Offsite Post: ‘Is Israel the Best Friend of Christians in the US?’

 

Anyone who pays attention to conservative politics in the [u]nited States at present for half a minute will hear some variant of the phrase, ‘Israel is the greatest ally of the US in the Middle East (or, in the world, according to some variations of this statement).’  The basis of the statement is that Christians and Jews have some sort of mystical religious bond – that they worship the same, or nearly the same, God – and this should translate into close political ties between the States and Israel.

But these statements are never examined for their veracity.  We aim to do so now.  Should Christians in the US, and especially in Dixie, consider Jews/the nation of Israel their best friend in the world?  Church history, when one actually reads it, says No.

Let us look first at the lives of the saints.  There is abundant evidence of Jewish malice toward Christians.  From the early Christian era is the life of St Matrona:

 

The Holy Martyr Matrona of Thessalonica suffered in the third or fourth century. She was a slave of the Jewish woman Pautila (or Pantilla), wife of one of the military commanders of Thessalonica. Pautila constantly mocked her slave for her faith in Christ, and tried to convert her to Judaism. Saint Matrona, who believed in Christ from her youth, still prayed to the Savior Christ, and secretly went to church unbeknownst to her vengeful mistress.

 

Pautila, learning that Saint Matrona had been to church, asked, “Why won’t you come to our synagogue, instead of attending the Christian church?” Saint Matrona boldly answered, “Because God is present in the Christian church, but He has departed from the Jewish synagogue.” Pautila went into a rage and mercilessly beat Saint Matrona, tied her up, and shut her in a dark closet. In the morning, Pautila discovered that Saint Matrona had been freed of her bonds by an unknown Power.

 

In a rage Pautila beat the martyr almost to death, then bound her even more tightly and locked her in the closet. The door was sealed so that no one could help the sufferer. The holy martyr remained there for four days without food or water, and when Pautila opened the door, she again found Saint Matrona free of her bonds, and standing at prayer.

 

Pautila flogged the holy martyr and left the skin hanging in strips from her body. The fierce woman locked her in the closet again, where Saint Matrona gave up her spirit to God.

 

Pautila had the holy martyr’s body thrown from the roof of her house. Christians took up the much-suffered body of the holy martyr and buried it. Later, Bishop Alexander of Thessalonica built a church dedicated to the holy martyr. Her holy relics, glorified by many miracles, were placed in this church.

 

The judgment of God soon overtook the evil Pautila. Standing on the roof at that very place where the body of Saint Matrona had been thrown, she stumbled and fell to the pavement. Her body was smashed, and so she received her just reward for her sin.

Several centuries later, we find similar things happening in the life of St Eustratius:

 

Martyr Eustratius of the Caves was born in the eleventh century at Kiev into a wealthy family. As an adult, he received monastic tonsure at the Kiev Caves monastery, after giving away all his possesions to the poor. Saint Eustratius humbly underwent obediences at the monastery, strictly fulfilling the rule of prayer and passing his days in fasting and vigilance.

 

In 1096 the Polovetsians captured Kiev and ravaged the monastery of the Caves, doing away with many of the monks. Saint Eustratius was taken into captivity, and was sold into slavery with thirty monastic laborers and twenty inhabitants of Kiev to a certain Jew living in Korsun.

 

The impious Jew tried to make the captives deny Christ, threatening to kill those who refused by starving them. Saint Eustratius encouraged and exhorted his brother Christians, “Brothers! Let none of us who are baptized and believe in Christ betray the vows made at Baptism. Christ has regenerated us through water and the Spirit. He has freed us from the curse of the Law by His Blood, and He has made us heirs of His Kingdom. If we live, we shall live for the Lord. If we die, we shall die in the Lord and inherit eternal life.”

 

Inspired by the saint’s words, the captives resolved to die of starvation, rather than renounce Christ, Who is the food and drink of Eternal Life. Exhausted by hunger and thirst, some captives perished after three days, some after four days, and some after seven days. Saint Eustratius remained alive for fourteen days, since he was accustomed to fasting from his youth. Suffering from hunger, he still did not touch food nor water. The impious Jew, seeing that he had lost the money he had paid for the captives, decided to take revenge on the holy monk.

 

The radiant Feast of the Resurrection of Christ drew near, and the Jewish slave owner was celebrating the Jewish Passover with his companions. He decided to crucify Saint Eustratius. The cruel tormentors mocked the saint, offering to let him share their Passover meal. The Martyr replied, “The Lord has now bestown a great grace upon me. He has permitted me to suffer on a cross for His Name just as He suffered.” The saint also predicted a horrible death for the Jew.

 

Hearing this, the enraged Jew grabbed a spear and stabbed Saint Eustratius on the cross. The martyr’s body was taken down from the cross and thrown into the sea. Christian believers long searched for the holy relics of the martyr, but were not able to find them. But through the Providence of God the incorrupt relics were found in a cave and worked many miracles. Later, they were transferred to the Near Caves of the Kiev Caves monastery.

 

The prediction of the holy Martyr Eustratius that his blood would be avenged was fulfilled soon after his death. The Byzantine Emperor issued a decree expelling all Jews from Korsun, depriving them of their property, and putting their elders to death for torturing Christians. The Jew who crucified Saint Eustratius was hanged on a tree, receiving just punishment for his wickedness.

There are also Christian children who suffered tortures and death from the Jews.  Here are a few examples:

 . . .

The rest is at https://identitydixie.com/2024/05/13/is-israel-the-best-friend-of-christians-in-the-united-states/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘Lingering Paganism in the US’

 

There are plenty of misguided conservatives in the United States who believe that their confederation is the most outstanding example of Christianity in world history.  One must have a highly selective reading of history to come to that conclusion.  We have discussed some aspects of paganism in the States in past essays, but there is more that could, and should, be said in that regard.

In particular, we would like to focus on the symbols on the coinage of the US over the centuries.  But before looking at them, we quote a short section from a previous essay to provide the proper context for what follows:

‘After 1770, writes Albanese, “songs began to appear which celebrated the Goddess [of Liberty]” and “preachers took up the cause of the Goddess in their turn.”  For example, Jacob Duché, the Chaplain to the Continental Congress who delivered its opening prayer, gave a sermon explaining how Liberty “true to her divine source, is of heavenly abstraction” and that both Liberty and the “divine virtue” which is her “illustrious parent” come to dwell “in the hearts of all intelligent beings” where “they ought jointly to be worshipped.”

‘The sign and sacrament of this veritable cult of the Goddess Liberty was the Liberty Tree in Boston . . . .  As Oliver’s brother wrote, Liberty Tree had been “consecrated as an idol for the mob to worship” and was the place for imposing the discipline of the “Tree of Ordeal [on those] whom the Rioters pitched upon as State delinquents.”  In addition to being both a totem and locus of the power of Liberty, Liberty Tree was a place of worship where revolutionary liturgies were enacted.  In Providence, Rhode Island a Liberty Tree was dedicated during a ceremony in which the participants laid their hands on the sacred object as a local minister invoked the worldwide unity of a kind of mystical body of Liberty . . . .

‘The “sacred elm,” writes Albanese, became “a kind of transcendent cosmo-historical tree around which the other Liberty Trees and liberty signs of the colonies took root . . . Like the sacrament it was, Liberty Tree was the reality which oriented the patriots, yet it pointed beyond itself to another source of power”—the power invoked by Paine with his talk of remaking the world and regenerating man in a disquieting analogy to the working of divine grace’ (Christopher Ferrara, Liberty: The God That Failed, Tacoma, Wash., Angelico Press, 2012, pgs. 150-1).

In this atmosphere, legislation was passed by the US Congress for the design of coined money to be used in the States:

‘The Coinage Act of 1792 specified that all coins have an “impression emblematic of liberty,” the inscription “LIBERTY,” and the year of coinage on the obverse side. The Act required that the reverse of gold and silver coins have a representation of an eagle and the inscription, “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.” . . .

‘The face of Lady Liberty appeared on our circulating coins for more than 150 years. When considering options for our first coins, Congress debated over whether to feature George Washington and later presidents. Many believed that putting the current president on a coin was too similar to Great Britain’s practice of featuring their monarchs. Instead, Congress chose to personify the concept of liberty rather than a real person.

‘The figure of Liberty, often with a cap and pole, had been a symbol used during the American Revolution. Because of Liberty’s origins as a Greco-Roman goddess, early coin designs portrayed her with classical style clothes, facial features, and symbols.’

It is quite inexplicable that the MOST CHRISTIAN COUNTRY would pass legislation that would place a pagan symbol on the confederation’s currency rather than a Christian symbol of some kind:  the Cross, the Bible, an image of Christ or a saint, etc.  And note well that there was no outcry over this amongst the peoples of the States:  The pagan goddess of Liberty remained on US money for decades, including through the great Protestant ‘revivals’ of the 19^th century.  And when the goddess was eventually removed in the 20^th century, it was replaced by the divinized/apotheosized presidents of the US (like the pagan Roman emperors before them), who were nominally Christian yet in reality quite un-Christian in their beliefs and affiliations – Washington and Franklin Roosevelt the Freemasons, Jefferson the rewriter of the Holy Gospels, the creator of a new Christianity, Lincoln the demagogue and opportunist, the Puritan Gnostic.  M. E. Bradford goes so far as to call Lincoln a blasphemer, and adds:

‘ . . . we should take seri­ously the reports of members of his cabinet and leaders of the Republican Party in Congress that he saw in the Union victory at Antietam a direct communication from on high.[74] Prior to that event, his language echoes Cromwell’s in the period leading up to the execution of Charles I. As did his prototype, the Emancipator declares that he has “preconsulted nothing” and that “whatever shall appear to be God’s will, I will do.”[75] And again, after the decision has been made, he sounds the Crom­wellian note, echoing Old Noll’s disclaimer, “I have not sought these things; truly, I have been called unto them by the Lord.”[76] Long before Lincoln in his Second Inaugural discusses the providential meaning of the chapter of history completed at Appomattox and sets himself as the “godded man,” beyond most of the radical Republicans in his understanding of these events as part of “universal history,” the direc­tion of the United States toward whatever is meant by “finish the work” has fallen into the hands of “God’s new Messiah,” the “homemade Jesus” of the Lincoln myth.[77] Lin­coln’s apotheosis through martyrdom served only to put a divine seal of approval on his understanding of himself. Or so we should be persuaded by what his fellow Americans made of the assassination and funeral, coming as they did at the end of a civil war[78] and sur­rounded as they were in a language promising salvation through social and political change.[79]’

Thus, the symbols and icons of ‘Christian America’.

However, actual Christians who have not departed from the unbroken tradition of the Holy Apostles have a different view of such things.  They see the restoration of paganism as being of the spirit of Antichrist.  A priest of the Orthodox Church, Fr Athanasius Mitilianaios, commenting on St John the Apostle’s Revelation 17:8-12, says of Gnosticism/Freemasonry:

 . . .

The rest may be read here:

https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/lingering-paganism-us

Or here:

https://katehon.com/en/article/lingering-paganism-us

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

Offsite Post: ‘Paganism Means Relations Based on Raw Power’

 

Tucker Carlson and John Daniel Davidson, senior editor of The Federalist, recently had an enlightening discussion on what the decline of Christianity and the return of paganism to the States and the rest of the West would mean for politics and the wider culture.  One of the main conclusions was that with paganism comes actions justified solely by who is physically more powerful in a situation.  The acceptance of abortion and euthanasia by more and more people they see as a consequence of this.

It is instructive to look at what the new pagans themselves think about such things.  As abortion looms large in the US presently, we’ll focus on it for a moment.  One blogger quoted on that subject wrote, “[T]here is no reasonable argument that (at least at most stages) [a fetus] enjoys anything approaching equality with a human being. Given this simple fact, it seems to me that over most of the process leading towards birth, it should be entirely the woman’s choice whether or not to carry a fetus to term.”  While a wicca FAQ elsewhere reveals,

 

Feminist spirituality promotes a belief that women are goddesses. Within feminist spirituality a woman is taught that she is the goddess incarnate. A goddess is both creatress and destroyer. And, since women are seen as the goddess incarnate, women believe that they wield the power over creation and destruction. A woman that thinks she (not God) is capable of creating life has little, if any, qualms bringing that life to an end. Consequently, abortion is considered a logical and appropriate option for pregnant women.

Thus we have confirmation that a new pagan age will involve the replacement of Christ’s example of self-sacrifice (replicated in every age in the lives of a multitude of Christians and especially in the lives of the saints) with the diabolically inspired will to power.  One of those saints in the Orthodox Church, St. Sophrony of Essex, England (+1993), describes the good sort of revolution Christ brought to the world vis-à-vis human relationships:

 

Whereas in normal human interactions there is a negotiation rooted in power and self-assertion, Christ calls his followers to the opposite. Rather than vie for authority, which is a desire to ascend upward through the secular hierarchical ranks, Christians are called to descend downward, imitating the self-emptying love of the Messiah who died for the sake of others. Here the worldly pyramidal structure of society is turned upside down. Summarizing St Sophrony’s explanation of this new reality, Fr Zacharias (Zacharou) writes, “Christ, in order to heal all mankind, to break the deadlock of human injustice and to raise up high all those who are of ‘low degree’ upon the earth, overturns this pyramid of human existence, placing the apex at the base, and thus establishes the ultimate perfection” (Christ, Our Way and Our Life, South Canaan: STS Press, 2003: 54-5). Christ places himself at the very “bottom” of this inverted pyramid, and hence calls humanity to follow after him by descending into the depths of selfless love for others.

To quote the Lord Himself:

 

But Jesus called them to himself and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (St. Mark’s Gospel 10:42-5).

 

The last will be first, and the first last (St. Matthew’s Gospel 20:16).

It is precisely this spirit of love and humility that has led to so much generosity to the weak and powerless in Christendom, the founding of so many hospitals and orphanages, the appearance of Holy Unmercenary Physicians (i.e., doctors who heal without asking for payment), a politics of restraint rather than force and violence, and so forth.  It is this spirit that inspired so many Christian kings, like St. Alfred the Great of England (+899), to dedicate so much time and effort to providing justice for the downtrodden within their realms:

 . . .

The rest is at https://thehayride.com/2024/05/garlington-paganism-means-relations-based-on-raw-power/.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!