100 years of abortion in Russia... coronary heart disease and cancer deaths being categorized as COVID-19 deaths... Russia's surrogacy baby business... illegal euthanasia in Belgium... Polish Church abortion ban generates mass protests... these articles and headlines in our latest newsletter all point to one thing: a culture of death.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Fifty or even twenty-five years ago, we would have been appalled at such news: Abortion was first illegal, then frowned upon. Married people were happy to have three or four children, or even more! Hospitals existed to cure diseases and save people's lives. Having a baby from a man who is not her husband meant a woman was an adulteress, a fornicator, or a prostitute. "Hospice care" meant keeping people alive and as comfortable as possible until natural death occurred, but now it means lethal doses of morphine to speed things up. Killing unborn babies who just might have Down Syndrome was unthinkable. Gradually, step by step, law by law, court case by case, film by film, we have cheapened human life to a commodity to be created when it's pleasant and terminated when unpleasant.
The Old Testament prophet Hosea found himself in such a dilemma: in ch. 1:2-3 we read – "When the Lord spoke at the first by Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, 'Go, take for yourself a wife of prostitution and children of unfaithfulness; for the land commits great adultery against the Lord.' So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; and she conceived, and bore him a son." Isn't that strange? How could God command His prophet to marry a prostitute? The fact of the matter is that, although God had given Israel the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law through Moses, after just a few generations Israel began to disregard the Lord, worshipping foreign "gods" (idols) that included temple prostitution and child sacrifice. So Hosea's sad marriage was to be an example to Israel of what happens when people behave that way.
In chapter 1, Hosea's wife Gomer bears him three children, whom he names "Jezreel" - the place where King Jehu killed Queen Jezebel, ""Lo-Ruhamah" meaning "unpitied," and "Lo-Ammi" meaning "not My people." These are terrible names to give one's children, but then in ch. 2, Gomer goes off whoring with other men in exchange for "my garments and my linen clothes, my oil and my necessities" (v. 5) and "These are my wages that my lovers have given me" (v. 12). Did all this really happen, or is this simply an allegory? Is it a word-picture for Israel forsaking the Lord to do business deals with foreign countries and adopt their idol-worship? In v. 15 we see a clue: "I will give her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope; and she will respond there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt." Gomer didn't come up out of Egypt, that refers to Moses leading Israel out of Egypt.
Then in ch. 3, Hosea has to pay "fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley" (v. 2) to buy Gomer back again from her adultery. But then, in v. 5 – "Afterward the people of Israel shall return, and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and shall come with trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days." This is a Messianic prophecy, because King David had died long before Hosea's time, so it refers to the Seed of David, the Messiah, Who will bring Israel back to true worship of the Lord.
Meanwhile, in ch. 4:1-3 we see how a nation's wickedness brings natural disasters – "Hear the word of the Lord, you people of Israel; for the Lord has a charge against the inhabitants of the land: Indeed there is no truth, nor goodness, nor knowledge of God in the land. There is cursing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break boundaries, and bloodshed causes bloodshed. Therefore the land will mourn, and everyone who dwells in it will waste away. All living things in her, even the animals of the field and the birds of the sky; yes, the fish of the sea also die." Can we simply pass a few laws to save the environment? Will windmills and electric cars save the world? It may help, but the real problem isn't burning coal or gasoline, it's that "there is no truth, nor goodness, nor knowledge of God in the land." That leads to lying, cheating, murder, and sexual sins.
Well, let's give it a "quick fix": in ch. 6:1-3 we read – "Come, and let us return to the Lord; for He has torn us to pieces, and He will heal us; He has injured us, and He will bind up our wounds. After two days will He revive us. On the third day He will raise us up, and we will live before Him. Let us acknowledge the Lord. Let us press on to know the Lord. As surely as the sun rises, the Lord will appear. He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain that waters the earth." I've heard sermons on this, portraying Israel as repenting and returning to the Lord.
But this is merely fake repentance: first, it's blaming God and not taking real responsibility for one's own sin – "He has torn us to pieces... He has injured us," in other words, it's all God's fault, the Lord is an arbitrary god like the pagan gods, hurling down bolts of lightning to injure us. "Ephraim, what shall I do to you? Judah, what shall I do to you? For your love is like a morning cloud, and like the dew that disappears early. ...For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings" (ch. 6:4 & 6). Fake repentance is like the morning fog and dew that quickly disappears and doesn't really water the soil. Israel thinks – "Maybe if we just offer a burnt sacrifice of a calf or a lamb, we can satisfy God's wrath." No! The Lord desires for us to truly know Him! True repentance is a 180-degree about-face turning away from one's sins and going the opposite direction.
Then we read in ch. 9:9-16 - "They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah. He will remember their iniquity. He will punish them for their sins. I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness. I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the fig tree at its first season; but they came to Baal Peor, and consecrated themselves to the shameful thing, and became abominable like that which they loved. As for Ephraim, their glory will fly away like a bird. There will be no birth, none with child, and no conception. Though they bring up their children, yet I will bereave them, so that not a man shall be left. Indeed, woe also to them when I depart from them! Ephraim, like I have seen Tyre, is planted in a pleasant place; But Ephraim will bring out his children to the killer. Give them – O Lord, what will you give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. All their wickedness is in Gilgal; for there I hated them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of my house! I will love them no more. All their princes are rebels. Ephraim is struck. Their root has dried up. They will bear no fruit. Even though they bring forth, yet I will kill the beloved ones of their womb."
God's people had fallen deeply into sexual perversion (the word "corrupted" above is translated "perverted" in Russian), like the men of Gibeon, who demanded to rape that Levite, and when they couldn't, they gang-raped and killed his concubine. Homosexual perversion directly leads to "no birth, none with child, and no conception" – it is merely fruitless, pointless autoerotic self-gratification. God created us as male and female to procreate and continue the human race. Tyre was the Phoenician city on a rocky peninsula sticking out into the Mediterrainian Sea where child sacrifice was practiced. Gilgal was "beside the oaks of Mamre" where Abraham erected his first altar (Genesis 12:6-7) but then he lied about his wife Sarai, causing Pharaoh to commit adultery with her. When Hosea mentioned these locations, the Israelites immediately recalled what went on in those stories.
But wait! Wasn't that just the Old Testament's wrathful, judgmental God? Isn't the New Testament's God always kind, merciful, loving, and forgiving? Those ideas about different Gods in Old and New Testaments is a heresy, a denial of the one true God in all of sacred and human history. God is indeed kind, loving, and merciful, as I wrote earlier in "Is God's Unconditional Love Conditional?" His loving-kindness and mercy endure forever. He is always loving and faithful, but we are sometimes unfaithful: it is our love that is sometimes conditional and wavering.
As we read in Hosea's last chapter, 14:4-8, the Lord will in the end restore Israel – "I will heal their waywardness. I will love them freely; for my anger is turned away from him. I will be like the dew to Israel. He will blossom like the lily, and send down his roots like Lebanon. His branches will spread, and his beauty will be like the olive tree, and his fragrance like Lebanon. Men will dwell in his shade. They will revive like the grain, and blossom like the vine. Their fragrance will be like the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim, what have I to do any more with idols? I answer, and will take care of him. I am like a green fir tree; From me your fruit is found."
In Hebrews 6:4-8, the Apostle Paul wrote to the Jews in the Diaspora who were struggling with persecution, forcing some to deny their faith in the Messiah – "For concerning those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the age to come, and then fell away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance; seeing they crucify the Son of God for themselves again, and put him to open shame. For the land which has drunk the rain that comes often on it, and brings forth a crop suitable for them for whose sake it is also tilled, receives blessing from God; but if it bears thorns and thistles, it is rejected and near being cursed, whose end is to be burned."
This is a rather grim picture. But there is hope! "But, beloved, we are persuaded of better things for you, and things that accompany salvation, even though we speak like this. For God is not unrighteous, so as to forget your work and the labor of love which you showed toward his name, in that you served the saints, and still do serve them" (verses 9-10).
And in Hebrews 10:26 we read – "For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more a sacrifice for sins." If we, after having received an experiential knowledge of the truth, willfully continue to sin, there is no longer a sacrifice for sin. Also, verses 38-39 give us hope – "'But the righteous will live by faith. If he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.' But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the saving of the soul." That first phrase, "the righteous shall live by faith," is a quote from the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, ch. 2:4, a passage made famous by Martin Luther in the Protestant Reformation.
So let us respond in the right way to the Lord's loving-kindness and mercy, truly repenting and turning 180 degrees from our sins! Let us respect human life from the cradle to the grave: Let the Babies Choose! Hear the cries of the voiceless and the powerless, forsake abortion and euthanasia, return to the Lord and to His ways!
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit! Christ is among us! He is and ever shall be!
(19 Nov.) On November 18, 1920, Soviet Russia became the first country to legalize abortion, marking the beginning of the legal killing of children in-utero worldwide. Russian history is a complex tale of political conflicts and tense governmental regimes, but the country’s deep-seated abortion culture is worthy of exploration. The consequences of a government distorting its people’s perceptions of human dignity through abortion legislation have made themselves apparent in various ways, such as in Russia’s falling birth rate and plunging population.
(4 Dec.) RUSSIAN Orthodox Christians in Nice have vowed to resist the attempted takeover of their properties by the Russian government, as part of moves to extend the Moscow Patriarchate's outreach across Western Europe.
(30 Nov.) Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal officially visited the Ecumenical Patriarchate today and took part in the patriarchal Divine Service led by Patriarch Bartholomew, as reported by Religiyna Pravda citing orthodoxtimes.com.
(30 Nov.) Australian pop singer-songwriter Sia is known for hits such as "Chandelier" but also for protecting her privacy, often concealing her identity with larger-than-life wigs.
(26 Nov.) Johns Hopkins published this study on Sunday which posits that Covid is nowhere near the disaster we're being told it is. I would summarize it for you or offer pull-quotes but honestly you just have to read it yourself because it's mind-blowing. The original article is now deleted from the Johns Hopkins website ... for some reason. Luckily the internet is forever and it's available via the Wayback Machine. Here is the article [excerpted]:
(2 Dec.) The Russian Civic Chamber has called for barring access of foreigners and single Russians to surrogacy services, as well as for banning surrogacy advertising, the newspaper Izvestia said on Wednesday with the reference to a relevant draft resolution.
