And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. And he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so. And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces. He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back, and stood by the bank of Jordan; – II Kings 2: 9-13
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This Thanksgiving, as we do every Thanksgiving, my family and I saw the 1947 movie A Miracle on 34th Street. In that movie a vicious, self-serving psychologist tries to have a man named Kris Kringle committed to a lunatic asylum because Mr. Kringle says he is Santa Claus. Of course we know the outcome. An atypical lawyer who believes that Kris Kringle is a harmless old man with a delusion for good manages to win an acquittal for Kris. Then, lo and behold, the lawyer discovers that the kindly old man he was defending actually is the one and only Santa Claus. And because he actually is Santa Claus, he is more concerned with the conversion of a feminist and her young daughter than he is with his own acquittal. Since the movie is a romance as Shakespeareâs The Tempest is a romance both the feminist and her daughter are converted at the end of the movie.
Miracle on 34th St., like all the great European fairy tales, allows us, the European people, to take a moral holiday. We see evil punished and the good rewarded. But in order to take pleasure in a movie such as A Miracle on 34th St, one must have a moral vision of life that is in line with the moral vision of the European people of ancient times who believed the hope of the world was born in a stable in Bethlehem.
Everything was in place in the citadels of power in 1947âchurch, state, academia, and press â to bring down the curtain on white Christian Europe, but the average white person at that time had more in common with the Europe of 1117 than the Europe of 2017. There was still a strong Christian ethos then, but now there is none. The ethos of Babylon has been institutionalized, and the ethos of Christian Europe has been destroyed. The new Miracle on 34th St would include a noble black savage, a horde of Moslem rapists, and a feminist harpy who would abort her child on Christmas day. That is the liberal romance â blasphemy wedded to the slaughter of the innocents.
There are weaknesses in A Miracle on 34th St movie. Kris Kringle only condemns quack psychologists; he does not condemn the practice of psychiatry. And we would like to hear something like unto Ebenezer Scroogeâs nephewâs speech from Kris Kringle:
âThere are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,â returned the nephew. âChristmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come roundâapart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from thatâas a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!â â A Christmas Carol
But taken for all in all A Miracle on 34th St and such movies as I Know Where Iâm Going and A Canterbury Tale place us in a very different world than the one we live in today. Is the old world the better world? In my view there is no doubt which is the better world. But there also is no doubt in the liberalsâ mind that their world is the better world. Why has the liberalsâ romance conquered the old romance of Christian Europe? The obvious answer — that the liberals worship Satan and hate the Light with passionate intensity while the grazers are confused and full of doubts about Christâs promise to be with them always — is the correct answer. But Satan did not gain ascendancy over the liberalsâ souls by a direct attack. He came at the liberals through stealth and cunning. He always presented himself to Europeans in some kind of disguise. Whether he came to them as a kindly theologian, a pure and noble Jacobin, a devoted Marxist, or a benevolent psychiatrist, his objective was always the same â to separate the European people from the God who enters human hearts. Every attack on the Europeansâ racial hearth fire in the name of ânobleâ causes such as liberty, fraternity, and equality, was an attack on Christ and His people. J. S. LeFanu describes this stealth warfare of the devil in his masterpiece, Uncle Silas:
Of my wretched uncle’s religion what am I to say? Was it utter hypocrisy, or had it at any time a vein of sincerity in it? I cannot say. I don’t believe that he had any heart left for religion, which is the highest form of affection, to take hold of. Perhaps he was a sceptic with misgivings about the future, but past the time for finding anything reliable in it. The devil approached the citadel of his heart by stealth, with many zigzags and parallels.
Satan did not have to approach the colored heathen by stealth, they belonged to him without such measures. The Arab chieftain in Scotâs novel, The Talisman, brags of his descent from the devil. And so it has been, and continues to be, with the heathens of color. The ethos of the devil is something they can understand; it is an ethos of blood, sex, and power. It is a vision of this world only, a world devoid of charity and mercy, that the devil presents to the colored heathen. And the colored heathens love that world.
The Europeans rejected the devilâs world for another world. This world was a shadow of another world, the real world of grace, beauty, and life everlasting in a kingdom presided over by the Prince of peace, mercy, and love. That belief penetrated into the heart and soul of the European people. To root such a belief out of their hearts, to make white men return to paganism, was the devilâs task. He approached them by way of the âzigzags and parallelsâ that destroyed Uncle Silas. The devil covered the seven deadly sins with the pride of virtue in order to create the most hideous creatures on the face of the earth â they are called liberals. Robespierre was the prototypical liberal. He didnât see himself as a mass murderer, he saw himself as a virtuous man who was purging the world of evil. What was the evil that needed purging? All things and persons that had any connection to Christ the Lord, because the virtuous liberal cannot abide Christ the Lord. He can abide Christ the social worker, Christ the Marxist, Christ the capitalist, Christ the civil rights worker, but he cannot abide Christ, the Son of the Living God. The apostles on the road to Emmaus asked Christ to abide with them because it was âtoward evening and the day is far spent.â The antique Europeans made the same request, and the Lord honored their request. But the liberals? They have commanded Christ to leave them and never return. As a result, we live in a world of eternal night, where the âvirtueâ of Uncle Silas-liberalism has been blended with the savage paganism of the colored heathens. We will never defeat the barbarians of color by appealing to the liberals for help, because the extermination of the white race is not a result of a misunderstanding any more than legalized abortion is the result of a misunderstanding. In both cases the liberals know what they are doing. They are attacking God by destroying his image in man, the white Christ-bearing race, and they are usurping the role of God by seeking to control the act of procreation.
The age of prophecy is dead, because Christ, of whom the prophets spoke, has come. But what happened to the prophetsâ connection to the living God once Christ came in fulfillment of the prophecies? I liken the new relationship between God and man after the fulfillment of the prophecies to the relationship of a man and woman who have been corresponding for years by mail. Then the time arrives for them to meet in the flesh. Will one or both recoil in horror because their correspondent was not what they expected, or will their relationship take on a new intensity? The Jews, in the main, went over to heathenism when they encountered the living God. It was the Europeans who took up the mantle of the prophets and formed a connection to the living God. But that marriage was a tumultuous marriage just as the prophetsâ relationship with God was a tumultuous relationship. First there were the bad counselors who thought they could improve the marriage with their great intellects. These men were the Grand Inquisitors of organized Christian Jewry who sought to return the Europeans to the letter-writing stage of their relationship with God. That cannot be done without severing the relationship. Christ is the God of human hearts, He is not the God of philosophical theory or dry parchments. If the word of God does not reach the human heart, how can there be faith on earth? Once the connection to the living God is severed, faith becomes an intellectual proposition that can be completely rejected or turned into a lukewarm bath that the Europeans occasionally go to in order to wash off some of the liberal slime from their bodies.
The greatest of the prophets, the man whom God took unto Himself by way of the fiery chariot, was Elijah. He opposed Ahab, but it was not the weak, vacillating Ahab who really ruled, it was Ahabâs wife, Jezebel, the most satanic woman that ever lived, who ruled the kingdom. When Elijah rebuked the 450 prophets of Baal that ate at Jezebelâs table, he was rebuking Jezebel, who was the mistress of Satan, in the name of the living God:
And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. Then said Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet of the Lord; but Baal’s prophets are four hundred and fifty men.
Four hundred and fifty to one, but it was Elijah who was victorious, because he served the living God:
And it came to pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that Elijah the prophet came near, and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again. Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God. And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there. â I Kings 18
It was not all clear sailing for Elijah after he slew the 450 prophets of Baal. Now, like the Prince in Disneyâs Sleeping Beauty who had to deal with Maleficent and all the powers of hell, Elijah had to deal with Jezebel and all the powers of hell. He flees to the mountains and is close to despair. But the Lord takes care of him; He sends an angel to minister unto him and tells him he is not alone: âYet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.â Then comes the incredibly moving moment when Elijah casts his mantle upon Elisha who is the man chosen to follow in Elijahâs footsteps. We all know the rest. Once the new prophet has been chosen, Elijah is taken up to heaven:
And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. And he said, Thou hast asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee; but if not, it shall not be so. And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more: and he took hold of his own clothes, and rent them in two pieces. He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back, and stood by the bank of Jordan;â â 2 Kings 2: 9-13
Do I wander too far from Europe when I talk about Elijahâs prophecies and his battle with Jezebel and her minions? No, I do not. Christ was the fulfillment of all the prophecies, and His heart contained all of the prophetic fire of the prophets. When the European people took Christ into their hearts they became one with the prophets and Christ. When the liberals broke their covenant with Christ by banishing Him from their racial hearth fire in order to worship Baal in the form of the colored heathens, they became like unto Jezebel. And the white grazers became like unto the lukewarm children of Israel who were rebuked by Elijah: âAnd Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a world.â
We stand before Christ just as the grazers of Israel stood before Elijah. How long will we be between two opinions? Will we worship the liberalsâ unholy trinity, or will we stand with Christ the Lord? The Jezebels of Liberaldom are frightening creatures. But Jezebel did not prevail. If we stand with the antique Europeans, who were like unto the âseven thousand in Israel,â we too will prevail against the liberals who are like unto Jezebel.
There is only one great miracle, whether it happens on 34th St or in ancient Israel, it is the miracle of grace, the miracle of the living God touching a human heart. That is our miracle, our common faith, which we celebrate this coming Christmas and every day of our lives until we see our Lord face to face. Please, God, protect me and my family in the day of battle against the modern Jezebels and their prophets of Baal, and protect and defend the loyal seven thousand Europeans in their battle (the final battle?) against the same foes. In Christâs name, Amen. +