Where God is not.

 

How filled with sweetness are those whose thoughts dwell on Thee; how life-giving Thy holy Word. To speak with Thee is more soothing than anointing with oil; sweeter than the honeycomb. To pray to Thee lifts the spirit, refreshes the soul. Where Thou art not, there is only emptiness; hearts are smitten with sadness; nature, and life itself, become sorrowful; where Thou art, the soul is filled with abundance, and its song resounds like a torrent of life: Alleluia! - From the Hymn, Glory to God from Age to Age.

This is one of the most powerful and beautiful modern Orthodox Christian hymns. It was written by a Russian Orthodox priest while in a Soviet Gulag.  His job was to bury the dead.  When I read this particular verse, I immediately rejected it.  That line, "Where Thou art not" I knew to be a lie.  I learned to accept the line in context.  But here is the reason for my immediate rejection.

John Rolf aka Rex Christi wrote the following and I remembered this hymn.

Jim Jones proved that the Luciferian psychopaths behind the CIA and other fronts of fronts operating clandestinely and imperceptibly in the shadows can convince people to fight to the death for their own destruction.

You are witnessing this on a global scale and pretending that you are not pretending to not notice it.

Never underestimate the warped human capacity to fight and kill to preserve the comforts of familiar insanity.

Prepare your heart.

War is here and it will escalate.

+ + +

Our friend Winston Smith wrote:
The battle comes whether we want it or not; they can't have us out here dissenting.
And he is right on both counts.

Jonestown happened when I was a Methodist pastor. Being familiar with the hypnotic techniques that Jim Jones used and knowing many other CIA mind-controlled pastors and evangelists operating in the culture; it shook me to my core. I had the abiding belief that there was nowhere that God's mercy did not exist. I was having a hard time seeing it in Jonestown. Shortly thereafter, there was a prison riot in New Mexico. It may have been a year later was there was a horrible prison riot at a prison south of Sante Fe: "America's bloodiest prison riot started on February 1, 1980 at the New Mexico State Penitentiary and ended 36 hours later with 34 casualties. Prison guards were brutally sodomized, pedophiles and convicted rapist were brutally disfigured, and the prison's "snitches" population were tortured and dismembered while still alive." The inmates actually began a contest to see who could be the most brutal. I read a detailed prison system report furnished to me by a friend who was chief of police in a small down. I thought "this is what happens in the absence of God."

 

Then some months later, the story broke. Twenty some-odd people were locked into a single cell; the prison chaplain was one of them. They were ordered to lay down on the floor. Inmates lined the bars with guns taken from the prison armory. They unloaded over one hundred and twenty rounds into those wall-to-wall bodies. No one died, and no one was seriously wounded. One guard said, "Just before they started shooting, I heard the chaplain say, "Jesus, you are my rock and shield," and then he started to pray the Lord's prayer. I ducked my head and prayed with him. The Forensic investigators could not explain it because the bullets marked the floor. 

 

I am sharing this not because of any kinship between the mind-controlled at Jonestown and the raw animal rage at the New Mexico State Penitentiary, just at how the violent events shook my faith in the Omnipresence of God and how that doubt was forever destroyed in the words of a prison guard, "I heard him say, 'Jesus, you are my rock and shield."'

 

2Sa_22:3 The God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour; thou savest me from violence. - Amen.

A lesson we all need to learn.

I can confess that I have been arrogant in the face of threat and violence ever since. He, and only HE holds the keys to death, hell, and the grave, and not one of the three can hold a sting when we, like a small child full of trust, claim HIM.  He is my rock and shield.