Love and Truth and the Good News in prophecy on the successful fulfilment of the “Conditions of Reunion with Rome"
Love and Truth and the Good News in prophecy on the successful fulfilment of the “Conditions of Reunion with Rome"
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https://youtu.be/-LMA_N1ELt0
We need as Orthodox Christians to repent and seek forgiveness for our sins committed against the “Roman Catholics” and all those who have different beliefs in any way, especially when they have been falsely claimed to be in God´s name. We also have to give thanks for the good deeds and virtues of those outside of the faith, such as the preservation of holy relics, such as the Turin Shroud, those of many Orthodox saints and of many icons.
The Good News is that we will be reconciled, in accordance with the prophecies.
We note that James 5:19-20 shows us a Christian's responsibility to lovingly correct other Christians, and, incidentally, to love to receive correction. Study the passage to learn more about this important and often neglected truth:
“19 My brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back,
20 remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins. (New International Version).”
See also Young's Literal Translation
19 Brethren, if any among you may go astray from the truth, and any one may turn him back,
20 let him know that he who did turn back a sinner from the straying of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall cover a multitude of sins.
Text Analysis
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Strong's |
Greek |
English |
Morphology |
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Ἀδελφοί |
Brothers |
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μου, |
of Me, |
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ἐάν |
if |
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τις |
anyone |
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ἐν |
among |
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ὑμῖν |
you |
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πλανηθῇ |
might wander |
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ἀπὸ |
from |
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τῆς |
the |
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ἀληθείας |
truth, |
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καὶ |
and |
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ἐπιστρέψῃ |
should bring back |
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τις |
someone |
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αὐτόν, |
him, |
Text Analysis
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Strong's |
Greek |
English |
Morphology |
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γινωσκέτω* |
let him know |
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ὅτι |
that |
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ὁ |
the [one] |
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ἐπιστρέψας |
having brought back |
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ἁμαρτωλὸν |
a sinner |
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ἐκ |
from |
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πλάνης |
[the] error |
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ὁδοῦ |
of the way |
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αὐτοῦ |
of him |
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σώσει |
will save |
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ψυχὴν |
the soul |
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αὐτοῦ |
of him |
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ἐκ |
from |
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θανάτου |
death |
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καὶ |
and |
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καλύψει |
will cover over |
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πλῆθος |
a multitude |
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ἁμαρτιῶν. |
of sins. |
James 5:19 Greek Texts
Berean Greek New Testament 2016
Ἀδελφοί μου, ἐάν τις ἐν ὑμῖν πλανηθῇ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ ἐπιστρέψῃ τις αὐτόν,
SBL Greek New Testament 2010
Ἀδελφοί μου, ἐάν τις ἐν ὑμῖν πλανηθῇ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ ἐπιστρέψῃ τις αὐτόν,
Nestle Greek New Testament 1904
Ἀδελφοί μου, ἐάν τις ἐν ὑμῖν πλανηθῇ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ ἐπιστρέψῃ τις αὐτόν,
Westcott and Hort 1881
Ἀδελφοί μου, ἐάν τις ἐν ὑμῖν πλανηθῇ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ ἐπιστρέψῃ τις αὐτόν,
Westcott and Hort / [NA27 variants]
Ἀδελφοί μου, ἐάν τις ἐν ὑμῖν πλανηθῇ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ ἐπιστρέψῃ τις αὐτόν,
Westcott and Hort / {NA28 variants}
Ἀδελφοί μου, ἐάν τις ἐν ὑμῖν πλανηθῇ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ ἐπιστρέψῃ τις αὐτόν,
RP Byzantine Majority Text 2005
Ἀδελφοί, ἐάν τις ἐν ὑμῖν πλανηθῇ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας, καὶ ἐπιστρέψῃ τις αὐτόν,
Greek Orthodox Church 1904
Ἀδελφοί μου, ἐάν τις ἐν ὑμῖν πλανηθῇ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας, καὶ ἐπιστρέψῃ τις αὐτόν,
Tischendorf 8th Edition 1872
Ἀδελφοί μου, ἐάν τις ἐν ὑμῖν πλανηθῇ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ ἐπιστρέψῃ τις αὐτόν,
Scrivener's Textus Receptus 1894
Ἀδελφοί, ἐάν τις ἐν ὑμῖν πλανηθῇ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας, καὶ ἐπιστρέψῃ τις αὐτόν,
Stephanus Textus Receptus 1550
Ἀδελφοί ἐάν τις ἐν ὑμῖν πλανηθῇ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ ἐπιστρέψῃ τις αὐτόν
Beza Greek New Testament 1598
Ἀδελφοί, ἐάν τις ἐν ὑμῖν πλανηθῇ ἀπὸ τῆς ἀληθείας, καὶ ἐπιστρέψῃ τὶς αὐτόν,
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James 5:20 ► |
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Greek Texts Berean Greek New Testament 2016 γινωσκέτω* ὅτι ὁ ἐπιστρέψας ἁμαρτωλὸν ἐκ πλάνης ὁδοῦ αὐτοῦ σώσει ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἐκ θανάτου καὶ καλύψει πλῆθος ἁμαρτιῶν. SBL Greek New Testament 2010 Nestle Greek New Testament 1904 Westcott and Hort 1881 Westcott and Hort / [NA27 variants] Westcott and Hort / {NA28 variants} RP Byzantine Majority Text 2005 Greek Orthodox Church 1904 Tischendorf 8th Edition 1872 Scrivener's Textus Receptus 1894 Stephanus Textus Receptus 1550 Beza Greek New Testament 1598 |
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James 5:19 ► |
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19 Adelphoi 19 Ἀδελφοί 19 Brothers 19 N-VMP |
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μου , of Me |
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ἐάν if |
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τις anyone |
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ἐν among |
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ὑμῖν you |
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πλανηθῇ might wander |
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ἀπὸ from |
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τῆς the |
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ἀληθείας , truth |
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καὶ and |
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ἐπιστρέψῃ should bring back |
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τις someone |
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αὐτόν , him |
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James 5:20 ► |
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20 ginōsketō 20 γινωσκέτω* 20 let him know 20 V-PMA-3S |
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ὅτι that |
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ὁ the [one] |
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ἐπιστρέψας having brought back |
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ἁμαρτωλὸν a sinner |
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ἐκ from |
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πλάνης [the] error |
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ὁδοῦ of the way |
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αὐτοῦ of him |
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σώσει will save |
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ψυχὴν the soul |
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αὐτοῦ of him |
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ἐκ from |
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θανάτου death |
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καὶ and |
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καλύψει will cover over |
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πλῆθος a multitude |
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ἁμαρτιῶν . of sins |
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James 5:20 ► |
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20 ginōsketō 20 γινωσκέτω* 20 let him know 20 V-PMA-3S |
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ὅτι that |
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ὁ the [one] |
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ἐπιστρέψας having brought back |
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ἁμαρτωλὸν a sinner |
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ἐκ from |
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πλάνης [the] error |
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ὁδοῦ of the way |
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αὐτοῦ of him |
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σώσει will save |
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ψυχὴν the soul |
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αὐτοῦ of him |
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ἐκ from |
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θανάτου death |
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καὶ and |
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καλύψει will cover over |
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πλῆθος a multitude |
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ἁμαρτιῶν . of sins |
Catena with commentaries
James 5:
Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him;
Let him know, that he who converts the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.
Clement Of Rome
AD 99
Who can describe the . Who can describe the
< 1 min
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
He who causeth a sinner to be converted St. James concludes his epistle with a work of charity, one of the most acceptable to Almighty God, and most beneficial to our neighbour, when any one becomes instrumental in converting others from their errors, or from a wicked life; for it is only God that can convert the heart. But he who with a true and charitable zeal, animated with the love of God and of his neighbour, makes this the chief business of his life, has this comfort here given him, that this will cover in the sight of God a multitude of sins, which he may have contracted through human frailty. The Church of England, when they modelled the articles of their reformation, received this epistle of James as canonical. They profess to follow the holy Scriptures as the only rule of their belief: they find in the 14th and 15th verses of this chapter these words: "Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the priests of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil. And if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him. "In these words they find all that they themselves require, to be a sacrament of the new law; to wit, a precept or injunction, clear and unlimited as to time, a visible sign, with a promise of invisible grace, in remitting of sins, the minister of it, and the persons specified who are to receive it. They also found this practised at the time of the reformation by the Universal Church, by all Catholics, both in the east and west, both by the Latin and by the Greek Churches; and that all Christian Churches received it as a sacrament; and yet they thought fit to lay it quite aside, as if it was neither a sacrament nor a holy ceremony, nor a pious custom fit to be retained. They must have judged that they had convincing proofs both to contradict in other things the judgment and belief of the Catholic Church, and also in this particular; as to which latter case, I shall examine the reasons which they bring. I presume it may be needless to insist upon the groundless imagination of Wycliff, and some heretics about that time, who denied this to be a sacrament, fancying it was prescribed by St. James, because the oil of Palestine was a sovereign remedy to cure diseases. If so, any physician, any old woman or nurse to the sick, might have applied oil full as well, if not better than the priests. Calvin, and the reformation writers, give us the following reasons or conjectures, that this anointing, as well as that, (Mark vi. 13.) was only to be used for a time, by those who had the gift of curing diseases miraculously; so that like other miraculous gifts, (as the speaking of tongues, prophesying) it was but to last during the first planting of the Christian faith. Dr. Fulk, against the Rheims Testament, and Mr. Baxter affirm boldly, that Christ "appointed his apostles to anoint those with oil whom they cured. "And Dr. Hammond says, "that the anointing with oil, was a ceremony used by Christ and his apostles in their miraculous cures. "They assert this, as if it was taught by Scripture itself. They are no less positive that this anointing soon ceased, and was laid aside with the gift of miraculous cures, given sometimes to the first Christians at their baptism, or when they received the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of confirmation. Dr. Fulk, besides this, is positive that "the Greek Church, never to this day received this anointing and praying over the sick as a sacrament. "These are their arbitrary, groundless, and false expositions, which they bring against a clear text of the holy Scriptures. It might be sufficient to oppose the judgment and authority of the Church to their private judgment. But to answer in short each particular: we find by the evangelists, (Matthew x. 8.; Mark vi. 13.; Luke x. 9.) that Christ gave to his twelve apostles, and afterwards to his seventy-two disciples, in their first mission before his death, (which was only into the cities of Israel) a power of casting out devils, of raising the dead, or curing diseases in his name. And St. Mark tells us, that they cast out many devils, and anointed many sick with oil, and cured them. But when Dr. Fulk and others add, that our Saviour appointed, ordered, or commanded them to anoint with oil those whom they cured, no such thing is said, nor insinuated, neither by St. Mark nor by any of the evangelists, nor any where in the holy Scriptures. And how Dr. Hammond could tell us that this "anointing with oil was a ceremony used by Christ himself "I cannot imagine. As for the apostles and disciples, they might cure many, making use of oil, and many without it by laying hands upon them, by a prayer, or by calling upon the name of Jesus, as the seventy-two disciples returned to him with joy, (Luke x. 17.) saying, Lord, even the devils are subject to us in thy name. Neither is it judge probable by the interpreters that the apostles, in their miraculous cures, were tied up or confined to the use of oil: especially since we find that after Christ's resurrection, in their second mission to all nations, Christ foretells (Matthew xvi. 18.) that they who believe in him, shall have this miraculous gift of healing the sick, but mentions only the laying of hands upon them: they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall be well. Besides had Christ appointed or given orders to his disciples to make use of oil in such miraculous cures, it would scarce have happened but we should have some examples of it in the Acts of the Apostles, where so many miraculous cures are related to have been done by St. Peter, by St. Paul, and others, but no mention of this ceremony of oil. We agree with our adversaries that this gift of miraculous cures, of which St. Paul speaks, (1 Corinthians xii.) was common only for a short time, like the other gifts of the Holy Spirit, which were only necessary, as St. Augustine takes notice, at the first planting of the Christian faith; and so that anointing with oil, merely as it was made use of in miraculous cures of the body, soon ceased, perhaps even before our Saviour's death; but we believe as our Saviour appointed water to be the matter of the sacrament of baptism, so he would have oil to be the matter of the sacrament of the sacrament of extreme unction, which he instituted to strengthen the souls of the sick, against the dangers and temptations at the approach of death, and of which St. James here speaks near upon thirty years after Christ's ascension. And the anointing in St. Mark, used in corporal diseases, may be looked upon as a figure of the sacrament of extreme unction in St. James, as the frequent washings or baptisms, as they are called, of the Jews, and especially the baptism of St. John the Baptist, was a figure of the baptism of Christ. The miraculous gift of healing, as well as other gifts of the Holy Spirit, was often given with the sacraments, which were to be always continued, and not to cease, with those gifts. We may also take notice, that neither they who had this gift of healing, had any command or advice to make use of it to all that were sick, nor were all that were sick ordered to seek for a cure of those who had this gift; whereas here St. James orders every one to send for the priests of the Church to anoint him, and pray over him for spiritual relief. St. Timothy had frequent infirmities, as we read in 1 Timothy v. 23., nor yet did St. Paul, who had that gift, cure him. The same St. Paul left Trophimus sick at Miletum. (2 Timothy iv. 20.) Epaphroditus, St. Paul's companion in his labours, was sick, when he had St. Paul with him, even unto death; that is, so as to be at the point of death (Philippians ii. 27.); nor yet did St. Paul, but God, restore him to his health. And if St. James had spoken of a miraculous restoring of corporal health by that anointing, he should rather have said: bring in those who have the gift of healing; for we may reasonably suppose that many had this gift who were not priests, and we have no reason to suppose that all priests had this gift. Our adversaries tell us with great assurance, that this anointing mentioned by St. James was soon laid aside; which, say they, we may gather from the silence of the writers in the three following ages. The same Dr. Fulk, who wrote about the year 1600, could scarce be ignorant of the ill success the Augsbourg confession met with among the Greeks, to whom, when the Lutherans had sent copies of their faith and of their reformation, Jeremy, the patriarch of Constantinople, with a synod of the Greeks, condemned their articles, and among other points, declared that they held "in the orthodox Catholic Church seven divine sacraments "the same as in the Latin Church, baptism. And the holy oil. Had Dr. Fulk lived a little longer, he must have been more and more ashamed to find other Greek synods condemning him and all the said reformers. For when Cyrillus Lucaris, advanced to the see of Constantinople by the interest of the French Calvinists, began to favour and support the doctrine of the Calvinists, the Greeks in several synods under their patriarchs, (in the years 1639, 1642, 1671, and 1672) condemned Cyril and the new doctrine of the said reformers, and expressly declared that they held seven sacraments. See M. Arnauld, tom. iii. Perpetuitè de la Foy; and the dissertations of M. Le Brun, tom. iii. p. 34, and 572, disert. 12, where he shows that all the churches of the East, and all the Christian churches of the world, though separated from the communion and subordination to the Pope, agree with the Latin Church, as to the sacrifice of the Mass, as to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and as to the seven sacraments. (Witham) If, with holy Scripture, we must allow that charitable persons on earth may prove instrumental, under God, to their neighbour's salvation, why are we to deny this to the saints in heaven, whose charity for man is much greater? See Less
9 mins
Cross References:
1 Peter 4:8
Related
And above all things have fervent love among yourselves: for love shall cover a multitude of sins.
Commentaries:
Clement Of Alexandria
AD 215
Also of "love. ""Love "He says, "covers a multitude of sins.". But when "charity covers the multitude of sins". This blessedness came on those who had been chosen by Cod through Jesus Christ our Lord. For "love hides the multitude of sins.". ` Love covers a multitude of sins. But is diffused on the brother. About him she is fluttered, about him she is soberly insane. "Love covers a multitude of sins." See Less
< 1 min
1/4
Clement Of Rome
AD 99
Who can describe the . Who can describe the. "but love covereth a multitude of sins."
< 1 min
2/4
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Love covers a multitude of sins. It is a great means to atone for them; or it may signify, that a charitable mind excuses many sins in others.
< 1 min
3/4
Tertullian of Carthage
1/14
Proverbs 10:12
Related
Hatred stirs up strife: but love covers all sins.
2/14
Romans 11:14
Related
If by any means I may provoke to envy them who are my flesh, and might save some of them.
3/14
1 Timothy 4:16
Related
Take heed unto yourself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this you shall both save yourself, and them that hear you.
4/14
Psalms 32:1
Related
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered
So, in the meantime this is what we must aim to do
God is, in the ultimate analysis, solution-focused, solving problems and giving the opportunity of salvation.
So, how will the current divisions be resolved?
Prophecies help to highlight this.
It is with the fulfilment of the final parts (20-24) of the Anonymous Prophecy of Mount Athos of 1053 that : the Latins (i.e. the West) will return to Orthodoxy; the Roman Papacy will cease; there will be one Patriarchate for all of Europe; Constantinople will already have been returned to the Greeks (which means, from other prophecies, such as from an Eldress of Georgia of mixed Greek, Russian and Georgian Royal descent, that they will have returned to the Patristic (aka Old) Calendar by then, because without this reversion Greece will be destroyed, in accordance with her Prophecy); and finally, they will be, amidst rejoicing, united under one flock under one True Orthodox shepherd . We have already seen the fulfilment of parts 1-12 of this prophecy in its entirety. Part 12 is Revolution in India and the expulsion of the English (1947), for example. Part 13 England for the Saxons only, is unfolding now (Brexit, etc).
This clearly involves World Orthodoxy repenting and becoming True Orthodox as part of the process. And of the Latins, whether Romanist or Germanic Protestant, returning to Orthodoxy.
True Orthodox Christian Prophecy - The semi-Cassandra of Troy, always correct, but very rarely believed, especially by the heterodox and secularists in power.
As won´t fit - the real solution is to be found in (True) Orthodox Christianity which overrides everything, but which is a semi-Cassandra of Troy, always always always always always (ad infinitum) right, entirely right, but almost never believed, especially by the heterodox and secularist idiots in power and doing their shallow analyses. See: https://rejoineuparty-iberia.blogspot.com/2024/03/always-always-right-but-all-too-often.html. According to these prophecies, China will take Siberia, invade the Middle East with an army of 200 million (yes 200 million) and then get nuked and pushed back, being prevented from crossing the Urals, stopping the Russians from realising their joke about crossing back into China, over the border from Finland.
As won´t fit - the real solution is to be found in (True) Orthodox Christianity which overrides everything, but which is a semi-Cassandra of Troy, always always always always always (ad infinitum) right, entirely right, but almost never believed, especially by the heterodox and secularist idiots in power and doing their shallow analyses. See: https://rejoineuparty-iberia.blogspot.com/2024/03/always-always-right-but-all-too-often.html
Always, always right but all too often ignored by the heterodox and secularists in power to their damnation - True Orthodox Christian Prophecy, Germany, the UK, Russia, the Ukraine and Brexit and all that - overrides "offensive realism" and all other considerations
Contrary to "realism", replacing it when it contradicts it: https://youtu.be/Yl7goPRw_eE?si=4yTxLJEt1uEw_qmS
Japan was pledged to declare war and invade the Soviet Union if the Germans took Moscow. The Germans knew this, and should have gone all out to take Moscow early while the weather was good. Hitler should have treated the prisoners well, following the maxim of Macchiavelli that people should be well treated or crushed. Postponing the genocides until such time as they had fully conquered the Soviet Union. Also, Hitler had recognised that a two-front war would be disastrous in Mein Kampf, following Bismarck and learning from World War One. Therefore he should have concentrated on clearing up the continent first, going through Spain, conquering Gibraltar, then taking the whole of the Mediterranean as far as both sides of the Turkish border, taking all British possessions and the Suez Canal as well as the Middle East.
Genocides of peoples who represent a military or other threat should only take place, after the end of a war. They should consist of killing surplus males, breeding the women and marrying them off, polygamously where appropriate, and compulsorily adopting and integrating the children, as well as suppressing resistant religions.
Your views are entirely secular and fail to discuss the influence of religious prophecy and its successful fulfilment.
The only non-True Orthodox Christian powers which have given True Orthodox Christians our full religious freedom and suppressed our Judaic and Masonic and ecumenist modernist enemies who have oppressed and murdered us since the fall of the Tsar of Russia, have been fascist powers of which Nazi Germany was by far the best.
Even freedoms of exiles in the USA and elsewhere has been increasingly undermined by hostile political correctness.
For examples of this, see below:
Original link required for citation of the paper “ The Brexit Religion and the Holy Grail of the NHS”, which now follows below:
: https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/138706/1/WRAP-The-Brexit-Religion-Holy-Grail-of-the-NHS-Kettell-2020.pdf
For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: wrap@warwick.ac.uk.
Comment 1 - at least partial fulfilment of part 13 (England for the Saxons only) of the Anonymous Prophecy of Mount Athos of 1053 and article The Brexit Religion and the Holy Grail of the NHS”
This is an attempt to direct, directly to academics, the need to understand that the most accurate predictor of what will happen, including in the case of the UK and Gibraltar leaving the EU, is Orthodox Christian prophecy. It´s high time that it was paid attention to.
Technical note: I am nothing to do with Warwick University and am writing this in a personal capacity as an informed True Orthodox Christian layman. I voted to Remain in the Referendum, without hesitation, and am expressing what are for now theologoumena – individual theological opinions in areas where no clear Patristic consensus (aka symphony) has yet emerged.
Nevertheless, I start from first principles: the greatest of all the commandments, Christ said, are to love God, and to love thine neighbour (as [much as if not more than] thyself). The European Union countries are quite literally the geographical neighbours of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the UK) and (the UK overseas territory of (the British Crown Colony of) Gibraltar, and the only land border the UK has is with Eire, the Irish Republic, which remains a European Union (EU) member state. Gibraltar has a land border with Spain, another EU member state.
Leaving the EU, with all the hostility involved and the exclusion of the direct input of the UK and Gibraltar´s neighbours into what had been common laws made by members of the EU, is a hostile anti-neighbourly act, and is, therefore, fundamentally anti-Christian, in my view, working from first principles.
More than that, supporting this exit, in any form whatsoever, is, in my view, phyletist. Phyletism is the heresy of putting a nation above God and was formalized by a local council of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in a ruling against Bulgarian nationalists in the 19th century.
Thus, in my view the UK and Gibraltar leaving the EU as fundamentally anti-Christian.
However, it should be noted that many, if not, most probably, most, or even very nearly all, Christians (especially of the less nominal sort) tend to be very right wing and amongst such people it has been found that they are maybe up to 9 times as likely to have voted to leave the EU than to Remain. Those of us who hold some values which might be described, conventionally, as ultra-conservative or ultra-traditional (I´m an abortion abolitionist, if admittedly somewhat moderate compared to the vast majority of abolitionists who advocate the death penalty for those who abort the unborn, as I would prefer the loving approach of compulsory education, followed by community work and mental health treatment as we want to bring them to repentance) were thus much more likely to vote Leave in the Referendum) and I am thus in the 10% who hold some traditional values (but support income redistribution, progressive taxation, etc) and who might be described, by some, as likely to be “Blue Labour” who supported Remain. Most “Blue Labour” types come from and identify as “working class”. I am very rare in coming from a cosmopolitan upper middle class background (with ancestors everything from pre-Conquest [and therefore True Orthodox Christian, not Papal Protestant or Reformed Protestant] royalty (and thus far more genuinely royal than the Normano-Hanoverian “royals”, descended from the Papal Protestant Romanist heretic William the Bastard, illegitimate by name and nature and his own choice) – through to extremely poor shoeless ancestors. I´m thus in a small minority of Remain voters, who mirror a small minority of socially left-wing Leave voters.
As ever, [True] Orthodox Christian Prophecy is completely accurate.
As modestly noted here by another commentator:
He gives a link to his well-argued view on the Orthodox Christian way of understanding prophecy, which differs from many others within his comment on the superiority of Orthodox Christian prophecy to all other prophecy:
https://old.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/174tvtz/orthodoxy_on_divine_hiddenness/
Orthodoxy on Divine Hiddenness
Note: For some reason with every debate I've made here I have to clarify this, but this debate is not about the truth or falsity of Christianity or God and I will not debate or respond to such arguments. Just because you disagree with the presuppositions behind my position does not mean that that is what the debate is about. This debate is specifically about my rebuttal to divine hiddenness arguments and the coherency of my position on the topic, and nothing else.
On Knowledge of God
So many people argue about how everyone should have knowledge of God, or that it is unfair to be born somewhere without access to knowledge of God.
God doesn't send people to heaven or hell based upon adherence to truth claims. Someone's level of rational knowledge about God is not the most important thing he wants of us.
Salvation is based upon ones noetic love for God. Part of that spiritual love can be found in both the practical faith and believing in the truth of God, and part of that love can be found in doing good deeds, but faith alone cannot save you, and works alone are dead. Faith and works only save through love.
While having the true faith is good, it is also a huge responsibility and challenge. While i wouldn't go so far as Jews do with their Tribal belief, I would say that Christianity is still also a kind of tribal community with special responsibilities. Except it is a spiritually based tribe rather than one based on an ethno-states covenant, and they are responsibilities and rules based on personal faith, rather than being able to be done by Atheist jews as in Judaism and thus irrelevant to ones faith.
Orthodoxy is not merely a moral or legal covenant and salvation is not merely from moral obligations, but salvation is ontological. God became man so that man could become god. Therefore, the responsibility one has in Orthodoxy is towards Theosis, to make real ontological spiritual change into being another kind of being. Salvation is the same thing as becoming God, and God is the same thing as love. Thus to be saved is to become embodied love. Truth is an outpouring of love, not its origin.
A common saying in Orthodoxy is that the road to hell is paved with the skulls of priests and lit with the skulls of bishops. Another common idea is that it is far more damning for one's soul if they enter the church and believe, only to fall away later, then if they were never to have come to the faith in the first place.
There is a tale in Orthodoxy about a monk who tried to correct the false beliefs of a simple farmer who put out milk for God to drink by showing him it was a fox and trying to instead teach him about God as an invisible spirit, but the man could not understand his logic, and an angel appeared later to chastise him for turning the man away from true faith and love for God due to his higher learning.
God saves people in their level of knowledge and their position in the world. He does not want to heap unnecessary burdens upon people. All throughout the Bible it talks about the true faith being simple, for children, foolish and crazy to the learned men of the world.
Ignorance can be an excuse, a reason to help people be saved when they might otherwise not be. And God gives it to them, and sends a spirit of delusion to both wicked and righteous. But sometimes knowledge can save, and thus then he gives it to them. But also knowledge can damn someone, for if someone is not prepared for it or misuses the responsibility given by that knowledge, they can be one of those lampposts on the road to hell. So sometimes God brings knowledge to save people who need it, and sometimes gives knowledge to the wicked in order to judge them.
There is no universal standard of God's method of salvation, besides being mystically united to Orthodoxy.
Some people will be better saved through knowledge, and some better saved through ignorance. But Orthodoxy is the only way to salvation, because the Orthodox God who is love itself is the only way to salvation, and as such, even if God cannot get someone to Orthodoxy, he will try to get them as close as possible to it.
Love comes before truth.
On Preparation for God
Another important belief is that in Orthodoxy heaven and hell are the same exact fire, and that fire is God and his loving presence. There is so much throughout the old and new testament about spiritual preparation, and how if you do not prepare yourself, you will burn and die when you face God. Even the high priest would only enter the holy of holies one day a year. Having "strange fire" in worship will kill you when faced with the true fire.
God doesn't want to give a huge sign and miracle to show everyone that he is real; then the end times would come. It would literally kill everyone to see God's love. That is how infinitely powerful and overwhelming his love is. (And why would we expect anything less from God?) God holds himself back in his mercy.
In revelations it speaks of heaven and earth being remade with fire. That is what will happen if God removes the veil of heaven.
Imagine Christianity is true; We are then clearly in a Time likened to Sodom and Gomorrah in how sinful and fallen away from Christ the world is. Why has fire and brimstone not destroyed everything? Due to the righteous men in the "city" who are praying for God's mercy and for the people to repent.
Even if we do not consider God's fire, there is still reason for God to stay hidden. In the Creed, Orthodox pray "I shall not reveal thine mysteries to thine enemies, and neither like Judas will I give thee a kiss, but like the thief will I confess thee".
God does not reveal his mysteries to his enemies. Miracles are given to the faithful, not to the wicked. Someone wicked who converts due to a true miracle, such as Saul, is due to them actually having a seed of loving faith within them, such that even though they are an enemy, they are not an enemy; much like the one prostitute who let the Israelite army in through the walls. That small seed, that single person, is enough to bring the city down.
Only those who are prepared spiritually for God, can be prepared for a miracle from God. Again, that doesn't necessarily mean that they have knowledge of Orthodoxy, it is about the heart and overall spiritual preparation.
Also, one should think of the symbolism here. All throughout the Bible there is imagery of Christ as the bridegroom and the church as the bride. To demand God to reveal himself is like demanding a stranger to have sex with you. If you demand miracles from God and for him to reveal himself to you, then you should re-read the story of Lot and the people who demanded the Angels visiting him (who were previously in the story used as a symbol of the Trinity) to have sex with them. And they were destroyed with fire. Symbolically because in some sense they were unprepared for the fire of God that they were demanding.
God is love itself. Saint Porphyrios and others speak about how this love is not merely some vague idea, but specifically goes into a divine Eros, an erotic sexual love for Christ and the Trinity. As scripture points to, to enter heaven is the same thing as entering the spiritual bridechamber of Christ. Of course I'm not talking about some literal physical sex, but it is a symbol of the higher divine reality. Heaven is an intense overwhelming intimacy. Anyone who is not prepared for this intimacy will reject it and possibly even go crazy in fear and confusion. God will not "rape" us by forcing heaven upon us. And although God is going to bring his presence into the whole universe in the end times, only those in heaven will feel any intimacy while those in hell will feel his love indirectly and as painful.
Another point is that God is the highest most unfathomable principle of existence beyond existence beyond existence... God himself has chastised man in scripture as to trying to peer into his ways and know who he is. Knowledge of such things is, and must be, a gift of God.
Orthodox believe in apophatic theology, by which we come to know God through negation by saying what he is not.
Conclusion: All arguments on Divine Hiddenness fail to address the beliefs of Eastern Orthodoxy, and typically only address Western conceptions of God by assuming Classical Theist ideas about God which Orthodoxy rejects, or otherwise fail through a demanding of divine intimacy or knowledge based on emotional appeals.
This comment is linked in his specific comment on Orthodox prophecies below:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/1axv0aa/eastern_orthodox_prophecies_are_more_convincing/
Eastern Orthodox Prophecies are more convincing than any other Faiths
Fresh Friday
I should note here at the beginning that I am not saying that Orthodoxy is true because of its prophecies. I do not believe that miracles and prophecies by themselves can prove a faith is true.
If someone says something like "okay, these sound true, but why wouldn't God just tell everyone specific dates and just prove himself in an instant?", I will just say this misses the entire point of prophecies in our theology, and would direct you to my post on Divine Hiddenness.
With that out of the way; What makes a convincing prophecy? A lot of it is determined by who it's for, and what it's purpose is, as even what skeptics would consider an incredibly vague prophecy can be used in a real holy way.
But interestingly, recently in a simple questions thread inspiring this post, there were some conjectures to u/AjaxBrozovic bringing up this issue. The main points given were that:
• Vague Prophecy can retroactively claim to be true, or someone can act on their own to "make" the prophecy come true
• Predictions of Natural occurances (like lunar eclipse) is not prophecy, it should be uncommon
• We need a Prophecy to be seen as being clearly fulfilled in the moment, and even expected beforehand and intended as a prophecy, so as not to be self-fufilling
• Skeptics want prophecy to be consistent
• it cannot simply be based on conjecture and hearsay
u/c0d3rman even gave a post on criteria for miracles, that they have to be:
• Not based upon simple deduction
• Risky, i.e. seemed unlikely to be true at the time
• Falsifiable, such that it can be disproved rather than fit to any time period
• Exceptional, rather than one success among failures
• Tamper-proof, something unable to be be fit to the prophecy by wanna-be fulfillers of prophecy
• Precise, such that it is clear what it is predicting before as well as after
These seem similar to what those in the SQ thread mentioned, and i think there could be said to be a general consensus based upon certain principles of knowledge that skeptics have.
I believe that Orthodox prophecies can, more or less, fit all of these criteria. Of course some more than others, but I will focus on the best examples.
Now, to preface, there are not very many Orthodox prophecies that mention specific dates, but I simply believe that is due to our theology, where the timeline of history is in some sense not set in stone. Although there is a certain fate that will happen, repentance can push it back, and sins 'speed up' the endtimes. So the prophecies will give general timeframes and orders of events instead. Accuracy here instead comes from the order of events being very specific Geopolitical events that follow one after another, with each successive true prophecy becoming more and more improbable, as you shall see, so that by the end it is impossible for that chain of events to line up as prophecized, like how tossing a coin a trillion times and getting heads every time, the odds go up until improbability.
First major prophecy I will give is one from a Monk from 1053 AD who wished to stay anonymous (or some say it might be from Saint Kosmos 1753 AD as a copyist error). Even if a skeptic doesn't want to believe it is dated that early, the first modern publishing of it was from 1913, which still leaves room for being fulfilled prophecies. Here is more information on it. Either way, It was providential that it was rediscovered in 1913, since every prophecy occurs directly after its modern rediscovery. The prophecy states that in order, these events will happen:
1. Great European War
2. Defeat of Germany, Catastrophe of Russia and Austria
3. Defeat of the Turks by the Greeks
4. Reinforcement of the Turks by the Greeks and defeat of the Greeks
5. Slaughter of the Orthodox peoples
6. Great turbulence/anxiety among the Orthodox nations
7. Invasion of foreign troops from the Adriatic sea [i.e. Italy, across this sea from Greece]. Woe unto those who live on the earth; for hades is ready
8. The Hagarene is great for a moment ["Hagarene" is an old term for Arab Muslims, since they are believed to descend from Ishmael]
9. A New European War
10. Union of Orthodox nations with Germany
11. Defeat of the French by the Germans
12. Revolution in India and its separation from England
In the 20th century, these events happened in order:
1. "The Great War", also called WW1, 1914
2. Germany is defeated in the War. The Austro-Hungarian Empire ends, and Russia falls to communism, 1918
3. Greece defeats Turks, there is the Treaty of Sèvres, and Greece occupies parts of Turkey in Smyrna, 1920
4. In Turkey Kemal Atarurk gains power and starts a revolt, 1923
5. Millions of Orthodox are killed in Turkey, as well as millions killed under communism in Russia, and in Nazi germany. The Greek Genocide, the Serb Genocide, the Russian Holodomor and Great Purge, the Armenian Genocide.
6. Great turbulence among Orthodox nations
7. Italy invades Greece, capturing Greek Islands in 1912 and going to war officially later around 1939
8. This could signify the sudden rise of Arab nations with oil fields, first discovered in Saudi Arabia in 1938
9. The New European War of WWII, 1939
10. Bulgarians and Romanians, some of the only countries at the time that could reasonably be called Orthodox nations, both allied with Germany, c. 1940-1944
11. Defeat of the French by the Germans. Northern half of country is occupied, c. 1940-1944
12. Revolution in India and its Separation from England, 1947
These first twelve prophecies have been fulfilled perfectly in line with what we would expect. There are actually more, but you can see them in the link so I won't go into detail. But the next two are:
• 13) England will be left to the Saxons alone
• 14) Victory of the Orthodox nations and general Slaughter of the Sons of Hagar [Again, meaning Turkish and Arab Muslims] by the Orthodox
This is highly relevant with the collapse of all of Britain's colonies, Brexit, and pushes for greater Scottish independence. And the 14th prophecy here would be interpreted in line with other Orthodox prophecies over the centuries that speak of the same thing as being Russia invading Turkey to start WW3, which seems potentially ever closer to us today.
Saint Paisios prophecized in detail that when Greece will extend its nautical limit in the Aegean dispute, Turkey will go to war with Greece, Turkey will close off the straights which causes Russia to invade Turkey for access to the Mediterranean, and then the EU steps in and WW3. Thus the prophecy of victory over the hagarenes is interpreted as a future Russia conquering Turkey.
Someone might say that these aren't in order. Generally they are, but it depends on how you interpret the "official" beginning and endings of different events. For a man presumably seeing such things through spiritual visions and writing down what he sees, i dont see why it needs to be perfect to what our governments would consider the beginning and end.
Is this prophecy vague? Some of them, but in general it is very specific. It certainly isn't common events, and was incredibly unlikely to expect these things either in 1053 or 1913, is not based on hearsay but a historical document. It is exceptional as each comes true except more future events. It is precise enough that someone in 1914 seeing that it said the war would end with Germanys defeat could bet on it, and on the overturning of Greek victory, a future Orthodox Genocide, an Italian invasion of Greece, etc., and be completely right, even if he didn't have the details. I don't see how someone can deny this fitting the earlier criteria without sophistry or moving the goalposts to demand prophecies can only be valid if they have specific dates. And certainly if the future events of WW3 come true, it should make you believe.
Another example:
Elder Aristocleus told people rejoicing about the end of WWI that "But there will be another war. Only do not rejoice then. Many Russians will think that the Germans will deliver Russia from Bolshevik government, but this is not so. True, the Germans will enter Russia and will do much there, but they will leave, for the time of salvation [i.e. end of communism] will not yet have come. That will be later, later.” (The Life of Elder Aristocleus, Moscow 2003, Dependency of the Russian Monastery of St Panteleimon on Mt Athos, pg. 18-25).
Aristocleus also prophecized before the soviet revolution: "An evil will shortly take Russia, and wherever this evil goes, rivers of blood will flow. It is not the Russian soul, but an imposition on the Russian soul. It is not an ideology, nor a philosophy, but a spirit from hell. In the last days Germany will be divided. France will be just nothing. Italy will be judged by natural disasters. Britain will lose her empire and all her colonies and will come to almost total ruin, but will be saved by praying enthroned women. America will feed the world, but will finally collapse. Russia and China will destroy each other."
So he got right that:
1. Russia falls to communism
2. Germany is split in two
3. France is conquered
4. Britain loses all her colonies
5. America becomes a breadbasket and world power that is now in decline
6. That they would all happen in this general order
There are a few other good examples of prophecies I can give, although I am running out of character space, so ask. But even one example of a True Prophecy should in principle be enough to prove supernatural origin, if one accepts that it has passed the criteria required, which this absolutely has.
u/ShakaUVM said in the SQ that skeptics faced with a true prophecy would "just claim it was a hoax or "obvious all along" or something like that. Confirmation Bias is a helluvah drug."
Prove him wrong?
Also, linked to this second prophecy: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiun-a2vcOEAxWlVqQEHd_rBwcQrAIoAXoECCIQAg&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FPropheciesOfTheFuture%2Fcomments%2Fygrhir%2Fprophecies_of_saint_aristocles_of_moscow_elder%2F&usg=AOvVaw1gTXEge4wl9hkI5c5SI376&opi=89978449
Prophecies of Saint Aristocles of Moscow, Elder Theodosius (Kashin) of Minvody, Seraphim (Vyritsky) of Moscow, Eldress Duniushka of Siberia, St. Paisios the Athonite, St. Nilus the Myrrhgusher and St. Seraphim of Sarov and Archbishop Anthony of Voronezh
St. Aristocles of Moscow (†1918)
Saint Aristocles of Moscow (†1918):
"An evil will shortly take Russia, and wherever this evil goes, rivers of blood will flow. It is not the Russian soul, but an imposition on the Russian soul. It is not an ideology, nor a philosophy, but a spirit from hell. In the last days Germany will be divided. France will be just nothing. Italy will be judged by natural disasters. Britain will lose her empire and all her colonies and will come to almost total ruin, but will be saved by praying enthroned women. America will feed the world, but will finally collapse.
Russia and China will destroy each other. Finally, Russia will be free and from her believers will go forth and turn many from the nations to God."
"Now we are undergoing the times before the Antichrist. But Russia will yet be delivered. There will be much suffering, much torture. The whole of Russia will become a prison, and one must greatly entreat the Lord for forgiveness. One must repent of one's sins and fear to do even the least sin, but strive to do good, even the smallest. For even the wing of a fly has weight, and God's scales are exact. And when even the smallest of good in the cup tips the balance, then will God reveal His mercy upon Russia."
"The end will come through China. There will be an extraordinary outburst and a miracle of God will be manifested. And there will be an entirely different life, but all this will not be for long."
"God will remove all leaders, so that Russian people should look only at Him. Everyone will reject Russia, other states will renounce her, delivering her to herself.“ This is so that Russian people should hope on the help of the Lord. You will hear that in other countries disorders have begun similar to those in Russia. You will hear of war, and there will be wars.
But wait until the Germans take up arms, for they are chosen as God's weapon to punish Russia - but also as a weapon of deliverance later. The Cross of Christ will shine over the whole world and our Homeland will be magnified and will become as a lighthouse in the darkness for all."
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"The deliverance of Russia from the Red yoke Father [now Saint - editor] John prophesied as being from the East."
[Source: I. K. Sursky, Father John of Kronstadt (Belgrade, 1942), vol. 2, pp. 3, 23-24]
This prophecy of St. John of Kronstadt is also mentioned by Fr. Seraphim Rose in his lecture "The Future of Russia and the End of the World".
"...they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is." (Rev. 17:8)
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The Catacomb Elder Theodosius (Kashin) of Minvody (†1948), shortly after the outbreak of war with Germany in 1941, declared:
"Do you really think that that was the war (1941-45)?! The war is still to come. It will begin from the east. And then from all sides, like locusts, the enemies will spread over Russia... That will be the war!"
Furthermore Schema-Archimandrite Seraphim (Tyapochkin) relates concerning the prophecies of Elder Theodosius:
"The greatest tragedy will be the seizure of Siberia by China. This will not take place through military means: in consequence of the weakening of the authorities and the open frontiers, masses of Chinese will move into Siberia, will snap up property, enterprises and flats. By means of bribery, intimidation and agreements with the authorities, they will gradually take control of the economic life of the towns.
Everything will take place in such a way that one morning the Russians living in Siberia will wake up in a Chinese state. The destiny of those who remain there will be tragic, but not hopeless. The Chinese will deal cruelly with every attempt at resistance. (That was why the elder prophesied a martyric end in the stadium of the Siberian town for many Orthodox and patriots of the Homeland.)
The West will assist this creeping conquest of our land and in every way support the military and economic might of China out of hatred for Russia. But then they will see the danger for themselves, and when the Chinese try to conquer the Urals, this time by military might, and go even further, they will by all means hinder this and will even be able to help Russia in deflecting the invasion from the East.
Russia must stand her ground in this battle; after sufferings and complete impoverishment she will find in herself the strength to recover. And the coming regeneration will begin in the lands conquered by the enemies, in the midst of Russians left in the former republics of the Union. There Russian people will realize what they have lost, will recognize themselves to be citizens of that Fatherland which is still alive..."
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Saint Seraphim (Vyritsky) of Moscow:
“When the East will get stronger, everything will become shaky. Numbers are on their side. But not only that: they have sober workers and industrious people, while there is such drunkenness with us. There will come a time when Russia will be torn into pieces. At first they will divide it, and then they will begin to steal its wealth.
The West will do everything to help the destruction of Russia and for a time will give its eastern part to China. The Far East will fall into the hands of Japan, and Siberia to the Chinese, who will begin to move into Russia, marry Russian women and in the end, by cunning and craftiness, will seize the territory of Siberia as far as the Urals. But when China will want to go further, the West will resist and will not allow it."
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Martyr-Eldress Duniushka of Siberia (†1918):
"At the far end of Russia, there will be an enormous earthquake. The waters will break out of the ocean, flooding the continent, and many nations will perish. Many diseases beyond understanding will appear. The face of the earth will change. The people will comprehend their guilt; they will come to understand how far they have departed from God and from His teachings, and then they will begin to be reborn...
In the course of one of those centuries, Asia will bestir herself; she will try to penetrate into Europe, but her attempts will be futile. No one will ever overcome 'Holy Rus', and only through her will salvation come to the world."
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St. Paisios the Athonite:
"The Mid-East will become a theater of a war in which the Russians will take part. Much blood will be spilled. The Chinese, with an army of 200 million, will cross the Euphrates and go all the way to Jerusalem."
St. Nilus the Myrrhgusher:
"All the nations of Europe will be armed against Russia. The Tsar [i.e. the Russian leader, whatever his contemporary title] will summon all his European and Asiatic peoples. The belligerents will meet in an immensely wide plain where a terrific battle will be fought and will last for eight days. The result will be a victory of the West over the Russians."
The Anonymous Prophet from Mount Athos (1053):
"Union of the six states against the seventh, Russia, and slaughter for three days. Cessation of the war by an Angel of Christ God, and handing over of the city [Constantinople] to the Greeks."
And finally both St. Seraphim of Sarov and Archbishop Anthony of Voronezh (†1846) state in almost the same words:
"Constantinople and Jerusalem will be taken by the combined forces of Russia and others. During the partition of Turkey, almost all of it will be apportioned to Russia."
Equally predictably, however, no matter how many times this fact is communicated to the non-[True] Orthodox, and no matter on how many forums, it continues to be completely ignored by them and the societies which are predominantly non-Orthodox, and even by many commentators who claim to be from a country or have obvious origins in a country, which is largely, nominally “Orthodox”.
This is noteworthy especially as, for example “The Orthodox Case for Brexit” by Vladimir (in baptism) (legally, Dr. Anthony Moss), written after the 2016 Referendum, but before the UK and Gibraltar left the EU (very illegally in my view), and a personal opinion, keeps on popping up on Academia.edu, from where I downloaded the paper below.
Having received the scholarly paper appended below by free download from Academia.edu. I really do hope that I finally get some sort of acknowledgement and actual serious reply (there have only been a handful of likes) from non-Orthodox sources as I have constantly posted comments on social media to mainstream publications but have failed to get any meaningful reply from them, despite what must be, by now, thousands of postings.
Let us hope, to repeat my earlier request, that some scholarly attention, including from the non-Orthodox, is now finally addressed to the [True] Orthodox Christian Prophecies.
The links which follow below are in the order they came up in a search “The Anonymous Prophecy of Mount Athos of 1053” (accessed in Lôgo de Deus, Eiras, Coimbra, Beira Litoral, Região de Centro, Portugal) on Google Chrome just after 8am on Saturday 11/24/2/2024/7532 in the abbreviated full [Traditional] Orthodox Christian dating system used by TRUE Orthodox Christians.
It is appropriate to insert here a copy of “The Orthodox Case for Brexit” which keeps on popping up on Academia.edu. It is the sort of paper which has earned its author, Vladimir Moss, the epithet of being “opinionated” by the likes of True Orthodox Christian priest Father Joseph Suaidan, though he has written much useful history from the point of view of his interpretation of True Orthodox History.
So, I am going to insert it and critique it below, explaining:
WHY “BREXIT” IS A “PHYLETIST” HERESY – REFUTING “THE CHRISTIAN CASE FOR BREXIT”
The first thing to note is that this paper downloaded in a “Serif” font. “Sans serif” fonts, only, are dyslexia-friendly. Vladimir Moss writes:
“ Introduction. The Kingdom of Christ is not of this world (John 18.36), and it is in general not wise for a Christian to become involved in the dirtiest aspect of the modern world – politics.”
Not so, we must aim to do our best to make sure that God´s will is carried out “on earth as it is in heaven” even in the face of opposition. Politics is a way of getting this done, generally much preferable to the alternatives of “anarchy” and “war”. Though Clausewitz may well have had a good point when he said, famously, that “War is an extension of politics by other means”, war is very much to be avoided because of its costs, most of the time, and the onus is on those who propagate it, to justify abandoning normal politics.
As Vladimir Moss has written in his own histories, there are a number of instances (e.g. the Prince-Bishops of Montenegro) where even Orthodox clerics have assumed political leadership positions.
The more Christians fail to be involved in politics, the more we will tend to lose by default, in those situations in which God does not directly overrule our opponents.”
Even Moss has to admit:
“Nevertheless, there are moments when politics impinges on the faith and spiritual life, whether we like it or not (usually not). Such a moment was the Russian revolution of 1917, when the failure of the Christian people to defend their most Christian emperor against his anti-Christian political opponents led to a catastrophe of enormous proportions that has yet to play itself out to the end.”
That is certainly true enough. Moss then goes on to assert:
“Another such moment is today’s crisis in Britain and Europe, when the British people’s decision to leave the European Union is clearly going to have major political and economic consequences around the world.”
This is false. The “British people” did NOT decide to leave the European Union. The Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland decided that the UK and its overseas territory “the British Crown Colony of Gibraltar” would try to leave the European Union. They attempted to do so through the use of the royal prerogative. This was overruled by the UK Supreme Court in a majority decision, requiring them to pass an Act of Parliament to leave under the terms of Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon. This requires two years notice, minimum to be given. It was subsequently ruled that this could be extended, as it was a number of times. Thus, it was the UK Parliament which decided to leave, exercising its “Parliamentary Sovereignty”. In Switzerland the Swiss electorate (who consist entirely of its own citizens at Federal, Confederation of Helvetia level) is deemed to be “sovereign” because since 1874 the electorate has been able to force out a binding referendum if there are enough signatories on a petition. There are also referenda required to pass the budget each year with amendments allowed. Defeats for the Federal Government are rare as normally acceptable amendments to the majority of the petitioners are passed, and there have been less than a dozen defeats for the Federal Government since that time. However, they have been extremely important. For example, Proportional Representation for Swiss Federal elections was the result of the Federal Government being defeated in a Referendum which had been forced out under this petitions procedure. The Swiss Radical Party has been in power since 1848 at Federal level. It merely formed a coalition in 1918 and has steadily expanded the number of parties in the coalition, as required to maintain a Governing majority, ever since. Switzerland voted against joining the European Union, quite narrowly, negotiating a series of accords with it instead which have resulted in almost complete freedom of movement between Switzerland and the EU, which it also has with the other European Free Trade Area (EFTA) countries. Unlike the other EFTA states and the EU member states, Switzerland is not a member of the European Economic Area (EEA). I say almost complete freedom of movement because in 2015 Switzerland very narrowly rejected freedom of movement with them in a binding referendum. This resulted in Switzerland being immediately suspended from some EU programs it was a participant in. Opinion polls suggest that Switzerland is happy with these arrangements, with support for joining the EU having now declined, in opinion polls, to as low as 7%. The majority of the Swiss electorate really can decide things in Switzerland, unlike in the UK (let alone in Gibraltar)
The UK “Conservative and Unionist Party” (an oxymoron if ever there was one) won a majority of the seats in the 2015 General Election on a minority of the votes cast. No party has ever won a majority of the votes cast since 1935. Even in 1935 only 39.115% of the electorate voted for the winning party. Unlike Belgium and Australia, voting is not compulsory for the electorate of the United Kingdom.
One of the election manifesto promises of the Conservative and Unionist Party was to get rid of the 15 year time limit on those voting who are resident abroad. Another was to hold a referendum on continued membership of the European Union by December 31st 2017. The first policy was copied from a long-standing Liberal Democrat policy which it had inherited from the parties which had merged to form the (Social and) Liberal Democrats in 1988, namely the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Liberal Party, which, however, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government of 2010-2015 had not enacted.
Naturally enough, UK citizens who had been resident outside of the UK and Gibraltar for more than 15 years were keen to have a vote in the promised referendum on EU membership, especially if they were resident in one of the EU and EFTA countries with which UK citizens enjoyed freedom of movement as EU citizens. There was widespread outrage when they were not given a vote in a referendum which affected them and their status MORE THAN ANYBODY ELSE. Legal challenges to this denial failed in the UK courts and the Referendum was also held in an unrequired hurry, being held on 23rd June 2016. The number of people who were denied the vote in this manner ran into the millions, and greatly outstripped the narrow 51.89% to 48.11% vote in favour of Leave. Only about 37% of the reduced electorate because of this, actually voted to Leave.
As if that were not enough, those who got to vote were simply the UK and Gibraltar electorates. This means that Commonwealth and Irish citizens got to vote in this referendum, which anyway was consultative not binding, whilst millions of UK citizens did not get to vote. Only now, in 2024, has the extension of the vote to all UK citizens over the age of 18, come into effect, with two subsequent General Elections, in 2017 and 2019, having taken place, both won by the Conservatives, in the meantime.
So, there has been no such thing as “the British people’s decision to leave the European Union”. Moss´s claim is demonstrably false as has been shown above.
“But what appears to have been overlooked is that it may well have major long-term spiritual consequences”, Moss maintains. Actually, there has been considerable discussion of “Brexit” in spiritual terms, amongst many faith communities, and recognition that it does have spiritual consequences, not least in making it harder for clergy and laity to migrate. So, this “too” is false. Sadly, however, despite many attempts, the (largely True) Orthodox Christian fully prophecy-believing complete symphonic perspective (with a minimization of theologoumena) incorporating other perspectives to the extent that they are in harmony with this overarching truth and rejecting them to the extent that they are incompatible with this overarching truth (LTOCFPB), has continued to be ignored by mainstream and alternative secular and spiritual media despite being the only completely accurate perspective, despite this author alone having made hundreds of comments on social media, a number of blog publications, written many emails and advanced, on a serious basis, as the Rejoin EU Party Iberia Coordinator, this position. This has not, however, been ignored within Orthodox Prophecy circles, including on directly relevant Orthodox Prophecy Facebook Groups. One should not be surprised at this, because after all “Those who will not accept the Truth will be sent the Spirit of Extreme Delusion” [Emphasis added]. LTOCFB remains the approach here.
Moss goes on to say:
“We sometimes forget that while Christ’s Kingdom, the inner Kingdom of Grace, is not of this world, He most certainly has complete power also over the kingdoms of this world. As He said to Pilate before His crucifixion: “You would have no power at all against Me if it had not been given you from above” (John 19.11). And as He said after His Resurrection and just before His Ascension into heaven: “All power hath been given unto Me in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28.18). All power means just that: power over both angels and men, both believers and unbelievers, both souls and bodies. Jesus Christ is the supreme King of kings and Lord of lords, “the prince of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1.5): there is nothing created that is not ruled by Him.”
Well, you may “sometimes forget” the above, but I am not part of your “we”. I never, ever forget it. That´s why I have been consistently politically active, including in political parties as an active member.
He then goes on to claim:
“What we also tend to forget is that today there are no rulers or nations today that can be called Christian even in the broadest sense of that word.”
While it would be true to claim that, perhaps, there are none “in the broadest sense of that word.”, it is certainly not so “in the broadest sense of that word”. This is blatantly false.
There are many countries which are officially “Christian”. A handful of these still ban abortion and do not recognize “same sex marriage”. Guatemala comes immediately to mind. Malta, an EU member state, is under no pressure to abandon its ban. Both of these are officially “Roman Catholic” states, and thus can´t be called (True (Orthodox) Christian in the narrowest sense of the word, but must be called “Christian [even] in the broadest sense of the word”. The EU officially confirmed the autonomy of member states in such matters in referenda held for Treaty ratification in the Irish Republic some years ago.
In fact, the spiritual state of the UK and Gibraltar after the referendum result of 23rd June 2016 recommending leaving the EU was, if anything, very much like that of Russia when the Tsar fell in 1917 – the ugly unleashing of demons. In Russia demonic attacks were immediately reported on a large scale. In the case of the UK and Gibraltar extremist pro-Leave violence had already erupted during the campaign, inspiring one man directly to murder pro-Remain Labour MP Jo Cox during the Referendum campaign itself. This forced the suspension of Referendum campaigns for a day. Whilst it can´t be said that all those who supported the Leave campaigns were racist, it has been a bit of a truism that practically all racists have always opposed EU membership and freedom of movement as they want to limit and even totally prevent (in some cases) non-British/non-English/non-white/non- “WASP” (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) immigration into the UK/Great Britain/England as the case may be. This is the phyletism explicitly condemned by a council of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the 1870s. Marking this there was a significant increase in racist attacks after the referendum had been called, during the referendum campaign itself, and after the referendum result.
These phyletist demons have continued to infect “Christianity” in both the broadest, and the narrowest, of senses. They have infected Dr. Moss, who otherwise qualifies as a Christian even in the narrowest of senses. They have not, however, resulted in the True Orthodox Christian bishop Dr. Moss is under, explicitly declaring in favour of Brexit. All True Orthodox Christians are deemed to hold the confession of their bishop. If they can´t agree with his confession, then they must leave. The irrational, ill-thought out incoherence of Dr. Moss clearly shows his phyletism.
Unsurprisingly his argument then continues to fall apart:
“Of course, there are individual politicians who call themselves Christian; there are even parties that call themselves Christian, like the Christian Democrats of Germany or Greece.” These are, by definition “Christian [even] in the broadest sense”. We must remember that, as St. John of Damascus pointed out, Islam is a “heresy, if a very strange one”. So, in his “broadest sense” that makes Moslem Governments “Christian”. And, this has been reflected in some such Governments opposing abortion and forcing votes on it at the United Nations. Though heavily defeated, this shows that there are still some Governments which aren´t entirely anti-Christian in “the broadest sense” or even, in some respects “in the narrowest sense” in all their policies.
Dr Moss goes on to assert
“But all governments – all without exception – are now anti-christian in their dominant tendencies; for all are engaged in implementing, to a greater or lesser degree, the anti-christian programme of what we loosely but conveniently call the New World Order.”
In fact, this programme, on abortion and other matters, has not been implemented by quite a number of states to the extent that it conflicts with the views of their Governments. This was very noticeable under, to give two obvious examples, Trump and Bolsonaro, with their somewhat successful opposition to abortion and open endorsement of “Christianity in the broadest sense”, without which they could never have been elected. Governments themselves, let alone their Parliaments, are often very divided and constrained as to what they can implement. In the “narrowest sense” of “Christianity” (which is an exonym) “True Orthodox Christianity” (composed of two endonyms and one exonym, the phrase as a whole being an endonym), governments still exist at individual, household, charitable, monastic, parish, diocesan, and Synodical levels, which remain legal and dominant within their respective spheres in many instances and in many places, though not all. Again, what Dr. Moss contends is not correct. He is seeing what he wants to see, and has far too much of a tendency to believe much of the similarly opinionated (to himself) inaccurate reporting of the far-right Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph and fails to take a balanced view, dismissing without examination, the erudite political analysis of Professor Noam Chomsky as “leftist”. The “Royal Path” of the Truth is down the middle, not deviating to either “the left” or “the right”.
He then goes on to state:
“Some would argue that Russia, for example, is an exception to this rule, in that it openly condemns “Eurosodom” and the godlessness of the West.”
This is indeed correct He goes on to say: “But, anyone even slightly acquainted with the reality of contemporary Russia knows that this is a sham and the grossest hypocrisy: Russia has all the vices of the West, while proudly and impenitently claiming to be the successor of the most evil and anti-christian state in world history – the Soviet Union. Almost all other “Orthodox Christian” countries belong now to the EU – and make no attempt to modify or fight against its “Eurosodomite” tendencies and laws. “
The Soviet Union was certainly one “of the most evil and anti-christian” states “in world history”. However, its evil was surpassed by some of the states it installed which had little or no indigenous (True) (Orthodox) Christian tradition to resist them. Cambodia, North Korea and Albania all come into these categories.
Does this mean that the Lord, while holding all power in His hands, has judged that the world is not worthy of salvation, and that the Antichrist is just round the corner? This would be a natural conclusion to draw from the present, absolutely catastrophic spiritual condition of the world. However, it would be unwise to conclude that the Lord has abandoned His people. Apart from anything else, we must remember that there are still several prophecies to be fulfilled before the Coming of the Antichrist – including the small matter of World War Three. In any case, the Lord is acting in and through international politics – if only we had eyes to see it…
The purpose of this article is to show how the Lord may be accomplishing His own holy purpose through the political crisis created by Brexit…
How it All Began. The distinguished journalist Simon Heffer writes: “A senior Ukip figure told me that it wasn’t Mr. Cameron’s pitiful and failed renegotiation [of the relationship between Britain and the EU] that drove Conservatives into the Farage camp, it was his determination to put same-sex marriage on the statute book.” Because of this determination to put same-sex marriage on the statute book, Cameron was facing a massive loss of support from ordinary Conservatives, especially those living in “the Shires”. So he offered them a quid pro quo: in partial compensation for his pushing through same-sex legislation, he offered them a referendum on Europe (many Conservatives who oppose same-sex marriage also oppose the European Union), over-confidently believing - and promising to his European colleagues - that the country as a whole would never vote to leave Europe.
But he miscalculated: not only most Conservatives, but also large numbers of Labour supporters voted to leave the EU, the Brexiteers won the vote – and Cameron resigned… This, as Jeremy Paxman notes, was probably the worst mistake of any British Prime Minister since the invasion of Suez in 1956 . But, as I shall try to demonstrate, it was a providential mistake, creating a causal link between Cameron’s shameful anti-Christian decision and not only Britain’s departure from the European Union but also something much more important – the possible collapse of the entire anti-christian civilization of the West.
And if this seems extreme, let us listen to the words of EU President Donald Tusk, who goes so far as to say that Brexit could spell the end of “western political civilization itself.” But how could that be? How could the friendly (or at any rate, non-violent) separation of one middle-sized country from the EU threaten the collapse of “western political civilization itself”?
In order to answer this question, we have to know a little about how the EU was formed. At the beginning, the European Project could hardly be described as tyrannical. It began in 1950 with the foundation of the European Coal and Steel Community, which created a supra-national organization that controlled the coal and steel industries of France and Germany on a mutually beneficial basis. In itself, the organization was neither big, powerful, nor obviously sinister: on the contrary, the fact that two countries that had been at war with each other so recently were now creating such symbols of mutual trust was plausibly seen as a good sign. But “mighty oaks from acorns do grow”; and the European Coal and Steel Community, which constituted a mini-model of the future EU (it even contained its own Court of Justice), was destined to grow into something much bigger and definitely sinister.
In 1957 the Treaty of Rome creating the European Economic Community (EEC) was signed. Describing it as an “economic” community was accurate insofar as its main activity at this time was economic; essentially it was a cartel, facilitating trade among the member-states while making it more difficult for non-members to trade with the EEC. Nevertheless, the leading Eurocrats were unanimous that economic unity would be followed by political union. When Britain voted to join the EEC (later the EU) in 1973, this political aspect was carefully hidden from the voting public by the Prime Minister, Edward Heath; some figures on the Right, such as Enoch Powell, and on the Left, such as Tony Benn, protested and warned, but they were ignored. Soon their warnings were being fulfilled: the Single European Act of 1985, the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, the establishment of the single currency of the euro (to which Britain secured an opt-out) in 1999 and the Lisbon Treaty of 2007 progressively stripped the member-nations of their veto powers; the unelected Commission became progressively more powerful, while the European Court of Justice, and European legislation in general, took precedence over the laws of the individual states.
Soviet President Michael Gorbachev joked that the EU was “the old Soviet Union dressed in Western clothes” or “the new prison of the peoples”. But it was no joke to the British… For over half a century British politics has been racked by huge turmoil over this question. Thus in the early decades the Conservative Party was pro-EU and the Labour Party – anti-EU. Later the roles were reversed: the Conservative Party was anti-EU and the Labour Party – pro-EU. Finally, in the referendum campaign of 2016 both main parties proclaimed their loyalty to the EU. But the British people said: “a plague on both your houses!” and voted against both parties to leave the EU…
Let us now approach the question in a little more detail, and from three different directions: economic, political and spiritual.
I. Economics. The European Union is part of the New World Order, and the essential point about the economic aspect of the New World Order, which was made many years ago by Bishop Gregory Grabbe, is its fragility. In spite of its massive external appearance, and the astonishing growth in prosperity that has taken place all round the world for several decades now, a downturn in one part of the system can threaten the downfall of the whole. This is owing to the extreme interconnectedness of its parts, and also to the fact that almost all countries are massively in debt – a debt so unprecedentedly vast and so difficult to reduce, let alone remit completely, that, in the opinion of many, a world slump on the scale of the 1930s Depression is only a matter of time. Already the banking crisis of 2007-08 very nearly brought the whole world economy to its knees. The Greek crisis of recent years has threatened something similar - the mainly French and German banks that have been over-exposed to Greece have survived (so far) only thanks to the enforced impoverishment and effective economic enslavement of the Greeks. Still more recently, the Italian banks have looked on the edge of crashing… In the opinion of most economists and bankers, another disturbance in trading relations such as Brexit represents could also bring disaster. Hence the extreme volatility of exchange rates and stock markets in the first few days after the Brexit referendum. Some distinguished economists (Patrick Minver, Roger Bootle) have been sanguine about Britain’s prospects: after some initial turmoil, they think that Britain’s economy, freed from the European cartel system, will be able to expand its trading links and prosper even more than before. But that, of course, is on the assumption that the world economic system as a whole does not collapse…
Now this might seem like a powerful argument against Brexit: “Don’t rock the already unstable boat!” But this fails to take into account another important aspect of the world economic system – its unpredictability. Every purchase, or decision not to purchase, has consequences for the whole system and for the long-term. The problem is: we don’t know what they will be… In meteorology, according to “chaos theory”, even the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings could cause a hurricane in some other part of the world – or drive it away. More likely it will have no discernible effect. But the point is that tiny causes can have huge effects. It is only recently that we have learned that large events such as volcanoes can have huge effects on the weather for many years. The problem is: we understand these effects only in hindsight; we are still a long way from predicting them in advance… Similarly, in the vastly more complex world of human economic actors, where economic decisions are determined by a vast variety of factors, only some of which are purely rational and economic, it is impossible to predict what the long-term consequences of something like Brexit – in itself, an enormously complex change - will be. Even short-term predictions are dicey, as the spectacular failures of most recent economic forecasting (for example, in relation to the disastrous effects of the introduction of the euro) has demonstrated. Of course, one has to do the best one can according to the knowledge one has. But the mind-boggling complexities mentioned above should fill decision-makers with a little more humility than they currently display. Brexit may destabilize the world economic system. On the other hand, it may do the opposite; it may begin the process of removing one of the main distorting and destabilizing factors in the world economy – the economic cartel that is the European Union.
Consider one small fact: Indonesia is inhibited from exporting cocoa beans to Europe because of the prohibitively high tariffs that the European cartel sets up. This is the flip-side of the free market inside Europe: an unfree, tariff-protected market for poor countries outside Europe. That is why several African countries, frustrated by European protectionism, have welcomed Brexit… Or consider another serious distorting factor: the fact that poor countries inside the Union cannot devalue their currencies in order to make themselves more competitive with the richer countries, because they are all tied in to the single currency of the euro. Hence the terrible economic devastation that we see in Greece today – with all the still more terrible consequences that may have for the survival of Orthodox Christian civilization. Nor can the Greeks pay off their enormous debts to the French and German banks because the Eurocrats are demanding that they sell off – at rock-bottom prices – those very economic assets that would enable them to pay off their debts. Even the IMF agrees that this is a crazy policy. (We are not denying that the Greeks’ economic profligacy in earlier decades is partly to blame for their present plight, but the fact remains that the European economic system, dominated by Germany, has made that plight much worse.)
The European Union today is the worst-performing economic continent in the world – except Antarctica; it has 50,000 bureaucrats on huge salaries and gold-plated pensions, and is almost mythically corrupt (10% of its income disappears God only knows where, and auditors have refused to sign off on it for the last 19 years). For years, British eurosceptics and others have been warning, cajoling, pleading – with no effect. As Nigel Farage said in the European parliament this week, the Europeans are “in denial” – in denial of the failure of their utopian, neo-Marxian project.
How can the British be blamed for trying to free themselves from their economic chains – and thereby help other European countries to free themselves also? The jury is out on whether they will succeed; there is no question that it will be difficult, especially since the European elites, the health of whose bank balances depends on the present system, have already indicated that they are not going to make things easy for them. But nobody can say for certain that they will not succeed: only God knows the future…
II. Politics. We have mentioned that EU President Donald Tusk has said that Brexit could spell the end of “western political civilization itself.” Political, not economic civilization. And he is right: the heart of the debate is not about economics, but about politics. As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes: “Stripped of distractions, [the referendum] comes down to an elemental choice: whether to restore the full self-government of this nation, or to continue living under a higher supranational regime, ruled by a European Council that we do not elect in any meaningful sense, and that the British people can never remove, even when it persists in error.
“… We are deciding whether to be guided by a Commission with quasi-executive powers that operates more like the priesthood of the 13th Century papacy than a modern civil service; and whether to submit to a European Court of Justice (ECJ) that claims sweeping supremacy, with no right of appeal.”
As Nigel Farage, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party, put it, the referendum was about “getting our country back”.
This is a completely understandable motive – but one that the European elites completely fail to understand. The reason is clear: the New World Order, of which the European Union is a part, has placed the destruction of national sovereignty as one of its main goals. On the excuse that nationalism leads to war, the denationalized Euro elites shout: Cartago delenda est – the nation-state with all its local patriotisms and loyalties and attachments must be destroyed.
And they are very, very passionate about it – almost as passionate as to start a war over it. Thus the President of Goldman Sachs has declared that Brexit must be overturned “in one way or another” – a somewhat sinister threat. Again, Tony Blair has “demanded” a new referendum, and already 2-3 million signatures on a petition for a new referendum (including 77,000 forgeries) have been created. So much for democracy… But then the EU was never a democratic project…
The journalist Sarah Vine, the wife of Michael Gove, one of the leading Brexit politicians, has described her experience: “The referendum was always going to be a close call. One side was always going to be disappointed. What I had not anticipated, though, was quite how bitterly.
“The way Remain campaigners have reacted to being unexpectedly on the losing side has shocked even a Twitter-hardened old hack like me.
“I think it’s because many of the most passionate Remainers are well-educated, articulate people in positions of authority, used to getting their own way.
“Unlike your average troll, they don’t rely on blunt invective to wound their opponents. Their anger takes the form of keenly worded, rapier-sharp attacks that cut deep.
“Almost overnight, those of us on the winning side suddenly found ourselves re-cast as knuckle-dragging thugs, small-minded Little Englanders whose shortsighted bigotry had brought the nation to its knees, while making sweet Italian waitresses cry and stopping small Polish children from going to school…”
We can go a little deeper into the cause of the anti-Brexiteers’ violent passion. Paradoxically, it is a kind of nationalism. For the country of these people, even if they are English by birth and education, is in fact not England but the supra-nation of Europe. Like the socialists who place the unity of the workers of all nations above their own nation, they scorn their birthplace – “Little England” is decidedly not their country. They are true cosmopolitans, “citizens of the world”; but until a world government comes into being they have to be content with the smaller world of the European Union…
This illustrates an important principle of political psychology: that everyone needs a political home of some kind, a home nation with which they can identify. This need is as ineluctable as sex or food; it cannot be eradicated. And there is nothing wrong with it if two opposing perversions can be avoided. The first is the murderous nationalism of the last two centuries that pits nation against nation in a war to the death; in its most extreme form this is Fascism. The other is the desire to destroy all the local attachments, traditions and patriotisms that have been built up over centuries in favour of an atomized, deracinated conglomerate of all the peoples of the earth; in its most extreme form this is Communism.
Post-war European democracy was supposed to be a blessed “third way” avoiding both these extremes. And it must be admitted that it had some success for a few decades. But there was a worm in the apple: the socialism of the EU’s real godfather, Jean Monnet, a protégé of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt – the real founder of the United Nations and admirer of “Uncle Joe” Stalin. And so the Treaty of Rome in 1957 prescribed “ever-closer union” between the member-states of the new Union. Since the EU is governed by an unelected bureaucracy that appoints itself and cannot be removed by the people, this is a recipe for despotism…
Indeed, as that distinguished veteran of the Soviet Gulag living in England, Vladimir Bukovsky, has pointed out, there are many remarkable similarities between the European Union and the Soviet Union; the former is a (so far) softer, more sophisticated, “up-market” version of the latter, but its despotic essence is the same. He sees only one major difference between the two: the Soviet Union was built up by force, while the European Union has grown peacefully. But, he warns, it has other methods of coercion, and its own kind of Gulag – the ever-growing mental Gulag of political correctness, which increasingly forces dissidents, patriots and traditionalists of all kinds to keep their mouths shut...
Another important political issue, but one little discussed in the campaign, is a proposed European army of which all the national armies will be parts. This is, of course, a direct threat to the viability of NATO, since it will draw scarce resources away from it. Putin must like the idea enormously…
“America,” writes Evans-Pritchard, “had second thoughts about the EU once the ideological fanatics gained ascendancy in the late 1980s, recasting the union as a rival superpower with ambitions to challenge and surpass the US.
“John Kornblum, the State Department's chief of European affairs in the 1990s, says it was a nightmare trying deal with Brussels. ‘I ended up totally frustrated. In the areas of military, security and defence, it is totally dysfunctional.’
“Mr Kornblum argues that the EU ‘left NATO psychologically’ when it tried to set up its own military command structure, and did so with its usual posturing and incompetence. ‘Both Britain and the West would be in much better shape if Britain was not in the EU,’ he said.”
But the most important political issue, closely connected with that of sovereignty and independence, is immigration. Stephen Glover writes that large parts of working-class England voted for Brexit because “they feel let down by successive governments which have allowed mass immigration to run out of control, with consequent pressure on public services such as schools and hospitals, a downward effect on wages and, in some cases, the transformation of communities.” Moreover, control of that flow was impossible as long as Britain was in the European Union and subscribed to its principle of free movement across the continent. Now a country that cannot control its own borders is not really an independent, sovereign state. Therefore recovery of control of Britain’s borders is felt to be both a condition and a criterion of the recovery of British sovereignty.
III. Religion. There was a quasi-religious motivation for the original decision under Tony Blair’s Labour government to open the doors to mass immigration. “According to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair and Jack Straw, New Labour threw open Britain’s borders to mass immigration to help socially engineer a ‘truly multi-cultural country’.” But “multiculturalism” is a code-word for the destruction of the old “mono-culture”, i.e. Christianity; in religious language it is called “ecumenism”, the new and enormously powerful religion of the contemporary West.
It works in the following way: the Christians are outnumbered and – out of fear of being accused of “racism” or “hate-crimes”, which now go with prison sentences – coerced into a demoralizing acceptance of the immigrant cultures. The only problem with this plan is that if the new immigrants are mainly Muslim, they create a new “mono-culture”. And this is itself the enemy of all other cultures, including the multiculturism of the European elites…
A few years ago Angela Merkel declared that “multiculturism” had failed – which was true. But in 2015, on her own initiative tearing up the Dublin agreement, she reversed course, throwing the gates of Europe open to a Muslim invasion. Most commentators accept that this was a disastrous mistake; it may well destroy the EU – if Putin does not destroy it first…
It is above all through multiculturism and ecumenism that the European Tower of Babel is being constructed… But God destroyed the original Tower of Babel – and through Brexit He may be withdrawing the first brick from the unholy building of the new, twenty-first century Babylon. For the European Union is a fundamentally atheist and anti-theist project that refused – in spite of the Pope’s pleading - to put the word “God” in its constitution.
Let us see how this is so by comparing the ancient and modern Babylons.
The State religion of Babylon under her first king, Nimrod, was a mixture of nature-worship and ancestor-worship. Thus, on the one hand, the Babylonians worshipped the stars and planets, and practised astrology as a means of discovering the will of the gods. "They believed," writes Ninian Smart, "that they could predict not merely by earthly methods of divination, but also by a study of the stars and of planets and the moon". One of the purposes of the temples or towers or ziggurats, whose remains can still be seen in the Iraqi desert, may have been as platforms from which to observe the signs of the zodiac. According to Herodotus, at the top of the Tower was a 23.5-ton statue to Marduk and representations of the signs of the Zodiac.
On the other hand, the chief god, Marduk or Merodach, “brightness of the day”, seems to have been identified with Nimrod himself. We know, moreover, that the later kings of Babylon were also identified with the god Marduk. This is ancestor-worship. It was probably Nimrod who invented both nature- and ancestor-worship. First he rose to power as a hunter or leader in war; he is described in the Holy Scriptures as “a mighty hunter before the Lord” (Genesis 10.9). Then he consolidated his power by giving himself divine honours.
By imposing false religion in this way he led men away from God, which earned him the title given him by the Jerusalem Targum of “hunter of the sons of men”. For he said: “Depart from the judgement of the Lord, and adhere to the judgement of Nimrod!” According to Blessed Jerome, “Nimrod was the first to seize despotic rule over the people, which men were not yet accustomed to”.
“Nimrod” means "let us rebel", and "it was Nimrod,” according to Josephus, “who excited them to… contempt of God; he was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means that they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage that procured their happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other method of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his own power.
“Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners [in the Flood]; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion...”
The modern Babylon of the New World Order shows a clear kinship with the old Babylon. Of course, the modern Babylonians do not practise astrology - at least, not officially; and officially they are very tolerant of all religions. But they do worship matter as the cause of all being, and they show an inordinate interest in outer space and cosmology (the modern equivalent of astrology, and hardly less deluded). There is even a popular theory that life came to earth from outer space; hence the exorbitant excitement when water was found on a comet. The existence of God is not denied, but they do not “do God”, as the expression goes – and, much to the Pope’s exasperation, there is no mention of God in the European constitution.
Nor do God’s commandments have any part in the morality of the New World Order as expressed in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the European Convention on Human Rights (1950). Liberal Christians have a tendency to view human rights as a kind of secular version of the New Testament commandments. Nothing could be further from the truth: the philosophy of human rights is designed to replace and utterly destroy Christian morality; it is a Nimrodian act of defiant rebellion against the living God.
This is most clearly seen in its sexual anti-morality. Under the rainbow-coloured banner of “the LGBT community”, every kind of sexual activity, even the most perverse, is not only permitted, but even “celebrated” as if it were something to be proud of. The only restriction is that the perverse sex should be undertaken between consenting adults. But who knows how long it will be before even paedophilia will be generally permitted?
The family, the foundation of every state, and the chief object of its care and protection, is being deliberately and ruthlessly destroyed on the grounds, as the cultural Marxists put it, that it is an out-of-date, patriarchal, repressive institution. And so, just as the Tower of Babel was followed, in the Biblical narrative, by Sodom and Gomorrah, so the modern Babylon, the New World Order, is proceeding to new heights – or depths - of universal licence…
Conclusion. We know what happened to the Tower of Babel, and we know what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. Therefore the only rational response of the Christian who wishes to save his soul as well as his body is to flee – flee from the whore of Babylon, flee from the burning heat of Sodom. “Come out of her, My people, lest you share in her sins, and receive of her plagues” (Revelation 18.4).
But what relevance has Brexit to this? In what way could Brexit help us to flee the modern Babylon, seeing that even its most fervent supporters want it for economic and political, not spiritual, reasons? And how could Britain lead the way in exiting the universal Sodom when she was a founding member of the New World Order, and one of its most enthusiastic advocates?
For spiritual leadership, it must be admitted, we cannot look to Britain; that light can only come from the east, from the Orthodox Christian countries – especially from Russia after she has made her “Russexit” from the final phase of the Russian revolution that Putin’s regime represents. But any rebellion against the New World Order, even if it is inchoate, disorganized, not knowing where it is going or what the ultimate issues are – is to be welcomed. For one thing can lead to another: having asserted her independence in the political field, the British may be encouraged – and encourage others – to think more independently, and then to think more deeply.
Let us recall that Nimrod “gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other method of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his own power”. This exactly reflects the reality of the modern European Babylon. As we have seen, the progression to the present 28-nation supranational Union has been gradual, and only a few saw that the original economic free-trade area was turning into a tyranny. Now almost every aspect of political and economic and religious life in the member-states is dependent on the power of the European Commission, which constantly issues “directives” to them – some trivial (like the correct shape of cucumbers), but others very far from trivial (like enforcing the supposed rights of multiculturists and sexual perverts).
Now one cannot see the good before one has departed, at any rate to a small degree, from the evil; as the prophet-king David says: “Depart from evil and do good” (Psalm 36.27). We must hope that the British, having departed from the smaller, political evil they can already see, will have their eyes opened to see the greater, religious evil that they do not yet see. The first step is to destroy their “constant dependence on his [the NWO’s] power”: this they have begun to do through the Brexit vote. Now they have to hold on to that sliver of independence against the ferocious backlash which will begin – indeed, it has already begun – from the NWO. If they win this defensive battle – and the British, as their history demonstrates, are well suited to defensive warfare by their individualistic, stubborn, rebellious nature – then, if God wills it, their hearts will be gradually opened to the fear of God and they will return in willing and conscious subjection to the one “Ruler over the princes of the earth,.. Who loved us and washed from our sins in His own blood” (Revelation 1.5), the Lord Jesus Christ…
June 19 / July 2, 2016; revised June 22 / July 5, 2016.
St. Alban, Protomartyr of the British Isles.
BREXIT, DEMOCRACY AND THE ANTICHRIST
British commentators are describing the failure of the British parliament to fulfill the will of the people and take Britain out of the European Union as a failure of democracy that even portends the collapse of democracy itself. Whether or not democracy will fall is difficult to say. What we can say with more certainty is that the Brexit process has revealed the internal contradictions of democracy as nothing else.
This is indeed a remarkable, perhaps unprecedented, situation. On June 23, 2016, in the largest democratic vote in its history, the British people voted by a narrow but decisive majority (52% to 48%) that their country should leave the European Union. Then, in 2017, both of the major parties formally committed themselves in their manifestos to implementing this decision, and then voted overwhelmingly that the date of Brexit should be March 29, 2019. Now we are past that date, and yet Britain is still in the European Union, while every means of extracting her from Europe in an orderly manner – that is, through a legal treaty agreement with the Union – has failed to pass in parliament. The reason does not lie in the evil machinations of any actor, whether British or European. The reason lies in the fact that there is no majority for any single course of action. In other words, there is no single will of the people, neither a Rousseauist general will, nor a single proposed course of action that commands a majority in parliament. And since democracy cannot work without a majority, that means that democracy in “the mother of parliaments” has ceased to work.
Democracy is a mechanism for getting things done in a divided community that would otherwise fragment. In a monarchy the king decides, and that is the end of the matter. He may or may not be wise, and he may or may not have the agreement of the majority. In any case, the people accept his decision. In a democracy there is no king. There is an elected executive, but in major decisions the executive cannot act without the consent of the majority of elected representatives. In this Brexit process, not only has the executive failed to get a majority for its preferred course of action: parliament has failed to agree on any other course of action. There is a total impasse.
The logical course now, in the opinion of many, is to have a general election or another referendum. But in the opinion of many others, this would be undemocratic as putting the original decision, by 17.4 million people, in jeopardy. In any case, there is no guarantee that it would resolve the impasse: more votes may mean still more division and sclerosis – and more passion.
A radical solution would be the break-up of the United Kingdom, allowing, for example, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which both voted to stay in the European Union in 2016, to make their own decisions and make their own treaty with the Union, while Wales and England, which voted to leave, would similarly make their own decisions. But where would that leave London, which, unlike the rest of England, voted to remain? And would the European Union agree to negotiate with what were now in effect separate countries?
We are reminded of the Lord’s words: “A house that is divided cannot stand.” Believers in democracy claim that it is the panacea for all division, a way of resolving conflicts in a peaceful and just manner. But the present situation proves that this is not always the case. In the past, democracy failed because the people unwisely voted for a person or power bent on destroying democracy – such as the revolutionary socialists in Russia in 1917, or the national socialists in Germany in 1933. Today, as far as we can tell, there is no Lenin or Hitler waiting in the wings to take over the rule of Britain. And yet democracy has manifestly failed.
Democracy is based on a fiction: that there is such a thing as a single will of the collective organism called the people, as opposed to the many wills of many individual people. Of course, it is a useful fiction and serves a useful purpose in very many situations. But it remains a fiction, and it is important to understand why it is untrue.
Democracy is based on an aggregate of many personal wills. This aggregate changes from day to day, even from hour to hours; so there is no constant thing called “the will of the people”. Moreover, at one time certain wills are good and wise, whlle others are bad and unwise; whereas at other times the reverse may be the case . Summing up an aggregate of wills by no means guarantees that the collective pseudo-will that emerges will be good and wise. In other words, democracy is only as good as the people and the wills that make it up at any given moment.
The historian Norman Stone has expressed this important truth as follows: “Hitler’s democratic triumph exposed the true nature of democracy. Democracy has few values of its own: it is as good, or as bad, as the principles of the people who operate it. In the hands of liberal and tolerant people, it will produce a liberal and tolerant government; in the hands of cannibals, a government of cannibals. In Germany in 1933-34 it produced a Nazi government because the prevailing culture of Germany’s voters did not give priority to the exclusion of gangsters…”
In a world pushed hither and thither by the “multimutinous” wills of men (van the Terrible’s phrase), some kind of compromise must be effected if a state of permanent war is to be avoided. Democracy is such a compromise. As such, it is not to be despised by those who prefer relative peace to constant war. But it must be recognized for what it is: a convenient fiction that guarantees nothing except relative peace. It is a method of conflict resolution, not a path to wisdom, or true peace and prosperity; and even as a method of conflict resolution it has its limits, as the present impasse over Brexit has proved. When a truly momentous decision approaches, democracy shows itself to be at its weakest. For when supremely important issues are at stake, relative peace becomes less important than truth. In an obscure but definite way, the British people feel that the decision to leave the European Union is one such momentous decision. Let us briefly examine why.
*
The root difference between “Leavers” and “Remainers” is not primarily over economics, even if most of the argumentation we hear on the media is indeed about economics. The Remainers believe that Britain’s long-term economic interests lie in remaining within the very large free trading area that is the European Union, and that leaving that area, with all its privileges, would damage British business both in the short- and the long-term. The Leavers accept that there might be some short-term disruption, but that the long-term advantages of being able to conclude trading agreements with countries all round the globe as an individual trading nation and not as a member of the European cartel, outweigh the short-term losses.
But the Leavers care less about economics than about political sovereignty and national identity. They argue that Britain in the European Union is no longer a sovereign nation in that decisions passed in bodies such as the European Commission and the European Court of Justice can overrule decisions passed in the British parliament or the British courts. In other words, Britain is a vassal state whose real ruler is no longer the Queen in parliament but the (usually unelected) institutions of the European Union. This is not disputed by the Remainers, who argue that political sovereignty is an outdated concept in today’s globalized world whose problems can only be solved by global or at any rate regional “super-nations”. Moreover, there is the strong feeling among Remainers that the European Union represents modernity, and that if Britain wants to be part of the modern world and prosper in it she must integrate herself into it and not “miss the train” as it leaves the station for a radiant if indeterminate future. But Leavers see this as integration into a socialist super-power that exercises a despotic dominion over its member-states. As that notable anti-socialist Margaret Thatcher said in her famous Bruges speech in September, 1988: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.” And, as Norman Stone writes, “she said, about the tired metaphor of not taking the European train as it was leaving the station, that ‘people who get on a train like that deserve to be taken for a ride’.”
In the end, for the British citizen this argument comes down to the question: do you feel yourself to be primarily European, and only secondly British (or English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish), or primarily British? Remainers see Brexit as a threat to their European identity, while Leavers see it as reasserting their British identity. It is this question that particularly divides the generations. Older people, who were born before Britain joined the European Union (then only the European Economic Community) in 1975, grew up in an independent Britain feeling Britain, not Europe, to be their real home; whereas younger people, having been born into the European Union see it as their real homeland. As Anthony Seldon writes, this issue of “membership of the EU goes to the very heart of national identity. It is not just about what people think or where they perceive their economic interests to lie; it is about who they are.”
Since this is a matter of individual and social psychology, it is unlikely that it can be resolved by rational argument. But there is an aspect to this question that transcends both economic and political arguments, and questions of national identity and sovereignty. If Europe were a godly state from which there issued godly laws and godly people and influences, we should be glad to be part of it, as Britain was glad to be part of the Roman empire and patriarchate in the so-called “Dark Ages”. But Europe today is the gateway into the New World Order, whose creed is atheism and multicultural ecumenism (especially Islamophilia) and morality – the immorality of the LGBT rainbow, abortion on demand and the crazy world of universal human rights.
President George H.W. Bush saw European unity as the model for world unity, while the core of that unity would be the United Nations: "I see a world of open borders, open trade and, most importantly, open minds; a world that celebrates the common heritage that belongs to all the world's people.... I see a world building on the emerging new model of European unity. ... The United Nations is the place to build international support and consensus for meeting the other challenges we face.... the threats to the environment, terrorism... international drug trafficking... refugees.... We must join together in a new compact -- all of us -- to bring the United Nations into the 21st century."
“I see a world building on the emerging new model of European unity.” So global unity depends to a certain degree on European unity. Europe has a huge diversity of nations, languages, traditions and creeds from which two world wars have emerged in recent times. It follows that if unity can be attained in such a divided region, there is hope that the wider, global unity can be achieved, too. If, on the other hand, European unity fails, the march towards global unity and a single world government is also halted. Hence the great importance of the Brexit issue for Europeans and globalists.
Roger Bootle writes: “What is the point of the EU? Is it to link together countries and peoples that are ‘European’? Is it to link together countries and peoples that are geographically close together? Is it to link together countries that conduct themselves in a certain way and are prepared and able to obey EU law? Or is it simply to carry on expanding as far as it can, because bigger is better, so that the EU can be regarded as an early progenitor of global government?
“Without a clear answer to these questions, it is difficult to see why the EU should not contemplate expansion to nations that are geographically close, such as Israel or the countries of North Africa, even though they are not strictly European. (Interestingly, the remit of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) does extend into the Middle East and North Africa.) Or if the key concept is cultural, what about countries that are European in character and history but are far distant, such as Canada, Australia or New Zealand?
“This question is of exceptional importance. For if there is no clear answer to the question of how far EU membership should spread, perhaps it should be restricted to a smaller territory – or indeed, perhaps the EU should not exist at all…”
Of course, there are other issues threatening to undermine the unity of Europe. The four “Vishegrad” countries of Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary have set their minds firmly against uncontrolled migration and the undermining of their Christian civilization by Muslim immigration.
The people should be led, not followed, as God has ordained… Those who say, ‘The voice of the people is the voice of God,’ are not to be listened to, for the unruliness of the mob is always close to madness.
Deacon Alcuin of York to Charlemagne.
https://byzantineprophecy.com/2020/05/10/the-anonymous-prophecy-of-1053-ad/
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiun-a2vcOEAxWlVqQEHd_rBwcQtwJ6BAgYEAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DXKFID6X1DZI&usg=AOvVaw1p0_IMDRcZHMu3VbApMxyc&opi=89978449
https://youtu.be/XKFID6X1DZI
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiun-a2vcOEAxWlVqQEHd_rBwcQFnoECBQQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scribd.com%2Fdocument%2F117335291%2FAnonymous-Prophecy-of-1053-AD&usg=AOvVaw2Rg6WDVM-X6kpPaZvLfYb9&opi=89978449
The Scribd article now follows, illuminating the preservation and divulgation of the Prophecy in the 20th century:
Anonymous Prophecy of 1053 AD
This prophecy is contained in most Orthodox eschatological books based on the Constantinople prophecies. Not much is known about it or its origins. Archimandrite Neilos Sotiropoulos writes in his book, The Coming Two Edge Sword: “The prophecy texts preserved are found in Northern Epirus, Epirus, and western Macedonia. They were found and are located in the Holy Monastery of Naum, Ochrid. It was found in Northern Epirus by the priest-monk, Archimandrite Neophytos Kalofountis, who served there as a soldier in 1914 after the liberation of Ioannina.
“The ever-memorable lay-preacher, Demetrios Panagopoulos recorded another copy in his book, Saints and Sages Concerning What Will Happen in the Future. The text is continuous and not divided into verses or enumerated. He mentions that “it is found at the Holy Monastery Kozani.” This copy of the prophecy is obviously by an uneducated writer [i.e. not Panagopoulos, but the prophecy text he used]; it inadvertently has spelling errors and variations in a few words, though without changing the meaning. It was found written on a papyrus. At the end of the text, it bears the timeline of being written in 1503 AD, while in the caption it states 1053 AD.
“The Old Calendarist Bishop of Kalamata, Gregorios, records another copy of the prophecy text in his book, “What We and Our Children Will See.” It reports that it is found in the Holy Serbian Monastery, Kozani. The text has minimal differences from the previous in words and spelling errors without changing the meaning.
“Another text is found in a village of the prefecture of Kozani and is also written on papyrus. In 1937, a Gendarme appeared at a village house to collect tax. An old woman, the only inhabitant of the house, told him she had paid the tax. The Gendarme asked for the receipt. The old lady, not knowing letters advised him to search the chest to find it. He emptied all the documents onto the floor. He found the receipt and congratulated the old woman. He also noticed an ancient document of prophecy amongst the papers. He took it, copied it and circulated it in many copies. In 1962, a Macedonian journalist published the text of this prophecy in a pamphlet with still more annotations. A Thessalonian gave me this booklet in 1972.
“Also, the Hagiorite Monk, Nektarios Katsaros’ small booklet, “Prophecies Concerning Constantinople’s Liberation” also contains this prophecy. I bought this book in 1957 at Karyes, Mount Athos where I went and was tonsured a monk.”
Some books state that there is a copy of this prophecy at the Holy Monastery of Koutloumousiou, Mount Athos.
The Text of the Prophecy:
1. Great European war.
2. Defeat of Germany, destruction of Russia and Austria.
3. Defeat of Turks by the Greeks.
4. Strengthening of the Hagarenes by Western nations and defeat of the Greeks by the Hagar.
5. Slaughter of Orthodox peoples.
6. Great distress of Orthodox peoples.
7. Entrance of foreign armies from the Adriatic Sea. Woe to the inhabitants upon the earth; Hades is ready.
8. For a moment the Hagarene is great.
9. New European war.
10. Union of Orthodox peoples with Germany.
11. Defeat of France by the Germans.
12. Revolt of India and its separation by England.
13. England will be restricted to only Saxony.
14. Victory of the Orthodox peoples and general slaughter of the Hagarenes by the Orthodox.
15. Uneasiness of the world.
16. General despair upon the earth.
17. Battle of seven nations in Constantinople. Slaughter for three days and three nights. Victory of the greater nation against the six nations.
18. Alliance of the six nations against the seventh nation, slaughter for three days and three nights.
19. Cessation of war by an angel (of God-Christ) and handing over the City to the Greeks.
20. Submission of Latins to the infallible Orthodox Faith.
21. The Orthodox faith will be spread from the East to the West.
22. Fear and trembling of the barbarians by this.
23. Cessation of the Pope and the proclamation of one Patriarch for all of Europe.
24. In fifty-five years the end of the tribulations. On the seventh there is no one afflicted, no one exiled, returning to the arms of the rejoicing Mother (Church).
Amen. Amen. Amen.
I am the Alpha and the Omega.
The First and the Last.
Finally one shepherd and in the flock the true Orthodox Faith.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
(Slave of Christ, the True God).
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiun-a2vcOEAxWlVqQEHd_rBwcQFnoECCMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fbyzantium%2Fcomments%2Fixb53t%2Fbyzantine_prophecies%2F&usg=AOvVaw1FRJDyA95VmtZab7jku6DA&opi=89978449
http://thetruechrist.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-anonymous-prophecy-1053-ad.html
https://byzantineprophecy.com/2023/09/06/is-saint-kosmas-the-aetolian-the-author-of-the-anonymous-prophecy-of-1053-ad/
https://www.orthodoxchristianbooks.com/articles/451/is-there-a-secret-ruler-world/
https://twitter.com/AdrianWhyatt/status/1097813593112887296
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiun-a2vcOEAxWlVqQEHd_rBwcQFnoECCUQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fplaylist%3Flist%3DPL4K8X26IP6lhVOW5xkX9BX58inZfuUA6U&usg=AOvVaw3e3GUIfPmB3KcLoI86lPoK&opi=89978449
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H90YtrZdy0w&list=PL4K8X26IP6lhVOW5xkX9BX58inZfuUA6U&pp=iAQB
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiun-a2vcOEAxWlVqQEHd_rBwcQFnoECB0QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fs33939bc9149089cf.jimcontent.com%2Fdownload%2Fversion%2F1506323274%2Fmodule%2F5620048350%2Fname%2F319_APOCALYPSE_THE_BOOK_OF_THE_END.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2znGk8HZnbsxI998f7HMka&opi=89978449
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwit_73dysOEAxXbgf0HHew5Dlk4ChAWegQIBxAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2FManisFriedman%2Fposts%2F10151611857809984%2F&usg=AOvVaw0Z0S877LFlMkpjwA9errMl&opi=89978449
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwit_73dysOEAxXbgf0HHew5Dlk4ChAWegQIDRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftrueorthodoxchristianlayman.blogspot.com%2F2022%2F10%2Fthe-eminent-coming-repentance-and.html&usg=AOvVaw3Y_nffGiaDCvaETXcKqbed&opi=89978449
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwit_73dysOEAxXbgf0HHew5Dlk4ChAWegQICBAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scribd.com%2Fdoc%2F117349003%2FElder-Ephraim-of-Arizona-s-Testimony-Concerning-the-Marble-King-John&usg=AOvVaw3yvEy0kZlmJ9P2Ns3vIc5V&opi=89978449
https://youtu.be/2v3eDNgcNMs?si=YOvfg9E3q4fznVrN
(in Greek)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKFID6X1DZI
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwit_73dysOEAxXbgf0HHew5Dlk4ChAWegQIBRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cambridge.org%2Fcore%2Fbooks%2Fhistory-of-the-athonite-commonwealth%2Fpart-ii%2FC42887EA186B223005B8E960D4A315E9&usg=AOvVaw0j7qJamWyjsYc6ucq0OiHW&opi=89978449
https://www.academia.edu/25319072/THE_RESTORATION_OF_ROMANITY
Mount Athos should pray for the triumph of the Turkish armies during the war. ... An Anonymous Prophet of Mount Athos (1053). After describing the main events of ...
On page 230 of 516 (at the end of the entire publication we find that the work as a whole was compiled as follows, first published on September 18/ October 1, 2014; revised October 30 / November 12, 2014 and May 1/14, 2016.
St. Tamara, Queen of Georgia):
: 3. An Anonymous Prophet of Mount Athos (1053). After describing the main events of the early 20th century with amazing accuracy, the prophet continues: “New European War [1939-1945]. Union of Orthodox Peoples with Germany [1940]. Submission of the French to the Germans [1940]. Rebellion of the Indians and their separation from the English [1947]. England for the Saxons only…Victory of the Orthodox, defeat of the Muslims. General slaughter of the Muslims and of the barbarians by the Orthodox peoples. Anxiety of the world. General hopelessness on the earth. Battle of seven states for Constantinople and slaughter for three days. Victory of the largest state over the six. Union of the six states against the seventh, Russia, and slaughter for three days. Cessation of the war by an Angel of Christ God, and handing over of the city to the Greeks. Submission of the Latins to the unerring faith of the Orthodox. Exaltation of the Orthodox faith from the East to the West. Cessation of the Roman papacy. Declaration of one patriarch for the whole of Europe for five or fifty years. In the seventh is no wretched man; no one is banished. Returning to the arms of Mother Church rejoicing. Thus shall it be. Thus shall it be. Amen."
http://prawoslawnikatolicy.pl/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/5_THE_BOOK_OF_THE_END.pdf
This was published in 2007. We find for the Anonymous Prophecy the following on page 139 of 334: It seems reasonable to identify this eight-day battle with the two three-day battles mentioned by the anonymous Athonite prophet of 1053, which also ends in the defeat of Russia, the intervention of an angel and the resurrection of Orthodoxy: "Battle of seven states for Constantinople and slaughter for three days. Victory of the largest state over the six. Union of the six states against the seventh, Russia, and slaughter for three days. Cessation of the war by an Angel of Christ God, and handing over of the city to the Greeks. Submission of the Latins to the unerring faith of the Orthodox. Exaltation of the Orthodox faith from the East to the West. Cessation of the Roman papacy. Declaration of one patriarch for the whole of Europe for five or fifty years. In the seventh is no wretched man; no one is banished. Returning to the arms of Mother Church rejoicing. Thus shall it be. Thus shall it be. Amen."
A basic example of it in video form: https://youtu.be/XKFID6X1DZI?si=faRAW-e50cWv-7-E
https://byzantineprophecy.com
Finally I would add that we must understand everything in the light of Holy Tradition, which includes both written and unwritten tradition, linked often by the holy icons which are written, not painted or drawn.
In that respect, the fact that today is the feast of the restorer of the Holy icons for the final time, the Empress Theodora, is especially apposite:
The Righteous Empress Theodora
Commemorated on February 11
The Righteous Empress Theodora was the wife of the Greek emperor Theophilos the Iconoclast (829-842), but she did not share in the heresy of her husband and secretly she venerated holy icons. After the death of her husband, when Saint Theodora governed the realm together with her in age minor son Michael, she restored the veneration of icons, bringing back the deposed holy Patriarch Meletios and convened a Council, at which the Iconoclasts were anathematised. And by her was started the celebration of this event – the Triumph of Orthodoxy, which annually is celebrated on the 1st Sunday of Great Lent. Righteous Theodora did much for Holy Church and moreover nourished in her son Michael a firm devotion to Orthodoxy.
When Michael came of age, she was retired from governing and spent 8 years in the monastery of Saint Euphrosynia, in ascetic deeds and the reading of Divine books (a copy of the Gospels is known of, copied by her hand). She died peacefully in about the year 867.
In 1460 her relics were given off by the Turks to the people of the city of Kortsyra.
1996-2001 by translator Fr. S. Janos. Close window
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Yours sincerely and with love in Christ
Adrian Whyatt, RejoinEU Party Iberia Co-ordinator, In a Personal Capacity, and a True Orthodox Christian Layman, also in a personal capacity, Saturday 11/24/2/2024/7532, 38th Week after Pentecost. Amongst the feasts celebrated today are the following:
Hieromartyr Blaise, bishop of Sebaste (316).
St. Vsevolod (in holy baptism Gabriel), prince and wonderworker of Pskov (1138).
Venerable Demetrius, monk of Priluki (Vologda) (1392).
Venerable Cassian the Barefoot (in the world 'Kosmas'), ascetic of the Joseph-Volokolamsk Monastery (1532)
St. Theodora, wife of Emperor Theophilus the Iconoclast (867).
St. Gobnait, abbess of Ballyvourney, Cork (Ireland) (7th c.) (Celtic & British).
Venerable Caedmon of Whitby, monk (680) (Celtic & British).
Venerable George (Kratovac) the Greatmartyr of Serbia (Greek).
Hieromartyr Lucius of Adrianopolis in Thrace (348).
St. Benedict of Aniane (821) (Gaul)
Revised the following day with the insertion of the Scribd Article, which is the
Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. The Main saints and feasts commemorated today, February 12 (Old Style)(O.S.) (used by the Church for Liturgical Purposes - various miracles occur in accordance with this, such as the Miracle of the Holy Light (aka Fire)
in on Holy Saturday /25 (New Style (N.S.) - the global civil (aka Gregorian, which now has the interposition of such things as atomic seconds to take into account changes in the earth´s orbit) calendar used for planting and harvesting of crops and other activities dependent on solar time) / 2024 (Anno Domini) (AD (Year of our Lord)/ 7532 (Year From Adam and the Creation of the World) (YFA) (The Church New Year is calculated according to this calendar, occurring on September 1st (OS)/14 (NS). The difference between the Church and the civil calendar is due to increase to 14 days in March 2100.
Iveron Icon (Moscow) of the Most Holy Theotokos (9th c.).
St. Meletius, archbishop of Antioch (381).
St. Alexis, metropolitan of Moscow and wonderworker of all Russia (1378).
St. Meletius, archbishop of Kharkov (1840).
New Hieromartyr Alexius (Buy), bishop of Voronezh (1930).
New Martyr Mitrophan, archpriest (1931).
Venerable Mary, nun (who was called Marinus), and her father, St. Eugene, monk, at Alexandria (6th c.).
St. Anthony II, patriarch of Constantinople (895).
Saint Meletios of Lardos, Founder of Ypseni Monastery (19th c.).
Venerable Bassian, disciple of St. Paisius of Uglich and abbot of Ryabovsky Forest Monastery, Uglich (1509).
Callia, righteous.
Venerable Gertrude of Nijvel, abbess (659) (Neth.).
St. Ethilwald of Lindisfarne (740) (Celtic & British).
New Martyr Chrestos at Constantinople (1748) (Greek).
Martyrs Saturnius and Plotonus (Greek).
Hieromartyr Urban us, bishop of Rome (223-230).
Holy Fathers Prokhore the Georgian (11th c.), Luka (Mukhaidze) of Jerusalem (1277), Nikoloz Dvali (1314), аnd the Holy Fathers of the Georgian Monasteries in Jerusalem (Georgia).
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The Brexit Religion and the Holy Grail of the NHS
Steven Kettell
Department of Politics and International Studies
University of Warwick
s.kettell@warwick.ac.uk
Peter Kerr
Department of Political Science and International Studies University of Birmingham p.kerr@bham.ac.uk
Abstract
The role of populism in mobilising support for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union has been well noted. But a key feature of populist politics – the use of religious discourses – has been largely overlooked. This article addresses this gap by exploring the way in which the Leave campaign framed Brexit in quasi-religious and mythological terms. Three core themes are identified: (1) That the British ‘people’ had a unique role to play in global affairs. (2) That the sanctity of this special status was threatened by elites and migrants. (3) That the referendum gave voice to the sacred ‘will of the people’. These narratives were underpinned by a strategic discourse centring on claims that EU membership was exacerbating a crisis in health and social care. This myth was encapsulated by the so-called ‘Brexit bus’ campaign.
Keywords: Populism, religion, political myth, social policy, Brexit, NHS
Analysing Brexit
The UK’s 2016 referendum decision to leave the European Union (or ‘Brexit’ as it has come to be known) was arguably the country’s most disruptive political event since the Second World War. Unsurprisingly, this decision continues to be the subject of sizeable commentary and debate. Within these analyses it is widely recognised that populism played a pivotal role in mobilising support for the Leave campaign. Brexit is often seen as the result of ‘a populist mindset’ (Freeden, 2017) linked to ‘a new nationalist populism in western Europe’ (Gusterton,
2017). At the heart of such analyses is a recognition that Brexit exemplifies an era of post-truth politics (Hopkin and Rosamond, 2017) encapsulated by the promulgation of myths, fantasies and misinformation, stoking fears and false expectations amongst voters (Browning 2019; Kettell and Kerr, 2019). Many such narratives have been employed to fuel anti-immigration and anti-establishment fervour (e.g. Hobolt, 2016; Dennison and Geddes, 2018; Virdee and
McGeever, 2018).
Within this scholarship, debate exists around the balance between the ‘cultural’ and the
‘economic’ drivers of the current populist wave. For some, Brexit should be interpreted as a ‘cultural backlash’ against socially liberal values (Inglehart and Norris, 2016), or as an appeal to imperialist nostalgia (Clarke and Newman, 2017). Others view it as a reaction to the economic consequences of globalisation, neo-liberalism and austerity (Hopkin, 2017; Powell,
2017; Watson, 2018), whilst some have seen it as part of a wider backlash against ‘modernisation’ (Kerr et al, 2018). As such, Brexit provides an ideal case study for understanding the inner dynamics of populist discourse and tactics (Corbett, 2016; Ruzza and Pejovic, 2019).
One aspect that has been underexplored in these studies is the link between Brexit, populism and religion. What little research exists in this area has tended to approach the topic through the lens of religious views and voting behaviour in the referendum (e.g. Knowles, 2018; Smith and Woodhead, 2018), leaving wider questions about the constitution of religious and populist themes unaddressed. This is an unusual omission given the degree to which populist politicians around the world have openly drawn on religious tropes and motifs. Examples include the links between Donald Trump and the Christian Right in the United States (Whitehead et al, 2018), the use of Christianity as an anti-Islamic identity marker by populists in Europe (Van Kessel
2016) and the rise of Hindu nationalism in India (Wojczewski, 2019). As Arato and Cohen
(2017) note, populist rhetoric has ‘an elective affinity with certain religious ideas or tropes’
(such as apocalyptic threats, the idea of a unique people and the need for salvation) and ‘religion is now playing an important role in the new populisms’. Or, as Mao (2017) puts it: ‘One of the perplexing features of populist movements and ideologies is that, although they often unfold in a secular milieu, they have scarcely disguised religious connotations’.
In some ways this omission from the field of UK politics is an understandable one. The UK is a largely secularised society and religion exerts little overt control over public life. Nevertheless, our aim is here to show that crucial parts of the discourse surrounding Brexit were grounded in a number of quasi-religious tropes and mythical themes. The article explores these issues using a qualitative content analysis of the discourse used by prominent Brexit supporters during and after the referendum campaign. To examine this, the study compiled a dataset designed to capture the main sources of political debate and communication from Leave advocates. This dataset was centred principally on the UK’s official record of Parliamentary proceedings (Hansard), and involved more than one hundred debates, statements and questions relating to Brexit since the 2016 referendum. This corpus was supplemented by transcripts of speeches collected from the UKPOL political speech archive (www.ukpol.co.uk) and the official Vote Leave website (http://www.voteleavetakecontrol.org), as well as reports collected by a comprehensive search of the media database, LexisNexus.
To identify common discursive frames, these data were subject to a qualitative content analysis. This is defined by Hsieh and Shannon (2005: 1278) as ‘a research method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes and patterns’. Data were analysed manually, and the discursive themes were revealed as an emergent property of the text, as opposed to being theoretically derived.
In what follows we explore three core discursive strategies employed by Leave campaigners. First is the idea that the British ‘people’ have a unique political, cultural and historical role to play in global affairs. The second is that the sanctity of Britain’s special status is under threat from European elites and an influx of foreign migrants. The third is that the EU referendum gave voice to the sacred ‘will of the people’, putting the implementation of Brexit beyond question. In these respects, Brexit was presented by the Leave campaign as a necessary path towards liberation from the clutches of Brussels, enabling the British people to fulfil their historic destiny as a global free-trading nation. At the same time, whilst such narratives remained largely metaphysical in their appeal, the benefits of Brexit were given more concrete expression through the strategic use of discourses around UK social policy. This was especially the case for the ‘Holy Grail’ of British politics, the National Health Service (NHS). This was directly linked to the case for Brexit through a high-profile ‘Brexit bus’ campaign, signalling that an extra £350 million would be provided for the NHS each week if the UK voted to leave. This myth reinforced claims that public services were under siege from a combination of uncontrolled immigration and the financial cost of EU membership. As such, leaving the EU was presented as the necessary panacea for the failings of the UK’s social care system.
This analysis makes a direct contribution to studies of Brexit, as well as to the growing body of work on the relationship between religion and populism, by showing how quasi-religious and mythical themes can be used to underpin a populist discourse. The rest of the article proceeds as follows. We begin by outlining the relationship between the spheres of politics and religion, highlighting some of the ways in which populism can draw on religious themes. We then move to examine the quasi-religious tropes and discursive myths that were recruited by the Leave campaign to mobilise support for Brexit. Finally, we show how these various elements were marshalled to stoke voters’ fears and expectations around a perceived crisis in health and social care provision through the NHS ‘Brexit bus’ campaign.
Populism and (secular) religion
The realms of the ‘political’ and the ‘religious’ have been deeply connected since the earliest forms of human society. For millennia, religious and mythical elements (such as the idea that rulers represented divine will or were divine themselves) provided the organising basis and legitimacy for the social order (Bellah, 1964). Importantly, as Habermas (2011: 17) notes, this legitimising power was understood as something that stood external to society itself. Thus: ‘“Religion” owes its legitimizing force to the fact that it has its own roots, independently of politics’. During the last millennium, however, this relationship has experienced a fundamental transformation. The onset of functional differentiation, the autonomisation of social spheres and the secularisation of state authority from the eighteenth century led to the increasing privatisation and decline of religion and to the loss of an external anchor for political legitimacy. This disappearance of society’s ‘metasocial character’ (ibid. 21) led to the development of new bases for social order and legitimacy in which the socially integrative role of religion was supplanted by secular concepts such as ‘the nation’, ‘sovereignty’ and ‘the people’. Importantly, however, these concepts represented secular forms of ideas that were initially framed in theological terms, famously described by Schmitt (2005) as ‘political theological concepts’. As Chibundu (2006) explains, the notion of sovereignty is a concept ‘as mystical and based on religious faith as are the notions of trinity and arianism’.
Thus, even under conditions of secularisation the organising principles and legitimising bases of political institutions ‘are founded in never fully accessible metanormative structures — deep-seated, unconscious assumptions that without being normative themselves determine the meaning of truth, justice, law within a socio-political order as a whole’ (Arato, 2013). The boundaries between the secular and the religious spheres are often blurred, such that certain aspects of religion can be co-opted by the secular. Mavelli (2019) illustrates this with the rise of neoliberalism, a system requiring ‘faith’ in the efficacy of the free market that has become ‘a quasi-religious authority’ in most Western societies. In short, even in secularised contexts, religious themes continue to provide a useful governing resource for maintaining social order. As Maier (2007) points out, ‘religion does not allow itself to be easily banished from society, and that, where this is tried, it returns in unpredictable and perverted forms’.
Religious themes can become intwined with the secular in a variety of ways. These include ‘political religions’, a concept devised to explain totalitarian systems such as those in Fascist and Communist regimes based on leadership cults, mass rallies, national liturgies, the construction of political fantasy worlds and the overt worship of the state (see Gentile, 2005; Maier, 2007), ‘civil religions’, a term used to describe a transcendent moral basis for the political institutions, beliefs, rituals and symbols of the nation (e.g. Williams, 2013), and ‘political myths’, described by Della Sala (2010) as discursive projects designed to set ‘the normative parameters of the nature of political authority and its use in a political community’.
In this sense, political myths explain a collective history and set out the values that define a group of people as being distinct from others.
Religious themes also permeate nationalist and populist varieties of politics, characterised by the use of ‘secularised theological concepts’ such as ‘the nation’, ‘the people’ and ‘sovereignty’
(Arato, 2013). Both forms emphasise the need for faith in an external power, appeal to emotion over rational forms of judgement and are marked by the affectivity of ceremonial rituals and symbols of national life, the use of mythologised national histories and claims to represent a territorially and/or culturally unique group of people, typically in need of salvation to fulfil a manifest destiny (e.g. Santiago, 2009; De Cleen and Stavrakakis 2017; Arato and Cohen 2017; Brubaker 2012; DeHanas and Shterin 2018; Mao, 2017).
The myths and religion of Brexit
A range of religious and mythological themes are visible in the case of Brexit. Critics of Brexit have frequently highlighted the way in which Leave campaigners indulged in a form of ‘unicorn politics’ (Sorkin, 2019) to persuade people that leaving the EU would fulfil a range of fantasies such as increased prosperity, political emancipation and lower levels of immigration (Browning, 2019). Some commentators have even drawn direct parallels to religion. Richard Dawkins has claimed that Brexit ‘has become a religion now. It has become a faith. It has become a creed’ (Humphreys, 2019). Jonathan Lis (2019) has described Brexit as a ‘medieval state religion’, casting its critics as ‘apostates or heretics’. The Conservative Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, described Brexit as ‘an article of faith’ (BBC News, 2019).
One need not agree with the view that Brexit has become a religion to appreciate this critique. As Finlayson (2018) points out, the various components of ‘Brexitism’ are united by ‘an underlying “metaphysics” – an image of the world linked with a belief in redemption …
achieved by heroic resistance to a future imposed by alien and expert elites’.
These religious dimensions to Brexit were operationalised through three key discourses: the claim that the British people had an ‘exceptional’ status within Europe, a view of the EU as a nefarious threat to this status, and an insistence that the sacred ‘will of the people’ expressed in the referendum had to be obeyed. These discourses combined to frame Brexit as the road to a form of national salvation and historic destiny for the UK, while effectively placing it beyond the reach of intellectual, rational contestation.
‘The special status of the British people’
These mythological narratives began with a repeated appeal to the legitimising role of ‘the people’ in driving the Brexit process. As Mao (2017) points out, in populist discourse ‘the people’ are often presented as a ‘quasi-religious notion’ that opens the route ‘to a decline in concern for realism and an indulgence of irrational beliefs about social life’. For Brexiteers, one such belief, embedded within two centuries of British foreign policy, was that ‘Britain is a European actor of an exceptional kind’ (Daddow, 2015), and, as such, Brexit was about
‘restoring and enhancing the distinctive and exceptional aspects of the UK state’ (Gamble, 2018). This type of nativist appeal drilled into some of the core myths of British national identity (Smith 1999) framing the ‘British people’ as having a unique global reach in terms of their language, culture, historical connections and geography. Such populist framing is typically offered ‘as the birth of a straightforward cultural exclusivity that cannot be delegated, preceded or brushed aside, and that has propelled a given society on an irreversible path of preserving its unique properties in the face of continuous challenges’ (Freeden, 2017). For the
UK, its own irreversible path was to set itself free from the EU in order to reconnect with its historic destiny as a leading, autonomous, global free trading nation.
Such a view was expressed in statements from prominent Leave campaigners such as David Davis (2016), Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, who claimed that the history of Europe ‘is not our history … the European Project is not right for us. The Global Project is’.
The Conservative MP (and future Home Secretary) Priti Patel, likewise claimed that leaving the EU would enable the UK to ‘position ourselves as an outward-looking, global, free-trading country’ (Hansard, 29 January 2019), enabling its people to ‘choose our future and be in control of our destiny’ (Hansard, 29 March 2019). Boris Johnson (2018), the-then Foreign
Secretary (and later Prime Minister), claimed that Brexit would be ‘a manifestation of this country’s historic national genius’ and was ‘about re-engaging this country with its global identity … in keeping with Britain's deepest instincts and history’. The Conservative MP (and future Chairman of the influential, anti-EU, European Research Group), Mark Francois, claimed that being a global, free-trading nation was ‘historically in our national DNA’, and that Brexit would therefore enable the UK to ‘take back full control of our national destiny’
(Hansard, 29 March 2017).
Such rhetoric also brings to the fore a quasi-mystical view of History as a teleological force.
Thus, in reference to wider processes of globalisation, Boris Johnson (2016c) was able to claim that: ‘the European project is going against the tide of events and history’. By recognising this fact, the UK was uniquely placed to once again break the tyranny of regional protectionism and promote the spread of global free trade, a process which the Conservative MP (and future Foreign Secretary), Dominic Raab, claimed would directly benefit ‘the poorest African nations, currently languishing under the yolk of hypocritical western protectionism’ (Hansard, 31
January 2017). In this way, Brexit would not only provide salvation for the British people but would become a platform for Britain to offer deliverance to other parts of the globe.
It is fair to say that such narratives of British exceptionalism ‘were not the sole preserve of the
Leave campaign. They had been the stock-in-trade of pro-EU British politicians for decades’ (Daddow, 2018). The UK had long presented itself as an ‘outsider’ (Daddow, 2015), a reluctant or ‘awkward partner’ (George, 1994) and had used this awkwardness ‘to carve out a privileged position for itself’ (Menon and Salter, 2016) in the form of a number of opt-outs and exemptions from broader EU rules and mechanisms. At the heart of this idea of British exceptionalism was a construction of its identity as an island, set geopolitically apart from the rest of Europe, which had, through its unique buccaneering spirit, spawned its own vast Empire. Thus, ‘Europe’ in this tradition is a choice for Britain, not a necessity’ (Daddow, 2018). This idea of British exceptionalism has been particularly evident in the aftermath of the referendum, with a number of prominent Leave supporters echoing Boris Johnson’s sentiment that the UK should ‘have its cake and eat it’ in terms of enjoying a range of unique benefits to other non-
EU countries in its future relationship with the EU (Kettell and Kerr, 2019). As the journalist Jonathan Freedland put it, using a different culinary analogy, Britain has attempted to retain ‘all the ice-cream of EU membership and none of the spinach’ (Freedland, 2019).
‘The EU as threat’
Central to this construction of British exceptionalism was a view of the EU as an external, malign force posing an existential threat to the political and cultural traditions of the British people. Here the EU was portrayed as entrapping the UK within the bureaucratic and undemocratic structures of a federal superstate, locked into a failing economic model. According to Boris Johnson (2016a), the EU project was ‘getting out of control’, and that, in the ‘effort to build a country called Europe … The independence of this country is being seriously compromised’. The leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage (2016), claimed that the EU had ‘by stealth, by deception, without ever telling the truth to the British or the rest of the people of Europe … imposed upon them a political union’. The Conservative MP (and another future Chairman of the European Research Group), Jacob Rees-Mogg, described the EU as nothing less than ‘an imperial yoke’ (Hansard, 21 October 2019). Thus, Leave campaigners built the case for Brexit around the idea that the British people had been betrayed by a combination of metropolitan liberal and European elites, and, as such, Brexit provided a chance for ordinary hard-working British people to regain control over their national destiny (Clarke and Newman, 2017).
A core part of this narrative centred on the supposed threat to public services posed by ‘uncontrolled’ immigration from the EU. This threat was said to be getting worse with the impending accession to the EU of Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey (which wasn’t actually joining since accession negotiations had stalled). The Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, claimed that ‘public services such as the NHS will face an unquantifiable strain as millions more become EU citizens and have the right to move to the UK’ (May, 2016). Boris Johnson (2016b) warned that immigration was adding ‘a population the size of Newcastle every year, with all the extra and unfunded pressure that puts on the NHS and other public services’.
This type of moral panic aligned itself with a long history of racialized fears over immigration which the Leave campaign was able to exploit. As Virdee and McGeever (2018) point out, ‘a reservoir of latent racism could be activated through the production of appropriately coded language about immigration’, sending out a signal ‘that the Brexit project was precisely about keeping the nation Christian and white’. Thus, the nature of this threat hinged not just on the claim that immigrants were flooding in to drain the UK’s scarce resources, but that the entire
EU project was at odds with the fundamentally special character of the British people, their history and their unique global destiny. For the Leave campaign, such fears were used to stoke nostalgic ‘fantasies of fulfilment’ (Browning, 2019) as Brexit promised to restore the UK’s unique political and cultural ‘essence’, hitherto stolen or betrayed by EU elites and migrant populations.
The Irrefutable ‘Will of the People’
Such narratives of salvation ignited a level of political fervour with a quasi-religious quality. In the aftermath of the referendum the euphoria of victory quickly turned to a vehement preoccupation for many on the Leave side that Brexit was in the process of being stolen or betrayed by parliamentary and cultural elites. This betrayal narrative was used to fuel a heightened zeal for the idea that the sanctity of the narrow mandate that the referendum had provided for Brexit (with Leave winning by just 52-48%) must be protected at all costs. To this end, many on the Leave side quickly seized on PM David Cameron’s sentiment the morning after the referendum that ‘the British people have voted to leave the European Union and their will must be respected’. From this point, the discursive myth of the ‘will of the people’ formed an irrefutable and unassailable commandment, signalling to both the British establishment and those who voted Remain that nothing could stand in the way of the popular mandate.
Despite the slim margin of the referendum victory, the ‘will of the people’ came to represent ‘a singular homogeneous monolith’ (Freeden, 2017), transmuted into the unequivocal resolve of the British electorate as a whole. This served to sidestep the fact that the authority of the referendum mandate, and the type of instruction it conveyed to Parliament, had always been subject to intense contestation. Even before the referendum, many on the Remain side stressed that the European Union Referendum Act (2015) did not legally commit the government to implementing the result, while those on the Leave side argued that the government was committed politically (if not legally) to respecting the outcome. In the wake of the vote, such disputes became the subject of ever-more antagonistic debate. This was spurred by wider disagreements about the character of UK democracy and the extent to which the idea of popular sovereignty could be used to over-ride the historically grounded precedent of parliamentary sovereignty (Weale, 2017). Moreover, in the months after the referendum it became increasingly evident that the referendum vote had given no clear indication of what type of Brexit ‘the people’ had voted for.
Despite the plethora of divergent interpretations of the result, both prominent Leave figures and an increasingly strident tabloid press sought to elevate the myth of the ‘will of the people’ to the force of an ‘irreversible truth’ (Freeden, 2017), such that anyone seeking to contest its authority could be denounced as ‘traitors’ and charged with national betrayal. One of the most notable examples of this was an attack by the Daily Mail, which portrayed High Court judges as ‘enemies of the people’ for daring to insist that the process of formally leaving the EU required an explicit vote in Parliament. As such, ‘the ‘will of the people’ as expressed in the referendum was portrayed as ‘the only democratic institution’ (Elefteriadis, 2017), a supreme authority that could be unquestionably cited above all other political or legal institutions.
However, as negotiations between the UK and the EU revealed a variety of potential Brexit outcomes, it became politically expedient for different factions of the Leave camp to utilise the peoples’ will myth to mobilise support for a particular form of Brexit. Amidst the resulting factionalism that erupted within Parliament, the various sides began to engage in a ‘war of position’ to impose their own interpretations of what it was, precisely, that the people had voted for (Kettell and Kerr, 2019). At this point, a number of prominent Leave MPs began to perpetuate the myth that the vote had delivered a mandate for an ‘exclusively hard Brexit’, or a clean break with the EU (Elefteriadis, 2017). In the fevered Parliamentary debates that followed, the tenor of some MPs’ pitch for a hard Brexit was likened to that of a religious fervour. As the Conservative MP, Claire Perry, remarked: ‘I feel sometimes I am sitting alongside colleagues who are like jihadis in their support for a hard Brexit. No Brexit is hard enough. Be gone you evil Europeans. We never want you to darken our doors again' (Hansard 7 February 2017).
Such developments exposed a glaring contradiction at the heart of the Leave discourse. On the one hand, ‘the people’ was to be regarded as a monolithic and sacred force whose combined ‘will’ could be clearly interpreted and implemented in full. On the other hand, ‘the people’ were split into two antagonistic and irreconcilable camps – the 17.4 million ‘true believers’ in the Brexit faith versus those ‘heretics’ in the Remain camp whose ultimate ambition was to betray the cause. Yet Brexiteers rarely allowed themselves to be troubled by such discrepancies. This point has been noted throughout the literature on both Brexit and populism more generally (e.g. Hopkin and Rosamond, 2018; Suiter, 2016; Rose, 2017), with various authors citing the fact that populist movements often rely on a number of ‘bullshit’ claims
(Frankfurt, 2005) which are strongly emotive in their appeal, yet largely indifferent to the truth.
As we discuss in the final section, the strategic utilisation of such ‘bullshit’ discourse lay at the very heart of the Leave campaign, with the now famous ‘Brexit bus’ claim that the Holy Grail of British politics, the NHS, would receive an extra £350 million a week in funding in the event of a vote to Leave.
The Brexit bus campaign
These ideas about the special status of the British people, the threat from EU elites and the sacred ‘will’ expressed in the referendum, were largely metaphysical in their appeal. Indeed, one of the oft-repeated criticisms from the Remain camp was that the benefits of Brexit were rarely rationalised in any concrete terms. One of the few exceptions to this was the strategic use of social policy issues to highlight the dividend that leaving the EU could bring.
The central feature of the Leave narrative was the slogan: ‘Take back control’. The emphasis here was principally focussed around claims about the detrimental impact of immigration on public services, particularly the NHS. The centrepiece of this appeal was an infamous promotional campaign to create a direct link between the EU and social policy by emblazoning a bus with the slogan: ‘We send the EU £350 million a week. Let’s fund our NHS instead’. For emphasis, the letters ‘NHS’ were shown as the official NHS logo despite repeated warnings from the Department of Health for England not to use it on the grounds that it was ‘against our guidelines’ and risked ‘misleading and confusing the public’ (BMJ, 2016).
The NHS Brexit bus proved to be one of most controversial flashpoints of the referendum. The £350 million a week figure conflated the net and the gross components of the UK’s contribution to the EU, providing only the gross figure (itself based on an estimate) and ignoring funds received from the EU in the form of a rebate and other financial payments. According to 2015 figures from the Office of National Statistics, the UK’s net contribution to the EU was in the region of £199 million a week, a far cry from the figure presented (Morley, 2017). The claim also drew criticism from the head of the UK’s Statistics Authority, Sir David Norgrove, who said it was ‘a clear misuse of official statistics’ (BBC News, 2017), and completely ignored the fact that the NHS was itself dependent on migrant workers. As the Health Foundation makes clear, ‘migrants are an essential part of the health care workforce’ (13.3% of NHS staff in hospitals and community services in England had a non-British nationality as of June 2019, with the figure for doctors rising to 28.4%) and with persistent staffing shortages, ‘[t]he NHS needs more staff from overseas, not less’ (Alderwick and Allen, 2019). Little wonder, then, that critics claimed the Leave campaign had set out to deliberately distort the truth. As Reid (2019) observes, to many Remainers ‘the NHS bus represents the apotheosis of a campaign divorced from facts’.
Assessing the relative impact of any single part of the Brexit narrative is clearly impossible. But the significance of focusing on the claimed benefits of Brexit on social policy, and especially the NHS, should not be underestimated. The Director of the Vote Leave campaign, Dominic Cummings (2017), later maintained that ‘the £350 million / NHS argument was necessary to win’, and that ‘the connection between immigration, £350 million and the NHS
... was absolutely vital’ for their success. As he put it, the linkages drawn by the slogan provided a hotwire for connecting the experiences of national decline to Britain’s membership of the EU, stating that:
[F]or millions of people, £350m/NHS was about the economy and living standards – that’s why it was so effective. It was clearly the most effective argument not only with the crucial swing fifth but with almost every demographic ... Would we have won without £350m/NHS? All our research and the close result strongly suggests No.
The effectiveness of the NHS Brexit bus can be attributed to a number of factors. One is its sheer simplicity, consisting of just thirteen words with a score of 102.6 on the standard FleschKincaid reading ease test, indicating that it could be easily understood by the majority of 6 and 7-year olds. In addition, the claim was strategically well-framed, presenting readers with a clear binary choice and channelling debate onto the costs of EU membership (Reid, 2019). The claim itself was also highly memorable. A study conducted in 2018 by the Policy Institute, with Ipsos MORI and UK in a Changing Europe, found that 42% of respondents (and 65% of Leave supporters) still believed that the UK sent the EU £350 million a week, long after the figures had been debunked.
The attempt to link Brexit to the NHS extended far beyond the bus campaign and was one of the central features of the wider Leave strategy. The claim was placed at the very top of a list of reasons for leaving the EU on the official Vote Leave website, which maintained that: ‘We will be able to save £350 million a week. We can spend our money on our priorities like the NHS, schools and housing’. The claim also featured prominently in other Vote Leave advertising. Nowhere was this more evident than on Facebook, where Vote Leave spent more than £2.7 million placing political advertisements (BBC News, 2018). Our analysis of these adverts (which were released to the Department for Media, Culture and Sport as part of an inquiry into the use of fake news) identifies 92 unique slogans in use during the referendum campaign. Appeals to the NHS featured in 11.9% of these adverts, and the £350 million figure featured in 17.4%.3 Examples of these adverts include: ‘Let’s give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week’, ‘Spend our money on our priorities. Like the NHS’, ‘The UK sends £350 million per week to the EU, enough to build a new NHS hospital’, and ‘Imagine if we gave £350m a week to our NHS instead of the EU!’
These messages, and the slogan used in the bus campaign, were designed to appeal to nativist, in/out-group sensibilities. This can be clearly seen in the sense of ownership and exclusion they convey. The wording of the bus campaign called on the British people to spend a greater
amount of their resources (‘we’ send the EU) not on ‘the’ NHS, but on ‘our’ NHS. Similarly, the Vote Leave website and Facebook adverts claimed that ‘we’ can save £350 million a week by leaving ‘the’ EU and spend ‘our’ money on ‘our’ priorities. This process of othering – thus preserving the sanctity of the unique British ‘people’ – was an integral part of the Vote Leave messaging strategy. The term ‘we’ featured in 25% of all their Facebook advert slogans. The term ‘our’ featured in a total of 28.3%. In this way the emphasis on the NHS helped to reinforce the key themes of the wider Leave campaign, helping to create and reinforce nationally constituted in/out group dynamics.
This widespread use of the NHS/£350 million claim highlights a deeper reason for the success of the Brexit bus campaign, which is the ‘mythical’ status that the NHS holds in British national life. Famously described by the ex-Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, as ‘the closest thing the English people have to a religion’ (Spence, 2017), this is borne out consistently by polls and surveys showing the extent to which the NHS is revered by the British public. A survey by Opinium taken shortly before the referendum put the NHS top of its ‘Pride of Britain’ list, being the leading choice of 36% of respondents, far ahead of ‘British history’ (in second place, with 25%), ‘British sense of humour’ (with 23%), the monarchy and the UK’s landscape and architecture (with 22% each) (Crouch, 2016). A survey carried out by Ipsos MORI for the Health Foundation in 2017 put the NHS first in a list of services that the public wanted to be protected from austerity cuts (with 88%), far ahead of schools (56%) and care for older people (40%). Almost two thirds of respondents (64%) felt that taxes should be raised to fund the NHS and 88% felt that the NHS ought to be funded by general taxation and free at the point of use for all citizens (Health Foundation, 2017).
In this context, placing the NHS at the centre of the Brexit narrative was a shrewd political calculation – framing the NHS as the Holy Grail that could be rescued from the malign threat of the EU superstate and an influx of foreign migrants. In so doing, the campaign neatly cut into a variety of beliefs and emotions about Britain’s place in the world and its membership of the EU. As Nerlich (2017) notes, claims about the NHS ‘reinforced, exploited and entrenched various “myths” about the EU and about what it means to leave the EU’. And as Cromby (2019) observes, the NHS Brexit bus campaign worked by promoting a sense of ‘mythical thinking about Brexit’ and ‘by organising feelings of loyalty, affection, or gratitude toward the NHS, and conversely feelings of anxiety about its current state, in support of the “leave” position’.
Conclusion
The discourse used to promote the idea of Brexit marshalled a range of quasi-religious and mythical tropes and themes, promising a form of national salvation for the British people. At the heart of the Leave campaign’s promise to ‘take back control’, the NHS, and social policy more broadly, were utilised as the Holy Grail that could be rescued from the clutches of the malign forces that laid siege to Britain’s unique historical place in the world. Thus, the religious aspects of Brexit centred on a nativist process of othering, in which secularised theological concepts such as ‘sovereignty’ and the ‘nation’ were utilised to place the blame for Britain’s economic, political and social ills at the feet the European Union. This was simultaneously aligned with claims about the exceptional character of the British people, leading to subsequent appeals around the need for them to regain their leading role in global affairs. Such quasi-religious narratives worked to heighten the intense emotional fervour around Brexit and led many of its adherents to distance themselves from various facts or ‘truths’ about its potential future implications, effectively insulating claims about Brexit from any sort of rational critique. This emotional disconnect from expert advice, along with the willingness of true believers to accept various forms of ‘bullshit’, created the ideal conditions for the now famous NHS ‘lie’ on the side of the Brexit bus to play a pivotal role in securing victory for the Leave campaign.
Recent psychological research has found clear differences in reasoning between Leave and Remain supporters. Whilst the latter have been characterised by self-identification with facts, rationality and evidence, the former have been found to place far greater emphasis on appeals to emotion, nationalism and authoritarian values, all of which closely align to a religiously inspired view of the world (Zmigrod et al, 2018, 2019). These findings are borne out by opinion polls and surveys. A poll of Conservative party members carried out in June 2019 found a strong preference for Brexit, even if it led to the breakup of the country, caused significant damage to the economy or promoted the destruction of the Conservative party itself (Smith, 2019). Thus, Brexit inspired in its believers a set of goals and desires that, to many on the Remain side, appeared wildly irrational and largely divorced from political and economic realities. Nevertheless, little of this was to trouble the loyal followers of the Brexit creed, whose faith in the project remained strong throughout the intensely difficult negotiations and domestic political wrangling over the UK’s terms of exit. Indeed, not only did public support for Brexit remain remarkably solid throughout this period, levels of support for the hardest and potentially
most damaging form of ‘no deal’ Brexit increased (Kettell and Kerr, 2019). It became increasingly evident that followers of Brexit were prepared to make sacrifices – potentially to Britain’s future prosperity and unity between its nations – for the goal of retrieving its national character, most powerfully symbolised by the revered NHS.
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Francis of Assisi claimed he was Christ´s physical brother. Clearly in spiritual delusion (aka prelest). All errors must be condemned in the reunion, whilst leaving the judgment of whether or not they are worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven, in both the initial and final judgment of God. We do want everyone to be saved, whilst we know that not everyone will be saved.
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