The persecution continues

Click to view the Pastor’s arrest

The Canadian authorities decided that they have had enough of the outspoken pastor’s defiance and yesterday sent the Calgary Police to arrest Pastor Artur Pawlowski after another “illegal” service.   A swarm of them pulled the vehicle he was in over and took him and his brother into custody.  The fact that the officers were typically Canadian nice does not obscure the fact that a totalitarian regime cannot allow, cannot tolerate non compliance with their diktats, however trivial and absurd.  In fact such rules are enacted and enforced precisely to impress upon the populace the irresistible power of their overlords.  It never hurts to remind the huddled masses who’s boss.

I am certain that Pastor Pawlowski knew full well what was coming, and embraced it.  I will wager he will continue his ministry in prison.  The fact that Canadian prisons are not as brutal as the Communist prisons under Soviet occupation does not diminish the fact that he is being persecuted for his faith which he dared practice openly even after being told to desist.  As is so typical of Marxist regimes everywhere, churches are among the first social institutions to be attacked, precisely because they owe allegiance to a Higher Power.   Such regimes aim to establish themselves as the highest power and will brook no rivals.  Further, they go after the leadership because they know that without a shepherd the scattered flock will be easy pickings.

This is not the beginning, it has been ramping up for several years, Google “pastor threatened for preaching” and you will get a long list of instances of pastors threatened for preaching the Bible going back a number of years.  This is nothing new, it has been going on for centuries.  Nor is it alien to the US despite the 1st Amendment protections.  Nor should it be thought that it is happening in distant lands (it is), it is current and close to home.  We are well past the beginning, but nowhere close to the end of this.  The orchestra of tyranny, I’m sorry to say, is just tuning up, the worst of this particular cycle is not that far ahead of us.

America is one branch of Western Civilization whose foundations are rooted deep in Roman law, Greek philosophy and Christianity.  Marxism is not so much a new religion as a heresy of Christianity, substituting love of power for love of God.  In order to triumph the Marxists know that they must break the connection between man and God in order to substitute submission to the state for the believer’s submission to the will of God.  An integral part of that substitution revolves around the destruction of the moral order.

Interestingly, Lenin, following Marx’s theory that Christian morality was a bourgeois affectation, he initially promoted moral collapse among the Russian people by making divorce easy, promoting atheism, homosexuality,  promiscuity, abortion and withdrawing support for families.  It did not take long before he was forced to reverse that policy as Russian society, already hammered by the crises of the Czars, World War I, the 1917 October Revolution and the subsequent wars between the various Communist factions, was falling apart.  He realized that he could not build any kind of nation when the people were bereft of a moral sense and dedicated to depravity.  Which is why the KGB invested so much time and effort all over the world to influence operations designed to promote the very policies shown to have nearly wrecked the Revolution in Russia, the very policies advocated by the Leftist  Progressives today.

In 1943, a Jesuit priest and ant-fascist activist named Tomislave Poglajen fled his native Croatia one step ahead of the Gestapo and settled in Czechoslovakia.  To conceal himself from the Nazis he assumed his Slovak mother’s name – Kolakovic – and took up a teaching position in Bratislava. . .  The priest had spent some of his priestly training studying the Soviet Union.  He believed that the defeat of Nazi totalitarianism would occasion a great conflict between Soviet totalitarianism and the liberal democratic West.  Though Father Kolakovic worried about the threats to Christian life and witness from the rich, materialistic West, he was far more concerned about the dangers of Communism, which he saw, correctly, as an imperialistic ideology.
. . .
Because he knew how the Soviets thought, Father Kolakovic  . . . warned Slovak Catholics that when the war ended, Czechoslovakia would fall to the rule of a Soviet puppet government.  He dedicated himself to preparing them for persecution.

He correctly foresaw that the Communists would try to control the Church by subduing the clergy.  For another he understood that the spiritual trials would put them to an extreme test.  The charismatic pastor preached that only a total life commitment to Christ would enable them to withstand the coming trial.
. . .
Giving oneself to Christ was not an abstraction or pious thought.  It needed to be concrete and it needed to be communal. . .  Inspired by the example of the Young Christian Workers movement in France, Fr. Kolakovic adapted it to the needs of … German occupied Slovakia.  He established cells of faithful young Catholics who came together for prayer, study and fellowship.

from Live Not By Lies – a Manual for Christian Dissidents, by Rod Dreher

Thus was born the anti Communist underground that spread throughout Eastern Europe, far beyond its Catholic roots, steadfastly resisted the Soviets for over fifty years, kept the Faith and the national culture alive, and provided the backbone of leadership when the Soviets collapsed.  They were tested by vicious persecution, calumny, prison, torture, deprivation, and, not uncommonly, unto death.  Now our time is upon us.  We have a brief window in which to prepare.

Get yourself ready!  Stand up and say to them whatever I command you.  Do not be terrified of them or I will terrify you before them.  Today I have made you a fortified city, an iron pillar and a bronze wall to stand against the whole land – against the kings of Judah, its officials, its priests and the people of the land.  They will fight against  you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you, declares the LORD.   –Jeremiah 1: 17-19

If the LORD is with us who can be against us?  We can do this.  Let’s do it in the name of the LORD.

Ask me how

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