3 notes

1. The post directly below may seem similar to other recent ones, but it's not.

2. All thoughts and fears of encroaching evil and violence on Christian lands should trigger this: the biblical response of putting one's trust in God and not in arms per se. Keep arms, but don't trust in them over God (don't count your forces before the battle, in other words...put not your trust in horses and chariots and superiour numbers...this is a theme in the Old Testament...David actually got in big trouble with God when he was told not to take a count of the population and he ordered Joab to go ahead and do it anyway, i.e. David wanted to see what kind of numbers he had to go into battle with, and God wanted him to rely on God alone for victory and have faith and trust in Him for victory). God is sovereign in providence. We act in it all, and it's not about fatalism because God also ordains secondary causes (our very actions are part of His providence), but God is in control. Calvin touches on this theme in an inspired way in his commentary on Psalm 23. (I was thinking about the subject when reading about how violent gangs have entered the U.S. from central America, and they resemble militant Islam in many ways, just purely evil and chaotic and violent...other things too like the massive influx of muslims in Europe and other western or historically Christian countries...)

3. I ran across a 2005 book I had to buy called The Secret History of the West by Nicholas Hagger. I had to buy it because it kind of uniquely talks alot - alot - about Calvin and Puritans and Tyndale and Shakespeare and Geneva, along with the other usual subject matter in such a book. The author makes alot of mistakes in his understanding of Calvin and Puritans and what not, but I found myself not wanting to mock him because frankly I find such different takes to be sort of valuable to get one out of potential boxes you may have gotten yourself into. I also found some connections and things he writes to be interesting and having degrees of truth in them. For instance he in his innocent way sees connections between Calvinism and things like the Cathars that I too can detect, but to see a non-Calvinist writing about it where he is making the pronouncements brazenly and without worry of sounding stupid or heterodox gives it all a sort of interesting aspect to it. I also found it interesting because Ouspensky mentions Fludd in Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution as a possible source for the Work (for some of the actual language of the Work) and it was interesting to see what this guy was saying about Fludd and Bacon and what he calls the three great prophetic books of England: the King James Bible, the Book of Common Prayer (original edition), and the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays. The extent that British Israelism was in the essence of English thinking back then. Little facts and events he writes about (which, of course, one has to be sceptical about since he does make mistakes with things I know about, so)... The subtitle of the book is: the influence of secret organisations on western history from the renaissance to the 20th century. Again, I only mention it because its subject matter includes people like William Tyndale and Calvin and Luther and Puritans and sees connections with these things and the more usual subject matter you find in such books... (I don't want to give the impression it changes my thinking on anything, it actually increases valuation for the Work language and for Calvin in what he was really up to, yet the connections do still have degrees of at least glancing truth here and there and it's interesting and validating as well to read about it...)