On 3 March I predicted that They would be using their new powers to prevent Christians gathering.
As usual I underestimated the severity of the situation.
In fact They didn't need to use their powers!
Instead, all the major Western Christian church hierarchies have dutifully lined-up to close their doors to congregations; cancel sacraments; advise against church members meeting at all, anywhere; and in general zealously reinforce the fear-driven, materialistic, 'safety'-first, secular attitude of politicians, mass media and officialdom.
All this at exactly the time when a spiritual perspective is needed more than for many decades; at just this time the Western Christian churches have stepped-back and joined the chorus supporting the totalitarian takeover (by an anti-Christian Leftist Global Establishment) as a thing both necessary and good.
So far as I am concerned, unless there is a fairly swift repentance and reversal; this is the end of the line for Western 'Christian' Churches.
Up to now - despite the prevalence of increasingly-corrupt leadership - there was some value in some churches for some people...
Now I see the church institutions as merely fair-weather friends to serious Christians. When, as now, the chips are down, and Christianity is threatened more than for many decades or centuries - they have declared themselves absent. The church leaders have washed their hands of their membership.
Things have come to a point; everyone is compelled to declare sides: and the Churches decisively have chosen the side against God.
Like the world-wide totalitarian coup; all this has happened much quicker, more easily, and with less fuss than I could have believed possible.
The churches, like everybody else, remain sleepwalkers - bumbling around with their eyes shut against the obvious; wittering about how frightened they are, how concerned for the poor victims, and always urging ever more (ever more fake) birdemic precautions: more surveillance and more centralised control of more things by the Godless hedonic nihilists who run the world; urging more fear and deeper despair...
Meanwhile, presiding over the actual death of institutional Christianity in The West.
Real Christians remain; and nothing truly stops us from continuing to live in faith, hope and loving charity - but real Christians are now - officially - on our own (like it, or like it not).
This will be a sudden and harsh realisation and adjustment for the many who equated good churchmanship with being an observant and obedient member of a true denomination. I feel genuinely sorry for you; but that choice has now been unilaterally closed-against-you.
Your correct choice should be an easy one to make - albeit difficult to live.
Your best friend is faith in God as our loving Father who will never, under any circumstances, leave us without everything we need for salvation; and all we need to learn from the experiences of mortal life.
Every single one of us has (here and now and always) whatever we need to follow Jesus through death to Heavenly Life Eternal - and we need only recognise it, and choose to accept it.
Note added: The lack of serious concern over this defection of the Western Churches by the laity, (support of the secular persepctive being imposed on them) confirms what I have argued before; that traditionalist, church-led, obedience-focused Christianity is finished; too feak and weeble to be effectual - even among those who profess to practice it. Either we become Romantic Christians, or Christianity degenerates to a club, a pastime - one among many.
5 comments:
My own experience is a sense of relief to be “allowed” to not go to church. Not because of the birdemic, but because very little has stood in the way of virtue-signaling messing up the social climate, made very much worse by the inability of church to stand up to what I’ll call Feminism, by which I mean church women socially enforcing good-evil-inverted rules on each other instead of socially enforcing real virtue.
So I don’t think it’s actually bad for my church to cut back so radically on its time-demands in my life. It feels like a real spiritual blessing actually.
@Lucinda - My view is that the era of Romantic Christianity will come, one way or another; but motivation matters - and it would surely be better (would have been better) if it is done by conscious choice rather than being externally imposed.
I agree, better by conscious choice rather than external pressure. I don’t know if it’s heretical, but the church in my opinion is a bridge for those with less spiritual independence and truth affinity, but with goodly motivations. The Book of Mormon begins with a man who leaves Jerusalem based on personal revelation (conscious choice) but the group later combines with a group who left when Jerusalem was taken captive (external pressure). The groups combine, and the later group is blessed by the first group’s bringing of the scriptures, which the second group didn’t have time to bring.
I think it’s part of God’s mercy to eventually bring some who needed external pressure, which includes many women. There is a femininity to the church that is often at odds with the masculinity of romantic Christianity, but they work together to cover the bases. Feminism appears to need to be dealt with by external pressures.
Comment from Mike A:
"How long can rolling waters remain impure? What power shall stay the heavens? As well might man stretch forth his puny arm to stop the Missouri river in its decreed course, or to turn it up stream, as to hinder the Almighty from pouring down knowledge from heaven upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints." DC 121:33
And one more:
“The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done.” History of the Church 4:540
Every home in my Church has now become a small, independent place of worship. In reality, it always has been (or should have been, for those who have not been as faithful). It is lead by a Priesthood Holder (me, the father and spiritual leader of our home) with authority to administer the sacrament as well as other blessings. It has been nothing but a great blessing for me, my family, and the neighbors to whom I am ministering and for whom I am responsible. Even now, I am pondering and preparing for our next sacrament meeting this Sunday. It is the family unit that is the bedrock for society. Not a church.
I also believe that persecutions will increase and it will be much more difficult to be a member of God's Church. Dark clouds are on the horizon, to be sure. However, I have never been more optimistic for the future. Our best days as a Church are yet to come, and the power of heaven will be poured out upon all nations.
As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and as someone who has put personal triggers on the subject of 'what would make me leave the Church' in the past, I feel like I understand some of the sentiment expressed in the post.
However, I understand God's will is revealed to the Church leaders, and I have come to feel that the worries I had before about the Church were unfounded. And I really need to be worried more about my own tendency toward corruption.
The whole coronavirus situation is incredibly stupid, but I'm not against what the Church is doing.
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