The Great Gaslight

 A Petrarchan Sonnet in iambic pentameter

With a single voice they cry out loud

Stoking the flames of fear, its us they drive

Toward a world, they build, they shape the hive.

The drones, the kings and queens behind the shroud ,

Direct as one, only where they're allowed.

To think alike, dissent cannot survive.

Only observe the facts that they contrive

The Great Gaslight takes place behind a cloud.

Cast off the lie, embrace the truth, and live

Don't quake in fear before their awful plot

But live a life of liberty of thought

Their only power is that which we give

To them, to strain out truth through liars sieve

The Great Gaslight should never be allowed

 

Stop The Steal

Stop the steal

I hear them squeal

They're stealing the election

 

Their dead men vote

While they promote

Their blatant insurrection

 

And right on queue

Ballots anew

Magically materialize

 

"Oh, that's fake news"

"It's just a ruse"

"Don't believe your own eyes"

 

"The facts are checked"

"Your story's wrecked"

"I seems you all are wrong"

 

"The truth has spoke"

"We've all been woke"

"Sorry, you don't belong"

 

The Orange man brayed 

While we all prayed

He'd usher in salvation

"With mighty tweets"

"He'll crush defeats"

"And heal this broken nation"

 

But faith misplaced

Must now be faced

A time for reckoning

The truth be told

A birthright sold

To sirens beckoning

When babies died

Few of us cried

'Cause my body, my choice

When genders swapped

Nothing was stopped

'Cause we all deserve a voice

When perversions we

See on TV

Fail to make us blush

When new iPhone

We all must own

Stampedes us; a mad rush

 

When envy crowns

All those around

With virtue from on high

 

When every thought

Completely wrought

From slogans that they ply

When love is hate

Anticipate

They'll love us all to death

When black is white

Then might makes right

Up to your dying breath

 

"I'm Free", we rage

From within our cage

Without bars, nontheless

Believe! We must!

Falsehood. We trust!

Truth we cannot express

While experts fail,

Obscure the trail

Out from predicament

Methinks today

We've lost our way

Our heritage misspent

 

Prodigal Sons

We've lost, not won

Our efforts, all in vain

 

We need choose

Which life to lose

And which life we're to gain

 

The one that's earned

The one that's yearned

Or the one that is bestowed ?

 

Salvation lay

That final way

Along the narrow road

 

 

Election Day Musing

I went down to the polling place
I did not wear a mask
The people, they just looked at me
Nobody dared to ask

“Why aren’t you muzzling up your face”
“Before you cast your vote”?
“We’ve all complied with the experts”
“We’re all in the same boat”

They smiled, or frowned, I could not tell
Veiled as they were
But their eyes seemed to say to me
We appreciate you sir

For at least there’s one who's not afraid
To live as a free man
To cast off lies and subterfuge,
Against tyranny, to stand

I know it not so great a feat
To leave my face exposed
To not comply bears little cost
When I compare myself to those

Who stormed the beach at Normandy
Who froze at Valley Forge
Who died in trenches on French plains
Who stood against King George

Who marched the field at Gettysburg
Who took to wooden ships
Who forsook all they’d ever known
Who for freedom, they equipped

Themselves with courage, strength and faith
And boldly they pursued
That promised life of liberty
With humble rectitude

Now we scream and rant and rail at
The legacy they left
We mask our face and hide ourselves
Of faith, we are bereft

We look to men to point the way
The blind leading the blind
We crown the “expert” bureaucrat
But truth we cannot find

Surrender we, our legacy
For fear is our new god
With muzzled face, and eyes cast down
Compliance, we applaud

Pretending that we’re virtuous
And love our fellow man
We lock him down, set him apart
We still don’t understand

To mask our kids, to teach them fear
Of that which they can’t see
We teach him how to be a slave
Robbed of all dignity

So no, I refuse to comply
With their masks and distancing
With church on Zoom, with Parsons goat
With voices whispering

For liberty I was set free
By Him, the King of Kings
With unveiled face and outstretched hand
I’ll lift my voice and sing

A small act of defiance
What was it you ask?
I went down the polling place
I did not wear a mask

Cleanliness is next to godliness, even in a pandemic

This PDF is a 1919 report of attempts to prove the 1918 influenza (aka Spanish flu) was contagious. The results may surprise you.

Christian and Conspiracies

There seems to a habit of some in the Christian community to use phrases like “outrageous conspiracy theorist ” when referring to people, such as myself, who have taken the time to explore alternate models to explain the phenomena we are observing, namely that some people are getting sick and dying of something. Granted that there are some who listen to a convincing sounding hypothesis and immediately believe it is true and nefarious. 

My position is that any hypothesis that presents a new model should be considered and subject to experimentation. Interestingly enough, I have yet to talk to anyone who dogmatically adheres to the narrative and eschews alternate theories that has actually done much research on either spectrum. They accept the narrative because everyone “knows” there is a virus. Conversely there is the other type that reject it because some other model satisfies their default persuasions.

For two months now I have been consuming copious amounts of information and what I am concluding is that there are copious amounts of information I have not even touched. However, it is clear to me that this destruction of our society and economy is not an appropriate response given the actual facts. 

Church leaders who use the term “outrageous conspiracy theories” when referring to hypotheses they are thoroughly ignorant of are at best weak minded leaders. If we believe that Satan is the lord of this world, that he prowls around seeking to devour, that he is a liar, the father of lies and the truth is not in him, and then we see the state telling us that we cannot meet with our family and friends, engage in corporate worship, but we can go to the liquor store or a gay bath house, that the only way we’ll be safe is to implement a contact tracking system and vaccinate everyone on the globe, nuanced thinkers should pause for a moment and wonder what is really going on.

Romans 13 Revisited

I have been vocally opposed to the capitulation of churches to the decree of the state that they must “forsake the assembling together“. Romans 13 seems to be the primary driver (excuse) used by church leadership to justify this position.

The unfortunate translation of ἐξουσίαις ὑπερεχούσαις as “governing authority” appears to support the notion of the state as the object under discussion. I reflexively reject that notion, but recognize that doing so demands a reasoned alternate interpretation of the entire passage. While I am convinced the “superior power” is a better interpretation of ἐξουσίαις ὑπερεχούσαις I still have not arrived at a satisfactory understanding of the passage. I have been meditating on this for quite some time, convinced as I am that the state is not the object here.

As I was walking early this morning I was reflecting on how we always seem to start inquiry into things at the “how could that happen” phase. Take for example WTC 7 imploding and the question of controlled demolition. People always start their consideration with “how could someone do that and get away with it?” That is a fair question and one I don’t have an answer for, but it is the wrong place to start. The place to start is with “what actually happened” and to explain the “what” using logic and reasoning and the model which best fits the observed phenomena. Once the “what” has been demonstrated using a best fit model, it is incumbent on those proposing an alternate model to falsify the assertion of the previous model. How does Romans 13 relate to this?

As I have stated, my understanding of this passage is inconclusive, however if I start with the axiom that the bible is the inerrant word of God, than I should be able to use logic to falsify any predicate I may have based on an interpretation of any passage. So take Roman 13:3.

“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”.

If rulers, ἄρχοντες, refers to the state here than all one has to do is demonstrate an instance where the state has indeed acted as a terror to good works, which seems to me an extraordinarily easy thing to demonstrate. Once you have done that logic dictates that either

1. The Word of God is not inerrant. Or...
2. The ἄρχοντες and the ἐξουσίαις ὑπερεχούσαις are not referring to the state.

Is my logic flawed?

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.