Easter Questions

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With Easter Sunday upon us, the government mandated stay-at-home fatwa in effect has prompted me to juxtapose two New Testament admonitions. I do this with the caveat that I am certainly guilty of not following the first for quite some time now. And of course, I think the second is utter foolishness; at least the parts I have highlighted.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near. Hebrews 10:23-25 

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Romans 13:1-4

Clearly the obsequious submission of the general population to the irrational fear-mongering of the ruling class has in effect of destroyed the livelihood of a great many people. Not the least of these are the myriad of small-business owners who have courageously built their enterprises through hard work and risk taking, only to have them destroyed by the capriciousness of a clueless or nefarious ruling class. It seems that we the sheeple have been so thoroughly programmed to abandon reason at the slightest whiff of risk, that we all but stampeded to our safe-spaces, stopping only to make sure we had ample supplies of double-ply to help us weather the pandemic.

As someone who was weaned on the eschatology espoused most popularly by Hal Lindsey in his “Late Great Planet Earth” I cannot help but notice the eerie similarity to the end times scenario painted therein. However, this worldwide mad rush into totalitarianism is something I did not anticipate and would not have believed could happen. In retrospect though, how else can a New World Order be brought about except by the suspension of critical thinking of the hoi polloi? And what better mechanism to suspend the critical thinking of the masses than to induce widespread fear? And how better to prepare a population for mass control through fear then to feed them a steady diet of pandemic porn in the form of entertainment? It's almost as if we have been programmed or hypnotized and when the special word is spoken, we respond like Pavlovs dog. We bite into an onion and believe it's an apple.

So what should Christians do now? Hunker down, and giddily wait for the rapture? The prospect of being somehow snatched up off the earth before the SHTF strikes me as a dubious proposition at best. Assemble "virtually"? It seems to me like that is following the letter of the first admonition quoted above while missing the spirit of it, but who am I to say? I rarely go to Church anyway; and why should I? To sing songs about putting sloppy wet kisses on Jesus' cheek? I attended services last week for one reason. To resist the soft tyranny that is soon to morph into hard tyranny. To stand with one body of believers that has yet refused to kowtow.

In the early days of the Church believers met in secret, in catacombs whose locations were pointed to by the fish, ἰχθύς, the acronym for ιησου χριστου θεον υιον σωτερο, Jesus Christ Gods Son, Savior. Persecuted to the point of death, they nevertheless chose to defy the ruling class and did not forsake the assembling together, but rather joined each other beneath the ground; seeds being planted for a future harvest. And here we find ourselves two millennia later, the spiritual progeny of martyrs, dismissing Hebrews 10 in favor of Romans 13 because our corrupt rulers have said we must.

We need revival. I need revival.