount of Scripture we should memorize. It goes without saying that mental conditioning should be a primary focus when attempting to memorize. That way, one may be optimized for memorizing the word of God. A runner exercises their legs for optimum performance and likewise we should also exercise our minds in Christ for memorizing and walking in wisdom. To make the most of memorization time one needs to be fully alert. It is best not to do it after a long day of work, an extremely stressful period of time, early in the morning when you’re groggy, or late at night before you go to bed. Rather it is better to pick a peaceful time of day during which you are most alert. Sometimes a small sip of coffee or other mental stimulant can help wake you up enough for meditation time. In order to be well conditioned mentally, first we need to understand how to be at peace within ourselves. If you’re often stressed out it can be difficult to memorize what you need to. Watch your own heart and be certain that you don’t take things too critically in life. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you take it. If you find yourself stressed out often, it may be more of how you’re handling the situation, than what’s happening to you. Although there may be something stressful happening in your life you may not need to take it so hard. In fact, the Lord calls us to always be rejoicing. As it is written, “Rejoice always” 1Th 5:16  The apostles through hardship and persecution were known to give joyous glory to the Lord. After being beaten by the council in Acts the apostles rejoiced in the Lord for the persecution they received. As we read, “…and when they had called for the apostles and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. So they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name.” Act 5:40-41 Likewise our temperance and spiritual state of mind can help us when it comes to time for memorizing the word of God. There are both short term and long term exercises that we should practice. In the short term we should learn to rest in Christ and release things to Him. In the long term we should grow in meekness, not taking things so critically in life that we can be at peace.

There are two “camps” which interpret Sor Juana's final years: the Catholic interpretation sees her renunciation as a turn to spirituality and devotion, while the secular camp sees Sor Juana as a woman persecuted by the Church. Both positions are ideological, for they are based on a desire to depict Sor Juana as either converting to or surrendering to the desires of the institutional Church. Both are too simplistic.

This same activity is evident in Daniel 10, where demonic spirits are called the “prince of the kingdom of Persia” and the “prince of Greece.” These are demons whose function is to influence the leaders of these nations to do their bidding, especially the persecution of the Jewish people, who were ruled by the Persians

The chief effort of unprincipled men is to quote the words of the recollected, misinterpreting them in order to slander and condemn them by means of some person who is either senseless or possessed, and who takes for wrong what he does not understand. Fear not men's persecutions, though they are the worst of all, for in the midst of this whirlwind, like another Elisha, you can mount to the heaven of contemplation.[1111] Imitate a swarm of bees that return to the hive during a tempest. Remember, trees supply their own strength which encloses itself in the root; springs are warmer at their fount in the coldest weather; fish dive into the water, the frogs leave off croaking. Let us follow their example by being the more recollected as persecution waxes fiercer, for this is I best way to overcome it.   Only

learn by experience the truth of the wise man's words: ' When they heard that by their punishments the others were benefited, they remembered the Lord, wondering at the end,  what was come to pass.' [1112]   ‘What was come to pass ' means the benefits conferred by trials suffered well.   At such times we should think of the Lord, not of our tempters, for if, as Gregory we should consider while reading Holy Scripture not him who wrote, but what he wrote, neither should we think during temptation of our persecutors, but of God, who allows it, to inure and teach us understanding from our trials.   Though you may be persecuted on all sides, do not be dismayed for God will make the truth known, and will deliver you as he did David, who being surrounded on all parts, lost hope of escaping from Saul's hands. Yet God so befriended him that he got the mastery over his enemy, allowing him to go free instead of repaying evil by evil.   Chapter

Some people persecute others in order to obtain their office and to injure their good name, thinking to increase their own, yet with all this, they feign to be religious.   Even if this happens to you, if you are good no harm can result to you, for no one can take God from you, and to take away anything else is to relieve you of trouble. But you must be cautious and commit no open fault, for these people will load you with bitter reproaches if you reveal any want of virtue. They will so rave and fulminate against you that they will seem rather to be persecuting than correcting you. But like a good knight, fear them not, for the accusers you think are your enemies are your advisers and are very useful in God's house. They are like the smith's file, which wears off the superfluity of other things while spoiling itself.

Father, who can separate me from the love of Christ? Can trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things I am more than a conqueror through Him who loves me! (Rom. 8:35, 37)

Life is short so live to the fullest. Laugh as much as you can and always forgive someone that hurts you because the only one that you are hurting by not forgiving is yourself. Love those that persecute you and never pay back evil for evil because an eye for eye will leave the whole world blind. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Islam is a close union of the spiritual and the temporal; it is the reign of a dogma, it is the heaviest chain that humanity has ever borne.... Islam has its beauties as a religion;.... But to the human reason Islamism has only been injurious. The minds that it has shut from the light were, no doubt, already closed in their own internal limits; but it has persecuted free thought, I shall not say more violently than other religions, but more effectually. It has made of the countries that it has conquered 9 closed field to the rational culture of the mind. What is, in fact -essentially distinctive of the Musalman is his hatred of science, his persuasion that research is useless, frivolous, almost impious—the natural sciences, because they are attempts at rivalry with God; the historical sciences, because they apply to times anterior to Islam, they may revive ancient heresies. Renan concludes by saying:— "Islam, in treating science as an enemy, is only consistent, but it is a dangerous thing to be consistent. To its own misfortune Islam has been successful. By slaying science it has slain itself; and is condemned in the world to a complete inferiority.

The spiritual legacy of that missionary couple was so great that more than a century after they died, the enemy was still mad about the way they lived. He was still mad someone had come and planted the gospel flag on "his" territory. Still mad that he had lost even one inch of ground, even one heart that would now spend eternity in heaven. 'How dare they!' More than a hundred years after they died, people pointed to the place where their bones were buried and said, 'Those were Christian people." Dear reader, if Satan is till mad one hundred years after you die about the way you lived your life and the witness you were for Christ, that's a mark of high honor, an amazing spiritual legacy! (pages 265-66)

Three ways thus lay open to them, by which they might obtain the knowledge of God. They could look up into the immensity of heaven, and by pondering the harmony of creation come to know its Ruler, the Word of the Father, Whose all-ruling providence makes known the Father to all. Or, if this was beyond them, they could converse with holy men, and through them learn to know God, the Artificer of all things, the Father of Christ, and to recognize the worship of idols as the negation of the truth and full of all impiety. Or else, in the third place, they could cease from lukewarmness and lead a good life merely by knowing the law. For the law was not given only for the Jews, nor was it solely for their sake that God sent the prophets, though it was to the Jews that they were sent and by the Jews that they were persecuted. The law and the prophets were a sacred school of the knowledge of God and the conduct of the spiritual life for the whole world.

For the Supernatural, entering a human soul, opens to it new possibilities both of good and evil. From that point the road branches: one way to sanctity, love, humility, the other to spiritual pride, self-righteousness, persecuting zeal. And no way back to the mere humdrum virtues and vices of the unawakened soul. If the Divine call does not make us better, it will make us very much worse. Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. Of all created beings the wickedest is one who originally stood in the immediate presence of God. There seems no way out of this. It gives a new application to Our Lord’s words about ‘counting the cost’.