Our American Babylon
January 12, 2009
Richard John Neuhaus
This essay by Richard John Neuhaus was originally printed in the December 2005 issue of First Things.
Once upon a time—it was the 1976 bicentennial of the American founding, to be precise—I wrote a book on the American experiment and the idea of covenant. Time magazine picked up on it and reported, “On the day of judgment, Neuhaus wants to meet God as an American.”
That’s not quite right. What I wrote is that I expect to meet God as an American. And that for the simple reason that, among all the things I am or have been or hope to be, I am undeniably an American. It is not the most important thing, but it is an inescapable thing. Nor, even were I so inclined, should I try to escape it. It is a pervasive and indelible part of what is called one’s “identity.” Among American thinkers, and not least among American theologians, one frequently discerns an attempt to escape one’s time and place. It is a very American thing to try to do. We are never more American than when we believe we have transcended being American. America is, after all, as some like to say, the world’s first “universal nation.”
The theologian Robert Jenson has employed to fine effect the phrase “the story of the world.” The story of Israel and the Church, he writes, is nothing less than the story of the world, and the world is today lost in its confusions because it has “lost its story.” I would add that, for those of us who are Americans, we are as Americans part of the story that is the story of the world. Moreover, America itself—this nation that the founders called an experiment and, like any experiment, may succeed or fail—is part of the story that is the story of the world. Of the many ways of thinking about America—economic, political, cultural, etc.—there is today a striking scarcity of thinking about America theologically.
It was not always so. Not so long ago, American intellectuals, including American theologians, spent considerable time thinking about their place as Americans. But in the last half century or so, we have largely lost our story and our place in the story of the world. Theologians, too, have succumbed to the false-consciousness of having transcended the American experience, which is expressed, more often than not, in a typically American anti-Americanism that is relished and imitated by others, notably by European intellectuals. As in the writing of biography, or of history more generally, one cannot think truly about a story with which one is not sympathetically engaged. Love is sometimes blind, but contempt is always blind.
Perhaps we should from the start attend to one common misunderstanding. To think about the American experiment theologically, or to suggest that God is not indifferent to the American experiment, in no way implies that people who are Americans are “special” in the sense of occupying a superior place in God’s concerns and purposes. The Christian tradition gives us to understand that a beggar on the streets of Calcutta is in the view of God, sub specie aeternitatis, as important as the president of the United States. As for the proud pretensions of worldly powers, Psalm 2 tells us that God holds them in derision, laughing them to scorn. And yet, it is precisely God’s concern for everyone, including the littlest and the least, that warrants our belief that He takes an interest in realities that affect billions of people on earth. America and its role in the world is such a reality.
To the God who marks every sparrow that falls, everything matters. God is infinite and his capacity for concern is inexhaustible. To propose that He cares more about one people than another is both unseemly and theologically incoherent. To God and to its five million citizens, the Kingdom of Denmark “matters” as much as the United States of America. But the Kingdom of Denmark is not, insofar as we can measure consequence, as consequential for human history as is, for better and for worse, the United States. Our subject is the stories within the story of the world, which is to say human history, which is to say the events and forces that influence and engage people who are the object of God’s infinite concern. Any suggestion that one nation is more “special” to God than another is excluded. The people of Israel and the Church joined to Israel are His elect people, but God is no respecter of nations. At the same time, neither is He indifferent to, among other things beyond numbering, the political configurations that may hinder or serve His purposes. It is by no means the decisive thing, but neither is it a trifling thing, that we Christians in America are American Christians. We have a measure of responsibility for this country and its influence in the world. As do Danes for Denmark, Japanese for Japan, Kenyans for Kenya, and on and on. Because America impinges upon them all, they, too, have more than a passing interest in how the American story within the story of the world is told.
Thought that is real and not merely, as Cardinal John Henry Newman put it, “notional,” is thought that is sympathetically situated in time and place. The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that Christians have here no abiding city. In the third eucharistic prayer of the Mass we pray, “Strengthen in faith and love your pilgrim Church on earth.” We Christians are a pilgrim people, a people on the way, exiles from our true home, aliens in a strange land. There is in all the Christian tradition no more compelling depiction of our circumstance than St. Augustine’s City of God. Short of the final coming of the Kingdom, the City of God and the earthly city are intermingled. We are to make use of, pray for, and do our share for the earthly city. Here Augustine cites the words of Jeremiah urging the people not to fear exile in Babylon: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its peace you will find your peace.”
It is often forgotten how very much of a Roman Augustine was. The City of God is, among other things, a sustained argument with pagan interlocutors whom we might today call “public intellectuals,” in which Augustine is contending for the superiority of the Christian philosophy and understanding of history. It is sometimes suggested that Augustine knew he was writing in the ruins of a collapsing empire that he dismissed as terminally corrupt. In fact, he wrote, “The Roman Empire has been shaken rather than transformed, and that happened to it at other periods, before the preaching of Christ’s name, and it recovered. There is no need to despair of its recovery at this present time. Who knows what is God’s will in this matter?” Knowing that we do not know God’s will does not mean that we do not think about God’s will in this and all matters, for, as Augustine writes in the same text, “It is beyond anything incredible that God should have willed the kingdoms of men, their dominations and their servitudes, to be outside the range of the laws of His providence.”
The Christian disposition toward exile in Babylon, wherever that Babylon may be, is nicely caught in the second-century Letter to Diognetus, in which it said of the Christians that “though they are residents at home in their own countries, their behavior there is more like that of transients; they take their full part as citizens, but they also submit to anything and everything as if they were aliens. For them, every foreign country is a homeland, and every homeland a foreign country.”
Taking their full part as citizens in the foreign country and homeland that is our American Babylon, Christians have, at least until fairly recently, tried to understand the part of the American experiment within what Augustine calls the laws of God’s providence. In this they followed the precedent of the Great Tradition of Christian thought in other times and places.
As Oliver O’Donovan reminds us in Desire of the Nations and his more recent The Ways of Judgment, “Constantinianism,” far from being a term of opprobrium, represents a considerable Christian achievement of that place and time. The distinguished historian Robert Louis Wilken convincingly argues that the toleration and later establishment of the Church was not a corruption in which, as it is sometimes said today, the Church ended up “doing ethics for Caesar.” When, in A.D. 390, St. Ambrose excommunicated the Christian Theodosius for his massacre in Thessalonika, he was holding Caesar accountable to the ethics of the Church. Similarly, what is often dismissively referred to as medieval “Christendom” can be seen as a creative coordination, for its time and place, of the tensions between, and the mutual interests of, the earthly city and the City of God.
In the light of this long and complex tradition, we can view the distinctive ways in which American Christians have tried to understand the American story—the ways in which (if one is permitted that barbarous phrase) they “did theology” about America. The first Puritan settlers understood themselves to be, in Perry Miller’s happy phrase, on an errand into the wilderness. The image was that of God’s chosen people on the way to the promised land, and they were the New Israel. Sometimes they and the New World were Jerusalem, having escaped the captivity of the Babylon of the Old World and, most particularly, having escaped the Babylon of Catholicism and of the insufficiently Protestantized Church of England.
With these Puritan beginnings, American thinking about America radically reversed the image of exile. The Church of the Letter to Diognetus and of Augustine became Babylon, and the foreign country unqualifiedly the Christian homeland. In the Puritan imagination, America became Jerusalem, and even, in the more utopian flights of theological imagination, the New Jerusalem.
After his visit to this country, G.K. Chesterton famously remarked that “America is a nation with the soul of a church.” The remark is both famous and true. America, he said, is about “making a home for vagabonds and a nation out of exiles.” It is a “home for the homeless.” It is a temporary home, to be sure, but a happy refuge for pilgrims along the way. Every human being, said Chesterton, can become an American by accepting a political creed. And the great thing about that political creed is that it leaves one free to accept a higher creed and pledge a higher allegiance to a country where we will, at last, be homeless no more.
In the absence of an ecclesiology that tethered them to the Church through time, for many American Protestant thinkers the nation with the soul of a church became their Church. That was true then, and it is true now. More than three hundred years later, in yet another reversal, some theologians today depict America itself as Babylon. But, like their Protestant forebears, they, too, have no Church in continuity with the Christian story through time. It is not enough to have the soul of a church. American Protestants have a tendency to forget that, in the biblical image, the Church is not the soul of Christ but the body of Christ. With this in mind, we can better understand Harold Bloom’s argument that “the American religion” is gnosticism. Religious gnosticism goes hand in hand with ecclesiological docetism. The result is less the Christian story than the free-floating and ambiguously Christian experience untethered from an ecclesiology that, as Newman would say, is not notional but real.
But I get ahead of myself. After the Puritan errand into the wilderness came the national founding. With very few exceptions, it was presided over by men who understood themselves to be serious Christians. Even Jefferson—whom ideological secularists depict as the chief, if not the only, founder—was much more of a Christian than is generally allowed. (See, for instance, Michael Novak’s On Two Wings, or James Hutson’s Religion and the Founding of the American Republic.)
In order to advance a principle of freedom, and in order not to threaten the religious establishments of the several states, the founders did a historically unprecedented thing. In the first provision of the First Amendment, they declared that the national government abdicated control of religious belief and practice. It would take almost two hundred years—the Supreme Court’s Everson decision of 1947 is the usual reference here—for religious freedom to be radically recast as the government’s “neutrality” between religion and irreligion, much to the benefit of irreligion. The consequence is what has been described as the naked public square. By that phrase is meant the enforced privatization of religion and religiously informed morality, resulting in the exclusion of both from the government of “We the People” who stubbornly persist in being a vigorously, if confusedly, religious people.
In rebelling against what claimed to be legitimate authority of the British crown, the founders appealed to the laws of nature and of nature’s God, making the argument that they were acting upon self-evident truths about inalienable rights with which we are endowed by the Creator. The inspiration of the errand into the wilderness resonates in The Great Seal of the United States of America printed on the back of every dollar bill, declaring this America to be a novus ordo seclorum—a new order for the ages. Again, the ecclesiological intimations appear: Here is a new church, and one hears in the background the voice of the one who promised that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. Thus was born what some call the American civil religion, a religion that is intricately intertwined with the religion that most Americans call Christian.
The church of the novus ordo seclorum had a thin public theology. As political philosopher Leo Strauss observed, its founding principles were “low but solid.” Perhaps too low and not solid enough. To change the metaphor, the new order was not wired for first-principle questions such as the humanity and rights of slaves of African descent. As it is not wired for today’s questions about the humanity and rights of the unborn child and others who cannot assert their rights. These are the questions at the vortex of what we call the culture wars. In the 1860s the church of the novus ordo seclorum was shattered by the bloodiest war in our history, and from that catastrophe emerged the greatest theologian of the civil religion. Lincoln’s second inaugural address, with its profound reflection on the mysteries of providence, is in some ways worthy of St. Augustine—except, of course, without Augustine’s Church and therefore without the communal bearer of the story of the world by which all other stories, including the story of America, are truly told.
American theology has suffered from an ecclesiological deficit, leading to an ecclesiological substitution of America for the Church through time. Alongside this development, and weaving its way in and out of it, is a radical and vaulting individualism that would transcend the creaturely limits of time, space, tradition, authority, and obedience to received truth. Here the prince of apostles is Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it is little wonder that he is revered by Harold Bloom as the font of what he calls the American Religion. Here there is no doctrine other than what Emerson calls “the doctrine of the soul.”
The many today who say they are interested in spirituality but not in religion are faithfully following in the tradition of Emerson’s battle against tradition and the idea of the authoritative. Consider his powerful 1838 address to the divinity students at Harvard:
Surveying what he views as the corruptions of historic Christianity with its doctrines, rituals, and traditions of authority, Emerson declares, “The remedy to their deformity is, first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul.”
Emerson was surely right to say “imitation cannot go above its model,” and the many who have followed him have, in fact, fallen far short of the Emersonian model. Witness the fate of what used to be called “liberal religion” in the form of Unitarian--Universalism or visit the shelves upon shelves in the “spirituality” section of your local bookstore. One can agree with Harold Bloom that gnosticism is the right word for it.
At the same time, there were other American Christians who, remembering the words of Jesus that the servant is not above his master, did not aspire to go above their model. The latter part of the nineteenth century, when almost all Protestants called themselves evangelicals, the nation witnessed the impressive construction of the “Benevolent Empire” in what is commonly designated the third great awakening. The social gospel movement, led by formidable figures such as Walter Rauschenbusch, embraced the goal of “Christianizing America and Americanizing Christianity.” Once again the note is struck that America is not only a nation with the soul of a church but is the Church. This self-understanding was soon to be shattered by the fundamentalist-modernist clash of the first part of the twentieth century, giving rise to the conviction that theology, so rife with conflict and divisiveness, must give way to something like a public philosophy.
Here the most notable figure is John Dewey who died in 1952 at age ninety-two, having presided for six decades as perhaps the most influential public intellectual in American life. Like so many liberal reformers of his time, Dewey was only one step away from the Protestant pulpit. A Common Faith, published in 1934, proposed a distinctively American religion that would leave behind the doctrinal and ecclesiological disputes of the hoary past and embrace all people of good will in the grand cause of progressive social reform. In what was deemed to be a post-Christian era, here was a new novus ordo seclorum with America as the elect people in the vanguard of leading history toward its liberal consummation.
Today, Richard Rorty, the grandson of Rauschenbusch, claims the mantle of Dewey. The common faith of the elect people lives on. In his 1998 Achieving Our Country, Rorty writes that Dewey and his soul-mate Walt Whitman “wanted [their] utopian America to replace God as the unconditional object of desire. They wanted the struggle for social justice to be the country’s animating principle, the nation’s soul.” He quotes favorably the lines of Whitman: And I call to mankind. Be not curious about God. / For I who am curious about each am not curious about God. “Whitman and Dewey,” Rorty writes, “gave us all the romance, and all the spiritual uplift we Americans need to go about our public business.” In this he sets himself against other leftist thinkers whom he accuses of a “semi-conscious anti-Americanism which they carried over from the rage of the late 1960s.”
Radical Christians’ understanding of America’s part in the world-historical scheme of things is very different, but Rorty shares with those radical Christians of an anti-American bent a belief that America is at center stage in the cosmic drama. For the followers of Rorty, America replaces God as “the unconditional object of desire,” while for radical Christians, America is the Antichrist in pitched battle against God’s purposes through time. Both are quintessentially American in their indifference to Augustine’s City of God, intermingled with the earthly city and on pilgrimage toward the End Time, and in their indifference to the Church of Augustine that sustains that pilgrimage.
There have been other efforts to establish a public philosophy quite apart from over-arching claims of providential purpose. To cite an outstanding instance, thirty-four years ago John Rawls published A Theory of Justice. It will be remembered that, in this intricately reasoned work, Rawls proposed that reasonable persons motivated by self-interest and risk-aversion and unencumbered by a knowledge of their place in the world could deliberate behind a “veil of ignorance” and agree upon the principles of a just society.
Rawls, to his great credit, helped revive an interest in political philosophy. Like Aristotle, and against the thinkers for whom politics is all procedure to the exclusion of ends, he understood that politics is the deliberation of how we ought to order our lives together. But his “oughtness” was assiduously insulated from what he called “comprehensive accounts” of history and the world, resulting in an esoteric theory of little use to the democratic deliberation of the question of how we ought to order our lives together. In that sense, Rawls is very un-American. From the Puritan beginnings to the Founding, from Emerson and Lincoln to Rauschenbusch and Dewey, Americans have been embroiled in comprehensive accounts, trying to make sense of the story of America within the story of the world.
Stephen Webb has recently published a little book titled American Providence: A Nation with a Mission. It is deserving of much more attention than it has received. Nor should we be ignoring the important contributions of Reinhold Niebuhr and his brother H. Richard Niebuhr, especially the latter’s The Kingdom of God in America. Reinhold was, I believe, much more of a Christian and much more of a Christian thinker than some of his contemporary critics allow. In many ways his sensibility might aptly be described as Augustinian. A half century ago and more, both Niebuhrs were in the long tradition of theologians wrestling with the story of America within the story of the world. Reinhold in particular was perhaps too much impressed by what he called the irony of American history. So skeptical was he of the pridefulness that often accompanied the idea of a national mission—one thinks, for instance, of the notion of “manifest destiny” and the purposes to which it was sometimes put—that he failed to engage constructively the irrepressible devotion to a national story, a line of devotion that runs from the errand into the wilderness to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “beloved community” to Ronald Reagan’s “city on a hill” and George W. Bush’s second inaugural on America’s appointed task in advancing freedom and democracy in the world.
There was another theologian who has an important place among those who have thought deeply about the American experiment: John Courtney Murray. Father Murray, who died in 1967, is best remembered for his part in the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on religious freedom. But his 1960 book We Hold These Truths is an unavoidable point of reference in discussions about America and providential purpose. He had the greatest admiration for the American founders, and admired most of all the modesty of their intention. This constitutional order, he insisted, rested not upon “articles of faith” but upon “articles of peace.” Unlike so many others, Murray never confused America with the Church. As a Catholic, he already had a Church that claimed his prior allegiance. That Church is universal—as in “catholic”—and she has centuries of experience with nations, including nations with universal aspirations, that lay claim to that prior allegiance. We see again and again that, without a Church — not notional but real — that transcends the American experience, the American experience becomes one’s church.
James Madison wrote in his famed Memorial and Remonstrance that those who enter the political community must have a prior allegiance to God and the laws of God. That allegiance is prior in both time and priority. For Madison and so many others, however, that allegiance was not instantiated in a community that claimed priority to the political community. Thus, again, America itself became their de facto church. Indeed the fundamental charge of anti-Catholics in American history is that Catholicism requires a “dual loyalty”—an allegiance to America and a prior allegiance to the Church. That was, and is, exactly right. A prior allegiance is not necessarily a conflicting allegiance. Murray argued that the Catholic allegiance complemented and reinforced the allegiance to the American experiment. In this he agreed with the Letter to Diognetus that America is both homeland and foreign country.
Already in 1960, Murray saw that the Protestant establishment, and not least its theological establishment, had wearied of thinking about America in terms of divine providence. In We Hold These Truths, he anticipated a day when Catholics would have to catch the fallen flag of this novus ordo seclorum. Murray envisioned a democracy in which citizens are “locked in civil argument” about how we ought to order our life together. He believed that the genius of this American experiment, grounded in what he called the American Proposition, is to have provided the procedures and to have cultivated the habits by which the argument could continue until the final coming of the promised Kingdom—a coming uniquely anticipated in the eucharistic life of the Church.
Along the way to the Kingdom, he proposed that politics—the deliberation of how we ought to order our life together—be guided by natural law. Natural law is by definition not the property of any one religion or denomination, although it has been the providential task of the Catholic Church to guard and to propose again and again the truths of nature and nature’s God that were assumed by the American founders. “From the beginning,” wrote the second century St. Irenaeus, “God had implanted in the heart of man the precepts of the natural law. Then He reminded him of them by giving the Decalogue.”
The American founders, without exception, agreed. In the vision of John Courtney Murray, public discourse guided by appeal to natural law—and accompanied by the presence of a Church that effectively challenged democracy’s idolatrous aspirations to ultimacy—could provide a public philosophy for sustaining the American experiment in producing as just and free a society as is possible in this our Babylonian exile from our true homeland.
Talk about a public philosophy for the American experiment strikes many today as nonsensical or utopian. In their view, a common public discourse has been shattered, leaving only the shards of myriad constructions of reality. Abandoning the idea of moral truth, politics is no longer the deliberation of how we ought to order our life together but is now, in the phrase of Alastair MacIntyre, warfare carried on by other means. All politics is combat politics. There is no longer, some say, a common American culture, and we should stop pretending that there is. There are only subcultures. Choose your subculture, take up its grievances, contentions, and slogans, and prepare to do battle against the enemy. Liberated from the delusion that we and our opponents can together say “We Hold These Truths,” we are urged to recognize the futility of being locked in civil argument and accept the fact that there is no substitute for partisan victory.
Such, we are told, is our unhappy circumstance, and many think it not unhappy at all. They relish the battle, with no holds barred, no compromise, and their opponents’ unconditional surrender as the goal. Our circumstance is not entirely new. Today’s culture wars, as they are aptly called, bear striking similarities to the moral and political clashes prior to the Civil War. I recently had occasion to revisit Walter Lippmann’s The Public Philosophy, on the fiftieth anniversary of its publication. There he describes a circumstance—before the civil-rights movement, before Vietnam, before the cultural and sexual revolutions, before Roe v. Wade, before wave upon wave of critical theory and deconstructionisms—not entirely unlike our own. That was a long time ago. It has been a long time since we have been locked in civil argument premised upon the confidence that we together “Hold These Truths.” Incidentally, Lippmann’s proposed remedy, to the extent he proposes a remedy, is a recovery of natural law. Although Lippmann was, however ambiguously, a Jew, Reinhold Niebuhr thought the book was altogether too Catholic.
It must be admitted that over these fifty years the churches have been of little help in restoring a politics of democratic deliberation about how we ought to order our life together. Those churches—once called mainline, and now more aptly oldline and, increasingly, sideline—have planted the banner “Thus Saith the Lord” on the cultural and political platform of the Left. The evangelical Protestant insurgency has often planted the same banner on the cultural and political platform of the Right.
For the purposes of this reflection, it matters little that those on the Right have greater political potency. With notable exceptions, both are enemies of a religiously informed public philosophy for the American experiment; both contribute to the political corruption of Christian faith and the religious corruption of authentic politics.
As for the leadership of the Catholic Church in this country, it oscillates between, on the one hand, a touching desire to be accepted by the oldline, and, on the other hand, cobelligerency with evangelicalism on great moral and cultural questions. But there are also, let it be said, some Catholics, including bishops and theologians, who remember that the Church is to be the “contrast society” of Madison’s prior allegiance. As such a contrast society, the Church is not above the fray, but neither is she captive to the fray. Her chief political contribution is to provide a transcendent horizon for our civil arguments, to counter the confusion of the political penultimate with the theological ultimate, and to insist that our common humanity with God’s gift of reason is capable of a common deliberation about how we ought to order our life together.
And so we return to the beginning. When I meet God, I expect to meet him as an American. Not most importantly as an American, to be sure, but as someone who tried to take seriously, and tried to encourage others to take seriously, the story of America within the story of the world.
The argument, in short, is that God is not indifferent to the American experiment, and therefore we who are called to think about God and His ways through time dare not be indifferent to the American experiment. America is not uniquely Babylon, but it is our time and place in Babylon. We seek its peace in which we find our peace as we yearn for and eucharistically anticipate the New Jerusalem that is our pilgrim goal. It is time to think again—to think deeply, to think theologically—about the story of America and its place in the story of the world. Again, the words of Augustine: “It is beyond anything incredible that God should have willed the kingdoms of men, their dominations and their servitudes, to be outside the range of the laws of his providence.”
Once upon a time—it was the 1976 bicentennial of the American founding, to be precise—I wrote a book on the American experiment and the idea of covenant. Time magazine picked up on it and reported, “On the day of judgment, Neuhaus wants to meet God as an American.”
That’s not quite right. What I wrote is that I expect to meet God as an American. And that for the simple reason that, among all the things I am or have been or hope to be, I am undeniably an American. It is not the most important thing, but it is an inescapable thing. Nor, even were I so inclined, should I try to escape it. It is a pervasive and indelible part of what is called one’s “identity.” Among American thinkers, and not least among American theologians, one frequently discerns an attempt to escape one’s time and place. It is a very American thing to try to do. We are never more American than when we believe we have transcended being American. America is, after all, as some like to say, the world’s first “universal nation.”
The theologian Robert Jenson has employed to fine effect the phrase “the story of the world.” The story of Israel and the Church, he writes, is nothing less than the story of the world, and the world is today lost in its confusions because it has “lost its story.” I would add that, for those of us who are Americans, we are as Americans part of the story that is the story of the world. Moreover, America itself—this nation that the founders called an experiment and, like any experiment, may succeed or fail—is part of the story that is the story of the world. Of the many ways of thinking about America—economic, political, cultural, etc.—there is today a striking scarcity of thinking about America theologically.
It was not always so. Not so long ago, American intellectuals, including American theologians, spent considerable time thinking about their place as Americans. But in the last half century or so, we have largely lost our story and our place in the story of the world. Theologians, too, have succumbed to the false-consciousness of having transcended the American experience, which is expressed, more often than not, in a typically American anti-Americanism that is relished and imitated by others, notably by European intellectuals. As in the writing of biography, or of history more generally, one cannot think truly about a story with which one is not sympathetically engaged. Love is sometimes blind, but contempt is always blind.
Perhaps we should from the start attend to one common misunderstanding. To think about the American experiment theologically, or to suggest that God is not indifferent to the American experiment, in no way implies that people who are Americans are “special” in the sense of occupying a superior place in God’s concerns and purposes. The Christian tradition gives us to understand that a beggar on the streets of Calcutta is in the view of God, sub specie aeternitatis, as important as the president of the United States. As for the proud pretensions of worldly powers, Psalm 2 tells us that God holds them in derision, laughing them to scorn. And yet, it is precisely God’s concern for everyone, including the littlest and the least, that warrants our belief that He takes an interest in realities that affect billions of people on earth. America and its role in the world is such a reality.
To the God who marks every sparrow that falls, everything matters. God is infinite and his capacity for concern is inexhaustible. To propose that He cares more about one people than another is both unseemly and theologically incoherent. To God and to its five million citizens, the Kingdom of Denmark “matters” as much as the United States of America. But the Kingdom of Denmark is not, insofar as we can measure consequence, as consequential for human history as is, for better and for worse, the United States. Our subject is the stories within the story of the world, which is to say human history, which is to say the events and forces that influence and engage people who are the object of God’s infinite concern. Any suggestion that one nation is more “special” to God than another is excluded. The people of Israel and the Church joined to Israel are His elect people, but God is no respecter of nations. At the same time, neither is He indifferent to, among other things beyond numbering, the political configurations that may hinder or serve His purposes. It is by no means the decisive thing, but neither is it a trifling thing, that we Christians in America are American Christians. We have a measure of responsibility for this country and its influence in the world. As do Danes for Denmark, Japanese for Japan, Kenyans for Kenya, and on and on. Because America impinges upon them all, they, too, have more than a passing interest in how the American story within the story of the world is told.
Thought that is real and not merely, as Cardinal John Henry Newman put it, “notional,” is thought that is sympathetically situated in time and place. The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that Christians have here no abiding city. In the third eucharistic prayer of the Mass we pray, “Strengthen in faith and love your pilgrim Church on earth.” We Christians are a pilgrim people, a people on the way, exiles from our true home, aliens in a strange land. There is in all the Christian tradition no more compelling depiction of our circumstance than St. Augustine’s City of God. Short of the final coming of the Kingdom, the City of God and the earthly city are intermingled. We are to make use of, pray for, and do our share for the earthly city. Here Augustine cites the words of Jeremiah urging the people not to fear exile in Babylon: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its peace you will find your peace.”
It is often forgotten how very much of a Roman Augustine was. The City of God is, among other things, a sustained argument with pagan interlocutors whom we might today call “public intellectuals,” in which Augustine is contending for the superiority of the Christian philosophy and understanding of history. It is sometimes suggested that Augustine knew he was writing in the ruins of a collapsing empire that he dismissed as terminally corrupt. In fact, he wrote, “The Roman Empire has been shaken rather than transformed, and that happened to it at other periods, before the preaching of Christ’s name, and it recovered. There is no need to despair of its recovery at this present time. Who knows what is God’s will in this matter?” Knowing that we do not know God’s will does not mean that we do not think about God’s will in this and all matters, for, as Augustine writes in the same text, “It is beyond anything incredible that God should have willed the kingdoms of men, their dominations and their servitudes, to be outside the range of the laws of His providence.”
The Christian disposition toward exile in Babylon, wherever that Babylon may be, is nicely caught in the second-century Letter to Diognetus, in which it said of the Christians that “though they are residents at home in their own countries, their behavior there is more like that of transients; they take their full part as citizens, but they also submit to anything and everything as if they were aliens. For them, every foreign country is a homeland, and every homeland a foreign country.”
Taking their full part as citizens in the foreign country and homeland that is our American Babylon, Christians have, at least until fairly recently, tried to understand the part of the American experiment within what Augustine calls the laws of God’s providence. In this they followed the precedent of the Great Tradition of Christian thought in other times and places.
As Oliver O’Donovan reminds us in Desire of the Nations and his more recent The Ways of Judgment, “Constantinianism,” far from being a term of opprobrium, represents a considerable Christian achievement of that place and time. The distinguished historian Robert Louis Wilken convincingly argues that the toleration and later establishment of the Church was not a corruption in which, as it is sometimes said today, the Church ended up “doing ethics for Caesar.” When, in A.D. 390, St. Ambrose excommunicated the Christian Theodosius for his massacre in Thessalonika, he was holding Caesar accountable to the ethics of the Church. Similarly, what is often dismissively referred to as medieval “Christendom” can be seen as a creative coordination, for its time and place, of the tensions between, and the mutual interests of, the earthly city and the City of God.
In the light of this long and complex tradition, we can view the distinctive ways in which American Christians have tried to understand the American story—the ways in which (if one is permitted that barbarous phrase) they “did theology” about America. The first Puritan settlers understood themselves to be, in Perry Miller’s happy phrase, on an errand into the wilderness. The image was that of God’s chosen people on the way to the promised land, and they were the New Israel. Sometimes they and the New World were Jerusalem, having escaped the captivity of the Babylon of the Old World and, most particularly, having escaped the Babylon of Catholicism and of the insufficiently Protestantized Church of England.
With these Puritan beginnings, American thinking about America radically reversed the image of exile. The Church of the Letter to Diognetus and of Augustine became Babylon, and the foreign country unqualifiedly the Christian homeland. In the Puritan imagination, America became Jerusalem, and even, in the more utopian flights of theological imagination, the New Jerusalem.
After his visit to this country, G.K. Chesterton famously remarked that “America is a nation with the soul of a church.” The remark is both famous and true. America, he said, is about “making a home for vagabonds and a nation out of exiles.” It is a “home for the homeless.” It is a temporary home, to be sure, but a happy refuge for pilgrims along the way. Every human being, said Chesterton, can become an American by accepting a political creed. And the great thing about that political creed is that it leaves one free to accept a higher creed and pledge a higher allegiance to a country where we will, at last, be homeless no more.
In the absence of an ecclesiology that tethered them to the Church through time, for many American Protestant thinkers the nation with the soul of a church became their Church. That was true then, and it is true now. More than three hundred years later, in yet another reversal, some theologians today depict America itself as Babylon. But, like their Protestant forebears, they, too, have no Church in continuity with the Christian story through time. It is not enough to have the soul of a church. American Protestants have a tendency to forget that, in the biblical image, the Church is not the soul of Christ but the body of Christ. With this in mind, we can better understand Harold Bloom’s argument that “the American religion” is gnosticism. Religious gnosticism goes hand in hand with ecclesiological docetism. The result is less the Christian story than the free-floating and ambiguously Christian experience untethered from an ecclesiology that, as Newman would say, is not notional but real.
But I get ahead of myself. After the Puritan errand into the wilderness came the national founding. With very few exceptions, it was presided over by men who understood themselves to be serious Christians. Even Jefferson—whom ideological secularists depict as the chief, if not the only, founder—was much more of a Christian than is generally allowed. (See, for instance, Michael Novak’s On Two Wings, or James Hutson’s Religion and the Founding of the American Republic.)
In order to advance a principle of freedom, and in order not to threaten the religious establishments of the several states, the founders did a historically unprecedented thing. In the first provision of the First Amendment, they declared that the national government abdicated control of religious belief and practice. It would take almost two hundred years—the Supreme Court’s Everson decision of 1947 is the usual reference here—for religious freedom to be radically recast as the government’s “neutrality” between religion and irreligion, much to the benefit of irreligion. The consequence is what has been described as the naked public square. By that phrase is meant the enforced privatization of religion and religiously informed morality, resulting in the exclusion of both from the government of “We the People” who stubbornly persist in being a vigorously, if confusedly, religious people.
In rebelling against what claimed to be legitimate authority of the British crown, the founders appealed to the laws of nature and of nature’s God, making the argument that they were acting upon self-evident truths about inalienable rights with which we are endowed by the Creator. The inspiration of the errand into the wilderness resonates in The Great Seal of the United States of America printed on the back of every dollar bill, declaring this America to be a novus ordo seclorum—a new order for the ages. Again, the ecclesiological intimations appear: Here is a new church, and one hears in the background the voice of the one who promised that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. Thus was born what some call the American civil religion, a religion that is intricately intertwined with the religion that most Americans call Christian.
The church of the novus ordo seclorum had a thin public theology. As political philosopher Leo Strauss observed, its founding principles were “low but solid.” Perhaps too low and not solid enough. To change the metaphor, the new order was not wired for first-principle questions such as the humanity and rights of slaves of African descent. As it is not wired for today’s questions about the humanity and rights of the unborn child and others who cannot assert their rights. These are the questions at the vortex of what we call the culture wars. In the 1860s the church of the novus ordo seclorum was shattered by the bloodiest war in our history, and from that catastrophe emerged the greatest theologian of the civil religion. Lincoln’s second inaugural address, with its profound reflection on the mysteries of providence, is in some ways worthy of St. Augustine—except, of course, without Augustine’s Church and therefore without the communal bearer of the story of the world by which all other stories, including the story of America, are truly told.
American theology has suffered from an ecclesiological deficit, leading to an ecclesiological substitution of America for the Church through time. Alongside this development, and weaving its way in and out of it, is a radical and vaulting individualism that would transcend the creaturely limits of time, space, tradition, authority, and obedience to received truth. Here the prince of apostles is Ralph Waldo Emerson, and it is little wonder that he is revered by Harold Bloom as the font of what he calls the American Religion. Here there is no doctrine other than what Emerson calls “the doctrine of the soul.”
The many today who say they are interested in spirituality but not in religion are faithfully following in the tradition of Emerson’s battle against tradition and the idea of the authoritative. Consider his powerful 1838 address to the divinity students at Harvard:
Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil. Friends enough you shall find who will hold up to your emulation Wesleys and Oberlins, Saints and Prophets. Thank God for these good men, but say, “I also am a man.” Imitation cannot go above its model. The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man’s.
Surveying what he views as the corruptions of historic Christianity with its doctrines, rituals, and traditions of authority, Emerson declares, “The remedy to their deformity is, first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul.”
Emerson was surely right to say “imitation cannot go above its model,” and the many who have followed him have, in fact, fallen far short of the Emersonian model. Witness the fate of what used to be called “liberal religion” in the form of Unitarian--Universalism or visit the shelves upon shelves in the “spirituality” section of your local bookstore. One can agree with Harold Bloom that gnosticism is the right word for it.
At the same time, there were other American Christians who, remembering the words of Jesus that the servant is not above his master, did not aspire to go above their model. The latter part of the nineteenth century, when almost all Protestants called themselves evangelicals, the nation witnessed the impressive construction of the “Benevolent Empire” in what is commonly designated the third great awakening. The social gospel movement, led by formidable figures such as Walter Rauschenbusch, embraced the goal of “Christianizing America and Americanizing Christianity.” Once again the note is struck that America is not only a nation with the soul of a church but is the Church. This self-understanding was soon to be shattered by the fundamentalist-modernist clash of the first part of the twentieth century, giving rise to the conviction that theology, so rife with conflict and divisiveness, must give way to something like a public philosophy.
Here the most notable figure is John Dewey who died in 1952 at age ninety-two, having presided for six decades as perhaps the most influential public intellectual in American life. Like so many liberal reformers of his time, Dewey was only one step away from the Protestant pulpit. A Common Faith, published in 1934, proposed a distinctively American religion that would leave behind the doctrinal and ecclesiological disputes of the hoary past and embrace all people of good will in the grand cause of progressive social reform. In what was deemed to be a post-Christian era, here was a new novus ordo seclorum with America as the elect people in the vanguard of leading history toward its liberal consummation.
Today, Richard Rorty, the grandson of Rauschenbusch, claims the mantle of Dewey. The common faith of the elect people lives on. In his 1998 Achieving Our Country, Rorty writes that Dewey and his soul-mate Walt Whitman “wanted [their] utopian America to replace God as the unconditional object of desire. They wanted the struggle for social justice to be the country’s animating principle, the nation’s soul.” He quotes favorably the lines of Whitman: And I call to mankind. Be not curious about God. / For I who am curious about each am not curious about God. “Whitman and Dewey,” Rorty writes, “gave us all the romance, and all the spiritual uplift we Americans need to go about our public business.” In this he sets himself against other leftist thinkers whom he accuses of a “semi-conscious anti-Americanism which they carried over from the rage of the late 1960s.”
Radical Christians’ understanding of America’s part in the world-historical scheme of things is very different, but Rorty shares with those radical Christians of an anti-American bent a belief that America is at center stage in the cosmic drama. For the followers of Rorty, America replaces God as “the unconditional object of desire,” while for radical Christians, America is the Antichrist in pitched battle against God’s purposes through time. Both are quintessentially American in their indifference to Augustine’s City of God, intermingled with the earthly city and on pilgrimage toward the End Time, and in their indifference to the Church of Augustine that sustains that pilgrimage.
There have been other efforts to establish a public philosophy quite apart from over-arching claims of providential purpose. To cite an outstanding instance, thirty-four years ago John Rawls published A Theory of Justice. It will be remembered that, in this intricately reasoned work, Rawls proposed that reasonable persons motivated by self-interest and risk-aversion and unencumbered by a knowledge of their place in the world could deliberate behind a “veil of ignorance” and agree upon the principles of a just society.
Rawls, to his great credit, helped revive an interest in political philosophy. Like Aristotle, and against the thinkers for whom politics is all procedure to the exclusion of ends, he understood that politics is the deliberation of how we ought to order our lives together. But his “oughtness” was assiduously insulated from what he called “comprehensive accounts” of history and the world, resulting in an esoteric theory of little use to the democratic deliberation of the question of how we ought to order our lives together. In that sense, Rawls is very un-American. From the Puritan beginnings to the Founding, from Emerson and Lincoln to Rauschenbusch and Dewey, Americans have been embroiled in comprehensive accounts, trying to make sense of the story of America within the story of the world.
Stephen Webb has recently published a little book titled American Providence: A Nation with a Mission. It is deserving of much more attention than it has received. Nor should we be ignoring the important contributions of Reinhold Niebuhr and his brother H. Richard Niebuhr, especially the latter’s The Kingdom of God in America. Reinhold was, I believe, much more of a Christian and much more of a Christian thinker than some of his contemporary critics allow. In many ways his sensibility might aptly be described as Augustinian. A half century ago and more, both Niebuhrs were in the long tradition of theologians wrestling with the story of America within the story of the world. Reinhold in particular was perhaps too much impressed by what he called the irony of American history. So skeptical was he of the pridefulness that often accompanied the idea of a national mission—one thinks, for instance, of the notion of “manifest destiny” and the purposes to which it was sometimes put—that he failed to engage constructively the irrepressible devotion to a national story, a line of devotion that runs from the errand into the wilderness to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “beloved community” to Ronald Reagan’s “city on a hill” and George W. Bush’s second inaugural on America’s appointed task in advancing freedom and democracy in the world.
There was another theologian who has an important place among those who have thought deeply about the American experiment: John Courtney Murray. Father Murray, who died in 1967, is best remembered for his part in the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on religious freedom. But his 1960 book We Hold These Truths is an unavoidable point of reference in discussions about America and providential purpose. He had the greatest admiration for the American founders, and admired most of all the modesty of their intention. This constitutional order, he insisted, rested not upon “articles of faith” but upon “articles of peace.” Unlike so many others, Murray never confused America with the Church. As a Catholic, he already had a Church that claimed his prior allegiance. That Church is universal—as in “catholic”—and she has centuries of experience with nations, including nations with universal aspirations, that lay claim to that prior allegiance. We see again and again that, without a Church — not notional but real — that transcends the American experience, the American experience becomes one’s church.
James Madison wrote in his famed Memorial and Remonstrance that those who enter the political community must have a prior allegiance to God and the laws of God. That allegiance is prior in both time and priority. For Madison and so many others, however, that allegiance was not instantiated in a community that claimed priority to the political community. Thus, again, America itself became their de facto church. Indeed the fundamental charge of anti-Catholics in American history is that Catholicism requires a “dual loyalty”—an allegiance to America and a prior allegiance to the Church. That was, and is, exactly right. A prior allegiance is not necessarily a conflicting allegiance. Murray argued that the Catholic allegiance complemented and reinforced the allegiance to the American experiment. In this he agreed with the Letter to Diognetus that America is both homeland and foreign country.
Already in 1960, Murray saw that the Protestant establishment, and not least its theological establishment, had wearied of thinking about America in terms of divine providence. In We Hold These Truths, he anticipated a day when Catholics would have to catch the fallen flag of this novus ordo seclorum. Murray envisioned a democracy in which citizens are “locked in civil argument” about how we ought to order our life together. He believed that the genius of this American experiment, grounded in what he called the American Proposition, is to have provided the procedures and to have cultivated the habits by which the argument could continue until the final coming of the promised Kingdom—a coming uniquely anticipated in the eucharistic life of the Church.
Along the way to the Kingdom, he proposed that politics—the deliberation of how we ought to order our life together—be guided by natural law. Natural law is by definition not the property of any one religion or denomination, although it has been the providential task of the Catholic Church to guard and to propose again and again the truths of nature and nature’s God that were assumed by the American founders. “From the beginning,” wrote the second century St. Irenaeus, “God had implanted in the heart of man the precepts of the natural law. Then He reminded him of them by giving the Decalogue.”
The American founders, without exception, agreed. In the vision of John Courtney Murray, public discourse guided by appeal to natural law—and accompanied by the presence of a Church that effectively challenged democracy’s idolatrous aspirations to ultimacy—could provide a public philosophy for sustaining the American experiment in producing as just and free a society as is possible in this our Babylonian exile from our true homeland.
Talk about a public philosophy for the American experiment strikes many today as nonsensical or utopian. In their view, a common public discourse has been shattered, leaving only the shards of myriad constructions of reality. Abandoning the idea of moral truth, politics is no longer the deliberation of how we ought to order our life together but is now, in the phrase of Alastair MacIntyre, warfare carried on by other means. All politics is combat politics. There is no longer, some say, a common American culture, and we should stop pretending that there is. There are only subcultures. Choose your subculture, take up its grievances, contentions, and slogans, and prepare to do battle against the enemy. Liberated from the delusion that we and our opponents can together say “We Hold These Truths,” we are urged to recognize the futility of being locked in civil argument and accept the fact that there is no substitute for partisan victory.
Such, we are told, is our unhappy circumstance, and many think it not unhappy at all. They relish the battle, with no holds barred, no compromise, and their opponents’ unconditional surrender as the goal. Our circumstance is not entirely new. Today’s culture wars, as they are aptly called, bear striking similarities to the moral and political clashes prior to the Civil War. I recently had occasion to revisit Walter Lippmann’s The Public Philosophy, on the fiftieth anniversary of its publication. There he describes a circumstance—before the civil-rights movement, before Vietnam, before the cultural and sexual revolutions, before Roe v. Wade, before wave upon wave of critical theory and deconstructionisms—not entirely unlike our own. That was a long time ago. It has been a long time since we have been locked in civil argument premised upon the confidence that we together “Hold These Truths.” Incidentally, Lippmann’s proposed remedy, to the extent he proposes a remedy, is a recovery of natural law. Although Lippmann was, however ambiguously, a Jew, Reinhold Niebuhr thought the book was altogether too Catholic.
It must be admitted that over these fifty years the churches have been of little help in restoring a politics of democratic deliberation about how we ought to order our life together. Those churches—once called mainline, and now more aptly oldline and, increasingly, sideline—have planted the banner “Thus Saith the Lord” on the cultural and political platform of the Left. The evangelical Protestant insurgency has often planted the same banner on the cultural and political platform of the Right.
For the purposes of this reflection, it matters little that those on the Right have greater political potency. With notable exceptions, both are enemies of a religiously informed public philosophy for the American experiment; both contribute to the political corruption of Christian faith and the religious corruption of authentic politics.
As for the leadership of the Catholic Church in this country, it oscillates between, on the one hand, a touching desire to be accepted by the oldline, and, on the other hand, cobelligerency with evangelicalism on great moral and cultural questions. But there are also, let it be said, some Catholics, including bishops and theologians, who remember that the Church is to be the “contrast society” of Madison’s prior allegiance. As such a contrast society, the Church is not above the fray, but neither is she captive to the fray. Her chief political contribution is to provide a transcendent horizon for our civil arguments, to counter the confusion of the political penultimate with the theological ultimate, and to insist that our common humanity with God’s gift of reason is capable of a common deliberation about how we ought to order our life together.
And so we return to the beginning. When I meet God, I expect to meet him as an American. Not most importantly as an American, to be sure, but as someone who tried to take seriously, and tried to encourage others to take seriously, the story of America within the story of the world.
The argument, in short, is that God is not indifferent to the American experiment, and therefore we who are called to think about God and His ways through time dare not be indifferent to the American experiment. America is not uniquely Babylon, but it is our time and place in Babylon. We seek its peace in which we find our peace as we yearn for and eucharistically anticipate the New Jerusalem that is our pilgrim goal. It is time to think again—to think deeply, to think theologically—about the story of America and its place in the story of the world. Again, the words of Augustine: “It is beyond anything incredible that God should have willed the kingdoms of men, their dominations and their servitudes, to be outside the range of the laws of his providence.”
Revelations 19:11-21
Behold A White Horse
[11] And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.
[12] His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.
[13] And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.
[14] And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.
[15] And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
[16] And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.
[17] And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;
[18] That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.
[19] And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.
[20] And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
[21] And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.
Book Summary
"My people are destroyed for lack of Knowledge" (Hosea 4:6). This book is not meant for those who refuse to step out of their box, but instead cling onto their blinders, believing that the world is exactly as they have always been taught it is. Rather, it is specially written for those who discern that things are not exactly as they seem, and are dedicated to the pursuit of truth and knowledge. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places"(Ephesians 6:12). "Behold a White Horse" is a roller coaster ride engaged in a myriad of related topics. The reader will be taken all the way back to ancient Babylon - the foundation of all secret societies, and continue on through Egypt and Rome. Other topics covered are ceremonial magick, kundalini power and evil spirits, the Talmud, Kabbalah, the apostasy of the Christian church today, alchemy, Papal Rome and the Catholic church, false prophets of the world, televangelists - wolves in sheep's clothing, & pagans in the pulpit. " Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen" (Romans 1:25) "This work is spiritually based, using many scriptures. It is the prayer of the author that through careful reading of these pages, the reader can connect the dots into a whole new level of discernment to help guard against demon traps and the many devices of Satan. Knowledge is power and the truth really does set you free."
Anonymous said...
The below is just a example of Cisco Wheeler book. I have never read a author that describes the left arm(Protestants) of the Vatican and makes it so clear that witchcraft and demonic spirits run the Protestant world. Rome's harlots(protestants)at work. Cisco ties it all together. Her book makes John Daniel's and Tupper Saussy history research true history. There research shows that Protestantism is the back side of Rome. American store front was Protestant, but was founded by Rome and today it has a Rome store front and is run by Rome. Protestants are just part of history and not part of our reality at the present time. Cisco's Book puts EVERY piece together.
Behold A White Horse
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Vain Deceit
author Cisco Wheeler
Vain' means 'empty nothing,' and the word 'deceit' refers to deception. In addition, 'vain' speaks of the pride of life. Man's pride is always in opposition to God and His ways. A half century ago the world knew that America was a Christian nation. This is no longer the message heard among the many nations. Over the last forty years the church has forgotten that Christianity is not a philosophy, it is a Person--the one and only
Colossians 2:8
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world , and not after Christ.
Christ Yahashua Messiah. It is a relationship with Christ that is personal and life changing. The church leaders abandoned their struggle between good and evil and slowly the people in this country began to attribute their blessings not so much to God, but to men: for many, God was put in the back seat of the church and man elevated himself to be his own god. Drowning themselves in materialism, self-centeredness and vain deceit the church has departed from God' truth. Human wisdom and philosophy always leads one away from Christ. The church began to disguise sin with new terminology. What God called drunkenness, today the church calls alcoholism; God said it was a sin, but today the church calls it is a disease. What God called sodomy; the church calls being gay. God calls it a perversion, and abomination, but the church calls it an altered lifestyle. What God called immorality; the church is calling it a new morality. God calls lying, cheating, stealing, a sin but in todays' church they are called abnormal social behavior.
Our churches are, for the most part, as heretical as our government. Can the sick heal the sick, or the blind lead the blind? Through moral decay one cannot separate the church from the world for the church is filled with witchcraft, child abuse, divorce, drunkenness, aids, teenage suicide, drugs, illegitimacy, abortion, sexual disorientation, and political corruption.
Through worldly compromise the majority of American churches are sleeping with the enemy as they have become an incorporated, state-controlled church under IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. When a church body accepts IRS 501(c) (3) non-profit status, it agrees to relinquish its authority as a local branch of Christ's church. It accepts restructuring as a state regulated 'religious organization.'
Isa.31
[1] Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong; but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the LORD!
The state is the creator of all corporations. When a church contracts with civil government to gain the benefits of incorporation, it signs over final authority in church matters to the state.The Church grants headship to the civil government and allows it to dictate the limits of church authority, autonomy, and action.
Biblical separation results if a church maintains its original structure. But when it is reestablished as a state church, a boundary shift occurs. Now one-way separation is the demand of the creator-state to separate state church from state, so the state may easily preempt God's sovereignty.
Greg Szymanski, JD
Feb 09, 2010 10:40PM
Anonymous said...
The apostasy within the churches can be understood when you read Cisco Wheeler=Behold A White Horse".Feb 09, 2010 10:40PM
From: SouthCoastISP support
Date: Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 12:18 PM
Subject: The other side of the beast!!
Tex Marrs writes from Cisco Wheeler book Behold A White Horse.
Posted by Cisco Wheeler at 2010-02-04 02:07
Satanists believe that the Earth is overlaid with grid lines along which powerful supernatural, occult power may flow, exactly as electricity flows through a circuit. This Luciferian power thus is envisioned to flow through this "circuit" grid, crisscrossing as it continually flows. Within the planetary grid flowing with this Luciferian power, are numerous vortexes [Definition: "Flow involving rotation about an axis; any activity regarded as drawing into its center and engulfing all that surrounds it." ] Certain important vortexes are thought to act as a "pillar" supporting the Golden age, or New Age, that is coming.
Baphomet, "Goats Head of Mendes"
Occultists believe that one very powerful vortex is located in the Capitol of the United States, in Washington, D.C. Satanists believe that, once a Satanic symbol is drawn on the ground, it begins to reverberate with occult power 7 days a week, 24 hours per day. In rituals, the Witch will almost always draw a powerful symbol on the ground from which she will conduct the ceremony. In the case of Washington, D.C., Masonic planners originally conceived that the street designs of the Capital would be laid out in the most powerful Satanic symbols possible, so that the entire Federal Government complex would reverberate with Satanic power every day of every year! This continuous flow of power directly from Lucifer himself would gradually and inevitably move this country in the direction of the occult, and would give its leaders the most incredible power as they deal with the leaders of other nations. As we showed in NEWS1040, the bottom portion of the Goats Head of Mendes Pentagram encompasses the White House; since this portion of the Goathead is thought of as containing the brain, or the mind, of Satan, then you can safely say that the power of Satan continuously flows through the White House. The President of the
United States, if he is a practicing occultist, would be infused with incredible occult power as he directed the affairs of state, and when he met with foreign leaders.
Serpent
Serpent
Now let us consider that, as our nation was continuously dedicated to Satan through careful orientation to the Dog Star, Sirius, so our buildings in Government Mall were dedicated to, and established according to the power of, the Serpents of Wisdom. What, you say, are the Serpents of Wisdom? As we take you through a discussion of really deep Satanism, we are indebted to former Black Magick Satanist, Cisco Wheeler, now a Born Again Christian, and co-author of several books on Illuminati Mind Control.
"The Great White Brotherhood and the Great White Lodge of our Galaxy, Sirius, have been preparing and working tirelessly to activate the highest level of dragon's lairs upon what is understood to be a planetary grid. There are many, many [energy] vortexes and each have great importance as they serve as the foundational pillars for the Golden, or New, Age ..."
"The pillar in the United States of America was founded by the Serpents of Wisdom ... who assigned the number 13 to the new nation. From its earliest history, the Phoenix Bird was the symbol of the United States; the Phoenix also has the assigned number of 13. Thus it was that the United States was formed once she had 13 colonies."
The Number 13 assigned to the United States is spoken of by New Age author, Bill Cooper, in his book, Behold A Pale Horse . Cooper marvels at the many instances of 13 that occur in the symbolism of the United States! Cooper notes the following instances of 13 in our Great Seal, shown in two parts on the back of a One Dollar bill, the Eagle and the Unfinished Pyramid. Cooper says: "In the Great Seal of the United States, we see the ancient symbol of the Brotherhood of the Snake ... which as you already know is the all-seeing eye in the pyramid representing Lucifer in the form of wisdom ... [In these two symbols, combined], there are:
13 leaves on the branches,13 bars and stripes, 13 arrows , 13 letters in 'E Pluribus Unum', 13 stars in the green crest, above, 13 stones, or layers, in the pyramid, 13 letters in 'Annuit Coeptis'
"Thirteen is the mystical number assigned to Satan, according to Stan Deyo in his excellent book entitled Cosmic Conspiracy." [Behold A Pale Horse, p. 93-94] Isn't it interesting that these two symbols contain seven [7] instances of '13', as the Number 7 is considered the perfect number in the occult.
Notice, also, that the All-Seeing Eye atop the unfinished pyramid represents the Brotherhood of the Snake, which we also know as the Illuminati. This brings us back to the Snake, the Serpents of Wisdom , according to which the United States and its Capitol, Washington, D.C., were established. Let us return back to Cisco Wheeler.
"From its earliest history, the symbol of the United States has been the Phoenix. The great United States was, and still is, the designated nation or place where the Phoenix, Bird of Freedom, will initially spread its wings over the whole world as it embraces the whole entire planet. Additionally, the great United States of America is to be the place that the United Atlantean/Lemurian Culture, will emerge; the great America has been the perennial melting pot, all polarities uniting as one as the androgynous flame of the new world of Venus will be kindled."
"When the Fifth Dimension world is here, the Serpent of Wisdom will once again populate the world as in the days of Noah and as they did in the early days of the motherlands. They will once again function within their immortal Dragon bodies and immutable physical shields, becoming the Nephalim of ancient days."
So, we now know that this New Atlantis, called the United States of America, was to establish the One World Government, Economy, and Religion of The Christ [Antichrist]. America was planned as far back as the early 1590's to fulfill this role. And, Washington, D.C., was deliberately planned to be the Capitol of this new kingdom dedicated to Serpent Power. Cisco then describes the pattern of these cities.
"A Dragon [Serpent] culture will flourish upon this planet as mankind regains the secret knowledge and technology as well as physical bodies that will have the Life Force of Serpent Power flowing within them. As in the past, new dwellings and all public buildings will be built in, or on, energy-conducive shapes, i.e., Pyramids, Spheres, Obelisks, and Domes. Like Washington, D.C., other cities will be tied into both the Planetary and Galactic Grids, in order to re-establish lines of communication with the Third and Fourth Dimensional Serpents."
The Capitol of the United States -- Washington, D.C. -- was built exactly according to these "energy-conducive shapes". Within the city, you see pyramids [triangles] galore, along with Spheres, the largest and most famous Obelisk in the world, the Washington Monument, and Domes on many of the buildings. Masonic planners fully intended to build a city that would "re-establish lines of communication with the Third and Fourth Dimensional Serpents!
In the mind of the occultist, Washington, D.C., literally was an open channel of Satanic power, emanating from the vortex of the earth on which she was built, and extending into the Third and Fourth Dimensions, calling forth Serpent Power upon this Capitol City, and the nation of which she is a part! Now, are you beginning to see a secret America which you did not know existed?
Cisco then tells us how this Serpent Power acts within such "energy-conducive" shaped buildings. "When a structure is in place, according to rule, the Serpent/Dragon that is living within each building takes on the form of a serpentine spiral of energy. An occult priest, a Master, can physically 'see' the spiraling, etheric body .... the Serpent has the ability to place special energy in these type structures as these megalithic forms become the physical home of the etheric serpent and its spiraling body . The Serpent will continually move left to right, up and down, inside and outside the structure. This makes the spirit more conductive; 'Phi' or the 'Golden Proportion', the numeric constant which determines the serpent spiral is incorporated into the dimensions of these structures, so the megaliths will fully harmonize with the movement of the Life Force."
"As the serpent Life Forces spirals down one branch off the conductive structure, its essence is transferred into a network of dragon lines which will go off in all four directions, following structured pattern lines. This energy must be harnessed as its dispersing Life Force must not be allowed to dissipate. This is the deepest reason the colonizing Serpents [demons] strategically place churches, temples, and buildings along Earth's etheric highway grid ... Other forms that can be used to house this Serpentine spiral energy are triangles, six-pointed stars, spirals, crosses, phallic symbols like obelisks, and stones. Collectively, these structures support self-sufficient Dragon Communities."
Now, you can get an idea as to why the government building to house our military might was built in the form of a Pentagon, that powerful 5-pointed symbol of Satan's power. The Pentagon was built to "support self-sufficient Dragon/Serpent Communities".
Further, in NEWS1399, we reported the fact that the entire shape of Government Center, also known as The Mall, was in the form of the Sephiroth Tree of Life! Thus, this Satanic depiction of a Serpent coiling around and through and upward in a Sephiroth Tree of Life is exactly what our Masonic Forefathers were aiming to accomplish in Government Center, Washington, D.C. These Masons knew exactly what they were intending to do, i.e., establish Washington, D.C. according to Serpent Power , so they could open a direct communication with the Third and Fourth Dimensional Serpents!
Further, the obelisk is the most important part of this entire pattern and structure. Thus, the Washington Monument is most important as a link between Earth and the upper dimensions, as Cisco explains:
"The obelisk is a very important energy conductive marker. An obelisk is taught to Masons as a symbol of the phallus, but the deepest level meaning is that it is really a 'frozen snake'. Obelisks support the Serpent Life Force as it spirals between Heaven and Earth. The shape of the Obelisk was inspired by huge generator crystals, Atlantean 'fire stone', the life force accumulators and amplifiers." Now you can understand the reason the Masons were so anxious to have the Washington Monument erected in the Government Center, as it is thought to literally "arc" the Serpent Life Force between Heaven and Earth, powerfully driving the government of the United States to be the most influential mover and shaker of the coming Kingdom of Antichrist, the New World Order.
Washington, D.C., was created to be the first such Dragon, or Serpent, City. Others are planned to follow, as soon as The Christ arises on the Earth Plane. Once Antichrist arises, and gains control over the entire earth, and "cleanses" the earth of all negative influences, then the Golden Age of Peace, Safety, and Prosperity can begin. At this point, many such Serpent Cities will be built, each on a vortex on the Planetary Grid.
If Washington, D.C., was truly built as a Serpent City reverberating with Luciferian power, then we should expect to see Serpent symbols incorporated in government buildings. Occultists love to communicate with each other, and over the passage of eras of time, through symbols.
THE HIDDEN SERPENT AT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT BUILDING
"Since the facade (and hence the panel) is oriented on the west-east line, the morning sunlight falls upon the figures fairly evenly, picking them out dramatically, as the relief is highlighted above the shadows. However, the panel has been inset in such a way that, until the whole relief is lighted, a shadow remains over the stick in the hand of the nude figure to the extreme right. As the Sun moves higher up the skies, the hand of the man is eventually picked out. the sunlight then slides slowly down the stick in his hand until the bottom symbol is revealed by its rays. This last penetration of light reveals the intent of the symbolism -- a serpent, coiled in the bottom-right corner." [David Ovason, The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capitol , p. 292].
Washington, D.C., is a serpent city, founded according to Serpent Power. Her streets were planned to radiate outward from the Capitol and the White House in a manner last seen in Babylon itself [Ovason, P. 41], and according to the stars! As the current Masonic Supreme Commander, C. Fred Kleinknecht, stated, "Washington, D.C., is a city of the stars ...with over 30 zodiacs in the city ... marrying the Capital City with the stars."
Systematically, every key government building built from the late 1700's through the middle the administration of Franklin Roosevelt was consecrated in a Masonic cornerstone laying ceremony, utilizing pagan symbols and pagan doctrine, and carried out in accordance with a horoscope cast to determine the most propitious day and time of day to carry out the dedication ceremony.
Ovason then tells us plainly that the Capitol was intended to be established according to occult spirituality. "... not only were efforts being made to ensure that the new federal city was consecrated to the heavens, by way of a satisfactory foundation [horoscope] chart, but that preparations had been made for the future spiritual life of the new city, in the form of a Masonic Lodge ." [Emphasis added]
Ovason has just confirmed our article of NEWS1399, where we showed that The Mall, Government Center, in Washington, D.C. was in the form of a Sephiroth Tree of Life. Further, we reported that the Masonic coffin is in this Tree of Life pattern, and now we learn that the inside of the Lodge is also in the shape of the Sephiroth Tree of Life. This devastating understanding should forever lay to rest any and all arguments whether Freemasonry is "Christian" or not! If they shaped their Lodges in the form of the Sephiroth Tree of Life, they are Satanic and not Christian.
What is the Sephiroth Tree of Life? Quoting from Mackey's Masonic Encyclopedia [pages 166-168], we discover that the Sephiroth depicts the occult concept of the creation of this world, as well as other worlds they believe exist. We quote Mackey's Encyclopedia at length in NEWS1399, and encourage you to read it thoroughly.
At one point, Ovason states, that "... we might be tempted to imagine that the federal city was little more than as center of Masonry ... [but] this would be no more true for Washington, D.C., than for any other major town or city connected with the original 13 states ... The very struggle for independence seems to have been directed by the Masonic brotherhood, and some historians insist, had even been started by them." [P. 75]
This news is hot indeed! The Masonic Brotherhood started the Revolutionary War! Were they simply carrying out the plan originally conceived by Sir Francis Bacon and Queen Elizabeth I in the early 1590's, to create in North America a nation that would become the new occult Atlantis, that would lead all nations into the Kingdom of The Christ, his New World Order? If we accept Ovason's statement that American Masons started the Revolutionary War, we can then understand the importance of the historic date of the first battle that started the war for independence. Historians will tell you that the Battle of Lexington-Concord started this war; it occurred on April 19, 1775. Every year, April 19 begins the 13-day Satanic high holy period known as the Bloody Sacrifice To The Beast ! [Read NEWS1347 for full details]
Thus, it is critically important that Ovason tells us that "the city of Washington, D.C., should become the nerve center of the body politic of the United States ..." [P. 163]
In other words, as Washington, D.C., goes, so goes the rest of the nation!
CONCLUSION
What are we to conclude given all this information? We can only conclude that the spiritual warfare in the heavenlies as God revealed in Daniel, Chapter 10, must have been raging hot and heavy during the late 1700's. God's holy angels must have battled Satan's demonic host for the very soul of the fledgling United States of America.
Through the mighty Christian revival known as The Great Awakening [1740-1790], God produced a citizenry that contained a higher proportion of Born Again Christians amongst the general population than we shall ever see again. But, Satan was able to put into place the "mighty men" of political, military, and economic genius as the leaders of this new nation. Working secretly so as to not offend and arouse a largely Christian populace, these Masonic leaders created a society based upon pagan, occult concepts, waiting for the day in which the population would be sufficiently pagan that these images and plans built in secret could be brought to the light of day.
Chief among these hidden symbols was the Unfinished Pyramid on the back of our One Dollar Bill. This Luciferian symbol was created in 1782 in secret session, and withheld publicly until 1935, when Masonic President Franklin Roosevelt felt that the population was now ready for it. [America's Secret Destiny: Spiritual Vision and the Founding of a Nation , by Robert Hieronimus, Ph.D., p. 2-3; NOTE: This book is New Age]
Similarly, the American Eagle was originally the Egyptian Phoenix Bird. However, key Masonic leaders at the time felt the American people would recognize the Phoenix Bird as deeply Satanic, so they switched to the American Eagle.
Now, is America ready to fully move the rest of the nations of the world into the Kingdom of Antichrist, the New World Order? Events seem to suggest that such is the case. America was instrumental in bringing Israel back to her land in 1948, thus fulfilling much Old and New Testament prophecy; America led the charge to reorganize the world into 10 Super Economic Nations, with NAFTA as Nation #1. According to the sequence revealed in Daniel 7:7-8, the next event on God's prophetic calendar will be the appearance of Antichrist!
The latent paganism so very apparent to the informed observer, is now taking full control over this country. The vast majority of the American people now have no love for Jesus Christ, but are fully enmeshed in a love of this world, with all its passions and sins. Now, you know that America was dedicated to the Egyptian Star Sirius, which is Satan. Now, you know that our Capitol, Washington, D.C., was founded according to the Serpents of Power .
Our doom at the hands of a Judging God has never seemed closer. [Read CE1038, Economic Babylon Of Revelation 18 May Be The United States]
Are you spiritually ready? Is your family? Are you adequately protecting your loved ones? This is the reason for this ministry, to enable you to first understand the peril facing you, and then help you develop strategies to warn and protect your loved ones. Once you have been thoroughly trained, you can also use your knowledge as a means to open the door of discussion with an unsaved person. I have been able to use it many times, and have seen people come to Jesus Christ as a result. These perilous times are also a time when we can reach many souls for Jesus Christ, making an eternal difference.wire
Feb 09, 2010 10:40PM
Cisco asked a group of ladies if they would comment on her book Behold A White Horse. My name is Julie, after we met at her home today after talking about her book. I have so many questions. I keep asking myself why I was so blinded from so many truths she has written about.I feel like I’ve lived on a different planet. Yes, I knew something was wrong in this world. But I stayed so busy with family and work I never took the time to go out of my box of denial. Maybe I thought it would all go away and I would live to be a grandma and the problems the world has would never touch me. Well the rug has been pulled out from under me and I want to know truth. As I write I feel guilty that I have not prepared my family for what is happening in America. Just the thought that America might loose it’s sovereignty is very hard to grasp when you have been in denial all your life. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights will be gone. The America we once thought we new will be gone. And so many people like me will have no idea what is happening when America is on her knees. Please take the time to read Cisco Wheeler book “Behold A White Horse” and prepare those you love for what is happening in America. Thank You Julie
February 17, 2010 5:14 PM
by Conradosalas
Feb 09, 2010 02:59AM
Cisco's book is refreshing, it cleanses the soul like white snow. Whether you are a Christian or not, it is more than highly recommended to understand the End Times situation in which we live today, and the ferocious conflict going on, on this plane and others, for one thing and one thing only: YOUR SOUL.
.- Conrado Salas Cano, M.S. in Physics http://conrado.50gigs.net
Feb 09, 2010 02:03PM
My name is Rita I have read Behold A White Horse by Cisco Wheeler This is the best book I have ever read on on uncovering the secrets Teaching of the Masonic Lodges. Cisco understanding of the occult world leads her reader behind closed doors into a world of secrets that have been hidden from the general population. This world is field with mysteries, philosophies and symbols used in witchcraft. She gives you as a reader a deeper insight into the world of paganism and the occult world. Her insight
has lead me upon a new path where I can began to see what is happening around me. I don't understand it all but my blinders have been lifted off my eyes and now I can see the apostasy in the churches and I understand the forces behind any mass performed in the Catholic Church or within any secret group that takes an oath to bring in the Anti-Christ. I give her book Behold A White Horse a 5 star. Rita
Hi my name is Jasmin,and I'm at Cisco Wheelers, doing a interview with her. I had more questions for her and it was such a blessing to be able to set with her and discuss her book. She has the ability to take a subject and fine tune it so the average person can understand the deeper issues that have so deeply effected the ministries as a whole. Ok,People its time to get out of your denial. But first your going to have to read "Behold A White Horse" by Cisco Wheeler. When you read it your eyes will be opened to the apostasies that we have been taught since are childhood. Because, the churches don't want to tell you about the sexual act between Lucifer and Eve in the garden of Eden because if you know these truths then you know what the Masons and Luciferian's know and their job responsibilities from the pulpit is to teach a false doc-trin and to keep these truths hidden from the people and they have done a good job in lying to the masses.
I found confusion when I would go to listen to different preachers and to study the word of God and I ask God to lead me into TRUTH and as I would flick to the cable channels I would pray and God lead me to Sheperd's Chapel over the months of sitting under Pastor Murrays ministry the word of God came alive in my heart, Then a friend suggested because I had so many Questions and couldn't talk to him personally that I should read BEHOLD A WHITE HORSE so I started to glean her book What a eye opener the word of God opened unto me and finally Gods word came a live and now I understand the earth ages, the fall of the angels ,the separation of God from man because of the fall of Lucifer and the sexual seduction of Lucifer in the garden of Eden to destroy the seed of righteousness, and until you understand Lucifer's seed line you will never understand the Bible or whats behind the teachings within all secret societies. So now we have twins Cain and Able who were the first born of Eve , they were not identical, we know that twins can be conceived by to different seed as long as they are not identical which the word tells us these twins were opposites. The word tells us about the seed of Cain in many scriptures you will find the references in Cisco book I will not take time to post them but in Geneses you will find the geneology of Cain, in Geneses #4 and Abel's in Geneses #5 they are not of the same linage! In Geneses Strong's Concordance when she was in labor she had Cain first. Satan had seduced eve before Adam could even know his wife as God had ordained. The word tells us again she was in labor and had Able, the Word in Strong's for the Word 'again' means to continue , so she gave birth to Able second child. But the second child was out of the righteous seed of Adam. You do not find any male seed -line for Adam until Seth was born a hundred years later because Cain had killed his half brother Able and Cain was of the seed of Lucifer just one last note beguiled in the Strong's concordance means seduced and it was not a apple it was a tree that stands for man and Lucifer can manifest himself anyway he chooses and you are going to see this as you read her book . In the Bible we have the father of lies, first sin, then we have sexual seductions, jealousy, hatred , pride, and then we have murder and then more lies. And as you read her book you will have the sin revealed up to today's date. May you be blessed as I've been blessed. I could go on forever telling you how her book has enlightened me to the truths of the scriptures, but you really do need to have this book in your library for future references come out of Babylon! With Love Jasmin
My name is Clara;
Jasmin I was reading your comment on BEHOLD A WHITE HORSE by Cisco Wheeler. I use to have fear as to what was coming upon the earth but the Lord has given me peace because now I have a deeper understanding of why things seemed so mixed up. How Satan has caused so much confusion. How the pulpits are full of the apostasy's of witchcraft that I believe are taught in the Bible colleges to detour our loved ones from understanding the true Word. You have authors that are spirit filled like Cisco Wheeler, that are washed in the blood and are fearless to expose the truths. God said in the end times he was going to bring-forth Josephs with boldness to expose Lucifer's corruption's and believe me she has done it. If you had a hard time understanding the traditions of man and the Bible, your in for a real awakening because when you get through reading her book all these pagan holidays we have been celebrating for years and the bondage they have put us financially under with our up counts down counts on the count that we have accounts they could only be man made traditions . Because God is not a God of bondage. They even put christmas trees in the churches and say its ok. Rabbits and Easter egg hunts, on the pagan sabbath day egg colaring bunnies baskets and Santa and Christmas trees. then of course Satan's birthday and the eating of the apple instead of the seducing sin it really was. No wonder our youth are confused! This is Satans way of confusing us. It is not Bibical at all. YASHUA hates these traditions. We need to get back to the jewish feasts. I am so excited about the millinium. Oh Lord come Quickly. The rapture never made since to me but now I understand where that BABYLONIAN witchcraft came from makes perfect since. How do we get these aposticies out of the churches of today when we have pastors in denial of these truths. Are they really in denial or are our pastors setting under man traditions and to afraid to come out of BABYLON in fear of losing finacial support from their sheep. Gods judgment starts in the house of the LORD and his word tells us to judge all things but in the churches of America its the blind leading the blind. How will they survive the Tribulation! When they haven't a clue as to really what is coming down like the return of the Nephilim s as in the days of Noah. You can mention that it light conversation and it goes right over their heads. (BLANK STARES} Not a clue.Im stoping here: "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of the world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. I give her book a 5*****+++YOUR SISTER IN CHRIST CLARA
Cisco Wheeler: Behold A White Horse
Click for larger image
Category:
RELIGION - Christian Living
Title: Behold A White Horse
Your Price: $25.99
Contributor(s): Wheeler, Cisco (Author)
Subject(s): Religion : Christian Life - General
Publisher: XULON PRESS Imprint: Xulon Press Publish Date: 17-Jun-2009 ISBN: 978-1-60791-355-9 Description: "My people are destroyed for lack of Kno more ...
1-866-381-2665 XULON PRESS
"My people are destroyed for lack of Knowledge" (Hosea 4:6). This book is not meant for those who refuse to step out of their box, but instead cling onto their blinders, believing that the world is exactly as they have always been taught it is. Rather, it is specially written for those who discern that things are not exactly as they seem, and are dedicated to the pursuit of truth and knowledge. "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places"(Ephesians 6:12). "Behold a White Horse" is a roller coaster ride engaged in a myriad of related topics. The reader will be taken all the way back to ancient Babylon - the foundation of all secret societies, and continue on through Egypt and Rome. Other topics covered are ceremonial magick, kundalini power and evil spirits, the Talmud, Kabbalah, the apostasy of the Christian church today, alchemy, Papal Rome and the Catholic church, false prophets of the world, televangelists - wolves in sheep's clothing, & pagans in the pulpit." " Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen" (Romans 1:25) "This work is spiritually based, using many scriptures. It is the prayer of the author that through careful reading of these pages, the reader can connect the dots into a whole new level of discernment to help guard against demon traps and the many devices of Satan. Knowledge is power and the truth really does set you free."