No Refuge Could Save the Hireling and Slave

“From the ends of the earth we hear songs of praise, of glory to the Righteous One. But I say, ‘I waste away, I waste away. Woe is me! For the traitors have betrayed, with betrayal the traitors have betrayed.’”

Isaiah 24:16

Following the mass shootings of August 3, 2019, the patron saint of cuckolds, Russell Moore, wrote an article called “White Nationalist Terrorism and the Gospel.” His single focus of concern was the unhinged El Paso, Texas, shooter and not the leftist/antifa shooter in Dayton, Ohio, who struck 13 hours later.

Moore asserts that “the killing of innocent bystanders” naturally follows from the manifesto of the El Paso shooter, which is an accurate summation of “the ideology behind all of this,” meaning white nationalism, which takes “root in rage-filled violent people.”

Moore dismisses the “usual tropes of an ‘invasion’ of migrants into our country, of the ‘replacement’ of white people by minorities,” though he admits that “white nationalist movements” are “cascading all over Europe and the rest of the world.”

It’s not arguable that the white stock of our country is being replaced. The white race used to be nearly one-third of the world population; it’s now at 14% and falling rapidly into the single digits. But no sympathy is given to us by the rest of the world. On the contrary, if anyone wants a new home, Western countries take them in, and here they receive free money and automatic citizenship for their children. The white population of our country was at 90% in 1950 and is at only 60% today. Since 2015, there have been more white deaths than white births. Less than half of children under age 15 are white. And if you dare to think this trend endangers the culture and way of life that our fathers intended for us, their children, you are in sin, according to Moore. You are a racist!

Moore and his fellow Alienists welcome this slow-motion genocide because the idea that all men are created equal – a French fantasy that could not even survive the 19th century – is far more important to them than the survival of their own people. In 2017, Moore wrote that “Americans of many different religions, and of no religion at all, should stand together on at least this: that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Imagine, a minister of the gospel defending the right of anti-Christs to commit idolatry, and believing that there is such a thing as having no religion. This is why Moore opposed Trump’s earlier threat to shut down mosques as a threat to religious liberty. The natural consequence of such polluted thinking is that conditions become intolerable for Christian families. When Christians finally buckle under pressure from the changes imposed by their overlords, Moore denounces them for being racist devils who cling to blood and soil when their only sense of belonging should be found in Christ.

To resist the will of the Alienists is to engage in the “sin” of segregation. Borders separate one nation from another. Borders and barriers, and not just the physical ones, fence the people and their cultures from harm. Those who believe that what remains of our national culture rises or falls with those who founded it and have always maintained it, namely white Christians, are therefore denounced as nationalists and supremacists.

Moore asserts that white nationalism, which like “racism” is a catch-all term for anything liberal progressives don’t like, necessarily leads to terror and murder because it is “idolatry” of “one’s ancestral origins or one’s tribal culture,” and this is what the gospel “confronts and condemns.” Unfortunately, an implied blood-worship is as close as Moore comes to actually defining what he means by “white nationalism.” He has probably never condemned any other kind of nationalism, and certainly not the ethnonationalism of Jews, who most Baptists assume to be in a special, perpetual, racial covenant with God, despite their belief that God’s only Son is the bastard son of a whore who is now in hell, boiling in feces for eternity. Curiously, those who believe in the Jewish race covenant and their divine grant of Palestine always escape the byname “racist.”

Moore begins his exposition against white nationalism with Matthew 3:9 and Acts 17:26-27. He is correct that we are saved by grace, not by blood. The Jews did not endear themselves to God simply by being descended from Abraham, and God’s adoption of the Gentiles showed that the promises to Abraham are received through faith, not through the genes. The question is whether God’s social design for humanity places our blood relations with family and kin, and the safety and familiarity that nationality provides to a self-identified people, as being important for our development in grace. The answer is clearly shown in the passage from Acts which Moore cites:

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.

One can scarcely imagine a more “nationalist” verse. It is the companion to Deut. 32:8:

When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.

In other words, it pleases God to divide the nations just as he divided the tribes of Israel, though all of them were united in common faith. God’s design is not absolute unity, but rather pluriformity (1 Cor. 12:12-13), which avoids a return to Babel by taking our fallen nature into account; the division of nations providing necessary checks and balances on sin, yet allowing us to cooperate in the pursuit of righteousness. “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sins diminish tribes” (Prov. 14:34, LXX). God loves boundaries and ethnic determination, for in Scripture, the word nation refers not to geopolitical entities and certainly not to propositional governance but to blood-lineage. As John Calvin observed, “men are placed on the earth so that each nation may be content with its own boundaries.” In this manner, “God, by his providence, reduces to order that which is confused.” In keeping with the principle of subsidiarity, the household of faith renews but does not supplant the household of kinship (1 John 4:21). The church is “a house of prayer for all the nations” (Mark 11:17), and the nations continue into eternity (Rev. 21:24).

In true gnostic form, Moore twists the instinct for unity in diversity, in conformity to the Trinity itself, into a “satanic pull to the exaltation of the flesh.” He cites Eph. 3:1-12 and Col. 3:11 as proof that the gospel tears down “carnal dividing walls” and “forms a new people who demonstrate the kingdom of God,” where “there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all, and in all.”

Christians need to be aware of the devious trick being played on them with Moore’s common misapplication of the text. Are we called to abandon our heritage, traditions, property, and inheritance because the gospel shows us that such concerns are carnal and irrelevant? “Who has ever seen ‘the individual,’” asks Juan Vázquez de Mella, “if not defined by his family, his region, his profession, his language, his inheritance, his faith?”

Spirit and flesh are united natures in a living soul (1 Cor. 6:15). The anti-Christ denies not that God exists but that the Word (the Logos) was made flesh. The sacraments are received not just spiritually, but in water, bread, and wine. The flesh is washed so that the soul is made clean, and our flesh feeds on the flesh and blood of Christ, so that, as Calvin puts it, “his life passes into us and becomes ours… We perceive that all these things cannot possibly take place unless he adheres to us wholly in body and spirit.” Hence, as Tertullian taught, “the flesh is the hinge of salvation,” united with spirit in both work and reward. Either this is an “exaltation of the flesh,” as Moore claims, or it means that grace transcends but does not erase the variations God creates and bestows, including our differences.

Look at the heavily abused Eph. 2:12-21:

¹² [R]emember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. ¹³ But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. ¹⁴ For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility ¹⁵ by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, ¹⁶ and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. ¹⁷ And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. ¹⁸ For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. ¹⁹ So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, ²⁰ built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone,²¹ in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

This does not mean that national borders are to be erased, that governments are to merge together, that refusal to accept world dictatorship is bigoted, and that all the various peoples ought to blend into an indistinguishable mass because nothing else matters except faith.

The key words in verse 12 are that the Gentiles were separated from Christ. They were far off from salvation but now have been brought near to God through faith. They were strangers and aliens to the covenant, not to Jerusalem. See Heb. 11:13, where the Israelites are also called strangers and exiles, in search of a homeland, even though they had a homeland and were not strangers to the covenant. But they waited for a better covenant. The issue in view is ending separation from Christ, not racial or national or individual separation.

In verse 14, the dividing wall of hostility refers not to cultural, racial, or national borders but to the enmity of the law against us and its power to condemn. Christ abolished the curse – not the law – by canceling our debt (Col. 2:14). Judeans and Gentiles are now one man in Christ spiritually, through the water of baptism, just as we are one man in Adam physically, through the water of birth.

Verse 18 underscores the point again, that through Christ we all have access in one Spirit to the Father. It does not say that we all have common access to the same crops, roads, education, health care, treasuries, resources, and services, and that our property does not actually belong to us but rather, it belongs to anyone in the world who wants it. “Cursed be anyone who moves his neighbor’s landmark” (Deut. 27:17).

Verse 19 calls us fellow citizens not of our respective countries and states, but of the household of God. As John Pearson writes in Exposition of the Creed, Article IX: “The Church is one in unity of faith (Eph 4:5; Jude 3); unity of origination (Eph 2:19-21); unity of sacraments (Eph 4:5; 1Co 10:17; 12:13); unity of ‘hope’ (Eph 4:4; Tit 1:2); unity of charity (Eph 4:3); unity (not uniformity) of discipline and government; for where there is no order, no ministry with Christ as the Head, there is no Church.”

Therefore, when Eph. 3:6 calls the Gentile believers “members of the same body” with the Israelite believers, the spiritual context should be clear: one Lord, one faith, one baptism. But then Moore waves Col. 3:11 before the unsuspecting reader’s face, hoping to register another Democrat.

Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.

This means that there is no longer a difference of privilege in being born of the natural seed of Abraham and being circumcised (Gal. 6:15). It means that we are called to renounce the unregenerate nature of the old man (Eph. 2:2), mentioned in the preceding verses, and walk in newness of life. This transition is described perfectly in Eph. 4:22-24, and how the regenerate man is to behave is described in verses 25-32. We are not called to gnosticism and erasing all identities except our spiritual identity; we are called to good works (Eph. 2:10).

The companion verse to Col. 3:11 is Gal. 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Male and female are not mentioned in Col. 3:11, which makes it more useful to Moore in his Marxist sleight of hand, because even he recognizes the futility in trying to convince real Christians that male and female no longer exist. Yet if he were consistent, he would have to claim this. Clearly, both verses mean that the love of Christ transcends but does not erase other differences and distinctives, such as the vast cultural difference that existed between refined Greeks and Scythians, who were considered the most barbaric of the barbarians. (Herodotus called them cannibals.) It would have been a terrible injustice to pretend that these two peoples were equal in every respect, or even in any respect, except for their equal access to the throne of grace.

Moore adeptly mixes enough truth in his words to mask the fundamental lie. The gospel does form a “new” church by building upon the foundation of the old church. The barriers that used to prevent many peoples from knowing the truth are no longer in place. And in the church, we are not to think that our ancestors and our social status and our riches accord favor with the Lord. As Isaiah said, all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. But don’t lose sight of Moore’s objective, which is to convince you through these Bible verses that seeking the interests and protections and a future for your race, into which God placed you and blessed you, is terrorism.

Moore writes:

The New Testament apostles expend much energy telling us, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that we are not in an ancestor cult (1 Peter 1:18)…

The reference to the futile ways of Gentile forefathers, in 1 Peter 1:18, refers to idolatry, in the same context as Eph. 4:17-19, where the words used are “futility of their minds,” “darkened in their understanding,” “alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” Their minds are futile, their hearts are darkened, and they are alienated from God because they “have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.” This has absolutely nothing to do with being in “an ancestor cult.”

…or a national or tribal identity cult (Phil. 3:20)…

Phil. 3:20 tells us that our citizenship is in heaven. This is the same point made by Heb. 11:14-16. Heavenly citizenship means that our names are written in heaven (Luke 10:20). It does not mean that earthly citizenship is meaningless and irrelevant. Notice in Acts 22:28 that Paul’s heavenly citizenship did not prevent him from using his Roman citizenship to avoid scourging and to seek an audience with Felix, the governor. And in his defense before Felix against the accusations of the Jews, he explains, in Acts 24:17, that he brought alms to his nation. And in Acts 26:4, he says that he is a Pharisee, and his reputation “among my own nation and in Jerusalem, is known by all the Jews.” In Acts 28:19, he says that finally he was compelled to appeal to Caesar, which was only possible because of his Roman citizenship. This has absolutely nothing to do with being in “a national or tribal identity cult.”

…but we have been adopted in a new family, a kingdom from every tribe, tongue, nation, and language (Rev. 5:9-10).

He means every tribe, language, people, and nation; and to be accurate, not merely “adopted” but ransomed. But yes, let everything that has breath praise the Lord. “May he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River [Euphrates] to the ends of the earth! May desert tribes bow down before him, and his enemies lick the dust!” (Psalm 72:8-9). This does not mean that our blood families no longer exist. It does not mean that tribes no longer exist. It does not mean that languages no longer exist. It does not mean that nations and races no longer exist. It does not mean that our people no longer exist. Men who teach such lies are the ones who Homer calls tribeless, lawless, and hearthless. Aristotle calls such men outcasts who love war because they are stateless and unprotected.

We are told in 1 Tim. 5:8 that “if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” In the Westminster Larger Catechism (Q130), we are told that it is sinful to carelessly expose our charges to danger.

Moore continues:

Moreover, we are joined in Christ to a God who loves those who are reviled for their racial or tribal or national background, and commands us to do the same, not just in word but in deed (Lk. 10:36-37).

This is quite true. Our Lord said that all the law and prophets hang on love for God and neighbor. Scratch a little deeper into Moore’s writings, however, and you’ll find that he is promoting the same “liberation theology” as James Cone and MLK, where whatever is considered to be oppression is redefined as sin, and being released from this imagined “sin” is redefined as justice, and being recompensed for said injustice is called reconciliation. It all begins with redefining what is sinful, as Moore does in this very article, with the short-term objective of scoring a payoff and the long-term objective of oppressing and marginalizing the majority. He is a useful errand boy for the ancient enemy, whose program has been so successful that young white people know they can score social status points by bemoaning their own oppression in having been born white!

Love for God and neighbor notwithstanding, we bear greater responsibility for those who are our own (Mark 7:11-13). This natural instinct and scriptural exhortation Moore hopes to suppress by singing anthems to the noble stranger. Responsibility is meaningless if our “neighbors” are everyone in the world, for that is a burden impossible to bear, even by the totalitarian state that promises to shoulder the burden. And if our “own” are figured strictly to be the Christians of the world, it is a theoretical contrivance that has never existed at any time in history and cannot possibly exist. Such an idea would do violence to the Fifth Commandment. In short, if the practical effect of our “love” is to violate law and duty, we are being anything but loving.

Kinists seek a return to corporate piety, as it was formerly understood, which unites the secular and spiritual spheres of life. As Darrell Dow writes, “One cannot achieve supernatural virtue while ignoring natural obligations. Piety is justice – it is giving what is owed to fathers and fatherland. If we fail to honor our earthly fathers, we cannot rightly honor our Heavenly Father.” Nor can either be honored by pretending that the hierarchical social order which God himself has created and bestowed does not or should not exist. Therefore, as Dow writes, “Favoring the far-off over the nearby is impious.”

To love my neighbor as myself, I will respect his boundaries. His wife is not my wife. His children are not my children. His property is not my property. I show love for him through obedience to the law, particularly commandments 6 through 10. And since love for brothers in spirit doesn’t exist without love for brothers of flesh (Rom. 9:3, Deut. 23:7), we can accurately conclude that covenant theology and nationalism are two sides of the same coin.

Moore continues:

That’s why Jesus announced his ministry by explicitly denouncing the idea that God’s mission is, or ever has been, limited by racial, cultural, or tribal boundaries (Lk. 4:24-27). The people loved what Jesus was saying, until he touched on issues of race and nationality, and then they were “filled with wrath” and sought to throw him off of a cliff (Lk. 4:28-29). No doubt many accused him of “distracting” them from the Word of God by talking about “justice” and such things. 

This is a breathtaking attempt to cast the words of Christ, not to mention the central focus of the apostles in the New Testament – the inclusion of Gentiles in the covenant – as a lesson on “social justice.” Our Lord is saying in Luke 4:24-27 that he, the Messiah, had come to ransom the Gentiles as well, as presaged by Elijah and Elisha ministering only to Zarephath and Naaman, who were Gentiles. The fact that God passed over Judeans and showed mercy to “dogs” angered the Jews. Some sought to kill Jesus, because they expected a Messiah for the Jews only, not for Gentiles as well. Yet even Joseph in Egypt was the savior of not just his own people but of Egyptians and many surrounding nations. Similarly, in Luke 10:14-15, our Lord says that it will be more tolerable for the Gentile cities of Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for his own Capernaum. Christ intentionally triggered the Jews with pro-Gentile parables such as the good Samaritan and the woman who lost a coin. Moore attempts to reframe this important covenantal lesson as “touch[ing] on issues of race and nationality,” as though a) all that can be said about race and nationality is that they must be regarded as meaningless, and b) that it is relevant to the white nationalist effort today, which is resistance to those who are successfully inundating a global minority, seeking their genocide.

Moore simply doesn’t care that anti-Christs are choking the life from his own people, because what does race matter to a man of “faith”? Well, it obviously matters a great deal when “social justice,” meaning extortion on behalf of non-whites and atheists, is at stake. Again, just enough truth (that God calls all races and tribes to repentance) is mixed with the lie (that race and nationality are incompatible with the Christian life) to make it palatable.

Moore accuses the brethren by drawing a fallacious moral equivalence between the deranged actions of killers and the ethic that white children should be allowed to grow in safety and security, among their own kind, so that their people, who were created by God with tremendous purpose, should not perish from the earth.

But, for Jesus and for his Spirit-anointed apostles, there is no gospel apart from the exposure of sin, and the repentance demanded in its wake. And one of the oldest manifestations of this flesh-worshipping devil-worship is racial superiority. To confront such sin is no distraction from the gospel. To the contrary, to not confront it, silently allowing it to sit in the psyches and consciences of the people, is not just a distraction from the gospel but a contradiction of it, a word that says to those caught up in an idolatrous path, “You shall not surely die.” Those are the words of a devil, not of a gracious God.

In other words, Moore alleges that those who consider their racial survival to be important, who are repulsed by their countries being flooded with hostile strangers, are worshiping their own blood and are deceived into believing that they will be immortal through their generations, and believe that they are inherently superior to everyone else, and are really worshiping the devil!

What makes this all the more flabbergasting is that Moore and his ilk think they are compassionately expanding civilization when in fact they are feeding the cult of empire. As Pat Buchanan writes in his book, Suicide of a Superpower: “We are trying to create a nation that has never before existed, of all the races, tribes, cultures and creeds of Earth, where all are equal. In this utopian drive for the perfect society of our dreams we are killing the real country we inherited…”

Liberty and equality cannot coexist. Liberty allows natural inequalities to surface, the perceived unfairness of which leads men to level them by curtailing liberties. This is always done by using the excuse that “security” is more important. But despite their best efforts, inequalities remain. This leads the levelers to believe that the reason is systemic, like “systemic racism.” The solution is always more and more government intervention. Conservatives cannot hope to defeat this by praising both liberty and equality, because more liberty would lead to more inequality, and attempting greater equality would lead to less liberty. In this sense, liberals are more ideologically consistent.

Thus, Moore continues:

And the sort of “way of the flesh” that leads to white nationalism and other such things are related intrinsically to violence, ultimately, though it may take a long time to get there. That’s because the cult of the flesh is also a cult of death (Rom. 8:12-13). That’s because it is, ultimately, from the satanic order, which means it is ultimately about a beastly kind of power (Rev. 13).

John Jay, writing in the Federalist Papers, recognized the blessings from God in making our country strong and connected: “a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs…” To defend, preserve, and protect the same, according to Russell Moore, is a “cult of death” that leads ultimately to violence.

Usually that manifests itself in less obvious ways – seething internal hatred, bigotry, envy, slander (Gal. 5:19-21).

To “live according to the flesh,” as it says in Rom. 8:13, is to exhibit the works of the flesh. Here is the list of such works directly from Gal. 5:19-21: “sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like.” This list has often been summarized as sins against others, sins against God, and sins against ourselves.

Moore’s implication that self-preservation is hatred simply doesn’t comport with reality. Hostility, covetousness, competition, and severance are far more likely to occur under conditions that are routinely and cruelly mislabeled as “our greatest strength.” As political scientist Robert Putnam discovered to his dismay, under such conditions, people distrust even those who are similar to themselves, because to retain sanity in a world without familiarity, the natural impulse is to retreat into one’s own shell, like a turtle.

Kinism reduces the quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder warned against in 2 Cor. 12:20. Sometimes the existence of opposing factions is necessary. The apostle observes in 1 Cor. 11:18-19 that divisions must exist for reproof of error.

Sometimes it shows up in the words of the mouth, comparing neighbors of a different ethnicity or national origin to animals or insects or diseases (Jas. 3:9).

Indeed, we must recognize that our potential for unity is grounded in being created in God’s image. As John Chrysostom writes, “With the devil alone we have nothing in common, but with all men we have many things in common; for they partake of the same nature with us; they inhabit the same earth, and they are nourished with the same food; they have the same Lord; they have received the same laws, and are invited to the same blessings with ourselves.”

And sometimes it comes into a store with an assault rifle aimed at innocents, or, as we have seen, in trains bound for camps.

And finally, the Nazi reference. Of course, the instigators against law and order, who wear fancy suits, meet in marble halls, and are funded by international usurers, tasked with the goal of moving warm bodies around the globe to fuel their Ponzi schemes, writing whole new chapters for the Talmud as they go – these banksters are never accused by Moore of hailing from the Satanic order. Instead, easy targets are chosen to convince the law-abiding that even the free exercise of their vote is a contract with the devil that, carried to its logical conclusion, will soon have them mowing down Mexicans in a Walmart.

Though it’s unrealistic to hope, one wishes that the pulpit preeners could restrain themselves from indulging Nazi fables and reflect on the real portents of history.

Moore’s contention that mixing everyone together produces unity and solidarity, peace and prosperity, hope and happiness, is nothing new. Consider Plutarch’s praise of Alexander the Great, the avatar of the spirit of Babel, for “civilizing” barbarians by vanquishing and then amalgamating them. Plutarch writes that wherever Alexander conquered:

…savagery was extinguished and the worse element, gaining familiarity with the better, changed under its influence…

Moreover, the much-admired Republic of Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, may be summed up in this one main principle: that all the inhabitants of this world of ours should not live differentiated by their respective rules of justice into separate cities and communities, but that we should consider all men to be of one community and one polity, and that we should have a common life and an order common to us all, even as a herd that feeds together and shares the pasturage of a common field…

But, as he believed that he came as a heaven-sent governor to all, and as a mediator for the whole world, those whom he could not persuade to unite with him, he conquered by force of arms, and he brought together into one body all men everywhere, uniting and mixing in one great loving-cup, as it were, men’s lives, their characters, their marriages, their very habits of life. He bade them all consider as their fatherland the whole inhabited earth, as their stronghold and protection his camp, as akin to them all good men, and as foreigners only the wicked…

[C]lothing and food, marriage and manner of life they should regard as common to all, being blended into one by ties of blood and children.

Bosworth, quoting Justin, writes that Alexander encouraged his Macedonian soldiers to marry Asian women, for the purpose of making them forget about the homes they had left behind to wage war upon the world, and to create a mixed-race army whose only home was the camp and whose only god was himself. More than 10,000 of these marriages had been formed when Alexander suddenly died at the age of 33. After his death, nearly all the marriages dissolved, and the unity that he hoped to force between Macedonians and Persians was never achieved.

Alexander’s empire fragmented after his death, just as Daniel had prophesied centuries earlier (chapter 8). His successors likewise styled themselves as saviors and continued Alexander’s program of Hellenization.

One of these, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who was also foretold by Daniel, achieved fame for Orientalizing Greeks and Hellenizing Orientals and merging them into his royal cult. He intended Babylon for his capitol. Then, as the Aramaean population in Palestine grew, and Rome took Egypt from him, he began to oppress the Judeans for being a resistant border colony.  

Syrian idolaters could more easily adapt to Hellenism than the Judeans; they simply gave Greek names to their gods and carried on. But the Judeans worshiped the One God, who would have no other gods before him.

Antiochus called himself “God Manifest” on his coins and renamed Jerusalem after himself (Antioch). He plundered the temple in Jerusalem of its gold and erected a statue of Zeus in the Holy of Holies. He tore down the walls of Jerusalem and confiscated the Scriptures. He outlawed circumcision and sacrificed pigs on the altar. He killed 40,000 Judeans for obeying the law of Moses and sold many others into slavery.

See 1 Maccabees 1:

Because of them the residents of Jerusalem fled; she became a dwelling of strangers; she became strange to her offspring, and her children forsook her…

Then the king wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, and that all should give up their particular customs. All the Gentiles accepted the command of the king. Many even from Israel gladly adopted his religion…

Many of the people, everyone who forsook the law, joined them, and they did evil in the land; they drove Israel into hiding in every place of refuge they had…

Anyone found possessing the book of the covenant, or anyone who adhered to the law, was condemned to death by decree of the king…

[They] put to death the women who had their children circumcised, and their families and those who circumcised them; and they hung the infants from their mothers’ necks.

Mattathias Maccabeus lamented, in words that we can easily understand today:

Alas! Why was I born to see this,
the ruin of my people, the ruin of the holy city,
and to live there when it was given over to the enemy,
the sanctuary given over to aliens?…

What nation has not inherited her palaces
and has not seized her spoils?
All her adornment has been taken away;
no longer free, she has become a slave.
And see, our holy place, our beauty,
and our glory have been laid waste;
the Gentiles have profaned them.
Why should we live any longer?

He was offered “silver and gold and many gifts” if he would fall in line with the rest and obey the king. Instead, he vowed to remain an ethnonationalist, even if all other men were too cowardly to join him.

Mattathias answered and said in a loud voice: “Even if all the nations that live under the rule of the king obey him, and have chosen to obey his commandments, every one of them abandoning the religion of their ancestors, I and my sons and my brothers will continue to live by the covenant of our ancestors.”

Miraculously, he and his son Judah overcame the armies of Antiochus and ended the blending of race and religion in Israel. Only those who loved the law more than their own lives supported them. In that time, as in ours, the traitorous bourgeoisie stood with Antiochus and his establishment, against their own people.

In fact, one reason why the Samaritans in the time of Christ were hated by the Judeans for being mixed-race, apostate traitors is that their leaders had petitioned Antiochus as their god and savior, telling him that they were not akin to the Judeans but were originally Sidonians, and if he would allow them to be treated as having no relation to the Judeans, they would rename their temple for Jupiter Hellenius.

Rome took control of the region about 80 years after the Maccabees won independence. In the book of Daniel, Rome is described as brittle, like iron mixed with clay. It was strong in terms of conquering enemies but weak in terms of uniting the subjugated peoples. But try to unite them Rome did, just as Alexander and his successors had done.

The Greek historian Aelius Aristides delivered this fawning oration to Rome in the second century, when the empire was at its zenith: 

The world is now like a well-swept and fenced-in front yard. The world speaks in unison, like a chorus; and so well does it harmonize under its chorus master that it joins in praying that this empire may last for all time…

Like one continuous country and one race, all the world quietly obeys. Everything is carried out by command or nod, and it is simpler than plucking the string of a lyre. If a need arises, the thing has only to be decided upon, and it is done…

Most noteworthy and most praiseworthy of all is the grandeur of your conception of citizenship. There is nothing on earth like it… Neither the sea nor any distance on land shuts a man out from citizenship. Asia and Europe are in this respect not separate. Everything lies open to everybody; and no one fit for office or responsibility is considered an alien. Rome has never said, “No more room!”…

No one is a foreigner who deserves to hold an office or is worthy of trust. Rather, there is here a common “world democracy” under the rule of one man, the best ruler and director…

No envy afflicts the empire… No hatred creeps in either, from those who fail to qualify. Since the state is universal and like one city, magistrates naturally treat the governed not as aliens but as their own people… So of course, things as they are satisfy and benefit both poor and rich!…

Under you what was formerly thought incapable of conjunction has in fact become united – an empire at once strong and humane, mild rule without oppression… So all people are now happier to send in their taxes to you than anyone would be to collect them for himself from others… Everyone clings tight to you, and would no sooner see fit to break away than passengers on a ship would from their pilot…

As on a holiday, the entire civilized world lays down the weapons that were its ancient burden and has turned to adornment and all glad thoughts, with the power to realize them… Cities glisten with radiance and charm, and the entire earth has been made beautiful like a garden… Like a perpetual sacred flame, the celebration is unending… You, better than anyone else, have proved the truth of the proverb: The earth is everyone’s mother and our common fatherland.

Beneath such hyperbole, Rome had already begun to perish, not so much from foreign incursions as from the internal moral decay that redefined kinship to the point that no one was willing to defend it.

Salvian the Presbyter, who lived in the fifth century, writes that his city of Trier in Gaul suffered the same defeat as Carthage, and of Rome generally.

[When] the barbarians were located almost in plain sight of all, there was neither fear of men nor protection of cities. So great was the blindness of soul, or rather so great was the blindness of sins, that, without doubt, nobody wished to perish, yet nobody did anything to prevent his perishing. Everything was carelessness and inactivity, negligence and gluttony… Indeed, a sleep flowed in upon them that ruin might follow. For when, as it is written, his measure of iniquities being full and the sinner deserves to perish, foreknowledge is taken away from him, lest he escape perishing…

[If] practically all people who bear the Roman name prefer to perish rather than be corrected, it is easy to see they prefer to die rather than live without their vices.

As Fritz Lenz concludes, the Romans shed their best blood and conquered the known world “not for their own people, whom they let die, but for foreign immigrants and the children of their slaves. A racial tragicomedy!”

The resemblance to our own time is chilling.

Emperors were ultimately restrained in their pillaging of the world when West and East did “merge” after all, not in the way that Alexander and the Caesars had hoped, but rather spiritually, through baptism in Christ. The Spirit of God turned these formerly antagonistic nations into brothers, greatly restraining their wickedness throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, without causing their heritage and customs to be erased, and without exacting imperial tribute.

Since the time of the French Revolution, the levelers and race-mixers have redoubled their efforts to rebuild Babel, and they’ve learned how to cloak their intentions in pseudo-Christian platitudes. Under cover of the gospel, the children of Zeno are again on the march to “disseminate and shower the blessings of Greek justice and peace over every nation,” as Plutarch wrote of Alexander’s reign. They despise God’s diverse purpose in the world and seek to replace it with adulteration and uniformity, and they will meet with the same destiny as their fathers before them, as the American Empire follows Rome to the grave.

As G.K. Chesterton writes in The Flying Inn (1904): “Did you ever hear the great destiny of Empire? It is in four acts: Victory over barbarians. Employment of barbarians. Alliance with barbarians. Conquest by barbarians. That is the great destiny of Empire.”

-By Jason