Bruce Charlton's Notions

The Antichrist phenomenon is generally misunderstood - not least because, as preparation for 'his' coming, false understandings have been seeded through popular culture for several decades. 

Father Seraphim Rose first made clear to me what Antichrist is, in his essay concerning the Signs of the Times - meaning the End Times. 

The Antichrist is not the overt and obvious enemy of Christ. Instead, the essence includes that the Antichrist presents 'himself' as the friend of Christianity, and operates via subversions and inversions of Christianity.

This is why it was prophesied that most of those who regarded themselves as Christian will be taken-in by the Antichrist, and thereby will find themselves unwittingly taking the side of evil in the spiritual war. 

But all this is rather abstract - and sometimes it is useful to have a concrete illustration of how the Antichrist works: and WmJas Tychonievich has provided one in a recent blog post. 

If you were confused about the sort of thing that Antichrist does; then Just Remember This. 

Once seen (I hope!) Never Forgotten... 

Metaphysics refers to a person's ultimate beliefs - or more accurately his assumptions - about how reality is structured and works. 

These primary assumptions are usually implicit rather explicit; and that they are assumptions is usually denied (claiming instead that they are logically-entailed or based on overwhelming evidence). 

What I am seeing in these End Times, is that every person's superficial 'beliefs' and self-identifications are being stripped-away and his metaphysical assumptions are being revealed. 

This seems to be striking among self-identified Christians. A large number are being revealed as simply Not Christian - in the sense that they are merely using Christian language to live by mainstream atheistic, materialist, Leftist and anti-Christian assumptions. 

But among serious Christians of all denominations there is a gap opening between those whose primary loyalty is to their church - and whose core ethic is obedience to that church; and those who have taken ultimate responsibility for their own Christian faith.  

This is interesting because there are very large differences among and between the belief systems of Eastern and Western Catholics; and Protestants such as Anglicans, Methodists or Calvinists; and churches such as Mormons. 

Yet brought to a point by the events of 2020-21, in and among all of these there is this division that has opened-up between those serious Christians who are primarily obedient to the church authorities, and those who evaluate and judge their own church according to personal discernment. 

At a metaphysical level; this relates to a primary assumption concerning the nature of Man. Among those who put obedience to their church as primary; there is the assumption that the relation between each Man and God must be mediated by a church if it is to lead to salvation and theosis. 

That 'I' needs 'the' church, but the church does not need me. The church has a mystical reality and primacy that does not depend upon its 'members'. This precisely because God has made the church essential to each Man - so therefore God will sustain the integrity of the church, no matter what. 

Among those whose faith is based on personal discernment is the assumption that salvation and discernment are a matter that is primarily based on a direct and unmediated relationship between each Christian on the one hand - and God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost on the other hand. 

That 'I' do not need the church. The church may be helpful - even very helpful - but may be harmful. The church has no mystical reality distinct from its members; so that any church has the potential to become as corrupt as any other human institution.  

By this account, God's promise of the availability of salvation and the possibility of theosis is made to each individual, and not to the mystical-church. So that although churches might all fail and fall; God will ensure that every Man capable of love will always have a path open to salvation, and the potential to grow in divinity.  

What I find striking, as one of the second category who regards churches as optional extras at best and potential enemies in the spiritual war; is that those who have taken the path of the primacy of the churches are spread across all types of Christian churches of which I am aware. 

It seems to make surprisingly little difference whether a person professes to be Catholic, Protestant or Mormon. It is a person's actual metaphysical assumptions about how reality works, how salvation works, and the purpose of this mortal life  - which seem to be crucial.... No matter what their churches may say. 

This is, I think, because Christianity has been primarily church orientated, and therefore focused upon whatever happen to be the requirements of church membership - which are very varied, usually very restrictive and specific; but very detached from metaphysical assumptions. 

Churches will exclude people on the basis of their failure to endorse and/ or live by behaviours that are integral to that particular church's sustained existence - but they will take no serious notice of a person's ultimate metaphysical assumptions. As long as someone verbally agrees-with and sticks-by the rules - they are included - but fundamental matters of assumption are unknown or ignored.

It is this neglect of metaphysical assumptions that is at the heart of the current malaise, and the deep reason for the mass apostasy of Christian churches and their loyal members - because the self-identified Christians, it turns-out! - have near identical primary assumptions as the mass of atheists, non-Christians and - in particular - the Global Leadership class whose agendas are now structuring the lives of everybody, everywhere.

People (including church-loyal Christians) go-along-with the secular, Lefts (and anti-Christian) agendas of the birdemic, antiracism and the CO2-environmentalism, social justice, equity etc. because - in an ultimate sense - they regard-themselves as primarily obedient creatures - obedient to the institutions of their-church...

"I need the church, but the church does not need me" means that their core metaphysical assumption is that such Christians regard themselves as members (or 'a people') - entities whose individual personal discernment has no objective validity in relation to salvation and theosis.  

At root, they assume: If I am not a member, then I am nothing.  

Such is the metaphysical assumption that has been exposed in these End Times. And like all such assumptions it needs to be recognized, acknowledged as an assumption - and then evaluated.

One of the great contributions made by William Arkle to my own philosophy of living is to bring to the centre of concern, the question of what we would want to do forever, for eternity - The question of what could possibly satisfy us everlastingly? 

In his writing (and art) Arkle conjures a friendly and accessible God who is a real Father (and Mother) to us, and creates with our best long-term - indeed eternal - interests in his heart. 

Arkle therefore invites us to make the thought experiment of such a divine parent who wants his children to be motivated and fulfilled in an eternal life; and to consider what kind of life that might be - what kind of life is divine creation aiming-at? 

When I make this thought experiment, my conclusion is that there are significant differences in what people want in their mortal life; and that there are also differences in what people seem to want for eternity.  

Some people have what seems like a very deep sense of fatigue about living; and seem to want an eternity of 'rest' - much like being dreamlessly-asleep - an eternity when nothing happens. 

Others seem to want an eternity of joyous contemplation; a continuous state of gratitude, worship; a perpetuation of that aesthetic arrest when we fall in love, experience great good fortune, or encounter something of overwhelming beauty... We just want to stay in exactly this state, forever. 

So both of these want an eternal state to be unchanging - although the first wants to be unconscious, unaware (or barely aware) of his own existence; while the second want to be consciously aware of his own existence - but continuously and without-fading immersed in happiness, appreciation, gratitude. 

But among those who want an active eternity; the answer probably depends on their time horizon, and their capacity for anticipating what things would actually be like. Some desire a 'paradise'-life in which they repeatedly-and-forever do the kind of thing they most enjoy on earth - e.g. eating, sex, or something sinful - but without ever getting used to it, without experiencing the 'habituation' or 'tolerance' that makes repetition so unsatisfactory in mortal life. 

This, then, paradise is an eternal present - and eternity without memory; where each 'day' (or cycle) is started afresh and unfading. 

In paradise there could be no sense of 'self', and no developmental progression; because that depends on linear continuity hence memory; so what is desired is an 'arrested development' - to be fixed as a certain type of person at a certain stage in life (child, adolescent, young adult etc), doing a certain type of pleasurable activity, again and again - forever.. but not to know that this is what is happening. It is rather like being reborn every day - but reborn as the kind of person one wants to be. 

Paradise is a life of continual play; in which the situation is one in which we and the situation are set-up such that we never get fed-up of playing - but it remains maximally satisfying.  

But none of the above constitute the idea of Heaven as I understand it. In Heaven, eternity is for creating; and creating is distinguished from 'playing' because creation comes from love. So the set-up of Heaven is one in which there are many people, and they are bound together by love; and this love overflows into creating. 

This vision of eternity comes from people (such as myself) who feel that the most profound experiences of life, which would never ever fail to satisfy, are those experiences of creating - in which that which is created is appreciated by those we love and those who love what we love.

'Creation' (in this sense) ranges very widely indeed, from more obvious things like creating new appreciations, understandings and insights; to making things and performing arts; to the creating involved in a continuing marriage, or in playing games with one's children... 

There is no limit to the kinds of things this involves - but in mortal life such creating is contaminated with mad motives (seeking status, power, to manipulate etc), and by the fatigue and entropy of our condition. For creating to become eternal we would need purity of loving motivation and endlessly-renewed energies from love (not from other, lower, sources) - so, it is these which must distinguish a creative-Heaven from this mortal life. 

Such thought experiments may be of great value, if one can persist with them to keep asking 'and what then?' after each answer you give yourself. 

Eventually you may work down through superficial half-answers to reach the solid ground of what would be eternally satisfying to you, personally. 

And then explore the consequences of that.     

My answer is that religions differ essentially in terms of what they believe happens after death. 

(By 'death' I mean biological death of the body.) 

This can be understood as what different religions 'offer' to their adherents after death; or alternatively as what the adherents of religions want to happen to themselves after they die.

All religions agree that death is not the end - or need not be the end. 

And there are a wide range of proposals about what happens after death.

What happens after death, including the factors that affect what happens after death, has implications for this mortal life - and this is why different religions end-up with recommending different behaviours and beliefs in this mortal life.

But the 'behavioural' differences between religions may be less obvious than the similarities between them - so the life of adherent of different religions may overlaps considerably, and even be superficially indistinguishable. 

In summary, the behaviours of religious people of different religions may vary only quantitatively. 

It is in terms of post-mortal destinations that religions show their qualitative differences; because if one thing happens after death then another thing cannot happen. 

If you reincarnate, you cannot resurrect; if you become a spirit after dying you will not have a body; if your personality and self are lost then they are not retained; if you assimilate with deity then you do not live-with the deity etc. 

This is what makes religions distinct. And this is why the commonly-expressed idea that ultimately, at root, 'all religions are one' - is completely false. 

However, if death is regarded as the end of everything that is a person in life - if death is annihilation of body, spirit, soul and everything else - then that is Not a religion. 

That is where the boundary between religion and not-religion should be drawn. 

So, religions differ in what happens after death - but all religions believe that some-thing remains 'alive', persists after death of the body. 

In essence: religions are systems of ideas relating to what happens to men after biological death. 

But when an ideology believes that nothing of a person remains after death, then it is not a religion.   

The non-Christians who are insightful enough to see the fake and lies of the mainstream System (the 'secular Right') are tying themselves in knots trying to describe and characterize the nature of the ideology that oppresses the world. 

They have nothing positive and motivating to suggest - but they routinely denigrate Christianity... and other religions too - but the focus is naturally on Christianity as the only potentially viable Western religion. 

They persist in describing the Global Establishment ideology of atheist, materialist Leftism as a New Religion - and persistently use religious analogies as a slur against Leftism - on the assumption that because faith, rituals, observances, prayer etc. are religious, that means they are dumb, irrational and/or manipulative.

So they are calling totalitarian Leftism a New Religion because Religion means bad. Yet this is a supposed religion that has - in the past year - closed down, taken-over and thereby utterly discredited not just the Christian churches, but all plausible pretense to spiritual authority of all the large and organized churches. So this 'New Religion' has destroyed spiritual authority... What kind of 'religion' destroys spiritual authority? 

Secular Leftism is also a supposed religion that does not believe in God: it is atheist in its avowed beliefs, and God is excluded as a significant factor from all areas of public discourse. What kind of a 'religion' does not believe in God, any gods, and any abstract deity?

This supposed 'religion' also disbelieves in any positive purpose or meaning to human life; and instead insists that reality is merely a combination of random and rigidly-determined 'physics'; just processes, grinding-on and with no point for humans.  

It insists that there is no soul, no life after death - that all human behaviour is reducible to 'psychology' and that the only kind of morality is based on 'feelings'.  

In what sense is this New Religion actually any kind of 'religion'? Well, only by superficial analogies and not by any deep beliefs or assumptions. 

This idea of Leftism as a New Religion is thus an analysis which makes worse the problem it tries to cure: it exacerbates the belief and harm of Leftism by tarring all religion with the same brush - and implicitly arguing from a standpoint of such total disbelief that religions go down in flames with Leftism because even the feeble negative and oppositional beliefs of Leftism are regarded as of the same nature as the powerful positive motivations of real religion. 

The problem is that the atheist "right" can't help themselves - so long as they remain atheist, for so long they must believe (by assumption) that all religions are false, and therefore all the beliefs, rites, rituals and other 'religious practices can only be made-up for the purpose of population manipulation. And are now being used by the 'New Religion' for the same purposes as they were used by 'old' religions. 

Yet the reality which explains the 'New Religion' is very simple - it is an anti-religion to Christianity; it is in essence the opposite of a real religion (Christianity, specifically) and the rites and rituals of Leftism have the same nature as those of explicit Satanism - they are a subversion or inversion of the Christian truth and reality. 

History teaches us that Real Religion is capable of motivating man more strongly than anything else - nothing else is able to sustain courage and social cohesion like a real religion. 

By contrast, modern Leftism is demotivating; it presides over a society of unprincipled cowards who cannot even oppose the secular authorities in the privacy of their own thoughts and are intimidated into craven obedience by the mere threat of stern looks and harsh words so that actual oppression is not needed. 

Against this, the secular Right have nothing positive to offer. 

Negatively; they are perfectly correct that our civilization is being actively-destroyed; and that all social functionality is being actively-destroyed - and that we are headed for the collapse of modern living and cooperative society; for severe mass human suffering from famine, violence and (real) disease. But negatively not-wanting this to happen is grossly inadequate - it is not a positive motivation.  

No civilization was ever built or sustained by the fear of losing a comfortable and convenient life. To grow and defend a civilization needs that courage and cohesion that only religion can give. 

We are the first and only thoroughly post-religious society, ever. 

By continually pretending we have a 'New Religion' and using religious language as a slur; by sniping at even the possibility of a real religion, by equating the literally Satanic anti-religion of Leftism with real Christianity - the secular Right are de facto fighting on the same side as the Leftism they so much despise. 

It seems to have been a constant factor of known history that particular living people have claimed to have some kind of direct and personal contact with specific dead people. This has various forms - including some that are perceptual such as having visions and/or conversations; automatic writing, Ouija boards and channeling; and direct mind-to-mind contact in trance states or dreams. 

Tribal peoples (especially hunter-gatherers) seem to have regarded contact between the living and the dead as both normal and significant; a necessary and valued part of everyday life. To the extent that 'human society' included both the living and the dead in a perpetual partnership and familial relationship.  

When the contact claimed is with a famous person, it may be linked with claims of special authority for the one who is claiming the contact - and this kind of 'vested interest' means that the subject is plagued with both charlatanry and self-deception. 

In other words, some people try to get fame or money from claiming a special relationship with some important dead person, while others make themselves feel important through a claimed relationship - just as people often 'name-drop' the famous living people they have met. 

Nonetheless, the ubiquity of the phenomenon through cultures and history - and the high stature of some of those who claim such contact - can reasonably sustain an assumption that contact with the dead really does happen. 

And if it does happen, then it is likely to be important. 

However, when the phenomenon is considered from the perspective that human consciousness has undergone a linear development through history; it can be seen that there has been a change in the nature of such claims. 

Contact with the dead seems to have begun as something that everybody did everyday, then to have become the preserve of an increasingly-professional and specialized priesthood - who might undergo training and initiation procedures, and might deploy formal methods of deliberately-induced deliberate trance states, then systems of divination.

When the spiritualist movement broke upon The West in the later 19th century (originating the USA) it used technologies such the Ouija board but also deep-trance mediums who were unconscious of the dead persons they were 'channeling'. 

Coming in the early 20th century, Rudolf Steiner announced and advocated that this era was ending, and that henceforth contact with the dead should happen in a different and fully conscious way - but he was never able to explain clearly just how this would happen - although he left many clues. yet he seems to have been right to the extent that the spiritualist-type contact has been in decline for a century - despite more and more extreme attempts to sustain it - for example by powerful hallucinogenic drugs. 

The situation now (in The West) is difficult to know - since it seems that Steiner was correct and the nature of contact with the dead has transformed as human consciousness has transformed; to the extent that contact may not be recognizable as such - may  be denied, or explained-away, or simply kept secret. 

And indeed, I think that in 2021 contact with the dead is meant to be - if not denied (because that would be dishonest) then kept 'secret' or not-talked-about; so that the actuality will not be contaminated or distorted by the actuality or accusations of status/ money seeking. 

This applies to all modern spiritual experiences; we should avoid the position of trying to defend them or of to convince other people about them. They, like 'everyday miracles', are best regarded as being For us specifically and personally - for our salvation and theosis; so that we may learn spiritually from the experiences of this life.

But in this general way; I would suggest that almost everybody could and should be having experiences of contact with the dead of some kind. And furthermore, that it is almost certain that someone of the dead is probably trying to establish contact with you at this moment. 

Who that person is is a personal matter - it could be a friend or relative, or it could be someone who was famous or from history - but I think that the initiative of genuine contact nearly always comes from the dead - and not by the desires of the living. 

It is, indeed, the desire of the living to contact specific dead persons (regardless of the needs and wants of those specific dead persons) that has led to much of the self- and -other-deception of spiritualism in its various forms. 

I think the way it works is that some person of the dead attempts to establish contact with some living person (for some reason that may never become clear) - and that the living person will become aware of this 'pressure' by the frequent, and perhaps inexplicable, recurrence of thoughts about the dead person pressing-upon their consciousness. 

I would also suggest that expectations of some kind of two-way, question and answer, call and response 'conversation' between the living and the dead be set aside. However it was in the past and in other places; that seems not to be possible or desirable at this stage of the evolution of human consciousness in The West.

Rather, I think the dead may communicate directly, thought-to-thought; but this may be unconscious (for example during sleep); and the living side of the interaction needs to bring this to consciousness and to understanding. 

Only when the living person has clarified and comprehended the thought-communication of the dead; can the dead person become aware of the living person's response. 

In other words, the interaction may be slow, simple, almost like yes-or-no in terms of information; and one-way at a time. 

The dead may also influence the motivation, interest, rewards of a living person - and contribute to discernment and creativity. 

A common example is from music; when some form of communion between a specific performer and a specific dead composer leads to an especially musically valuable interpretation of that composer's work. This seems to be very common - albeit it is not necessarily explicitly claimed to be a contact. For instance: in the case of John Lill and Beethoven it is thus claimed; in the case of Glenn Gould and JS Bach the link is powerful but implicit - but in both cases the results are objectively verifiable.    

The main potential value of such is for the living person himself; who experiences some enhancement of possibilities and the value of confirmation of the reality of the spiritual world and personal destiny.

I accept the intuition of most young children and tribal peoples that reality is made of many Beings - thus I am a pluralist. 

I therefore reject the usual 'monist' mainstream metaphysical and theological assumption that every-thing began as one thing; e.g. the pantheistic assumption that everything is really one deity, or the monotheist assumption that one God created everything from-himself. 

Instead I regard God as one (or, in fact, two) of the original Beings; and that God creates 'using' pre-existent Beings from-which to create. 

Like most pluralists - I regard linear and sequential Time as real, essential - thus reality has a history. Things have changed through history and there is a future aim; thus reality is 'evolutionary' or more exactly developmental.   

But while I believe that there always-have-been many Beings in reality; I also believe that these Beings originally shared in one original consciousness. 

Therefore history has been a developmental separation of the consciousness of Beings; so that by now (especially in The West) Men experience the world as if they each had a completely separate consciousness. 

Indeed many Men believe that this is a 'scientific fact' and that Men can only 'communicate' indirectly and symbolically - hence unreliably and distortedly - via language. 

So I regard the developmental history of Men as having gone from a single consciousness with minimal self-awareness and minimal autonomy of thought and agency of action; through to the current situation when (adult) Men assume a complete separation of awareness and agency: each locked inside his own mind/ brain. 

I regard this current separation of consciousness as ultimately a choice, albeit a choice based upon deep assumptions and ingrained habits. 

My understanding of God's motivation is that the destiny of men (that is, what God hopes from us, each individually; and makes possible) is that from our state of self-separated consciousness; men will individually choose to re-enter the common consciousness of Beings. But not as a return to the primal situation of minimal awareness, autonomy and agency... 

This time, Men are given the choice to enter a creative group-consciousness in Heaven; a group-consciousness of resurrected eternal Men. 

In other words; Men will have gone from an involuntary pluralism of Beings with oneness of passive unconsciousness...

Through the current situation of pluralism of Beings with a chosen pluralism of consciousness...

To a pluralism of Beings with a chosen oneness of creative consciousness. 

Does your church have spiritual authority? 

No. And it never will again.

In 2020 the Christian churches of the world voluntarily, without objection, with full publicity - handed-over their spiritual authority to the secular powers. 

Whatever kind of Christian church - this happened... 

Church buildings were closed. Pastors ceased to visit. There was no mass, no gathering of Christians to pray or sing, no laying-on of hands, no weddings or funerals or baptisms. Missionary activity ceased. 

This was all done - willingly, while celebrating the fact - because church leaders handed-over full spiritual authority to the secular powers. Bishops did what they were told, said what they were supposed to say, and apparently thought what they were supposed to think; and did not do/ say/ think what they were told not to; protestant and other denominations likewise. 

If, now, churches have-opened or will re-open - this is only because church leaders have been told it is okay. They believe they did right, and would do the same again.

They have also been told what they can and cannot do (say? think?) when the churches re-open - so the ultimate authority of the secular remains.

But what this all means is that spiritual authority in the world has been destroyed. 

The secular authorities are atheist in assumptions, leftist in aims, anti-Christian in bias.

So there is no high-level spiritual authority in the world. It Has Gone. 

It is gone - therefore it cannot be handed-back from the secular to the church leadership. When spiritual authority was handed over to the secular leadership spiritual authority died. 

(Spiritual authority is not the kind of thing that can be put into deep freeze for a year, thawed-out and re-activated!)

Christians really need to grasp that since early 2020 the world has changed, spiritually, permanently. 

The Christian church - meaning 'the church' of all professing Christians; and also each of the specific major denominations of Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant denominations, Mormon and all others with a large institutional organization - has undergone the biggest and most devastating collapse since the time of Jesus. 

2020 was the worst year for Christians, ever. Nothing in history comes close. 

And the catastrophe is amplified many-fold by the near total denial that it has happened! 

The mass of Christians (and almost all their 'leaders') are currently so corrupt that they cannot even notice and acknowledge when the fundamental supporting props of their church (whichever church) have been kicked away and stamped into dust!

Dishonesty is rife, and horribly compounded by dishonesty about dishonesty. In a world of insane nonsense; the simple and obvious truth is the one thing that is denied - and self-identified Christians are as bad as anybody.

Well, these are The End Times, with all that entails. We can't say we were not warned - for all the good it did. 

What was not so clear from the prophecies is that the defining feature of the End Times is that Christians would not even notice! 

Although that is a feature of the Antichrist idea - that self-styled followers of Christ would be following an imposter. 

But instead of a charismatic and fascinating Antichrist who pretends to the mantle of Jesus; we instead have the grey, managerial puppets of a dreary global bureaucracy of international political institutions, finance, mass media, big business, etc. 

We have a System Antichrist that is not even claiming to be 'another Christ', nor Christian, nor religious nor or spiritual in any way...

Yet The System is followed by church leadership and the mass of Christians as if it was The Good Shepherd himself.

It is literally incredible... but the new normal: our everyday reality.

I first heard this aria sung, as above, by Luciano Pavarotti - and this is, for me, the greatest performance overall. But the role was clearly Not written for a tenor of Pavarotti's type - with such a full, ringing and loud voice. (This is indeed known from multiple other sources of evidence.) 

Therefore, despite that Pavarotti sings every other note with his usual, perfectly even and glorious tone, he cannot reach the high F without switching to a falsetto (head-voice) voice production which marks a qualitative break in tonal quality. The run-in to this note is from 4:25. He does the high F beautifully - yet it sounds like someone else is singing that particular note. 

Pavarotti had probably the best high C of any full-voiced Italianate tenor - and what is more he possessed equally fine high C-sharp and even D - as may be heard in this aria; yet there are extremely few tenors of his type that can manage these notes using the same mode of vocal production as the high C. 

But the high F is three semitone above D - and that is a long way when singers are being judged by exact standards - and way beyond what any big-voiced tenor could produce in his normal vocal tone. 

You can hear this from a compilation of recordings of this notorious note - which is, I think, by far the highest note in the mainstream operatic tenor repertoire - since it is very seldom any tenor is required to go above high C at most - and that only once or twice per opera. 

Ignore the drivel in the comments! - What you can hear is that any tenor who has the kind of loud, ringing tone of a Pavarotti - someone like Gedda - must change to a qualitatively different tone for the high F. 

This is because all tenors have a 'break' in the voice, above which the tone must become falsetto; this break can be raised by training - but it is because of this that full-voiced tenors will sometimes 'crack' on high notes. This is like a yodel, and for the same reason - the voice suddenly, but uncontrolled because accidentally, flips into falsetto. 

(Yodeling is a controlled flipping back and forth between falsetto and the ordinary voice.) 

So, is the high F 'impossible'? 

There are tenors who, instead of having an abrupt break, gradually introduce more and more falsetto - their voice gradually and evenly changes from normal to falsetto as the notes get higher. (I have a friend with a naturally deep and sweet-toned voice, who does this spontaneously - and who has been able successfully to sing bass, baritone and tenor roles in Gilbert and Sullivan!) For such tenors, this high F may have more, or less, falsetto according to how high the break occurs. Some tenors have a very high break, and therefore the high F has less falsetto. 

However, these tenors invariably have a 'lighter', quieter and less ringing kind of tenor voice than the likes of Pavarotti and Gedda (or other greats of Italian Opera such as Caruso or Gigli) - they are, in essence, a different kind of voice (leggiero or tenore de grazia are some of the terms) - and such tenors are nowadays most often seen in Rossini, because only lighter voices can manage rapid coloratura (decorative passages of many quick notes). Luigi Alva was of this type.    

It seems certain that Bellini was writing for a just this type of leggiero, ligh-voliced singer, who used falsetto-flavoured production for the high notes. However, the tenor plays a man in nearly all operas, what is more the hero; and so he needs to sound masculine in vocal quality. 

This need for a heroic quality can be a problem for most high-voiced tenors, including who can best manage the high F with the minimum of falsetto. For perfection, the tenor should be able to integrate the high F with the whole of the rest of his voice - so that there is a completely-seamless transition in vocal quality. 

An example of musically-desirable seamless integration is Bruce Brewer (from 4:20):

Pragmatic appeasement is a 'managerial' or bureaucratic mode of thinking that has spread into mass interpersonal discourse. 

It accepts an evaluation of the 'realities' of the current situation as 'the facts'; and then tries to behave pragmatically. This is the bread-and-butter reasoning of 'sensible dissent', which is the only permissible mainstream analysis and discussion of major policies.  

At root, pragmatic appeasement is always is about managing people. It affects agnosticism about reality and real-causes; and focuses on attempting to make the best of things 'given that ' people's attitudes and behaviours are what they (apparently) are. 

So, when the birdemic came - pragmatic appeasement argued that - whether or not it really was dangerous, clearly people were afraid; and therefore it would be 'sensible' to lock-down-etc. Now, it argues that the peck is 'sensible' because (whether or not it 'really' works) the world is locked-down and we need to offer the (even more-) afraid people a way to justify a return to normal. 

Thus people are seen as needing appeasement, and appeasement is seen as being effective.

This is what is very striking about pragmatic appeasement - it is 'agnostic' (or just wrong) about real science, the facts, and implications; but it is absolutely dogmatic about soft assertions concerning what 'people' think, and how policies can shape what people think. 

Bureaucrats thus treat physics, biology and medicine like social policy - and social policy as if it were applied mathematics.  

Trying to discuss matters of physics, or medicine with such people, one is confronted with the fact that such knowledge is explained-away to merely social institutions and consensus. And when confronting ridiculously over-confident cause-and-effect assertions of how this policy will affect that human behaviour - one is confronted with immoveable dogmatism.  

What all this represents is the surface manifestation of deep, metaphysical assumptions concerning the reality of this world. 

Because it operates at the deep and invisible level of assumptions, pragmatic appeasement is robust against anything and everything that might happen at the observable level. It requires only vaguest hand-waving kind of proof (e.g. it was on The News, some Spokesperson, said so...); and is disproof-proof.

Perhaps the largest scale examples are atheism and leftism. The entire world is governed on the basis of atheism and leftism; yet it might appear that these have an utterly appalling track record through the twentieth century, when they began to dominate. 

To name the totalitarian atheist leftist regimes would be to dictate a who's who of the worst in human cruelty and dishonesty. Yet none of this makes any difference At All; and the world continues to be more and more atheist in its functioning (including the churches), and more and more leftist in its aims.    

Pragmatic appeasement assumes an accidental and humanly-indifferent universe in which human lives are brief and finite; and therefore there is no higher purpose than making the best of things, for the time being. Within this framework - all dissent must be sensible, and all action short-termist, pragmatic, realistic and focused on the proximate world of people rather than 'things'. 

The vague hope is that somewhere, somebody is looking at the Big Picture; and taking account of the the fact, the long term, and the whole community; and shaping society in a Good direction... 

But for the little-people like 'us' - our highest hope is to get-through as much of our pointless lives as possible, with the least amount and severity of suffering; and perhaps tentatively aspire to get some sporadic amusement, and even excitement, before we are inevitably crippled by disease or age and annihilated by death.

In the meantime - people make the best of things, and do not go looking for trouble. 

Unfinished Tales is probably my very favourite among the many wonderful books collecting his unpublished father's works that Christopher Tolkien edited over a span of more than forty years. 

The audiobook version of Unfinished Tales was issued just last week; and I began listening on the day it was published! 

It was a sheer delight to hear it read by the Father-Son duo of Timothy and Samuel West; whose versions of Beren and Luthien and The fall of Gondolin gave me so much pleasure. 

Timothy W. takes the 'role' of Christopher Tolkien by reading the editorial material; while Samuel reads the main texts written by JRRT. 

Timothy W. adopts an avuncular and relaxed persona; while Samuel reads with sustained concentration, tremendous intensity, and a focus on detail that could not be surpassed. 

Consequently, although I have re-read Unfinished Tales many times, I became aware of many aspects - specific facts and general tone - that I had previously not noticed. This is one reason why I appreciate audiobooks so much - the other is my spontaneous enjoyment of hearing favourite words spoken aloud so well. 

If you love The Lord of the Rings but have never begun to explore Tolkien's writings unpublished in his lifetime; this is where I would recommend you start - perhaps by listening to the Audiobook first, and then getting a paper copy for future reference. 

You will hear On the coming of Tuor to Gondolin - the very best and noblest story of the elder days (according to Christopher Tolkien, endorsed by me!). 

You will hear of Aldarion and Erendis and discover much concerning the earthly paradise of Numenor (this was Tolkien's only 'love story', albeit a sad one). 

You will hear the 'back story' to The Hobbit as told by Gandalf; also much on the finding of the One Ring and the about the Nazgul. 

I was (literally!) entranced by the information about the elves in general, and Galadriel in particular - hearing this vividly re-awoke the elvish fascination I first felt in my middle teens. 

And there is much else concerning the five wizards - including the occasion when Gandalf first irritated, and then incensed, Saruman by smoking pipeweed, while Saruman tried to ply his rhetorical persuasion on The White Council... And of Saruman's subsequent guilty and secretive adoption of the pastime. 

In short - the Unfinished Tales audiobook is a treasure trove for the Tolkien-lover. This was just the first of what will surely be many listenings... 

Most people in the world seem to be materialists who deny-by-assumption the reality of the spiritual realm. By which I mean they assume the non-reality of entities such as God; spirits such as the Holy Ghost, angels and demons; the soul; and the possibility of life after biological death. 

It is not that these have been sought and found to be absent - rather they are metaphysically-assumed to be absent, and therefore cannot be detected. 

This is normal and mainstream. The materialist assumption is built-into the institutional discourse of all powerful social functions such as politics and government, the mass media, law, science, the arts, education, the military etc. 

This is a post-religious world because once a person has adopted the materialist assumption; it is not refuted by any institution - not even by any church. 

When the materialist looks for religion in 2021, he sees church organizations whose behaviour where it most matters (by materialist assumptions) is fully explained with materialist assumptions. 

The churches themselves will state and behave on the basis that 'health', antiracism, equality, climate etc are more important than the spiritual - these take priority in their functioning. 

If one is mainstream leftist; this means that where it most matters the churches are superfluous and offer nothing extra; but, if one is anti-left materialist; then it means that where it most matters the churches are wrong.  

The mainstream materialist simply cannot perceive anything that the churches actually do which is at odds with what other kinds of institutions do. 

In a nutshell; churches are institutions; institutions are part of The System; and The System is materialist by assumption; therefore churches are materialist by assumption.  

This is a problem, unless you are already a Christian! 

It means that, so long as people are already materialist yet seek to become Christians via a church - there is no compelling reason to become a Christian. Yes or no; it is merely a lifestyle choice.   

This is why it has become so spiritually-damaging (so damning) that so many Christian churches insist that one can only be a real Christian within their church. 

...When the actual situation seems to be the opposite: that one can only become a Christian outside the churches. 

After one has become a Christian, then one can choose to join a specific church; if and when this is helpful to one's Christian life. 

But one must first become a Christian; and as of 2021 that is a matter of each individual taking full responsibility for his ultimate personal destiny in this world. 

If someone looks to any external authority or institution to tell him what to do - then he will merely remain in the materialist fly trap; he will merely continue to be-processed-by The System of Damnation.  

Things began with chaos, among-which were Beings. Beings are self-sustaining - from Beings come the energies that shape chaos into creation. 

As soon as creation had begun, there was entropy - which is the tendency for the created to revert back to chaos. 

In this current stage of creation (which we also inhabit) creation must always be-overcoming entropy; by the self-sustaining energies of Beings. 

The reversion of creation to entropy releases 'energy'.

Therefore evil Beings, those who hate God and creation, encourage the reversion of creation to chaos. They do this partly in order to destroy creation, and partly to use the released 'energy' for their own purposes. 

Luciferic-evil Beings reduce creation intending to feed-upon the released energies. 

Luciferic evil is thus parasitic in nature - a Luciferically evil Being will feed-upon the energies of creation, as he destroys it.

Ahrimanic-evil Beings destroy creation by opposing chaos with 'order'. 

Creation becomes confined within The Global Bureaucracy, The System, The Matrix: the Black Iron Prison (BIP). 

Dynamic self-sustaining creation is held in stasis - thus the energies of creative life are squeezed out from the imprisoned Beings. 

After taking a tithe for vampiric (Luciferic) self-reward; these energies are used to maintain, extend and reinforce the prison: to extend the BIP globally, to include all Men; and to eliminate all perception and awareness of any-thing at all beyond the prison.

(Actually not all Men; because Ahrimanic evil entails a sharp distinction between prison inmates and warders; between the Beings who are-processed and the Beings who-do-the-processing - between Us and Them.) 

The death-factory is constructed and fueled by the energies released from its destruction of life. Ahrimanic evil is thus an entropy-factory, a processing plant; it takes living creation and reduces it to dead matter: creation to chaos. 

Ultimately, Ahrimanic evil turns creation against itself; uses life to crush life. 

Sorathic Beings are saboteurs - they were supposed to be warders sustaining the BIP, but they have begun smashing the buildings, wrecking the machines, and torturing the inmates. 

Sorathaic Beings are defectors from the Ahrimanic plan - because they have come to regard the Ahriminic factory as too slow, too dull, too unrewarding, too conjectural in effect. They want to destroy creation Now, directly, indiscriminately. 

Sorathic Beings perceive the contradiction of creating a Black Iron Prison as a means to destroy creation - when the base motivation of evil is to destroy all of creation (including BIPs). Pure evil cannot postpone universal destruction when it can be started already. 

Thus, Sorathic Beings will burn the death factory, along with its inmates and the warders; will return every-thing to chaos without attempting to harness or use the energies for any purpose. 

The motivation is not pleasure (like the Luciferics), nor mass effectiveness (like the Ahrimanic) - but a spite-driven, burning-zeal for pure destruction of all - here and now. 

Sorathic evil is born of a distrust of complex, long-term plans and schemes, a revulsion against the hypocrisy and pretense of the Ahrimanic strategy; which poses as 'good' and continues to create, albeit justified in order to destroy.

Sorathic evil emerges and waxes when the Ahrimanic scheme is nearing completion - when it comes to be believed that There is Only the BIP - there is only a whole world of evil, inescapable, with no alternative. 

Then evil has only evil as a target - so the greater evil turns-against and consumes the lesser.

It is my impression that there is a very long tradition of exaggerating without restraint the sufferings of Jesus, compared with how they are described in the Gospels - especially the Fourth Gospel (being our only eyewitness source). 

Suffering is not one-sidedly a matter of the cruelties inflicted-upon Jesus - but also of Jesus's response to the cruelties. And overall, my overwhelming impression through The Passion is of Jesus being stoic - that he suffered from the tortures, but not to the extremity I have so often heard described and seen depicted. 

Furthermore, Jesus predicted and willingly accepted his suffering - which is usually regarded as a diminishing factor. (e.g. A woman in childbirth suffers much less than she would if the same (extreme) pains were due to a fatal disease - because she wants the child). 

The reason for the long tradition of piling-on-and-on about the sufferings of Jesus, is related to theology, rather than scripture - to the idea that Jesus's primary work was to 'suffer for our sins' - by an account which regards 'sin' as primarily immorality. 

Thus, because of this theology but only because of this theology -  Jesus must (despite the Gospels) be regarded as having, in some sense, suffered to an indescribably vast degree in order to compensate-for and neutralize the vast (and still growing) scale of human immorality.  

Yet this is a narrow and essentially false understanding of what Jesus did - if we are to believe the Fourth Gospel. Jesus needed to die and be resurrected, in order that Men might choose to follow him. But there was no need for Jesus to suffer to an unprecedented extent when he died - and indeed this did not seem to have been the case.

If we are able to perceive that 'sin' meant (mostly) death; and that Jesus 'saving us from our sins' meant (mostly) becoming able to offer us eternal resurrected life - then we can see that the precise manner of Jesus's death was not of primary importance to the success of his mission. 

If Men like Caiaphas had been more virtuous and courageous, and made better choices, and Jesus had not been crucified but died in some other and less painful way - this would Not have sabotaged God's plan. 

The point of the plan was that Jesus should die in order that he could be resurrected, ascend to Heaven and send the Holy Ghost - but the exact manner of Jesus's death was not crucial.   

In these End Times, it is as if Christians have superpowers!

What do I mean? Well, firstly I don't mean anything like the power to perform miraculous wonders in the material world. And I restrict the superpowers to those periods (even moments) when the committed Christian is actually in-tune-with God, aligned-with God's creative will and purposes. 

Superpower is (pretty much) what I mean by heart-thinking, intuition, direct knowing, or Final Participation. 

We are super-powered at such times because we are living in the larger and spiritual world, rather than the finite material world which is (increasingly) under demonic-evil control). 

We have thus (for a while) escaped this temporary world of entropy, and (in our thinking) are living in the larger world of eternity and Heaven (with this-world in that context).  

We also have the superpower of divine creation; because at such times our thinking is intrinsically divinely creative. 

In other words; when we are thinking from our real self and this real self is fully- (albeit temporarily-) aligned-with God's create-ing - then we are bringing something original to creation: we are bringing something generated from our uniqueness. 

We are, in fact, being 'geniuses' working with God in the permanence of Heavenly creation.

In this world; such a state is temporary and may be very brief indeed; yet by recognizing and acknowledging when it happens, we may strengthen our faith in God and hope of Heaven in a way that is 'super' - i.e. above - the powers and limitations of this-world.

There are only two coherent ways of regarding God. 

Either as someone who is easy to know; exactly as easy to know as knowing your parents. 

(Which - of course - not everybody can do, although it is common enough; and so easy that even a child can do it - and indeed young children are nowadays often better at it than adult children.) 

Or else God - being the creator - is so qualitatively different from us, that God is impossible to know. 

So - God is either easy or impossible to know.

The other option, which I would reject, is that God is 'possible but difficult' to know. This is the idea that most people cannot know God; but some few can get to know God by (for example) prolonged study, meditation, practice or initiation/ ordination. Such a view has been common in the history of religion, including the history of Christianity - yet I think that it is and was an essentially false understanding, for a Christian. 

Getting to know God, in the way that we know our family, is a very different matter from understanding God, or from predicting God. 

A young child may know his mother, and has faith in her love - even though the child's intellectual capacity means that the child cannot understand her. 

Indeed the gap in ability between (say) a young daughter and (say) William Shakespeare, who happens to be her father, is truly immense; in that Shakespeare was a creative genius of such stature that he towered above all others in his field - then and now. 

This makes an instructive thought experiment for Christians. Many Christians are 'stunned', 'overwhelmed' - even mentally-paralyzed - by the qualitative gap in ability between the creator of this reality, and themselves - and they assume that this means we cannot know God.  

It does mean that we cannot get near to understanding God in the specifics of his creating; just as Shakespeare's daughter did not understand how her father could write what he did. Indeed, nobody has ever understood how Shakespeare wrote what he did: the gap is just too large. 

Yet the little girl can know that her father loves her, and can live in that confidence. 

She can also, no matter how young, understand her father's motivations as they relate to her; she can understand what (in broad terms, and also in some specifics) he hopes from her in terms of her behaviour and life trajectory. 

This applies to a Christian's ideal relationship with God; because all Christians understand God as their loving father. This means that, although we can understand God's creative work much less than we can understand Shakespeare; we can nonetheless know God in the same kind of personal way that we know our parents.

We can - and should - be in awe of what God has done and can do; yet it would not be a good thing if a daughter was to have a relationship with her father that was primarily one of awe - the relationship ought instead to be loving and personal, affectionate and close. 

Ideally, there should and would be respect on both sides - the respect of one unique person for another when they are bound by love and confident of love. 

But in a family, awe and respect does not get in the way of affection, of closeness - because underneath all there is a confidence that derives from mutual knowledge of love.

That confidence is also called Faith.   

Thus a Christian should aim for the kind of confident, affectionate relationship with God that we innately know to be the ideal for a loving family. And this Faith can then be the basis of understanding what God wants for us and the world. In much the same way that Shakespeare's young daughter might have understood what her father wanted in terms of family relationships and plans - despite that she had no understanding of how her father had composed his sonnets, nor how he planned to write Hamlet. 

Note: the above is indebted to the insights of William Arkle - especially his Letter from a Father. 

How clever are the Global Establishment? It is an important question. 

One answer is 'They are cleverer than the masses - and that is all which is necessary'.

The masses did not need to be cleverer than Them in the past, because the masses were led by common sense and their personal experiences; and their evaluations were rooted in religion. So long as religion was central to their world view, there was a limit to how far the masses could be fooled. 

Now the masses have been trained to ignore the divine and spiritual; to regard public discourse (especially in the mass media) as the only really-real reality; and to disregard their own experience and common sense.   

Another answer: 'They are cleverer than the intellectual classes - whom they are leading by the nose to their own annihilation'. 

It has always been easier to mislead the intellectual classes, since abstraction is prone to mislead when applied to Life; and abstraction can lead someone much further from the natural and spontaneous than instinct. 

But now that the intellectual class are mostly anti-Christian and almost-wholly materialist in terms of what they take-seriously - then the intellectual class will 'believe' (i.e. go-along-with, base their career and self-respect upon) pretty much anything - especially when is the opposite of obvious common sense reality. 

Furthermore, as of 2021 the intellectuals cannot think. To live by abstraction and be unable to think means that They control the intellectuals like puppets. 

But the best answer is 'They are clever enough for what they want to accomplish: which is destruction'.

The Global Establishment strategy is that of Satan: the damnation of as many Men as possible; which is a destructive agenda aimed-at God, divine creation and all that is Good (truth, beauty and virtue). 

And destruction is much easier than creation. It takes a genius to devise a complex functional machine, but any fool can throw sand in its works, or smash it with a mallet. 

It takes God to create - but any demon or human fool, madman or servant of evil can wreck creation and any one of a million ways. 

To successfully implement a strategy to guide Men towards choosing salvation is difficult and the options are restricted; by contrast, to encourage the corruption of Men is trivially easy and requires few resources and little planning. 

Thus scores of mutually-reinforcing, Goodness-degrading policies can be pursued simultaneously, on multiple fronts - and are.

The take home message is that They are quite clever but in an un-creative way, and they are prone to wreck their own plans by treachery and spite. 

But; in a world that has self-subtracted god and the spiritual, and has thereby excluded all possibility of rooted consecutive reasoning; Their malice is eternal and sleepless. 

And what They are attempting is something to which any-being - no matter how dumb or lazy - can contribute towards... 

So Their numbers are legion, and growing.

I am fascinated by the descriptions of Tolkien's Numenoran Men; and how one of their gifts was to know when it was that they should die. This evoked one of the most beautiful passages Tolkien ever wrote:

Then going to the House of the Kings in the Silent Street, Aragorn laid him down on the long bed that had been prepared for him. There he said farewell to Eldarion, and gave into his hands the winged crown of Gondor and the sceptre of Arnor, and then all left him save Arwen, and she stood alone by his bed. 

And for all her wisdom and lineage she could not forbear to plead with him to stay yet for a while. She was not yet weary of her days, and thus she tasted the bitterness of the mortality that she had taken upon her. "Lady Undómiel," said Aragorn, "the hour is indeed hard, yet it was made even in that day when we met under the white birches in the garden of Elrond where none now walk. And on the hill of Cerin Amroth when we forsook both the Shadow and the Twilight this doom we accepted. Take counsel with yourself, beloved, and ask whether you would indeed have me wait until I wither and rail from my high seat unmanned and witless. Nay, lady, I am the last of the Númenoreans and the latest King of the Elder Days; and to me has been given not only a span thrice that of Men of Middle-earth, but also the grace to go at my will, and give back the gift. Now, therefore, I will sleep. 

"I speak no comfort to you, for there is no comfort for such pain within the circles of the world. The uttermost choice is before you: to repent and go to the Havens and bear away into the West the memory of our days together that shall there be evergreen but never more than memory; or else to abide the Doom of Men." 

"Nay, dear lord," she said, "that choice is long over. There is now no ship that would bear the hence, and I must indeed abide the Doom of Men, whether I will or I nill: the loss and the silence. But I say to you, King of the Númenoreans, not till now have I understood the tale of your people and their fall. As wicked fools I scorned them, but I pity them at last. For if this is indeed, as the Eldar say, the gift of the One to Men, it is bitter to receive." 

"So it seems," he said. "But let us not be overthrown at the final test, who of old renounced the Shadow and the Ring. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!"

The Numenoreans had been gifted (by the Valar, the gods) with a lifespan several-fold greater than ordinary Men; and they were also immune to both illness and the degenerations of ageing. So they would (unless killed) remains healthy and vigorous until they became aware that their proper lifespan was ended; and at this recognition they - willingly, by choice - ought-to embrace death, as did Aragorn. 

If they rejected death, the Numenoerans could indeed live about a decade longer; but at the cost of rapid decline in physical health and the onset of what we would term dementia. But more significantly, by clinging to life, they had succumbed to spiritual corruption. And this corruption itself shortened their life span.  

It was when the Numenoreans, especially their Kings and Queens, began clinging to life; that the corruption of the race began to get a grip and to accelerate. Because this clinging represented their rejection of the divine will that Men (but not elves) should naturally die and their souls would then leave the circles of the world. 

I feel that there is a deep lesson in Numenor about life and death. Our life is of value, as a time of experience and learning, and for so long as this life continues it is ordained by God. Death is inevitable for men - however, the inevitability can be accepted or rebelled-against; can be embraced at the proper time, or delayed for a while. 

There will come a time when we know that Christians ought to surrender life willingly - and more with faith and hope onto the next stage. 

But - for this choice to be a real choice, it is possible to refuse to die now and move-on - and it is possible that death can be delayed. There is no guarantee of successful delaying of death, for those who choose that path - but the spiritual crux is whether we accept timely death, or whether we strive to delay it. 

We can either acknowledge that this mortal life has now fulfilled its divine purpose and that it is now best to undergo the transformations of death and resurrection... 

Or, we can refuse death, and remain alive for some while longer - but at the cost of physical and mental degeneration and spiritual corruption. 

In other words, we can - at death - align our-selves with God's purposes; or we can turn-away-from God's purposes and hold to our own.

When I talk of willing embrace of death at the right time, I mean more than a stoic acceptance of the inevitability of death; and more than the acceptance of death as the least-worst of alternatives - for someone worn-down by pain and weariness. In other words, the willing embrace of death means more than death as analgesia, sleep and rest. 

Death should go beyond mere passive acceptance to a voluntary and positive choice. When a Christian follows Jesus through death to resurrected life eternal; this is an active and conscious matter - which entails repentance (recognizing and discarding the sins that are incompatible with Heaven).   

The willing embrace of death was modelled by Jesus in the Gospel accounts; but it follows naturally from a desire for salvation - which can only come via death.  

It may be of vital importance to know the point at which the price of life becomes too great. 

A Man may find himself confronted with the possibility of 'clinging to life' at the cost of doing, saying or thinking some-thing that he knows to be a deep and damning sin. At such a point; a Christian needs to be able to recognize that this is the time to die. 

Such a situation may become more frequent in the world as it has become. In this totalitarian world of surveillance and control, ruled by powers of evil; more and more Men are in a position analogous to the slave of a wicked master. 

Ultimately a slave may be compelled to do his master's will, or else die: there may be no other alternatives.

Therefore, we need to be prepared to die, prepared willingly to accept death; when what we are being asked to do is would destroy our own capacity for repentance. 

Each Man will know when this point is reached (God will make sure of this) - although he may, of course, choose to pretend that he does not know. 

Obedience and death-delayed; or refusal and death-now... 

The devil delights in presenting such a choice when he feels confident of the outcome; and he must surely be confident that most modern Men would do or destroy literally anything when they believe it may delay their own death - as the 2020 birdemic made crystal clear. 

If that choice comes to us, and when the price of obedience is damnation; a Christian needs to acknowledge the fact, and the irreversibility of the decision. To refuse martyrdom may be to embrace damnation.

It is as well to be prepared. The cost of wrong choices we can see depicted in the History of Numenor.   

Quite a lot of self-identified Christians seem to believe that their faith requires them to live by the assumption that The Authorities (however defined) must have good intentions - perhaps because they are supposedly (in some way) 'ordained by God' to hold their positions of authority. 

And some Christians also believe that it is immoral for anyone to assume that those in-charge-of large institutions (whether international agencies like the UN, national or local governments, churches, medical and scientific institutions and the like... are evil by motivation; are engaged in active, strategic evil. 

It was, until 2020, sometimes allowable to assume that the leaders of large corporations were indeed immoral. But this is now apparently forbidden - since Big Pharma and the Silicon Valley Tech Corps are the biggest of big corporations, and it is no longer permissible to regard them as evil - on pain of severe sanctions. 

Such are the tests of these End Times. 

To remain Christian we are called-upon to make a distinction between this-world and the-next; between the reality that while resurrected Heavenly Life is in full accord with God's purposes; in this earthly mortal life evil may triumph at any and every level - including that of the Authorities of this-world. 

This ought to be very obvious, but is not; because of the breadth and depth of corruption; which is unprecedented in world history - so comparisons between Now and The Past can be grossly misleading.  

All past societies were predominantly religious (in one form or another) until about a century ago (the Russian Revolution) - and until about fifty years ago the Godless societies were in a minority. 

Nobody else has ever lived in so thoroughly Godless a world; nobody in the past experienced a whole world in which religion has been so pervasively subordinated to worldly concerns as we find ourselves in since early 2020. 

A nothing-but-materialist world to such an extent that the religious and spiritual dimension of life has precisely zero effect on actual policies and strategies: all world religions have been subordinated to this-worldy agendas in a very extreme and obvious way...

Yet this has hardly been noticed. 

Suddenly it has been declared (for instance) that watching stuff on a TV monitor is spiritually the same as participating in religious rituals. 

Holy places, shrines, churches, temples can be closed... and nothing significant is lost. 

Missionary work and evangelism (which many sacrificed-for greatly and even gave their lives to do in the past) are simply set-aside. 

Pilgrimages that were essential and transformative in 2019, became inessential and worthless in 2020. 

A pastor visiting his flock can be replaced by masked people communicating by phone. 

The priestly laying-on of hands for blessing and healing, the human-divine touch, is (it turns-out) merely an optional-extra with no objective value. 

Thus (pretty much) all the leaders of all the religions (including Christian churches) have gone-along with this overturning of however-many centuries of core religious belief. 

Such scale of apostasy cannot be undone. One cannot suspend wholesale all the most sacred activities - around which religions were built - and the 'restart' them as if nothing has happened. 

And this plain fact is obvious to the devil, even if apparently invisible to the religious leaders.  

Here-and-now we live in a post-religious world. 

The pretense of all denominations has been revealed, has been enacted - with the enthusiastic assent of religious leadership.

After 2020; we cannot assume that The Authorities are working on the side of God; when they have so comprehensively allied with the agenda of Satan, and have not repented.  

If we, as Christian individuals, really believe that our religion is true - then we must be ready to go it alone, in an ultimate sense - which entails judging and rejecting the spiritual authority of The Authorities. 

What passes for 'dissent' in the modern leftist-bureaucratic mass media/ government/ corporate world is what might be called 'sensible' dissent. This is allowed - up to a point - even in the mass media. 

Sensible Dissenters are the people who allow the validity of the goals - but question the current impatient and irrational means to achieve them: the doctrinaire antiracists who resist MLB; the climate environmentalists who prefer nuclear to wind power; the pro-sexual-revolutionaries who are concerned by 'excesses' such as the micro-aggression movement relating to 'pronouns' and child mutilations from the trans-agenda; those who regard the birdemic as a real plague but want more rigorous testing and phased-introduction of the pecks...

Sensible dissent is where the critic concedes all the Big Lies, but advocates a slow, care-full, cautious approach to policy - something much like what Karl Popper advocated in the form of 'incremental' reform, or 'piecemeal social engineering'. 

This is the modern descendent of the Fabian Socialist approach of non-revolutionary gradualism; by which the end-point is pretty much identical with communism - but is reached by different means. Thus it is not coincidental that the most powerful Popperian in the modern world is the man born as György Schwartz. 

The entire modern world, with its totalitarian global government imposed in early 2020 by an unnoticed "grey-coup", represents the triumph of Fabian Socialism - so it is clear why the allowed dissent is merely the 'sensible', rationalist, more-gradualist side of this tradition. 

Sensible Dissent includes the people who really believe-in the Great Reset; and are (rightly!) fearful of unleashing and unrestrainedly-fueling panic and resentment because it will destroy The System. 

They are 'moderate' but ideological Leftists who want a wholly-materialistic System of omni-surveillance and total-control; and who therefore fear the irrationalism, hatred, spiteful destructiveness and capacity for violence of the angry, impatient extreme Left - whose 'ideals' are wholly negative. 

In this era - Sensible Dissent has near-zero traction - it can be expressed, it can even be 'approved' by those who regard themselves as moderate, decent, sensible; but as of 2020; Sensible Dissent is never attended to, it never makes any difference: Sensible Dissent is always ignored.

This because the SD's share the strategic ideals of the crazy-destructive-left and only differ in terms of the best tactics; Sensible Dissent comes-across as dull, boring, feeble, weakly-motivated Old Men or Women - obsolete, corrupted, part-of-the-problem. 

This is a major reason why the rising generation of most-idealistic Leftists always want every year to be Year Zero - they want to delete The Past and all who defend any aspect of The Past. 

This eliminates effective opposition from the patient-gradualists, and accelerates the dominance of the most impatient and hard-line among the leftist-anti-divine-creation-ists. 

All the Leftist energy and drive nowadays is on the side of the stupid, insane, and frankly-evil individuals and organizations (i.e. Chaotic Evil) - those who demand extreme, uncompromising, reckless Action. Now. Those who regard opponents as enemies and that enemies be eliminated.

Demand therefore that opponents be cancelled, suppressed, outlawed; demand riots, destruction, arson, jailings, killings.

...Demand whatever eliminates fastest.  

Sensible Dissent needs to be detected and rejected by Christians (for example, using the 2020 Litmus Tests as a screen). 

The moderate, rationalist enemy is still The Enemy: they are still following the anti-God, demonic agenda - albeit of the Lawful Evil (Ahrimanic) type. 

They are still aiming at the same end (damnation) albeit by gradualist means.

In these extreme, irrational, insane, Sorathic End Times - when the most extremely-evil enemy are ever-increasingly in the ascendant - Christians need always to pursue The Good; and must not be diverted into pursuing the lesser-evil. Because the lesser evil is just a more gradual, incremental, rational, sensible form of damnation.

The usual understanding of Christians is that sin is moral transgression against God's law; and that this leads to the just punishment of being excluded-from Heaven and sent instead to Hell. 

But a close reading of the Fourth Gospel paints a very different picture of what Jesus taught about sin. 

In the Fourth Gospel - sin means death, primarily. 

Death here means to die physically, biologically, death of the body - and thereby to lose our-selves - without a living body we would cease to be our-selves. 

This seems to have referred to the condition of sheol - in which, after death of the body, each Man's soul was reduced to the state of a demented ghost who did not know his own identity.  

Jesus came to take away the sin of the world, for those who would follow him; and this meant that after biological death, instead of every-Man going to sheol, those who followed Jesus would be resurrected to eternal life.  

Thus Jesus came to change Man's previous universal destiny of death/ sheol - and this applied to those who chose to follow Jesus to resurrected life eternal. 

So, after Jesus made 'salvation'/ resurrection a possibility for all Men; then the meaning of sin began to include not only death; but any-thing that would prevent a Man from choosing to follow Jesus. 

That is how moral transgressions' work' in causing damnation. They are those moral choices that need to be recognized as preventing us from following Jesus to life everlasting in Heaven. They are moral choices that are incompatible with Heaven. 

Repentance is the recognition that these moral choices are incompatible with Heaven - and our willingness to discard these moral choices when we are resurrected. 

This is necessary, because for resurrection to eternal life to be possible, we must each voluntarily choose to discard that in our nature which is incompatible with Heavenly life among resurrected men. 

The reason is that Heaven is a state of full alignment with God's creative purposes; and Heaven is the situation in which Men work-with-God on divine creation. (This is becoming fully sons and daughters of God). 

Sins are what prevent us from having full alignment with God's creative purposes; and thereby intrinsically prevent us from being resurrected into Heaven. 

We need to be able to recognize sins as sins, and to repudiate them: to be prepared to discard them forever when we are resurrected. 

We must be able to discard these aspects of our-selves at resurrection - or else we physically-cannot be resurrected - and this choice of discarding  sin at resurrection is repentance in action.