Posted on 12/01/2018 8:00:41 AM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
All attempts to find a way out of the plight of today’s world are fruitless unless we redirect our consciousness, in repentance, to the Creator of all: without this, no exit will be illumined, and we shall seek it in vain.
...We must first recognize the horror perpetrated not by some outside force, not by class or national enemies, but within each of us individually, and within every society.
This is especially true of a free and highly developed society, for here in particular we have surely brought everything upon ourselves, of our own free will. We ourselves, in our daily unthinking selfishness...
Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder.
Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us...
To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can propose only a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned. Only in this way can our eyes be opened to the errors of this unfortunately twentieth century and our bands be directed to setting them right. There is nothing else to cling to in the landslide: the combined vision of all the thinkers of the Enlightenment amounts to nothing.
(Excerpt) Read more at orthodoxnet.com ...
I disagree with the headline.
I don’t think people have forgotten God. The average American still goes to Church and they still respect others.
What HAS lost control is the constant bombardment of the media which is created to demonstrate extremes. They are in business to evoke a response.
Spend a few days without the TV or Internet and just interact with people. There are some wonderful folks out there. You just never hear about them anymore.
The letter of James is a great letter to help men get back on track to worshiping God.
BUMP
From The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Kipling
...On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.” ,,,
It ain’t like we haven’t been warned:
Leviticus 26:27-28
‘Yet if in spite of this you do not obey Me, but act with hostility against Me, then I will act with wrathful hostility against you, and I, even I, will punish you seven times for your sins.
2 Chronicles 36:16
but they continually mocked the messengers of God, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, until there was no remedy.
Zechariah 7:12
“They made their hearts like flint so that they could not hear the law and the words which the LORD of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets; therefore great wrath came from the LORD of hosts.
Jeremiah 1:16
“I will pronounce My judgments on them concerning all their wickedness, whereby they have forsaken Me and have offered sacrifices to other gods, and worshiped the works of their own hands.
...and on and on and on.
“This Just In, ,”
I certainly wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the material progress of the last two centuries, as the article does. The average person on earth is far better off than they were 200 years ago by virtually any measure.
Psalm 9:17 The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.
This “Material difference” is proving itself the path to Hell, unfortunately. That, and stepping over women in the churches and academia, puffed up and shuffling men to the heavy lifting and grounds keeping, filling their time being “in charge “, but abandoning their own duty to husband, nurturing children. See the Hollywood generation in plain sight, on football fields, and now graduating their own kids from highschools in the same sorry shape.
Atheists,,,
I shudder at the thought of
“No God”.
This planet would be
Without Any restraint
Whatsoever.
No reflection on You Simon.
Each one of us are responsible
To Ourselves.
“The average American still goes to Church and they still respect others.”
A visit to Portland, Oregon will be an eye opener for you.
The author of this article, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was also an atheist as a young man. His experiences as an officer in the Red Army during World War II, his eight years in the Gulag, his bout with severe cancer during internal exile, his rise to fame during Khrushchev’s regime, his exile from the Soviet Union after receiving the Nobel Prize, and his triumphant return to Russia made him the literary giant of the 20th Century. His return to God was extraordinary.
Had I been born in similar circumstances two centuries ago, I would’ve likely only been in school until 13 or so, and then probably gone on to some sort of manual labor for the rest of my life....which would have been rather short, as I contracted contracted stage III kidney cancer at age 50 (complete remission, thankfully). I’d be doing well to have more than a few dozen books in my library, and I might have traveled to a few neighboring states. On the other hand, I may have gone to church a lot more.
In actuality I had education through high school and college, worked in an office for 34 years and then retired comfortably. In spite of cancer, diabetes, and Parkinson’s Disease I have minimal symptoms (thank you, modern medicine!). My library has thousands of books. Thanks to the Internet, I can read or watch the accumulated culture of the entire planet at a moment’s notice. I travel internationally 2 to 3 tines a year, and have visited over two dozen countries.
Life has never been better.
Thank you for posting.
I’m neither Russian or Orthodox. (am Baptist, wherever that places me.)
But Solzhenitsyn was a great man and thinker. He was very perceptive and this was spot on when written and still today.
Mankind has given up on God. They feel isolated.
Difficult indeed, I have it in my library.
. When you forget God, the understanding of law changes.
“...high school student should read A S’s book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denysovich.” It short but has a big impact...”
And CANCER WARD, especially the English translation offered in the 1974 Penguin edition is a fabulous novel. On the surface it is about a Cancer hospital in the Soviet Union. On a deeper level it is about the Soviet Union as a whole. On a still deeper level it is about life and its value and fragility.
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