It may be hard to believe, but Baptists and bootleggers are natural allies in pursuit of a common goal. The Baptists believe that drinking alcohol any time is a sin, but doing so is twice as bad on Sunday. The Baptists want to use the law to restrict the legal purchase and consumption of alcohol any way they can. For them, this is a religious crusade. God is the only justification they need. Whether it is good public policy or bad is of no consequence to the true believer.
Bootleggers also want to restrict legal alcohol sales. They make more money when their product is illegal and when the law restricts their competition. Al Capone wasn’t on any kind of religious crusade. He just wanted to make more money, no matter what that required him to do.
The bootleggers hide behind the Baptists. The Baptists provide the moral cover for politicians to posture as upright servants of the people. All the while, the politicians are taking payoffs behind the scenes from the bootleggers, with whom they can’t afford to be publicly associated. But they don’t need to be. The politicians can pose with the Baptists for photo ops, while secretly doing the bidding of the bootleggers.
The best thing about this coalition between the Baptists and the bootleggers? Because the two sides normally can’t stand each other, no one even notices that God’s people and the criminals are working for the same legislative / regulatory outcome. Those that do notice mostly keep quiet about it. Usually, anyone pointing out the two sides are really working together is going to be labeled a “conspiracy theorist.”
How could Pastor Brown and those dastardly Rum Runners possibly be working together? Well, they aren’t. Not exactly. But then again, they are. There aren’t any meetings in back alleys or Sunday school rooms. They don’t form committees or issue joint press releases. Publicly, there is seemingly no connection between them at all. Yet, by pursuing their own interests for their own reasons, such unlikely coalitions manage to control many legislative / regulatory outcomes. Frequently, we may add, outcomes that actually hurt the general population.
Never heard of this before? What we described above is actually a mainstream economic theory of regulation:
Bootleggers and Baptists is a specific idea in the subfield of regulatory economics that attempts to predict which interest groups will succeed in obtaining rules they favor. It holds that coalitions of opposing interests that can agree on a common rule will be more successful than one-sided groups.
Our current COVID “pandemic” is a classic example of this theory. There are many groups exploiting the official COVID narrative for their own reasons. Together, they have a vested interest in keeping the hysteria going. They have no interest in things returning to “normal.” The situation is not temporary. It is not by accident. It will not go away on its own. There are too many people benefitting for that to be allowed to happen.
The COVID Narrative – A Confluence of Interests Against the Common Good
The prevailing COVID narrative can be summed up this way:
COVID is highly contagious, novel, and very deadly. It has killed over 600,000 Americans. No one is safe. There are no medical preventions. There are no treatments for COVID. All we can do is save lives by “stopping the spread” through lockdowns, wearing masks, social distancing and getting vaccinated. Otherwise, our hospitals will be overwhelmed. Widespread testing is essential. Those who test positive must be quarantined along with those who have been in contact with them. The vaccines are highly effective and safe. If everyone got vaccinated, we could end COVID. But everyone still has to wear a mask, because masks stop the spread. The anti-vaxxers alone are responsible for extending the pandemic. Only selfish, stupid people refuse the vaccines which are the only way we can ever get back to normal. If you refuse to get vaccinated, then we have to make you for everyone’s protection. Even though the vaccines work, they don’t work well enough that we can allow 30% or more of the population to go unvaccinated. Everyone has to be, or the vaccinated are not protected. Booster shots are essential, because immunity wanes over time. Natural immunity from previous infection doesn’t exist.
The goal here is not to debunk that narrative. We have challenged it many times, and there is a wealth of resources available on our site and all over the Internet. On our own site, we have provided articles on the availability of effective treatments / prevention of COVID, the uselessness of masks and lockdowns, the dangers of the “vaccines” (here, here, and here), and the lack of efficacy for Pfizer and Moderna. This interview with an RN whistleblower is a newly available resource that really blows the lid off the conventional narrative. Take 15 minutes and listen. The meme below also provides a great summary of the problems with the “narrative.”
Rather, the goal here is to explain how such an obviously wrong narrative can persist because it is useful to so many different groups for different reasons. There is some overlapping membership between the groups covered below, and some do cooperate actively. But many are quite distinct from each other. There is no villainous “Bond” organization behind all this. If there were, it would be easier to beat. Instead we are up against a massive coalition of “Baptists and bootleggers” all pursuing a common policy – keeping the “pandemic” going as long as possible while radically changing society to suit their own goals.
COVIDian Progressives – These are the true believers, the “Baptists” in this coalition. They have always known they were smarter, better people than their rube neighbors. COVID gave them a way to show it. Masks are their emblem for now. Their dedication to masks is virtue-signaling at its finest. They double-mask alone, outside, and take selfies doing it. They harangue people in stores for not complying with COVID rules, and live stream the confrontations. They dox people on social media. They report their own pastors, friends, and neighbors for non-compliance. COVIDians are everywhere, even in your churches. They baptize their COVID rituals and make them about being virtuous people who care for others in the name of Christ.
COVID is their sense of purpose, their way to show everyone how superior they are. They brag about being vaxxed on their social media profiles. They decorate their posts with slogans like “We can do this!” COVID is their WWII, their Moon Landing – the war on the virus is their generational moment. COVIDian Progressives have a childish faith in government to keep society progressing towards a Utopian future. We can beat a virus. We can beat death. We can do it, as long as government leads the way. Everyone just has to comply. For them, “science” is not a method but a set of beliefs, an orthodoxy to which all good people subscribe. They don’t read research papers or ponder data. Instead true COVIDians live by the dictates of the “official” scientists. No matter how accomplished pre-COVID, any doctor or scientist deviating from the official narrative is a miserable science-denying quack. Such people should be stripped of their credentials and exiled from society.
COVIDian Progressives are authoritarians who enjoy the sense of power government coercion gives them. The endless rules offer them opportunities to lord it over their mentally inferior enemies. They believe in the vaccines as if they were the Holy Eucharist. The vaccines will solve everything, if only all of us take them by choice or force.
Never mind the doublethink here – the vaccines work but the unvaccinated are still a threat to the vaccinated? Even President Biden said that when outlining his new vaccine mandates. How is that possible? “Shut up you heretic!” is the essence of the reply. “No one can be allowed to question or refuse the vaccines.” The “common good” trumps any considerations of personal “free dumb.”
It is true that many COVIDian Progressives are completely terrified of death, and consequently see their devoted participation in the COVID cult as a means of warding of their own demise. Many of them are actually neurotic, “A 2020 Pew Research study reveals that over half of white, liberal women have been diagnosed with a mental health condition at some point.” All the data in the world will do little to calm the hysterical fears of the truly crazy.
But others only play up their fear of death. The more reasonable, less neurotic COVIDians realize that their chances of dying from COVID are really, really small. They also understand that the PCR tests used to authenticate the “pandemic” are wildly unreliable with massive numbers of false positives. For them, the constant obsessing over COVID case / death statistics is just so much theater. Their pretend fear inspires real fear in the neurotic and the easily influenced. Despite knowing better, they go along with everything, particularly the vaccines, as a means to their ends. One of which is the coveted prize of Vaccine Passports – the ultimate virtue signal!
For people who grew up desperately dreaming of the sorting hat assigning them to Gryffindor, vaccine passports are the ultimate status symbol. Got the vax? Got the passport? Then welcome to Team COVIDian – the cool kids who are totally unlike those Muggles with their weird obsessions over crazy things like freedom and bodily autonomy. This is even better than double-masking as a way to prove you are a good, intelligent, totally non-domestic terroristic type person. The COVIDian elect can go places and do things that the uninitiated can’t! Even better – the vax passport is guaranteed to morph into a social credit system. Quite soon, all those with unapproved, conservative, unenlightened wrongthink ideas will be locked out of everywhere. The good people will be on the inside laughing at them.
COVIDian Progressives are the foot soldiers for the pandemic on social media and in the streets. They are completely immune to facts, data, logic, or reason. Trying to convince them to end the pandemic is more difficult than convincing a Baptist preacher to open a microbrewery with rows of slot machines and burlesque dancers for entertainment. They will not look at your charts, read the papers you post, or respect dissident research. Whatever you offer as a challenge to “the narrative”, they will counter with repetitious talking points and links to articles from the CDC. Every. Single. Time.
They are the base of support for Biden’s vaccine mandates. No form of coercion is too extreme for their liking – withholding medical care from the unvaccinated, quarantines, fines, prison sentences. They are on board with it all. Heretics must be punished. COVIDian Progressives do not want “normal” to ever come back. Many of them didn’t like “normal” to begin with. They want everything to keep going, and even get worse.
We can pray for them. But we can’t reach them. In the end, if we want to move forward as a society, we have to decidedly beat them.
Pharmaceutical Companies and Other Enterprises – Pfizer’s full year 2021 sales forecast for its COVID vaccine is $33.5 billion, substantially higher than the original estimate of $26 billion. That forecast included one booster shot, not one every 5 months the way Fauci and Biden want it. Every 5 months. Forever, by the way. Israel already has people getting a second booster, so be prepared that this is coming. Pfizer’s forecast also does not include injecting young children, which is likely to happen shortly. Expect Pfizer to make a lot more money once every single man, woman, and child will be vaxxed on a regular five month schedule.
What would you do for just a billion dollars, much less 34 billion of them? Would you lie? Cheat? Bribe? Falsify studies? Look away from an “acceptable” number of adverse reactions (even deaths)?
Let me ask it another way, what wouldn’t you do for that kind of money? For most people that is a very short list of things. There are people in church with you every Sunday that would kill you and hide your body for a lot less. So why would it be surprising that Pharmaceutical companies, who have sociopathic tendencies to begin with, would be willing to trample law and morality in pursuit of so much lucre?
Not only the companies are making money, but also investors and employees are getting rich(er) by the day. COVID-19 vaccines have created at least nine new billionaires after shares in companies producing the shots skyrocketed. They have a combined net wealth of $19.3 billion. Mega asset management firms Vanguard and BlackRock are the largest stockholders in Pfizer. COVID has been a bonanza for investors. Not only have their pharma investments increased, but COVID interventions also caused record low interest rates and a massive tsunami of money printing. The mega money firms who co-own the world economy never had it so good.
COVID is a gravy train on biscuit wheels. No one onboard wants it to stop rolling. They have money. They have power. They have unlimited greed. And they have millions of true believers providing a moral smokescreen to cover all that up.
God help us trying to overcome just that much. But there’s more.
Media & Big Tech – The legacy media loves COVID. The Pharma industry spending on advertising topped $6.58 billion in 2020, including over $4.58 billion of spent on TV. But there is more of a financial connection than that. Vanguard and BlackRock (top 2 owners of Pfizer) are the top two owners of Time Warner, Comcast, Disney and News Corp, four of the six media companies that control more than 90% of the U.S. When the bosses are getting rich(er) off the pandemic, smart journalists and media personalities smile and cash checks. To do otherwise is to risk your job at a time when getting a new one could be difficult. The same mega-investors have stakes in all the Big Tech companies as well. That gives them unprecedented influence to censor anything that might derail the gravy train.
Plus, crisis is great for ratings. Nothing attracts eyeballs more than scary fear porn, which explains the prevalence of “click-bait” headlines promising mass death. Even when a reporter risks his employment and dares to ask legitimate questions, the COVIDian mob is quick to come for him. Consider the case of Robert Peston. He wondered on Twitter why the latest vaccine data from Public Health England (PHE) was not getting more attention. The data show that reported infection rates have been higher in the double vaccinated than in the unvaccinated for those aged 40-79 – up to 38% higher in some age bands. Peston probably noticed this trend because he had just come through a COVID infection, despite being double vaccinated. He noted in his Tweet, “And according to leading scientists at least part of the explanation is that vaccine efficacy is not as good as we would like for the Delta variant.”
For daring to report information that cast the vaccines in a negative light, the Twitter COVIDians soon had him reduced to groveling. This episode, and many like it, will not be lost on journalists. Even if the boss doesn’t get you, the mob will. So why not just keep shoveling the COVID narrative indefinitely?
Public Health Bureaucracies and Politicians – Before the pandemic, did you know your county health director? Bet you know ’em now, don’t you? How prominent were the NIH and the CDC in our lives before the “pandemic?” Did you realize that “health orders” could shut down our entire economy? How about your school board? Did you really pay any attention to them before they shuttered the schools and/or put your kids in disgusting, wet masks all year? Did you know the CDC could stop property owners from evicting non-paying tenants? Or that OSHA can make taking a vaccine a condition of employment? Or that state governors could claim a “health crisis” essentially gave them unlimited powers? Or that mayors could close businesses and churches while making you wear a mask just to buy groceries? Heck, COVID has even given Joe Biden the power to threaten governors. COVID is, evidently, way more powerful than federalism.
Our entire system of law and government has been upended. Petty bureaucrats have turned into celebrities whose words are now laws. Politicians have increased the powers of their offices beyond any constitutional boundaries. We measure “THE SCIENCE” by what words fly out of Fauci’s mouth on a given day.
Do you think any of these newly minted tin-pot dictators are anxious for “normal?” Do you think any of them want to see actual “science” see the light of day that might challenge the COVID narrative that is the font of all their power and prestige? Further, politicians love to be seen “doing something” about any given crisis. Their bold and decisive “action” fires up their respective bases. Who wants to go back to boring budget meetings after you have, literally, saved the lives of your voters?
There is also, not surprisingly, money at stake. Many public health bureaucrats leave “public” service and go on to lucrative careers as lobbyists, board members, executives, consultants, etc. There were 1,502 pharmaceutical lobbyists in 2020, 63.58% of whom were former government employees (including former members of Congress). Former FDA Chief under the Trump Administration, Scott Gottlieb, now serves on Pfizer’s Board of Directors. It is even legal for government scientists to collect royalties from vaccines they have worked on, while still remaining in government employ. The whole system is deeply, deeply corrupt.
Which government employees are going to choose telling the public the truth over boarding the gravy train? If you answer “not many,” you would be correct.
Hospitals and Doctors – The more COVID cases and COVID deaths, the more money the hospitals make. Hospitals report adverse vaccine reactions as new COVID cases and rely on inaccurate PCR tests to inflate case numbers as well. These are ways hospitals are maximizing their profits. Hospitals are also refusing to treat COVID, even if attending physicians wish to prescribe a course of treatment. Despite their successful use, monoclonal antibodies, Ivermectin, HCQ and many other treatments are denied to preserve the narrative – only vaccines help. If there are treatments, then there can’t be a justification for the emergency use of experimental vaccines.
RN’s and doctors who speak out about the situation are fired and threatened with loss of license. For the medical establishment, COVID is working. At least as far as the administrators are concerned, and until resignations among the RNs start to shut down facilities. In many hospitals, over 50% of the nursing staff is still unvaccinated. When they leave under pressure to take the jabs, expect hospitals to enter a crisis of Biblical proportions.
The Democratic Party – In early 2020, President Trump was trying to troll China and the Democrats. Talking about the “China virus” fired up his base, had a shot at distracting from impeachment, and boxed the Democrats into their tired habit of shouting “racism.” At first, it seemed to work. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi toured San Francisco’s Chinatown and said there was no reason for anyone to stay away from the area because of coronavirus concerns. For Trump, it must have seemed like a major victory was within his grasp. But then the Democrats flipped the script and became founding members of Team Apocalypse. Some smart person or persons among the Democrats realized that COVID was an opportunity to completely change our voting laws and get away with it.
The result was a less secure election that seems to have enabled voter fraud on a massive scale in some areas via the mail-in balloting system. Also important, mail-in balloting enabled the Democratic base (noted for low enthusiasm) to effortlessly vote from home. The Democrats face an even tougher electoral situation going forward. Joe Biden, and most signature policies of the Democratic Party, are extremely unpopular with the American electorate. The Democratic Machine needs to keep the pandemic going in the hopes COVID can be leveraged to keep themselves in power.
Globalists and Global Institutions – There is no doubt that an influential group of globalists, centered around the World Economic Forum and other elite institutions, would like very much to transform the world. The current project for a New World Order goes by the name The Great Reset. The initiative has a book, a web presence, and a following among global politicians that parrot its slogans such as “Build Back Better.” While The Great Reset has some lofty sounding goals, the major purpose among the Global Elite is to make sure that super wealthy people remain so and end up with even more control over everyone and everything – “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.”
COVID has been integral in the endeavor to turn the world into a police state. We covered the basics in this article, which has a lot of supporting links to more information. Here is how Roman Catholic Archbishop Vigano, former Apostolic Nuncio, summed up the goals of The Great Reset and the globalist agenda:
A global plan called the Great Reset is underway. Its architect is a global élite that wants to subdue all of humanity, imposing coercive measures with which to drastically limit individual freedoms and those of entire populations. In several nations this plan has already been approved and financed; in others it is still in an early stage. Behind the world leaders who are the accomplices and executors of this infernal project, there are unscrupulous characters who finance the World Economic Forum and Event 201, promoting their agenda.
The Global Elite would prefer to use Climate Change to drive their agenda, but that failed to be sufficiently scary to serve as cover for transforming society. COVID fit the bill, and they will continue to milk it for all that it is worth. Even if the “vaccines” worked perfectly, the globalists would try to keep the crisis going. They will not let go of COVID unless forced to.
And There’s More – The previous list is not exhaustive. You could find more groups with an interest in the persistence of the “pandemic” with all the various vaccines and “interventions.”
Orthodox Bishops and the Orthodox Church
Prior to COVID, most of us did not realize how uneducated the majority of our bishops are about the modern world. Most have little to no understanding of political and economic concepts such as regulatory capture, inflation, the interlocking nature of global corporate ownership, or even the concept of Baptists and bootleggers that we are talking about here. The bishops (many priests and parish councils as well) accepted all things COVID at face value. If the CDC says something, they lend it moral credence and enforce it on their churches. Further, many bishops routinely denounce as “conspiracy theories” facts which are true. Public cooperation between many of the groups we talked about in this article is not a conspiracy. It can’t be a “conspiracy” if everyone knows about it.
Bishops more than anyone should understand just how dark the heart of man is when corrupted by power and money. Unfortunately, they seem to have forgotten that lesson when someone is clamoring on about the “common good.” Worse, bishops (even Patriarchs) have used their offices to encourage vaccine uptake and other measures to “get back to normal.” There is a lot of power and money riding on “normal” not returning. So far, our Orthodox leadership seems content to just play along.
You might say that the bishops should ignore politics and economics and instead focus on spiritual matters. You would be wrong. Our churches have been closed by secular dictates. Many are still constrained in their operations. Our ability to practice the Orthodox Faith, as it was handed to us, is in peril. The Orthodox Church embraces voluntary, informed consent for medical procedures, but the ability of unvaccinated Christians to feed their families is in real jeopardy. How long until our freedom of conscience is constrained in other ways? Australia is already building quarantine facilities. New Zealand is living in a permanent lockdown to “slow the spread.” These were once English-speaking democracies with a respect for the rule of law. It is clear that this creeping totalitarianism is threatening to spread here.
The Church is a natural focal point for resistance to the COVID narrative, but only if our bishops (and other leaders) are willing to analyze, understand, and acknowledge what is truly happening.
Nicholas – member of the Western Rite Vicariate, a part of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in America
If you want to know what is really going on, all you have to do is “follow the money.” The Greek Orthodox Church of North America has receive A HECK OF A LOT OF MONEY from Masonic organizations such as AHEPA, Daughters of Penelope and Sons of Zeus.
What did these organizations get in return? The loyalty of our hierarchs of course. But also the loyalty of a lot of the so-called “faithful”, especially in those parishes that were more heavily supported. Many parishioners also got seduced and joined Masonic lodges for Mammon.
What happens when we start serving both God and Mammon? We despise the one and are loyal to the other or the other way around – leading to divisions within our very Church – Divisions over spoons, masks, vaccine mandates and who knows what else in the future. (I’ll bet you anything that in the future eschatological global church, one will even need the mark of the beast to enter and worship!)
But this heavy financial Masonic support of our Greek Orthodox parishes does not explain everything. Where does AHEPA and their branch organizations that lure in our youth get their money, and why so much support for the ORTHODOX Churches? And if our hierarchs are bought off by these Masons, which rumour has it they are, what are they doing with the money they get?
Rumour has it that slippery Ab Sotirios in Canada lavishes most of what he gets (which isn’t much compared to what Elpidophoros gets, so therefore, Soti has to GOUGE his churches for money each year) on Patriarch Bart – and we’re talking $ millions just from Soti alone. This explains how Soti got promoted from a mere Bishop to a Metropolitan, to an Archbishop (don’t tell me he’s not a Mason – there was an article about that in OR) So, if Soti is giving Bart money, who else is giving Bart money, and what is Bart doing with all that money? Where is it all going to? Does Erdojan really exact that much from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate? If only someone could do an audit…
But the problem first began when we let the Masons into our churches to begin with. This happened much more so in the USA than it did in Canada, but when and where it did happen, that is when the crack turned into a gaping hole and then the flood gates collapsed. That is why we are being tsunamied with deep corruption in the here and now.
Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve. From parishioner to hierarch, the guilty know who they are, but it will take AN AWFUL LOT of repentance and tears to reverse this fiasco my friends, because most of our hierarchs are all Masons by now. We, the “faithful” turned a blind eye at the beginning of the Ecumenist movement and when we first started consorting with Masons in our churches. We, the sheep, started dancing with the wolves after some of us let them into the sheep pen. The noise we are making now over the spoons, the masks and the vaccine mandates, we could’ve and should’ve made back then.
Now, we desperately want ‘back to normal’. What normal? The wolf-dancing normal? Forget it. While we were enjoying ourselves “at the ball” the enemy was at the gate. We don’t need that kind of normal back. Like it or not there is going to be some painful spiritual surgery before we can establish a new normal, which will re-instate the liturgical significance of “the doors, the doors.” For God’s sake people, if and when the purging is done, KEEP THE DOORS SHUT!!!!
Hi Rita: If, indeed as us you say, there is Masonic infiltration, then this whole thing it totally corrupt and needs to be replace with a competing jurisdiction. Masonic rite is Satan worship of the highest and most discrete order. It’s more than just mammon, its outright devil worship on the most intense level. Any sheep under this jurisdiction are in peril of delusion. In other words, demons have access, the wolf in is in the sheepfold.
John,
You write:
“ Masonic rite is Satan worship of the highest and most discrete order. It’s more than just mammon, it’s outright devil worship on the most intense level.”
Is that so? Mozart (not known for his interest in mammon, he just wasted money when he had a lot of money and lived modestly when he did not; and can his Requiem considered to be influenced by “Satanic worship”?) and Goethe were freemasons. As was John Wayne. As was, also, Kurt Tucholsky, one of the earliest and most vehement adversaries of Hitler (who was no friend of freemasonry: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/freemasonry-under-the-nazi-regime).
As for the current situation: Is there any hint that freemasons are behind that?
I do not know the masonic rite, so I do not know if there is anything satanic about it.
But I can vividly imagine how Kurt Tucholsky would have reacted to lockdowns, mask mandates and coerced vaccinations. Or, for that matter, how John Wayne would have reacted.
Dear John and Manfred:
Thank you both for your responses. However, I’m afraid neither one of you know very much about (the degrees of)Freemasonry and how it has infiltrated and influenced the Greek Orthodox Church. It is a huge topic of immense significance in modern church history and it has a lot to do with present day Ecumenism. I suggest you Google it as it is beyond the scope of this commentary. You may be very surprised as to what you learn.
We have a couple of good articles on the site about Freemasonry (we could always use more)
https://orthodoxreflections.com/freemasonry-and-the-rise-of-ecumenism-in-the-orthodox-church/
This one explores contemporary Masonic influence
https://orthodoxreflections.com/is-freemasonry-systemic-in-the-greek-orthodox-church/
Rita, you write:
“ I’m afraid neither one of you know very much about (the degrees of)Freemasonry and how it has infiltrated and influenced the Greek Orthodox Church. It is a huge topic of immense significance in modern church history and it has a lot to do with present day Ecumenism. I suggest you Google it as it is beyond the scope of this commentary..”
1. When I really want to find something, I never use Google. I use DuckDuckGo.
2.I concede that I do not know very much about Freemasonry (and I did not claim otherwise). What I do know is that some of the greatest intellects, and men who stood up for justice, goodness and truth, were freemasons.
3. Leaving aside the question whether Church membership and freemasonry are compatible or not: It is one thing to declare it incompatible. It is a different thing to claim, as John did (and that was what I had responded to) that “ Masonic rite is Satan worship of the highest and most discrete order. It’s more than just mammon, its outright devil worship on the most intense level.” Masonic rites might be wrong, they might be infantile and silly; to call them “Satan worship of the highest and most discrete order” makes out of freemasons worshippers of Satan. If not true, such a statement would constitute gravest injustice.
This is an English translation of the first leaflet of the “White Rose” student resistance group:
https://www.gdw-berlin.de/fileadmin/bilder/publikationen/begleitmaterialien/Faksimiles_PDFs_englisch/FS_15.1_ENGL_1.Aufl_RZ-web.pdf
The two students who wrote this used extensive quotes from Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Schiller and Goethe both were freemasons, that is no secret at all.
The two students who wrote this leaflet, and used quotes from the freemasons Schiller and Goethe, were Hans Scholl and . . . Alexander Schmorell (https://orthodoxwiki.org/Alexander_Schmorell).
Where are the Shepherds with backbone int these great United States ? Throughout the history of the Church the Shepherds of Christ have stood up to emperors, kings, dictators, fascists, communists and nazis. Yet, today, in our free country we are in jeopardy of losing, our Shepherds cower in their rectories.
Re: Confluence of interests against the common good
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/a-self-fulfilling-prophecy-systemic-collapse-and-pandemic-simulation/
But then, that’s conspiracy theory, isn’t it?
Trust “the science”, and the preventive measures our governments are taking for the good of all people!
For those who doubt conspiracy, lets think about this for a moment: was not the fall a conspiracy between the woman and Satan to overthrow the authority of Adam? Then, did not Adam and Eve conspire against God? Did not Lucifer himself conspire to overthrow God’s throne? (read his words) How was the tower of Babel (Babylon=world system) not a conspiracy of Nimrod against God. If some have not noticed, the entire world system–that is condemned to hell–is a conspiracy within a conspiracy, within a conspiracy. Every temptation is–at its root–a temptation to conspire against God and His plan for Man. Anyone denying the presence of conspiracy, has not read the Fathers on the essence of evil (100% conspiracy), the nature of the world as THE anti-Christ conspiracy, and the Bible. Any bishop that does not understand the nature of evil in the world–as pure conspiracy–should not be a bishop; because he has by his ignorance become the devils consort (co-conspirator). His ignorance is way too dangerous to innocent and naive parishioners. And their endorsement of vaccines proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt. If something came into your home coming for your children, how would any sane man not throw the danger out, yet we have bishops that not only did not throw the danger out, but opened the door to the wolf to eat his sheep. Bishops who consort with the state to enforce or enhance COVID protocols are no less than the same thing; wolves inflicting the sheep (they are the cause of division (and untold misery). Bottom line: Anyone who cannot see through the conspiracies of our modern age is blind to the workings of evil altogether, that have always conspired to overthrow the Faith. They are like this because they secretly “love the world” and they cannot see through it. And the love of the Father is not in them (as St John put it). How can this remain in our churches? It will not; God will not ignore bishops conspiring with the anti-Christ state to access God’s people with the frankenshot (once x2, now x3; where will it end?; evil has not finality). This is why the Church is being shaken up, to shake out the conspirators (those bishops/priests who conspire with the state to overthrow Church sovereignty by becoming agents of the state and not agents of the fathers). Its that simple. To see it any other way is to buy into the delusion of conspiracy at the heart of all evil. Time to face reality and stop denying conspiracy; to deny conspiracy is to deny evil in the world and love the world more than God. Too many bishops are consorts (in bed with) the state–the consorts of Satan.
Could this be the fruit of abandoning a literal reading of Genesis? Once you have smugly proclaimed that the Bible is not a science textbook, and said who am I to argue with Science! about the age of the earth, you really are left defenseless when Science! says take this shot.
Actually, Scripture is above science, it is revelation. Science keeps changing. Additionally, Scripture is literature and subject to all the behaviors of literature because language is always a moving target; changing from generation to generation, as well as being very subjective (everybody reads/hears with their own unique paradigm). While Scripture is truth, it cannot stand alone because it needs the right paradigm (set of operative presuppositions)to be understood. This is why the Church is indispensable in this regard. Because the Church wrote the Scripture and canonized the Scripture, it is a book within the context, paradigms, and mindset of the Church, not science. To make it a book of science would be to denude it of any power to convert the soul. Of course, that is not to say going back to review the Genesis account is worthy of our time, it most certainly is. The Fathers had a lot to say about those things.
Since the Enlightenment the operative presuppositions of science is “miracles do. Not. Happen.”
So if the miracles reported in the Bible, such as creation in 6 days, the fall with its cosmic consequences of starting death, the global flood with its geological and palentological consequences, and the tower of babel with its linguistic consequences really did happen, science would do everything in its power to ignore that conclusion. Because miracles do not happen. So confirmation bias is a thing.
Add to the fact that materialism has owned academia for two centuries and it is sad that they couldn’t come up with anything less silly than evolution.
Along comes some “sophisticated” Christians who try to develop a syncretism of science and orthodoxy. It’s the worst form of ecumenism. The byzantine empire said creation was September 1, 5509 BC, so yes, a few thousand year old earth is to be abandoned because that’s what the church always taught.
Before the standard insults come, yes I’m an anglophone konvertski from evangelicalism. I’m a redneck and a bunch of other things you would be uncomfortable around.
Russel,
You write:
“ Could this be the fruit of abandoning a literal reading of Genesis? ” This question presupposes that a “literal”reading was a standard that was subsequently abandoned.
Even if it had been a uniform standard, that would not prove its truth.
Father Lawrence Farley and Father Stephen Freeman have written about Genesis and about a (supposedly…) literal reading of Scripture on their blogs; that is among the good stuff on Ancient Faith Blogs.
I fear that those who fight the current move towards totalitarianism will not find their task made easier by “allies” who promote a – supposedly – “literal” reading of Genesis.
Father Lawrence Farley believes in evolution and compared orthodox who insist on one spoon to snake handlers. Father Stephen Freeman also believes in evolution so has drank deeply of the zeitgeist. If you accept conclusions of materialistic science in contradiction to the scriptures, you are joining the protestants who, according to Father Stephen Freemen in his book “Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe” talk about miracles like there don’t believe in them. Ironic.
Russell,
You write:
“ Father Lawrence Farley believes in evolution and compared orthodox who insist on one spoon to snake handlers.”
There have ALWAYS been multiple spoons, except the very first time a spoon was used. It is not the case that one single spoon is passed from one church to another. Even in pre-Covid times, hundreds, thousands of spoons were used every Sunday around the world. For one and the same Gifts.
You write:
“ Father Stephen Freeman also believes in evolution so has drank deeply of the zeitgeist. If you accept conclusions of materialistic science in contradiction to the scriptures, you are joining the protestants who, according to Father Stephen Freemen in his book “Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe” talk about miracles like there don’t believe in them. Ironic.”
I am in no way joining protestants (on the other hand, sometimes one has the impression that there are converts from Protestantism to Orthodoxy who in fact never left Protestantism . . .).
It is perfectly possible to believe that the world was not created 5509 BC and at the same time to believe in miracles, and the resurrection. I have no problem at all with that, many don’t.
It is perfectly possible for me to believe that the milk in my fridge cannot make me drunk, but the beer can do so.
Russell,
Re: “… joining the protestants …”
As an example, taken from another context:
Is it permissible to execute heretics?
I would side with the Protestant Sebastian Castellio, who denied that right.
I would not side with the Orthodox “Possessors” who endorsed that right.
https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/church-history/fifteenth-century/russia2
Still, that would not mean that I am “joining the protestants”, as it is the Protestant Jean Calvin’s “right” to execute an heretic that Sebastian Castellio contested:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28236614-the-right-to-heresy
With whom would you side in that question?
With the Orthodox Saint St. Joseph of Volokolamsk (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Joseph-of-Volokolamsk), or with the Protestant theologian Sebastian Castellio?
For “Covidian Progressives,” I suggest the name “Branch Covidians.”
Thank you for another superb article. Every single point is spot-on. I am grateful to Orthodox Reflections for your voices of wisdom, discernment, clarity, and courage. God bless you.
All of these COVID events are easy for me to understand, accept, and digest. Since, the 1970’s I heard about the coming “One world government.” As a Pentecostal, I was steeped in the end time theology of Hal Lindsey, Jerry Jenkins (Father of Dallas Jenkins [The Chosen]) and many others. In the Assemblies of God bible college I went to “end times eschatology” was part of the curriculum, I was tested on this stuff. In other words, I grew up watching “A thief in the Night,” “a Distant Thunder” and other end times movies in the 1970’s. I have always been aware of the impending tribulation. The fact of the coming Anti-Christ, was not news to me. From then until now, I have tracked off and on, with world events knowing the world banking system would at some point launch a whole world take over. The Plandemic and the vaccine have placed universal government within reach. Now we see it, I’ve watched it coming for almost 50 years. I still have books from that era on that issue: e.g. “The Day the Dollar Dies” by Willard Cantalon. Is this the time of “Anti-Christ”? Two things are yet missing for the final battle to ensue: 1. the total fall of America (which may not happen), and 2. The revelation of the “Man of Sin” the singular man, with his false prophet; that has not happened yet so things are not yet fully lined up for the time of Anti-Christ.
John,
Why speculate about the “end time”? Does it matter, except for those who make money out of selling books about the end time?
The right thing to do is the right thing to do, and the wrong thing to do is the wrong thing to do; that is not affected by how much time is left, for any individual or for mankind as a whole.
Martin Luther:
“If I knew that the world were to cease tomorrow, I would still plant a little apple tree today.”
Wonderful article! Thank you!
I’m beginning to wonder if the main aim of this blog is to cause division. Many of the statements made in this article are ridiculous and divisive. Your beliefs about Baptists are simply wrong and your own covid narrative is extremely narrow. I’m not a Baptist nor a supporter of the covid vaccine, by the way. Let us pray for our enemies and may God bless His Holy Church.
It looks like you’ve contrived a minor objection to the article to dismiss It so that you do not have to engage with the substance of it. As a former Baptist, I assess that the article is correct on history. Although Methodists started the temperance movement, the majority of Baptist also endorsed that so-called progressive movement, although a small minority (e.g. primitive Baptists) did resist the movement and uphold the right of the people to make and sell liquor in peace. Also note that the prohibition movement was a “progressive” measure, along with racial segregation and eugenics, meant to “improve” people’s lives. So-called progressive movements often seek to attack or “reform” a minority group.
All that is true. The beginning was actually only used to set the stage for the theory of economic regulation / coalition building called “Baptists and Bootleggers.” The article wasn’t actually about Baptists or Bootleggers, it was an application of a theory to the COVID pandemic. We are not at all sure why Maria took a detour into Baptists, when they were not really the point.
So the comment is confusing. The article is actually not about Baptists. The theory of economic regulation / coalition building is called “Baptists and Bootleggers” for historical purposes. There are no actual opinions of any Baptists in the piece. Baptists did end up on the same side as bootleggers, hence the foundational title of the theory. So what are our beliefs about Baptists? To our knowledge, none were actually expressed. The Baptists were used as they were in the original theory as an example. They really did, particularly in the South, champion prohibition and that benefitted bootleggers, though not intentionally.
What do you think we had to say about actual Baptists?
As for divisiveness, no one could ever be more divisive than President Biden’s threats not only to the unvaccinated but to elected governors. This is an incredibly divided time, and us ignoring that will not make any difference. Especially since the pro-COVID and pro-vaccine groups are not acting in good faith. This was an attempt to explain why normal politics seems to be suspended in favor of an all-out drive for totalitarianism.
What is narrow or incorrect about our interpretation of the COVID narrative? COVIDians have called for the non-vaccinated to be denied employment, health care, and even the right to travel freely. The medical establishment has been fighting to prevent successful treatments of COVID in favor of the vaccine. Pfizer is owned by Blackrock and Vanguard, which also owns a controlling stake in our media. Journalists who stray from the approved script on COVID get fired or at least pummeled into submission.
What was said in the article, in specific, that you disagree with?
“to cause division”?? The Church is already fully divided: on the one hand there are those very deluded bishops, priests, and parishioners who fully deny what evil is going on and on the other hand there are those that are informed and are warning their brethren of the real and present threat to your health, your children’s health, and the welfare of the Church. In the beginning I was willing to just ride things out, but when our priest forwarded an email to our parish and said, “want to know what the Church thinks about COVID/vaccines” a document published by “Orthodox theological society” (not medical doctors) that said it OK for a pregnant woman to take the vaccine, I totally lost it. I was ready to go back and be a protestant (but I’m still here). After that, then I was fully offended because this is nothing short of uber malfeasance on the part of bishops. In the normal world of business these men would be sued ad-infinitum for the pain suffering and damage they have cause others echoing the state. From then on, I was fully aware our beloved Church was in the hands of either the most ignorant, incompetent men, or the most villainous bishops the Church had ever seen. People will die, because bishops/priests used their position of trust to encourage people to get the frankenshot! Children will be crippled and orphaned because, bishops told them to get the vaccine. Nothing more nefarious has ever happened in the Church. At this point in time bishops should be falling on their faces crying out to God for mercy and falling before the Church begging for forgiveness for buying into the lie. And time will reveal the absolute damage these bishops have caused to health of innocent people. Like it or not, the “vaccine” is a bioweapon, a slow kill device to reduce world population. How do we know this? The richest men in the world, wrote books about it, told us their intentions, its not a secret, its in plain sight.
Exactly John Lee there’s plenty of other divisions going on if this site is “divisive” it’d be merely a grain of sand in the bucket. Hopefully we get the “new crew” for the ship soon! There are many things one can be scandalized about in the church. But it takes 2 to make a scandal, the scandalizer AND the scandalized.
Maria,
I only discovered this website a few weeks ago, via the “Doctors for Covid Ethics” twitter page; so: I do not know what has been going on here since the inception of this site.
After I had discovered this site, I occasionally looked at it, with no intention to get involved in the comments until … there was that “conspiracy theory” sneer in a comment posted by a priest (there hardly can be anything more stupid, especially for an Orthodox Christian, to dismiss the reality, and danger, of conspiracies: The event that paved the way for eventually the worst persecution of Christians ever was a conspiracy between the German Empire and Lenin. One only has to read Stefan Zweig’s “The sealed train”). That priest’s comment triggered me off; since then I have posted a lot of comments here and also read all new posts.
I certainly do not agree with everything that is stated here on this site in the posts or in the comments, but:
If there is division in the church, I do not think it is this site that initiated that. Who initiated that are those members of the clergy who misused, and abused, the Church as a pro-government PR-agency, those members of the clergy who joined in with the mob and ridiculed those who do not play along with the narrative propagated by the mass media.
And it is those members of the clergy who should either make a U-turn, or resign, to fix that division, and better sooner than later.
I’m orthodox now but was a Southern Baptist pastor. In our little church in Texas I found an old Bible which promently displayed the temperance pledge with places for everyone to sign. It was funny to us but also a reminder of our history.
This post had nothing to with Baptists but I’m reminded of the old proverb, “always take two Baptists fishing with you because if you only take one he will drink all your beer.”
We grew up with the joke, “What is the difference between a Baptist and a Methodist? The Methodist says hi back to you in the Liquor Store.”