The Master's Ladder Step by Step
Step Seven
Mat 5:9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
I wrote this first with many references from the Holy Fathers, about reconciling the inner man with the outer man. Reconciling the heart and mind, etc. How true peace is an inner struggle and happens only when a man becomes reconciled with God. How, when a man has become so reconciled he naturally tries to effect this reconciliation with others. There is always allusions to greater and grander negotiation and peace making, dialog and understanding.
All the time the images of fake peace haunting my thoughts. This is the huge tradition of the Fathers with many references, and it is NOT wrong, it is easily referenced so I don't what to merely repeat what is common knowledge. This is one of those subject that has exhaustive writing, Christian as Peacemaker. In all of these references, in the English translations the word, “peacemaker” and "peacemakers" is continually employed, as it if has some holy and spiritual significance. I want to take a slightly different approach.
How could Jesus say, “Blessed are the peacemakers” and “I came not to bring peace but a sword.” Is one statement more important than the other? Some would have you believe that "peacemaking" is an outer function and taking up the sword has merely an interior function, sort of like the Muslim apologists try to convince you that Jihad is an "interior spiritual struggle." Jesus also said, “he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” I suggest that peacemaking and taking up the sword have both an interior and exterior reality. Let us look further.
We have an example of peaceful “Christian Society” in an admonishment by Saint Paul to the “people of the way” the Thessalonians, instructing them to “be at peace,” and it directly ties to these steps.
1Th 5:12ff And we request of you, brothers, to recognize those who labor among you, and are over you in the Lord and instruct you, and to regard them beyond all measure in love, because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. Now we exhort you, brothers, admonish the disorderly, encourage the discouraged, be supportive of the weak, be patient toward all. See that no one pays back evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue that which is good, both for one another and for all. Rejoice always! Pray without ceasing!
Let me further deconstruct the common interpretation of this proposition, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Do you know that “peacemaker” is an English word, created for use in the King James Bible with no antecedent in English literature and no etymology springing from another language. A totally invented word. I think there are some languages, some Northern European languages where they squeeze this verse into “Blessed are the pacifists” - words having equal meaning in their language. I know this is the way the Coptics use this verse, as if all force is violence.
Dutch, vredestichters, means peace keepers, those who by reason and force, keep the peace.
If we translated the verse literally it would be, Blessed are the (ειρηνοποιός from the root word ειρηνευτής - pacifier) pacificatory, i.e. those who have been pacified. What does pacification mean. Any army officer can tell you, creating a state of non-hostilities in country. In this case the country is our own selves, our own hearts, our own psyches. The pacification of the interior is the absence of psycho-pathos. The suffering soul ceases to suffer. So it would be correct to translate the words as "blessed are the peaceable." Or better those who keep the peace. Who are the peaceable but those who are “at peace.” How does one become “at peace”? By the spiritual discipline outlined in these steps. In this instance what is described as “peaceable” has as much in common with social and political pacifism, as being meek has in common with being weak.
The word peace traces its meaning from the Anglo-French pes, and the Old French pais, meaning "peace, reconciliation, silence, agreement." This going back to the 11th century. We see in those definitions words that fits the lessons of these steps.
Reconciliation, where the heart-mind becomes totally reconciled with God.
Silence, where the chaos of the mind is silenced, so that communication with God can be and ultimately is restored, without the roar of Luciferian static.
This word “pes” “pais” came to us from the Latin pax, meaning "compact or agreement or treaty of non-hostilities” a legal term. Pax Romana - Roman Peace, proves that violence of Empire can be mistaken for a time for peace. Even the great church father, a foundation of Orthodoxy who fought the brave fight against heresy like few others in our history, observed this sort of nominal peace saying, "Through the Roman's instrumentality, the world is at peace, and we walk on the highways without fear and sail where we will. _ Irenaeus AD 180.
This holds little in common with the concept of peace we wish to highlight here. Pacts of Peace, or peace generated at the point of a gun or edge of a sword, are always agreements of slavery. Even if totally equitable, which means both sides compromised to evil, or the damage caused by evil, it represents at the VERY best, remission of a disease that is hell bent on destruction. I'm not speaking of anarchy here. There ARE lesser and greater degrees of just governance. Yet, we place this proposition, “Blessed are the peacemakers” into the paradigm of making peace agreements with evil, so that in our time we read, Blessed are those who make agreements of peace.
I propose and I know that what is true, can never make peace with what is lie.
I propose and I know that what is pure can never make peace with what is corrupted.
I propose and I know that what is life-engendering can never make peace with Satan that ole destroyer, whose very symbol in Paleo-Hebrew is the symbol of sharp toothed jaws chewing up a human being, meaning, he who destroys mankind. There is no peace to make with this evil.
Those whose spiritual reality has become LIFE-engendering, whose very presence has become LIFE-engendering, the psalmist described this way – (note - remember the Kingdom of God is within, the “house of God” is our hearts, if we so make it):
Psa 84:4 Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee. Selah. Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; in whose heart are the ways of them. Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools. They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.
When you have established “praying without ceasing” “rejoicing always” that is, the prayer of the heart, where the heart-mind has awakened and is in continual communion with God, where communication via the power of the Holy Spirit is continual . . . I'm not talking about endless verbalization, although to quiet the mind of its chaos, the Hesychast discipline of the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner) is a powerful tool repeated thousands of times a day, which has the power to overcome the fantasy laden and fantasy producing brain, to train it to silence while the heart prays . . . the Jesus Prayer is a tool not the goal; “communion empowered by the Holy Spirit” is the goal.
And by communion, I'm describing something more like the digital “ping” of a fiber-optic line. When communications is cleared, there is an open direct line between the heart and the All Mighty, the heart every few seconds pings the Lord and the Lord says, “Here I am.” The Lord pings the Heart, and the Heart-mind says “Here I am.” A standing open communications line, so that when information has to pass, it is faster than the speed of light, faster than our natural thought process, feeding us the synergistic wisdom of the Holy Spirit, timely and to the point, functioning above our own rationalizing, an intuitive knowledge that is at every instance, a weapon of healing/salvation.
The process is so natural, those next to you cannot perceive anything different about you, except that they sense there is at your core a rock they cannot move, using their normal hypnotic means. They cannot fool you. They cannot influence you. The most tempting plot they (evil) can arrange cannot find a place in your heart, your heart having become enlivened by something more than mortality. There best psychological weapons pass through to no effect and no damage.
Lao Tsu said, speaking of those who had taken hold of real life, “I have heard it said that one who excels in safe-guarding his own life does not meet the rhinoceros or tiger when traveling on land nor is he touched by weapons when charging into an army. There is nowhere for the rhinoceros to pitch its horn; there is nowhere for the tiger to place its claws; there is nowhere for the weapon to lodge its blade. Why is this so? Because for him there is no realm of death.”
There is no Satanic defense against a Heart that is broken by prayer, against a spirit that is contrite before Holy Wisdom. “Break your heart open with prayer . . . so that the power of the devil may be completely broken away from your heart by perfection . . Just as a man fears to take hold of a fiery and sparking iron, so the devil fears the breaking of a heart. For the breaking of the heart breaks his cunning completely. However, In the relaxed and unbroken heart, as soon as it is confronted with the devil's fantasy, the heart accepts it at once and is deeply impressed by the idea of the fantasy. Where there is contrition of heart all satanic evil is put to flight and every demonic action is set ablaze. Break your heart with prayer so that sin may be broken away from your heart . . ” Anonymous Hesychast monk: Neptiki theoria, p 171-174 (in Greek).
We know, as the master's of hypnosis/propaganda know, that the subconscious mind records everything it sees and hears, without filter, without discrimination. This “recording” becomes part of the person, feeding fantasy and fear. A broken heart on a very, very, deep level takes control of that process, where even the subconscious mind becomes discriminatory, guards itself, aware of the hypnotic assaults. Aware that his enemies of are those of his own household.
I used the King James version of the psalm above about the strength of one who has come to peace. (Walking through the valley of Baca) In the Septuagint, the oldest extant version of that Psalm it has a pretty significant departure, (actually it is the King James that departs from it) but it paints a clear picture as to how someone comes to possess this LIFE-engendering power of peace. Remember God's house is our hearts. It says, “Psa 84:4ff Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will praise thee evermore. Pause. Blessed is the man whose help is of thee, O Lord; in his heart he has purposed to go up into the valley of weeping, to the place which he has appointed, for there the law-giver will grant blessings. They shall go from strength to strength: the God of gods shall be seen in Sion . . . Behold, O God our defender, and look upon the face of thine anointed.”
UP into the valley of weeping. (greek) “ascends” the valley of weeping not descends into. This is HOLY dejection, the hospital of Holy Healing, not the pit of despair. Intelligent therapy, not mindless clawing at wounds. This is “purposed” by the actor, not experienced by mere happenstance. It is a rational meeting with the law-giver, not a sentimental spiritual or nebulous experience or feeling. Blessedness is bestowed there, creating a warrior perfectly at peace within himself. So that, that warrior can turn back to the lawgiver and say, “Behold, O God our defender, look (in me) upon the face of thine anointed.” Who is the anointed one? Christ himself. If that soul can turn to the Almighty, and in warlike fashion and say, Behold my defender, the face of YOUR anointed. What possible power does Satan have against him? Is it any wonder that demons go screaming away? Is it any wonder that Satan then has to resort to less subtle and more corporal means of war?
Blessed are the peaceable, does not mean those who make treaty with evil, but those who have come to peace with God, who can with knowledge observe the plans and actions of Satan and blunt them, dodge them, halt them, expose them.
Peace, true peace comes from reconciliation, from restoring what was broken. It cannot come to exist where rebellions remains.
Reconciliation and Rebellion cannot make peace.
There is no treaty ever written that could make that possible.
Such treaties codify evil, create illusion while evil insidiously continues its destruction.
Islam uses false peace as a weapon of conquest through civilization Jihad.
Look at the absurdity of the warmongering Obama, who with his alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood has created both Muslim and Christian genocide, and he holds a Nobel Peace Prize. Could that prize ever again have any meaning, except to the deluded? It cannot have meaning to even the Northern European Protestant mindset that reduced this proposition to “Blessed are the pacifists.”
In fact, Jesus explained this graphically using the text from Micah which says not to place trust your closest companion or government. That your enemies will be of your own household and what he describes is WAR and not false peace. Those who teach that the “reconciliation” this proposition suggests is reconciliation with evil, to simply create the absence of conflict, at all cost, at the sacrifice of the innocent, which is the pacifists' delusion, they are false teachers.
(I will spare you the picture, but go to Google Images, and punch in dead children and name the country in conflict - WAKE UP! You cannot make peace by the sacrifice of children to Moloch.)
There is no theological grounds in Christianity for the abandonment of the innocent into the hands of evil for their destruction for the purpose of avoiding conflict. If there were then Jesus' words, “what you do to the least of these, you do also to me” would have no meaning. Abandoning the innocent, is abandoning Jesus Christ. No he says rather, be at peace and stand and fight, and don't worry there is no place for Satan to lodge his horn.
IF, it is true, as we described in the previous steps, that one may become prey merely by dropping out of the evil of the Culture, we should see witness to this now. And we do. We see this happening in our culture, where those who merely separate themselves from the evil culture, create no harm or threat, become prey (Waco, Ruby Ridge, the attacks on the survivalist movement – off the grid and you are an immediate suspect.) How much more an enemy is one who overcomes the delusions of the culture, reconciles with the All Mighty and remains in the culture, exposing the cultural lies, blunting them, destroying the hypnotic spell, sabotaging the schemes, causing them to stumble by their own snares.
These peaceable ones are dangerous. Their hearts literally has the power to open up “the way” for others. “in whose heart are the ways for them.” Actually, “Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee, --they, in whose heart are the highways.” Do you want to talk about REAL evangelism. These ones, whose psyches have been filled with life become so filled with life that when they pour themselves our it creates opportunities for healing, stated as wells and pools for the thirsty and highways for those who have lost their way. THESE are the peaceable ones and they are dangerous.
What is the reality of the false peacemakers? Jer 6:14ff And they have healed the breach of my people lightly, saying, Peace, peace! when there is no peace. Are they ashamed that they have committed abomination? Nay, they are not at all ashamed, neither know they what it is to blush.”
Fake peace is reconciliation with evil. If you doubt what I'm saying listen to the Sufi Mystic Rumi teach it.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there."
Many caught in eastern religions who have come to the knowledge of “centering” of gathering the scattered self, of making the outside like the inside, and those bound by the pseudo-sciences of psychology and psychiatry, suffer the same, by reconciling with evil. “I'm Gay and I'm PROUD.” The young woman who says, “I've slept with hundreds of guys. So what? Who are you to judge?” This kind of psychological reconciliation is just learning to sin boldly. To accept the fake peace, to pretend destruction of the psyche is healthy, to be unashamed they have committed abomination, having numbed their conscience, now unable blush. In the next sentence God actually gives them some very sound psychological advice; “Thus saith Jehovah: Stand in the ways and see, and ask for the ancient paths, which is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.”
So the ancient good way, wherein we may walk and find rest for our suffering soul, our psycho-pathos, is what we are teaching, and not some colors of Eastern Religion, or false peace of modern psychology/psychiatry – hypnosis and drugs. We are not speaking about making peace with what is false, what is evil, but coming to reconcile our deepest self with TRUTH and CONQUERING IT.
Addictions and other fetishes find empowerment in the paradigm of false peace. Come to a meeting name your addiction and claim it. Admit there is no cure. Reconcile to be locked into struggle for the rest of our life, without relief from the craving, accept that there is no conquest of demonic evil. Make uncomfortable peace with your demon, struggle valiantly, relapse on a regular basis, months apart or years a part, but gosh take another meeting.
You see, this is only where did we start. Father John Romanides of Blessed Memory, who was well known for teaching the psycho-therapeutic discipline of the Holy Fathers, described where we start as, "One is dealing with a neurobiological sickness which produces fantasies in the human imagination and distorts one's vision of reality . . . “ We started a psycho-pathos, a suffering soul, having lost the accurate perception of “the good,” blind to the presence of God, having experienced myriad assorted misuses of Material Being, having our mindset formed within a sea of distortions, purposeful distortions common in the culture, which together distorted our powers of observation and reason.
Walking “The Way” away from the neurobiological sickness, our psycho-pathos, first, we began to realizes our own poverty. We reached to God and begin our walk on The Way. Again, “The Way” is the earliest name used of physical/spiritual Christian therapeutic life. It was understood that "The Way" was a physical/spiritual Christian therapeutic LIFE, a liturgy of living (work) and not religion, not a theory, but a physical/spiritual process of healing. The Way is the process of allowing the "reign" of God to come into our hearts, so that when we enter our heart-mind we enter HIS House, a place where HE abides. Where is TENTS among us.
The person "coming into the Kingdom of God" begins to see with spiritual eyes for the first time and the view is frightening and grief engendering. The view creates both tears of remorse towards the waste of one's own life, but grief looking at the waste of others also, and anger and frustration looking at the sad state of things as they appear to be. And to this spiritual vision comes the comfort of degrees of God's Wisdom. God's Wisdom is an uncreated energy of God, it is "Ha Hagia Sopia," the Holy Wisdom, the Holy Spirit. So participation in the "kingdom-reign of God" is participation in His uncreated energies, which is the substance of NEW LIFE, a substance actually created for us by Jesus Christ, upon the Cross. “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you.” It is the Divine/Human substance of Jesus himself, into which we are being imbued here and now, with incorruption and immortality.
Jesus was speaking on the personal level and on the societal level, on the physical level and on the spiritual level when he said:
“Mat 10:32ff Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven.”
Correction – this actually says in the Greek, Whosoever shall confess IN me, before men.” Do you see the confirmation of what I am teaching you? Confession of Jesus Christ, saying “Lord, Lord” has no meaning. Many, when pressed including Satan and his demon will make confession "of" Jesus.
Mat_7:21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
Mat_7:22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
Luk_6:46 And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?
Well, I've always believed in Jesus Christ!
So has Satan.
Well, I've always believed in the Bible!
So has Satan.
Well, I've always confess that Jesus Christ is my, Lord.
So has Satan.
You can confess the name of Jesus Christ, constantly until the end of days and it will accomplish you nothing, for even the demons call him Lord, Lord, and believe. No one can TRULY Confess IN the LORD, except by the Holy Spirit. That power has to become established in you.
Until you Confess Jesus Christ IN HIM, your confession is prideful hubris, it is a hypocritical claim to something you DO NO possess.
And there is only one way to become possessed of him. That is do the work to make your heart his true abode. And in that you cannot stand with pride, holding closely your passions, harboring a heart filled with garbage and that confession have any meaning whatsoever.
“But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven. Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.”
Again, so we can affirm that we are theologizing and not theorizing, I want to related this story about the power of REAL peacemaking, an actual event I recorded a few years ago.
A Season of Peace
(Written February 1977)
The story of an unexplainable reign of peace in Georgia's most violent state prisons, the state's official disciplinary prison, where the most violent are housed.
It is a place the public rarely sees. It is nestled in a valley in the Georgia Mountains. It is out of sight and out of mind for most Georgians. It is a place you have to mean to find, to go there. There is not a home or business in sight of it. A narrow two lane road leads off the highway winding through low hills, then at the crest of one of the hills the prison looms into view, sprawling across and covering the entire valley floor. It is a daunting sight: 12 ft fences and razor wire, a perimeter road a mile and a half around and 80 foot tall guard towers and cell-blocks housing one-thousand-four-hundred men. Dogs in cages bay in the distance and at times the air is punctuated with the sound of the firing range some hundreds of yards away. Here is the place where the state prison system sends its disciplinary problems. It houses some of the worst of the worst.
I was asked by a friend of a friend to visit a man at the prison. The chief chaplain had been solicitous of help and asked if there was a possibility that I could come maybe once a month and say Mass. That afternoon I really didn't know what to expect. Several inmates gathered for Mass. The service began and all went well. During the sermon in a way that was hard for me to understand, I found myself declaring a reign of peace,
saying:
"Few of you realize the power of inviting Christ into an institution in the special way we do in the Mass. Whether you believe in the real presence in the Bread and Wine or not, I will tell you 'it has power.' This isn't a revival service this is the physical presence of the Almighty. It is not the magical changing of the element into flesh and blood as the Roman doctrine proclaims. That is a three dollar definition of a billion dollar mystery. But it is real none-the-less and we in Orthodoxy call it "The Mystery of the Eucharist." I can't explain it, but I know it is true. And that TRUTH has power to effect these surroundings. The power of Christ's real presence in the Divine Eucharist is not limited to this room and to you men, but has the power to effect this entire institution. Do you want to see change in this violent place?"
A few nodded their approval.
"Then be faithful to this service and invite others to participate. But whether others participate or not the presence of this service will be felt throughout this institution."
As soon as these words were spoken I shrank from them, and questioned my sanity. I took a hard look at the men in the room, strangers all. But from reputation and information in orientation, I knew that they were serious men. I mentally kicked myself angry that my "ego" had gotten the best of me and that I had made "claims" that I should not have made. My animal mind told me what a fool I would appear. In those moments I understood failure. I had failed and I knew it. There was nothing I could do to bring peace to that prison. The thought of it was ridiculous. Then in the presence of "The Presence" as in fact the All Mighty's presence filled that chapel, I felt an assurance that removed all doubt. It had huge humor to me. I knew that peace was going to blanket that place, that it was unreasonable, irrational and still it had more reality to me than stone, than my own nose, than my own broken heart.
That peace in that dangerous place and the knowledge of that peace in a place of violence and pain was a feeling of strength I had never felt before. Somehow there was the certain knowledge that even in this place God was in charge. My imagination rushed to the idea of what it would take to bring calm to a maximum security prison filled with robbers, rapists, murderers and thieves. Violence was a way of life here, all many of these men knew; all some of them had ever experienced from birth. What could possibly bring a season of peace? And why would the Lord choose to show such a sign in this prison, now? Repeatedly in the months ahead I found myself making statements about peace and the power of the Presence of Christ in the Mystery of the Divine Eucharist.
A SUDDEN DROP IN THE LEVEL OF VIOLENCE:
Prison professionals know the sick feeling of quiet before the storm. Experience has taught them that when a place filled with violent men suddenly becomes quiet there can only be one reason, "They are plotting and planning something." There grew an uneasy calm that lasted months. The officers and staff were nervous. They stepped up eavesdropping, listening in on the activities of the inmates. Many boring hours were spent listen to the gambling and horse play that are standard realities of the prison life. Finally after months of listening they had something. Seven inmates were meeting regularly in the exercise yard of one of the cell blocks and were talking about seeking revenge on the Warden for some of his strict policies. However, in fact, it had been six months of non-violence, and no real rebellion brewing.
A DAY OF VIOLENCE:
It was a warm day. At dawn the collective Tactical squads of several prisons "invaded" the prison. They goose-stepped onto the parade ground and clicked their heels. They were clad only in black and wore Kevlar masks. On the signal they sprang into action carrying out a violent and grueling "shake-down."
Every inmate in the institution was stripped naked and forced to lay belly down on the concrete with his legs crossed and his hands crossed behind him. For propriety sake and good taste I will not go into the details of the severity of this "raid and shake-down" but I will say that I have seen shock. And even days and weeks after the shakedown there were inmates and staff still showing the symptoms of shock. It was not until this point that I became aware that the previous months had been so peaceful. (note: I personally saw bloody beatings, that day. They hauled the most injured away via bus, and had to call out the camp fire department to hose off the tarmac where the buses were running blood. - I did not include these details and more, because I wrote this for the camp's inmates and guards, wardens, and staff.)
What a reward for a period of peace! It was absurd on the face of it. Yet who was I to second guess. The men who run Georgia's prisons are trained and capable. Many have years of experience and have seen all there is to see in the prison setting. I was "out of my element" inside a maximum security prison. I didn't know the prisoner's "lingo" or the rule by which inmates and officers lived. But on the face of it, it seemed like the worse kind of counter-productive act. It "appeared" that the message that was sent was, "behave, and do as you are
supposed to do and we will reward you with a violent shakedown."
EXPECTING REPRISALS:
I assumed that after the shakedown, especially since it was an unjust assault where even cooperative inmates were beaten there would be reprisals. I assumed that the violence level would increase. But it didn't. Months passed and nine months into the reign of peace, the institution broke the all time state record for the most peaceful institution in the state. And now, as of this writing in 13 months into this reign of peace, each day that rolls by creates a new record. The contrast is shown clearly in the statistics for the month of December last year and this past December which is an emotionally difficult month and tends to be a volatile time. In December last the Disciplinary Reports (D.R.s) numbered 137. That is 4.42 reports a day. This December the Disciplinary Reports numbered 8. That is (point -25) .25 reports a day, A NINETY-FIVE PERCENT DECREASE IN VIOLENCE.
THE PEACE THAT PASSES ALL RATIONAL UNDERSTANDING:
By any rational model this strange event cannot be explained. One cynical captain told me that it was just "screwing with statistics to impress the people in Atlanta." He said that many of the reports that would have been filed were being settled without filing them. He estimated that a "realistic figure" for the D.R.s in December 1996 "should have been around 35." I smiled realizing that he could not face the truth of it. And even if his cynicism were true, that would still be a decrease of about 75 percent. 75% or 95% I will not quibble. But I know one thing. God has created a reign of peace in a violent place as only God can. And in that time of peace we have seen many wonders of healing. "Praise God from whom all blessing flow. Praise him ye creatures here below Praise him above ye heavenly host. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen."
We have never allowed ourselves to imagine the reality of God's peace, the "irrational" reality of that Peace. We have never thrown ourselves on His Peace, and with warrior like resolve “let it be.” But the story above is repeated in families and neighborhoods, and communities, and cities, many times more than we know. We have bought Satan's brainwashing scheme thinking we cannot conquer evil here, now. Without God's faithful peaceful ones present in the violence culture, being the leaven in the dough, this planet would be a singular living hell and would not long exist.
All one has to do to view the miracle of God's Peace, is to look at the last fifty years and the presence of the power of the human race to exterminate itself many times over. Yet, walking to the brink of nuclear war three time with tens of thousands of possible errors that could have created holocaust, the uneasy peace remains. Whatever peace we have, is the peace we possess. Whatever peace or holocaust that is to come is also from the very same base of reality. Who WE are.
Thank God that many who may have no idea of the Steps of the Master, have intuitively found them, and intrinsically functioned in the synergistic life of the Holy Spirit of Life and Peace and become peacemakers.
His peace is real and springs from relationship with him in a mystery we can experience but cannot explain. That real Peace, Peace which is beyond "understanding" is available in the Singular Orthodox Spirituality Christ creates in the Church and the Synergistic working of the Holy Spirit of ALL LIFE, everywhere in actions beyond our comprehension. Many who do not have the slightest idea what that "Singular Orthodox Spirituality" is have found it, in various compromised and corrupted forms, but none the less have found it. In ignorance they may think that the various "sicknesses of religion" they have accepted are the source, but even in that compromise to the sickness of religion, the Holy Spirit is not absence and is working around the "obstacles" one clings to, and He is leading, teaching and drawing. There is a "short cut to peace" which is not a short cut at all but is instead the "Work of Our Lives" which will bring His Peace. It is the Orthodox Faith of the New Testament-Apostolic Church, the ancient Christian Faith still present, still alive, still real.
(End of February 1997 Article.)
I have to admit, that these eighteen years later there was consistent truth in what I wrote then and what I'm writing now. It would take a book to tell of the healing effect of those years that reign of peace is still producing, directly traceable to that event. We have to stop playing Satan's game on Satan's turf, we have to play God's game on Satan's, and BE the Church Militant, starting with the turf of our own hearts. Ridding it of it Satanic baggage, preparing it for warfare that is to come.
Excuse the well known saying, but how very apropos:
IF NOT US, WHO THEN?
IF NOT NOW, WHEN?
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