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A very
good conversation, discussing Rod Dreher’s new book, Live
Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents. The book examines our current situation in
the West, in all of its insanity, and then offers lessons from Christians who
suffered through the persecutions in Eastern Europe during communism.
I will not go point by point. If the topic is of interest, spend fifty-five minutes on the video. I will, however, draw out a couple of points; here, while discussing the closing of and / or limits on churches, etc.:
Dreher: I really do believe God has allowed covid as a severe mercy for us, to prepare us for what’s coming in the future. If we as Christians can’t handle this sort of minimal depravation without falling apart, then you’re not going to make it through what’s coming.
He makes this comment in the context of what he understood from Christians who survived communism in Eastern Europe: you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. If you can’t handle what’s happening today, you will never survive tomorrow.
Just to be clear that I am not fully aligned with the entire discussion: the one comment that I will take meaningful exception to, and it comes shortly after the above comments. Dreher seems to buy into the full pandemic narrative – it is real, albeit it is being used to accelerate this coming system of control.
In fact, he compares it to the Reichstag fire, using it as the opportunity for Hitler to increase his control. Of course, many believe it was a fire set in motion by Hitler, just for this purpose. False flags… Dreher apparently misses this possibility regarding the fire, so it would not be a surprise that Dreher misses this possibility on covid.
However, Dreher ends on a strong note, beginning here. Very Christian, so I will summarize: we have read the Book. We know how the story ends. It may get unpleasant in the meantime.
I hope this isn't a prelude.
ReplyDeleteThat was a good conversation. I like that Dreher interviewed many people from the Soviet bloc to understand what they saw, how it applies to the US today, and what they did to survive with their faith intact. It sounds like the important thing is reminding yourself and those around of truth. Sometimes that has to be subtle and veiled like when he mentions Tolkien. We have Tolkien, Lewis, and even Rowling among others that remind us of truth within a story.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of the social score and woke capitalism is disturbing. I made a mental connection while watching. In Revelation, the mark of the beast is to worship the beast and then the person is able to buy and sell in the system. Daniel is a parallel book to Revelation. You need to study them together to understand what Revelation is saying. Daniel is more stand alone but Revelation takes many different addition books and passages to put into context. With that in mind, there is a visualization in Daniel that helps understand what the beast is in Revelation. In Daniel, beasts are governments. In several chapters the governments of Babylon, Medo-Persian, Greece, and Rome are described using the metaphors of beasts. I need to go back and read the verses in Revelation about the beast to understand the connection but it make sense. Worshipping the beast and taking the mark of the beast is giving allegiance to government and accepting its dictates.
I went back and looked at Daniel 7 and Revelation 13 & 17. One interesting things is that THE beast in Revelation is an amalgamation of the 4 beasts in Daniel 7. Those beasts are the kingdoms of Babylon, Persian, Greece, and Rome.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to interpret what that means though. Is the amalgamation a picture of one world government or just that all governments on earth are involved in the activity of Revelation? Don't know but I will be studying this more.
It all highlights how important it is for Christians to avoid believing in any government or putting their identity into a political party.
During the period of ’glasnost’ Soviet authorities released false numbers for communist party membership. However, those fudged numbers weren’t what one would expect. Instead of attempting to shore up a crumbling political establishment by inflating communist party membership, Soviet authorities instead deflated the real numbers in order to give credence to a ’collapsing’ political system; communist party membership continued to climb throughout the ‘glasnost’ period, as detailed in the article, House of Cards: The Collapse of the 'Collapse' of the USSR.
ReplyDeleteThe same subterfuge was taking place in the East Bloc nations, as illustrated in the case of Yugoslavia. The Library of Congress Federal Research Division 1990 Area Handbook Series study on Yugoslavia informs us regarding the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY), the name of Yugoslavia‘s sole political party:
LCY membership decreased slightly in the 1980s. The last increase was recorded in 1982, and in 1988 membership fell below 2 million for the first time since 1979.1
The Library of Congress informs us that the last increase in LCY membership occurred in 1982 and that the actual number fell below 2 million in 1988. Since the last increase in LCY membership took place in 1982, then LCY membership couldn’t rise above its “below 2 million’ figure after 1988, unless, of course, the figures presented were being manipulated. And manipulated the figures were.
Incredibly in the same study the Library of Congress has access to the real numbers for LCY membership, inadvertently included in the study’s coverage of the LCY’s 1990 Fourteenth Party Congress:
The Fourteenth Party Congress included 1,688 delegates, of
which 994 were elected by local commune party conferences (1
delegate per 2,000 party members).2
So let’s do the math to determine if the LCY more or less maintained its “below 2 million” membership number count in 1990…
1,688 X 2,000 = 3,376,000
Wouldn’t you know it, a whopping 40.75% increase in LCY membership throughout the 1980s, and as in the USSR example, in preparation for the fraudulent ‘collapse‘ of communism in Yugoslavia. Throughout 1980s LCY membership was massively increasing in numbers, not decreasing as the Marxist co-opted Library of Congress would have us believe.
Addendum
Communist Control Of Yugoslav ‘Civil Wars’
The massive increase in numerical strength of the LCY allowed for scripted and controlled dirty wars between 'secessionist' Orthodox, Catholic and Muslim factions during the Yugoslav Wars, 1991-2001, where the religious factions conspired to not wipe out the 9% of the population that attempted to do away with religion altogether in Yugoslavia, proving the wars were orchestrated and controlled by the communist faction:
Like in most former Communist countries in Central, Eastern
and South-Eastern Europe, the means and actions applied by
the Yugoslav Government between 1945 and 1990 to reduce
the influence of religions and religious organisations were
quite effective: While there was just a tiny group of people who regarded themselves to be without a religion before the Second World War (less than 0.1% of the population), this number grew to 13% in 1953 and to 32% in 1987.3
continued...
...continued...
DeleteBefore any religious sectarian strife, first there would have been massive reprisals against the reviled Communists who implemented draconian discriminatory policies to wipe out religion in Yugoslavia. LCY anti-religious discriminatory policies were so effective that within fifty years those who were without a religion increased by an astronomical 3,100%! The fact that no reprisals took place against LCY members proves that the breakup of Yugoslavia was manufactured and controlled by the Communists.
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1. Library of Congress: Federal Research Division 1990 Area Handbook Series: Yugoslavia
https://cdn.loc.gov/master/frd/frdcstdy/yu/yugoslaviacountr00curt_0/yugoslaviacountr00curt_0_djvu.txt
2. Ibid.
2. Religions and religious institutions in the post-Yugoslav states between secularization and resurgence, Reinhard Henkel (2009)
https://web.natur.cuni.cz/ksgrrsek/acta/2009/2009_henkel.pdf