It's a warning. "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand"
Posted on 04/16/2019 3:19:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
The symbolism of the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral, the most renowned building in Western civilization, the iconic symbol of Western Christendom, is hard to miss.
It is as if God Himself wanted to warn us in the most unmistakable way that Western Christianity is burning -- and with it, Western civilization.
Every major Western (and one major non-Western) social and intellectual force has conspired to rid Europe of Christianity and the civilization it produced.
Within the Western world, the French Enlightenment -- the intellectual basis of the French Revolution and the modern West -- sought to replace Christianity, and religion in general, with secularism rooted in reason. No God, Bible or Ten Commandments is necessary for morality or meaning: reason (and science) will replace them.
The two final deathblows to Christianity in Europe were the world wars. World War I ended most Westerners' belief in the nation-state and the West. Christianity, already weakened by the Enlightenment, was further weakened by World War I. German Christians were killing millions of French and English Christians, and French and English Christians were killing millions of German Christians. So the argument and sentiment against Christianity went. Then World War II saw even more death on the Christian continent as well as the failure of Catholic and Protestant churches in Nazi Germany to offer even minimal noncompliance with the Nazis' Jew-hatred.
With the end of World War II, every internal Western intellectual doctrine was secular. God, the Bible and religion were regarded at best as innocuous nonsense and at worst as noxious nonsense.
Meanwhile, Europeans brought a non-European ideology into Europe, an ideology that, for more than a thousand years, sought to replace Christianity as the world's dominant religion. The Europeans, believing in nothing distinctly Christian or Western and believing in the moral and intellectual nonsense known as "multiculturalism" -- a doctrine that asserts that all cultures are morally equivalent -- saw nothing problematic in bringing millions of Muslims into Europe. They had no idea that most of these people actually wanted to replace Christianity with their religion. They had no idea because, in their ignorance and arrogance, they assumed that because they were secular multiculturalists, everybody else was, too -- or would be, once they lived in Europe.
They were wrong, of course. And as a result, the two dominant forces in Europe -- secular leftism and Islamism -- sought the end of Christianity and the West. (The left believes that protecting Western civilization is equivalent to protecting white supremacy.)
This is not producing a pretty picture. Generally speaking, Islam has not been nearly as kind, tolerant, open, medically or scientifically innovative or intellectually curious as Western civilization (and yes, Nazism and communism were born in the West, but they were anti-Western).
Even without tens of millions of Muslims, post-Christian Europe has not produced a pretty picture. This was predicted in 1834, 100 years before Hitler's rise, by the great German poet Heinrich Heine, a secular Jew (who later converted to Protestantism, "the ticket of admission into European culture"):
"Christianity -- and that is its greatest merit -- has somewhat mitigated that brutal German love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman (the cross) is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then ... a play will be performed in Germany which will make the French Revolution look like an innocent idyll."
European Christians persecuted European Jews, often brutally. But it took a post-Christian ideology, secular Nazism, to produce Auschwitz -- just as it took post-Christian communism to produce the Gulag, the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Ukrainian and Cambodian genocides.
Moreover, Nazism and communism aside, the left's belief that secular reason can replace God and the Bible turns out to be completely wrong. The alleged citadels of secular reason -- the universities -- are the most irrational and morally confused institutions in the West.
I don't know if a worker accident or a radical Muslim set fire to Notre Dame Cathedral (as they have scores of other churches around Europe). In terms of what the fire represented, it doesn't much matter. What matters is the omen: Europe is burning, just as Notre Dame was.
It's a warning. "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand"
Perhaps you missed my added point, that a satanic cancer is killing Western Civilization AND islam rising is a symptom of the dying.
The optimistic view would be that from the ashes a new or renewed faith will emerge for Christian civilization. A Phoenix will arise from the fire of Notre Dame in the form of an appreciation of the values and accomplishments of the West. This will be spearhead by people like Jordan Peterson, Donald Trump and new apologists that will fight against the encroachments of radical Islam and Marxism in both Europe and America. New heroes are needed to heed the call to reclaim the treasures of the past and press against the barbarians already within the shining City on the Hill. The symbolism connotes an epic battle that can be fought and won by a renewed spirit fully aware of what is at stake and its duty to a free people. History will tell...
The pope would be the obvious leader of such a resurgence. But this pope is an apologist for the international islamic takeover. Amy resurgence in Christianity will have to be independent of government or church officials.
Yes, this Pope shows how far the danger has advanced. He’s a Marxist Pope. Both Marxism and radial Islam are a form of diseased mentality and Marxism is surely enabling Islam.
Good points
Islam is a war plan.
Next time by fire.
There will also come a time when the warnings will end and the consequences of not heeding them begin.
I tend to think of God’s warnings being plagues, pandemics, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes, not structural fires.
I believe that a natural environmental situation can trigger a chain of events that looks to be a man-made disaster.
If this were a warning from God wouldn’t he have used lightning?
It’s interesting VK. Clement has a powerful voice and I like the musical background to his talk. Thanks for sharing.
When I sit in the library and work, in the book shelves behind me are the shelves — actually the beginning of the Dewey Decimal system so Philosophy books and a bunch of computer programming books as well as directories of all sorts of things.
So I ran across a book titled, “The 1,000 musical pieces you need to hear before you die”. Provocative title, eh?
So I decided to use their recommendations and find the music they recommended on YouTube, and I think I could find 90% of the tunes I searched.
So I download 10 tunes. And the best one in the lot, IMHO, an adaptation of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” by Bach.
Now the first 50 seconds is the original Bach, but then the composer/pianist Gabriela Montero begins a charming variation of the work.
Curious if it pleases you too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYeLlrTiErk
AVE MARIA (Fantasia)
Tip: Stay focused for the next track, "Night on Bald Mountain"
Good memory of the genius of Walt Disney. In many ways these movies are more moving than the super high-res animations that are can only be used to laugh. Nice flashback.
Bkmk.
wish you could post that meme.
agree with you. Christianity doesn’t make Christians weak, only makes them more tolerant for a time.
Down in Cajun Land they have been inspired to help rebuild three
local churches that have recently been burned.
snip 4-16-2019
As hundreds of millions of dollars roll in to help rebuild the historic
Notre Dame Cathedral, people have been inspired to donate to rebuild
three churches in Louisiana that were intentionally burned down.
The intentionally set fires burned three historically black churches in
rural St. Landry Parish — about 30 miles north of Lafayette — St. Mary
Baptist Church on March 26, Greater Union Baptist Church on April 2 and
Mount Pleasant Baptist Church on April 4.
On Tuesday, fundraising efforts for the churches that started last week
had reached more than $150,000 of the $1.8 million needed. By Wednesday,
the GoFundMe campaign skyrocketed to more than $1.8 million and counting —
officially reaching the fundraising goal. The push for the donations was
inspired by social media users spreading awareness of the campaign, in
the aftermath of the Notre Dame fire.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/16/us/notre-dame-rebuild-louisiana-churches-trnd/index.html
Christians should never take secular money in their offerings.
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