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CHAPTER  5

The Sandcastle Kingdom and the Kingdom in More than Name

News 335

AGI on line (Italy on Line), June 23, 2004, EU Business, May 27,
Guardian Unlimited, May 25, et al.

PART ONE

THE MOOD GROWS

What, said Christ, is built on the sand, doesn't stand (Matthew 7:21ff.). Sand as the base is an absence of adequate foundation, and it is washed from its forms. Such are this world's willowy ways. Thus when we read of the new European Union Constitution, and find its little waivers and waverings, its insistences and its generation of hostilities, endeavours to resolve them, considerations of aim and criteria of formulation: we find sand in quantities.

It is not without humour, almost like the British kind, except that apparently it is not intentional!

Thus former French President Giscard d'Etaing had recommended some months ago, that the Constitution should not mention Christianity, since it could be divisive, and in any case, the reference to its religious past would be understood by anyone, so that it could be read into a general religious statement  without affront to any, in the meantime.  Quite a concoction, but scarcely a statement of faith!

Yet, say some, the EU is a secular body^*1, and so ask what has faith to do with it! That has to be determined, and the current news seems assuredly to indicate that the current Irish EU President has no taste for the religious element in this arena, and despite numbers of nations seeking the mention of Christianity, with the Vatican not absent of course for its type of religion, to which it still gives this name (cf. SMR pp. 912ff., 1032-1088H), there has been movement away, away from all that. This of course is fully in accord, in direction, with the clear biblical prediction that the joint kings in their kingdom, leaders in the domain at the time preceding the return of that King of Kings, Jesus the Christ, will if you will, buck off the religious dominion, or more precisely, she will be removed from its back.

The mood grows, and Europe has in some ways, had enough, despite the voice of several nations to the contrary. The religion bit is to be a little bit, and a very indistinct bit, at that. This is the present trend. Of course the sort of 'Christianity' with which Europe in multiple wounds that it is mere unscholarly nescience to ignore, is accustomed to find in its palaces and power, is Romanism. It is this specifically that the Bible predicts to be thrown away, that and all the adjuncts of allied power and prestige (cf. SMR pp. 946ff.). As to actual Christianity, that is a matter of the cross, of the world doing to those who are His what it did to Him, of taking up your cross and following Him, which naturally has nothing, but nothing to do with sitting on the back of anyone, far less the powers that be! On the contrary, these normally find it either necessary or expedient to depress, compress or crucify it. The servant, said Christ, is not greater than his Master. How could he be!

But as to the dominating religion, Romanism, it is to fall and its famed site to be burnt, at least in the religious centre (cf. SMR p. 949). Meanwhile, it is to fall from the political place and grace, says the Bible. The trend is already here in Europe.

Thus France is adamant that in the EU Constitution, a 'Christian' reference is to be OUT, perhaps to help French Moslems, of whom perhaps there may seem to be too many, for them to be (emotionally) put out! Further, Jack Straw of England told  reporters, we read, that if there were to be reference to one religion, there would need to be reference to all.

This too is scarcely a statement of faith from the ostensibly 'Christian' nation, where even rules about what the Sovereign is to hold, exist. It is however implicitly a statement of religious exclusion for the EU, since what is not even mentioned is scarcely a control! Largely Romanist States, such as Poland, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Slovakia show evidence of desiring to have such a 'Christian' reference included;  but these appear to be failing, their desire frustrated.

Interviewed on Radio Vatican, the Minister for EU policies declared,

"A Europe which cannot say one significant word on its own identity is a Europe which is still searching for itself." He added: "This is not the arrival place for the historic process of unifying Europe, there are other stages of the journey."             (Emphasis added.)

Not surprisingly, he is not pleased. That however, prediction-wise, is just a beginning.

Those other stages, biblically and hence assuredly, will not be to Rome's liking, any more than this direct rejection of these pleas via the pope for the desired reference in the new Constitution. Biblically, there is to be, not merely what is now before us, a secularisation of the Super-State (apparently of some 450 million), but a religious development indeed. This is to occur when it categorically divorces from Rome's past entirely and removes, in biblical imagery, the 'harlot', the city of seven hills at the time of the end of the Age in its religious relevance, from its back. It rather reminds one of the Australian colloquialism: "Get off me back!" The present is a very considerable step in that direction.

This however is to occur, in stark contrast to medieval Europe, when

	now this sovereign
	(such as Charles I of Naples and Sicily in his short-lived 13th century, Mediterranean Empire, in martial collaboration with the papacy, Emperor Charles V, in open collusion with the papacy, and persecutor of Luther),
	now that
	(such as the potentate of France, Charles VIII cf. SMR pp. 1033ff.)
	would be summoned to do this or that work of aggression, intimidation or conquest.

Great was the misery of the Jews, who instead of being won, were in significant ways and to a notable extent, abolished; and great was the suffering of those who, in using force where Christ instead suffered it, yet in His name roamed Europe in lupine assault on those who would not submit to their arrogance, one antipodean to Christ.

To this day, those Romanist assaults are said to have been 'in the service of the truth', which is no truth, for Christ's kingdom is NOT, repeat not of this world. He ought to know: He said so (John 19:36). When HE comes to rule, then the judgment will sit. Meanwhile, it is not a matter of undue violence, but of vileness in violation of the meekness of Christ, seeking and gaining power, forcing a religion on people by such erratic means, which is in the starkest contrast to the One who told Peter to put up his sword, which is now still not heard in those who defile the apostle's name by making it an inhabitant of luxury, wealth and squalid power, which instead of forwarding in meek and contrite hearts, the Gospel of grace without works, forwards works of a kind illicit in salvation and illegal in aspiration.

After all, there has been no revocation of Unam Sanctam, that gross claim to rule the segments of society, whether prelates or princes (cf. SMR p. 1070).

Europe has had enough. It wants to be free of this burden, as England did in the time of Elizabeth, making its wishes clear enough when the Lord destroyed the Spanish Armada.

Some may question this attribution, but the fact is that a massive tempest accentuated the need for little and manoeuvrable ships, whereas the Spanish galleons could not be called that even by the most astute propagandists, and were packed off by harrying and hurricane to northern lands, Scotland and western, Ireland, racked remnants, as the newly freed nation continued to enjoy the Lord's deliverance from European invasion.

Such is the desire to avoid such things as Moslem dissatisfaction (which England's Jack Straw implicitly numbered in the reasons for keeping Christianity OUT of the EU Constitution), and that of others of this or that religion, that so far it appears none of the 9 nations to the contrary, nor these with the pope, rate acquiescence from the EU. NO 'Christian' reference thank you!

The May 25 draft of the Constitution reportedly held these words, that Europe's "cultural, religious and humanist inheritance" was "nourished first by the civilizations of Greece and Rome, characterized by the religious impulse and later by the philosophical currents of the Enlightenment."

It is small wonder that many have objected to this. Not least is the Polish President who is reported as follows: "I am an atheist and everybody knows it. But there are no excuses for making references to ancient Greece and Rome, and the Enlightenment without making references to the Christian values which are so important to the development of Europe." The sour taste and the pragmatic possibility alike move Europe, it appears, away, away...! as it prepares for its day (cf. Cascade of Truth, Torrent of Mercy Chs. 10, 12, SMR pp. 886ff., Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 1).

It is a pretty pass when an atheist needs to tell this so secular Europe that its historical omission in its self-characterisation are insupportable! For our purpose, however, it is most significant since it shows the extent of the alienation from the concept of religious explicitness, and the movement to that 'Enlightenment' which tended, in foolish philosophy and scampering about like a dog off the leash, towards that humanism which still loving the tinge of the religious, yet wanting it under control by man, moves towards the biblical end of the Age (cf. Dastardly Dynamics ... Immovable Faith Ch. 10)..

That ? It involves just in this way, an alienation from God  above (HE is not now MENTIONED in the EU Constitution, on last exposure seen), and an investment in man below with the robes of that office, yet sadly, without its power. It is so like junior putting on dad's hat that it is high comedy! That is the way it is to go, and that is the way it is going. That, it is striking; but then, it always is so, and although this is staggering in its close parallel in 'process' to the biblical depiction of where it ends, it is yet not so surprising when you consider that it is ALWAYS the case that history is in chains. It HAS to go where it has been already directed in prophecy, the word of God, alike all-potent in creation and in eventuation, whether in material design, or design for destiny. God lacks in nothing, not even in mercy, not even in rescuing at the last, any who come to Him, as you see in the case of Jerusalem in Jeremiah 17:19ff/, where in the teeth of the gale of horror, He gave them a new opportunity, which they defiled. .

Thus,  let no one imagine that this is a force to do evil! To the contrary, Jesus the Christ has long since given the way to avoid that destructive duet of judgment on the one hand and defilement on the other, to deny the devastating dynamic, by setting man free from the fear of death and the burden of guilt before God, as many as receive Him (John 1:12ff., Romans 3:23ff.,  Hebrews 2, 9). The case is rather that God, knowing what man is to do, has resolved how He will meet this, and how provide for His people while He makes clear the self-depiction of this world, allowing it to show itself for what it really is. Thus the outcomes from man's rebellion, which is the income for control and supervision, are moved to the format which does this. God is very deep, and puddles often disbelieve in His oceanic profundity (cf. Romans 11:33ff.).

But what of the puny potentate, man, in his puny aggregate, Europe, excising ... God from its multiple midst!

Now what is perhaps the most humorous feature of this comic tragedy is this, that whereas Giscard d'Etaing indicated that anyone would KNOW, would REALISE from the words about 'religion' in the EU Constitution, and from the past in Europe, the place of Christianity, so that you would not need actually to use the word, so leaving it all vague, there has been a development, shall we say, on this theme. Now that the wording is omitting both God and Christianity, someone has put it this way:

"France continues to believe that we should stick with what is there, because anyone can recognize him or herself in the text,  whatever their belief, religion or philosophy."

This pearl was reportedly cast by France's Foreign Minister, Michel Barnier.

Does this mean, then, that the "cultural, religious and humanist inheritance" ...  "nourished first by the civilizations of Greece and Rome, characterized by the religious impulse and later by the philosophical currents of the Enlightenment, " provides this. Someone says, Ah yes! Humanist... excellence. Should be more of it. Just the thing. Someone else declares, 'Culture now! That's to the point. That should take us somewhere!" It certainly will, if it follows its current course. "Philosophy, now," say the extravanganzas of the same in opposite and often deplorably irrational modes (cf. SMR Ch. 3), "that is what we need. These opposite and self-contradictions should take us nowhere in particular while we just make money." "But it is the 'religion' bit,' says another, ' and this shows how religious we really are. Cannot complain about that, hey ?'

It is rather like a wedding ceremony in which the bride is asked:

"Do you promise to obey,

when this is the cultural force that impels you ('impulse' from the draft of the EU Constitution is an important thing indeed!),

or to disobey,

provided the humanist feeling of feminism is paramount at the time,

and to make common religion with your husband,

provided only that it is never defined and just happens to go where it may ?"

This could be solemnised, or rendered as a comedy, depending on the desire of those participating. It would not work, but there, they are together now, aren't they and a sentimental tear drops from the cultural eyelids to the humanist face below it.

Now it is a simple fact that there are vastly more currents then Enlightenment since it came in its darkness of confusion and inadequacy^*2, and that Greece and Rome of old are hard put to challenge the thousand year follow up of Christianity, both in fact and in fiction when it was taken over by this world for its own version of the thing in a force-deploying body called Roman Catholicism, in marked defiance to the words of Christ in John 18:36 and His own rebuke to Peter when the same used the sword in His defence (cf. Matthew 26:52ff.).

The river of history has currents and counter-currents, massive representation by Romanism, vast portrayals from Christians who followed the Bible, including some of the greatest of scientists, like Newton, Faraday, Boyle,  Maxwell, von Braun, and those who to this day, dominate in various fields of science. It has torrents of enormous courage in which were impelled those preferring to be dried and burnt by Romanism to living in contorted discomfort of spirit and betrayal of the words of the Bible. In these cascades righteousness and faith also were those defying the Communist naiveté, a follow-up of the delusive idealism of the French Revolution of 1789, and bloodier even than its irrationally rampaging precursor. If the French revolution became ghoulish, how much more did the Communist one become a sort of blood specialist, but not in the medical nuance of useful treatments, so much as in the ghoulish consortium of undertakers, where that is, they bothered to inter at all (cf. News 74).

Moving from the celestial perspective of truth to the earthy terrains of trial, we find history has in fact had interchanges, interweavings, compromises, eruptions, containments, light on the dark areas and darkness where light had been, as move and counter-move frolicked in the cultural pastures, now turning brown, and more recently, red with the blood of wars and terrorism, sickening green with the vomit of spurious philosophy, providing dressings of the damned for those who mistake damage for purity. It is very necessary to change clothes (Isaiah 61:10), if the abusive passions are to find peace rather than their own destiny undimmed by pretence, in the light of truth, which shrivels sin. It is grievous, but its pompous futility is comic, and will become more so, as it is focussed in the final act on one man, the man of sin, confusing himself in order to believe, Yes, I am God! (II Thess. 2, It Bubbles ... Ch. 7,
Of the Earth, Earthy ... Ch. 10).

It is an agile comedy surely which they play with such oddities, providing mischaracterisations of Europe which are far beneath the merely simplistic, becoming instead high comedy in the midst of the tragedy which is the cultural drift, a matter of very poor taste. The taste ? it is undoubtedly bitter, and bitter mirth ? but then they do not see the joke.

PART II

 THE JUNE BLOOM

Now Europe has moved a little, as English June has passed May and come into flower. It now decides to exclude the Greek and Roman classics, and the Enlightenment with its special selectivity, and to substitute both more and less. More ? It appears that now we have reference to "inspiration from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, democracy, equality, freedom and the rule of law."

Thus the same multiplication of the contraries continues to be the criterion.  The rule is black and white, zero and infinity, God and man, man without God, ideals without foundation, foundations in man, absolutes from man, without absolutes to make them absolute, and the litany of illogicity continues to surround the EU like snakes about a jungle hut.

Gone then is what may well be the worst précis every known to educated man. Instead, we nestle religion, and hence God, among the cultural, which precedes (like a bridesmaid preceding the bride), and the humanist which brings up the rear. The inalienable rights come where they are readily alienated, since they are, on this model, mere affirmations coming from somewhere or other, which some like for some reason or other, while yet they may go somewhere or other, and some may cease to like them, as is common in the last couple of centuries, for some reason or other.

Here is a sand castle if ever there was one, and the tide is coming in. It is made however to look nice till sunset.

Thus what logic lacks, verbiage proclaims. It is in this, just the same as before. The universal values are so far absent that they are violated in Europe with vast swathes of crime, selfishness and disregard of persons in ever new affirmations of the licence of power, which is currently being practised, for example,  in seeking to quash and squash Israel still more, as if the entire fraction of the globe that has Islam, and that significant part of it near Israel, did not exist. Equality is so far from being so, that the clever and the well are by no means similar in power to gain economic resources or approbation from man, as the sick and the stupid; but if it means that we TRY to help them to be regarded as not less,  then in what way ?

Not in the love of God, since religion is by the May preview seen  to be formally regarded as merely an inspiration; and it has in any case, in fact, been most varied in Europe, including the entire disregard of it by the Inquisition, as by Hitler and others of left or right persuasion. How can they be equal if they are not, in mere creaturely signification ? If on the other hand, it is because God has made them, and His love is not subject to such variations, being from the infinite One, so that His respect gives them place and position which their mere strength or man's toleration cannot: then of course, it makes sense. However that is to make sense in what is directly and intentionally omitted from the Preamble of the EU Constitution, where the topic is noted.

 It is like omitting from your mathematical code that 2 plus 2 makes four, and then using it continually. It is thus a drift rather than a draft.

Thus they select the ideals they want, remove the objective and even historical bases on which they were based and built, and make them inalienable. Inalienable sand!
 

WHO does this ? Man, or some men in the EU.

WHAT does this confer ? Verbiage, such as Communism did, which also loved to TALK of democracy while being perhaps the best exemplar of its defilement that centuries of history have known.

These inalienable things, we learn from the screed of the quasi-creed, they have DEVELOPED, and thus are not just given.  In whom and by whom are they developed ?

By man.

Who elects this development as distinct from others, to make it paramount ?

Man.

Whose religion then makes these values and absolutes mandatory ?

Man's.

On what is it based ? It is resting on desire.

What strength has desire ?

Less than that of reality. This then is humanism quietly asserting itself over all forms of input, with its own stated and declared output, and ends precisely where it did before. Man's culture is man's  resource, man's religions are selectively taken as desired, and man's determination makes inalienable what is a removal of what is not desired, and a focus on what is.

So does man make subservient to himself all his past, and create himself as the developer and selective agent, equipped with power to make things inalienable which rest on developments, so aspiring to his place as the god of this world. Soon he will be worshipping himself more specifically, in his own representative. As Christ put it, the prince of this world is coming and he has no part in Me (John 14:30).

Europe, that entity in ... development, it totally agrees. Already God is out, and Christianity with Him.

We now await the next step, as the divinity within awaits its crown. To be sure, it is not really present but assumed for the race, just as nature is assumed to make itself, ultimately from nothing, since it comes literally from nothing to be there, and then continues for no reason to be more there. Man then makes himself some more, and in a little, behold, all things are in his hand, except the judgment which remains in the hand of God, who hands it out when it is ready.

It is rather silly of man ? No, it is the most crass crushing of reality you could wish; and who, who can stand against it ? Not man. Hence his nerves and his arrogance, his pitiable laments and his moanings and groanings mixed with aspirations and computations and inspirations surge, while the road disappears on which to travel.

Blindness always has this defect, that you do not, because you cannot know where you are going.

That however is by no means to indicate that you are not going; and when you go but do not know, it is collision in the offing. When you ignore your own God, the collision is more personal, and the name judgment is apt. It is also active, even now. It also is to surge. The two insurgencies, arrogant abrogation and divine oversight, come like vast ocean currents leading to whirlpools which draw down.

However, this is no passage of gloom. It is over soon; it is only for those who want it; there is a way out of these destructive forces, and it is the same One who made the possibility of force to act, and the environment for its action, and who made man personal with spiritual needs, and who has met these rather than have a world which collides with Him endlessly, disputing His existence, His ownership, His directions as with Israel.

He has not forgotten us; He has set the events and the role of history, and those who reject Him, these may know their path, if they want to. For one's own part, it is nothing worth knowing, except of course for the remarkable use of NOT ignoring the facts, and returning to God. It is a path of wastage into the racial wilderness of just deserts.

Europe for its part, it has rejected this as a multinational entity. This is as it was to be (cf. SMR pp. 886ff.). Europe was singled out for the task, and it is doing it; while it is ignoring the One who made it, made man and made the prediction.

It is sad and even grievous that it values its own members' consent more than that of its Creator, that its power for a third time in so short a number of decades, is to flourish once more so that then finally, it may be eclipsed before the power of the One who was forgotten in pride in World War I,  as Kaiser's self-aggrandisement proceeded, again in World War II as Hitler put his trust in rising races, all mysteriously developing by strange forces, and Russia put its trust, as a nation, in an obsessive departure from God.

It is forgetful now, for the third and last time. Going, going, gone ... It has been rescued twice. The third sinking is fatal.

 PART III

THE UNRAVELLING CONSTITUTION

DISSIPATED, DISSIPATING AND INSPISSATED WITH MIST:

IT NEVER WOULD BE MISSED
(with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan)

Let us then review the development of the developments, that is, the way this developing thingummy is developing its thought about itself, in the drafts of its would-be (and now is ?) Constitution.

It is an unravelling constitution. Imagine trying to put Greece and Rome and the darkness of the suffusing blackness of the Enlightenment with its impossible philosophies, its absurd theories, its romancing and roving into what has ended in the impasse of the cul de sac into which it went, the only mentionable place in the Constitution's past icons! Imagine refusing Christianity a mention in the profile of the place when its surrogate and imposter, Romanism, slew with a Hitleresque intensity and an al Qaeda profanity, those who loved the Lord, and many who did not. And why ? It was because they did not conform to the Party rules which in word made someone who was crucified Lord, who for His part refused defence even of Himself by violence, and instructed both government official and disciple of this fact.

Now the engines of Europe, the forces back of its assemblage, they are past all that, its former violence. Now it is itself, its pure selfhood which is the point The result of so much, this so vain structure suffers no stricture, but declares all that is from its very own mouth, just as the Bible in Daniel 7 predicts concerning the "mouth",  the pompous personage who will declare vapid and brash things of himself, despising all authority but his own. It is on the way to that in spirit now!

Now however, in its revised late June draft of its Constitution,  it is quite the same in this as in the May version noted, that although it has dismissed Greece, Rome and Enlightenment from the only spotlight treatment accorded to any in the field, it still leaves its own glory in principle the same, only less defined, merely limited to and by itself. But imagine what such an omission of any foundational principles, based on logic, formed in reality, shown in history, implies!

It implies that having at first sought to dismiss Christianity from history's insistence in speaking of its own identity, by omission, it continues to do JUST THE SAME, making its secularity the criterion of its selfhood. There is NOTHING above it, and its development has brought it to where it is, and will take it to where it is to go, undefined.

After all, if all of THIS (the past) produces THIS (the present which declares because of 'development'), then all of THAT (new development) can declare what it is to be, can state when it is it! Don't forget that this was the concept of Hegel which Marx took over, and utilised for yet more fanciful purposes, making matter debate, where Hegel had spirit do it, which at least is feasible; but not so when you have to have the potential  at the start to secure the eventuation at the finish, in the system which is supposed to produce it. What does not have it, cannot produce it. It is, and always is, as simple as that.

What however is it to produce ? What is the nature of its final development ?

To what does it progress ?  Stalin and Hitler had a little disagreement,  and the USA and England helped Russia out, which collapsed eventually anyway, under its own dead weight of production from nowhere going to a summit for no reason but vacuity. Chance is like that. It is merely a name for what is there without further purpose; but it does not PUT it there! For that you need creation; and without it, your mythical actions are weighted and found nothing. Vacuity does not produce. You have to start with the adequate or you will not so much as be. Hence they finished in fact where they started in theory, nowhere.

So it went, the forces of freedom helping. What now for Europe, with its development, culture and religion under its own auspices ? It has given up saying WHAT, for it now merely wants to know WHER. It cannot however know this, for for a tracing you need to know what you are tracing. Europe ? It is merely itself, undefined, except on this one point, how to go.

What it will be is what it will be, and in this, it has a verbal similarity to God ("I am what I am" as He declares); but not a virtuous or a logical or an authoritative one like His.

It is disposed to be a be-all and an end-all; and this will be its end. That is the nature of such things. What then is it omitting, now as in its earlier draft of its own Constitution, which though now grown, it is rather belatedly declaring, like a child of 6, noticing that it is born, made and a going concern. This child, Europe, however, is somewhat older in fact, so that it is now deciding to declare what it is and how it developed, and what is to be done about it, by all, in his own terms. Its development ? it is special, shrouded in history and religion and all sorts of things, none to be specified.

Imagine the Greece and Rome plus Enlightenment touch, then, in the May version, one which was too obviously selectively profane, and so had to go. What a defilement by definition and an enactment by exclusion, that was! Now imagine, however, in both drafts of its new Constitution, the same which by duplication is much worse: the ignoring of those countless saints whose words in science, in philosophy, in literature, whose works in compassion, whose witness in courage made Europe better than unbarbaric. So human indeed did it tend to become with those who were in fact Christians, that it provided such testimony to the word of God and the grace of His kingdom, that it became fascinated with its own humanity and decided to erect its own shrine.  Geneva has at last led to godlessness, and England's beatific gift to a clatter of words.

Thus has its mouth spoken of the inalienable rights of man, called of course the "human person", to be more personable; and thus has it dubbed them inviolable though they are violated with indifference by those who find themselves otherwise funded. SO has its culture and past, invented for it without reference to any source but its own development, been culled like a rose and stuck in water till it dies. So does it forget its bloom. Instead, it asserts in word only, what is impermeable, inexpropriable, inherently its own, and diffusing this knowledge, before the perfume gained when it was on its bush has entirely dissipated, it erects this monument to itself.

	Like a jumper that unravels, leaving only the reminder of the past thought that 'built' it;
	or like a figure in the clouds that dissipates as the wind blows;
	or one in the bank which departs as the spendthrift addresses him (or of course her) self to its deployment for "progress and prosperity", to use the Constitution's own words, and for the "good" of all,
	without bothering to find a basis for this good or what is the good of it, unless it be prosperity and progress in a direction unknown:
	it becomes a blighting bonanza.
	This is does and will do till such good having been experienced, there is nothing of the inheritance left:

So does Europe follow the English touch, for itself, but this time en bloc. We are too good to need Christ, so let us bask in our own self-hood. Alas, when self is the target, self is the god, an its godlessness is by definition, first in logic, then in history and then in judgment, as something detached and ready to shrivel, like a branch severed from the vine when the sun comes up.

You could  almost call it a bloc-head work, since its head has found things going to it, and it is becoming both heady and heedless. All this is as it was supposed to be, and as to the English touch ? England long before Europe thought of it, appeared to find its marvellous (and in many ways, really marvellous) heritage so good, its institutions so lovely, its laws and human emphasis so admirable, its works and principles so prior in the pack, that it too tended to move from its Christian basis (explicit in this case) to that sort of idealistic idiocy which finds in itself its wealth, in its traditions its truth and in their development its admiration, till quite forgetting where its call came from, it moved in the post-Christian direction, spending the past and living up the present, until it is now being merged, if not submerged (this is contemporary political debate about this) into Europe. (Cf. News 13, With Heart and Soul, Chs.  9 and 10, Wake Up World, Your Creator is Coming! Ch. 3.)

Into Europe ?^*3 into the source of the Spanish Armada, of the papacy, of the Kaiser's expansionism and the Hitler racism, the Napoleonic vision of the Republic, liberated and enslaving in all directions, with its liberty, equality and fraternity, which having no father, came to behave as an illegitimate, not in physical but in spiritual parentage. Of course, there has been Christianity in Europe, as well as its misnamed defilement, abusing terminology and toying with truth; but its exports have long moved into the secularity of success, and the hideousness of dynamisms undirected but by philosophy. England through its government desires to be driftwood (in the new EU Constitution it would become drift-word) into that whirl-pool, forsaking what remains of its religious identity for the sake of a diffuse plurality founded on nothing, coming from much, disowning its past and trying to last without life, until it dies, as lifeless things must.

England really wants this ? Well, not entirely, for the new UKIP is wanting to SKIP it! England feels that there are SOME things which must be retained, even though the EU Constitution seems quite clear that the EU will have powers transcending that of its members. After all, we read in the thing, that the "use  of Union competences is governed by the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality" ...
 

Who but a lawyer! And what can it mean but that something is subsidiary and something is not. Is the EU a subsidiary of any nation or is every nation a subsidiary of the EU ? Even if it be taken as the latter, it is still the case that every nation in conjunction, each with each, as one bloc, directs its subsidiary, which therefore becomes its master and owner.

Does language protect what the facts inject ?

Proportionality - this implies that each has a proportion and the result is that the singular, each with each nation,  becomes interpreted and then compelled as the said principles ... actually, dictate!

But you say, its foreign policy is not intrusive ? Ah but it declares that the "Union's competence in matters of common foreign and security policy shall cover all areas of foreign policy and all questions relating to the Union's security, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy, which might lead to a common defence." So this PROGRESSIVISM and COMMONALITY (let's go with the lawyers) is really non-intrusive. You HAVE to do what it says for all, and if you are merely one of the 'each', then where is your liberty ? It is rather like a collection of States federated, and if it does not like the name, the result is quite the same in this.

The "mutual political solidarity" of the EU members, declares its new Constitution, shall be the basis of its proceeding to "conduct a common foreign and security policy." Now you cannot have two heads, for if they conflict, you die in the confusion, or are damaged; and thus the mutuality becomes the immutability of the resultant. The committee rules; and who, as in the Communist liturgy, is more potent in the thing, than the Secretary? Thus does a diffusion of power lead to a profusion of power.

With its basis gone, drifting as mists in the valleys, soon to depart entirely when the sun comes up, so it proceeds except for this, that there is no "sun of righteousness, with healing in its wings" (Malachi 4), for this nameless, headless monster,  but only the sun and sum of resultants. As the glaring brilliance of reality dazzles, the EU, hiding,  thus prepares and is ready for some actual basis to become visible in the clouds which drift. One of its leaders recently declared that the President would need to heave ht patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon and ... ? and the force of someone like Genghis Khan. That is so like former leader, Spaak, who declared this: Give us a leader, and be he god or devil, we will follow him.

It is a distressing tendency in Europe which, whether it be Roman Emperor, papal power, Napoleon, Hitler, or Mussolini, has done just that; this vile violence continuing while, on the other hand, there has shone another light which now it sees fit to ignore, not willing so much as to name it, Jesus the Christ, whose ways are not violent, and whose virtues are in definitive reality, clear and cordial, personal and absolute. Instead of these, it now elects to move up, down, in or in 360 circuits, obliquely, or in the vague commissions to go, go, without direction or definition of principle, with legalese, vagueness and phraseological squalor, heedless and headless.

Driftwood always tends to follow the current, and as to that, it depends on the "mutuality" and "proportionality" which results in that actuality. What then will fill the void ? Into what will the unravelled wool of this woolly thought compose itself ? In reality, things do not compose themselves, but merely evince what they are, or else are the result of thought and conception, imagination and action by initiative, as the case may be: that of matter or that of spirit, the receptacle or the spectacle of creation.

There will be 'development' in the future as in the past, then. With Christ, the Bible and Christianity unable to be affirmed, lest any should feel that the very mention of historical FACT about Europe should undermine its unity, it is apparent that this development will be based on some OTHER unity, whether it be found statistically, by composition of proponents, voiced into fact, or by the surge of passion at which Europe is so experienced. Yet what is its underlying unity ? what enables it to be in order that it might do ?

What more transparently obvious than ITSELF, which dismisses Christ like Pilate, declaring, "What is truth", and ignoring the fact that it not only IS but CAN only be what God is and says. HIS actions constitute, as seen in reality, what truth is; and His words, as uttered by the mind which alone knows all, constitute its expression. Without this, truth is a misnomer, and you cannot even say that, for if you did, you would know the truth which you have just dismissed with the God whose knowledge and actions in concert alone can be it, confining yourself wilfully to an enshrining system as a component and hence not an assessing surveyor: one which moreover, has nothing as its basis, whether chronologically, logically or both, and so is a self-contradiction.

The fact that, if this were true, it would be impossible to know it, logic and language alike being defunct, is only one of the various antimonies involved, which prevent any rational argument for such a position as so much being made! (Cf.  It Bubbles ... Ch. 9, Barbs   6 - 7, News 122).

Make the intra-systematic king, and you cannot even know that, since you cannot get out. Unhappily, on that basis, you can talk logically only of happenings, and cannot know anything beyond; so that you cannot even consistently speak of the truth of your model, such as the point that it is only happenings, since on that, truth is an absentee. Your statements at this level are all instantly invalid, and the series of statements constituting your theory or model, is all the more so.

It is as contradictory in itself, moreover, as Humianism always was (cf. SMR pp. 262ff.), and necessarily must be. Moreover,  on that basis, you as god call what is to be, and not being God, what could you expect! Denying the role to exist which you assume merely aggravates the irritated tissue of pseudo-truth.

The thing is far too big for you, and you end in antimony on all sides, an unenviable extravangaza of dissipated and dissipating thought, assuming without foundation, its own validity while dispersing any possible basis for it.

Thus Europe is already worshipping itself, and in its seductive nescience, is already crying to the heavens for judgment; and it is as the scripture declares, in this not going to be disappointed. It is merely a  matter of time until it realises this, and just as its "humanist" and "Enlightenment" past (strands in the pattern) has developed itself, its most glorious self, which can make things inalienable and inviolable, with the values of equality, so without God it can, albeit in a vomit of irrationality, say anything it likes, and it will. Nevertheless, restraining God from having the dispensation of the same, and reserving it to itself, it will make what is equal to be what is to be found by definition and desire,  yet to be determined. Thus, there will develop a new aspect of equality. WHO is EQUAL to the

WHO IS EQUAL to the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, which show how what is to rule rules! Would any dare to compare itself to the resultant of this voting ? or as Revelation puts it, the cry will be this:

"Who is like the beast ? who is able to make war with him!" (Revelation 13:4).

You see it is all very much the same, the intimations of mortality in Europe, its trends and its omissions of all but its so glorious SELF, and the declaration of the Almighty, on what is in fact to be in that 4th and final kingdom of Daniel, which is Europe (cf.  *1,   *3 below).

Thus, by itself and for itself, it defines and constitutes the very meaning of equality, and rights, the inalienable and the inviolable. What these are, it states, out of air, at will. If it becomes the inalienable right of Europeans to be directed without impediment by their Central Government, who dare contest it! We have seen enough examples of these glorious liberties in the hands of inveterate and unfounded tyrannies that if we allow it to happen once more, it will not be so much a question of being blind, as esteeming blindness an inviolable and inalienable right. When you do this with wrong, you are defining the very ante-room to hell itself.

Who disposes rights but the ultimate, and what makes things right but the reality, and who disposes of reality but the Union which in itself has all the powers to define and determine, of God. That is, it has this in implication, not in potency. This is the myth, which will become a friend, one of the three musketeers, humanism, naturalism and secularism, with this variant, that it will make of itself its own God, more or less as poor deluded Stalin thought to do, before he found that it couldn't be done, no, not even without classes...

	That is always the problem with sand-castles,
	that they are unfounded,
	and hence with the waves and tides, confounded.

If like the 'man of sin' of II Thessalonians 2,

the 'king of the castle'

as the child's game used to furnish,

were to go on calling,

'I'm the king of the castle!'

for too long, on site,

he might drown.

 

However, in the actual case,

the king of dark designs does stay too long (no time at all is too long),

and loitering is met,

not with tide

but with the One who is the light of all,

even of those whom He does not enlighten,

since their minds are closed,

their spirits averse and their wills worse.

 

It is a great day for which the children of God long:

"And then the lawless one will be revealed,

whom the Lord will ... destroy

with the brightness of His coming"

- II Thess. 1:8.

Light is like that, it is evacuative of darkness,

destructive of pretence

and makes plain the truth.

There was a beginning^*4

and there will be an end^*5.

Then the game is up.
 

NOTES

*1 THE SICKLY SECULAR SITUATION

Michel Barnier , French Foreign Minister, has recently been quite active in this field. He reportedly declared that Europe is not a "Judaeo-Christian club." He proceeded: "Even if the world secularity means different things in different countries, it remains the case that this European construction is a secular construction, which respects the traditions and religions of each people." This sounds so like the Education Department dream of 1988, noted for South Australia, and in detail exposed in its irrationality in TMR Ch. 8, and so like the Russell Report, a Victorian State religious affront, exposed in the author's 50,000 word Diploma of Education thesis, that it has a certain déjà vu quality, that with the cloning, makes for a sense of clowning.

Thus they seek for the EU,

a military arm, a judicial court, an international policy,

but when it comes to deciding what they are about,

for what they live and die,

what is the point and purpose of their living,

towards which all these institutions thrive,

and burgeon under the mighty skies above,

they really cannot tell,

they actually cannot say:

for all for one and one for all,

leaves none in thrall.

It may appal clear thought, but giving the unfond farewell to their historic realities, while selecting the more secular in taste, this is not neutrality, but nescience. They do not want to know it, to be related to it, so with inane phrasings and arcane periphrasis, giving way at length to vague abstraction, they focus the toe, and forget the hand.

This too, it is PRECISELY in line with the scriptural indication of the inhibition which becomes prohibition towards Romanism, and leaving all else with its secular twist, moves to some sort of exaltation of something, somehow, which is suitable for so secular a body, with so great a past, which can scrape out not only the perversion of Christianity in Romanism, but Christ Himself if it were possible. This it was proceeding to do,  while first glorying in the selected segments of the founderings of humanism  and the darkness of the enlightenment, basing all on man, unable to find his meaning, and meaning nothing, so becoming singular mean in the process, as aimless people tend to do. Then it is all mere vagueness in the June rendering, just culture and religion and ourselves. Development is the dynamic, meaning is the omission, and method ? it is simply to go.

But some may say: It is for European greatness then, that they move  ? 

Great to do what ? To eat ? to think without any religious connection to anything but man ? to think of different 'gods', as in effect  Hitler did, defacing them but still having them dynamic in force; or as Stalin did, defiling them, but still having them operate with laws of their own; or both and have civil war ? or simply, to save time, on the basis of humanity without defining it.

Justice then for man, though not for logic or for God ? It is impossible.

	Justice for man ? How ?
	By ruling him on your irrational, relativistic humanistic premises which preclude truth, even though you act on what you preclude ?

(Cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 6 -7, Worn-Out Earth and Coming King Ch. 5, News 84, 94, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 9, Beauty for AshesCh. 3, Spiritual Refreshings
Ch. 13).

	To think ? to think what ? On what basis ? in dereliction of logic ? What is that but a mental whirring, like gears disengaged in a powerful but useless engine!
	To follow the rules ? rules for what ?
	To provide equity ? For whom ? For God the Creator of all, whose name you ignore or defile or both ? For those whose religions you 'respect' as in South Australia (cf. TMR Ch. 8), to the point that the religion which SAYS SO, which confers the authority to exist, being the determinant in the society, subverts and subsumes all under its own principles in practice, so making inequity paramount and justice a loon!

(Cf. Spiritual Refreshings Ch. 16, Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 3).

For scientific method ? Far from it

(Cf.  Ch.  3 above,   *1 and   *5 and in detail SMR pp. 149ff., TMR Ch. 1.)

 

Founded on nothing, it gets nowhere.

For what then ? for effrontery ? for arrogance, that ultimate human racism which makes of itself, while a mere placement in the profundity of creation, yet the meaning and goal. Goal ? towards what ? Do you kick it up, then, to avoid any sense of direction ? scarcely in any direction, in case someone else felt the posts should be at the other side.

No goal ? a purposeless body ? How could you have no purpose when your power is to be directed selectively ? To satisfy votes and ignore anything else ? But what are votes, but the desires of some, and does statistics then supplant both reason and meaning ? Does it have purposeful meaning, that so many want this and so many that, born outside the truth ?

What is this but a psychological, statistical extravanganza,

erected in irrationality, polished in servility,

proceeding without warrant,

without reason, without hope,

moving in phrases designed to avoid the truth,

lest any having it, or valuing it,

should become a nuisance to the ... processes,

to the development desired.

If truth is a divorcee, since the only way it could exist is to be absolute truth which is neither limited nor tilted by the limits and opacities of what is an interacting being, to what then do you direct yourself ? Indeed, if there were no God, then there COULD be no truth, since they WOULD be merely what was the impact on any or all, of this or that; but what if someone felt it held more meaning ? Then there would be no source to decide the issue. Moreover, it would as observed above, be merely on such a model, the annunciation of one of its antinomies. What then would the Beast (as Revelation puts the resultant power) do with such who make such questions that have no answers, since the model excludes them, and must not be shown up ? Possibly what others used to do, like the papacy in the Inquisition, Hitler with panzas, not so pretty as pansies, and Stalin with Siberia. Each to his own.

Meaning requires a meaningful control. If you assume its absence, then you evacuate meaning. If then you mean to rule, it is a meaningless rule, which might as well be al Qaeda as the Red Cross. To become meaningless, however, by rupture or reason and the vigour of will is merely to lapse into the infantile, or to inhabit the abode of devilries. If it not the former, then assuredly the latter. That, once again, is precisely what the Bible declares of this ... development (cf. Revelation 13:11, with 20:2).

Again, if there WERE no absolute truth, and if there were only reactions and responses in terms of whatever happens to be around, and seeing what happens when you do this and that, procedural niceties, then how could you say what it is ? How could you KNOW this except it were there to be
known ? There would BE only impressions, observations made by interacting objects, with preferences and imaginations. But if you do know not because, in this model, you cannot know it, then you cannot affirm the model to be true. Thus if this were all you were, it could not be true that this is all you are. It becomes pretty, like a little blatherskite at a party, who by mistake has taken an intoxicating brew.

Further, the possibility of the model being true would not exist, for it would be voided with the avoidance of absolute truth in the first place.

If the EU is to avoid reality in order to exist, it is by definition an unrealistic body. If however it wishes to void the presence of truth absolutely, and not merely for procedural reasons, then it is in worse condition still. In omitting its past and not declaring any but itself, while arising to be, as in excluding both God and Christ, even from its words of constitution, it shows itself constituted amiss, willing to negate into nescience all but itself. Thus it comes to the same thing, whether by commission or omission, in the end.

If then your own version is not truth, since this is not convenient to so great a body, which fiddles with social pressures and puts into words what numbers dictate, then what is it ? On such a model as that, it is then  an arrogant presumption daring to direct people in what cannot be known, by rule and authority. How then could you order people without truth ? It COULD only be by will. This delusion, then, having forsaken truth, and maintaining it the truth that it must be forsaken, in self-contradiction rules as unruly. Its dictates are directive, but its direction is dissolved.

When however will rules in vacuo, man is decapitated as if by al Qaeda, but voluntarily: indeed some wish the cut to be made quickly, so that they can continue as unmanned.

If then man is either by default for pragmatic purposes, or by assault for arrogant battle, to defy reason, defy God, proscribe His mention, disregard His sovereignty, by omitting Him;  and if he is, moreover to dismiss the divine authority and use his own over the Creator's  products: then the EU is now giving the lead into the final revolt. It has to come, for it is predicted; it is on the way, and we notice its embarkation, yet there are no streamers, no not for this, as when vessels used to move from the pier, and the last paper contact between those who left and those who remained, at last broke.

The news then  of the EU Constitution ? It is not surprising.

It is merely apprising us that it is here, that the last phase is fitting like hand in glove. With all the other indicators, this movement of alignment, this combination of  contradictories outside knowledge: it shows ripeness. And for this, there is a collision outcome.

Voided truth rests in the hand of unavoidable reality. It is conflict, it is war, and it is war on God just as Revelation indicates in 19:18. What is in fact inviolable and inalienable is that absolute truth without whom nothing could be true, to affirm or to deny concerning all meaning and all life, all destiny and all models of life, man and the universe. What is inalienable is that irrepressible remedy which He has provided, and attested, and invested in this earth, the divine rebuke to the lies and fraud of man, who misuses His equipment, including himself, and the divine place of pardon at one and the same time (News 100, 122, Delusive Drift or Divine Dynamic Ch. 3).

Without accepting the former, you remove the door to the latter!

The time has been long, but not too long; for this new assertion of humanism and secularism, of darkness as 'enlightenment' and the avoidance of God in reality, in relevance, even in mention while man ordains his morals, his meaning and his desire by mouthing symbols without root or possibility of mere truth, is on the rim of revealed destiny (cf. News 19). Man is securely coming to the point of self-evaluation by desire absconding from history as from thought. Man's representative showing himself that he is god is merely a kilometre away.

Furthermore, if you cannot state truth, why say ?  But they say as if their lives depended on it, so that they talk to the air. If you can but won't, why pretend ? In the end, what is excluded, atrophies, and what is put 'paid' to, becomes extraneous, while you live and move on the basis of what you adopt. You are living divorced from truth: and that ? is it not to live in a lie. What pertinaciously avoids truth is securely just that. You pretend you can't live in the truth, find it absent:  how could you know, since it would be truth that you can't. Is antinomy to be the grandparent of this irrational rule! It creaks like an old house in the wind. Will and nescience combine like the components of a critical mass for the appropriate explosion, first in spirit, in logic, in politics, then in the calamities of final ruin.

If you talk to the air, and yet air your talks, what is the point of that ? It is but a testimony that your model crimps your reality, and you cannot follow it. Truth is innate for man as a receptor, and when he departs from it, he cannot act logically any more, but saying one thing, he does another. Words substitute for reason, and orphaned of both man's Creator and their point, make sounds while man, surreptitiously making HIMSELF the god, becomes whatever takes his fancy. Fancy, however, it is not fact. Disrelish for reality is the most certain way of securing destruction.

That too, it is coming as you see in II Thessalonians 2. It is coming nearer by the day. The EU Constitution is a wonderful indication of just HOW near!

*2

See :

Repent or Perish Ch.  5;

Predestination and Freewill  esp. Sections 1 and Appendix on Kant;

Questions and  Answers 10;

The Kingdom of Heaven  7, pp. 120ff.;

Things Old and  New Chs.  5,  6, 10, Epilogue; 

ALIVE   1 (Tony Blair's speech on religions) ;

News 80;  19 (systematics on morals included)  ;   5

Lord of Life Ch.   8, Divine Agenda Ch.   7

*3

SMR pp. 911ff., starting at "5",    has some far earlier words on this 'unity', that for that very reason, may be helpful here to contemplate. Their being historically a decade earlier may help perspective to appear.

The very SAME trend which is now far more nearly consummated, is exposed over a decade ago, in this earlier work. We see it with some of its biblical background in this fifth section below, which is being cited. The very same illusory pretensions of unity are likewise explored in "6" below.

This is in its context, an elegant confirmation now from history, that the forbears of the current heart, were indeed beating away over the last centuries, more especially in the last one; and now the resultant child is keen to forget its parentage, especially some elements of it, which were ruffians and riotous, unruly, revolutionary and rudely aggressive. Europe does not really CARE to state the apst.

Yet you cannot change your own genes, and when and while Europe is keen on not changing its spots, the mere selection of some on which to focus, does nothing to the constitution, which now is simply being externalised into words. Thus we integrate this verificatory past as part of the declaratory present. Degrading it all into generalities is merely to confirm the evacuation.

The text below continues from pp. 886ff., where Daniel's exposition of the coming Empires of the last predicted kingdom, that of Rome, is given and explored; and then pp. 902ff., where Europe's current developments are traced to the point of publication of that volume of SMR in 1992.

	We move from the prophet Daniel to the Fourth Empire of his depiction in Daniel 7 (cf. The Pitter-Patter of Prophetic Feet Ch. 4, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 10),
	and then through the Romanist this-world's philosophy of Christianity, and its violent fruits,
	to Communism's effort to be the next page, and its violent directives,
	until we come to the present.

It is useful for us thus to have all these phases in one site, and so we trace it to the vibrantly contemporary phase, which comes like a tsunami on the never placid shores.

How could they be placid when the Prince of Peace having been crucified once, is now systematically and internationally in this EU, being crucified again. It was in philosophic extravanganzas like Romanism and Communism (cf. Highway to Hell, SMR pp. 946ff., and text below)  and Humanism (cf. *2 above), that this was once done. Now it is political as well; and marvel of all, it is COMPOSING ITSELF, this time, willingly. It is not by jackboot but by Jack Smith, if you will, that it makes itself live.

In passing, let us note that if you want to explore Daniel, many items on this prophecy are in the volume Highway of Holiness. Again, the excerpt below will provide more biblical background for the understanding of the prophecies concerned.

Here is the prophetically ultimate political extravanganza, then, composing itself, in the spirit of a bonanza, the latest stanza of the poem of humanistic pollution, dispersing the divinely created ozone layer of protection, and exposing itself to the irradiations of unreality, only too happy to intrude from its unstable base, like an asteroid crashing to earth, as it falls under its own weight and imparts its disruptive dynamism in the process. In fact, what is here metaphor, is literal reality to come indeed, for the “star fell from heaven” scenario, unlike the popular song, imparts devastation on a massive scale, as part of the awakening process for a yawing, jawing and lethal earth (cf. Revelation 8:10-11, cf. 8:8).

Now, therefore,  we can trace the unveiling  further to 2004, over a decade later. The very words of description are all but the very same. This, then, is verification of the trend, both as to its nature, and as to its apt, accurate and almost stunningly 'relevant' depiction of the process ... of what the new EU Constitution calls its 'development'. Alas, the developmentally fascinated if not hypnotised are always in the same boat: they do not consider INTO WHAT they develop, having the optimism of clouds that float in imaginary concourses above the earth with its violence and vileness of philosophy and fantasy, by which it so often and in so much ruled.

When what develops is the design to disband deity in practice, lest He get in the way, and to institute virtual deity, since it is in the way of its wishes, then war on God is the situation.

It is costly, and since the crucifixion is already past, it has little it can do; but await desolation.

That of course is precisely one of the major emphases of Daniel 9, as it looks towards the end of the Age, and the finale noted in Daniel 12, at the resurrection and the judgment of man. That, he declares, "shall be a time of trouble such as there never was since there was a nation".

Revelation 6-17 tells you much more, and on that, the Lord has spoken till He comes (Revelation 22:18-19, for these THINGS are permitted no addition, nor these words any decrease).

EXCERPT FROM SMR

ON EUROPEAN DEVELOPMENTS AND PROPHECY

5. Spiritual and Martial Dimensions of the Common Market, and of Daniel's Fourth Kingdom

a. The Convenient Church

It now becomes necessary to consider various phases and frames of reference in this coming consummation relating to the fourth kingdom. These include the Roman Catholic time in central Europe, the venue of the fourth kingdom, indeed the phase with the ironic name in the long and devastating period of the political alliance: the so-called Holy Roman Empire. With its ludicrous but purely internal strife between emperor and pope for supremacy, and the hideous cruelties towards Protestants, the schemings and false gospels abounding in the 'church' which killed its opponents so freely, it was anything but holy. The name would fit best perhaps a musical comedy, like Gilbert and Sullivan's H.M.S. Pinafore.

The point is however that that very fact fulfils the prediction concerning the nature of this fourth kingdom, made by the prophet Daniel.

We have had occasion to consider and will consider other elements where Christianity has been persecuted, in the fourth kingdom and its various phases: its partly strong and partly weak aspect, its partly patent and partly latent areas, its partly hale and partly broken history, as predicted by Daniel (Daniel 2:31-34,40 ff., cf. the fourth kingdom in Daniel 7). Where is it now ?

Not only are there communistic contributions as to the spirit and method to be employed, and Nazi contributions as to the scope and the religious vagrancy involved, but Roman Catholic contributions in that these inspired Hitler (who devoutly admired the organisation of the Jesuits and indicated this): these are centred in central Europe, and the current Pope is explicitly seeking one religion for the new and 'united' Europe which so splendidly fits the fourth empire in its continuation. It is for this reason that the doctrine of Rome, and its contradiction of the Bible and of Christ required, does require and will require analysis (e.g. pp. 1040-1086, cf. 1032-1040 infra), so that the fourth kingdom will be seen operative in all its dimensions. In particular, this will include its contribution in quality and trend, to predicted events, yet to come.

Another reason, of course, as dealt with elsewhere¹ is the relevance, to our apologetic field, of the principial use of force in the subduing of those who will not believe what is wanted, relative to alleged salvation. This in turn requires us to research the statements and practice of Rome, historically, on such use of violence (e.g. in Chapter 10, Section 2A , and pp. 913 ff. infra), enabling both of two necessary points.

What are these ? The first is this: that Rome's use of force here is contrary to the construction of man, in God's image: the Bible does not signify force for conversion purposes. God pleads, exhorts, asseverates, thunders, protests, judges, but does not make force the means of 'conversion'; and of course Jesus stated that His kingdom does not belong to this world. It will be seen that this, apart from Biblical contradiction, rules out both the Moslem heresy and that of Rome, each of which employs a different 'Christ', re-defined. It does more than this. It helps to define the nature of the cruelty which Daniel (7:7,19) predicated of this fourth Empire, in which Rome has played so substantial a part, in its ecclesiastical format, in the Church of Rome.

The second is this: that Rome, with its force is part (as we have developed and will develop this theme) of a predicted apostasy from Christianity. It is not at all apologetically relevant as a negative (as if Christ now offered violence, crucifying, no more satisfied with being crucified); but is relevant as a positive item, in that it is a predicted perversion of the purity of the Saviour, carried out in His name. (See Chapter 10, infra.)

Thus Boniface VIII, so long occupied in conflict with Philip the Fair of France, had some words echoing with divine sovereignty:

How shall we assume to judge kings and princes, and not dare to proceed against a worm! Let them perish forever, that they may understand that the name of the Roman pontiff is known in all the earth and that he alone is most high over princes. (Italics added. Address to the Cardinals against the Colonna: Schaff - History of the Christian Church, Vol.VI, p. 16.)

One had thought that God alone was most high and all the princes of the earth were as dust before Him (Isaiah 40:1-17)! Again, for ever... seems a long time for one mortal sinner to reflect on the superior, and indeed lordly powers of another mortal sinner, when it is God alone who "shall be exalted in that day" (Isaiah 2:10-11) when all is revealed. That day will of course take place within the 'for ever' held in view by the Roman pontiff. For ever will become never! and this by strictest principle. It is again a strong penalty pompously envisaged on behalf of one mortal sinner who specifically is not to be in the lordly mode of 'the Gentiles' (Matthew 20:25-27), if a Christian. For as Christ said:

He who is greatest among you will be your servant ... and he who exalts himself will be abased, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

The lesson, if learnt, would not seem to correspond to the 'humbling of himself' on the part of the pope. The object of the lesson is in fact the precise opposite - the full realisation of the ineffable power claimed by the Pope, and defended with such zeal that eternity is needed to reflect adequately on it. Such is the pope's lesson, here! Such teaching and such 'understanding', he would impart.

Further, as Schaff also observes (loc. cit.), in view of this exaltation of the Bishop of Rome alone, it is notable that, in recognising the Emperor, Albrecht, Pope Boniface declared that "as the moon has no light except as she receives it from the sun, so no earthly power has anything which it does not receive from the ecclesiastical authority". God, for His part declares:

It is He who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers... He brings the princes to nothing: He makes the judges of the earth useless (Isaiah 40:22-23).

It would appear a most anomalous grasshopper who makes the princes depend on him! One of the antichrist sentiments seems commonly to be the removal of God from all practical involvement, whether verbally, symbolically, by philosophy or, as here, by mere pretension; and when you reflect on it, this is natural. To be God requires no opposition; and to make Him inoperative or irrelevant to the point, would prima facie convince some that all that was HIS was now theirs, for their own disposition; and perhaps it might almost convince some of the victims likewise!

Small wonder Boniface I, another bishop of Rome (*5) once sent a humble petition "to the emperor to provide some remedy against the ambitious contentions of the clergy concerning the bishopric of Rome" (Foxe, in his Book Of Martyrs, p. 12); whilst Gregory 1 (op. cit., p. 15) detested the vulpine vulgarity of 'universal bishop' as a title. This is merely the flesh and the spirit, as so often, at war: the one aspiring, the other adoring Christ. Thus of Gregory I, Foxe writes:

In his epistles how oft does he repeat and declare the same to be directly against the gospel, and ancient decrees of councils, affirming that none of his predecessors did ever usurp to himself that style or title and concludes that whoever does so, declares himself to be a forerunner of antichrist.

Thus did faithful Gregory, in the early days, despise such high claims to being 'universal bishop', repudiate them, claim them as novelties in the history of the church - though himself bishop of Rome. His predecessor, Bishop Pelagius of Rome, urged similarly, showing that to take such a title makes one bishop to become 'derogatory' of another. Gregory, Foxe notes, spoke "with sharp words and rebukes, detesting the same title, calling it new, foolish, proud, perverse, wicked, profane, and that to consent to it, is as much as to deny the faith." This is scarcely surprising in view of Matthew 23:10. It is not only disobedience, but direct usurpation: for the reason that it is forbidden, is this - that the post is Christ's!

I Peter 5:1 tells us that Peter is a fellow elder, and 2:25 that Christ is operative "bishop of our souls".

Verbally to arrogate that title is to derogate deity!
To assume such a role is to imitate deity in His majesty; to suffer it, is to allow idolatry!
To embrace it in the heart, is idolatrous.
We must agree absolutely with Gregory I in his assessment, in the early springtime of his office.

Wrote Gregory: "As for me I seek not mine advancement in words, but in manners: neither do I account that any honour wherein the honour of my brethren I see to be hindered... my honour is the full and perfect vigour of my brethren. Then am I honoured when to no man is denied the due honour which to him belongs... Let these words therefore go, which do nothing but puff up vanity, and wound charity..." (Foxe, loc. cit.).

In the grip of these ungoverned pontifical pretensions, long an object lesson in grasping at the sceptre of God, Pope Leo Xlll (Sapientae Christianae) could say:

Union of minds requires not only a perfect accord in one Faith, but complete submission and obedience of will { to God ? no... } to the Church, and to the Roman Pontiff, as to God Himself. This obedience, however, should be perfect, because it is enjoined by faith itself, and has this in common with faith, that it cannot be given in shreds.

There is the crux of idolatry and the criterion of antichrist: that another snatches the sceptre, takes the post, achieves the position, masquerades quite directly as God. God is one whom no man can impersonate, because His personality is infinite; and whom no man can replace, because He says so. There is one God (Ephesians 4:4), one Lord of all; so that the mathematical error of calling one two, when there is no question of a quadripartite God, is mere blasphemy.

'Appalling blasphemy' is the sense of the "abomination of desolation" which is to be "standing in the holy place" (Matthew 24:15); and this is in Blasphemy Avenue, en route to such a blasphemy as that. There is little in development, then, at this level, before the 'man of sin' in person; but Rome, as we will see, can here only make her not insignificant contribution.

It is the fact that it is significant, that currently concerns, as an avenue to the fulfilment of prophecy, already in type meeting the case.

To revert, however, to Leo XIII: The popes, said he, 'hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty.' This unevasive declaration is found in his encyclical The Reunion of Christendom (1885).

The New York Catechism, as quoted by Professor Lorraine Boettner in Roman Catholicism (p.127) states:

The pope takes the place of Jesus Christ on earth.

As Christ (Colossians 2:9) has the fulness of the Godhead in Him bodily, this means the pope takes the place of God; and that is not merely logically impossible for a sinful creature, but the pontifical erection of an idol, distinguished only by this, that it is the pope himself, who is so transformed (cf. II Corinthians 11:13). He proceeds even beyond the false apostles of Corinth; for he is 'replacing' Christ rather than merely misteaching Him; but while replacing, also misteaching... so we progress (cf. II Thessalonians 2:7). Paul (1 Corinthians 5:11) even prohibits fellowship with such persons.

The point is this: we have progressed in precisely the predicted direction, and it is within the premises of the fourth kingdom of Daniel, with its ecclesiastical appurtenances, that this has occurred, already.

Let us not however neglect Pope Innocent III, who as Avro Manhattan (Vatican Imperialism In The Twentieth Century, p. 52) points out, made this claim on his own coronation (Christ's crown was rather different) in the accompanying sermon:

Now you may see who is the servant who is placed over the family of the Lord; truly is he the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the successor of Peter, the Christ of the Lord ... greater than man; who judges all, but is judged by none.

Concerned lest he should send to hell any who should enjoy eternal life, he showed the extent to which he regarded God rather like King Edward VIII, as if abdicating from this earth, in his favour. That of course is just what the New York Catechism, as quoted, indicates; and we will shortly quote from it again. The Pope then is able to substitute. One might substitute for another basketball player, being his fellow and near equal; but for God ? Jesus Christ is replaced. Someone else substitutes for God in the play of life! Christ however declared that no man should be called master on earth, since it was Himself, God as man who alone occupied that role. Nothing could be clearer (Matthew 23:10, John 13:13).

Since then no man is to be called master but Christ Himself only, then by this papal act, Christ is displaced. What then, the increate, sinless, possessor of everlasting Deity as we have seen (cf. John 17:3, 8:58, Colossians 2:9, Revelation 1:8,11,18) can have a stand-in, albeit a temporal, sinful, created, dependent being! Sin substitutes for purity, incandescent deity is bundled out in favour of polluted flesh (Hebrews 1:3); the finite, behold, it operates as the infinite, the created as the Creator, the partial as the total (John 1:14, 3:34... Romans 12:3).

But here, in the New York Catechism as in the other claims noted, we learn from the spiritual sagacity of this sinner that Christ (who statedly made His requirement excluding any other, forbidding to call any man on earth Master because one is our Master, even Christ - Matthew 23:8-10 - and any Teacher because one is our Teacher, even Christ) can be flatly contradicted. He is to be replaced on earth by one emphatically not Christ. Such a one will be both the teacher and the master. It is at least a rollicking rebellion.

After all, the Pope was not born of a virgin, did not carry the sins of Christians in his own body on the Cross, did not rise from the dead, is not the saviour, did not enjoy glory with the Father before the world was... There is no slightest risk of confusion between pope and Christ, of substitutability, of a mortal sinner acting in the place of God, who in Christ did all these things. Not Christ, though he incontestably be, this papal aspirant calls himself, in acute derogation of the very reality of deity:

the head of the entire church, the father and teacher of all Christians (sic). He is the infallible ruler, the founder of dogmas (sic), the author of and judge of councils; the universal ruler of truth (sic) the arbiter of the world, the supreme (sic) judge of heaven and earth, the judge of all, being judged by no one, God himself on earth. (Italics added. Taken from New York Catechism.)

The only good thing from a Biblical standpoint one can see in the above appalling blasphemy is that it obviously contradicts, like a triune corruption, the Matthew 23 prohibition of being called father, teacher and master. It accomplished so much in so short a space that followers who can read have no excuse, once God's book is with them. Indeed common sense should make it clear.

If the intention had been to show defiance towards an aggressive king called Jesus Christ, then this series of statements would be 'telling Him', breaking all He says, reason and common sense as well. Yet God is not available for mimicry, far less through an epidemic of contradiction. Christ on earth endured the contradiction of sinners, and it is clear this unholy hoax is making an art form of it: doing it while masquerading in His own name! Alas, no pope or other can bring himself back in time to the point before time, and bring it about that he... was there! It is... too late now.

A man is God; a creature is - if the terminology is to be taken even slightly seriously, and all is serious in this sphere - Creator. A subject is ruler; and one who is exhorted to follow the rule of being 'subject to one another' (I Peter 5:5) by the very apostle whose name is used, is subject to none!

Our task, then is done. The Roman papacy has long been in the business of showing itself that it is God (cf. II Thessalonians 2:4). That is a precise format: showing itself. It uses words, descriptions, phrases, terminology that builds up, with absurd pretentions, the whole pageantry of papal power by means of paper images. That is long past; new Christs, gods from the ground, we have seen in their paranoid way in pathology.

The past has introduced the way, the present multiplies it, and the future trend, based on the past and the multiplying present, looks ripe for the final annunciation in the Temple. It has several historical preliminaries; they churn and then surge into the stage where the figurehead will come, as Daniel says, scarcely perhaps realising the pantomine folly of such pompous philosophy and proud vagrancies, with so much former history to... help:

On the wings of abomination, he comes desolating, till the judgment appointed is poured on the desolator.

The economic, the religious and the cultural, moral, geographical, visual scene is absolutely, precisely prepared and we are seeing the fulfilment of these fourth beast prophecies with spectacular and fascinating completeness, rising like islands from a misty sea, growing clearer as one proceeds. We seem, indeed, set on collision course with these prophecies, as a race. Our technology, psychology, sociology and politics are all running in excellent sychronisation with the sequences and situations in prophecy.

Political ? Here we revert to the European Common Market. Coming like a monster from the sea (Revelation 13 uses this symbolism), it stands, still shivering a little, but by now a very little, on the threshold of fate. It has the place, Europe, the broad spread of Romanism (*6) and numbers of its nations (the Pope at about the time this was written, was addressing Europe's parliament); it has the continuity with the past empire that once, in its mood of greater 'iron', occupied its place.

In this Roman mode, or aspect, it is of particular interest how quickly after World War II, this ... dalliance made itself clear. As Avro Manhattan indicates:

In Europe, only a few years after the Second World War, reborn political Catholicism was at the head of ten European governments, west of the Iron Curtain - i.e. Italy, Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Holland, Eire, Spain and Portugal - whereas in Eastern Europe Catholic Parties, although greatly reduced and, indeed, suppressed, continue to be the centers of the fiercest opposition to the communist governments... (colour added, op. cit. p. 158).

So very early the predicted 'ten' of Revelation 13:1 and Daniel 2 and Daniel 7:7-8 issued its warning. Again, for years when the Common Market was actually legally in force, there were ten member nations, and to the current situation we shall shortly return. Movements are Biblically predicted; but the sheer extravagant wonder of this fulfilment, even in the number of particating parties is a joy to behold as well as a verification.

The theme also occasions us to ponder the close Roman Catholic involvement which greatly simplifies the concept of the renewed and continuing Roman Empire, though partly weak. It is partly clayey - there is not the same unified smiting power, at least in appearance. The Papacy, in its diplomatic but powerful corridors, and the governments when they are RC in control, both bring about, in conjunction with the area of the Common Market 'rule', the fulfilment at this stage.

b. The Convenient Community- Considerations of Clay and Iron

We have referred to the continuity with the Empire of Rome; but in terms of the clay in the final stage (Daniel 2) of world empires before the 'smiting stone' of Christ (cf. also Daniel 7:13-14,26-27), there is to be expected some element of weakening, more humanising kind. The discontinuity element then is partly this - that there is no one man, no one nation, but there is a multiplicity. They argue, and strive, and are dissatisfied with their Market dues, their exchange rates or their internal subsidies on agriculture or whatever; they parry and thrust within with a very clayey look. They strive about dairy products, torment themselves about subsidies or disbursements, and altogether have an exceedingly clayey look; clay tipped with nuclear power.

For all the clay compartment, there is iron as well. There is an increasing space technology to add to Euratom; France has its own force de frappe, nuclear arm; West Germany is exceedingly rich and industrially strong and the potential of 350 million marketeers is a thought that seems, as we shall see, to locate in the midst of decreasing Europessimism, with increasing pragmatism, as already pondered (Chapter 8, *18 supra). With East Germany giving the West German economic power an opportunity for new bases and breadth, and to the French balance of payments, redress in the process of West German mothering of her 'lost' segment: the 'child' of the European unity seems well on the way to being born, though there has been a somewhat difficult delivery.

All that precisely fits the two-sided nature of this Empire at the last, as traced in Daniel. Partly strong and partly broken, as prophesied, partly clay and partly iron, it has been and remains... till the final phase, short though this be. (Cf. Daniel 2:40-43: Following this empire's division - correctly predicted in Daniel 2:41 - this partial weakness is predicted; and that follows the fall of ancient Rome, and moves beautifully aptly over the whole history of Europe since, till this very time, when its unity potential at last is becoming more obvious than a few short-lived dictators could make it. Its fearful potential remains.)

This post-World War II rebuild of the U.S. - Europe is of course far more than that - has a very decided character of its own. As to numbers, the Bible predicts ten kings and the Western European union (*7) has currently nine. This is where the financial power and military link to NATO may form, as we shall see in the note. Augmented by one, this power group could become the relevant ten (and now has - see p. 958 infra); or again, the ten, who for so long were the Common Market, may be all that is intended. The addition of some may be disregarded for the purposes of influence and power, or may simply be a phase of the history of the matter not considered; again, an internal economic union within the Common Market gives a further perspective, soon to be considered, relative to the 'ten'. In a long range forecast, it is not necessary to trace every phase and feature, if the pith and point is to be kept.

The important point is this: ten were predicted and ten remained for long enough to become a well-known characterising feature of the European renewal and form. It has happened. It does not prophetically need still to do so. What next must happen is that the small, dynamically virulent 'king' (Daniel 7:24-25) or leader is to arise outside that ten. That is quite clear and highly specific. He is to overthrow three of the original ten.

Thus whether that 'ten' is to be the famous first ten, or is to be made up of the Western European power bloc, with financial clout and military access, adding one more such member, or through some union of smaller members, or any members, or other, we do not know. One such union of smaller members is already extant. What we do know is that to this point all has happened exactly as foretold and in this regard, two primary features remain. The 'little horn' or leader of small base, outside whatever of the 'ten' possibilities will manifest itself as the characterising body: this force will conquer three of the ten.

As to that, the Austrian anschluss (1938) - a constrained union - with Germany may be a good example of the combination of force and composition that may be used. In that the little horn is to uproot the three (Daniel 7:8, 24), this absorption, or assimilation without residue, may indeed be the method; and it may not appear so at the first. (Deceit, we have seen, was part of the character of the anchor man of evil, the devil's 'messiah'). Not all 'marriage' is for love; and what is not, does not always declare itself at the outset... for what it is.

As to the possibilities of some new groupings or alignment, or power nucleus in the Market, it is notable that Thatcher was not happy with the strident overtones of the 1992 Economic Union, and that there are tensions concerning agricultural subsidies and apportionment of 'dues', doubts about the probably at least partial, or perhaps even total, loss of national sovereignty which created concern in parts of England, and which can haunt sections of other peoples. There are still some reservations about the yieldings that the spreading concept of European unity may imply, portray... or require! Such matters could stir many vexed questions such as Britain's place, its exact nature, or that of others into a coming degree of negativity which may affect the names of the eventual main operators. 1993 has been turbulent.

Nevertheless, the appeal, the sense of destiny, of composite dignity in the whole group, of trading strength and common action, of international power and security, of a useful and stable unity (together as so often with the frustrated sense of brotherliness, which without God will often force the hand of the heart that is lost): all this keeps the engine of European unity surging on the rails to realisation. As noted, with the resistant Mrs Thatcher's movement from the Prime Minister's post, the vexed questions, though not perhaps the vexation, may decrease; and the end more speedily approach.

Yet whatever may be the technique of the eventual revealing of such minute details, the fact is that the whole scope of the prophecy over thousands of years is fulfilled, and that our concern with interpreting such fine detail, only the more emphasises the spectacular splendour of the forecast. It is all eminently testable and is currently eminently, amazingly, devastatingly fulfilling the parameters of the Danielic fourth (and final worldly) kingdom, its placement, its potential and its numbers. Nothing is awry, amiss; questions of curiosity remain, but the historic career of Europe has followed the Biblical parameters, from the days of ancient Rome, its genesis, to now, as if 'hooked'.

The stage then is set, has been set, the battle is on and the prediction is surging towards its final fulfilment with that grand authority (*8) which does it in its own way, amazes with precision, and is beyond all second-guessing. Perhaps this lS to emphasise how much is involved in predicting it all long-range from 2000 or so years ago. Meanwhile, clearly seen is the movement towards increasing contemporary power in Europe. The USA has lost its economic dominance and, moving in the eighties from the post of the world's greatest creditor to world's greatest (gross) debtor, owes large sums to Japan (an exquisite irony).

Unexpected it might be, but the event seems in direct line with the force of the European base envisaged in the prediction. Russia (or part of what is now the Union of Independent States) as we have seen, is marked prophetically for doom in its predicted surge against Israel, perhaps with the support of certain Moslem nations - a similarly utterly apt fit with the current trends, as shown in detail in investigating some of the recent history of the area (pp. 516-520 ff. supra).

Russia, with whatever new name or format, in economic and financial weakness, already apparent in 1991, its productive vitals eroded by years of Communist misuse, appears before the world with strong appeals for aid. This, together with the power vacuum which would result from such a debacle as that to which desire (and some of the military) may entice (Ezekiel 38:8-12), at once suggests an open door to the old European dominance, one at first sharpened by the old concordat consciousness of Rome. That is the ecclesiastical body which had concordats with many nations, giving a 'vision' of worldly grandeur and rule, to militancy.

She had such concordats, intimate agreements and 'arrangements', with Franco and Mussolini in one brief era; with Hitler - another coup - stressing his allegiance to Rome while Franco called him a son of the Roman church, at his death, for whom the Spanish dictator saw... 'victory', for his Rome-related life! (*9 - cf. Smokescreens, pp. 20, 23. On the latter page, the direct quotations from Hitler are of acute interest, including this: 'As A Catholic I never feel comfortable in the Evangelical Church.') As ever, this concordat consciousness angles to control the dictators who control the world. In this, one is reminded forcibly of Revelation 17:2 - "With whom (*6) the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication." Let us ponder the German case a little.

The close co-operation of Hitler with the Von Papen (*9) envoy who negotiated with the Vatican (with such 'special' and specially good terms, we read in The Secret History Of The Jesuits, by Edmund Paris, p. 130); the Concordat intimacy (I933); the interesting papal failure to make incisive public protest about the plight of the Jews, and the intimate co-operation of the notorious Pavelich in Yugoslavia, with the Roman Catholic Yugoslav Archbishop Stepinac, in the days of the massive exterminations (*10), tortures and butcheries of Russian Orthodox Serbs in that land: all alike are alive with this intoxication to which Revelation 17:2 refers predictively, and which we note in verification.

This intoxication ? it is called in Revelation 17:2, 'the wine of her fornication' - the admixture of worldly ways and ambitions, exactly as between Stepinac and Pavelich, in Yugoslavia's other mass murder. It may be that the present one, which is in reverse as between Serbia and Croatia, is a sentence on a regime where in the Roman headquarters, both Pavelich and Stepinac's vicar-general were cordially received, at the height of the atrocities, and on the same day; while compliments were exchanged in Croation newspapers at that time between Pavelich and pope (Paris, op. cit. p. 145).

The old Pope-Emperor syndrome has its modern counterpart of mutual encouragement or even admiration. Thus Pope Pius Xl, described Benito Mussolini as "the man whom Providence allowed us to meet." Within this field, Avro Manhattan gives some detailed data in his Vatican Imperialism in the Twentieth Century (esp. pp. 350 ff., cf. Paris, op. cit. pp. 126 ff., with Susan Zucotti's intimate and very detailed recent work, The Italians And The Holocaust, pp. 130 ff.). This prophesied closeness and the 'intoxication' (*10) both of spirit and with blood, both theological and persecutory (cf. Revelation 17:1,4), yes and political in the power play involving a papacy (in the 'saddle' of the beast) laying explicit formal claim (p. 911 ff. supra, and 984-986, 1070-1072 infra) to govern the world through its kings, has all come to pass.

It may help to introduce some of the atmosphere of the political level papal dealings with the following very significant papal contribution to the outbreak of World War I. It is largely a matter of papal designs on and interest in this world, with the pronounced prestige of Jesus Christ as a sort of entourage. We recall the words of Boniface V11 about having no fear to proceed against a worm (some prince or other, like the King of France, perhaps), and that 'he alone is most high over princes'. With such a background, the observable atmosphere is not hard to understand.

Thus Paris relates the account of the World War I entry time relative to the Pope like this. Baron Ritter, Bavarian Charge d'affaires to the Vatican, had written to his government:

The pope agrees with Austria dealing severely with Serbia. He doesn't think much of the Russian and French armies and is of the opinion that they could not do much in a war against Germany. The cardinal secretary doesn't see when Austria could make war if she does not decide now.

This is found on p. 118, documented from Bayerische Documentem zum Kriegssausbruch, III, p. 105.

With such aims and claims, such participation in kingdoms of this world, and such advice, contributing to such consequences, with such flows of blood, through the duly exercised power over princes, small wonder we can read in Revelation 18:24, where there is reflection on the predicted physical destruction of this Rome:

And in her was found the blood of prophets and of the saints and of all slain on the earth. (See pp. 749 supra and 948 infra.)

She found her substantial and significant portion of all three categories of dealing death; she to whom death is so dramatically, according to the Scripture, to be dealt (see also Extensions 2 and 3, to follow). It was not for nothing that the scheming, politically active, papally bound and Rome relishing Jesuits, like Communists at a. later stage, were banished from so many of the countries of Europe. Power-hungry intriguing, backed by religious awe and veneration of man, can create a sea of blood.

Let us then review the prognosis, based so substantially in present fact, and in justice.

The beast, according to Revelation 17:15-16, is to turn on Rome and then dispossess her of her ingenious position of power (i.e. on the 'back' of the beast). The ten kings will instead resolve, leaving Rome (the physical destruction of which is forecast in chapter 18 with little joy to merchants), to form and have a different basis! Instead, with Rome 'bucked' off its back (one is reminded of the vernacular charge: 'Get off me back!'), the kings are to resolve to give their power direct to the beast itself, with no woman driver:

These are of one mind and they will give their power and authority to the beast - Revelation 18:13.

The array of Rome (now closely involved in the notorious World Council of Churches q.v.index) will fall and a more explicit replacement of Christ, that is, one less involved in quasi-Christian double-talk, will arise. The political scenario is moving solemnly to this hour, and almost visibly so, as Rome is warily seeking to recapture Europe after the Communistic dallyings and destructions, capturings and captivatings, as the case was; and Europe is subject to ferments of its own, thrilled with increasing power of its own, and is in the mood for making its own gods to suit, anew. The preliminaries of such things we have considered in various aspects in Chapters 2, 3, 7 and 8 supra.

It does not need any prompting, this mood. Henri Spaak, a former active European 'community' leader, has been noted before, and is significant:

What we want is a man of sufficient stature to hold the allegiance of all the people, and to lift us out of the economic morass into which we are sinking. Send us such a man, and be he god or devil, we will receive him.

The allegiance of all the people... their taste is cultivated with much, as perhaps in their foods. They have an emergent appetite for what will carry them, judging by much of their philosophies, into an evocative and unknown future. Actually, however, that is precisely what leads to the known; exactly as it is written. To the beast, they have one mind to give their kingdoms, to the pragmatic, practical, activating cultural centre of their lives, so that all will accept, be stirred, co-operate; all, that is, except those remarkable non-mark of the beast people, who prefer God the Creator, to man the imaginer.

They use, in the Common Market arena, the language of vague unity, like some of the uniting churches, uniting with one knows not what, but diverging from the word of the Lord, at any rate. A sort of communal haze remains from the communist phase, which in turn held some of the potent madness of Rousseau, Nietzsche, Hegel and others, laced with Darwin, Freud and Wagner, with a little Spencer for that fulsome flavour: somehow, being one will be wonderful! This is its thrust; and a sort of psychological substitute in masses, for the realities of one Creator, begins to command the instincts meant for God, in a way reminiscent of the manic-depressive: perpetual exaltation and depression, as misplaced hope alternates with grounds for despair. It is like trying to drive a car with no tyres; it doesn't really work; but you move a little, amid much smoke, here and there.

Thus the Council of Europe, Article 1 (a), in the interstices of these things, (as quoted in A Special Study Of The Moves Towards The Political And Economic Union Of Europe - Intelligence Digest) states:

The aim of the Council of Europe is to achieve a greater unity between its members for the purpose of safeguarding and realising their ideals and principles which are their common heritage and facilitating their economic and social progress.

The bold print is used to emphasise the first objective in terms of 'ideals and principles', relating to the supposed 'common heritage'. This is of crucial importance. In the same study, Mr Heath, former British P. M., is quoted as saying:

It is not just, as is sometimes thought, an abandonment of sovereignty to other countries, it is a sharing of other people's sovereignty as well as a pooling of our own.

Not only, then, are political and economic ends in view; for these are added to the former, the more visionary ones, stated first.

There is in all this a dynamic for change and absolutism, which Spaak merely felt; and these early pronouncements for an indivisible Europe, are now far more explicitly pondered and pronounced upon, moved as if drawn.

What however are the 'ideals and principles' which loom in a 'common heritage'? The rule of the force of a Hitler ? of a Bonaparte ? of a Mussolini ? Is it then the ungodly horror of pope and (Holy Roman) Emperor, striving for supremacy, the one over the other, for so long as to leave a... tradition! Is it their use of material power to implement (Roman) Catholic imperialistic ends (the term is just: the explicit claims are already noted). And what have these ends, these aims, involved ? not only the elevation of the pope at the expense of Christ, but the effectual belittling of the commands of Christ in the Bible, in the interim. The interim ? that until He personally returns, as He so clearly and so often stated, to deal with King impersonators and disbelievers; for they cannot stay, who will not stay with God, for God remains (cf. Zechariah 9:7, and pp. 623 ff. supra). And He remains God, and He alone (Isaiah 45:21-25). Even among the sons of the mighty, there is none like Him... not even like Him! (Psalm 89:5-6.)

Is this occasion of war - on Christ, on Christians (cf. Revelation 19:19), is this the 'common heritage', is it found, this communal past, in the Inquisition - so astonishingly long-lived, as we saw, with its ferocity still so readily unleased in 'new ways', even this century ? Is it here, perchance! Is the torture of Christians, the butchery, no less, by Romanists to be seen in the light of a common heritage, as if blood reduces all, and being drunk with it effaces thought ? Forgiveness is not stultification... Is it like a game, with both sides part of the whole show ? Which side, then, is death, in union ?

6. The Illusions of Unity and the Marshalling of the Marketeers

Is the Reformation and the anti-Reformation a common heritage ? Is the despatch of corpses by burning, and the experience of being burnt, a common heritage ? Is it so when the very Canons of Trent remain unchanged, and 'infallible' ex cathedra popes have called to the heavens to sanctify their desire to exterminate... extirpate... any who dare diverge from their pontifical, dynamic dogmatism in doctrine ?

Ever new, this dogma reaches to the very heavens, where last century they installed Mary complete with a sinless life, having loaded her with blasphemous titles such as redemptrix (i. e. female redeemer, versus Acts 4:12, Hebrews 9:12-28, 10:26-29, Luke 2:23-24 with Leviticus 12:8 and Hebrews 9:15; Psalm 49:6-7,15, Romans 3:23, 1 John 1:8-9, Hosea 13:14, Isaiah 43:11), queen of heaven and sundry pagan insults to the very name of God and indeed to Mary (Jeremiah 7:18 and 44:15-30) who did nothing to earn this abuse of her name (Isaiah 26:13, 1 Timothy 2:5-6, Ephesians 1:10, Hebrews 10:20,29, Matthew 12:46-50). The category of redeemer of the soul of man is herein, by the word of God, shown to be exclusive to God, to a non-sinner, and once again Rome confuses Creator with creature, insulting the purity of Christ. This function of redemption excludes all help, aid, or work, but that of the one God Himself!

Is then political pragmatism and religious innovation (versus Galatians 1:6-9 which damns it) deemed a common heritage ? Is the infallible word of the unchanging God, Himself alone the mediator in the form of man, who once was in the form of God (Philippians 2) and now has a name above every name, by which alone salvation is to be found (Acts 4:12): Is this, leading to pure and sacrifical adherence to the scriptures, to be put with that!

Do we cast the beauty of freedom from
the threefold papal crown with all its political assertions and worldly, carnal pretensions (versus Philippians 2:8; 2:20-22; Matthew 5:5; 18:1-5, 20:24,27-28, 23:11 Ezekiel 31:10-18, II Corinthians 10:5, Isaiah 2:10-11, 1 John 2:27, Luke 22:26, John 13:14-15!)

into one common pot
with the rule of the 'spiritual' OVER the temporal, of Pope over prince (verses John 18:36):
as the accepted tradition of ALL!

This rugged, and all but comic craze, sent Europe almost reeling for centuries as Emperor and Pope pursued their unseemly quest for dominance, with grandiose papal bulls scouring the heavens for further means of higher exaltation of that name which is not "above every name": since it was never that of Jesus (Acts 4:11-12, Philippians 2:9); and has not been so elevated, since no pope did ever, leaving the form of God, take the form of a man, a servant, to the point of becoming obedient to death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:5-9), the cited Biblical preliminary for such exaltation of Him who alone will be exalted in that day (Isaiah 2:10-11).

It is this same Jesus, who sinless, unlike every pope (1 Peter 2:22-25) or invention of the pope, or of his dogmas, did not need to first pay for His own sins (Hebrews 7:27), as do all sinners, who must be redeemed, men and women (Romans 3:23), all other members of the human race whatsoever: but by the body of His flesh through death redeemed all sinners who are His, those wholly dependent on His unique act (Colossians 1:22-23, Romans 5:1-10, 8:32, John 10:26, 8:24). That act depends, as Colossians there shows, on His unique post as co-Creator of all that was created, and His having all the fulness of the Godhead dwell in Him (Colossians 1:19-23, 2:9).

Indeed, He "in all things has the pre-eminence", it is here scripturally stated, because it so pleased the Father that this Person, with His plenary place before and with God, should so humble Himself and so act, in life and in death on earth. His is no meretricious exaltation: He was God, and HE humbled Himself to become a servant. He did not exalt himself to become a Lord, from the status of a creature; but, quite the reverse, as God assumed the status of man, so that He might bring us back to God, from whom He came.

This in its magnificence of uncreated humility, a common heritage with pope and emperor challenging and humiliating each other, in the way so famous from the medieval era, so 'infallibly' enshrined within the Roman church's structure of power and concept and Trent itself: is this 'common' to all!

Will unity then come because Rome will repent ? Yet in modern times from John Paul in his 'ecumenism' to the present Pope, there is constant reiteration of Trent! It is like Lenin to the Marxists. Must one be blind and deaf not to hear the Popes, per se, constantly reiterate this dogmatic determination to stay what they are: with their bundle of traditional infallibility, like a bionic electrode, sticking into their very beings. Do not mistake. This is one example only of tension and empty words, in a full program and agenda for that Europe, with its special emphasis on Rome that Daniel foretold as being the kingdom of the end. In Europe it is; and Rome is the name for it, the exemplar and the base in history to which Daniel refers (*11).

Where there is room for such an example of illusory European 'unity', there is room for a further, a more developed illustration of the unity resolution. Any makeshift mischief may be 'found' to be mandatory and obvious, to bring Europe to the power of dictatorial unbelief which makes up a 'beast'. Where 'ideals' for this Common Market are formulated in high-sounding words, where in fact there is such a morass of contrariety and divergence, from a history of such still unresolved terror and evil, not formally repented of... what would the REPARATIONS BE, for the countless slain of the INQUISITION ?... such ideals can still be 'interpreted' as may seem best for the great objectives.

If scripture is now almost routinely, rankly interpreted by contradiction, how much more are mere historical facts alone and vulnerable, without Him! Where God is not in explicit rule, then man, with such dominion as the Common Market countries envisage (and with first increasing, but then decreasing resistance from Britain as 1992 approached), can invent any form of control, as if it were the very criterion of freedom.

Indeed, such activity has long since ceased to be merely comic and tragic in Russia, where religious freedom 'of course' had to abide by the 'required'... criteria of the glory of the State and the necessity of Communism. For a time such corruption can seem to prevail, before God countervails; but the lesson on temporary obliteration of truth in the interests of convenience, suppression and distortion aided by misplaced quasi-morals about 'ancient hatreds', miscalling unchanged facts which may indeed be forgiven: this challenges all weakness. The 'guidance' of official corruption must never be accepted, let the muscle of its temporary might be what it will!

The Communist State has either learned lessons from Rome... or from the same source in Satan, whose aim to have dominion is manifest (Isaiah 14:13, Matthew 4). Hitler counted the Jesuits an outstanding example of organisation. Rulers look at rulers... Even Gorbachev does not seem to appreciate lectures from foreign mentors. Yet the Helsinki accord on freedoms has been violated in Russia for so long, and with such tragic travesties as Solzhenitsyn has exposed in his many books, that it becomes crassly illusory to promote the 'perfect look', where the power base is polluted in irrational confusion. So the blasé belittling of man (by man!), which is a hallmark of Communism, exhibits the religious and anti-personal character of the lust for power.

No matter that Marxism, immersed in contradiction, teaches that laws of nature assuredly and predictably push nations along from a basis of 'chance', to its own unhallowed liberation! What does it matter what it teaches, however irrational at the outset, when its theories are not fulfilled and yet are deemed 'scientific.'

The 'unripe' Russia was taken over by force, despite the absurd 'democratic' pretensions; and force is as readily implemented by slick political tricks, as by most other things in this world. The theoretically 'ripe' Germany, however, 'ready' for the predicted style of revolution, did not suffer it. Further, the State forces of repression, predicted to die away, grew far worse in Russia, than before, with communism.

The timing was out just as the stage was 'wrong', by the theory. Yet pressuring particulars including the exhaustion of a world war and slow help from outside led to a revolution anyway. Moreover, the form was wrong; there was estrangement between two wings of Russian power, so that the army did not act as it might; and measures of reform, were viciously replaced by a pretence as colossal as the Gorbachev era now shows it to have been (cf. *14), more recently, in this land. Russia was a tired giant in a war-weary world: manipulated by a band of revolutionaries who were helped by a crushing defeat of the Russian power and prestige abroad and a lust for deliverance which was powerfully - if irrationally - sold to a yearning people. Many were expecting land availability as they deserted from the Army, but what were soon to be found were, instead, were small landowners dispossessed and reduced to a state worse than serfdom, and this in the name of a 'social justice' which communalised property, misused resources, manipulated the not unexpected famine and terrorised the populace.

The State with its powers of oppression was 'scientifically' sure to wither away with the 'heaven' of no class conflict (whatever the actual 'classes' (*12) may have been in personality, morals and faith - all of which vary enormously in a given income group or even profession). This 'heaven' was to unfold itself by allegedly scientific processes. Come ? come it would with the inevitable power crunch of a grandiloquent Communism, fated to come, with no 'fate', on its own basis, to make it do so!

Did 'it' come ? Small wonder the foul three, Marx, Lenin and Engels are called 'the three dishonoured prophets' in Nicolas Rothwell's article, 'The Facts Crawling Out From Under Russia's Secret Rocks', in The Australian, October 19-21, 1991. Less wonder still when even Tass, the official Russian newsagency, is reported in The Times, January 1992, as acknowledging that nearly 4,000,000 people were prosecuted for 'counter-revolutionary activity' in the period 1921-1954, with over 3 millions sentenced to death or sent to prison or camps for up to 25 years... the article continuing to note that estimates of 'those who lost their lives as a direct or indirect result of Soviet communism - including collectivisation and the famine that followed, enforced industrialisation and the camps - range from 25 million to 40 million.'

In fact, the oppression and size of the Russian State police, informers, intruders, officials, KGB and all the types and brands of manoeuvrers, torturers, psychiatric manipulaters and the rest has appeared quite unprecedented, as if to anti-fulfil the prediction on something near the vastest scale imaginable. What nation has specialised more in the instruments of oppression than this one, under this atheistic management! Solzhenitsyn is merely one of its testifiers (*13)! The prophecy is not only unfulfilled; the exact opposite has not only come: it has come with a vengeance which, the gruesome apart, would qualify as comic... The true ruler of the nations has allowed, in His wisdom, a colossal and comic irony to occur - the 'liberators' are the worst oppressors of all (though it is to be acknowledged, their 'glorious' system has had South-East Asian and Asian followers who may yet surpass their Russian prototype in massive cruelties, giving further testimony of the wonders which Communism can perform before our very twentieth century eyes)!

That this farce has been preached as a twentieth century 'gospel', complete in China with obsessively present loud-speakers blasting the ears of the victims, perhaps lest thought had time to cerebrate: that is almost as devastating a critique of the follies of the mid-and-late twentieth century trends of the human race as any. Here again is brisk and vigorous verification of the Biblical predictions that, in the deteriorating times to come, many would be turned to fables (II Timothy 4:4). FEW MORE MACABRE FABLES, more sombre flirtations with fancy HAVE EVER OPPRESSED THE HUMAN SPIRIT; and it is no small phenomenon, but has governmentally CAPTURED IN CHINA ALONE, AROUND 1/4 OF THE EARTH'S PEOPLE! That Biblical fulfilment is massive ...

On the contrary such a 'theoretical' and 'scientific' result is not even in the direction of the Marxist predicted trend. A cry, thought or protestation of 'calm' is Biblically predicted and this before the eyes of the world (1 Thessalonians 5:3), and first Krushchev and now Gorbachev allow the sight of some of the Communist realities, so often researched before, to be made plain to all. It was a tornado of oppression which this wonderful and liberating system of peace procured. Its devotees, for example in the Red Army, a place not without significance, are still not without some means of provoking or precipitating peril, while putsch and counter-putsch is contemplated or conducted. Even yesterday (January 1992), the news report was to the effect that Russia is not the sole repository of nuclear power in the former U.S.S.R., and so many reports, now this, now that, indicate the strain, the stress, the complications, combinations and surreptitious preparations that desire may form, with means at hand.

Nevertheless, now that Yeltsin tells the world from Russia, that the missiles are being trained away from the U.S.A., enemy no longer [and so helpful as it is with food], a cry of peace, End of Cold War, of hope arises! A delusive interim is predicted Biblically, only to be ruptured by the realities of unbelief which war on peace, and procure slaveries to sin: political, social and military. ''They shall not escape!''

This period may yet be that which arrests man with hope, before his failure to repent, shows its inoperability. The ersatz character of the coming 'peace' is to appear as clearly as Communism has shown the failure of esoteric European philosophy to make headway by standing on its own head, as if it were the rock of its creation and salvation. It has, alas, only to burst an artery.

Such oppression is the testimony of this evil system; and the non-withering away of the long-tried Communist State, instead aggrandised with instrumentalities of torture of mind and body (indulged in by their species of 'liberated' freedom, if not wanton abandon indeed) - with all the impressive repressive mechanisms - leaves behind all rational claim for science (*13). This result is persistent, through all their vagaries, insistent, radical and to the root of their whole operation; and it is resistant to any variety of situation, relative power or position: for an essentialised remoulding of man, when man does not like it, and the vision of wonder is replaced by the horror of 'scientific' and observable reality. This is how the ideology has fared. It has not tended to be fulfilled; it has sustained itself as it first advanced itself, by delusion to prepare the field, and by force to take it.

It said one thing: it did another, torridly. As for what it said - these were not its mechanics, these were not true grounds, this was not its nature: the civilisation of man is vastly otherwise, constantly inviting devils and dupes, deceivers and deceived, to dispense with God and... do something! Communism's special feature was its arrogance, and this has enabled the fulfilment of yet another Biblical prediction, one of a different kind, simultaneously: ''Whosoever exalts himself shall be abased'' (Luke 14:11, 18:14 - cf. II Corinthians 10:5). In this it must join with Rome.

Moreover it scorned God; but now its President is to be seen in a religious service. It mocked God, but now its churches multiply. It went on record to be great without God, predicting, performing and being blessed. It did none of these things; and is itself mocked by the abyss between its words and its performance: as earlier seen, between its claims and logic. It has served however: for its mockery, as what is lowly exalting itself, serves by contrast to focus the word of God which is exalted, being constantly, consistently and differentially fulfilled, with an exuberance which neither ignores detail nor fails to encompass profound realities with éclat.

Similarly, the assumptions of atheism and historicism (an assured base for social prediction based on the past, with no God over all, one ground out in the bosom of 'chance') were irrational from the first. Popper notes this latter point on historicism and that of the woefully deficient 'withering away' with some address (in his Open Society and Its Enemies, pp. 108-9, 142-3, 320-8 et al.).

Yet why is all this mentioned here ? Not least, it is for this reason. One cultured, traditional, European country has already, if you like, tried the experiment in moral, idealistic words on a no-visionary base. A nation (the partly European U.S.S.R.) committed to descriptive attitudes in an atheistic philosophy, has sought, clown-like, to enshrine ideals (from nowhere, logically, for a theory which is merely descriptive of 'what is'): to focus things which one ought to do, as if human mechano sets ought to do anything. But woe to the participants (reluctant, chained at times), if they do not see what the vision requires!

You can try to force men, when the vision does not fit their design. Then, and of course you may do this: and that is precisely what they did. You cannot do this with physics; but with men... it is tried. In the end, it does not work either. God who did the making has said how it works; alternatives lack the blessedness of working!

The Biblical prediction, then, for the European experiment, if this is that time - and the criteria are fitting perfectly - is this. Force is going to be used (just as it has been used in Russia). Recently, in 1989, China has confirmed this vicious vortex, inherent in the system, using its Army to war against its own young in its Capital, rather than warring through its young, as with the Red Guard formerly. The 'god of forces' (*14) certainly abounds, foreshadowing the character of the antichrist as predicted. What then of Europe and its trend; of Europe and its unity... so carefully formulated, so long adumbrated, so codified ?

To forge a 'common' or joint consequence for all, from utterly disparate and divergent concepts of God, to take that alone, and to 'make it work' as Europe is set to do, suggests... what ? The normal and here traditional method is only to be expected: the use of force on the one hand, and of devious devices with words on the other. Marxism has shown it par excellence in one land; we await a 'broader' attempt with a broader base in a broader way, perhaps flush from the anti-success of Communism and 'trying harder', to seek to control the heart of Europe... or as much of it as may be seized... Not merely land, but people are prey.

As a matter of fact, the prediction of Daniel regarding Spaak's 'man' is just that: we read of a 'mouth speaking pompous words'. This is the ultimate arrogance on earth, the devil's messiah, survival of the fittest at its zenith, a man trying to survive as if god: and his fall will epitomise the folly of these wild and recent thrusts of history, which seem to prepare for it, so that such madness of spirit would seem but a natural result. The syndrome is very mature already.

In short, he will exalt himself above all that is called God (II Thessalonians 2:4), and the Lord will slay him with His word, as He created, by His word. When you have power, a word is enough.

*4

See The Biblical Workman Ch. 7,

A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 9,

Ancient Words, Modern  Deeds Ch.   9

*5

See A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 18,

Spiritual Refreshings ... Ch. 3, Ch. 6,

Barbs, Arrows and Balms Appendix