Christ Pantocrator

 

About Jordan Peterson’s horrendous tweet at Netanyahu: “Give ‘em hell.  Enough is enough.”

I check [my moral compass] as follows: the only people who suffer in such situations are the common people who have or want nothing to do with such violence, who want nothing more than to raise their children, give them a good education, have a decent job, feed their families.

All of the actors – the movers and shakers?  None of them are physically at risk.  They have either put these wheels in motion or are trying to figure out how to leverage these events to their advantage – or both.

I wrote that just a few days after October 7.  We can see now, although it was obvious then, what those who were to support the state of Israel were calling for when they used words like Peterson’s.

Given what we have seen the last several months, the mea culpas should be flowing.  Very few are….

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This episode was certain to tear the left apart, as there was nothing that held the elite and the raving masses together other than hate for western civilization.  It turns out the raving masses were consistent in their application, and the elites didn’t like that:

The Left is Consuming Itself

This was a certainty – just as feminism was going to be consumed by trans athletes, support for people of color ™ was going to be embraced until it touched on the people of color living between the river and the sea ™.

It isn’t just the left that has its zanies:

Well, the so-called right isn’t doing any better, with one outdoing the other on the desire to fulfill zany end-times lunacy.

Christian Zionists for Genocide?

Speaking of zany end-times lunacy…. Can we put a knife in the horrendous blasphemy that is Scofield, once and for all?

This followed by an image of John Hagee entitled “Israel: God’s Battle-Ax.”  Well, yes on the battle-ax part.  But is it God’s? 

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How are these Scofield evangelicals going to handle the antisemitism of saying “Christ is King”?  What happens to these Scofield evangelicals when they decide they can’t withstand the social pressure of saying such words?  What happens to them when the following words are labelled antisemitic, hence cancelling Jesus?

·         A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed.

·         But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

·         Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.

·         But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! … Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

·         Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

Doug Wilson points out that it is the evangelical Zionists that are the bulwark against crazy in America – given their size and voting power.  Yes, maybe.  But sooner or later this bulwark is going to have to choose: Just who, or what, is their king? 

Romans 9:5(b) Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever.

Christ Pantocrator: Christ, ruler of all.  That would make Him king.

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No, no trope or dog whistle here.  I have used this phrase many times in the past in posts that have nothing to do with current controversies, for example, August 2021:

In this chapter, Strickland offers descriptions of several of the icons one will find in an Eastern Orthodox church.  Christ Pantocrator at the top of the dome; Mary and the infant Jesus above the alter.  To see these icons (and dozens of others) in person is truly a moving experience, something that I believe is a loss in most, if not all, protestant churches.

September, 2021:

Inside this Antiochan Orthodox Church, where I was a visitor…Christ Pantocrator in the dome; below that the disciples, the authors of the Gospels, New and Old Testament saints, other saints of the Church.  Absolutely beautiful.  But much more.

Christ, at the head and looking down on His Church.  All of His Church – those of us in physical attendance with those of us represented in the walls.  It was a picture of the Body of Christ, and I felt it.  This feeling isn’t everything, but it’s not nothing.  I don’t think I will ever forget the experience.

November, 2021: Someone describing the experience of entering an Eastern Orthodox Church

Worship: we enter the kingdom.  If you can envision a typical Orthodox Church, with all of its icons, and that great central icon of Christ Pantocrator, Christ, the ruler of all, you are entering into another sphere, into the kingdom.  As Christians, we need that experience of entering into the kingdom, week by week.

November, 2021:

I have described my feelings in such a church before.  Just the space is worshipful, with Christ Pantocrator on the ceiling of the dome, and surrounded by the icons of a hundred saints and prophets, all joined by the parishioners – a real image of the Kingdom of God. 

There are several more examples.

If we are driven to give up Christ is King in our language, as we have been driven to do regarding many other meaningful terms and phrases, in other words, if Christians decide that declaring Christ is king is forbidden, then all hope is lost.

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Over the last fifteen years or more, with the number of and magnitude of calamities that have been foisted upon us, the numbers of people who I might consider allies has continued to shrink.  Covid was the event that really tore it all apart, but the many wars that conservatives supported were certainly chipping away at those I might consider compatriots.  Then there was this:

But the sliver of the intersection in the Venn Diagram that I occupy and I have clumsily attempted to portray is growing ever smaller.  This issue of Israel and Gaza is shattering all sides of the divide first explained by Obama and expanded by Clinton.

For me, the ones speaking most sensibly on this topic are at the same time the craziest when it comes to economics and social life.  But things are changing, it seems.  Six months of indiscriminate bombing will have that effect.

The cracks are starting to develop on the right, and also those who might be described as in the middle.  For example, Alex Jones, Candace Owens, and Joe Rogan are calling out the actions of Israel in Gaza as genocide (of the three, I think Candace Owens was there from the beginning).  This is adding some space in the portion of the Venn Diagram where I stand. 

Conclusion

Yes, power corrupts.  But other than God, no one or no group has absolute power.  The reaction, not just in the United States but worldwide, to what the state of Israel is doing in Gaza is proving this out.  Would a group that supposedly had absolute power have fallen into the inevitable trap that being married to the zanies on the left would have led?