The most difficult thing to recognize about the current situation in the world is that it is very simple! We live in a godless world - where the divine is excluded from all significant public discourse.
To whatever question why; the answer is ultimately Godlessness.
Therefore, historical (and any other kind of) scholarship is not just useless but actively misleading as a guide to where we are and where we are going. It is just another distraction to add to those deluged upon us by The System.
And this is why the most educated are (in general) the most clueless.
But even among people who have recognized what is happening and where we are going, there is an unhelpful desire to seek insight by scouring history for analogical precedents - especially about the Roman Empire; but also elsewhere.
These are mostly a kind of displacement activity (much like the focus on national personalities, policies, elections and minor quantitative variations in a world of unprecedented qualitative uniformity); a kind of self-psychotherapy, subconsciously-intended to cover the reality of helplessness when faced with the global and inexorable nature of what is coming.
I am not at all advocating despair and passivity - quite the opposite (as many other recent posts make clear); but intellectuals need to be clear that brain power and hard study leading to abstract national/ planetary generalizations are of zero strategic value for improving the outcome of where we are and going.
My attitude is: by all means read history, theology, philosophy, whatever etc.- but do so for your own personal purposes; and do not expect it to help other people.
What helps others in a general way is very simple, child's level analyses, rooted in the spiritual war between God (and the Beings who support creation) and the devil (and the Beings who oppose the divine).
That is really all which needs to be said theoretically: the rest is working-out the implications in our own lives.
3 comments:
What is your opinion on the Book of Revelations and its (possible) relation to what is happening now?
@jas - I don't find it intuitively convincing; and it contradicts much of the Fourth Gospel (which I regard as primary).
Comment from Nova
Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
-- Ephesians 6:11-18
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