While I deviated into Lamentations yesterday, Paul has continued to discuss the doctrine of bodily resurrection and why it matters. This is the final part of this, and gives us an application. There context of that time, as now, is that the war is used as a weapon against faith.
Never mind that, as a religious person and the world’s worst Catholic, I have very good reasons to be afraid of laws that – thanks to the bafflingly imprecise language that ends up framing legal definitions – will be inevitably turned around on anyone’s religious customs when some malicious lawyer or Supreme Court justice with a hunger for precedent becomes creative with interpretation.
I understand that “religious freedom” – like “free speech” and “the right to bear arms” – is a concept regarded with far less reverence here than in the U.S., where there’s a written Constitution with more vigorous definitions bolstered by two centuries of inspired debate. Which is why I have every reason to expect that good intentions will become predatory legal rulings and punitive bureaucratic punishment here. It’s happened before.
Was it too much to ask my country’s leader to get me to vote for his party by treating me like a rational adult? Which is why I showed up at the polling station expecting not to vote for my Conservative candidate.
The Tories were tired and they have had a bunch of trollish corruption charges against them. The Liberals do not have a great track record, and the idea that a second Trudeau is PM makes me cringe, in part because within the commonwealth the only dynasty that exists should be the House of Windsor.
There are parallels with Australia here. The religious and upright are rejected: Turnbull defines cuckserviatism. But our duty remains.
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
(1 Corinthians 15:51-58 ESV)
We are to remain steadfast. We can be called fundamentalists. We can have laws against us. We can expect to be shunned. And we will see the final stages of the progressive experiment.
For the progressive experiment is based on a lie, and truth will out, regardless of the vote
Truth cannot be changed. When Synods discuss about doctrinal matters, the adherence to truth is the prerequisite of every such discussion. When they take a vote the same, of course, applies.
In the past, a 75% majority was required by Synodal votes. Why? Because a 75% majority was considered a sufficient enough evidence that what was voted was in adherence to Truth. Mind, though, that no one ever said a 75% percent majority – or a 80%, 85%, or the like – can change truth. Every decision is, and can only be seen, according to its conformity to Truth. It is this conformity that makes the decision a legitimate one. Not the majority with which it has been reached.
So let us take the insults from the press as a complement. They generally don’t know what they are speaking of.
Remain steadfast. Do not be with the elite. Do not be like them.
Regrettably I think the problem is not limited to the secular desire to see Christianity gone. My local has increasingly wandered off down the Pentecostal path and the style and content has begun to rankle a bit. Most of the elders who should know about the core of the orthodox faith seem staggeringly ignorant of the fundamental beliefs needing to be held. Having queried this (quietly and in a completely non confrontational way) I now feel the cold wind of rejection blowing my way. How do supposed visions and prophecy (generally flimsy “mean anything” or plain wrong) help the weak who cling to faith in the face of persecution. Alas, what is one to do in the face of those seeking an experience limited to dodgy signs and wonders because they do not really know the living God? There seems little leadership and teaching by people who know what they are talking about today.
Find a crunchy bunch of Calvinists. Unfortunately, they are not everywhere. The Churchians love too much the spirit of the age.
‘Canada’ is now just nothing– an empty, exploited shibboleth:
Government regulation and coercion in Canada is just insane. Why work??? WE have communism. The government control wages and incomes AFTER the fact with taxation. The government takes 50% of everything. If you work hard then it is simply given to someone else by force.
Democracy has become one vote and 2 minutes of input every four years, followed by government fiat on 10,000 decisions to tax, steal and coerce everything from you for next 4 years–with state force to back it up.
Once again, I didn’t vote. No point.
I didn’t know what the old Canadian flag looked like until the other day. Its classy.
I find it amusing that the people who vote and eventually hate what they voted for tell people that don’t vote (because the non voters think the system or choices suck) that they can’t complain about what they didn’t vote for.
Well, I vote. Because there are some parties in NZ that only stink mildly. In Canada, they all Stink.
I greatly prefer the Red Ensign to the current Canadian flag; it indeed is more classy, and it acknowledges our heritage.
Agreed; they always assert that “If you don’t vote, you don’t have a right to complain.”
But on what logical, rational basis can one argue that non-voters have no right to complain, anyway, just because they don’t vote? We have freedom of speech and freedom of opinions, and my right to complain is part and parcel of that, whether or not I participate in the charade of the status quo. And I have noticed that there are many people who go out and vote, then when a party OTHER than the one they voted for gets in, and does what it says it would do, they STILL complain, even though they didn’t vote FOR that party, which is only doing what it said it would do, which is actually noble and honourable in itself, whether or not one agrees with the particular policy. If they reserve the right to exercise their freedom of speech and complain about a party they didn’t vote for, why can’t I, if I chose to do so? The only difference is, I’m voting for nobody.
The choices you have in Canada range from appalling to merely bad.
Agreed.
I hear today the battle against IS is being abandoned and the nice Canadian government is going to be bringing some of them, whoops, I mean refugees, to Canada.