I have spent most of the afternoon wandering around the Berlin Cathedral. Photos will follow (let’s say that the phone was used, a bit). I discovered that the German Kings were fervent Lutherans, cared for their children (there is a crypt dedicated to the loss of a crown prince in 1915) and did do much good. Pity that they lost the war: pity that the Victorians had begun to lose faith.
For we now need a reformation, and reformations need to be thorough. You have to tear up traditions and remove customs. In the case of Josiah, he had a simple method of disposing of idolatrous priests: he killed them on their altars. He destroyed the cult of Topeth, where infanticide was a form of worship, and stopped the practice of ritual (and homosexual) sex as worship.
He was bloody, and he was thorough. Hence some mind bleach around the text.
4The king commanded the high priest Hilkiah, the priests of the second order, and the guardians of the threshold, to bring out of the temple of the LORD all the vessels made for Baal, for Asherah, and for all the host of heaven; he burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes to Bethel. 5He deposed the idolatrous priests whom the kings of Judah had ordained to make offerings in the high places at the cities of Judah and around Jerusalem; those also who made offerings to Baal, to the sun, the moon, the constellations, and all the host of the heavens. 6He brought out the image of Asherah from the house of the LORD, outside Jerusalem, to the Wadi Kidron, burned it at the Wadi Kidron, beat it to dust and threw the dust of it upon the graves of the common people. 7He broke down the houses of the male temple prostitutes that were in the house of the LORD, where the women did weaving for Asherah. 8He brought all the priests out of the towns of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had made offerings, from Geba to Beer-sheba; he broke down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on the left at the gate of the city. 9The priests of the high places, however, did not come up to the altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, but ate unleavened bread among their kindred. 10He defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of Ben-hinnom, so that no one would make a son or a daughter pass through fire as an offering to Molech. 11He removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the LORD, by the chamber of the eunuch Nathan-melech, which was in the precincts; then he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. 12The altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the LORD, he pulled down from there and broke in pieces, and threw the rubble into the Wadi Kidron. 13The king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, to the south of the Mount of Destruction, which King Solomon of Israel had built for Astarte the abomination of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 14He broke the pillars in pieces, cut down the sacred poles, and covered the sites with human bones.
15Moreover, the altar at Bethel, the high place erected by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin — he pulled down that altar along with the high place. He burned the high place, crushing it to dust; he also burned the sacred pole. 16As Josiah turned, he saw the tombs there on the mount; and he sent and took the bones out of the tombs, and burned them on the altar, and defiled it, according to the word of the LORD that the man of God proclaimed, when Jeroboam stood by the altar at the festival; he turned and looked up at the tomb of the man of God who had predicted these things. 17Then he said, “What is that monument that I see?” The people of the city told him, “It is the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and predicted these things that you have done against the altar at Bethel.” 18He said, “Let him rest; let no one move his bones.” So they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet who came out of Samaria. 19Moreover, Josiah removed all the shrines of the high places that were in the towns of Samaria, which kings of Israel had made, provoking the LORD to anger; he did to them just as he had done at Bethel. 20He slaughtered on the altars all the priests of the high places who were there, and burned human bones on them. Then he returned to Jerusalem.
21The king commanded all the people, “Keep the passover to the LORD your God as prescribed in this book of the covenant.” 22No such passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or of the kings of Judah; 23but in the eighteenth year of King Josiah this passover was kept to the LORD in Jerusalem.
24Moreover Josiah put away the mediums, wizards, teraphim, idols, and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, so that he established the words of the law that were written in the book that the priest Hilkiah had found in the house of the LORD. 25Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the LORD with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; nor did any like him arise after him.
Some things to note in all this.
- He did not care about tradition. He destroyed temples dedicated by Solomon, by Jeroboam, and places that had been used for multiple generations
- He cared less about tolerance. The gender fluid and polyamorous were rounded up and destroyed
- He gave not a whit to culture. I have no doubt that many of these statues were beautiful. He destroyed them all
- He removed all who would predict — all the mediums, wizards, teraphim (lots)… so people were not tempted to return to them
- He called for the people to return to the LORD
The problem with the Berlin Cathedral was not Kaiser Wilhelm. Nor was it the men who rebuilt it. It was that we have let in strange Gods, and rejected Christ, who was preached throughout Christendom. The divisions between Luther and Calvin now look quaint: all believers are being oppressed by the dance of tolerance.
We need to follow the example of Josiah. Outside of the church there is no quarter. Vox Day conflated multiple stories to make this.
He spreads his hands and shrugs. “You know how it is. Sure, everyone knows you’re in the clear, but this lets the CEO assure everyone that we take racism and sexism and homophobia and all that very seriously, and keeps the directors off his back. I mean, the official story is that it’s all just a big misunderstanding, right, so they’re having you take this class to make sure there aren’t any more misunderstandings in the future.”
“But there wasn’t any misunderstanding. It was all just a pack of outright lies!”
He winces. “Hey, I know that, and you know that. Hell, everyone in the executive suite knows that. But they can’t come right out and say it either, can they?”
“Why not?”
“Because if they did, they’d have to fire the woman who brought the accusations against you, and nobody wants that kind of trouble. Look, we all know there is something seriously wrong with that woman. But if they fire her, we’re talking a wrongful dismissal lawsuit at the very least, and probably other employees getting upset and threatening to quit, other whackjobs manufacturing sob stories about how they were harassed or offended or whatever, and HR going nuclear. And if word got out to the media that we fired a black woman, forget about it! By the time it was all over, we’d have to rehire her and promote her to department head, set up a scholarship fund for disadvantaged youth, and sponsor at least three Women in Tech conferences.”
You stare at him, aghast. You can’t believe that after putting you through six months of Hell for nothing, your accuser isn’t going to get so much as a slap on the wrist.
I don’t think I am giving away the book when I note that a venture capitalist attends the diversity seminar, walks out, and tells our protagonist to get his CV in order: they will come after him and the firm will be toast, so leave… now.
Within the church we should also have no quarter.
- We should shut down interfaith dialogue and replace it with missionaries and evangelism.
- We should not let homosexuals or women be priestesses and priests. Regardless of how beautiful their weavings are
- We should not turn to other means of comfort such as mindfulness (which is buddhism) or the multiple forms of occultic spirituality
- We should dispose of the traditions which make us worship other things. (Many of these are quite modern).
- We must, instead, turn to the LORD in prayer and contemplate his teachings in the word.
And we must be thorough. For the enemy will enter and subvert if we leave any quarter unsearched.
‘Mindfulness is Buddhism’; interesting; care to explain?
Perhaps as a post?
I remember the cult of ‘wellness’ in the early 00s, and now, two decades later, we have the cult of ‘mindfulness’. It struck me as a form of Gnosticism, seeking to understand things at a ‘meta’ level, and flattering the egos of those who see themselves as those ‘knowing’ – much like SJWs, who flatter themselves as those in ‘the know’, with their ‘woke’ BS.
I know a bunchaton of mindfulness practitioners. The practice is a secular form of meditation, and a number of them go to Buddhist monasteries, to the point of becoming monks for a week.
Interesting. And here I thought it was just corporate nonsense. Actually more pernicious than that…