In an interview with the Washington Times earlier this week, Bush said that he didn't "see how you can be president without a relationship with the Lord."
Okay, which lord are we talking about here?
There is Our Lord and Savior. The Prince of Peace. He who sits at the right hand of God in Heaven. The Lamb slain for the sins of man so that we might live. The only begotten Son of God. The One Who was pierced, and yet shall every knee bow toward Him and confess that He is Lord.
At some point in the future. In the due time. But not just yet...
Because the lord of this world and present age is still on his throne. The one possessing all the glory and splendor of this carnal realm to do with as he pleases. The king of the air and darkness. The prince of high places. That one who would set his throne above the stars of God. The roaring lion that would consume all. The Morningstar. That great dragon who Christ acknowledged had been granted all authority over the nations and kingdoms of this world, toward whom all knees have at some time or another. Before some would now confess that he is their master no more.
One Lord offers forgiveness for all. The other lord brings accusation without ceasing.
There is the Lord that is ever confessed with joy and contentment with the countenance and tongue. There is also the lord that is rarely confessed outside the depths of a man's heart.
One is of the light. The other is even called "Light-bringer" but has been sentenced to darkness.
One Lord is the God of Heaven. The other lord is the god of fortresses.
One Lord brings with Him eternal life. The other lord can wrought only neverending damnation.
One Lord says that in His Father's house are many mansions, and He has prepared a place for us. The other lord would have us believe this realm is our true home, and offers us every imagined conceit of the flesh.
One Lord asks only for our repentance and faith in Him, in the assurance that we would join Him in ruling over all the heavens someday.
The other lord asks for nothing less than our soul, and can offer nothing but the fleeting powers and pleasures of this weary world... and he promises it Now. Now. Now.
Take a guess which one it is that most of history's leaders have taken as their own lord. Tell me, please, why I shouldn't be suspicious of anyone who merely talks of his "lord" without producing evidence that he is, indeed, an honorable and loyal servant.
You see, I just don't know who it is exactly that George W. Bush is referring to here. And though it is true that only God knows the true condition of the heart of a man, the fellowship in Christ is instructed - many times in scripture - to be wary of those who claim to be of Christ yet produce none of the fruits of the spirit. If the spirits are to be tested to determine if they are surely of God, how much moreso should we test those men who use their profession of Christ as enticement for us to trust them with things of this world?
Shoot man, that could be anyone that Bush is talking about as his lord.
As for which lord it is that Bush has taken as his sovereign... well, there are suspicions, but I won't delve into those: the proofs of which have already been well-documented, and weighted against those of the Other are certainly not found wanting. I do desire that my wondering of this issue can be easily forgiven because, like the early Christians of Berea I weigh all things against scripture... and especially those things that beg my confidence because they merely profess Christ.
That said, there were some other things that Bush says in this interview, that sounded eerily similar to another leader, who was likewise greatly praised by Christian leaders and hailed by at least one as "a true brother in the Lord"...
"I think people attack me because they are fearful that I will then say that you're not equally as patriotic if you're not a religious person. I've never said that. I've never acted like that. I think that's just the way it is." (Huh?)The italicized text were quotes from George W. Bush in the Washington Times story.
"...A general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith. From our point of view as representatives of the state, we need believing people.""I fully understand that the job of the president is and must always be protecting the great right of people to worship or not worship as they see fit. That's what distinguishes us from the Taliban. The greatest freedom we have or one of the greatest freedoms is the right to worship the way you see fit."
"The... state has not closed a church, nor has it prevented the holding of a religious service, nor has it ever exercised any influence upon the form of a religious service. It has not exercised any pressure upon the doctrine nor on the profession of faith of any of the confessions.""America is a remarkable place when it comes to religion and faith. We had people come to our rallies who were there specifically to say, 'I'm here to pray for you, let you know I'm praying for you.' And I was very grateful about that."
"Even today I am not ashamed to say that, overpowered by stormy enthusiasm, I fell down on my knees and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.""I don't see how you can be president at least from my perspective, how you can be president, without a relationship with the Lord."
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter... As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.""Whether they voted for you or not, there's a lot of values in this country, for which I'm real proud."
"In the state anyone is free to seek his blessedness after his own fashion.""What we are going to do in the second term is to make sure that the grant money is available for faith communities to bid on, to make sure these faith-based offices are staffed and open. But the key thing is, is that we do have the capacity to allow faith programs to access enormous sums of social service money, which I think is important."
"It will be the Government's care to maintain honest cooperation between Church and State; the struggle against materialistic views and for a real national community is just as much in the interest of the German nation as in that of the welfare of our Christian faith."
The bold text were quotes from Adolf Hitler from numerous sources.
Parse this as you will.
1 comments:
"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew." - 11th-12th July, 1941 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"Christianity is the worst of the regressions that mankind can ever have undergone, and it's the Jew who, thanks to this diabolic invention, has thrown him back 15 centuries." Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"Pure Christianity— the Christianity of the catacombs— is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics." - 14th December, 1941 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"Didn't the world see, carried on right into the Middle Ages, the same old system of martyrs, tortures, faggots? Of old, it was in the name of Christianity. To-day, it's in the name of Bolshevism. Yesterday, the instigator was Saul: the instigator to-day, Mardochai. Saul has changed into St. Paul, and Mardochai into Karl Marx. By exterminating this pest, we shall do humanity a service of which our soldiers can have no idea." - 21st October, 1941 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"I'm sure that Nero didn't set fire to Rome. It was the Christian-Bolsheviks who did that, just as the Commune set fire to Paris in 1871 and the Communists set fire to the Reichstag in 1932." - 25th October, 1941 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"It was Christianity that brought about the fall of Rome – not the Germans or the Huns." – 27th Jan 1942 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"As soon as the idea was introduced that all men were equal before God, that world was bound to collapse." 26th February, 1942 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"By means of the struggle, the elites are continually renewed. The law of selection justifies this incessant struggle, by allowing the survival of the fittest. Christianity is rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of failure." - 10th October, 1941 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"It is deplorable that the Bible should have been translated into German, and that the whole of the German Folk should have thus become exposed to the whole of this Jewish mumbo jumbo… As a sane German, one is flabbergasted to think that German human beings could have let themselves be brought to such a pass by Jewish filth and priestly twaddle, that they were little different from the howling dervish of the Turks and the negroes, at whom we laugh so scornfully. It angers one to think that, while in other parts of the globe religious teaching like that of Confucius, Buddha and Mohammed offers an undeniably broad basis for the religious-minded, Germans should have been duped by a theological exposition devoid of all honest depth." - 5th June, 1942 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death. A slow death has something comforting about it. The dogma of Christianity gets worn away before the advances of science. Religion will have to make more and more concessions. Gradually the myths crumble. All that's left is to prove that in nature there is no frontier between the organic and the inorganic. When understanding of the universe has become widespread, when the majority of men know that the stars are not sources of light but worlds, perhaps inhabited worlds like ours, then the Christian doctrine will be convicted of absurdity." - 14th October, 1941 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"I shall never believe that what is founded on lies can endure for ever. I believe in truth. I'm sure that, in the long run, truth must be victorious. It's probable that, as regards religion, we are about to enter an era of tolerance. Everybody will be allowed to seek his own salvation in the way that suits him best. The ancient world knew this climate of tolerance. Nobody took to proselytising." 27th February, 1942 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity. Christianity is a prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilisation by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society." - 19th October, 1941 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"The man who lives in communion with nature necessarily finds himself in opposition to the Churches. And that's why they're heading for ruin - for science is bound to win." Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity. It will last another hundred years, two hundred years perhaps. My regret will have been that I couldn't, like whoever the prophet was, behold the promised land from afar. We are entering into a conception of the world that will be a sunny era, an era of tolerance. Man must be put in a position to develop freely the talents that God has given him." 27th February, 1942 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"I don't interfere in matters of belief. Therefore I can't allow churchmen to interfere with temporal affairs. The organised lie must be smashed. The State must remain the absolute master." 13th December, 1941 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"The American statesmen, by subjecting the Church to the same regulations governing all other associations and institutions, have limited its field of activity to reasonable proportions; and, as the State does not contribute from State Funds one single cent to the church, the whole clergy cringes and sings hymns in praise of Government. This is not to be wondered at! The parson, like everyone else, has got to live; what he makes out of the public offertory doesn't amount to much, and so he is more or less dependent on State charity. As he has no legal claim whatever on the State, he therefore takes very good care that his demeanour is always pleasing in the eyes of the State and therefore deserving of the crumbs it cares to toss to him." - 4th July, 1942 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"The development of relations between State and Church affords a very instructive example of how the carelessness of a single statesman can have after-effects which last for centuries. When Charlemagne was kneeling at prayer in St. Peter's, Rome, at Christmas in the year 8oo, the Pope, giving him no time to work out the possible effects of so symbolic an action, suddenly bent down and presto! popped a golden crown on his head! By permitting it, the Emperor delivered himself and his successors into the hands of a power which subjected the German Government and the German people to five hundred years of martyrdom." - 4th July, 1942 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"Here is a lesson we would do well to learn: if we do not complete the conquest of the East utterly and irrevocably, each successive generation will have a war on its hand, to a greater or lesser degree. Even stupid races can accomplish something, given good leadership. Genghiz Khan’s genius for organisation was something quite unique. Only in the Roman Empire and in Spain under Arab domination has culture been a potent factor. Under the latter, the standard of civilisation achieved was wholly admirable; to Spain flocked the greatest scientists, thinkers, astronomers and mathematicians of the world, and side by side there flourished a spirit of sweet human tolerance and a sense of the purest chivalry. Then with the advent of Christianity, came the barbarians. The chivalry of the Castilians had been inherited by the Arabs. Had Charles Martel not been victorious at Poitiers – already, you see, the world had fallen into the hands of the Jews – so gutless a thing was Christianity! – then we should in all probability have been converted to mohammedanism, that cult which glorifies heroism and which opens the seventh Heaven to the bold warrior alone. Then the Germanic races would have conquered the world. Christianity alone prevented them from doing so." – 28th August 1942 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"I can imagine people being enthusiastic about the paradise of Mahomet, but as for the insipid paradise of the Christians! In your lifetime, you used to hear the music of Richard Wagner. After your death, it will be nothing but hallelujahs, the waving of palms, children of an age for the feeding-bottle, and hoary old men. The man of the isles pays homage to the forces of nature. But Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless, nor any more indecent way of turning the idea of the Godhead into a mockery. A negro with his taboos is crushingly superior to the human being who seriously believes in Transubstantiation." - 13th December, 1941 Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"The fact that the Japanese have retained their political philosophy, which is one of the essential reasons for their success, is due to their having been saved in time from the views of Christianity. Just as in Islam, there is no terrorism in the Japanese State religion, but, on the contrary, a promise of happiness. This terrorism in religion is , to put it briefly, of a Jewish dogma, which Christianity has universalized and whose effect is to sow trouble and confusion in men’s minds." – 4th April, 1942Hitler's Table Talk 1941- 1944
"You see, its been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn't we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?" – Hitler Quoted by Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich, pg. 115.
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