Functional unity in Prayer [Is. 19]

What the progressives do not know, what they cannot comprehend, is that they are going to lose. That their rage is akin to the temper tantrums my children pulled when they were two… and led to the adults giving looks of support over the table.

Christ will triumph. That is the message of Revelations: it was given for us, as we need it. When our buildings are seen more as cultural artifacts than the repository of a people of faith, then society is blinded. It was not blinded previously.

The progressives and the elite hate the Christians. They want the church destroyed, and the buildings turned into temples of Soviet Hygiene. This is the world we live in: the toddlers have taken over universities.

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Well, what are we to do? We are to unite. We are to glorify God. We are to let the nations rage. And we are to welcome in our fellow believers.

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.

(Romans 15:5-7 ESV)

Now, the church is divided: we are told this should not be so, but it is. Those who argue that all have fallen from the Pope and the Church in Rome is the one true church have difficulties: as do the Reformed, adn the Orthodox. There are considerable theological difficulties — I think it was Scott who in his combox as an Orthodox priest telling a Reformed person that to convert into the Orthodox he has to repent of his Catholicism, and there is a painful truth in that statement — which we will not deal with in this life.

They are on weighty matters, such as how we are saved, communion, the prayers for the saints: They are not small. We cannot say they matter not.

So I cannot say convert to the Reformed. For the reformed could be wrong. I can day but two things: Pray for me: Pray for my brothers. Be they Papists or Russian Orthodox.

And one thing more: the enemies of the church will be converted.

In that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the LORD at its border. It will be a sign and a witness to the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt. When they cry to the LORD because of oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and deliver them. And the LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians, and the Egyptians will know the LORD in that day and worship with sacrifice and offering, and they will make vows to the LORD and perform them. And the LORD will strike Egypt, striking and healing, and they will return to the LORD, and he will listen to their pleas for mercy and heal them.

In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and Assyria will come into Egypt, and Egypt into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.

In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.”

(Isaiah 19:19-25 ESV)

This will be a miracle. For the sons of Ishmael have opposed the Children of Abraham from the beginning: the allegory of this was expounded by Paul: it is as old as the church. As John Wright notes, bringing this current:

I am as agog and aghast as all honest onlookers, psychopathologists, and men of good will at the inability of the Progressives to perceive even the slightest thistledown-weight of danger from the blood-sopped cave-dwelling death-cultists of Mohammed, who have been at war with Christianity since the days of Mohammed, and whose Holy Book, the Al Koran, commands in no uncertain terms that all infidels be converted at swordpoint or slain or enslaved.

The behavior of the Ishmaelites has not changed since the Bronze Age by an iota. Adopting Mohammedanism did not improve their character: they are the same Edomite and sons of Agog seen in the Bible, the deadly and unrelenting enemy of the Chosen People.

But to the Progressives, these troglodytes are the victims, not the aggressors, and their actions are the fault of Western powers: the fault, in short, of constitutionalism, conservatism, capitalism, Caucasians and Christians.

Yet, and yet, Isaiah prophecies that the two historical empires that enslaved and oppressed Israel — Assyria and Egypt — the children of Ham and the children Japeth — will worship. The curse of Ham will be lifted (See Gen 9:24).

So what can we do?

Firstly, we can help our fellow believers. At this time, that is the Eastern Rite Catholics and Orthodox from Syria and Iraq: The Baptists, Anglicans and Catholics in Nigeria, and all the beleievers in China, Burma and North Korea. They are dying for the faith. If we can give them shelter, we should.

Secondly, we should not import their oppressors with them.

Thirdly, we should pray for their witness, and all witnesses. Particularly those churches we do not like or we think are in error. We should pray for reform in the church, that all may praise God. Beginning with us.

Beginning with us.