…for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” I Corinthians 15: 52 – 53Â
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I saw a small news item the other day that is emblematic of the state of Christianity in every European country. A group of Moslems living in Switzerland have demanded that the Cross be taken off the Swiss flag because the Cross is offensive to Moslems. The fact that Moslems are allowed in Switzerland, let alone that they feel entitled to demand that the Swiss abandon their cultural heritage to suit them, indicates to me that Christianity is dead in Switzerland as it is dead in every European country. And please don’t tell me about church attendance and celebrations of Christmas and Easter. The symbols and customs of a dead culture often remain for centuries after that culture has ceased to be a living culture. Christianity as practiced by Europeans prior to the 20th century is dead.
Is Christian Europe permanently dead? A Spenglerian who believes that cultures like people go through an inevitable cycle of birth, maturity, decay, and death would answer that question in the affirmative: “Yes, Christian Europe is dead and will never return.” But a non-Spenglerian, a European of the old stock, sees something more than mere nature in a culture. The antique European sees that a culture consists of human beings with souls; therefore, a culture is a spiritual entity not subject to the strict, physical laws of birth, maturity, decay and death. Just as a soul can be reanimated so can a culture. What would it take to reanimate the souls of the dead-to-life Europeans? What is needful? Faith is needful. The same faith that animated Europeans for so many centuries prior to the modern age: a faith in Christ crucified, Christ risen. Recapturing that faith should be the European’s all in all.
Of course faith cannot be merely an intellectual construct that serves a very limited material need on this earth. Genuine faith comes from the divine longings in the human heart. Though we still have Christian churches in Liberaldom, we do not have a genuine faith. The modern Christians have created a new non-spiritual Christ whose kingdom is of this world only. Let us look at the original, “this world only” defilers of the living God: if we go back to Christ’s first audience, to “his own, and his own received him not,” we are confronted by the Sadducees and the Pharisees. I see in these two groups the modern liberals and the modern conservatives. The liberals, like the Sadducees, see no animating spiritual principle in man. Man is doomed to die and return to nothingness, so the concern of man should be generic man, or, in modern terms, the generic Earth of Al Gore and the Hollywood crowd. Rock stars such as Madonna worship black Christ figures and wear crosses to accent their cleavage, but they do not worship the living God of the antique Europeans. Like the Sadducees, their god is sensual pleasure in this world only.
The Pharisees believed in God and the immortality of the soul, so it is all the more striking that the Pharisees were so vehemently opposed to Christ. But then upon consideration we find that it is not at all unusual for men who make a living by saying “Lord, Lord,” to feign and propagate a belief in a false God in order to reap material rewards in this world. In Frank Morrison’s book Who Moved the Stone, he wonders if Caiaphas himself might have secretly believed that Christ was indeed the Messiah but refused to acknowledge the fact because it would have cost him his job as the head of the Sanhedrin. (1)
The conservative, like the Pharisee, wants to be member of a church that is a power in this world. So when the culture that showed the world the face of Jesus Christ has fallen out of power, you simply proclaim your allegiance to a this-world-only faith and try to grab your share of the Kingdom of God on earth. What is multiculturalism and multiracialism other than an attempt to forge an alliance between Christianity and Babylon so that “Christians” can retain some power in the New World Order? And what is behind the incredible push to make Christianity and Judaism one faith? Christ enjoined His followers to spread the Gospel, but did He enjoin them to water down the Gospel in order to appease the rulers of this world?
The European has crossed the Rubicon and entered the city of Babylon. But unlike Julius Caesar’s Rubicon, the European can go back because his Rubicon is a spiritual Rubicon. He can go back across the Rubicon if he stops believing that his advance across the river was a heroic Christian endeavor rather than a cowardly retreat.
There have been some staggering changes in the European nations in the last forty years. During that time period the people of Europe embraced racial Babylon, which engendered the sexual Babylon of legalized abortion, homosexuality and sexual permissiveness. All the aforementioned evils were quite predictable given the decline in a genuine faith in the resurrection of Christ that occurred in the early part of the 20th century. Nations are moral entities; when the faith that created a nation becomes a dead letter, then moral decay is bound to ensue.
What was not quite as predictable — it became apparent in hindsight — was that organized Christianity offered little resistance at first and then accepted virtually all of the new post-Christian Christianity. The church hierarchies debated the minutia of the law while ignoring the spirit of their faith. And the enemy from without became part of the fabric of the church.
The churchmen of the West try to defend their apostasy by invoking universalist Christianity and the apostasy of the European people: “Christ came to save all people, and the Europeans have abandoned Christ.” In response and in defense: in order to preach the Gospel to all peoples there must be one people, a moral entity, that can go forth and preach the Gospel to every nation. The European people were that moral entity. In the past prior to the 20th century, when the Europeans apostatized, the Christian clergy called on their people to repent and return to God; they did not declare the European people a non-people and make the colored races into demigods on a higher plane of existence than Christ Himself. And how can the clergy justify the betrayal of their own people by claiming that their people apostatized, when they, the clergy, were the prior apostates? They made the living God into an abstract, dead God and then blamed their people for being apostate from that God. There is no universalist, abstract way to God. We find God in the hearts of His people, nowhere else.
At Christmas time I always think of Dickens’ Christmas Carol; there are so many scenes from that story that have become part of my soul. And at Easter time I always think of Handel’s Messiah. Musical scholars tell me that there are better musical compositions, and there certainly are some magnificent works by composers such as Mozart and Bach. But for me Handel’s Messiah is of a different order altogether, because no other piece of music puts us so close to the divine humanity of God. Other works make us feel the majesty of God, but are there any other musical works that make us feel so close to the heart of God?
And I think the singular and astounding magnificence of Handel’s Messiah comes from its simple retelling of the Christ story as it is told in the Holy Scriptures. From the comforting prophecies about the Lamb of God, through Christ’s birth, death, resurrection, and His life in eternity, Handel shows us God as He meant us to see Him, as an indwelling spiritual presence among His people. The Word took flesh and dwelt among us.
No great artist, be he writer, painter, or composer, creates alone. His work is connected to the heart of his people and their God. The artist is infinitely more gifted than his fellow men, but he is of them. Handel speaks for the European people in the Messiah. His vision of God was the European peoples’ vision of God, and his vision of God is the vision of we few, the remnant Europeans. It’s not possible to keep God and jettison the people of God. The antique Europeans’ vision of the living God is the vision that must prevail because it is the true vision. We strive to remain separate from all other cultures and all other peoples so that the light of Christ can shine in the darkness. As Europe becomes Babylon, the darkness spreads.
One of the many things I like about the incomparable Edmund Burke was that he was not afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve. He openly admitted in his Letters on a Regicide Peace that his people’s failure to see the necessity of war with Regicide France had left him profoundly depressed. Nonetheless, he fought nobly on. We can do no less. You would have to be a man of stone not to be depressed at the present state of the European people. But the Christ story so magnificently told by Handel makes it clear that Christ renews His people through a faithful remnant. Our faith in our people and their God, Christ the Lord, is not dependent on the numerical superiority sought by the Sadduceean liberals and the Pharisaical conservatives. Our faith is grounded in the blood of the Lamb that was slain. “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing …” +
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(1) But the personal consequences to Caiaphas and his family were hardly less distasteful. We do not know what changes in the Constitution of the Great Sanhedrin would have taken place under a truly Messianic regime. They would probably have been very considerable. But one thing is certain: the supreme ascendancy of the High Priest, as the arbiter of the national fortunes, would have suffered eclipse. Whatever aspects of its ancient and historic form the Hebrew Constitution might have retained, the real Dynast would have been the Messiah. As the national Deliverer and the supreme Representative of the God of Israel, His right to impose policy and to direct events would have been final and absolute. The prospect of the Nazarene Carpenter stepping into this unique and unparalleled seat of national power must have been profoundly disturbing to certain men (and women) who had an unquestioned interest in the maintenance of the status quo.