The Scriptures and the South - Part I

Richard Weaver is not alone when he notes how highly the Bible is revered among Southrons in his essay ‘The Older Religiousness in the South’ (see p. 142 especially).  This could not but help to bring forth some good fruit in our land (and for Protestants in general), for the word of God is not without effect when read with humility, love for God, and so on.  However, this attachment to the Bible also has its troublesome side, which we will write of another time. 

For now, let us note that the South has preserved something of a Christian way of living against the idolatrous, barbarous, and always shifting principles of the scientific materialism-nihilism of the age through love of the Holy Scriptures, of God-given revelation (Weaver, p. 142). 

But in order to make this defense against worldliness all the more effective, we turn now to St Justin Popovich, Serbia’s wonderful theologian-philosopher-monk, to help us understand why the Holy Scriptures benefit us so amazingly in this life.  (This is around the last half of his essay.  The first half is well worth reading also.  Please follow the path below for the full work.)

 . . .

The main thing is: sow, and it is God who causes and allows what is sown to grow (1 Cor. 3:6). But do not rush success, lest you become like a man who sows today, but tomorrow already wants to reap.

By reading the Bible you are adding yeast to the dough of your soul and body, which gradually expands and fills the soul until it has thoroughly permeated it and makes it rise with the truth and righteousness of the Gospel.

In every instance, the Saviour's parable about the sower and the seed can be applied to every one of us. The seed of Divine Truth is given to us in the Bible.

By reading it, we sow that seed in our own soul. It falls on the rocky and thorny ground of our soul, but a little also falls on the good soil of our heart--and bears fruit.

And when you catch sight of the fruit and taste it, the sweetness and joy will spur you to clear and plow the rocky and thorny areas of your soul and sow it with the seed of the word of God.

Do you know when a man is wise in the sight of Christ the Lord? --When he listens to His word and carries it out. The beginning of wisdom is to listen to God's word (Matt. 7:24-25).

Every word of the Saviour has the power and the might to heal both physical and spiritual ailments. "Say the word and my servant will be healed" (Matt. 8:8). The Saviour said the word--and the centurion's servant was healed.

Just as He once did, the Lord even now ceaselessly says His words to you, to me, and to all of us. But we must pause, and immerse ourselves in them and receive them--with the centurion's faith.

And a miracle will happen to us, and our souls will be healed just as the centurion's servant was healed. For it is related in the Gospel that they brought many possessed people to Him, and He drove out the spirits with a word, and healed all the sick (Matt. 8:16).

He still does this today, because the Lord Jesus "is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Heb. 13:8)

Those who do not listen to God's words will be judged at the Dreadful Judgment, and it will be worse for them on the Day of Judgment than it was for Sodom and Gomorrah (Matt. 10:14-15).

Beware--at the Dreadful Judgment you will be asked to give an account for what you have done with the words of God, whether you have listened to them and kept them, whether you have rejoiced in them or been ashamed of them.

If you have been ashamed of them, the Lord will also be ashamed of you when He comes in the glory of His Father together with the holy angels (Mark 8:38).

There are few words of men that are not vain and idle. Thus there are few words for which we do not mind being judged (Matt. 12:36).

In order to avoid this, we must study and learn the words of God from the Bible and make them our own; for God proclaimed them to men so that they might accept them, and by means of them also accept the Truth of God itself. In each word of the Saviour there is more eternity and permanence than in all of heaven and earth with all their history.

Hence He said: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away" (Matt. 24:35). This means that God and all that is of God is in the Saviour's words. Therefore they cannot pass away.

If a man accepts them, he is more permanent than heaven and earth, because there is a power in them that immortalizes man and makes him eternal.

Learning and fulfilling the words of God makes a person a relative of the Lord Jesus. He Himself revealed this when He said: "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and carry it out" (Luke 8:21).

This means that if you hear and read the word of God, you are a half-brother of Christ. If you carry it out, you are a full brother of Christ. And that is a joy and privilege greater than that of the angels.

In learning from the Bible, a certain blessedness floods the soul which resembles nothing on earth. The Saviour spoke about this when He said, "Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it" (Luke 11:28).

Great is the mystery of the word--so great that the second Person of the Holy Trinity, Christ the Lord, is called "the Word" or "the Logos" in the Bible.

God is the Word (John 1:1). All those words which come from the eternal and absolute Word are full of God, Divine Truth, Eternity, and Righteousness. If you listen to them, you are listening to God. If you read them, you are reading the direct words of God.

God the Word became flesh, became man (John 1:14), and mute, stuttering man began to proclaim the words of the eternal truth and righteousness of God.

In the Saviour's words there is a certain elixir of immortality, which drips drop by drop into the soul of the man who reads His words and brings his soul from death to life, from impermanence to permanence.

The Saviour indicated this when He said: "Truly, truly I say unto you, whoever listens to my word and believes in the One who sent me has eternal life ...and has passed over from death to life" (John 5:24).

Thus the Saviour makes the crucial assertion: "Truly, truly I say unto you, whoever keeps my words will never see death" (John 8:51).

Every word of Christ is full of God. Thus, when it enters a man's soul it cleanses it from every defilement. From each of His words comes a power that cleanses us from sin.

Hence at the Mystical Supper the Saviour told His disciples, who used to listen to His word without ceasing: "You have already been cleansed by the word which I have spoken to you" (John 15:3).

Christ the Lord and His Apostles call everything that is written in the Bible the word of God, the word of the Lord (John 17:14; Acts 6:2, 13:46, 16:32, 19:20; II Cor. 2:17; Col. 1:15, II Thess. 3:1), and uniess you read it and receive it as such, you will remain in the mute, stuttering words of men, vain and idle.

Every word of God is full of God's Truth, which sanctifies the soul for all eternity once it enters it.

Thus does the Saviour turn to His heaveniy Father in prayer: "Father! Sanctify them with Thy Truth; Thy word is truth" (John 17:17).

If you do not accept the word of Christ as the word of God, as the word of the Truth, then falsehood and the father of lies within you is rebelling against it.

In every word of the Saviour there is much that is supernatural and full of grace, and this is what sheds grace on the soul of man when the word of Christ visits it.

Therefore the Holy Apostle calls the whole structure of the house of salvation "the word of the grace of God" (Acts 20:32).

Like a living grace-filled power, the word of God has a wonder-working and life-giving effect on a man, so long as he hears it with faith and receives it with faith (1 Thess. 2:13).

Everything is defiled by sin, but everything is cleansed by the word of God and prayer--everything--all creation from man on down to a worm (1 Tim. 4:5).

By the Truth which it carries in itself and by the Power which it has in itself, the word of God is "sharper than any sword and pierces to the point of dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Heb. 4:12). Nothing remains secret before it or for it.

Because every word of God contains the eternal Word of God--the Logos-it has the power to give birth and regenerate men. And when a man is born of the Word, he is born of the Truth.

For this reason St. James the Apostle writes to the Christians that God the Father has brought them forth "by the word of truth" (1:18); and St. Peter tells them that they "have been born anew...by the word of the living God, which abides forever" (1 Peter 1:23).

All the words of God, which God has spoken to men, come from the Eternal Word--the Logos, who is the Word of life and bestows Life eternal.

By living for the Word, a man brings himself from death to life. By filling himself with eternal life, a man becomes a conqueror of death and "a partaker of the Divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4), and of his blessedness there shall be no end.

The main and most important point of all this is faith and feeling love towards Christ the Lord, because the mystery of every word of God is opened beneath the warmth of that feeling, just as the petals of a fragrant flower are opened beneath the warmth of the sun's rays. Amen.

Source:  ‘How to Read the Bible and Why’, http://www.sv-luka.org/library/howtoread_jp.htm, accessed 1 Sept. 2014

Works Cited

Weaver, Richard.  ‘The Older Religiousness in the South’.  The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver.  Curtis III and Thompson, Jr., eds.  Indianapolis: LibertyPress, 1987.  Pgs. 134-46.

A Note to the Reader

My Dear Friends,

We would like to thank you all for visiting our site.  We are not going away entirely, but as this site was not intended in its beginning to follow the ‘news of the day’ quite so closely as it has come to do, going forward we will post a bit less frequently on those subjects and focus more on things of an enduring nature.

We hope to see you again soon,

Walt Garlington

Trying to Start another War with Lies

The Western Elite is desperate to start a war with Russia, whether in Ukraine

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/08/paul-craig-roberts/respect-for-truth/

or in Syria. 

So beware the hysterical rantings you are going to hear (and are probably already hearing) from the warmongers in Washington City and their fellow travelers on Fox News, talk radio, etc. over the supposed beheading of James Foley, the Islamic State, etc.  Dave Hodges wrote a good breakdown of what to watch for in his essay ‘The Goal of the ISIS Psyops Is WWIII’.  Keep these things in mind to protect yourself from the lies of the Western powers.  Here is a portion of Mr Hodges’s work.

ISIS is everywhere and America should be paralyzed with fear. ISIS is in Ferguson, they are on Twitter, they are in Iraq and Syria, they are crossing our undefended southern border. They could be carrying Ebola into the country. Stop, stop, stop! Here is a phrase that I would like all Americans to memorize and recite often:

“ISIS is everywhere, because the CIA is everywhere”.

ISIS Is a Classic PSYOPS

America is both shocked and horrified at the video posted  on August 19th, on YouTube,  showing American Journalist, James Foley kneeling next to a man dressed in black. Foley reads a message, presumably written by his captors, that his “real killer” is America.

Foley can be heard saying in the video.  He is then shown being beheaded. ISIS controls vast territory of both Syria and Iraq, and they just posted a video on the Internet of the beheading of an American journalist. America can expect to see much more of the same in order to maximize the PSYOPS that is being directed at American public opinion as we rapidly move towards our date with World War III.

ISIS has released a number of tweets which proclaims they are going to bring to America extreme harm.

#AmessagefromISIStoUS

We are in your state

We are in your cities

We are in your streets

You are our goals anywhere

ISIS had a sign in Ferguson proclaiming that they were present. It looks like America has a lot to be worried about. ISIS is beheading journalists, threatening America on Twitter and displaying signs on the streets of Ferguson, MO.  We should be frightened and now when the next 9/11 false flag attack occurs we know who to blame, don’t we?   And on and on the drum beats on. ISIS is everywhere! Why? Because the CIA is everywhere!

Child-Like Innocence

As some prominent people in American circles would say, “The dumbing down of America is nearly complete”. Most Americans look at current events with the mindset and reasoning ability of a child.

Sorry, but the mental midgets which comprise the majority of the sheep in the country, badly need to Google the word “PSYOP(S)”, but alas, most of our fellow countrymen could not be pulled from the couch, and the upcoming NFL season, long enough to be bothered with the looking up of even this one term. For those who are too busy to familiarize yourself with the term and possess a decided lack of common sense needed to understand when you and your country are the victim of the process, please allow me to save you the time and trouble.

PSYOPS or Psychological Operations: “Planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. The purpose of psychological operations is to induce or reinforce foreign attitudes and behavior favorable to the originator’s objectives. Also called PSYOP. See also consolidation psychological operations; overt peacetime psychological operations programs; perception management.

 (Source: U.S. Department of Defense).

We might be well-advised to replace our current national mindset, which is being conditioned by the present CIA sponsored PSYOPS which is inundating us with the belief that “We (ISIS) are everywhere”, and replace this child-like thinking with some fact-based information.

ISIS Is Not Three Years Old: The MSM’s Phony Timeline Related to Terrorism In Iraq and Syria

Syria has seen terrorist groups operating in their country for over three years.  These terrorist groups are operating with the approval of the war mongers in Washington DC and their allies in London and Paris. These terrorist groups are operating with the full knowledge and backing of NATO and their allies in the Gulf, namely Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

 . . .

Source:  http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/2014/08/21/the-goal-of-the-isis-psyops-is-world-war-iii/ (via LewRockwell.com), posted 21 August 2014, accessed 25 August 2014

Southern Independence Ain’t Just for ‘White People’

Most Northerners have never had any particular love for blacks; many of their pre-war State constitutions, which made it nearly impossible for free blacks to live a decent life in those States, bear that out well enough.  The Northern Elite especially have had a virulent dislike for black folks (and for ‘backward’ Southern whites, who have never much minded their being here amongst us):

http://confiterijournal.blogspot.com/2014/01/northern-racism.html

This Yankee-inspired hatred, this desire to cull the undesirables from the earth, is once again being displayed for all to see, this time in the federally approved MMR vaccine that has proved extremely harmful for black children:

(NaturalNews) Yesterday I wrote that Natural News is investigating a report of a massive scientific cover-up perpetrated at the very highest levels of the CDC.

Today I can report that I now have in my possession CDC documents which prove beyond any doubt that the former head of the CDC, Dr. Julie Gerberding, actively participated in willful scientific fraud in order to bury clinical evidence linking the MMR vaccine to a 340% increase in autism among African-American children.

Yes, the CDC knew that MMR vaccines caused autism in black babies, and its top scientists actively conspired to cover up that fact for the last twelve years.

 . . .

What is especially heinous and disturbing about these revelations is that the CDC had in its possession irrefutable data linking MMR vaccines to autism in African-American children.

The agency then went out of its way to retroactively alter the study data to commit scientific fraud which they knew would bring harm to countless African-American babies. Today, there are untold thousands of young black children and teens who grew up with autism disorders due entirely to the CDC's willful scientific fraud. Rather than warning the public about the autism risk of MMR vaccines, the CDC deliberately chose to hide this fact, all while lying to the African-American community by telling them "vaccines are safe!"

In essence, the CDC has perpetrated what can only be called "vaccine violence against blacks," knowing that black babies would be seriously and permanently harmed by these vaccines yet doing absolutely nothing to warn the public or require safer vaccines from drug companies. To the CDC, black babies are always expendable.

 . . .

This cover-up has continued for the last twelve years, during which anyone who dared mention the word "autism" in the same sentence as "vaccines" was immediately and viciously attacked by the scientific community, vaccine trolls and the mainstream media. Yet all this time, the CDC's highest officers were fully aware that the MMR vaccine autism link was real. And it was black babies who were suffering the consequences of the cover-up.

Yes, a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri shot one black man and killed him, but the CDC allowed doctors to shoot up millions of black babies with dangerous vaccines that have caused untold pain, suffering and permanent damage across the African American community. The audacity and scale of this crime against humanity is almost unspeakable.

 . . .

Source:  Mike Adams, ‘CDC Caught in Scientific Fraud, Perpetrating Vaccine Violence against Blacks in Shocking Eugenics Cover-Up’, http://www.naturalnews.com/046537_vaccine_violence_black_Americans_scientific_fraud.html, posted 20 August 2014, accessed 22 August 2014

No, Southern independence would not be good only for the descendants of the English and the Celts, the French Huguenots and the Spaniards and the Germans; it would manifestly be to the great good of our African brothers and sisters as well, who would no longer have to live under a federal government run by creepy, eugenics-obsessed Yankees intent on wiping them out.

Whatever reconciliation remains to be done between whites and blacks here in the South, let us see to it as quickly as possible, that we might all have done the sooner with the evils gushing forth from that accursed swamp on the Potomac.

The Heresy of Worldly Comfort

This heresy the South was born into, as Richard Beale Davis reveals to us in his masterwork Intellectual Life in the Colonial South 1585-1763:

By the 1585, British eyes saw the area they would settle as a terrestrial paradise, implicitly a tropical or semi­-tropical paradise. For most it was a new Eden, another land of Canaan. For some it was more nearly a pagan Arcadia which might be brought to Christ at the same time it became a comfortable and even luxurious home for Europeans (bolding added -- W.G.).

Source:  Brion McClanahan, ‘The Oldest South’, http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/the-oldest-south/, posted 12 August 2014, accessed 20 August 2014

Life in Christ and worldly comfort can have no fellowship.  Yet this is the heresy most of the Western European nations and their offspring have fallen to, because of their rejection of the True God and True Faith and True Church for human-ruled organizations called Roman Catholic and Protestant churches.  These, having lost full communion with the Most Holy Trinity, have substituted the ‘kingdom of goods’ (St Nikolai Velimirovich) for the Kingdom of Heaven.

What the South and all the Western nations need is a re-evaluation of comfort - and of suffering.  About such Gabe Martini writes in ‘Carrying the Cross and Suffering in Hope’:

 . . . A falsehood spread throughout the broader Christian world today is that God adopts us into his family without anything expected of us. Or even worse, we are promised a better life, happiness, and even material wealth or worldly success. But this is really the opposite of what the scriptures promise. Paul again reminds us that “we were saved by hope” (Rom. 8:24). Our salvation is not realized immediately, nor is it a ‘flip of the switch’ in one’s mental assent of faith, but is rather a journey that begins in Baptism and is consummated on the Last Day. And until that day, we are awaiting our true salvation. From the beginning of our salvation journey to the end is a whole lifetime of trials, temptations, suffering, discipline, asceticism, struggle, and growth.

Being “saved in hope” also means knowing in whom we place our trust:

Who shall separate us form the love of Christ? Affliction, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? . . . But in all these things we more than conquer through the One Who loved us. —Rom. 8:35,37

While we are almost guaranteed a life marked by affliction, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword, we have assurance of victory through the love of Christ. Our hope is in him. He is our assurance, just as he is true Life.

Since we are guaranteed as much, our prayer should be to see suffering transformed into salvation. As Elder Paisios has said:

In every test, let us say: “Thank you, my God, because this was needed for my salvation.”

Similarly, Fr. Seraphim Rose:

Only struggle a little more. Carry your cross without complaining. Don’t think you are anything special. Don’t justify your sins and weaknesses, but see yourself as you really are. And, especially, love one another.

When faced with struggle or temptation, ask God that we might struggle a little more. Give thanks to God that we are being provided an opportunity for our sanctification and salvation in him. Look to Christ as a source of strength—as one who suffered all, and yet without sin. Consider the lives of the Saints, who have imaged Christ in their own struggles.

In the end, remember that Christ didn’t suffer so that we wouldn’t have to. He suffered, died, and conquered death-by-death so that we could handle suffering with him. Casting our lot with Christ is a calling to suffering, a calling to carry a Cross—whether great or small.

But through Christ, through the mysteries of the Church, and through our own individual struggle and ascesis, we can live as co-heirs of him, prepared for future glory.

Source:  http://onbehalfofall.org/carrying-the-cross-and-suffering-in-hope/, posted 30 June 2014, accessed 20 August 2014

May we in the South learn once more the incomparable value of suffering together with our Crucified and Risen Lord for the sake of our salvation, that we too might arise in the Glory of the Holy Ghost on the day of Christ’s return.

From Iraq to Our Own Cities, Towns, and Villages

The transnational Elite and their enablers across the Union have very much succeeded in turning local police forces into military units outright.  These pictures say it all.

The top shows Baghdad, Iraq; the bottom, Ferguson, Missouri. 

Source:  http://rt.com/usa/180376-ferguson-militarization-police-weapons/, posted 14 August 2014, accessed 18 August 2014

Thankfully, some concern is beginning to be shown across the political spectrum, from Sen Rand Paul to Rep Hank Johnson.

http://www.infowars.com/congressman-wants-to-curb-military-surplus-program/

http://time.com/#3111474/rand-paul-ferguson-police/

But Southerners and those in the other States had better not wait for the federal government to fix a problem they created.  We need to work peacefully within our own States and localities to de-militarize the police and set up other protections for the law abiding plain folk, black and white.  For the Elite even now are planning on how to divide and conquer and destroy what good remains in the [u]nited States.

http://www.infowars.com/u-s-army-releases-action-plan-for-civil-unrest-during-ferguson-riot/

http://www.infowars.com/document-army-preparing-to-use-lethal-force-against-unarmed-americans-during-full-scale-riots-in-u-s/

Wendell Berry on Invading Iraq

As the [u]nited States embark on yet another invasion of Iraq, it is worth recalling the words of Caintuck’s talented poet, essayist, novelist, and farmer Wendell Berry, which he penned at the start of the American Empire’s first invasion of that country in 1991.  The sickness of the typical self-righteous American soul described so well by Mr Berry below, dismayingly, has not improved very much in the intervening years.  And that does not bode well for anyone in the world.

Sabbath Poem I from 1991

The year begins with war.

Our bombs fall day and night,

Hour after hour, by death

Abroad appeasing wrath,

Folly, and greed at home.

Upon our giddy tower

We’d oversway the world.

Our hate comes down to kill

Those whom we do not see,

For we have given up

Our sight to those in power

And to machines, and now

Are blind to all the world.

This is a nation where

No lovely thing can last.

We trample, gouge, and blast;

The people leave the land;

The land flows to the sea.

Fine men and women die,

The fine old houses fall,

The fine old trees come down:

Highway and shopping mall

Still guarantee the right

And liberty to be

A peaceful murderer,

A murderous worshipper,

A slender glutton, Forgiving

No enemy, forgiven

By none, we live the death

Of liberty, become

What we have feared to be.

Source:  http://cla.calpoly.edu/~smarx/courses/380/Berry/MorePoems.htm, accessed 15 August 2014