Death Knells and Resurrections
The Spirit calls in this plaintive time we call "post-election", recalling Christ's lament as it applies to the United States: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!"
[1]
This thing called the U.S. has crucified Democracy. It has crucified Truth. It has crucified Beauty. It has turned the ballot box into a Weapon of Mass Destruction, a pliable tool to sanction murder and tyranny. It has turned the vote into an ephemeral concept written on air, and it has done all this in the service of the Prince of the Air, the Father of Lies. Now, it is crucifying Christ again, even as it purports to follow Him.
Yet this is prelude to a great unfolding that will overwhelm and dispel the growing, deepening, darkening shadow descending on our land. The Light of God shall break through these foul and ugly mists that seem to strangle Him.
[2]
But things must get darker first. I remember the political strategy attributed to the Roman Emperor Claudius (in the masterful British TV series 'I Claudius'), as he planned the future ascendancy of Nero, to "let all the poisons lurking in the earth hatch out."
For how shall the chaff be identified, if it be not allowed to grow with the wheat?
[3]
And how shall the bad tree be distinguished from the good, if its bad fruit be not first put forth?
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But the ax is already at the root.
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We know, now, what we have long suspected: that the political system has failed us, as every political system will, that it is incapable of delivering Justice, Mercy, and Faithfulness (except under great duress, and even then only grudgingly and fleetingly), that it is bankrupt and corrupts everything it touches. And we know too, that though the day will come when a Savior shall ride to our rescue on a white horse,
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he shall not have first clambered up the corpse-strewn mount of political privilege wearing a white skin.
Let us therefore put aside the empty hopes of a fallen system, with its worship of false gods, and instead pursue our prophetic mission that casts down the pretensions and arguments
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of this corrupt age, that denounces the love of money,
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along with the other idols and abominations set up in sacred places.
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Let us remember, too, the revelatory promise: "Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God…and I will also write on him my new name."
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November 2004
[2]
See William Shakespeare, '2 Henry IV', I.ii.196-197
