Victory Of Good Over Evil Quotes

We represent the true human condition, the one permanent victory over cruelty and chaos. . . . Our true home is the imagination, and our kingdom is the wide-open world.

We Africans will fight, if necessary, and we know that we shall win, as we are confident in the victory of good over evil.

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, These are the seals of that most firm assurance Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength; And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, Mother of many acts and hours, should free The serpent that would clasp her with his length; These are the spells by which to reassume An empire o'er the disentangled doom. To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?...But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated...'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan,'controls the future:who controls the present controls the past.'...All that was needed was a series of victories over your own memory.

That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned: That until there are no longer first-class and second class citizens of any nation; That until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; That until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained; And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique and in South Africa in subhuman bondage have been toppled and destroyed; Until bigotry and prejudice and malicious and inhuman self-interest have been replaced by understanding and tolerance and good-will; Until all Africans stand and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as they are in the eyes of Heaven; Until that day, the African continent will not know peace. We Africans will fight, if necessary, and we know that we shall win, as we are confident in the victory of good over evil.

On Dussehra, the day marking the victory of good over evil, however, the city of Bombay prepared to receive another wannabe incarnation of God. This time the mode of conveyance was not the television set, but a Swaraj Mazda souped up to resemble a chariot. And the new, self-styled avatar of Rama was not an actor but a politician: L. K. Advani, president of the BJP.

Using my concentration wisely and connecting widely" dwelling on the reality I n I creating. developing the root thinking, room clean inside" balancing naturally and spiritually, ambition is the mission" I n I only limitation is my imagination" I am free from vexation, full filled with Jah love. Good is always victorious over evil" Destiny guided by the most high. - Amadou Jarou Bah

Henceforth I learn, that to obey is best, And love, with fear, the only God; to walk As in His presence, ever to observe His providence, and on Him sole depend, Merciful over all his works, with good Still overcoming evil, and by small Accomplishing great things; by things deemed weak Subverting wordly strong, and worldly wise By simply meek; that suffering for truth's sake Is fortitude to highest victory; And, to the faithful, death the gate of life - Taught this by His example, whom I now Acknowledge my Redeemer ever blest.

Who I Am in Christ I Am Accepted   John 1:12 I am God’s child. John 15:15 I am Christ’s friend. Romans 5:1 I have been justified. 1 Corinthians 6:17 I am united with the Lord, and I am one spirit with Him. 1 Corinthians 6:20 I have been bought with a price. I belong to God. 1 Corinthians 12:27 I am a member of Christ’s Body. Ephesians 1:1 I am a saint. Ephesians 1:5 I have been adopted as God’s child. Ephesians 2:18 I have direct access to God through the Holy Spirit. Colossians 1:14 I have been redeemed and forgiven of all my sins. Colossians 2:10 I am complete in Christ. I Am Secure   Romans 8:1-2 I am free from condemnation. Romans 8:28 I am assured all things work together for good. Romans 8:31-34 I am free from any condemning charges against me. Romans 8:35-39 I cannot be separated from the love of God. 2 Corinthians 1:21-22 I have been established, anointed and sealed by God. Philippians 1:6 I am confident that the good work God has begun in me will be perfected. Philippians 3:20 I am a citizen of heaven. Colossians 3:3 I am hidden with Christ in God. 2 Timothy 1:7 I have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind. Hebrews 4:16 I can find grace and mercy in time of need. 1 John 5:18 I am born of God and the evil one cannot touch me. I Am Significant   Matthew 5:13-14 I am the salt and light of the earth. John 15:1,5 I am a branch of the true vine, a channel of His life. John 15:16 I have been chosen and appointed to bear fruit. Acts 1:8 I am a personal witness of Christ. 1 Corinthians 3:16 I am God’s temple. 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 I am a minister of reconciliation for God. 2 Corinthians 6:1 I am God’s coworker (see 1 Corinthians 3:9). Ephesians 2:6 I am seated with Christ in the heavenly realm. Ephesians 2:10 I am God’s workmanship. Ephesians 3:12 I may approach God with freedom and confidence. Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

This is the greatness of human consciousness, but at the same time it is always posing the practical problem of how to live upon the lower level when one's understanding reaches to the higher. For if we discover that there is some superior order harmonizing what seem to be conflicts at the level of our normal, individual consciousness, may not this new understanding upset our standards and weaken the will to fight? If we see that the Good of the world is not the victory of· good over evil but, on the contrary, the tense polarity of good-and-evil in perpetual conflict, is it not possible that this will lead us to a recognition of the function of evil making it difficult for us to fight and hate it?

Don't tell me God works in mysterious ways,’ Yossarian continued, hurtling on over her objection. ‘There's nothing so mysterious about it. He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about - a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?’ ‘Pain?’ Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife pounced upon the word victoriously. ‘Pain is a useful symptom. Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers.’ ‘And who created the dangers?’ Yossarian demanded ... ‘Why couldn't He have used a doorbell instead to notify us?

All religions were one, maintained the Sufi saints, merely different manifestations of the same divine reality. What was important was not the empty ritual of the mosque or temple, but to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart - that we all have Paradise within us, if we know where to look. Deal only with things that are good. If you trade coal, you will be covered in black soot. But if you trade musk, you will smell of perfume. Good deeds have good effects. Bad deeds have bad effects. The mullahs are always trying to fight a jihad with their swords, without realizing that the real jihad is within, fighting yourself, achieving victory over your desires and the hell that evil can create within the human heart. Fighting with swords is a low kind of jihad. Fighting yourself is the greater jihad. As Latif said: "Don't kill infidels, kill your own ego". There is no fire in hell. Everyone who goes there brings their own fire and their own pain, from this world. The main struggle, especially when you are young, is to avoid four things: desire, greed, pride and attachment. Of course you can't do this completely - no human being can - but there are techniques for diverting the mind. There are few places in the world where landscape and divinity are more closely linked than in southern India.

I do not expect everyone to like me; but I would be extremely surprised if a person whom I consider highly spiritual, a person that I properly evaluate and conclude to be mentally healthy and very sane, a person that is mostly and foremost good at heart, hated me. That is an impossibility, as I have confirmed after traveling the whole world and meeting thousands of human beings. Evil and good do not resonate at the same frequency, and that is what disgust, distrust and lower affinity mean. And so, we are then allowed to conclude that whoever loves everyone doest not know himself, and whoever hates everyone doest not understand the purpose of life; but one who can see this polarity and interfere with its order without being a part of it, has transcended the trap of attachment, a trap which can only be conquered once we conquer our need for a personality and the attachment to the ego; a trap from which nobody seeking for selfish gains in the wilderness of attachment can escape from. Only then, such enlightened soul will understand that the outer world is merely reflecting the inner world, and a soul cannot conquer one without conquering the other. In other words, the spirit must conquer the personality, as much as the personality must accept the spirit, for victory over life to come as much as we reach for it. Only when a marriage between the willpower of the personality with the sensitive loving need of the spirit is accomplished, can a human being transcend his nature, and in doing so, transcend the nature of the world.

Then one evening he reached the last chapter, and then the last page, the last verse. And there it was! That unforgivable and unfathomable misprint that had caused the owner of the books to order them to be pulped. Now Bosse handed a copy to each of them sitting round the table, and they thumbed through to the very last verse, and one by one burst out laughing. Bosse was happy enough to find the misprint. He had no interest in finding out how it got there. He had satisfied his curiosity, and in the process had read his first book since his schooldays, and even got a bit religious while he was at it. Not that Bosse allowed God to have any opinion about Bellringer Farm’s business enterprise, nor did he allow the Lord to be present when he filed his tax return, but – in other respects – Bosse now placed his life in the hands of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And surely none of them would worry about the fact that he set up his stall at markets on Saturdays and sold bibles with a tiny misprint in them? (‘Only ninety-nine crowns each! Jesus! What a bargain!’) But if Bosse had cared, and if, against all odds, he had managed to get to the bottom of it, then after what he had told his friends, he would have continued: A typesetter in a Rotterdam suburb had been through a personal crisis. Several years earlier, he had been recruited by Jehovah’s Witnesses but they had thrown him out when he discovered, and questioned rather too loudly, the fact that the congregation had predicted the return of Jesus on no less than fourteen occasions between 1799 and 1980 – and sensationally managed to get it wrong all fourteen times. Upon which, the typesetter had joined the Pentecostal Church; he liked their teachings about the Last Judgment, he could embrace the idea of God’s final victory over evil, the return of Jesus (without their actually naming a date) and how most of the people from the typesetter’s childhood including his own father, would burn in hell. But this new congregation sent him packing too. A whole month’s collections had gone astray while in the care of the typesetter. He had sworn by all that was holy that the disappearance had nothing to do with him. Besides, shouldn’t Christians forgive? And what choice did he have when his car broke down and he needed a new one to keep his job? As bitter as bile, the typesetter started the layout for that day’s jobs, which ironically happened to consist of printing two thousand bibles! And besides, it was an order from Sweden where as far as the typesetter knew, his father still lived after having abandoned his family when the typesetter was six years old. With tears in his eyes, the typesetter set the text of chapter upon chapter. When he came to the very last chapter – the Book of Revelation – he just lost it. How could Jesus ever want to come back to Earth? Here where Evil had once and for all conquered Good, so what was the point of anything? And the Bible… It was just a joke! So it came about that the typesetter with the shattered nerves made a little addition to the very last verse in the very last chapter in the Swedish bible that was just about to be printed. The typesetter didn’t remember much of his father’s tongue, but he could at least recall a nursery rhyme that was well suited in the context. Thus the bible’s last two verses plus the typesetter’s extra verse were printed as: 20. He who testifies to these things says, Surely I am coming quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!21. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.22. And they all lived happily ever after.

Waste not what remains of life in consideration about others, when it makes not for the common good. Be sure you are neglecting other work if you busy yourself with what such a one is doing and why, with what he is saying, thinking, or scheming. All such things do but divert you from the steadfast guardianship of your own soul. It behoves you, then, in every train of thought to shun all that is aimless or useless, and, above all, everything officious or malignant. Accustom yourself so, and only so, to think, that, if any one were suddenly to ask you, Of what are you thinking-now? you could answer frankly and at once, Of so and so. Then it will plainly appear that you are all simplicity and kindliness, as befits a social being who takes little thought for enjoyment or any phantom pleasure; who spurns contentiousness, envy, or suspicion; or any passion the harbouring of which one would blush to own. For such a man, who has finally determined to be henceforth among the best, is, as it were, a priest and minister of the Gods, using the spirit within him, which preserves a man unspotted from pleasure, unwounded by any pain, inaccessible to all insult, innocent of all evil; a champion in the noblest of all contests—the contest for victory over every passion. He is penetrated with justice; he welcomes with all his heart whatever befalls, or is appointed by Providence. He troubles not often, or ever without pressing public need, to consider what another may say, or do, or design. Solely intent upon his own conduct, ever mindful of his own concurrent part in the destiny of the Universe, he orders his conduct well, persuaded that his part is good. For the lot appointed to every man is part of the law of all things as well as a law for him. He forgets not that all rational beings are akin, and that the love of all mankind is part of the nature of man; also that we must not think as all men think, but only as those who live a life accordant with nature. As for those who live otherwise, he remembers always how they act at home and abroad, by night and by day, and how and with whom they are found in company. And so he cannot esteem the praise of such, for they enjoy not their own approbation.

During the second half of the sixties, the center of the crisis shifted to the sprawling ghettos of the North. Here black experience was radically different from that in the South. The stability of institutional relationships was largely absent in Northern ghettos, especially among the poor. Over twenty years ago, the black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier was able to see the brutalizing effect of urbanization upon lower class blacks : ". . . The bonds of sympathy and community of interests that held their parents together in the rural environment have been unable to withstand the disintegrating forces in the city." Southern blacks migrated North in search of work, seeking to become transformed from a peasantry into a working class. But instead of jobs they found only misery, and far from becoming a proletariat, they came to constitute a lumpenproletariat, an underclass of rejected people. Frazier's prophetic words resound today with terrifying precision: ". . . As long as the bankrupt system of Southern agriculture exists, Negro families will continue to seek a living in the towns and cities of the country. They will crowd the slum areas of Southern cities or make their way to Northern cities, where their family life will become disrupted and their poverty will force them to depend upon charity." Out of such conditions, social protest was to emerge in a form peculiar to the ghetto, a form which could never have taken root in the South except in such large cities as Atlanta or Houston. The evils in the North are not easy to understand and fight against, or at least not as easy as Jim Crow, and this has given the protest from the ghetto a special edge of frustration. There are few specific injustices, such as a segregated lunch counter, that offer both a clear object of protest and a good chance of victory. Indeed, the problem in the North is not one of social injustice so much as the results of institutional pathology. Each of the various institutions touching the lives of urban blacks—those relating to education, health, employment, housing, and crime—is in need of drastic reform. One might say that the Northern race problem has in good part become simply the problem of the American city—which is gradually becoming a reservation for the unwanted, most of whom are black.

I see over and beyond all these national wars, new "empires," and whatever else lies in the foreground. What I am concerned with — for I see it preparing itself slowly and hesitatingly — is the United Europe. It was the only real work, the one impulse in the souls, of all the broad-minded and deep-thinking men of this century — this reparation of a new synthesis, and the tentative effort to anticipate the future of "the European." Only in their weaker moments, or when they grew old, did they fall back again into the national narrowness of the "Fatherlanders" — then they were once more "patriots." I am thinking of men like Napoleon, Heinrich Heine, Goethe, Beethoven, Stendhal, Schopenhauer. Perhaps Richard Wagner likewise belongs to their number, concerning whom, as a successful type of German obscurity, nothing can be said without some such "perhaps." But to the help of such minds as feel the need of a new unity there comes a great explanatory economic fact: the small States of Europe — I refer to all our present kingdoms and "empires" — will in a short time become economically untenable, owing to the mad, uncontrolled struggle for the possession of local and international trade. Money is even now compelling European nations to amalgamate into one Power. In order, however, that Europe may enter into the battle for the mastery of the world with good prospects of victory (it is easy to perceive against whom this battle will be waged), she must probably "come to an understanding" with England. The English colonies are needed for this struggle, just as much as modern Germany, to play her new role of broker and middleman, requires the colonial possessions of Holland. For no one any longer believes that England alone is strong enough to continue to act her old part for fifty years more; the impossibility of shutting out homines novi from the government will ruin her, and her continual change of political parties is a fatal obstacle to the carrying out of any tasks which require to be spread out over a long period of time. A man must to-day be a soldier first and foremost that he may not afterwards lose his credit as a merchant. Enough; here, as in other matters, the coming century will be found following in the footsteps of Napoleon — the first man, and the man of greatest initiative and advanced views, of modern times. For the tasks of the next century, the methods of popular representation and parliaments are the most inappropriate imaginable.

Next comes the Curse, as it is called, which God pronounced upon man. The prominent point in that curse turns chiefly on the contrast between man and nature. Man must work in the sweat of his brow: and woman bring forth in sorrow. As to work, if it is the result of the disunion, it is also the victory over it. The beasts have nothing more to do but to pick up the materials required to satisfy their wants: man on the contrary can only satisfy his wants by himself producing and transforming the necessary means. Thus even in these outside things man is dealing with himself. The story does not close with the expulsion from Paradise. We are further told, God said, ‘Behold Adam is become as one of us, to know good and evil.’ Knowledge is now spoken of as divine, and not, as before, as something wrong and forbidden. Such words contain a confutation of the idle talk that philosophy pertains only to the finitude of the mind. Philosophy is knowledge, and it is through knowledge that man first realises his original vocation, to be the image of God. When the record adds that God drove men out of the garden of Eden to prevent their eating of the tree of life, it only means that on his natural side certainly man is finite and mortal, but in knowledge infinite. We all know the theological dogma that man’s nature is evil, tainted with what is called Original Sin. Now while we accept the dogma, we must give up the setting of incident which represents original sin as consequent upon an accidental act of the first man. For the very notion of spirit is enough to show that man is evil by nature, and it is an error to imagine that he could ever be otherwise. To such extent as man is and acts like a creature of nature, his whole behaviour is what it ought not to be. For the spirit it is a duty to be free, and to realise itself by its own act. Nature is for man only the starting-point which he has to transform. The theological doctrine of original sin is a profound truth; but modem enlightenment prefers to believe that man is naturally good, and that he acts right so long as he continues true to nature. The hour when man leaves the path of mere natural being marks the difference between him, a self-conscious agent, and the natural world. But this schism, though it forms a necessary element in the very notion of spirit, is not the final goal of man. It is to this state of inward breach that the whole finite action of thought and will belongs. In that finite sphere man pursues ends of his own and draws from himself the material of his conduct. While he pursues these aims to the uttermost, while his knowledge and his will seek himself, his own narrow self apart from the universal, he is evil; and his evil is to be subjective. We seem at first to have a double evil here: but both are really the same. Man in so far as he is spirit is not the creature of nature: and when he behaves as such, and follows the cravings of appetite, he wills to be so. The natural wickedness of man is therefore unlike the natural life of animals. A mere natural life may be more exactly defined by saying that the natural man as such is an individual: for nature in every part is in the bonds of individualism. Thus when man wills to be a creature of nature, he wills in the same degree to be an individual simply. Yet against such impulsive and appetitive action, due to the individualism of nature, there also steps in the law or general principle. This law may either be an external force, or have the form of divine authority. So long as he continues in his natural state, man is in bondage to the law. It is true that among the instincts and affections of man, there are social or benevolent inclinations, love, sympathy, and others, reaching beyond his selfish isolation. But so long as these tendencies are instinctive, their virtual universality of scope and purport is vitiated by the subjective form which always allows free play to self-seeking and random action.

I do not expect everyone to like me; but I would be extremely surprised if a person whom I consider highly spiritual, a person that I properly evaluate and conclude to be mentally healthy and very sane, a person that is mostly and foremost good at heart, hated me. That is an impossibility, as I have confirmed after traveling the whole world and meeting thousands of human beings. Evil and good do not resonate at the same frequency, and that is what disgust, distrust and lower affinity mean. And so, we are then allowed to conclude that whoever loves everyone does not know himself, and whoever hates everyone doest not understand the purpose of life; but one who can see this polarity and interfere with its order without being a part of it, has transcended the trap of attachment, a trap which can only be conquered once we conquer our need for a personality and the attachment to the ego; a trap from which nobody seeking for selfish gains in the wilderness of attachment can escape from. Only then, such enlightened soul will understand that the outer world is merely reflecting the inner world, and a soul cannot conquer one without conquering the other. In other words, the spirit must conquer the personality, as much as the personality must accept the spirit, for victory over life to come as much as we reach for it. Only when a marriage between the willpower of the personality with the sensitive loving need of the spirit is accomplished, can a human being transcend his nature, and in doing so, transcend the nature of the world.

Courage exposes ambushes. Steadfastness destroys enemies. Keep your victories hidden. Do not sulk over defeat. Accept good. Bend before evil. Learn the rhythm which binds all men.

rejoice in the suffering itself, nor in iniquity, God forbid. We rejoice because we are thereby given the grace to play a tiny share in the victory of goodness over evil. We rejoice because we are graced to let Christ’s presence spread into a world that knows him not, has no time for him, and tends merely to laugh at the gift of his love, as the onlookers do in Tintoretto’s picture. We rejoice in a God who cares to save uncaring mankind.

The other great obstacle to abandoning oneself to Divine Providence is the presence of suffering, in our own lives as in the world around us. Even for those who abandon themselves to Him, God permits suffering; He leaves them wanting of certain things, in a manner sometimes painful. Think of the poverty in which the family of young Bernadette of Lourdes lived. Isn’t this a contradiction of the words of the Gospel? No, because the Lord can leave us wanting relative to certain things (sometimes judged indispensable in the eyes of the world), but He never leaves us deprived of what is essential: His presence, His peace and all that is necessary for the complete fulfillment of our lives, according to His plans for us. If He permits suffering, then it is our strength to believe, as Thérèse of Lisieux says, that “God does not permit unnecessary suffering.” In the domain of our personal lives, as in that of the history of the world, we must be convinced, if we want to go to the limits of our Christian faith, that God is sufficiently good and powerful to use whatever evil there may be, as well as any suffering however absurd and unnecessary it may appear to be, in our favor. We cannot have any mathematical or philosophical certitude of this; it can only be an act of faith. But it is precisely to this act of faith that we are invited by the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus, understood and received as the definitive victory of God over evil. Evil is a mystery, a scandal and it will always be so. It is necessary to do what one can to eliminate it, to relieve suffering, but it always remains present in our personal lives, as well as in the world. Its place in the economy of redemption reveals the wisdom of God, which is not the wisdom of man; it always retains something incomprehensible. …for My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are My ways above your ways and My thoughts above your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9). At certain moments in life, a Christian is necessarily invited to believe in the contradiction of appearances and to hope against all hope (Romans 4:18). There are inevitably circumstances where we cannot understand the “why” of God’s activity because it is no longer the wisdom of man, a wisdom within our capacity to understand and explain by human intelligence. Rather it is divine Wisdom, mysterious and incomprehensible, that thus intervenes.

Consider also that the fellow creature whom you hate is either a just man or a sinner. If a just man, it is certainly a great misfortune to be the declared enemy of a friend of God. If a sinner, it is no less deplorable that you should undertake to punish the malice of another by plunging your own soul into sin. And if your neighbor in his turn seeks vengeance for the injury you inflict upon him, where will your enmities end? Will there be any peace on the earth?   The Apostle teaches us a more noble revenge when he tells us "not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil by good" (Rom. 12:21 ) – that is, to triumph by our virtues over .the vices of our brethren. In endeavoring to bc revenged upon a fellow creature you are often disappointed and vanquished by anger itself. But if you overcome your passion, you gain a more glorious victory than he who conquers a city. Our noblest triumph is won by subduing ourselves, by subjecting our passions to the empire of reason,

The current spirit of our country inclines us to be troubled. It’s a sensible temptation. How can any one person or small group of people make a difference? How can we change and renew things so that our children grow up in a better world? We come back to a question suggested at the start of this book: How can we live in joy, and serve the common good as leaven, in a culture that no longer shares what we believe? The answer to that question springs from a simple historical fact: On a quiet Sunday morning two thousand years ago, God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. This small moment, unseen by any human eye, turned the world upside down and changed history forever. It confirmed Jesus’ victory over death and evil. It liberated those living and dead who lay in bondage to their sins. An anonymous ancient homily for Holy Saturday, speaking in the voice of Jesus Christ, reminds us of the full import of his resurrection: I am your God, who for your sake [has] become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants, I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. Jesus rose from the dead so that we could be joined to him and his victory. Believers know that Jesus was not only victorious then, in Jerusalem. He’ll also come in royal glory at the end of time, when he will judge the living and the dead. At Christ’s second coming, his kingdom will fully arrive. His reign will be complete. The time in which we find ourselves is an interim one. We may struggle as we seek to follow Jesus, but we also remember the great victories of our King: the victory in the past and the victory certain to come. And those victories give us hope. Hope

Finding Favor in God’s Eyes Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD…. Noah did everything just as God commanded him. —GENESIS 6:8,22     One way to find favor with God is to love His little children. In the New Testament we read where Jesus loved the young children and warned us as adults to be careful not to harm the little children. As a grandparent, I can gain favor with God by being kind and gentle with the little ones in our family. What an honor to be a part of the spiritual development of any child. In government, sports, business, medicine, education, theater, and music—there are those who rise to the top of their professions and are honored because they find favor through their actions, personalities, efforts, or sometimes just because of their social connections. They might be known for very amazing and noble accomplishments like running a nonprofit, discovering a new cancer drug, teaching those thought unteachable, or singing the most beautiful aria the world has ever heard. These are all remarkable reasons to have favor among men. But have you ever thought how much richer life would be to have God find favor with you as a parent, a grandparent? I stand in awe when I think of God finding favor with me, but He does. Noah lived in a world much like today’s, a world full of sin. Humanity hasn’t changed much over the centuries—we just give sin a different name. Yet through all this wickedness, Noah was a person who lived a godly life. His life was pleasing to God even during those evil days. Noah didn’t find favor because of his individual goodness but through his obedience to God. We are also judged according to the same standard—that of our personal faith and obedience. Even though Noah was upright and blameless before God, he wasn’t perfect. God recognized that Noah’s life reflected a genuine faith, but not always a perfect faith. Do you sometimes feel all alone in your walk with God? I know I do. Noah found that it wasn’t the surroundings of his life that kept him in close fellowship with God, but it was the heart of Noah that qualified him to find friendship with God. It isn’t important to find favor from our fellow humans. God’s favor is so much more rewarding. Somehow God’s favor with me is passed down through the favor from my grandchildren. As we live in this very difficult time of history, I might ask, “Do I find favor in God’s sight?” God gives us grace to live victoriously: “He gives us more grace” (James 4:6).

April 14 MORNING “All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head.” — Psalm 22:7 MOCKERY was a great ingredient in our Lord’s woe. Judas mocked Him in the garden; the chief priests and scribes laughed Him to scorn; Herod set Him at nought; the servants and the soldiers jeered at Him, and brutally insulted Him; Pilate and his guards ridiculed His royalty; and on the tree all sorts of horrid jests and hideous taunts were hurled at Him. Ridicule is always hard to bear, but when we are in intense pain it is so heartless, so cruel, that it cuts us to the quick. Imagine the Saviour crucified, racked with anguish far beyond all mortal guess, and then picture that motley multitude, all wagging their heads or thrusting out the lip in bitterest contempt of one poor suffering victim! Surely there must have been something more in the crucified One than they could see, or else such a great and mingled crowd would not unanimously have honoured Him with such contempt. Was it not evil confessing, in the very moment of its greatest apparent triumph, that after all it could do no more than mock at that victorious goodness which was then reigning on the cross? O Jesus, “despised and rejected of men,” how couldst Thou die for men who treated Thee so ill? Herein is love amazing, love divine, yea, love beyond degree. We, too, have despised Thee in the days of our unregeneracy, and even since our new birth we have set the world on high in our hearts, and yet Thou bleedest to heal our wounds, and diest to give us life. O that we could set Thee on a glorious high throne in all men’s hearts! We would ring out Thy praises over land and sea till men should as universally adore as once they did unanimously reject. “Thy creatures wrong Thee, O Thou sovereign Good! Thou art not loved, because not understood: This grieves me most, that vain pursuits beguile Ungrateful men, regardless of Thy smile.

Prayer for Healing Lord Jesus, Thou camest to heal our wounded and troubled hearts. I beg Thee to heal the torments that cause anxiety in my heart; I beg Thee, in a particular way, to heal all who are the cause of sin. I beg Thee to come into my life and heal me of the psychological harms that struck me in my early years and from the injuries that they have caused throughout my life. Lord Jesus, Thou knowest my burdens. I lay them all on Thy Good Shepherd's Heart. I beseech Thee – by the merits of the great, open wound in Thy Heart – to heal the small wounds that are in mine. Heal the pain of my memories, so that nothing that has happened to me will cause me to remain in pain and anguish, filled with anxiety. Heal, O Lord, all those wounds that have been the cause of all the evil that is rooted in my life. I want to forgive all those who have offended me. Look to those inner sores that make me unable to forgive. Thou who camest to forgive the afflicted of heart, please, heal my own heart. Heal, my Lord Jesus, those intimate wounds that cause me physical illness. I offer Thee my heart. Accept it, Lord, purify it and give me the sentiments of Thy Divine Heart. Help me to be meek and humble. Heal me, O Lord, from the pain caused by the death of my loved ones, which is oppressing me. Grant me to regain peace and joy in the knowledge that Thou art the Resurrection and the Life. Make me an authentic witness to Thy Resurrection, Thy victory over sin and death, Thy living presence among us. Amen.

The Need for Justice and the Problem of Evil The search for justice runs through all storytelling. We watch some nefarious villain executing his evil ploy and we hang on the edge of our seats hoping our hero will be victorious. There’s something fundamental in the human spirit that wants to see good triumph. This desire for justice is what attracts us to the adventure quest, like Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. There, Frodo Baggins is given a ring that holds the power of the evil Sauron, who seeks to wield it and rule Middle Earth. Because he bears this ring, Frodo assumes the dangerous responsibility of finding the path to destroy it. Frodo never asked for this assignment; circumstances thrust it upon him. Yet, he knows the quest is vital even if he may lose his life in the process. In one poignant scene, Frodo is feeling the weight of his choice and laments to Gandalf about the evil Gollum, who is threatening their quest: Frodo: It’s a pity Bilbo didn’t kill him when he had the chance! Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand. Many that live deserve death, and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many. Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened. Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you also were meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought. In Frodo’s complaint, we see a particular instance of the problem of evil. You may have heard someone complain about how a loving God could allow so much evil in the world. Frodo believes the world would be better if Gollum had been killed. It’s easy to make the charge that there’s too much evil in the world, but we don’t know how the story of this world plays out. However, fans know that Gandalf is right. Gollum’s existence does figure into the ultimate salvation of Middle Earth. Evil Gollum must exist in order for Frodo’s quest to succeed and a greater evil vanquished. The Roman executioner’s cruelty must also exist for the sacrifice of Jesus to succeed. It isn’t a contradiction to say God exists and is in control even if evil hasn’t been eliminated. We just haven’t gotten to the end of the story.

The biblical King David was also a sacred shepherd. His sensual and ecstatic songs of earthly love, so untypical of the Bible, derive from the ancient love rites of the shepherd king and the Goddess—her Canaanite names were Asherah, Astarte, Ashtoreth. The settled people of the Old Testament, like everyone else in the Near East, practiced Goddess worship. The Old Testament is the record of the conquest and massacre of these Neolithic people by the nomadic Hebrews, followers of a Sky God, who then set up their biblical God in the place of the ancient Goddess. The biblical Hebrews were a nomadic pastoral and patriarchal people, tribes of sheepherders and warriors who invaded land belonging to the matriarchal Canaanites. Both Hebrews and Canaanites were Semitic people. The Canaanites lived in agricultural communities and worshiped the orgiastic-ecstatic Moon Mother Astarte. As Old Testament stories relate, the Hebrews sacked, burned, and destroyed village after village belonging to the Canaanites, massacring or enslaving the people—a series of brutal invasions and slaughters described typically by theologians and preachers as “a spiritual victory.” In this way the Hebrews established themselves on the land, along with the worship of their Sky-and-Thunder God Yahweh (Jehovah), calling themselves his “chosen people.” Yahweh’s male prophets and priests, however, despite their political victory over the Canaanites, had to carry on a continuous struggle and fulmination against their own people, who kept “backsliding” into worship of the Great Mother, the Goddess of all their Near Eastern neighbors. For she had originally been the Goddess of the Hebrews themselves. This constant fight against matriarchal religion and custom is the primary theme of the Old Testament. It begins in Genesis, with the takeover of the Goddess’s Garden of Immortality by a male God, and the inversion of all her sacred symbols—tree, serpent, moon-fruit, woman—into icons of evil. Of the two sons of Eve and Adam, Cain was made the “evil brother” because he chose settled agriculture (matriarchal)—the “good brother” Abel was a nomadic pastoralist (patriarchal). The war against the Goddess is carried on by the prophets’ rantings against the “golden calf,” the “brazen serpents,” the “great harlot” and “Whore of Babylon” (the Babylonian Goddess Ishtar), against enchantresses, pythonic diviners, and those who practice witchcraft. It is in the prophets’ war against the Canaanite worship of “stone idols”—the Triple Moon Goddess worshiped as three horned pillars, or menhirs. One of her shrines was on Mount Sinai, which means “Mountain of the Moon.” Moses was commanded by “the Lord” to go forth and destroy these “idols”—who all had breasts. We are told monotheism began with the Jews, that it was the great “spiritual invention” of the religious leader Moses. This is not so. The worship of one God, like everything else in religion, began with the worship of the Goddess. Her universality has been duly noted by everyone who has ever studied the matter. “Monotheism, once thought to have been the invention of Moses or Akhnaton, was worldwide in the prehistoric and early historic world,” i.e., throughout the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages. As E. O. James wrote in The Cult of the Mother Goddess, “It seems that Evans was correct when he affirmed that it was a ‘monotheism in which the female form of divinity was supreme.” The original monotheism of the Goddess is perhaps most clearly shown by the fact that, in Elizabeth Gould Davis’s words, “Almighty Yahweh, the god of Moses and the later Hebrews, was originally a goddess.” His name, Iahu ’anat, derives from that of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna.

Your fight against evil, Christian, is one of resistance. Do that and the devil will flee (James 4:7). The power to resist, including the motivation, happens by faith. Faith in the same Jesus that “disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (Col. 2:15). Your faith is your weapon against the enemy of everything good. “In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one” (Eph. 6:16). And yes, resisting the evil one by faith can sometimes feel like putting on shoes not made for your feet and a war you don’t have the stamina to win. But no worries. This cosmic conflict won’t last always, for the God of peace is coming. The shoes you have on don’t belong to you, but you will be victorious over the evil one as if they were. “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Rom. 16:20). Amen.

Tomas thinks he is the Prince of Hungary” - Why would Adam say that to Martina? That wasn't the right question I kept asking myself. Did Adam say that to Martina or someone else? Was it meant as a message to me? How in what kind of conversation could it be said like that and why? What was Adam referring to when he said “The Prince of Hungary”? I was arguing with Rachel and Adam over the summer before. I challenged their belief that the UK was victorious in World War II and they were both puzzled, asking why. I tried to convince them by telling them the story of an Austrian Jewish lady who had migrated to the UK before the Anschluss and sensed that Nazi forces were approaching, but the UK denied her documents to stay and she ended up stuck between the Nazis in France and the UK on the Channel islands. The Nazis took all Jews from the islands, including Therese Steiner, and she ultimately ended up in Auschwitz and in the gas chambers. My point was that if the UK didn't defend its own citizens to avoid conflict, then how could they be seen as 'winners'? Who was the Jew here who was stuck between good and evil? I didn't realise that Adam in 2014 was trying to disprove my point, gaining victory without direct confrontation. Perhaps he was offended that I cared more about a poor, lonely Jewish girl trying to escape death and horrors than he would have cared himself.

By the time that Donald J. Trump was elected to the Presidency, the elections which chose the President had transformed from referendums about who would best administer the international slave trade into contests about who’d get the chance to reduce illiterate Muslims into pulpy masses of intestines. The people who’d voted for Trump went nuts because they’d won and had no idea what to do with their impossible victory. The country’s political liberals went nuts because Trump put them in the position of facing an undeniable and yet unpalatable truth. This was the truth that the political liberals could not deny and could not face: beyond making English Comp courses at community colleges very annoying, forty years of rhetorical progress had achieved little, and it turned out that feeling good about gay marriage did not alleviate the taint of being warmongers whose taxes had killed more Muslims than the Black Death. You can’t make evil disappear by being a reasonably nice person who mouths platitudes at dinner parties. Social media confessions do not alleviate suffering. You can’t talk the world into being a decent place while sacrificing nothing. The socialists didn’t go nuts. They were the people who’d thought about the complex problems facing the nation and decided that an honest solution to these problems could be achieved with applied Leftism. But don’t get your hopes up. Despite being correct in their thinking, the socialists were the most annoying people in America. When they spoke, it was like bamboo slivers shoved under a fingernail. I don’t know why. It was the single biggest American tragedy of the last one hundred years. Here was the difference between the priestly castes, many of whom had opinions on deadline for money, and everyone else: sane people shut the fuck up, nodded their heads, and did what they needed to survive in a toxic political landscape. In an era when public discourse was the bought-and-paid property of roughly twenty companies, and the airing of an opinion could subject a person to unfathomable amounts of abuse and recrimination, the only reasonable option was to be quiet. So when you next fawn over someone’s brave public thoughts, repeat the following: The contours of discourse are so horrendous that one thing has become certain. Any individual offering up a public opinion necessarily must be either hopelessly stupid or insane. I am engaging with a product of madness and idiocy.

2:286 Allah does not charge a soul except [with that within] its capacity. It will have [the consequence of] what [good] it has gained, and it will bear [the consequence of] what [evil] it has earned. "Our Lord, do not impose blame upon us if we have forgotten or erred. Our Lord, and lay not upon us a burden like that which You laid upon those before us. Our Lord, and burden us not with that which we have no ability to bear. And pardon us; and forgive us; and have mercy upon us. You are our protector, so give us victory over the disbelieving people."[125]

Without Good Friday, there is no Easter; without Easter, there is no deliverance from evil; without deliverance from evil, there is no victory of light over dark, of love over hate, of life over death.

Over and over again in our music, liturgies, displayed artwork, and language and word choices, we have reinforced the idea that white is holy and black equals sin. These passive suggestions have created an entire subconscious theology of race. For example, most pastors wear a white alb or surplice while they lead worship—using whiteness to represent baptism, purity, and closeness to the creator. We’ve never stopped to ask why we equate the color white to goodness. Every day we sit in church, we are being subtly fed this narrative about whiteness—a narrative that is at work in all of us consciously or subconsciously. The person who administers the sacraments: clothed in white. The colors of resurrection and ultimate victory: white. The candle you light at the anniversary of your child’s baptism: white. The message is clear, whether we realize it or not. White equals pure. And the inverse is also true: the absence of white—darkness or blackness—equals bad or evil.

We are preaching a repentance that is only half way. We’ll let God decide what is wrong, but we’ll still decide what is right. We’ll pay God our tithe, but we’re still going to decide what to do with the 90 percent that is left over. We’ll go to church on Sunday, but we’re still going to decide what to do with the remaining six days. We want the blessing of the Lord, but we are not willing to pay the price of returning the knowledge of good and evil back to God.

Great is the power of humanity; humanity does not die until man dies. And when there comes a brief but terrifying period in history, a period in which the beast triumphs over man, to his last breath the man slain by the beast retains his strength of spirit, clarity of thought, and warmth of feeling. And the beast who slays the man remains a beast. In this immortal spiritual strength of human beings is a solemn martyrdom, the triumph of the dying man over the living beast. Therein, during the darkest days of 1942, lay the dawn of reason’s victory over bestial madness, of good over evil, light over darkness, of the power of progress over the power of reaction; an awesome dawn breaking over a field of blood and tears, an ocean of suffering, a dawn breaking amid the screams and cries of perishing mothers and infants, amid the death rattle of the aged. The beasts and the philosophy of the beasts foreshadowed the end of Europe, the end of the world; but people remained people. They did not accept the morals and laws of fascism, fighting with all the means at their disposal against them, fighting with their death as human beings.