year2027

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God first What is honestly to the very truthful way you can? 09-12-2011 I tried to be truthful in everything I research, study, in my walk, with my speech, with my soul, with my heart, and all other ways but some it not my spirit that I hear. I do my best to do as Christ would of done but my flesh is a part of me. Is pride getting in your way too as I am too proud to say I might of made a mistake but in time I will overcome this too. I had a hard time realizing that before we can be born again we must be conceived from above or from spiritual heaven and not fleshly earth or from below. Conceiving is the making the seed fertilizing the egg before one can come out of the seed of Christ birth must happen this birth is death of our soul where we are born into spirit kind. It is a shame most Christians do not understand the basic meaning of the birds and bee’s so to say in a figural meaning. One must look at God’s truths in many ways fleshly and many ways spiritual otherwise one must see him-self as Jew, Gentile, Church of God and every other kind one can be fleshly and spiritual. As I read the word I see it as real, alive, and living as a fleshly words that men wrote down fleshly, fleshly words of alive with spiritual spark of alive, and spiritual words hidden with that which is living spiritual. I see myself as growing fleshly as my fleshly dies fleshly to grow spiritual until I am born spiritual and I die fleshly. The day that I am break the egg of flesh is the day Christ comes back to me personally as I break out of this flesh world to be a god-kind which is like God himself but a lower creature in Christ image the in God’s image. O how long had I wonder in the dark places of this truth without seeing it as the truth is was. Thank you with love and a holy kiss from Roy.

God first Was Peter the antichrist in this moment of time? 09-09-2011 Matthew 26:34 Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. We know that the apostle Peter deny in the Jesus being the Christ to save our souls out of fear his own life but does that make him one of the antichrist that came. My atheist friend would say it does but my self-righteous Christian may say no. This is a puzzle for us to work as a man of love to see the truth, as God wanted us to understand. I look at truth the holy bible in many ways first I ask myself what love is there to this truth and I find that is facing the truth about myself every time I deny the truth in my heart. Because I am establish this truth by laying in my own shoes like the man who for Jesus’ help for his unbelief in this verse. Mark 9:24 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. The father got honest with himself first and than he ask Jesus for help because he could not heal him alone if we get honest with ourselves God will do the rest. Because if you come to God without being honest God hands are tired in knows of pride. Do you think if the man would came to God saying yes I believe what you say it would had so powerful for his son? So was Peter being the antichrist in Matthew 26:34 yes Peter was the antichrist in this moment of time as we are our moments of life in the flesh. Peter and me realized that we are weak flesh but we look forward to the spirit we can be in future tense after our birth has completed but right now we are just conceived in Christ seed of hope. I see God’s word the truth as the mix of fleshly things with spiritual things that we search to understand the fleshly truths alone side the spiritual truths of God. I see it was written to me personal and me as a whole the love in all of us together. It was for spiritual truth we could read the fleshly truth and have no real truths of God at all. The spirit truths are what make the search so rewarding for us finding them among the lies of flesh kind truths. To say I read the truth spiritually and fleshly is I understand the word of God by the words of foolish mankind of flesh. Thank you with love and a holy kiss from Roy.

God first thanks cman and Jbarrax cman did not Joseph want to sleep dreaming is a part of sleep hid not Moses climb the mountain to hear from God when witness the burning bush they took desire to hear from God Jbarrax yes Joseph had the desire to hear from God but speaking tongues is how one speaks do you put the pictures in your mind do you not make every sound do you make every picture you saw and the oldest tongues is in picture form the art on cave walls with love and a holy kiss Roy

God first thanks cman and Jbarrax cman did not Joseph want to sleep dreaming is a part of sleep hid not Moses climb the mountain to hear from God when witness the burning bush they took desire to hear from God Jbarrax yes Joseph had the desire to hear from God but speaking tongues is how one speaks do you put the pictures in your mind do you not make every sound do you make every picture you saw and the oldest tongues is in picture form the art on cave walls with love and a holy kiss Roy

God first thanks Jbarrax Genesis 37: 5 ¶ And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more. speaking in tongues = dreamed a dream later Joseph Interprets the dream in Prisoners' Dreams which the interpretation of tongues at will or Joseph"s control his mind wanted to hear from God and his mind wanted to give the interpretation it that simple with love and a holy kiss Roy

God first thanks everybody someone said "More importantly to the topic at hand, there is no reference in the Old Testament to a believer being able to manifest holy spirit at will.. They did so according to God's timetable, with God's permission. " so you think not me the Holy spirit was just as must manifested in the Old Testament as the new I see it all over the old and all over the new that just way-like thinking with love and a holy kiss Roy

God first thanks cman Christ flesh was killed by us mankind that what we in have unity with Christ we were dying in our sins Christ die because we nail to a tree Christ spirit never die but our spirit die that very day spiritual until Christ made it alive by Christ's fleshly death making us spirit life again with love and a holy kiss Roy

God first thanks cman Jesus Christ was speaking of his living flesh and our dead spirit that he was going quicken it awake in Christ has ourselves but do not take it has truth I am learning as we talk with love and a holy kiss Roy

God first and last Have you broken the Millstone of the Way ministry yet? 09-05-2027 Yes have you broken the millstone of the Way ministry yet or do you hold out hope they will see pass their errors? I just this week broke the last chain that I know of but I am sure there are more chains I do not know of. I was down in the pit of false beliefs of the Way ministry the lie of my soul the hell of myself. The man that I worship was the doctrines of a man that I was trick into believing that their was truth there. The false doctrines of a cult that I believe had some truth but I was mislead in the doctrines of ministry of a person in stood of discovering the truth in myself. Christ has been helping me see the lies I once believe to be so but I know we work it out ourselves. No man can understand the truth by his weak fleshly self we must seek out the comforter of ourselves the another comforter was send by Christ. The spirit of ourselves Christ was the first comforter and we are last comforter and another comforter and God is the one before Christ the beginning comforter. We are the serpents of flesh that will die and we are the spirit seed that will be born. We were conceive alive spiritual in the beginning but we kill ourselves in our sins then Christ make us alive in his blood by forgiven us of past sins of our flesh awaken us spiritual. God is I am, Christ was I am, and we are I am to come the Way ministry what I was and I am the child of God. I kill the Way ministry of my past I once was believe I destroy the lies I once believe in I broke the milestones of false that I change to fairy tales. In my heart I broke the chains that lock me in endless prison of the cult of my mind the hope was destroy I saw that I was in a prison of my believes. The layers of false believes broke away as I saw it was me that had to free my self from this pit hell that I have falling in. When I saw I was the antichrist of myself my flesh was the antichrist and I must become the spiritual Christ of myself no one could free me but me. So the millstone was around by neck holding me in the hell of unbelief and I was the one that put on that millstone of antichrist and I was the one who had to free me. God is the beginning comforter, Christ is the comforter to come, and we are still coming as another comforter. Thank you with love and a holy kiss from Roy.

God first thanks cman you are the another coming to realized what you are cman is the another comforter Roy is the another comforter Todd is the another comforter we comforter each other it that simple God send us to ourself with love and a holy kiss Roy

God first thanks faith no more will I believe in fairy tales and I am a child of God I am Atheist and I am a believer with love and a holy kiss Roy

God first thanks cman the first was Jesus Christ the son of God was the first comforter that die for us the other comforter or another comforter was our seed of our spirit in us which is not the begotten son of God but us our spirit of us ourself, our-seed, our-christ, our new man the truth unity of truth with love and a holy kiss from Roy

God first thanks Cman it was awaken by the love of Christ that when became a new creation of child of God we are the Christ in ourself a news Christ a new creature our Comforter was sent By Christ for God we are the comforter with love and a holy kiss Roy

God first thanks Cman yes my friend it can not be measure fleshly things it can only be measure in itself or the growth in you the spirit of Christ in me or you it a one on measurement of our inner self the Christ that in us that birth that has happen to us it is always in me in you too even the puff up fool of when we were in the cult the Way ministry that was ourself at a time in our history of life what I learn today is not the same I learn tomorrow the spark changes as life changes for me and you the holy spirit grows as I mature in Christ as I get more like the Christ that first came in my life we are maturing into the child of God that we were in the beginning with love and a holy kiss Roy

God first thanks cman another comforter is the Christ in you the seed inside of you the sprit life growing in you with love and a holy kiss Roy

God first Truthful is impossible because we do know enough about own self? 08-31-2011 I always try to tell the truth but sometimes I do not know enough things about my own natural or body of sin. We have a sin nature we have nurture this natural all our own lives it has become a part of us. So to sat it aside is not easy thing to do the things I know as truth must be set aside if I going to know God’s truths. Like is the world round or does its mass constrain by more than what I see has the earth gravity I see does it also contain things I cannot see. What is the true me what I see or what I cannot see or both the two together? Questions that we do not know enough to even try to tell the truth about what was truthful about. Even biography of something does tell every thing a thing they just tell the basic of the person, thing, place or what ever they do give every detail line by line. Biology of a human person does not telling us why the person was and how dust formed into us in first place? By not given us enough we can tell a lie about it without knowing it because we just understand enough to get us in trouble. If I say my name is Jack am I lying because I am not different than I am a man of sin like Jack similar to Jack the person. Jack and me are humans alive on this earth there are different in our personalities Jack is a religion fruitcake but I am what I is. Jack Howard has made himself my enemy but I have made him mine I have enemy but myself. I was a copy of Jack Howard in the pasted I was a religion fruitcake I believe the words of God’s bible were the only truth I could see then. But now I see past my sins and the blamed goes on no one other than my weak flesh it is on my shoes and our own shoes the blamed must be set. Now that I see clearly I can put the blamed on my personal self as the Jack’s of this place can bowel our heads together in that all of us are in sin. Maybe people call me Roy William Perry III known as year2027 but I am one of the Jack’s of this world. We are the one’s in the sin doomed until we evolve out of this fleshly dust that lives as me. How can I evolve out of this world Christ is the only part I know because I am not wise enough to understand yet. Jack and me Ephesians 1:4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. Jack and me are accepted in Christ whether I believe or not and Jack believes I am. 7 In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; 8 Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; 9 Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: Whether we understood what the redemption is or the forgiveness of sins that we live in and this mystery of God’s will towards us. 10 That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: 11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: In Christ we have obtain the dispensation of God’s truth about our selfs. 12 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ. 13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, 14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory. We have now earnest of our inheritance without blamed for our weak flesh has we look forward to our spiritual bodies that not decay and die. This is the new concision that planted in us the spark of new life that no man can kill only God can destroy it. Thank you with love and a holy kiss from Roy known as year2027.

God first The Book of the beginning “Genesis”! 08-17-28-2011 Before that a beginning to everything there was nothing all but that evolve into something we call God which I am nothing that became something. It was a in a spark of light God begin to be here as God made things for his enjoyment or his love. But we had nothing until we learn to write down to talk about as we learn what is it was to be alive. Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. . Before the dust of the earth God made the place where we life would begin the heaven which is not above like most think it is everywhere. The dust evolve into this rock that evolved from one gain of dust and so on evolve is another word for creative. This earth was inside the heavens and everything was creative from within God that which was first evolved into a wake form of life. God breathe out from nowhere and from nowhere into all things spiritual and all things fleshly were creative into that reality, that evolves from itself forming into that which is alive. In the moment of time that was before time itself God made the heavens and the earth that was made for as God shape it the form is because and given it life of itself. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. The earth was without purpose of being into reality there was reason for it because it void of life that made it worth the God effort of making it into, forming it in its shape, and creation of life in itself in the darkness of spiritual in upon the darkness of fleshly space. God saw himself in itself the face of deep thought as the spirit of God moved upon itself the waters of fleshly truth. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. God spoke light into the reality of what will be fleshly lights of truth and what is spiritually lights of truth from itself. God saw the fleshly light was good and God saw light was good as God divided them from each other the spiritual light of God from the fleshly light of our kind. God called the spiritual light day and God called fleshly light night as the Godly evening came on the morning of the unity of God’s day. 6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. God spoke into reality let there be a firmament in the middle of the waters of spiritually truths and the waters of fleshly truths and them divided from one another from the spiritually truth from fleshly truths. As God made, form, and creation each from itself, which the waters under the heaven has fleshly truths from the waters above them of spiritually truth dividing from itself and it was so. God named the firmament above as heaven and one below has the earth of dust as the evening past and the morning came things were establish that day. 9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. 11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day. God spoke into the waters of truth let them the under fleshly be gathered unto unity of God and let the spiritually waters of truth have the same unity of truth and the dry dust of land appear unto the fleshly world and the spiritually land appear unto God and it was good. God called the dry dust fleshly earth and the gathering together of the water God called fleshly seas of truth and God called the dry dust spiritual heaven and the gathering together of the water God called spiritual seas of truth God saw that it good. God spoke into the fleshly waters of truth let the earth bring forth fleshly grass, the herb yielding seed of itself, and fruit yielding trees fleshly seeds of itself whose seed is in itself upon the earth God spoke into the spiritual waters of truth let the heaven bring forth spiritual grass, the herb yielding seed of itself, and fruit yielding trees spiritual seed of itself whose seed is in itself upon the heaven and it was good. The fleshly earth brought forth fleshly grass, and herb fleshly yielding seed after their kind and the tree of life yielding fruit in itself whose seeds was in itself after their kind and spiritual heaven brought forth spiritual grass, and herb spiritual yielding seed after their kind and the tree of life yielding fruit in itself whose seeds was in itself after their kind and God saw that it was good. The evening and the morning was a complete day of truth. 14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day. God spoke into reality let there be lights in firmament of heaven to divided the fleshly night from spiritual day and let them be for signs of truth coming and for days and years. Let them be lights in above in the open firmament of spiritual heaven to give lights of truths upon the flesh earth and it was so. God make established great lights the spiritual greater light to rule the day and the reflected light of flesh to rule the night and God made stars also the lights of us because were fleshly lights of truth that became spiritual lights of truth. God set them in middle of heaven the firmament of spiritual heaven to give the light of God upon the fleshly earth. God over the spiritual day and over the fleshly night dividing one light from another and God saw that it was good. The evening and the morning were the worldly day of life both spiritual truths and fleshly truths. 20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. God spoke into reality let the waters of truth bring forth abundantly fleshly moving creatures that hath fleshly life and the fowl that may fly above on the earth in open space firmament of above the fleshly waters of truth and God spoke into reality let the waters of truth bring forth abundantly spiritual moving creatures that hath spiritual life and fowl that may fly above in the earth in open firmament the spiritual waters of truth. God creative great whale s spiritual life and every living creature that moves on the on open space of the earth, which the waters of truth brought forth abundantly fleshly after their kind and every winged fowl after its kind and God creative great whale s spiritual life and every living creature that moves in the surface of dust, which the waters of truth brought forth abundantly spiritual their kind and every winged fowl after its kind and God saw that it was good. God blessed it all saying be fruitful and multiply and fill the fleshly waters and spiritual waters of truth in the seas of forever truths that let us creatures fly multiply in the earth and in the heavens. The evening and morning came and there was grace unto all. 24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. 29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. 31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. God spoke into reality let earth bring forth living creatures of flesh after flesh kind cattle and creeping things of flesh and every beast of the earth after their kind of flesh and God spoke into reality let heaven bring forth living creatures of spiritual after their kind of spiritual cattle and creeping things of spiritual and every beast of the heaven after their kind and it was so. God made the beast of the earth and God made the beast of the heaven after their kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepers upon the earth and upon the heaven after their kind: and God saw that it was good. God spoke let us make man in spiritual image and fleshly image so creative man God own image in the image of God image created God us male and female created God us spiritual image and fleshly image. God blessed us, and God spoke into us fleshly and spiritual, be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth and the heaven and subdue it by controlling it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing fleshly and spiritual that has life that moves upon the earth and upon the heaven. God spoke unto reality behold, I have gave you every herb bearing seed fleshly seeds and spiritual seeds which is upon the face of all the earth and upon the face of heaven and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed fleshly and tree yielding seed spiritual to you it shall be for meat. I have given you every fleshly beast of the earth and every spiritual beast of the heaven and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepers upon the earth and in the heaven, wherein there is life, I have given you every green herb for fleshly meat and spiritual meat and it was so. God witness every thing that God had made fleshly and spiritual and behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the man’s day of fleshly truths and spiritual truths. Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. 4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, Thus was the creation of the heavens and earth were complete but not the molding of fleshly earth and the reforming into spiritual heaven God made you alive fleshly and spiritually and all the life of them. On the spiritual perfection day of God, God ended God’s work, which God had made from nothing or creation, which is making and forming that which God had begin. On the spiritual day God rested from God’s work of love which God begin in us the creation of life fleshly and spiritually. God blessed the spiritual day and sanctified it because in it God had found rest from God’s work, which God created and then made alive. These are the generations of the spiritual heavens and fleshly earths when they begin to have reason for life in the very day God begin it all in the day our master God made life in our fleshly life of heaven and our spiritual life of earth. 5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. Every plant of the field that had seed in it self before it was call earth in put life in the seed of the plant as every herd grew. The Lord God had not cause it to rain upon the dust of the earth fleshly rain or spiritually rain. There was not a man to till the ground controlling how plants are raised in the field. 6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. God made water go up in mist from the fleshly dust earths and spiritual dust of heavens and watered the whole face fleshly and whole face spiritual of the dust of truth. The lord God our master formed man fleshly and spiritually from the dust of truth fleshly and spiritually of dirt that man was formed from. God breathe into man’s fleshly nostrils and spiritually nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul of flesh and living reflection of God’s spirit. 8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The Lord God our master planted us fleshly and spiritually eastward in the direction of the spiritual truth and fleshly truth in Eden of the earth and Eden of the heaven and there God place the man whom God had formed his shape. Out from dust the Lord God grow every tree spiritual and tree fleshly that is pleasant to the sight of God spiritual and good for fleshly food for mankind. The tree of life is in midst of fleshly truth and spiritually truth of the garden of truth is the tree of knowledge of good spiritually and the tree of knowledge of evil fleshly. 10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. 11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; 12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. God place a fleshly river and spiritually river that went out from Eden from the waters of the garden of truth and from thence it was parted into world of masters. The named of unity is Pison that is which compassed the whole land of Havilah where is purely in gold of truth. The truth of that land is fleshly gold and spiritual love there is bdellium of fleshly and spiritually joy there is fleshly onyx stone and spiritually perfection. 13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. 14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. The name is Gihon which is established river of truth the same compassed the whole land of Ethiopia. The name of the complete river is Hiddekel that is which goes toward the spiritual light of truth and toward the fleshly of truth. The world is river of flesh and of spirit named Euphrates. 15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. The Lord God took the man and placing the man into the garden of truth fleshly and truth spiritually to dress it with mankind to keep it. The Lord God order or commanded the man saying “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat but of the tree of the knowledge of spiritually good and fleshly evil you shall of it for in the very day that you eat of it you shall surely die”. 18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. 19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. The Lord God our master said, “it is not good that man should the only life kind fleshly and spiritually but still alone I God will make man a help mate for man”. Out of the dust the Lord God formed every beast of the field fleshly and angel of the heaven and every fowl of the air fleshly of the earth and every fowl of the air spiritually of the heaven. God brought the creatures unto man called Adam to see and what Adam would call them whatsoever called every living creature that was its name thereon. 20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. 21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; Adam gave names to all cattle after their kind and the fowl of the air after their kind and to every beast of earth and to every angel of heaven but there was not found helpmate for Adam the man. The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and Adam slept and God took part of Adam unity of Adam ribs and closed up the flesh and the spirit substitute it with itself. 22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. 23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. The rib, which the Lord God our master had taken from the man’s fleshly body and from, the man’s spiritually body and made a woman from the man’s rib and brought the woman unto the man. Adam the man spoke “this is now flesh of my dust bone and this is spirit of my waters of truth and the woman shall be called Eve became the woman was taken from man after mankind. 24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and the man shall cleave unto his woman his wife and they shall in unity of the flesh and in unity of the spirit. They the man and his woman were both naked spiritually and naked fleshly the man and his woman the wife and they were not ashamed of their nakedness. Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? Now the serpent of man was subtler than any beast of the field of earth, which the Lord God had created spirit, formed its shape, and made soul life in man the serpent. The man of the serpent said unto woman “yes you have heard God say you shall eat of every tree of the garden that God’s set in your sight”. 2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. The woman said unto the serpent man “we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden but of the fruit of tree, which is in mist of the garden God hath said unto us you shall not eat of it neither shall you touch it maybe you die”. The serpent of man said unto the woman “you will not surely die for God will not know in very day you decide to eat of that tree” and they ate it as they awake spiritually we are like gods knowing evil fleshly thoughts and good spiritual thoughts. 6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. 7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. When the woman spiritually saw that the tree was good for fleshly food and it was pleasant to the woman spiritually eyes and a tree to be fleshly desired to make unity of wisdom to give wisdom of God the woman took of the fruit thereof and woman did eat and gave unto the man the woman husband with the woman and they did eat. The spiritually eyes of them were opened and they knew they were naked fleshly and spiritually and they sewed fig leaves fleshly together and spiritually together to made themselves aprons, 8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. 9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? 10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in mist of the garden in the cool breath of the daylight and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God their God amongst the trees of the garden. The Lord God called unto Adam and Eve speaking unto them “where are you” and Adam said unto God “we heard your sound in the garden and we were afraid because we were naked spiritually and we hid ourselves”. 11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? 12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. 13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. God our Lord said “who told you that you were spiritually naked and fleshly naked? Have you eaten of tree that I God commanded you that you should not eat”? The man said, “the woman whom God gave to the man the woman gave to me the man of the tree and I the man did eat.” The Lord our God said unto the woman “what is this that you have done”? The woman said, “the serpent man temped me the woman to eat and I the woman did eat.” 14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: 15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. The Lord our God said unto the serpent of man “because you have done this you are cursed above all fleshly cattle and above every fleshly beast of the earth on the field you shall craw upon your belly and you shall eat dust all your days of your fleshly life. I God will put ill well between you and the woman and between your seed and the woman’s seed your wife it shall bruise your head in child birth and you shall bruise the woman’s heel in child birth”. 16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee, Unto the woman the man’s wife God said “I God will greatly multiply your wife’s sorrow in child birth and your wife’s conception with blood in the sorrow your wife’s shall bring forth children of your desires shall the woman’s husband and the man shall rule over the woman the wife”. 17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Unto Adam the man God said “because you the man has listen unto the voice of the woman your wife and has eaten of the tree of knowledge which I God commanded you the man saying you the man shall not eat of the fruit of knowledge cursed is ground of the dust for your sake in sorrow shall you eat of the dust all the days of you live”. 18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; 19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Rocks and weeds shall the earth of dust bring forth also to you as you eat of its herb of fruit in itself in the field of the earth. In the sweat of your face shall you eat bread of life until you return unto that which you were made of the ground you came from and ground shall you return too? For out dust of the ground was you taken for dust you are and unto dust shall you return, 20 And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living. 21 Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them. Adam called his wife’s name Eve because the woman Eve was the mother of all life as know life today fleshly. Unto Adam and Eve God our Lord did make coats to covered their nakedness of fleshly skins and clothed then of spiritual death. 22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: The Lord our God said “behold the man has become like us in the unity of us to know understand what is good spiritually and understand what is evil fleshly. So let us now stop him and put forth man’s hand of flesh and man’s hand of spirit and also take the tree of life in itself so man lives forever with this curse that he brought unto his self. 23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. Therefore God our Lord sent Adam and Eve forth from garden of spiritual truths and fleshly truth in Eden the name God named it for man to till the ground of spiritual truth and fleshly truths from whence the man was creative, made, and form from. So God drove the man out of that place and God place lights in Eden the garden of truth a flaming sword cutting fleshly and spiritually ways which was the word of truth the Christ which turned every way know to man and unknown to man to keep the path of the tree of life. Genesis 4:1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. 2 And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. Adam the man knew Eve the woman his wife as she the woman conceived Cain the child she grew inside of her that she gave birth to the child named Cain Eve the woman had gotten boy child from the Lord our God. Eve the woman again give birth his brother called Abel a boy child also. Abel was a keeper of the sheep creature fleshly and spiritually but Cain was a tiller of ground fleshly and ground spiritually. 3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. 4 And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: 5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. In process of time it came to pass that Cain brought of the fruits of the ground of dust fleshly only and offering unto the Lord our God. Abel also brought of the unity of love of Abel’s flock fleshly and spiritually the fat of finest parts Abel offering unto the Lord our God with respect of God from Abel and gave Abel back the respect Abel gave to God. But unto Cain and Cain offering God had no respect for it so Cain was very angry with Abel and God Cain’s countenance fell or composure of self-control. 6 And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? 7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. The Lord our God said unto Cain “why are you angry at me God and has your self control been lost? If you do well shall you not the reward you earned and if do not do well you made the boat you are in? Sin is at your door or blessing is at your door you can accepted it or not as your desires shall be in your heart and you must rule your heart right yourselves. 8 And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. 9 And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper? 10 And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. Cain talked with Abel his brother as time pass when they in the field of the earth in fleshly form Cain raised up against Abel his brother and kill Abel his brother. The Lord our God said unto Cain “where is Abel your brother” and Cain said “I Cain know not am I my brother’s keeper”? God said, “What have you done your brother’s voice cried unto me God from the ground of dust”? 11 And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand; 12 When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. Now are you Cain cursed from dust of the earth that have opened its mouth to receive Abel your brother of flesh kind Able soul had been token by your own hand. When you tills the ground of dust it shall not henceforth yield its fruit unto you your labor will be vain your strength will be wasted a fugitive and vagabond from place to place shall you be in the dust of the earth. 13 And Cain said unto the LORD, My punishment is greater than I can bear. 14 Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me. Cain cried unto the Lord our God “my punishment is greater than I can bear to live in” behold you God have driven us mankind out from the spiritual face of dust of the heaven unto your fleshly face of mankind. I Cain shall be hid from God’s blessing as I Cain become a fugitive and a vagabond in this fleshly earth and as time pass whoever find me Cain shall take revenged for Abel death. 15 And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. 16 And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. The Lord our God said unto Cain “therefore whosoever revenged Abel death by Cain vengeance shall be taken on that person’s spiritual perfection fold” and the Lord God mark upon Cain if anyone finding Cain that person shall kill Cain. Cain went out of the presence of the Lord God and dwelt in the land of fleshly Nod on the east side of spiritually heaven of Eden. 17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch. 18 And unto Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: and Methusael begat Lamech. Cain had sex with his wife and she conceived Enoch and gives birth to Enoch and Cain build a city and called its name Enoch after Cain son. Unto Enoch was born Iran and Iran gave birth to Mehujael and Mehujael gave birth to Methusael and Methusael gave birth to Lamech. 19 And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. 20 And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle. Lamech took unto himself established wives the name of the unity was Adah and named of the other was Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal was the father of all that dwell in tents who have cattle and such. 21 And his brother’s name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. 22 And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubalcain was Naamah. Jabal brother’s name was Jubal he was the father of people who handle the harp and organ, Zillah Judal’s wife gave birth also Tubalcain an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron and the sister of Tubalcain was Naamah. 23 And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. 24 If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold. Lamech said unto Lamech’s wives Adah and Zillah “hear my voice you wives of Lamech hearken unto my speech for I Lamech have revenged the blood of Abel by killing the man Cain to my credit wounding the man the old man by a young man me Lamech. If Cain shall rewarded spiritual perfections truly Lamech shall be revenged spiritual perfection times perfection and spiritual perfection. 25 And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. 26 And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD. Adam knew his wife Eve again and she gave birth a son called named Seth for God said, “Adam hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel whom Cain killed”. To Seth was also conceive a child and the birth was a son came into the world Seth called him Enos and then the men began to call upon the name of spiritual Lord our God. Genesis 5:1 This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; 2 Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. This is book of the generations of life Adam history of the seed of Adam in the very day that Adam was made fleshly and created spiritually as God molding into shape fleshly and spiritually in the spiritual likeness of God made, created, and form them. Male and female God created, form, and made them as God blessed them as God called their names Adam the man and Eve the woman in the very day they begin they were created spiritually. 3 And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth: 4 And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters: 5 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. Adam lived with perfection of Divine order by itself and with ministry overtones plus completely complete statement of mankind the ministry of sin as Adam conceive a son in Adam’s own likeness after mankind image of fleshly life and spiritual death and Adam called his name Seth. The days of Adam after Adam gave life to Seth were new beginning of life kind with perfection divine order by itself and Adam conceive d sons and daughters of mankind. All the days of Adam were live by Adam was judgment of perfection of Divine order with ministry of sin with completely complete sin of mankind and Adam die. 6 And Seth lived an hundred and five years, and begat Enos: 7 And Seth lived after he begat Enos eight hundred and seven years, and begat sons and daughters: 8 And all the days of Seth were nine hundred and twelve years: and he died. Seth lived perfection of Divine order by itself with grace and Seth conceived Enos. Seth lived after Seth gave life to Enos new beginning with perfection of Divine order by itself with spiritual perfection of Seth and Seth conceived sons and daughters of mankind. All the days of Seth were judgment of perfection of Divine order by itself with government perfection of Seth and Seth die. 9 And Enos lived ninety years, and begat Cainan: 10 And Enos lived after he begat Cainan eight hundred and fifteen years, and begat sons and daughters: 11 And all the days of Enos were nine hundred and five years: and he died. Enos lived judgment with perfection of Divine order by itself and conceived Cainan. Enos lived after Enos’s gave life to Cainan new beginning perfection of Divine order by itself and completely complete grace as Enos conceived sons and daughters of mankind. All the days of Enos were judgment of perfection of Divine order by itself with grace of Enos and Enos die. 12 And Cainan lived seventy years, and begat Mahalaleel: 13 And Cainan lived after he begat Mahalaleel eight hundred and forty years, and begat sons and daughters: 14 And all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years: and he died. Cainan lived spiritual perfection by divine order and Cainan conceived Mahalaleel. Cainan lived after Cainan gave life to Mahalalleel the new beginning by perfection of divine order by itself plus period of probation, trial, and chastisement of Cainan and Cainan conceived sons and daughters of mankind. All the days of Cainan were judgment by perfection divide order by itself with perfection divine order established of Cainan and Cainan die in his flesh. 15And Mahalaleel lived sixty and five years, and begat Jared: 16 And Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared eight hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters: 17 And all the days of Mahalaleel were eight hundred ninety and five years: and he died. Mahalaleel lived which marks the apostasy of that Tribe Mahalaleel family or the perfection by divine order of man with grace of Mahalaleel as Mahalaleel conceived Jared. Mahalaleel lived after Mahalaleel conceived Jared Mahalaleel walks this earh new beginning of perfection by divine order by itself and ministry of sin Mahalaleel conceived sons and daughters of mankind. All the days of Mahalaleel were new beginning of perfection by divine order by itself judgment by perfection by divine order with grace overtones of Mahalaleel and Mahalaleel die in the flesh. 18 And Jared lived an hundred sixty and two years, and he begat Enoch: 19 And Jared lived after he begat Enoch eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: 20 And all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died. Jared lived perfection by divine order by itself, which was established, and Jared conceived Enoch. Jared walked this earth after Jared conceived Enoch perfection by divine order by itself with new beginning of Jared and Jared conceived sons and daughters of mankind. All the days of Jared were judgment of perfection by divine order by itself of man by perfection by divine order that was established of Jared life and Jared die in the flesh. 21 And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: 22 And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: 23 And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: 24And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him. Enoch lived marks the apostasy of that Tribe or man of perfection by divine order with grace of Enoch as Enoch conceived Methuselah. Enoch walked with love of God in Enoch heart and Enoch conceived Methuselah completely complete perfection by divine order of Enoch and Enoch conceived sons and daughters of mankind. All the days of Enoch were completely complete with perfection by divine order by itself plus the apostasy of that Tribe or man of perfection by divine order with grace of Enoch. Enoch walked with God’s love in Enoch’s heart and Enoch fleshly was not found for God had token Enoch spiritual body. 25 And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech: 26 And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters: 27 And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died. Methuselah lived the perfection by divine order by itself with new beginning of perfection by divine order with spiritual perfection of Methuselah and Methuselah conceived Lamech. Methuselah lived after that Methuselah conceived Lamech spiritual perfection by perfection of divine order by itself with new beginning of perfection by divine order that established of Methuselah and Methuselah had sons and daughters of mankind. All the days of Methuselah were judgment of perfection by divine order by itself with man’s perfection by divine order by judgment of Methuselah and Methuselah die in the flesh. 28 And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son: 29 And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed. 30 And Lamech lived after he begat Noah five hundred ninety and five years, and begat sons and daughters: 31 And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy and seven years: and he died. Lamech lived new beginning of perfection by divine order with established of Lamech conceiving a son of him-self. Lamech called his son’s name Noah saying “this the same person who shall comfort our work to live that we toil of our own hands because of the ground of dust we were token from which the Lord our God hath cursed because of our sin of mankind.” Lamech lived after Lamech conceived Noah and Lamech live grace of perfection by divine order by itself with judgment of perfection by divine order of grace of Lamech and Lamech conceived sons and daughters of mankind. All the days of Lamech were spiritual perfection by perfection by divine order over spiritual perfection of perfection by divine order with spiritual perfection of Lamech and Lamech die in the flesh. 32 And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Noah was grace by perfection by divine order by itself when Noah conceived Shem, Ham, and Japheth Noah complete sons. Thank you with God’s love toward you and a holy kiss of Christ from God’s child Roy.

God We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us talk by Jim Forest for the Orthodox Peace Fellowship meeting in Canton, Ohio, June 22, 2001 In the dawn of time, way back in the nineteen-fifties, my favorite comic strip concerned an assortment of animals living in Florida’s Okefenokee Swamp. The artist, a whimsical man named Walt Kelly, referred to them as “nature’s schreechers.” There was Pogo, a level-headed, pure-hearted possum overflowing with good will. It was Pogo who gave the strip its name. It would have been a Pogo-like child who told the emperor he was wearing no clothes. The swamp’s large cast also included Albert, a raffish, cigar- smoking alligator of large appetites, a turtle named Churchy La Femme who wore of pirate hat and had an keen eye for the ladies, Beauregard, a hound dog with a Sherlock Holmes orientation, an owl name Howland who was the swamp’s leading scientist and also occasional newspaper editor, a porcupine named Porkypine who had a knack for seeing the dismal side of things and being disappointed when the worst didn’t happen, Madamzelle Hepzibah, a romantic skunk with an accent fresh from Paris who loved to be wooed but was never won, and the fox Seminole Sam, a lawyer by trade who would never walk past a penny without putting it in his pocket, perhaps emptying your pocket while he was at it. There was also P.T. Bridgeport, a bear in striped jacket and boater hat who spoke in circus-poster lettering and in my mind sounded like W.C. Fields. He was the model showman-salesman in a nation fascinated by shows and selling. I mustn’t leave out Wiley Cat, who at a certain point in the strip’s history began to bear an astonishing resemblance to Joseph McCarthy. Wiley Cat saw sedition if the roses had red petals or if he found a red hen in the farmyard. You had to be a brave cartoonist in those days to dare making fun of the junior Senator from Wisconsin — being laughed at was not something that warmed his cold-war heart. Not least in the cast was Deacon Mushrat, a severe, bespeckled muskrat who more a black morning coat, had a black string tie, spoke in black Gothic script, was in permanent pulpit-mode, smiled only when receiving the collection plate, and was in favor of kindness to the needy so long as the beneficiaries were abjectly grateful and didn’t forget to say “Thank you” and “Amen.” It was a well-drawn, wonderfully funny strip packed with puns and poetry and, on occasion, a good-humored political bite. Few people in America took on the fifties as daringly as Walt Kelly, including our obsession with spies, traitors, and nuclear weapons. He got away with it because he pretended this was just a comic strip and that these were, after all, only talking animals in an imaginary swamp. But of course these verbose animals were human beings in india-ink disguises. They were us, we were them. Their swamp was our country. You may wonder why Jim Forest, who is supposed to be talking about “Following Christ in a Violent World,” is instead talking about a comic strip on the 1950s? The answer is that, while I was thinking about what I might say here in Canton, I found myself haunted by a single sentence that Pogo said many a time during the years this strip was being drawn: We have met the enemy and he is us. This is a key verse from the Gospel According to Pogo. We have met the enemy and he is us, as I was to learn later in life, sums up a lot of the writings of the Church Fathers, the principal theologians of Christianity’s first millennium. If you read the Fathers, you find that one of their main subjects is spiritual warfare, a life-long inner struggle against those soul-destroying tendencies the Church Fathers called passions. It is a battle with all those temptations and attitudes that, unresisted, can carry me or any of us to hell. In a world in which bad choices and enmity not only rise up in our darker thoughts but are relentlessly promoted day in and day out via the mass media, spiritual warfare is something no Christian can get along without. It is striking how often the Church has used military metaphors to describe ordinary Christian life. In the Book of Revelation, John the Evangelist sees a two-edged sword emerges from Christ’s mouth. Paul uses not only a sword but helmet and shield in describing basic attributes of Christian life. In doing this he is only enlarging on Christ’s own words. He said that he came “not to bring peace but a sword.” Sadly, it’s a text that has sometimes been used to justify weapons and warfare, though such a reading goes flat when we notice that Christ had no sword, killed no one, and blessed neither armies nor wars, not even the liberation war that was gathering steam under the anti-Roman Zealots in those days. As St. Tikhon, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in the first years of Communism, said in 1919 in an effort to prevent Orthodox Christians from participating in civil war: For the Christian, the ideal is Christ, who used no sword to defend Himself, who brought the sons of thunder to peace, having prayed for His enemies on the Cross. For the Christian, the guiding light is the command of the holy Apostle, who suffered much for his Savior and who sealed his dedication to Him by his death. In the Gospels we meet the Christ of healing and forgiveness, the Christ who brings the dead back to life. He speaks admiringly of the faith of a Roman centurion — an officer of Rome’s army of occupation — who seeks his help. He prevents the execution of a woman who had been found guilt of adultery. His final healing miracle before his crucifixion was on behalf of one of the men who had come to arrest him, someone wounded by Peter in his effort to use a sword to defend Christ. The early Church took very much to heart what Christ said to Peter on that occasion: “Whoever lives by the sword will perish by the sword.” Yet, reflecting on the lives of the saints and the Church’s history, we see that Christ did indeed bring a sword. There is the sword of division that occurs whenever a follower of Christ obeys God rather than man. The Church’s many martyrs are mainly men and women who suffered for failing to be the kind of people the authorities wanted them to be. The sword also symbolizes truth, with its razor-sharp edge. It’s interesting to reflect that Gandhi’s word for nonviolence, satyagraha, means much more than the mere avoidance of violence. Satyagraha means the power of truth. Each time we recite the prayer that begins “Oh heavenly King,” we remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. Living in the truth, being truthful people, is a sine qua non of spiritual life, that is life in the Holy Spirit. And it is no easy undertaking. While we remain in this world, it’s an endless battle. “Tell the truth,” says my wife’s screen-saver. “Don’t be afraid.” She is a profoundly truthful person but apparently even she needs to be reminded not to let fear keep her from trying to know the truth and to tell it. I learned partly from our daughter Anne just how powerful a symbol the sword can be. Anne was about sword-length herself at the time and night after night she was having dragon nightmares. Our response was to purchase a silver-colored plastic sword from a local toy store and give it to her, hoping it might aid her in her night-time encounters with dragons — and it did. She felt much safer and stronger when she closed her eyes at night. In the course of several years, she wore out three plastic swords before she decided she no longer need a sword in bed with her. Before that day came, I can recall her surprise when she noticed Nancy and I didn’t sleep with a sword. Once at breakfast I mentioned a dream that had disturbed my sleep the night before.”You know, daddy,” she said, “if you had sword, you wouldn’t have dreams like that.” It is not only children who battle dragons. Dragons symbolize evil. They are an image of anything that makes us afraid. Sooner or later we meet real dragons. We even find discover some of them have dug caves in our own souls. We are obliged to fight them. This is spiritual warfare. This is what the icon of Saint George the Great Martyr is all about. It is not that George had a white horse and went around looking for dragons to test his warrior skills and rescue ladies in distress. This young soldier probably didn’t have a horse and never saw a dragon. The actual dragon he met was imperial persecution of Christians. In the era of Diocletian, he suffered torture and was executed for professing his faith. His actual weapon was not a spear but the cross. However the medieval legend of Saint George reveals the truth in its own metaphorical way and is a profoundly Christian story. An important detail of the legend is that George doesn’t kill the dragon; he only wounds and subdues it. Princess Elizabeth puts the dragon on a leash made from her belt and leads it back to the town. Responding to this miracle of courage, the people of the town are converted and prepare for baptism. The dragon to whom they once sacrificed their children in the end becomes their pet. Another detail worth pondering is that the unbaptized people of Elizabeth’s town have long had their own solution to living with the dragon: they sacrificed some of their children to it. Human sacrifice to appease dangerous gods was a common practice in the pre-Christian world, and remains a central element in the pseudo- religion of nationalism: the offering of our children to the god of war. We don’t have to look far to find a dragon. Most of the spiritual warfare we carry on in our lives is in response not to a terrifying creature in the distance but to a familiar adversary we meet in the mirror. The struggle against those soul-destroying tendencies the Church Fathers called passions is a struggle with myself. We have met the enemy and he is us. St. Paul tells us that we struggle “not with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers.” (Eph 6:12) This is crucial to any understanding of Christian peacemaking. I say “Christian peacemaking” and just simply “peacemaking” because our center point is not an ideology or philosophy or political movement of peace. It is Christ himself. It is not simply that Christ is peaceful but rather that he is peace. For us peacemaking is not a secular word. It is participation in who Christ is: the Logos, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, our maker and redeemer, who not only came to live us with us as a man among men, but gives us an example of what is to be fully human, to become people in whom the image of God is not only present, if largely hidden, but has become visible; a people in whom God’s likeness has been restored. Battling the principalities and powers rather than flesh and blood is the essence of Christian peacemaking and why in the Beatitudes Christ calls peacemakers children of God. A large part of our struggle with principalities and powers is recognizing that these powers rejoice in God’s sons and daughters being in enmity with each other. This means we have to struggle to overcome whatever makes us into enemies with our fellow human beings. This means trying to identify aspects of the process of enmity — to see the ways in which enmity plants itself in me and the way enmity can become the organizing principal both of one’s own life and of whole societies. I mentioned the Gospel According to Pogo. We can also speak of the Gospel According to John Wayne — or any other movie star who plays similar roles. This is our main story. It’s a movie we have made thousands of times and continue making. It can be adapted to any background — not only the 19th century western frontier, but 20th century urban strongholds of the Mafia or an intergalactic backdrop a la Star Wars. These are always stories of how decent, brave men find no honorable recourse but to take up a gun and kill those who are evil and indecent. The latter are always people who rejoice in their malevolence. There is no image of God in them. Repentance and conversion are out of the question. The community can only protect itself from the dangers such men pose by killing them. This is our culture’s main story, and a powerful myth it is. The Christian conviction is that no human being comes from bad seed — no one is genetically programmed to evil. Neither is any of us lacking a capacity for evil. As Solzhenitsyn wrote: The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of hearts, there remains… an un-uprooted small corner of evil. [Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, "The Ascent"] The person who commits evil deeds has lost his way but, if we wish to see him with Christ’s eyes, we will see him as being in the grip of invisible powers which are making use of his life. The man himself is not our enemy, only the demons who have gained a foothold in his life. Our hope is that the person threatening our lives today may in the future be someone we need no longer fear, and that we might either help in his salvation or at least not impede it. But if we see only an enemy in him, someone to hate, we are already in hell, we are in the kingdom of hatred. “The Church never has any enemies,” Archbishop Anastasios told me when I was in Albania in March. “We may be regarded as enemies but we have no enemies.” These words come from the leader of a Church which suffered one of the harshest persecutions in the history of Christianity. This is no vague, distant memory. Many of the persecutors are still alive. Many of them still hate every manifestation of religion, especially Christianity. As was the case with the early Church, the Church in Albania refuses to have enemies. It is not fighting a “holy war” against them, not even thinking a holy war against them, but rather has a paschal confidence that anyone, no matter how much an enemy he has been or seems to be, can in the blink of an eye become a fellow disciple of Jesus Christ or in some other way devoted to God and no longer anyone’s enemy. The key word is conversion. In the early Church the primary model of transformation is Paul. He was among the most passionate enemies of Christianity at first, a man who approved of Christ’s crucifixion and consented to the execution by stoning of the Church’s first deacon, Stephen. Yet Christ makes of him not only a disciple but an Apostle as well as one of the authors of the New Testament. We find other models in the repentant thief crucified with Jesus, in St. Mary Magdalene, in St. Moses the Black, in St. Mary of Egypt and in so many others. Peacemaking begins with the eyes, with the way we see others. A nun friend of mine often uses the phrase “hospitality of the face.” Our face should be a place in which others experience a real welcome. Peacemaking is also a life of prayer for the other, not only those whom we love but also those we fear, those who threaten us. Christ’s commandment is, “Love your enemies, pray for them.” Take this out of the Gospel and you have removed the keel from the ship. How can we love an enemy whom we do not pray for? It is impossible. If we want to overcome enmity, it starts with prayer. This is not a small or easy step. The fact is that the last person in the world we really want to pray for is the person we fear or despise. The first glimpse we have of the enemy within ourselves is our reluctance to pray for those whom we fear or hate. We need to keep a list of our enemies and make prayer for them part of our daily life. Prayer is an invisible binding together. The moment I pray for another person, there is a thread of connection. I have taken that person into myself. Praying for him means to ask God to bless him, to give him health, to lead him toward heaven, to use me to help bring about his salvation. As soon as this occurs, my relations with that person or community of people is changed. You look differently at a person you are praying for. You listen differently. It doesn’t mean you will necessarily agree. You may disagree more than ever. But you struggle more to understand what is really at issue and to find solutions that will be for his good as well as your own. In fact, the saints tell us, the deeper we go in the life of faith, the freer we become from worrying about our own welfare, the more we worry about the welfare of others. Keep in mind that love is not simply a sentimental condition — happy, joyful feelings for certain beloved persons. Love is how we respond to the other. It is doing what we can safeguard his life and to pray for his salvation. If you say you love someone but you let him starve to death, there is no love. If you say you love God but you abandon your neighbor, there is no love for God. Yet how hard it is to overcome the temptation not to seek God’s image in other people. On the contrary, how easy it is not to see that image or even to imagine its exists. Truly we have met the enemy and he is us. Some years ago, at a Syndesmos conference on the Greek island of Crete, I gave a talk in which I summarized Orthodox teaching about war. I pointed out that the Orthodox Church has never embraced the just war doctrine, that the Church regards war as inevitably sinful in nature even in cases where no obvious alternative to war can be found, that no one has ever been canonized for killing, that priests are forbidden by canon law to kill or cause the death of others, and that under all circumstances and at all times every baptized person is commanded by Christ to love our enemies. There was nothing remarkable in what I said, no novel doctrines, nothing borrowed from non-Orthodox sources, yet the lecture stirred up a controversy not only in the hall in which I was speaking but into the city itself, as the translator’s words were being broadcast live over the diocesan radio station. The debate continued that night when the local bishop, Metropolitan Irinaios, and I took part in a radio conversation with listeners. Responding to a man who called in to denounce Turks as barbarians who only understood violence, I summarized what Christ had to say on the subject of loving one’s enemies and pointed out that Christ lived, died and rose from the dead in a country suffering occupation, yet he neither blessed nor took part in the Zealot’s armed struggle against the occupiers. “That’s all very well,” the caller responded, “but now let me tell you about a real saint.” He preceeded to tell me about a priest who, in the 19th century, played a valiant role in the war to drive the Turks off the island. In fact we have soldier saints, like Great Martyr George, but when we study their lives in order to find out why the Church canonized them, it was never for their courage and heroism as soldiers but other factors. Most were martyrs — people who died for their faith without defending themselves. There are saints who got in trouble for refusing to take part in war, in some cases dying for their disobedience. One saint, Martin of Tours, providentially escaped execution and went on to become a great missionary bishop. There is Ireland’s renowned Saint Columba, who is on the Church calendar not because he was co-responsible for a great battle in which many were slaughtered but because he went on to live a life of penance in exile, in the process converting many to Christ. All of what I’m saying probably sounds fine. It isn’t hard to admire saints. Most people realize that the Gospel is not a summons to hatred or violence. But what about our ordinary selves living here and now? What does this have to do with how we carry on our lives? Most of us will readily admit we are only partial Christians — that is to say, our conversion is far from complete. When we go to confession, we don’t even try confessing all of our sins because no priest in the world would have time to hear them all. We try to think what the main ones are and focus on them, or perhaps deal with them thematically. We’re painfully aware that we have far to go. We have met the enemy and he is us. One of the great obstacles is that we tend to be more nation- than Christ-centered people. We are formed less by the Gospel than by a particular economic, social, political and cultural milieu. Our thoughts, values, choices, “life style” — all these tend to be formed by the mass culture in which we are born and raised. In America Christians easily find themselves following a Christ who has been Americanized: a Christ who smiles like a presidential candidate, a Christ of success rather than the cross, a Christ who blesses manifest destiny, a Christ untroubled by our wars, or by the Cuban or Iraqi children made dead by economic sanctions, or all the children killed before birth through abortion, or the many ways we push our neighbors toward tragic choices by our failures to help or to develop structures of mutual support. Yet we have in the Church so many saints who provide us with models of what it means to follow Christ wholeheartedly, without holding anything back. One such saint — not yet formally canonized — is Mother Maria Skobtsova, a Russian refugee in France who devoted herself to the care of the homeless and destitute — and also to the renewal of the Church. She and the community she was part of helped save the lives of many people, especially Jews, when France was occupied by Nazi armies. On one occasion she managed to smuggle children awaiting deportation out of a stadium in which thousands of Jews had been rounded up. It is hardly surprising that eventually she was arrested and ended her life in a German concentration camp, Ravensbruck, dying on Good Friday in the place of a Jewish woman. Yet we find in her many letters, essays and the acts of her brave life not a trace of hatred for Germans or Austrians, even those who were captive of Nazi ideology. She was part of the resistance to Nazism, but was no one’s enemy, not even Hitler’s. Her small community produced two other martyrs: the priest who assisted her, Fr. Dimitri Klepenin, and her son, Yuri, who was then just entering adulthood. At the core of their lives was the conviction, as Mother Maria put it, that “each person is the very icon of God incarnate in the world.” This is not some new idea that was discovered by a few saintly Christians in Paris in that grim time but what C.S. Lewis referred to as “mere Christianity.” It is because each person is an icon of God that everyone in the church in honored with incense during the Liturgy. Mother Maria had been married and became a mother before taking the monastic path. Before that happened her husband left her and one of her children had died. She embraced a celibate vocation, but her understanding of monastic life was not the traditional one of withdrawal. She was opposed to living a life that might impose “even the subtlest barrier which might separate the heart from the world and its wounds.” Like any Orthodox Christian, the Liturgy was at the core of her life, but it was seen giving daily life a divine imprint. “The meaning of the Liturgy must be translated into life,” she said. “It is why Christ came into the world and why he gave us our Liturgy.” She was determined to live a life in which the works of mercy were central. As she wrote: “At the Last Judgment I shall not be asked whether I was successful in my ascetic exercises, nor how many bows and prostrations I made. Instead I shall be asked, Did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners. That is all I shall be asked.” No one has lived in a more violent time than she, a time in which there were more temptations to keep one’s head down and quietly survive. Yet instead she and those who worked with her give us a model of centering one’s life on those whose lives are threatened. Then it was especially the Jews. In our time the list of those in danger is much longer, including not only the born but the unborn as well as those who are handicapped or old. We live in what many people have come to identify as a culture of death. The only question each of us must struggle with is where to focus our life-saving activity. It is not just a question of saving lives but making clear to others, through our response to them, that they bear God’s image — thus that there is a God, and that God is love. We have met the enemy and he is us — no small foe. Yet if we will only cooperate in Christ’s mercy, struggling day by day to die to self, day by day our conversion will continue. Let me close with these words from St. Cyprian of Carthage: You have many things to ponder. Ponder paradise, where Cain, who destroyed his brother through jealousy, does not return. Ponder the kingdom of heaven to which the Lord admits only those of one heart and mind. Ponder the fact that only those can be called the sons of God who are peacemakers, who, united by divine birth and law, correspond to the likeness of God the Father and Christ. Ponder that we are under God’s eyes, that we are running the course of our conversion, and life with God Himself looking on and judging, that then finally we can arrive at the point of succeeding in seeing Him, if we delight Him as He now observes us by our actions, if we show ourselves worthy of His grace and indulgence, if we, who are to please Him forever in heaven, please Him first in this world. ["On Jealousy and Envy", chapter 18] This entry was posted on Monday, April 25th, 2005 at 9:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

God We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us talk by Jim Forest for the Orthodox Peace Fellowship meeting in Canton, Ohio, June 22, 2001 In the dawn of time, way back in the nineteen-fifties, my favorite comic strip concerned an assortment of animals living in Florida’s Okefenokee Swamp. The artist, a whimsical man named Walt Kelly, referred to them as “nature’s schreechers.” There was Pogo, a level-headed, pure-hearted possum overflowing with good will. It was Pogo who gave the strip its name. It would have been a Pogo-like child who told the emperor he was wearing no clothes. The swamp’s large cast also included Albert, a raffish, cigar- smoking alligator of large appetites, a turtle named Churchy La Femme who wore of pirate hat and had an keen eye for the ladies, Beauregard, a hound dog with a Sherlock Holmes orientation, an owl name Howland who was the swamp’s leading scientist and also occasional newspaper editor, a porcupine named Porkypine who had a knack for seeing the dismal side of things and being disappointed when the worst didn’t happen, Madamzelle Hepzibah, a romantic skunk with an accent fresh from Paris who loved to be wooed but was never won, and the fox Seminole Sam, a lawyer by trade who would never walk past a penny without putting it in his pocket, perhaps emptying your pocket while he was at it. There was also P.T. Bridgeport, a bear in striped jacket and boater hat who spoke in circus-poster lettering and in my mind sounded like W.C. Fields. He was the model showman-salesman in a nation fascinated by shows and selling. I mustn’t leave out Wiley Cat, who at a certain point in the strip’s history began to bear an astonishing resemblance to Joseph McCarthy. Wiley Cat saw sedition if the roses had red petals or if he found a red hen in the farmyard. You had to be a brave cartoonist in those days to dare making fun of the junior Senator from Wisconsin — being laughed at was not something that warmed his cold-war heart. Not least in the cast was Deacon Mushrat, a severe, bespeckled muskrat who more a black morning coat, had a black string tie, spoke in black Gothic script, was in permanent pulpit-mode, smiled only when receiving the collection plate, and was in favor of kindness to the needy so long as the beneficiaries were abjectly grateful and didn’t forget to say “Thank you” and “Amen.” It was a well-drawn, wonderfully funny strip packed with puns and poetry and, on occasion, a good-humored political bite. Few people in America took on the fifties as daringly as Walt Kelly, including our obsession with spies, traitors, and nuclear weapons. He got away with it because he pretended this was just a comic strip and that these were, after all, only talking animals in an imaginary swamp. But of course these verbose animals were human beings in india-ink disguises. They were us, we were them. Their swamp was our country. You may wonder why Jim Forest, who is supposed to be talking about “Following Christ in a Violent World,” is instead talking about a comic strip on the 1950s? The answer is that, while I was thinking about what I might say here in Canton, I found myself haunted by a single sentence that Pogo said many a time during the years this strip was being drawn: We have met the enemy and he is us. This is a key verse from the Gospel According to Pogo. We have met the enemy and he is us, as I was to learn later in life, sums up a lot of the writings of the Church Fathers, the principal theologians of Christianity’s first millennium. If you read the Fathers, you find that one of their main subjects is spiritual warfare, a life-long inner struggle against those soul-destroying tendencies the Church Fathers called passions. It is a battle with all those temptations and attitudes that, unresisted, can carry me or any of us to hell. In a world in which bad choices and enmity not only rise up in our darker thoughts but are relentlessly promoted day in and day out via the mass media, spiritual warfare is something no Christian can get along without. It is striking how often the Church has used military metaphors to describe ordinary Christian life. In the Book of Revelation, John the Evangelist sees a two-edged sword emerges from Christ’s mouth. Paul uses not only a sword but helmet and shield in describing basic attributes of Christian life. In doing this he is only enlarging on Christ’s own words. He said that he came “not to bring peace but a sword.” Sadly, it’s a text that has sometimes been used to justify weapons and warfare, though such a reading goes flat when we notice that Christ had no sword, killed no one, and blessed neither armies nor wars, not even the liberation war that was gathering steam under the anti-Roman Zealots in those days. As St. Tikhon, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in the first years of Communism, said in 1919 in an effort to prevent Orthodox Christians from participating in civil war: For the Christian, the ideal is Christ, who used no sword to defend Himself, who brought the sons of thunder to peace, having prayed for His enemies on the Cross. For the Christian, the guiding light is the command of the holy Apostle, who suffered much for his Savior and who sealed his dedication to Him by his death. In the Gospels we meet the Christ of healing and forgiveness, the Christ who brings the dead back to life. He speaks admiringly of the faith of a Roman centurion — an officer of Rome’s army of occupation — who seeks his help. He prevents the execution of a woman who had been found guilt of adultery. His final healing miracle before his crucifixion was on behalf of one of the men who had come to arrest him, someone wounded by Peter in his effort to use a sword to defend Christ. The early Church took very much to heart what Christ said to Peter on that occasion: “Whoever lives by the sword will perish by the sword.” Yet, reflecting on the lives of the saints and the Church’s history, we see that Christ did indeed bring a sword. There is the sword of division that occurs whenever a follower of Christ obeys God rather than man. The Church’s many martyrs are mainly men and women who suffered for failing to be the kind of people the authorities wanted them to be. The sword also symbolizes truth, with its razor-sharp edge. It’s interesting to reflect that Gandhi’s word for nonviolence, satyagraha, means much more than the mere avoidance of violence. Satyagraha means the power of truth. Each time we recite the prayer that begins “Oh heavenly King,” we remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. Living in the truth, being truthful people, is a sine qua non of spiritual life, that is life in the Holy Spirit. And it is no easy undertaking. While we remain in this world, it’s an endless battle. “Tell the truth,” says my wife’s screen-saver. “Don’t be afraid.” She is a profoundly truthful person but apparently even she needs to be reminded not to let fear keep her from trying to know the truth and to tell it. I learned partly from our daughter Anne just how powerful a symbol the sword can be. Anne was about sword-length herself at the time and night after night she was having dragon nightmares. Our response was to purchase a silver-colored plastic sword from a local toy store and give it to her, hoping it might aid her in her night-time encounters with dragons — and it did. She felt much safer and stronger when she closed her eyes at night. In the course of several years, she wore out three plastic swords before she decided she no longer need a sword in bed with her. Before that day came, I can recall her surprise when she noticed Nancy and I didn’t sleep with a sword. Once at breakfast I mentioned a dream that had disturbed my sleep the night before.”You know, daddy,” she said, “if you had sword, you wouldn’t have dreams like that.” It is not only children who battle dragons. Dragons symbolize evil. They are an image of anything that makes us afraid. Sooner or later we meet real dragons. We even find discover some of them have dug caves in our own souls. We are obliged to fight them. This is spiritual warfare. This is what the icon of Saint George the Great Martyr is all about. It is not that George had a white horse and went around looking for dragons to test his warrior skills and rescue ladies in distress. This young soldier probably didn’t have a horse and never saw a dragon. The actual dragon he met was imperial persecution of Christians. In the era of Diocletian, he suffered torture and was executed for professing his faith. His actual weapon was not a spear but the cross. However the medieval legend of Saint George reveals the truth in its own metaphorical way and is a profoundly Christian story. An important detail of the legend is that George doesn’t kill the dragon; he only wounds and subdues it. Princess Elizabeth puts the dragon on a leash made from her belt and leads it back to the town. Responding to this miracle of courage, the people of the town are converted and prepare for baptism. The dragon to whom they once sacrificed their children in the end becomes their pet. Another detail worth pondering is that the unbaptized people of Elizabeth’s town have long had their own solution to living with the dragon: they sacrificed some of their children to it. Human sacrifice to appease dangerous gods was a common practice in the pre-Christian world, and remains a central element in the pseudo- religion of nationalism: the offering of our children to the god of war. We don’t have to look far to find a dragon. Most of the spiritual warfare we carry on in our lives is in response not to a terrifying creature in the distance but to a familiar adversary we meet in the mirror. The struggle against those soul-destroying tendencies the Church Fathers called passions is a struggle with myself. We have met the enemy and he is us. St. Paul tells us that we struggle “not with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers.” (Eph 6:12) This is crucial to any understanding of Christian peacemaking. I say “Christian peacemaking” and just simply “peacemaking” because our center point is not an ideology or philosophy or political movement of peace. It is Christ himself. It is not simply that Christ is peaceful but rather that he is peace. For us peacemaking is not a secular word. It is participation in who Christ is: the Logos, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, our maker and redeemer, who not only came to live us with us as a man among men, but gives us an example of what is to be fully human, to become people in whom the image of God is not only present, if largely hidden, but has become visible; a people in whom God’s likeness has been restored. Battling the principalities and powers rather than flesh and blood is the essence of Christian peacemaking and why in the Beatitudes Christ calls peacemakers children of God. A large part of our struggle with principalities and powers is recognizing that these powers rejoice in God’s sons and daughters being in enmity with each other. This means we have to struggle to overcome whatever makes us into enemies with our fellow human beings. This means trying to identify aspects of the process of enmity — to see the ways in which enmity plants itself in me and the way enmity can become the organizing principal both of one’s own life and of whole societies. I mentioned the Gospel According to Pogo. We can also speak of the Gospel According to John Wayne — or any other movie star who plays similar roles. This is our main story. It’s a movie we have made thousands of times and continue making. It can be adapted to any background — not only the 19th century western frontier, but 20th century urban strongholds of the Mafia or an intergalactic backdrop a la Star Wars. These are always stories of how decent, brave men find no honorable recourse but to take up a gun and kill those who are evil and indecent. The latter are always people who rejoice in their malevolence. There is no image of God in them. Repentance and conversion are out of the question. The community can only protect itself from the dangers such men pose by killing them. This is our culture’s main story, and a powerful myth it is. The Christian conviction is that no human being comes from bad seed — no one is genetically programmed to evil. Neither is any of us lacking a capacity for evil. As Solzhenitsyn wrote: The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of hearts, there remains… an un-uprooted small corner of evil. [Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, "The Ascent"] The person who commits evil deeds has lost his way but, if we wish to see him with Christ’s eyes, we will see him as being in the grip of invisible powers which are making use of his life. The man himself is not our enemy, only the demons who have gained a foothold in his life. Our hope is that the person threatening our lives today may in the future be someone we need no longer fear, and that we might either help in his salvation or at least not impede it. But if we see only an enemy in him, someone to hate, we are already in hell, we are in the kingdom of hatred. “The Church never has any enemies,” Archbishop Anastasios told me when I was in Albania in March. “We may be regarded as enemies but we have no enemies.” These words come from the leader of a Church which suffered one of the harshest persecutions in the history of Christianity. This is no vague, distant memory. Many of the persecutors are still alive. Many of them still hate every manifestation of religion, especially Christianity. As was the case with the early Church, the Church in Albania refuses to have enemies. It is not fighting a “holy war” against them, not even thinking a holy war against them, but rather has a paschal confidence that anyone, no matter how much an enemy he has been or seems to be, can in the blink of an eye become a fellow disciple of Jesus Christ or in some other way devoted to God and no longer anyone’s enemy. The key word is conversion. In the early Church the primary model of transformation is Paul. He was among the most passionate enemies of Christianity at first, a man who approved of Christ’s crucifixion and consented to the execution by stoning of the Church’s first deacon, Stephen. Yet Christ makes of him not only a disciple but an Apostle as well as one of the authors of the New Testament. We find other models in the repentant thief crucified with Jesus, in St. Mary Magdalene, in St. Moses the Black, in St. Mary of Egypt and in so many others. Peacemaking begins with the eyes, with the way we see others. A nun friend of mine often uses the phrase “hospitality of the face.” Our face should be a place in which others experience a real welcome. Peacemaking is also a life of prayer for the other, not only those whom we love but also those we fear, those who threaten us. Christ’s commandment is, “Love your enemies, pray for them.” Take this out of the Gospel and you have removed the keel from the ship. How can we love an enemy whom we do not pray for? It is impossible. If we want to overcome enmity, it starts with prayer. This is not a small or easy step. The fact is that the last person in the world we really want to pray for is the person we fear or despise. The first glimpse we have of the enemy within ourselves is our reluctance to pray for those whom we fear or hate. We need to keep a list of our enemies and make prayer for them part of our daily life. Prayer is an invisible binding together. The moment I pray for another person, there is a thread of connection. I have taken that person into myself. Praying for him means to ask God to bless him, to give him health, to lead him toward heaven, to use me to help bring about his salvation. As soon as this occurs, my relations with that person or community of people is changed. You look differently at a person you are praying for. You listen differently. It doesn’t mean you will necessarily agree. You may disagree more than ever. But you struggle more to understand what is really at issue and to find solutions that will be for his good as well as your own. In fact, the saints tell us, the deeper we go in the life of faith, the freer we become from worrying about our own welfare, the more we worry about the welfare of others. Keep in mind that love is not simply a sentimental condition — happy, joyful feelings for certain beloved persons. Love is how we respond to the other. It is doing what we can safeguard his life and to pray for his salvation. If you say you love someone but you let him starve to death, there is no love. If you say you love God but you abandon your neighbor, there is no love for God. Yet how hard it is to overcome the temptation not to seek God’s image in other people. On the contrary, how easy it is not to see that image or even to imagine its exists. Truly we have met the enemy and he is us. Some years ago, at a Syndesmos conference on the Greek island of Crete, I gave a talk in which I summarized Orthodox teaching about war. I pointed out that the Orthodox Church has never embraced the just war doctrine, that the Church regards war as inevitably sinful in nature even in cases where no obvious alternative to war can be found, that no one has ever been canonized for killing, that priests are forbidden by canon law to kill or cause the death of others, and that under all circumstances and at all times every baptized person is commanded by Christ to love our enemies. There was nothing remarkable in what I said, no novel doctrines, nothing borrowed from non-Orthodox sources, yet the lecture stirred up a controversy not only in the hall in which I was speaking but into the city itself, as the translator’s words were being broadcast live over the diocesan radio station. The debate continued that night when the local bishop, Metropolitan Irinaios, and I took part in a radio conversation with listeners. Responding to a man who called in to denounce Turks as barbarians who only understood violence, I summarized what Christ had to say on the subject of loving one’s enemies and pointed out that Christ lived, died and rose from the dead in a country suffering occupation, yet he neither blessed nor took part in the Zealot’s armed struggle against the occupiers. “That’s all very well,” the caller responded, “but now let me tell you about a real saint.” He preceeded to tell me about a priest who, in the 19th century, played a valiant role in the war to drive the Turks off the island. In fact we have soldier saints, like Great Martyr George, but when we study their lives in order to find out why the Church canonized them, it was never for their courage and heroism as soldiers but other factors. Most were martyrs — people who died for their faith without defending themselves. There are saints who got in trouble for refusing to take part in war, in some cases dying for their disobedience. One saint, Martin of Tours, providentially escaped execution and went on to become a great missionary bishop. There is Ireland’s renowned Saint Columba, who is on the Church calendar not because he was co-responsible for a great battle in which many were slaughtered but because he went on to live a life of penance in exile, in the process converting many to Christ. All of what I’m saying probably sounds fine. It isn’t hard to admire saints. Most people realize that the Gospel is not a summons to hatred or violence. But what about our ordinary selves living here and now? What does this have to do with how we carry on our lives? Most of us will readily admit we are only partial Christians — that is to say, our conversion is far from complete. When we go to confession, we don’t even try confessing all of our sins because no priest in the world would have time to hear them all. We try to think what the main ones are and focus on them, or perhaps deal with them thematically. We’re painfully aware that we have far to go. We have met the enemy and he is us. One of the great obstacles is that we tend to be more nation- than Christ-centered people. We are formed less by the Gospel than by a particular economic, social, political and cultural milieu. Our thoughts, values, choices, “life style” — all these tend to be formed by the mass culture in which we are born and raised. In America Christians easily find themselves following a Christ who has been Americanized: a Christ who smiles like a presidential candidate, a Christ of success rather than the cross, a Christ who blesses manifest destiny, a Christ untroubled by our wars, or by the Cuban or Iraqi children made dead by economic sanctions, or all the children killed before birth through abortion, or the many ways we push our neighbors toward tragic choices by our failures to help or to develop structures of mutual support. Yet we have in the Church so many saints who provide us with models of what it means to follow Christ wholeheartedly, without holding anything back. One such saint — not yet formally canonized — is Mother Maria Skobtsova, a Russian refugee in France who devoted herself to the care of the homeless and destitute — and also to the renewal of the Church. She and the community she was part of helped save the lives of many people, especially Jews, when France was occupied by Nazi armies. On one occasion she managed to smuggle children awaiting deportation out of a stadium in which thousands of Jews had been rounded up. It is hardly surprising that eventually she was arrested and ended her life in a German concentration camp, Ravensbruck, dying on Good Friday in the place of a Jewish woman. Yet we find in her many letters, essays and the acts of her brave life not a trace of hatred for Germans or Austrians, even those who were captive of Nazi ideology. She was part of the resistance to Nazism, but was no one’s enemy, not even Hitler’s. Her small community produced two other martyrs: the priest who assisted her, Fr. Dimitri Klepenin, and her son, Yuri, who was then just entering adulthood. At the core of their lives was the conviction, as Mother Maria put it, that “each person is the very icon of God incarnate in the world.” This is not some new idea that was discovered by a few saintly Christians in Paris in that grim time but what C.S. Lewis referred to as “mere Christianity.” It is because each person is an icon of God that everyone in the church in honored with incense during the Liturgy. Mother Maria had been married and became a mother before taking the monastic path. Before that happened her husband left her and one of her children had died. She embraced a celibate vocation, but her understanding of monastic life was not the traditional one of withdrawal. She was opposed to living a life that might impose “even the subtlest barrier which might separate the heart from the world and its wounds.” Like any Orthodox Christian, the Liturgy was at the core of her life, but it was seen giving daily life a divine imprint. “The meaning of the Liturgy must be translated into life,” she said. “It is why Christ came into the world and why he gave us our Liturgy.” She was determined to live a life in which the works of mercy were central. As she wrote: “At the Last Judgment I shall not be asked whether I was successful in my ascetic exercises, nor how many bows and prostrations I made. Instead I shall be asked, Did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and the prisoners. That is all I shall be asked.” No one has lived in a more violent time than she, a time in which there were more temptations to keep one’s head down and quietly survive. Yet instead she and those who worked with her give us a model of centering one’s life on those whose lives are threatened. Then it was especially the Jews. In our time the list of those in danger is much longer, including not only the born but the unborn as well as those who are handicapped or old. We live in what many people have come to identify as a culture of death. The only question each of us must struggle with is where to focus our life-saving activity. It is not just a question of saving lives but making clear to others, through our response to them, that they bear God’s image — thus that there is a God, and that God is love. We have met the enemy and he is us — no small foe. Yet if we will only cooperate in Christ’s mercy, struggling day by day to die to self, day by day our conversion will continue. Let me close with these words from St. Cyprian of Carthage: You have many things to ponder. Ponder paradise, where Cain, who destroyed his brother through jealousy, does not return. Ponder the kingdom of heaven to which the Lord admits only those of one heart and mind. Ponder the fact that only those can be called the sons of God who are peacemakers, who, united by divine birth and law, correspond to the likeness of God the Father and Christ. Ponder that we are under God’s eyes, that we are running the course of our conversion, and life with God Himself looking on and judging, that then finally we can arrive at the point of succeeding in seeing Him, if we delight Him as He now observes us by our actions, if we show ourselves worthy of His grace and indulgence, if we, who are to please Him forever in heaven, please Him first in this world. ["On Jealousy and Envy", chapter 18] This entry was posted on Monday, April 25th, 2005 at 9:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

God first thanks Twinky and waysider a Atheist/Christian is atheist fleshly in the form of mankind and Christian spiritually in the form of Christ we are all christian/atheist and atheist/christian we have some unbelief and some things we believe in that makes us all atheist and christian lets get truthful for does hate God our kind Numbers 33:17-18 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. 18 But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. is this hate or you explain it to me with love and a holy kiss Roy

God first thanks Ham I have too my friend Ham with love and a holy kiss Roy

God first thanks faith no more I am a Atheist/Christian today and always have been God may have warned us if everybody get truthful part of them are Atheist and part of them Christian thank you my Atheist brother thank you my Christian brother with love and a holy kiss Roy

God first Does God hate our kind? 08-15-2011 After reading the holy book of truth that some call lies of mankind or is the problem in our understanding of love and hate. How come to many bible verses have God killing the unbelievers and sending them to hell or the grave? Is there an easy answer to this question that has puzzle so many believers and unbelievers alike? We go to John 10:10,11“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep” for our answer. Christ came into this fleshly world or this spiritual world which one not to steal, and to kill, and to destroy spiritually world but to steal, and to kill, and to destroy fleshly world where is life we have now. Making our inner seed more than abundantly spiritual otherwise our next life because that which we have will decay. I am what I am otherwise that which is me will be you in the next life because I am the shepherd that leads the sheep into the next stage of life. Yes God hates our kind but in his son God has given us hope to evolve into a new life a creature of God-kind. Its not robbery to like God because we are not God but are just like a copy a twin of god. Christ is good shepherd of God and one that owns the field of the world were we the sheep live as the creature of the field in the flesh form. We are the beasts of the field in a fleshly form but we shall change into a sheep form, which is only figured form of sheep. Christ is the one that guilds us to that changed from fleshly life to spiritual life. What we are today is nothing next to what we will be tomorrow as the day pass bye we will awake, as a new life kind not known to flesh-kind. The Christ in us by the seed of Hope that is more to this life than what I see now. Thank you with love and a holy kiss from Roy.

God first thanks socks yes our Tax problems are a mix I agree with you it should be pay on the local level but if our government wants to give money there should safe guards of some kind and Taxing the churches one to get tax lever fare but I understand with love and a holy kiss Roy