The Foliate Head From Paganism and the Green Man Tradition

 In all that follows, true Christians know why there is religious error in Christendom that has existed from the fourth century, and that because it became the policy of the Roman Catholic Church to let paganism indigenously exist as a “folklore religion” alongside the few remnants surviving from the earlier, apostolic Christianity. This policy was and is in defiance of the Bible’s requirement that worship of the God of the Bible must remain free of whatever smacks of paganism: “Therefore, get out from among them and separate yourselves,’ says Jehovah, ‘and quit touching the unclean thing’” (2 Corinthians 6:17).

 [https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2021/01/introducing-the-green-man/]

 “The Green Man, a character from traditional folk culture, has captured the imaginations of many in the modern world. Books, articles, and websites on the Green Man abound, each of them looking at the figure from its own perspective. Those who have commented on or employed the image of the Green Man range from historians to neopagan worshippers, from festival organizers to novelists, and from folklorists to participants in Renaissance fairs….”

 “. . . [T]he term “Green Man” . . .  had existed for hundreds of years” prior to scholars’ mention of the term in the twentieth century….

 “. . . [R]ituals common among the peasantry involve a character called “the green man,” . . . [e.g., ] . . . that the Green Knight of the great Middle English romance /Sir Gawain and the Green Knight/ could be a manifestation of this character from folk culture….

A theory of the Green Man folklore tradition may be stated this way: “. . . [M ]edieval Christians in Britain celebrated a ritual similar to the May Day ritual from 1901. The ritual itself had come down to them from pagan ancestors, among whom it involved the death and resurrection of a vegetation spirit, sometimes even including the sacrifice of the person portraying the King or Green Man. The ritual had been Christianized so that it no longer involved a sacrifice, but people revered the Green Man and recognized the symbolic equivalence of the figure with Christ. The ritual therefore symbolized for them the death and resurrection of Christ, the “focal point of [their] religious ideals.” Because of this, they decorated Christian churches with portraits of the man performing the ritual, as a symbol of Christ, the resurrected God. As years went on, such rituals lost more of their religious underpinnings, but they persisted in form, giving rise to the common name and image of the “Green Man” for inns and pubs. They were still being performed in 1901….

“This theory . . . comports well in a very general sense with what folklorists know about the religious lives of many people. Many of us adhere to religions that have official liturgies, approved beliefs, and established theologies; yet we also believe in ideas, and follow traditions, not officially approved by those religions. Much of the imagery surrounding Christmas in America involves Santa Claus, elves, Christmas trees, and reindeer, none of which is part of most official denominations’ Christmas beliefs. Even in many churches, these images are prominently displayed during the season, but observers from a foreign culture might search in vain for any explanation of these symbols within the official teachings of the church.

“Folklorists call such unofficial beliefs, images, and practices connected to religious observance “folk religion.”

“Don Yoder, in his book /Discovering American Folklife/, included the following definition:

““Folk religion is the totality of all those views and practices of religion that exist among the people apart from and alongside the strictly theological and liturgical forms of the official religion.”

“One interesting aspect of Catholic religion is the existence of folk saints, holy people or other beings revered as saints by groups of people, but not recognized as such by the church. Typically, the story surrounding a folk saint and the details of the saint’s following are referred to as that saint’s “cult.”  The “Cult of St. Guinefort,” for example, reveres a heroic French dog of the 13th century. By speaking of the Green Man or Robin Hood having a “cult” in the 16th and 17 centuries . . . [suggests] that the figure was an unofficial folk saint….

“The May Day ritual . . . [is] undoubtedly an aspect of English folk religion. [And the theory that] . . . it was an adaptation of a very old pagan rite, and that the foliate heads and the earliest “Green Man” pub signs were illustrations of the same folk-religious ritual as it existed among Christians [from the Medieval to modern times] . . . This theory will probably remain unproven, but it is not outlandish. It doesn’t require medieval English people to be “defiantly pagan,” or carvers to be “subversive" [i.e., heretics] [I]t requires them to be Christians whose folk religious practices included a seasonal ritual adapted from their pagan ancestors, and who understood the symbolic connection of that ritual to Christianity. Consequently, one of their important symbols was the Green Man, even though that symbol was not part of the official religion.

“ . . . Many folklorists and anthropologists have argued, and continue to argue, that aspects of Christian folk religion are derived from pagan practices. Some of these pre-Christian practices are quite obvious in today’s world, such as referring to the Christmas season as “Yule,” decorating eggs for holidays such as Easter, and depositing votive offerings at bodies of water. Doing these things doesn’t make one “defiantly pagan,” but it does demonstrate that, to some degree, “unofficial paganism subsists side by side with the official religion.”

“The foliate head, too, certainly seems to be based on pagan antecedents. It’s true that these pagan antecedents have not been found in Britain, but Britain has never been cut off from continental or global cultural influences. Unless we imagine that Green Men in British church architecture have nothing to do with the similar figures in French and German churches, limiting our focus narrowly to Britain doesn’t make sense, . . . [because there is abundant evidence] that the ritual was a British version of a ritual that was also Continental. Other, better examples [of such evidence] exist from elsewhere in the Roman world, including several from the palace of Diocletian in Split, Croatia . . .  [where we do find] "two foliate heads are from a pagan context: the Temple of Jupiter at the Palace of Diocletian in Split, Croatia, ca. 300 C.E. ….

“No one would deny that meanings change over time, but the principle that older meanings are “unhelpful” in understanding more recent ones would surprise any scholar who works with meaning over time, whether in history, linguistics, or literature. In any case, drawing a strict dichotomy between Christian and pagan iconography, and between British and Continental iconography . . . is unnecessary and misleading. The halos we see around saints’ heads in artworks are not original to Christian imagery, but were adopted into Christianity early in the church’s history from Classical and other sources. They are Christian but also pagan, and their pagan meaning may inform their Christian meaning. The same seems to be true of the foliate head [and, as the credible theory goes, the connection foliate head from paganism with British folklore religion's uses of ‘the Green Man’].”

Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to celebrate/honor Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, May Day, and any other tradition that has the trappings of paganism. We have quit touching the unclean things from pagan/folklore religion.

 

Whose Prayers Does God Answer?

Not all who pray to God get a hearing ear from Him. Those who approach God in prayer should not expect God to favorably hear their prayers as long as they see no need to repent works of the flesh, such as sexual immorality, spiritism, fits of anger. If one refuses to become cut to the heart over his sins--if he refuses to let the spiritual and moral standards of God's Word the Bible convince him that he must repent his sinful way of life--, then he will not find favor with God even if he prays many times during the day. James 4:8-10 puts it this way: "Draw close to God, and he will draw close to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you indecisive ones. Give way to misery and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into despair. Humble yourselves in the eyes of Jehovah, and he will exalt you." If one sincerely desires to do the will of God no matter the cost to himself, then the God of the Bible will draw that repentant person to Himself; God will open wide his heart to accept His Son Jesus Christ as his ransomer from sin's wages, death. There cannot be a fine relationship with God if there is no fine relationship with Jesus Christ (cf. John 17:3). Jesus has told us this: "No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). And this: "[Jesus] said: What I teach is not mine, but belongs to him who sent me. If anyone desires to do His will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or I speak of my own originality" (John 7:17). God Himself makes sure of it. So, if one truly has God-granted assurance that he is getting a hearing ear from God, then it is because he is a true Christian, a real disciple of God's Son Jesus Christ. Like Jesus, he will be delighted to be doing what is truly God's will. 

Materiality of Mind

My reflections on the subject.

 Gravity is a physical reality even though it is not extractable—cannot exist apart from that physical system we call the (physical) Universe, but nonetheless is a physical reality that emerged after the Big Bang. We know that gravity not only is an emergent reality—emerging within nanoseconds after the Big Bang—, but that it should manifest in a foreordained way for the existence of galaxies. This is so because gravity, as a physical constant, has a certain quantitative value given it by God for what should result from its power for “downward causation.” This is its power to participate in the organization of a constrained (finely tuned) system in matter as it moved away from “ground zero” of the Big Bang, the results of which include the existence of galaxies. Yes, this is materialism, but not atheistic materialism inasmuch as God is not only the Creator of matter, but He is the One who, by his power, imposed the critical values that the physical constants should need for the constitution of a physical universe able to support existence of human beings. 

 The human mind cannot exist apart from its being grounded in matter. It is an emergent reality, too; it necessarily, essentially emerges from the much more complex organization found in human brain tissues than is so for animals’; animals’ mentations also essentially emerge from their relatively less complexly structured brain tissues. Grounded in our brain tissues is the existence of certain experientials we know to be our own self-consciousness, conscience, at-will memory storage and recall, and “qualia,” etc.); these reside in a configuration of neuronal connections. A “snapshot” of an individual’s own brain (neuronal configuration) is the result of its “plasticity” for “recording” modifications in neuronal configurations that are layered for a circular (i.e., “downward and upward”) causation network. Thus no minds are identical. 

 Neither science nor the Scriptures give solace to proponents of dualism in human nature. True, the only alternative to anthropological dualism is materialism (physicalistic mind); however, the concept of atheistic materialism as sufficient explanation for human nature is as unscientific and anti-Scriptural as the notion that the Universe we live in came about by chance. Still, there is nothing that can logically contravene anthropological physicalism, nor is there anything scientifically known that requires us to scrap the concept of Big Bang cosmogony as it unfolded through power of holy spirit.

 

(Reply to a cousin) Answering Pro-choice Arguments for Abortion (Infanticide) Part 1

When does the life of a human being begin? Scientists have recognized that human life begins at conception, the fertilization of a woman’s ovum by a sperm cell. (See https://www.princeton.edu/~prolife/articles/embryoquotes2.html.) That event means that a new human genome has naturally come into existence within, and for the life of, an independent being of the human kind. That being does not have a copy of its mother’s genome such as is found in any of the mother’s somatic cells. It follows that the fertilization of an ovum (for resultant presence of a zygote) is not, of course, like certain other developments in a woman’s body (e.g., that development that is the normative beginning of a programmatically timed appearance in adolescence for one of the functions in female bodies, namely, ovulation); fertilization of the egg involves two persons, but ovulation does not. The fertilized egg in a female’s body is not normatively present in her body like certain other things in her body that normatively and finally, by mitosis, became functioning existents (organs) in, and for the life of, her body as coded for in her genome alone. Nor is the zygote like the happenstance appearance of some unusual, unexpected, pathological tissue growth in her body. No, but from the beginning of its existence, the zygote is indeed a very specialized entity, a human being firstly resident—albeit for a very brief while—as that single (zygotic) cell in its mother’s body. That human being, however, after having come to term in its mother’s womb, will then be composed of about twenty-six billion diploid cells. So, from its first cell to its twenty-six billionth cell, that thing growing inside the woman has the sanctity of life belonging to a human being having both a father and a mother responsible for what unsurprisingly and recognizably is shown to be the parents’ child that had begun its growth in the child’s mother’s womb. Yes, it is, from its beginning of life, a human being, and thus not an appendage or organ naturally occurring as an integral constituent of the mother’s body. Therefore, the child in the womb is not like a kidney inside the woman’s body, a fact that supports this valid argument: although a woman may choose to have one of her two healthy kidneys removed for the sake of donating it in order to help a recipient of it to have better health, yet she will not remain free of bloodguilt in God’s eyes if she elects to remove (kill) the child growing in her womb, this also (ostensibly) for the sake of improving (her) health.  The kidney was part of her, as shown by the fact that its cells have the same genomic content as any other of her body parts’ cells. But the conceptus in her womb has its own genomic content different from either one of that child’s parents genomes, as appropriate to the fact that she has resident in her womb a human being. 

Scriptural Refutation of the Evangelicals' Two-Kingdoms Theology (Part 2)

When rulers persecute us, can we then be in accordance with God’s will for Christians if we seek to insinuate ourselves into civil government in order to bring about relief from the persecution? No, there is no such vision given in the Scriptures for us Christians.

Satan is the ruler of the world, and we come off victorious over him when we hold to our God-given, in-common vocation. And what is that? Peter, addressing first-century Christians, admonished them as follows: “You should declare abroad the excellencies of the One who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. For you were once not a people [recognized by God], but now you are God’s people; once you had not been shown mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as foreigners and temporary residents to keep abstaining from fleshly desires, which war against you. Maintain your conduct fine among the nations” (1 Peter 2:9-12a). Because we Christians are no longer part of the world, then we no longer give uncritical obedience  to a people/nation into which we were by happenstance born; we obey God as ruler, not men. Moreover, it is our responsibility to make appeal to all nations’ citizens that any among them can choose to let God’s spirit enlighten them and motivate them to the fine conduct that is featured among those who are “God’s people,” an enlightened, spiritually minded people. 

The majority of any nation’s citizens will not benefit themselves by means of the witness God provides them through the activities of God’s people, “the congregation of the living God, a pillar and support of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). That is of no moment to God’s people, for it was never foretold in the Scriptures that God’s people would ever become defined as a polity or polities in the world of mankind; God’s people have no geographically defined borders which they should jealously guard with fleshly weapons.  Jesus’ said that his disciples do not take up the sword to protect an earthly kingdom (see John 18:36). The greatest enemies God’s people have are “the wicked spirit forces in the heavenly places, [in the invisible realm]” (Ephesians 6:10-19); fleshly weapons can never deliver us from their designs to shut down God’s people (cf. 2 Corinthians 10:3-5); our enemies cannot be held at bay with such weapons. Yet we are victorious against Satan, against those whom he controls, in that we keep our faith strong, and keep strong the witness we bear—strong “even in the face of death” (Revelation 12:11). Such a conquest seems foolish, unreal,  to those not God’s people. Still, the matter here is just as we read in the Bible at 1 John 5:4a-5: “And this is the conquest that has conquered the world, our faith. Who can conquer the world? Is it not the one who has faith that Jesus is the Son of God?” Does it seem to you that this man of God was chafing because Christ’s disciples had not become organized into some polity or survivalist group / cult having an earthly militia for the protection of its way of life amidst a hostile world arrayed against them? No, that man of God was not looking for the establishment by Christians of a civil administration which should protect their lives during their sojourn here on earth. 

Just the same, Christians can appeal to “Caesar” (secular authorities) that he should intervene in behalf of us, a people who have a God-given right to preach the good news of God’s Kingdom (cf. Philippians 1:7; Matthew 28:18-20). Philippi was a colony of Roman citizens jealous of their status as citizens. But Christians coming into Philippi had a God-given right to preach God’s good message, this although it  might have seemed to the secular authorities in Philippi that the newly-arrived Christians in their midst were in violation of the law De Legibus, ii.8, which stated, “No person shall have any separate gods, or new ones; nor shall he privately worship any strange gods, unless they be publicly allowed.” It may have been the case that Jews were proscribed from worship in a synagogue inside the gates of the city Philippi, but that their worship may have been permitted outside the city gates (cf. Acts 16:12, 13, 16). But as Paul and Silas were once again making their way outside the city of Philippi to be with Jews on Sabbath day, Paul then found occasion to use the name “Jesus Christ” as the basis of his authority for casting out a demon from a certain fortune teller who had been tagging along behind them for days prior to that Sabbath day. As a pretext for hiding the grief caused them by their monetary loss when they saw that the demonized girl was of no more use to them, the masters of that slave girl thought to use Paul’s invocation of Jesus Christ against him, for they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them back into the city, “into the marketplace to the rulers. Leading them up to the civil magistrates [inside the city], they said: “These men are disturbing our city very much. They are Jews, and they are proclaiming customs that it is not lawful for us to adopt or practice, seeing that we are Romans”” (Acts 16:19-21). Even though Christians could preach against idolatry, and preach against giving to Caesar God’s things, they certainly had no idea for establishing an earthly government that should supplant Caesar’s God-permitted rule, this no matter the divine punishment to which the Caesars made themselves liable for their wickedness and for their persecution of Christians. God is the One who judges those outside the Christian congregation; Christians do not involve themselves in such matters. 

Paul highly prized not his Roman citizenship, but rather his heavenly citizenship, and he highly extolled Jesus as the Philippian Christians’ savior and Lord to whom “every knee should bend—of those in heaven and those on earth and those under the ground—and every tongue should openly acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11). Such a Lord and savior, of course, could be neither Caesar nor Moses. The apostle also wrote to the Philippians: “Our citizenship exists in the heavens, and we are eagerly waiting for a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20). Jesus—not that Moses presented in an exaggerated, legalistic view of Moses’ worth as promoted by Jewry’s religious leaders, and who was wrongfully promoted by those Judaizers who were false Christians (cf. Philippians 3:2-11)—was the true, powerful, heavenly paradigm for their future life; he was the one to whom  Christians should look for guarantee that they would be saved for life, for life with the true savior in a heavenly body made like Jesus’ (q.v. Philippians 3:21). 

God would never supplement Christ’s sufficient rule over the Christian congregation by ordaining / commanding the appearance of another Leader in a political (man-concocted) arena for him to work alongside Jesus Christ for satisfying the needs of the Christian congregation. There is no such thing as a Two Kingdoms theology—no two Leaders (see Matthew 23:10). Nor does Jesus’ leadership stand divided into different dominions, the secular and the spiritual, this as though Christians may think of themselves as working with Jesus in their participation, alongside unbelievers, for administration of civil governance no matter the moral tone of that governance. The Scriptures record these telling questions for us to consider: “Further, what harmony is there between Christ and Belial [(Satan)]? Or what does a believer share in common with an unbeliever?” (2 Corinthians 6:15). He has nothing in common with unbelievers for when he works alongside his Leader, Jesus. This is in harmony with 1 John 1:6, where we read: “ If we make the statement, “We are having fellowship with him,” and yet we go on walking in the darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth.  However, if we are walking in the light as he himself is in the light, we do have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” Christ has no fellowship—nor do we—with those who are walking in the darkness, with those who are liars and not practicing the truth. His blood has not cleansed them for us to have fellowship with them.

Well, then, do we Christians have need of a “Caesar” for him to proscribe elective abortions? No, we Christians need only to keep our brotherhood free of the presence of murderers who would call themselves our brothers. Do we Christians have need of a “Caesar” for him to keep us safe from the presence in our midst of those who are practicers of pedophilia, homosexuality, adultery, idolatry, thievery, etc.? No, for if there should occur in our midst any who take up a practice of such kinds of wickedness, then we trust that they will be discovered and we would then turn aside from fellowship with them. And we would not shield them from Caesar’s right to punish such evil doers. Can “Caesar” exact punishment against evil doers? Yes, that is presently his prerogative; he answers to God for his failures and mistakes. Do we Christians have need of a “Caesar” for him to protect the existence and work of the Christian congregation? No, for it is already given us in prophecy found in God’s infallible Word that He will miraculously deliver us whenever Satan’s scheme has taken shape for what he plans to be the violent removal of God’s people from off the earth. God will not allow the extermination from off the earth of his namesake people.  Can “Caesar” rightfully demand that Christians sacrifice their life in defense of his government? No, he oversteps his God-permitted authority when he so demands it on pain of punishment/persecution against Christians who will not comply; he will answer to God for that persecution (cf. John 19:9-11). Indeed, there is much that Caesar does that God permits but does not approve. Caesar’s representative Pilate was permitted his persecution of Jesus, but it was not approved by God for Pilate to thereby add to his bloodguilt. “Caesar” may increase his bloodguilt in God’s eyes when he commits genocide, but even so, God does not authorize Christians to bring punishment against any of the “Caesars” of this world for such heinous sins. Christians cannot be a constitutive element in Caesar’s rule presently permitted him.

Humans Are Not Naturally Totally Depraved

 What does it mean for us to say that a person has free will (free moral agency)? It means that God can make a spirit-empowered appeal to a person’s conscience so that he might choose not to resist God Who stands willing to help sinful humans to have their minds enlightened by God’s holy Word, the Bible. The Bible is a record of what God has revealed to us about Himself.

Our affirming free will in God’s rational creatures need not commit us to a doctrine that has it that the sinful world that resulted after God had declared all His creations good (see Genesis 1:26–31) is something that caught God off guard. He did not suffer defeat of His purpose to have a world of humankind, descended from Adam, living in perfect compliance to God’s will. God, as men’s contemporary, has made occur certain events in the world well after the rebellion in Eden such that they guarantee that He will in time certainly own a perfect world of humankind descended from Adam.

The idea that God actualized a world He foreknew would sin is a doctrine that is neither expressly given in Scriptures nor need we infer it from the Scriptures. In fact, it is contrary to the Scriptures. Some “exegetes” have made the doctrine that the best possible world God found that He could create was nonetheless one that He foreknew would fall into sin. Per this doctrine, God had to choose to actualize such a world because even though it would not remain sinless, yet it supposedly was the only one that offered God the maximum number of those being saved. The doctrine has it that in none of the possible worlds God surveyed did He just happen to find that the first human couple He would create (namely, Adam and Eve) would remain sinless and would procreate sinless offspring. One of the problems here is that such a theory of “possible worlds” still compromises God’s sovereignty because the theory portrays Him as One Whose will, as respects some matter, is a will He may have to abandon, even though it ideally (perfectly) suits His character. The doctrine devolves to the place whereby God had to settle for creating a world that He really did not want because He was trumped by a Second Principle beside Himself, a Principle able to specify/dictate to Him at least the range of His possible choices for the world He should have to actualize.

Certain Calvinists escape postulating a Second Principle beside God, but they know that they must hold that God freely chose some sinners to receive salvation, and that God has not done so for all the rest of sinful men. This idea of salvation is, in effect, presented as a thing that God does on the basis of no righteous principle that He be One Who exercises balanced, impartial judgment. That is a stripe of Calvinism that devolves logically—maybe even unwittingly?—to the position that God, who is our contemporary, does not look into the hearts of His temporal creatures before ever He would decide whether to intervene in behalf of a certain few members of a totally depraved world of men. Indeed, why would He intervene on such a basis since He would always find total depravity, so goes the theory, in any individual whom He would inspect? So, the doctrine of intervention held by some is that God intervenes sufficiently (unto eternal salvation), specially and miraculously in just some individuals’ behalf regardless of the total depravity supposedly in everyone’s heart at the time God would make any intervention for some of them. Therefore, such a doctrine has it that God is totally arbitrary in the matter of His deciding the “forever fate” of individuals because His decision to intervene specially and miraculously in the will of some few men is a decision He has made without any need for Him to be able to make logically meaningful distinctions among members of the fallen human race, and that all others who do not get such good will (favor) from God are individuals who had not been predestined, so goes the doctrine, to receive salvation from God. If Abraham had such a concept of God being a totally arbitrary God, then he would have not appealed to God as he did on the occasion narrated for us at Genesis 18:16-33. And God would have not entered into a soliloquy with Himself for asking Himself ‘Am I keeping hidden from Abraham that I am making an inspection of Sodom and Gomorrah to see if the report that has come to my attention about those cities means that I should destroy them?’ (See Genesis 18:16–21.) Really, Abraham’s confidence in God was that God would not act in a way that would mean an arbitrary disregard of what few persons there might possibly be in Sodom and Gomorrah whose conscience had not yet let them sink into totally depraved, abominable conduct.

In the case of Cain, God made powerful intervention in Cain’s behalf; however, He did not choose to disregard Cain’s free will by creating miraculously in a God-resisting Cain an absence of hatred for his brother. Was God being less than honest in His appeal to Cain? God said to him, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well [like your brother Abel does], will you not [also] be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin [(unconscionable, willfully depraved conduct)] is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4:7 NRSV). But why make appeal to Cain for him to do an impossible thing, for if it entirely depended on God’s miraculously creating in a God-resisting Cain the will for him to turn himself around−and yet God, so goes the false doctrine, had already decided before ever Cain had been born that He was not going to so create such a will in Cain−, then that means that God was not making in real (phenomenal) time, for sake of Cain’s conscience, an honest, sincere appeal to Cain for him to do something about his situation.

Scriptural Refutation of the Evangelicals' Two-Kingdoms Theology (Part 1)

The Bible tells us Christians that “in every way we recommend ourselves as God’s ministers . . . by truthful speech” (2 Corinthians 6:4, 7). None who declares himself to be ‘an ordained representative/minister sent forth from God from within a body of Christ’s disciples as a benefactor of a human government’s citizens’ has God’s approval for such a declaration; he is a liar. 

If it were possible for people comprising human government to be Christians doing the will of God, then their governance would certainly emanate from their government’s institutions which should then not differ in its moral character from that which obtains and is manifested in a religious community that truthfully claims to be Christian. There is not such a governmental phenomenon anywhere in the world. Christians are no part of what comprises human governments. We are, however, law-abiding sojourners, temporary residents among the nations (1 Peter 1:11, 12). So, then, it is as 1 Corinthians 5:12, 13 reminds us: ". . . what [do] we have to do with judging those outside [the Christian congregation]? Do you not judge those inside [the Christian congregation], while God judges those outside [it]?" True Christians do not inform the governmental structures/institutions invented by men; they do not seek to make straight that which God lets remain crooked for the time being (cf. Ecclesiastes 1:15). 

So, it is not God’s wisdom that one preaches for a denial of the Scriptures-supported facts being reviewed here. How do we know it? We know it because, among other things, the deeds of human rulers belie their claims about their knowing anything about the Kingdom of God, His heavenly government in the hands of His Son Jesus Christ. As the Bible says, “It is this wisdom that none of the rulers of this system of things came to know, for if they had known it, they would not have executed their glorious Lord” (1 Corinthians 2:8). 

That Bible passage quoted immediately above is not reference to a past-time frame of mind owned just by the Jewish rulers who were chiefly responsible for Jesus’ execution. No, but the same murderous, anti-Christ frame of mind from the Devil, which operated in the Jewish rulers—see John 8:43-47—during Christ’s earthly ministry, operated and still operates in all “the rulers of this system of things, who are to come to nothing” (1 Corinthians 2:6; cf. Acts 4:25-28), this despite the efforts of every human government to perpetuate, by whatever means at hand, its own claim of a right to sovereign control over the lives of its citizens. This, of course, is not according to God’s will, for Christians in the final analysis must be seen as those who “obey God as ruler rather than men” (Acts 5:29, 32). Yes, Christians obey secular (man-concocted) governments just so long as whatever they command does not infringe against God’s right of sovereign rulership over His servants (cf. Matthew 22:21). Our subjection to man-concocted governments that operate with God’s permission—but remember that they do not operate by His having commanded either their existence or their struggles for sovereignty—is a relative subjection. So, if a government calls for taxes, we pay the taxes. If they legislate for the common good of its citizens without targeting Christians for persecution, then we obey (Romans 13:1-7). If, however, they demand worship and sacrifice of our lives in support of their governments, then we must refuse to give to Caesar the things that belong to God, for our lives are dedicated to Jehovah God. This position is verified also by the history of early Christianity during the first three centuries of the common era. 

When governments frame mischief against us by decree, will we take up fleshly weapons against them in order to defend ourselves? We have no earthly government that needs such a defense (cf. John 18:36). In fact, if a Christian were to take up a fleshly weapon for bringing an end to another human’s life, then that would be an act directly forbidden by Jesus Christ. Matthew 26:52 says: “Then Jesus said to [Peter]: “Return your sword to its place, for all those who take up the sword will perish by the sword.” Then what relief do we have? We are certain to experience the guaranteed relief promised us at 2 Thessalonians 1:4-10. So what, then, if our persecutions result in deprivations or martyrdom? So long as our faith remains in tact and not ship wrecked, then we are victorious because we stood stalwart with help of God’s holy spirit for vindication of God’s name and Kingdom, confident of the reward of everlasting life. Such is our joy made even greater during persecutions (Matthew 5:11, 12; 1 Peter 1:5-9; 3:14, 17; Hebrews 10:34); it is ours because of courage for which we pray for strength to possess and show even unto our last breath taken from us at the hands of Satan’s henchmen, if it should come to that, for then God’s enemies will not have succeeded in despoiling our faith and thereby taking everlasting life away from us. (Compare 1 John 5:4, 5, 11-13.) 

Jesus and his Father will mete out justice against the unrepentant wicked ones for their persecutions of  Christ’s brothers. And why not, since they deserve it?  The tribulations they cause against the righteous are born of the age-old, Satanically inspired designs that the rulers of this system of things have continually implemented against Christian disciples  ever since Christ took a seat at the right-hand side of his Father (see Revelation 1:7; Acts 2:32-36; 7:51-58). Yes, the Devil’s works carried out by the rulers of this world have meant persecutions and martyrdom for Christ’s disciples. That should not surprise us, for it was not just Jewry's government during the time of Christ’s earthly ministry which remained ignorant of God and morally and spiritually bankrupt so that they opposed Jesus and his disciples right up until the nation’s destruction in 70 C.E. Indeed, it ever has been and continues to be the case that every man-concocted government is similarly infected by Satan’s murderous spirit. 1 John 5:19 tells us how extensive is Satan’s rulership: “ . . . but the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one”; see also Luke 4:6 and John 12:31. Christ’s spirit-anointed brothers, however, have the hope of sharing in the vengeance to be visited on the nations—all of the nations—when God and our Savior Jesus Christ gloriously manifest themselves for the realization of the Christian brotherhood’s happy hope. (See Titus 2:13; Revelation 2:24-27; and Revelation 19:11-16.)

All the above Scripturally refutes the evangelicals’ “Two Kingdoms Theology.” But more about this later.

Book Review: Dissent on the margins. How Soviet Jehovah's Witnesses defied Communism and lived to preach about it.

https://www.proquest.com/religion/docview/1854845783/2DAB0DC80694742PQ/12?accountid=13565

Dissent on the margins. How Soviet Jehovah's Witnesses defied Communism and lived to preach about it. By Emily B. Baran. Pp.xvi + 382 incl. 2 maps. New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. £51. 978 0 19 994533 5

Reviews

Emily B. Baran's book on the Jehovah's Witnesses in the Soviet Union is one of the most revelatory books on religion in the USSR, the quality of her research being truly astonishing. She has not only recovered information from Soviet state archives, but she even learned Romanian in order to gain access to the local sources in Soviet Moldavia. As a result, this book reveals a great deal about Communist policy towards religious minorities in general, a subject which has not been fully researched before.

The period covered is relatively recent, because the Witnesses did not appear on Soviet soil in any significant numbers until the end of the Second World War, when territorial gains incorporated them into Transcarpathia (Western Ukraine), where they had flourished under an earlier regime. For a time, the policy to contain them was deportation to Siberia, where those that survived, not unlike Lithuanian Catholics, were convinced that God was directing their missionary efforts under persecution. It took some time before Soviet practice took this into account and prison camp after summary trial became the preferred option.

Even here the bravery of the Witnesses often came to the fore. By the early 1960s the infamous Dubravlag became a kind of seminary. Baran writes: 'One man, sent to Mordovia in 1963, described the camp as a "school for studying his faith"... Dubravlag made it much easier for elders to minister to their imprisoned flock and convert new members.' They even formed their own choir there.

Although always small in numbers (45,000 in the whole Soviet Union at the time of its collapse, according to an official publication from the Brooklyn headquarters of the Jehovah's Witnesses), their bravery and determination won out time and time again over brutal persecution. Baran's research bears testimony to the quality of their organisation, whether in the 'underground' (though this is truly a misnomer for their activities) or in prison. It has always been thought that the Baptists led the way in establishing clandestine and home-made printing presses in the early 1960s, yet in the 1950s, when control was more lax in Poland, men swam across the River Bug and back to obtain Polish copies of The Watchtower, which were then translated and secretly printed in the USSR.

Not all Witnesses held firm to the faith. A feature of the Soviet anti-religious campaign, which intensified under Nikita Khrushchev after 1959, was the printing of testimonies of believers who renounced their beliefs under interrogation and torture. Such a man was Konstantin Potashov, who was converted to the faith while in prison for hooliganism and theft. He oversaw major printing initiatives, but was arrested in Mukachevo, Western Ukraine, in December 1962. At his trial he buckled and betrayed many Witnesses by name, before continuing for years as their public critic.

His infamy was nothing compared to that of Aleksandr Dvorkin in the present day. This unspeakable practitioner of religious repression - a key figure in Putin's Russia who attempted to turn the clock back to Communist malpractice - coined the expression 'totalitarian sect'. Baran unmasks him, though eschewing words such as those in the previous sentence. She quotes him as leading the campaign against religious minorities, being encouraged so to do both by the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian State. For him, the Jehovah's Witnesses are a leading organisation that 'violates the rights of [its] members and inflicts harm on them through the use of certain methods known as "mind control"'. Thus Dvorkin led the way to yet another round of systematic repression of the Witnesses, an attempted reversal of the registered status which they acquired in the early '90s. Thus, in recent years, articles have appeared in the press accusing them, in true Soviet style, of ritual murder (p. 214). This book bears testimony to their lawyers' fighting such accusations in court.

Turning her attention away from the Moscow courts, Baran lifts the curtain on some less well-known corners of Europe. The accessible archives in the West Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia bear eloquent testimony to the vigour and fearlessness of the Witnesses in the post-war years, when this region fell under Soviet rule - and therefore violent political and religious repression - for the first time. Her attention moves on to Moldova, a former Soviet republic and now an independent country, another region where Witness activity has been strong. Here, as in Russia in post-Soviet times, they gained their freedom under the law, but this did not prevent attempts by clergy of the Orthodox Church to prevent them from preaching.

Much worse was what happened in Transnistria, that region of long-frozen conflict, where a thin strip of the original Soviet Moldavia is still occupied by Russian troops, forming a mini-state which has no outside recognition beyond Russia itself. Baran describes Petr Zalozhkov here as the 'Dvorkin of Transnistria', which is surely enough said. Not satisfied by persuading the state to violate its own registration laws, he even wrote a section on the Witnesses in the standard school textbook on religion, claiming that they were operating a 'pyramid scheme' to fleece converts of their money. Here, again, the Witnesses won in the courts, but they could not enforce their own decisions. To his credit, the local Orthodox bishop publicly excommunicated Zalozhkov, but disputed cases remain before the courts.

In her conclusion Baran quotes a story related by the exiled Vladimir Bukovsky. Wandering through the streets of London, he came across a simple sign outside a modest building saying 'Jehovah's Witnesses'. He required nothing more to prove that Western democracy offered true freedom of conscience.

Are there, then, no faults in this book? It is superbly written, entirely void of sociological jargon and beautifully produced by Oxford University Press. The reader would have been additionally enlightened by an account of what typically happened in a Kingdom Hall, at the times when such communal worship was possible. While not sharing their faith, as Emily Baran tells us, she cannot but admire the dedication and selflessness of generations of heroic figures whom she depicts in her pages.

AuthorAffiliation

Keston Institute, Oxford

Word count: 1056

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