Where Do Our Highest Loyalties Lie?

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Where Do Our Highest Loyalties Lie?

 

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Our fleshly human nature reacts against the turmoil of war and the injustice of human suffering that results from it. We are strongly tempted to react viscerally, to take one side or the other of this current mili(dola)tary and ideological conflict – that's just human nature. But how should we respond rather than react? How to be proactive instead of reactive?

This requires forethought and spiritual preparation: our minds and our hearts must be filled with the Divine Nature (2 Peter 1:4). The Living Word of God should "pierce even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12), enabling us to see our own motives. We must let the Holy Spirit transform us by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). All this describes the way we Christians who are all "called to be saints" (Romans 1:7 and 1 Corinthians 1:2) ought to respond.

We need to spend much time in prayer, confessing our own sins and our human nature distorted by sin: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" Only then will we be able to respond in love and think fairly, not having our minds and hearts distorted by our old, fleshly, and sin-stained human nature.

Disability Impacts All of Us

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THE RELIGION OF ANTICHRIST

 

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This video, with the subtitle "A reflection on the deceptive nature of the religion that will be established by the antichrist," is by Father Spyridon Bailey, and if you click on "Father Spyridon" at this YouTube page, you'll see several more of his videos. Also, here's a link to his books on Amazon. As he mentions, the antichrist will first appear to be god-like and many will fall for his signs and wonders:

"For the mystery of lawlessness already works. Only there is one who restrains now, until he is taken out of the way. Then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will kill with the breath of his mouth, and bring to nothing by the brightness of his coming; even he whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deception of wickedness for those who are being lost, because they didn't receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Because of this, God sends them a strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be judged who didn't believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thes. 2:7-12).

Many people with "itching ears" will fall for such charlatans: "For the time will come when they will not listen to the sound doctrine, but, having itching ears, will heap up for themselves teachers after their own lusts; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and turn aside to fables" (2 Tim. 4:3-4). People will be led astray by some who say all religions are the same, Jesus was just another good moral teacher, we need to coexist, etc. How can we escape being taken in by such deceivers?

At the end of St. Paul's letter to the Hebrews, he writes – "Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man will see the Lord, looking carefully lest there be any man who falls short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby the many be defiled; lest there be any sexually immoral person, or profane person, as Esau, who sold his birthright for one meal" (ch. 12:14-16). The word "sanctification" comes from Latin sanctus and the Greek is hagios, "holy" –

"Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God..." (Rom. 12:1a). We find this theme again in 1 Thes. 4:3 – "For this is the will of God: your sanctification...." These three texts, in Hebrews, Romans, and 1 Thessalonians, have dozens of cross-references that I suggest you click on to consider: Be Holy!