Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.
Ephesians 6:10
Commenting on Ephesians 6:10, Gordon Clark said of this verse, “Here begins the peroration of the epistle.”
“Peroration” is not a term most of us commonly use. It means the concluding part of a discourse, especially the concluding part of an oration. A second meaning of “peroration” is highly rhetorical speech. In light of this definition, Clark’s calling verse 10 the beginning of the epistle’s peroration certainly seems appropriate. Verses 10-18 of Ephesians chapter 6 are memorable, not only for the message itself but also for the rhetoric Paul uses to make his point.
In this passage, Paul uses the figure of a Christian soldier armed to do battle against the wiles of the devil
Now this passage on Christian spiritual warfare has many applications. But the focus of my comments today will be concerning Christians and the present battle against Covid tyranny.
For nearly two years, Christians the world over have been subjected to a remarkably intense political, economic, and psychological assault by the political, academic, religious, and business elite of the world. This assault, whether in the form of unprecedented lockdowns, vaccine mandates, or restrictions on movement, ultimately is not a political battle, although it involves political oppression. Neither is it fundamentally economic in nature, even though the pushers of the Covid narrative have certainly attacked ordinary people economically while at the same time vastly enriching many billionaires who benefited from the lockdowns and vaccine mandates.
If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
John 8:36
Perhaps it’s trite to say this, but 2020 has been a very dark year in the formerly Christian West. Here in the United States, we’ve experienced months of violent rioting.
Marxist and racist rhetoric targeting white Americans pours forth from government, academia, churches, the mainstream media and businesses. Indeed, such rhetoric has become a commonplace in 2020 America. And those who advance such ideas, far from being condemned in the public square, are lauded as courageous truth tellers.
Aggressive homosexuals have managed to push their agenda to the point that simply denying there’s such a thing as same-sex marriage, or that a man can become a woman, can get a person in a world of trouble both politicly and professionally. A recent story in New York Magazine reveals how normalized homosexual practice has become in the United States. The story claims that, “roughly 30 percent of American women under 25 identify as LGBT.” If true, then a large minority of American young women have “chang[ed] the natural use into that which is against nature.” Can such a civilization long survive?
In their response to Covid, federal, state and local governments have routinely trodden underfoot what were, until very recently, thought inviolable personal liberties. No let up to the lockdowns is in sight either. In fact, governments throughout the West seem prepared to crank up their violations of personal freedom and property rights with ever more stringent lockdowns. These lockdowns, supposedly designed to fight the spread of Covid, represent, in the view of this author, the imposition of arbitrary government on the formerly free nations of the West. If those who have imposed these lawless restrictions get their way, arbitrary lockdowns, mask requirements, travel restrictions, immunity passports and forced vaccinations will become a permanent way of life.
Then there’s the matter of the presidential election, just nine days away as of this writing. Americans are faced with choosing between two leading candidates. One, the corrupt, semi-senile, Roman Catholic Joe Biden – Biden most likely is a Trojan Horse for the Democrats to smuggle in the Monstrous Regiment in the person of the radical progressive and highly immoral Kamala Harris – and two, Donald Trump, who, for all his imperfections, manages to get some things right, holding to something like a traditional American understanding of personal liberty and economic freedom. Naturally, the corrupt national media blindly supports Biden and shows open disdain for Trump and his supporters. The winner for most exceptionally egregious example of media bias is NPR, which has, so far, refused to cover the explosive Hunter Biden email story linking Joe and his son Hunter to shady foreign dealings in Ukraine and China. NPR’s Managing Editor for News dismissed the Hunter Biden story, writing, “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.”
Indeed, America, and the West more broadly, seem to be at a major inflection point. If present trends continue, it’s hard to see how Western Civilization survives much longer, if it isn’t already dead, except in remnant form.
Lux Lucet 