A SCARY COINCIDENCE

Red Deer Advocate, January 2008. When we do something wrong and then something bad happens to us, we wonder if God is judging. When the bad thing we do and the bad thing that follows upon us are of similar categories, we wonder all the more. Scary coincidences bring God into our thoughts because we intuitively know that our sin deserves a punishment that suits the sin.

For fear of causing offence or seeming harsh, today’s timid moralists would refrain from pointing out the correlation between the salacious singer’s pseudonymous name and the type of cancer she got. But so long as we are cautious in our choice of words, something may be said. God’s Providential control extends even to the falling of sparrows. “One of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father” (Matthew 10.29.) This teaches us that nothing is outside his government, coincidences included. I’m not saying that the coincidence in this article indicates a supernatural and direct instance of poetic justice by God. But it may be safely said that sometimes God appoints our sin to be followed by a malady that remarkably hints at what our sin deserves. “He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption” (Galatians 6.8.) Any justice that looks poetic is a signpost to take special notice of. It may be that God did not smite with cancer by his own hand. But he ordered it. We may fail to take a lesson from a rock star dying of old age. But when an indecent rocker called Bif Naked gets breast cancer, we are startled by a mysterious association of sin and sequel. 

We should not fail to see the mercy of God in this. He did not kill, but allows an extraordinary association in order to provoke Bif and her fans to fear, and perhaps someone to repentance, and faith in Jesus, who alone can save sinners from their final Just Deserts: the Torments of Hell. Scary coincidences ought to compel us to press into the kingdom of God without delay. That kingdom has been made accessible by the most conspicuous death in history, which involves the most signal case of poetic justice of all: Satan tried to foil God’s design to save sinners by killing God’s chosen Saviour; but faith in that death is the very way of salvation! “Through faith in his blood” (Romans 3.25.) This is poetic justice writ large!

The death of Christ is the event that reconciles sinners to God, for in Jesus’ death the wrath of God toward man was swallowed up; that is, the wrath of God toward those who would repent and believe. So this good news will do you no good at all unless you renounce the sins you feel God judging you for, and unless you receive Jesus as the Saviour from your sins. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1.15.)

THE ACADEMY AWARDS

Out of this list of Best Pictures I have seen the following for sure: On the Waterfront; Ben-Hur; The Sound of Music; The Godfather; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Rocky; Platoon; Rain Man; Dances with Wolves; The Silence of the Lambs; Unforgiven; Shcindler’s List. That’s twelve out of sixty-six—way too many!

I am an aspiring minimalist. To own as little as possible with which to get by, and to clutter and vex my mind with no more useless information than necessary: these are two of my minimalist goals. My possessions are down to just a little more than what a small bedroom can contain; and my movie and program intake I have reduced to zero since about ten years ago, save one movie on the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Knowing the Bible, theology, pious biography, and fine literature must be better for the soul than knowing who’s who in the cinema world and what’s what on the television screen! An old friend of mine couldn’t get over the fact that I’d never seen a program called Trailer Park Boys. But would this program do me any good? I once talked to a holy man who had been in his prime during the pinup reign of Marilyn Munroe. She was the only star out of a large list of entertainers that he recognized the name of. ‘That Munroe girl,’ he called her. O, to be that innocent concerning evil! Wouldn’t that be nice?

Most Christians think they have a divine right to choke their minds with the smog of Theatre, Hollywood, and Television. Hank Hanegraaff even promotes a movie-watching scheme as a ‘springboard’ to speaking to non-Christians about the Faith. But the Bible asks, “Let us do evil, that good may come?” (Romans 3.8.) And David says, “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes” (Psalm 101.3.) And Job tells us, “I made a covenant with mine eyes” (Job 31.1.) And the apostle Paul commands, “I would have you…simple concerning evil” (Romans 16.19.) Hank Hanegraaff ‘The Bible Answer Man’ has no good answer to mollify or gainsay these verses. There is no way one can watch a run-of-the-mill movie these days without snubbing biblical counsel, period.

Maybe you wish you could give up all your viewing amusements but you’re hesitating. Why not knock it off bit by bit? And listen, just reason like me. I’ve seen at least one movie of Oscar caliber in each department: be it a romance, a war film, a western, a musical, a gangster flick, a horror movie, a comedy, etc. What need is there to watch even one more, especially since nothing but a fleeting thrill may be gained by the experience? And what a mental liberation to know nothing about the program lineup and who the new actors are! What freedom not to care about the dregs and drivel of playacting! And how much vexation could I have saved myself by not hooking up to the internet? Regardless, it is high time for all sinners and saints to awake out of sleep, out of Make-Believe and into Reality, Truth, and Consequence. If not now, when? Fill your mind with the Academy of Truth, Knowledge, Wisdom, and Understanding before Time and Circumstance find you standing before God with nothing in your mind but mush! How will you answer for your Soul, then? Lay aside evil and take up what is good while time remains! Judgment will come. It must. We have to be ready!

THE FITNESS CRAZE

Oliver Huskinson began fitness training in 1918. (He was a little ahead of his time.) The fitness craze really began in the 1970’s alongside Participaction commercials on Canadian television. Training devices like the springs you see in the picture (or at the thrift store) were very popular then. What forty year old man doesn’t remember some lusty boy, maybe himself, busting his chops while trying to do curls with this booby-trapped invention?! Or maybe catching the skin of his chest in the springs?! But all of that’s beside my point.

 Maybe Mr. Huskinson’s story will encourage you to do some participaction. But you’ll probably not reach the age of 99 no matter what you do. And even if you did live for that long, and with vibrant health, so what? ‘He’s fit for life,’ it says. But how much longer can he have to live? What then? At the age of 130 Jacob told Pharaoh, “Few and evil have the days of the years of my life been” (Genesis 47.9.) The lesson I see there is that if Jacob the saint regarded his earthly pilgrimage as an evil one, how urgent it must be for the rest of us to get right with the God of Jacob? Jacob wrestled with the angel, and won the blessing. What does this teach us? That real blessings, like salvation, are had through wrestling with matters that are spiritual. How spiritual are your weights and your running shoes? Only a dumbbell will focus too much on these things.

Carnal man will always be obsessed with adding years to his body of sin. In vain he tries to beat death by improving a body that is programmed to die. “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass” (Isaiah 40.7.) If the ultimate cause of death is the LORD, then who can prevent it? A curse from the Almighty is what saps your strength. His curse is what sends you down that one way road to yonder cemetery. Does the LORD kill for nothing? The curse is in you because you are guilty of sin. Are you guilty of cursing the God who has cursed you? Do you lie, lust, steal, or sleep around? Then you are guilty. Death and hell are at the door. Death you cannot avoid. But Jesus Christ can help you miss hell. You have much to learn about this. You need a Bible, not another exercise gadget.

THE SALVATION ARMY

Red Deer Advocate, 2007. Now you might be thinking, “What a boring news clipping for someone to comment on!” But wait for it! What if I should take you right through this advertisement, as through a porthole or a door, and you come with me into this church for a glimpse at the goings on in there? It may be that we will see a sad spectacle, indeed so depressing as to be something of a melancholy marvel!

This is not to paint all Salvation Army churches with the same brush, though I think the wise man, if a wise man could be a gambler, would not bet that such a church could be entered into at random for the hearing of an actual salvation message on Sunday morning. I hold in my left hand, as I write this with my right, the recent titles, texts, and substance of what was preached by one of William Booth’s own denominational (I will not say spiritual) descendents. Here are the titles: Tomatoes & Tulips; God’s Desire in a Pile of Dishes; Richard Dawson, Hammers, Hatchets, & the Church; Jesus, the Wizard, & Toto; Life Lessons from a Coconut Cream Pie (the word ‘cream’ spelled in French); and Poultry, Prison, & Potty Training—Is Contentment Possible. Now what does 99% of this have to do with the Bible—with Salvation—with Jesus! Maybe the best thing that can be said is that some alliteration was used for effect. But what is that but a mere aesthetic element? The Bible texts that are meant to coincide with these titles, of course, have nothing to do with such silly, infantile musings. There is no mention, for instance, of coconut cream pie, not even a French one, in Ecclesiastes! I must grant that the sermon notes taken down by the saintly woman who allowed me to see them has the pastor quoted as saying a few things like, “Without God we would just be heading toward a hopeless eternity” (Jason.) But judging from her candid Christian testimony and the rest of the notes that she took on the sermons, this kind of statement from the man is empty of any real point, force, or meaning, for there is no definition nor method of salvation laid out in his messages. Most of her notes go something like this, “He had many laughing after telling about the Thanksgiving stuffing at his brother’s place when he was 18. After the laughter, how is it that the Holy Spirit can come forward in seriousness? Is this method of attracting people appropriate for a pastor behind a pulpit who should be reaching out to the souls of these people?”

 I remember these five titles in a book of Spurgeon’s Revival Sermons: The Story of God’s Mighty Acts; The Blood of the Everlasting Covenant; The Necessity of the Spirit’s Work; Predestination and Calling; and The Minister’s Farewell. Are these lofty themes not better (as the sky compares to the gutter) than tomatoes, hammers, Toto, pie, and potty training?! And are the acts of God and the blood of his Son not more saving and edifying to souls than gossipy drivel about game-show hosts, hockey, Britney Spears, and Paul Henderson?! Such potty-mouth topics ought to be too embarrassing for a clergyman’s ear, let alone his mouth! These are not sermons, but ditties of the lowest order among clergy of the most clownish sort! I recall being alarmed a bit at the tone sometimes taken by Spurgeon and Lloyd-Jones in their lectures on preaching. Both held up certain types of preachers to ridicule in order to discourage and prevent further blasphemy and buffoonery in the pulpit. But if a mocking tone in a Seminary could have prevented this Salvation Army Captain from uttering what these great preachers justly condemned, would it not have been worth the professor being thought of as a slanderer? Up until recently my acquaintance with the Salvation Army was almost nil. Now my happy ignorance has been replaced by a wretched knowledge of what passes for preaching in this odd branch of Christendom. That there are some genuine Christians in these pews I am certain of; that they can put up with jokers in the pulpit for more Sundays than one, I am in amazement about. Spurgeon did rightfully cast his verbal wrath upon a sermon he heard that was merely about whether an angel actually descended to stir the pool at Bethesda. “Dying men and women were assembled to hear the way of salvation, and they were put off with such vanity as this! They came for bread, and received a stone; the sheep looked up to the shepherd, and were not fed” (p. 79.) What would he say about these grubby, juvenile Salvation Army sermons?!

NAIVE CHRISTIAN ZEAL

From City Light News, October, 2007. When a sinner repents to follow Jesus he is at once perfectly right with the LORD whose wrath was set to turn him over to hell at the moment of death. The righteousness of Christ is laid to his account. But in the Christian’s practice, though his stony heart has been made alive to God by a divine regenerative act, perfection does not instantly follow in all his deeds. This is why the new Christian is called a ‘babe’ in the Bible. He has a lot of growing up to do now that he’s been born into God’s family. And like a literal babe, he’s fascinated by all that he sees, and out of genuine, instinctive zeal for growth, he puts a lot of stuff in his mouth besides milk: dangerous objects that he doesn’t comprehend are bad to eat. The babe is zealous. This is good, even wonderful. He is also naïve. This, in spite of new eyes that see spiritual matters old philosopher kings are utterly blind to. Many Christians, possibly the majority of them these days when shallow theology is the main course, remain babes their whole life long. At the very least, every Christian remains a babe in many things, no matter how big he may get in some.

There is a kind of zeal the Bible speaks of that is ‘not according to knowledge’ (Romans 10.2.) This refers to Judaizers who go about working in vain for a righteousness they instead might have declared to them if only they believed on Jesus. The Christian babe often exhibits a zeal, I will not say as ignorant as that, for by faith he knows Jesus, but one that more perfect knowledge would help guide in the right direction.

I take it that The Miracle Theatre in Tennessee took issue mainly with those words I have underlined in the article. Is this statement ‘blasphemy’? Is it not probable that the work performed by she who made the comment is something we would loathe to have Jesus’ name associated with anyway? She may have spoken roughly, but did she not speak truthfully? Would that more actors repeated her very words upon receiving a like award! Pretty much all Jesus has to do with Emmy-like shows and awards is the part he plays in the Agency of upholding the universe for the actors’ continuance in it.

So The Miracle Theatre sends a petition to Hollywood executives concerning this matter. If members of this Christian theatre group were ‘simple concerning the evil’ (Romans 16.19) going on in Hollywood and the Emmys like they’re supposed to be, they’d not know who Griffin is, what she played in, or how to contact movie execs in the ‘city of angels.’ Artsy Christians are far too familiar with what’s going on in the ‘liberal arts,’ if you get my meaning. Their eyes are fixed on the awards of this world more than they care to admit. And just imagine a first century Christian performing a spectacle rather than being made one! It just doesn’t fit. That said: zeal for the Lord is praiseworthy; defending his honor is brave-hearted; and because of the good intention involved, even that zeal which is misguided may sparkle in God’s eyes. But chiding someone for saying Jesus had nothing to do with an award, when the production that won it is not something Jesus would approve of in the first place, this is that kind of wild baby zeal that too often misses the mark.

THE WEAKER VESSEL

Feminism has come a long way. Who can deny it? Women have won the right to vote. They wear pants instead of dresses. They crop their hair. They hang out in bars. They sleep around. Lassies now spit in public. And maidens walk around with uncovered behinds. That’s progress! Grown men are scared to say as much as boo against the feminist ‘cause’ because the wrath stored up from the suppression of her ‘true self’ is poised to unleash and devour at the slightest provocation or offence. But still, the female sex is the weaker vessel. And no matter how hard the older, rougher feminists try to fashion lionhearted she-men out of tender babes, the girls, weak vessels that they naturally are, still crack like pottery to loose their tears, especially when adversity ends in defeat.

God has charitably prevented feminists from expunging from the fawn-like sex the ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’ that she is providentially endowed with. Mannish men would lose the will to pursue her if the female person were made completely warlike and invulnerable.

Girls and women are taking up the attitude and putting on the appearance of male-like toughness. But their native weaknesses remain. And these weaknesses are taken advantage of by opportunistic men. The woman, being the weaker vessel, craves the security and romance of a marriage contract. “He took me in his strong white arms/He bore me on his horse away” (Christina Rossetti.) This is her desire. She can never entirely disown it. Even the so-called career woman, the woman who thrives on ‘girl power’ and whose motto is ‘I am woman, hear me roar’—even she craves the marriage certificate, even while, and especially when, she protests most against it. Our modern woman feels forced to obey the feminist command to act as if she needs no man. But her natural desire is for a lord to call her own. So she “takes on a sexuality that looks identical to male fantasy and calls it sexual liberation in order to legitimize pandering to men while still looking like a strong woman” (Joan Sewell.) If a woman can’t get a man by virtue, she’ll try and get him by vice. But this type of ‘sexual liberation’ she adopts liberates man to exploit her, as George Gilder put it. Do men not hold women hostage to sex by empty promises of marriage? Not only do these men abuse woman virtue, but they waste woman’s valuable time while they do it, sometimes until these poor concubines have lost their allure; and hence from there they must go it alone, broken, and bereft of the principal means for securing the marriage they’ve always dreamed of. This heartbreaking aftereffect is happening on a large scale. With virtue gone and beauty fading, what’s left to attract a man, good or bad? The intervention of God is greatly needed at such a time! The woman’s heart then cries about how “Sweet sweet love was/Now bitter bitter grown to me” (Rossetti.)

The weaker vessel is meant to dwell with a husband who loves and cares for her so much that she is not ashamed to call him lord (1 Peter 3.) But without such a husband and even with one, who could be more relieved than a weaker vessel to accept the invitation of Lord Jesus?—,“Come unto me, all that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11.28.)

SCIENCE VERSUS EVOLUTION

From the National Post. The coelacanth (pronounced seal-uh-cant) was supposed to have gone extinct more than 50 million years ago. A fisherman caught a live one in 1938. This event should cause our scientists to question the ‘science that has gone before.’ That ‘science’ is the Evolutionary Hypothesis. “’How can a creature exist that long without changing?’ asks biologist Tony Ribbink of the South African Institute of Aquatic Bio-Diversity…It makes us question all the science that has gone before. This animal should be extinct. I want to know if the enigma can be explained.”

I once heard a Christian apologist state that “true science is observable, repeatable, testable, and measurable.” This has the ring of common sense. In other words, in the words of Henry Morris in Evolution and the Modern Christian, “science…means knowledge—not theories, opinions, beliefs, or philosophies, but actual, verified, factual, certain knowledge” (p. 41.) Evolution says that this fish ought to have evolved into something else by now or died out. But look at the picture. That it exists in an animate condition just as it did before is observable. Its present existence is measurable and testable because that's what the scientists are doing in the picture. And finally, the whole process is repeatable because more than one coelacanth has been landed in recent times. True Science then, not just the Bible, is at odds with Evolution. Evolutionists mock Christians for believing that dinosaurs lived in recent times when the coelacanth that was just caught was like discovering a living dinosaur! “It was like discovering a dinosaur,” the journalist wrote.

Biologist Tony Ribbink wants ‘to know if the enigma can be explained.’ About spotting the coelacanth in its oceanic habitat, diver Pieter Venter said, “It was so weird, like from another world…like seeing a UFO.” Will these men come to a competent judgment about the existence of this UFO-like enigma? It depends how much their opinions are, or remain, prejudiced in favor of a Theory that is disputed by their scientific findings. “It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings to search out a matter” (Proverbs 25.2.) Enigmas are searched out to their proper end by acknowledging God. The enigma is solved in the Bible. No fish existed 50 million years ago. 

Evolution is what the Bible calls “science falsely so called” (1 Timothy 6.20.) When Christians get too chummy with secular universities, and dependent on them financially, they are prone to compromise by professing to believe too much concerning Evolution, and so ‘err concerning the [Christian] faith’ (verse 21.) Any Theory that is embarrassed by the appearance of a creature that the Theory asserts to have gone extinct millions of years ago should be avoided about as much as this one avoids God, who is the only Answer respecting the Origin of Anything and Everything besides himself. He is the First Cause that reason tells us there must be in order to anything besides God existing. Verifiable facts and logic are on the Creationist side.       

ARCHEOLOGY AND THE BIBLE

From the National Post, circa 2000, Reuters. Archeology shows the Bible is true concerning what it says. Every time this happens we are not astonished. We are happy to be reminded that we have believed the right thing. We have not believed the Bible in vain. The Bible is historically accurate.

The ancient Assyrian Empire occupies a comparatively substantial portion of Scripture’s historical narrative. It is mentioned, sometimes at large, in over a dozen Old Testament books. The Bible speaks of this Empire; archeology has often echoed what the Bible says about it; now we hear this echo again. 

Pay special attention to the notice of these ‘winged lions’ that were discovered. Are these statues just a representation of some figure in Classical Mythology? Encyclopaedia Britannica tells us that “mythological and epic themes are…found in Geometric Art of the 8^th century BC.” But the idea for these winged lions came from somewhere else than mythology. And much of mythology derives from facts laid out in the Bible.

Objects comparable to the winged lions were brought to light by a Dr. Layard just over a century ago from the same ruins of ancient Nineveh in Nimrud, Iraq. In his Inhabitants of Heaven (1862; 1877) James Killen demonstrates by careful research that sculptures like those referred to in our article are nothing else and nothing less than distorted depictions of the Cherubim of Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Revelation. “And this was their appearance…every one had four faces…four wings…the face of a man, and the face of a lion” etc. (Ezekiel 1.5, 6, 10.) Since “Paganism…is but a corruption of Patriarchism [the cultural paradigm during the time of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when Cherubic figures and images were already popular]…we need not be surprised to find, amongst the objects of Pagan superstition, forms more or less nearly resembling the Cherubic symbols” (Killen, p. 275.) In like manner, have we not found variations of the biblical Flood account among pagan civilizations?  

Myth and legend originate from some truth more often than we realize. A biblical explanation for fabulous-looking creatures is satisfying and convincing. Compare Encyclopaedia Britannica’s take on the origin of the Minotaur (a half human, half bull) idea: “could have arisen from exaggerated accounts of bull leaping in ancient Crete.” How likely is that?

Discoveries of winged lions are exciting and fascinating because the idea for their creation came down through oral tradition and artistic representation of what the Cherubim guarding the entrance to the garden of Eden looked like! This is like a piece of heaven right here on the ground of history! “We have in these Assyrian remains, those winged figures…an evident and striking representation of the Paradisiacal Cherubim as the guardians of the tree of life in Eden” (Killen, p. 288.) Archeology corroborates the biblical narrative.

MAD SCIENCE

This frightening piece of news is taken from the National Post some time near the turn of the second millennium. Certain blind or ignorant optimists would scoff at the notion that the potentiality spoken of in the headline could soon become a reality. Others, because they already benefit financially from runaway science, will try and convince us that human laws will prevent scientists from going too far. But concocting human embryos in a petri dish has already been allowed when such a thing would have been outlawed by more cautious generations.

Godless peoples will unite their ideas and forces to do creator-like things. No power but the true God is able to prevent the monstrous machinations of man. “Behold, the people is one,” said the LORD one time, “and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do” (Genesis 11.6.) The principal ‘one language’ the world is using today to build its tower up to heaven is called science. But it is a science gone mad. How high God will permit this Babel to ascend we do not know. But we know that Bio-Medical Research, even if it were restricted to operate within the bounds of propriety and righteous conduct, will not be the dialect by which man achieves any sort of immortality. Only the word of God through Man the Word can do that. Jesus Christ is the life-giving word.

This scientific mixing of man and beast is a sophisticated form of that confusion spoken of in Leviticus 18.23. A sexual union between man and beast is there called confusion: an ‘unnatural mixture.’ A union of the same by the use of a petri dish is confusion too. In one sense, the latter is worse, for science might bring about some offspring by its deeds. Soon, we hope, God will once again bring his own confusion upon mad scientists. “Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language…So the LORD scattered them” (Genesis 11.7, 8.) We pray God to hurry up because many confusions (though less horrific than a ‘half-human, half-chimp’) have already been created. The appended article goes on to say, “The little white mice in Keith Humphries’ lab are part human. They carry genes for human blood components and pass them on to their young…Such hybrids…invaluable for studying…disorders.”

Some newspaper browsers won’t even muffle their giggles when they read about the next abomination man may actuate. These are they who are content to do what they must to survive, and spend the rest of their time and energy listening and looking for any new thing that might feed their lust for amusement and shock. They would be the first to approve of the creation of a man-beast just so they could get a look at it. They don’t doubt that man may be able to make a ‘half-human, half-chimp.’ But will they believe that God will yet raise cadavers from the grave to unite them to the souls they once belonged to? No, a Grander Science by the Highest Power they will not believe. Imagine, a body resurrected to be thrust away from God and good, a risen body reunited to a half-despairing, half-longing soul that is condemned to feel alienated for ever! Is that a monstrosity for the idle reader to giggle at? There will be a resurrection. Only those who believed and trusted in Jesus will be given glorified bodies. Therefore, pray that you will soon be able to say with the sincerity of a real Christian, “But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead” (1 Corinthians 1.9.)

LECHEROUS PRIESTS LURKING

This clipping is from one of the Sun newspapers, February 16, 2005. I’m glad I saved it. As upsetting as the contents may be, let’s go on saving this piece of vile news in order to be reminded how the Roman Catholic Church deals with pedophiles in her midst. She simply has them quietly ‘transferred from parish to parish,’ it goes on to say. What does this do except broaden the scope of the pedophiles’ hunting ground? Does the Bible speak of this? “They gather themselves together, they hide themselves, they mark my steps, when they wait for my soul” (Psalm 56.6.) Listen, the Church of Rome is not led by men alone, but is what the Bible calls a “synagogue of Satan” (Revelation 2.9; 3.9.) This is why it is no slander to assert and insist that Rome persecutes whenever and wherever she can get away with it, if not in your parish, then in a parish near you.

Those who love children will righteously sneer at the fact that this child rapist could be out of prison as early as 2013. Is there a sentence anywhere on earth righteous enough to satisfy those of us who are grieved at how children are affected by molestation? Think for a moment what rape does to a kid! If we love children, we should fiercely defend them. The principle of mercy does not argue against the State bearing the sword (Romans 13.) But in Canada presently, what can we urge the assaulted to do but say from the heart, “They be many that fight against me, O thou most High. What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee” (Psalm 56.2, 3.) In fact, the less we can rely on Government, the more cause we have to trust God, and through the forgiveness and justification we need because of our own sins, one day see all our unrepentant enemies put down and ourselves lifted up, yea, lifted up all the way to HEAVEN. All of this by God’s only Begotten, through whom all blessings get channeled to his persecuted children. “And he [Jesus] took them [little children] up in his arms, put hands upon them, and blessed them” (Mark 10.16.)