Friday, March 29, AD 2024 9:24am

Martyrs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did you mark how naturally – as if he’d been born for it – the earthborn vermin entered the new life? How all his doubts became, in the twinkling of an eye, ridiculous? I know what the creature was saying to itself! “Yes. Of course. It always was like this. All horrors have followed the same course, getting worse and worse and forcing you into a kind of bottle-neck till, at the very moment when you thought you must be crushed, behold! you were out of the narrows and all was suddenly well. The extraction hurt more and more and then the tooth was out. The dream became a nightmare and then you woke. You die and die and then you are beyond death. How could I ever have doubted it?

As he saw you, he also saw Them. I know how it was. You reeled back dizzy and blinded, more hurt by them than he had ever been by bombs. The degradation of it! – that this thing of earth and slime could stand upright and converse with spirits before whom you, a spirit, could only cower. Perhaps you had hoped that the awe and strangeness of it would dash his joy. But that is the cursed thing; the gods are strange to mortal eyes, and yet they are not strange. He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and even doubted their existence. But when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realised what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not “Who are you?” but “So it was you all the time”. All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories. The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained; that central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at last recovered. Recognition made him free of their company almost before the limbs of his corpse became quiet. Only you were left outside.

He saw not only Them; he saw Him. This animal, this thing begotten in a bed, could look on Him. What is blinding, suffocating fire to you, is now cool light to him, is clarity itself, and wears the form of a Man. You would like, if you could, to interpret the patient’s prostration in the Presence, his self-abhorrence and utter knowledge of his sins (yes, Wormwood, a clearer knowledge even than yours) on the analogy of your own choking and paralysing sensations when you encounter the deadly air that breathes from the heart of Heaven. But it’s all nonsense. Pains he may still have to encounter, but they embrace those pains. They would not barter them for any earthly pleasure.

CS Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

 

 

 

I won’t dignify the dead, murderous villain by using his name, but I would ask prayers for the souls of his victims:

A gunman singled out Christians, telling them they would see God in “one second,” during a rampage at an Oregon college Thursday that left at least nine innocent people dead and several more wounded, survivors and authorities said.

“[He started] asking people one by one what their religion was. ‘Are you a Christian?’ he would ask them, and if you’re a Christian stand up. And they would stand up and he said, ‘Good, because you’re a Christian, you are going to see God in just about one second.’ And then he shot and killed them,” Stacy Boylen, whose daughter was wounded at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., told CNN.

Go here to read the rest.  In this Vale of Tears death is ever at our side, but so is Christ.

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Ezabelle
Ezabelle
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 3:52am

My Prayers for those victims and their families. Such a troubled angry world.

I wander how a father could be “shocked” by his sons actions? If you don’t know your own child, your own flesh and blood, then I think you’ve done something wrong along the way. You reap what you sow. Murderers are raised, not born.

Philip
Philip
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 3:56am

Watch the self appointed one, King of America, issue another edict. No More GUNS.
After all, he knows better than the American public.

Establishment clause, correct me if I’m wrong, states basically, that our children can not hear the Word of God or Public prayer, in our public schools. Peer pressure on minority kids that don’t believe in same religion was part of their reasoning.. (?)

I wonder.
If our latest hater of organized religion had grown up in a public school system that started each day in prayerful reflection, for example the Our Father, would he had more or less hate for organized religion?

Cliche coming… No Jesus.. No peace!
Know Jesus, know peace.

Look forward to more Freedom from Religion thugs coming to a school near you.

Ezabelle
Ezabelle
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 3:59am

“If our latest hater of organized religion had grown up in a public school system that started each day in prayerful reflection, for example the Our Father, would he had more or less hate for organized religion?”

He doesn’t hate organised religion, he hates Christianity. I’m sure that if his day began with him sticking his bum in the air on a small piece of carpet, he would be a happy Chappy.

Philip
Philip
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 4:11am

Ezabelle.
Good point. Sensitivity booklets on Islam and related worksheets are in the classrooms.
Islam has had bad press you know.
Those hooded men are rightfully angry at a mean US. I mean, they are a peaceful people, right. Only trying to conquer the world for their God, even by death, well…that’s not a bad thing. Right?

Maybe we should ask our national King to draft a new edict. Muslim prayer throughout the day in public schools. Join us in prayer or die could be the new school motto for all the public schools.

I apologize. Sarcasm was in my first cup of coffee this morning.

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 4:12am

Obama won’t ever address the fact that this insane person’s motivation was demonic hatred against Christians. It does not fit his paradigm.

Ezabelle
Ezabelle
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 4:20am

“Join us in prayer or die could be the new school motto for all the public schools.”

There’s probably some truth in that sarcasm. They’re going to end up with that slogan in schools across Europe soon. The rest of the world won’t be far behind.

You are very correct though- when they take out any mention of our loving Father in Heaven in the public domain, then the youth fail to know what Love is. That they are loved. That through all the adversity they may experience in this world, there is a God that loves them, who they will be answerable to- it’s the only true direction we can give our children in this world.

This boy would not have committed these murders if he was taught this.

Philip
Philip
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 4:22am

I agree with you Ezabelle.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 6:25am

Establishment clause, correct me if I’m wrong, states basically, that our children can not hear the Word of God or Public prayer, in our public schools.

You’re wrong. That’s not what the Establishment Clause states. That’s what the Supreme Court says the Establishment Clause means.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 7:37am

Our deceitful enemies perennially deny the War on Christians. The War has been flagrant for hundreds of years and now is waged by academia, Hell; Hollywood; the lying, liberal media (I repeat myself again); Mecca, Riyadh, and Tehran; and the Obama regime.

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Go out and sell your mantle and buy a gun.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 7:47am

You know they can’t possibly deport 11,000,000 illegal invaders; but they can disarm 83,000,0000 American citizens.
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“Though it be broken –
Broken again- still it is there,
The Moon on the water.”
Chosun

Paul W Primavera
Paul W Primavera
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 8:05am

My response to T Shaw: 1st Maccabees Chapter 2 – I am sure you would agree:
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https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+maccabees+2&version=RSVCE
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There was one and only one thing that the pagan Seleucid overlords understood and respected. God-haters are the same today as they were in 160 BC.

Philip
Philip
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 9:08am

Ernst Schreiber.

Got it!
Thank you for the clarification.

Alphatron Shinyskullus
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 9:15am

As soon as I saw the story yesterday I knew that the shooter would be targeting Christians. Why? Because that’s happened in other mass shootings, and because this is Oregon. Anti-Christian hatred is alive and well. I’ve experienced it many, many times here. My youngest brother was recruited to that cause. Yet, my local newspaper made no mention of the shooter’s motivation, and that Christians were singled out. If the shooter had been singling out black people, it would have generated much interest and commentary. Christians? Not so much, because we sort of have it coming to us, don’t we? The stereotype is that we promote hatred. In fact, a former co-worker posted slander against pro-lifers on Facebook last night with just this sort of charge, prompting me to unfriend this person. They’ll go after the guns to disarm the Christians, and not go after the hatred that causes the shooting. The next step? Isn’t it obvious?

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 9:58am

One thing Obama will not say, “If I had a son, he could look like the killer.”
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Let’s politicize the war on Christians.
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Every thing you read or see in the media is pure deceit.

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 11:03am

Robert H. Bork’s “Slouching Toward Gomorrah” comes to mind, and something to the effect that the next enemy invasion will be that of godless children born and raised here. Obama’s default position on gun-control is just the irrelevant blather of the most unsatisfactory president in history. Our economy is a shipwreck, our foreign policy is a rudder-less derelict driven by the prevailing winds. We are nearly on the verge of a third world war as pre-conditions frighteningly similar to the late nineteen-thirties play out before eyes blinded by ideological distractions. Oremus!

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 11:16am

Mr. Walsh: Truth.
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If there were (there is not) an increase in so-called mass shooting cases, it would be microscopic. The only increases are in Obama’s and his imbecilic worshippers’ demagoguery, hype, and hype/hysteria.
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HRH Hillary’s email scandal; Benghazi; and Obama’s innumerable, epic economic and Mideast catastrophes require them and their lickspittle curs in the media to wax hysterical about something, anything to distract the morons that support them. They can’t gull the rest of us.
.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Friday, October 2, AD 2015 2:24pm

Oremus!!! Yes! Give us the grace Lord to pray, to repent and to get to work evangelizing our own. I am guessing the Kingdom does not come floating down from the Heights to us…

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