Hearts and Art

November 30, 2008

Over the last century, we’ve seen a breakdown in traditional systems of art, literature and music. In art, we’ve seen the death of the artist striving to put his message before the world and the rise of the artist creating something to be seen solely in the eye of the beholder. The thrill of art used to be the thrill of discovery – of realizing, at last, what the artist was saying and identifying with his message. Now, art promotes narcissism – what do you see in this Coke can? Remove the artist from the art, and you have nothing but an endless series of Rorschach tests hung in museums and sold for thousands of dollars.

With the rise of rampant subjectivism in art, it is harder and harder for art to evoke deep emotion in its audience: The audience has to do all the work. As viewer Anna Brook, age 22, told me, “Great art needs to evoke a feeling, to connect to the inner being; this was interesting from an engineering standpoint, but nothing else. There was no connection to the human condition, as there is in the art of a Michelangelo or Renoir. It was well worth seeing, but it wasn’t great art.”

Other forms of art have similarly discarded age-old systems in favor of subjectivism or at least purposeful inscrutability dictating subjectivism.

The need for subjectivism dictates that rigorous rules be cast aside. Paintings don’t have to look like anything. Music doesn’t have to sound like anything. Literature doesn’t have to say anything. Because, you see, the art, the music, the literature – it’s all within you.

Of course, rampant subjectivism didn’t stop with art. Over the last century, traditional morality has been discarded in favor of personal morality. Subjectivism in art means the death of art; subjectivism in morality means the death of a functioning society.

Amorality – the lack of objective moral standards applicable to everyone – quickly devolves into immorality. Even supposedly private actions have externalities; if everyone has his or her own set of rules, the externalities become endless. If millions are harming and being harmed, all in the name of personal autonomy without limits, chaos becomes inevitable. The only solution is state control or open anarchy. It is the Hobbesian war of all against all. Only hang-ups about the virtues of democracy prevent such war from becoming open.

Benjamin Shapiro, 20, is a recent graduate of UCLA and the author of the new book, ” Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth .”

If a 20 year old can see it so easily and clearly why can’t all the so-called experts? Can ANYONE point to a true art masterpiece of the last decades? I mean Masterpiece, with a capital M, not the multi-million $ junk that hangs in avant-garde art galleries or brik-a-brack “sculptures” that unashamedly occupy living space? And don’t get me started about the music of our times, because it may be called a lot of names, but not music. And please spare me that tastes are subjective and relative. Whatever, it sounds like junk to me. “We have gone a long way, baby,” just like the infamous advertisement declared. A long way, yes, it is undoubtedly true. What they forget to mention is the little word “DOWN,” as in “a long way, DOWN.” And I include whatever passes for Christian music these days, but that is another subject which we have handled elsewhere in this site.

The culture of a nation reveals the spirit of that nation. The U.S.A., by virtue of their dominant position, have polluted the whole wide world with their immoral entertainment business and their bankrupt cultural production, all that accomplished with formidable stealth in a modern day rendition of the Trojan horse.

These days we are all aware of “trojans” malaware which infiltrates our computers under pretended spoils. These trojans which hide in desirable programs or utilities people unwittingly download, once they are inside a computer start to do what they were programmed for by their malevolent creator:

A program that appears legitimate, but performs some illicit activity when it is run. It may be used to locate password information or make the system more vulnerable to future entry or simply destroy programs or data on the hard disk. A Trojan is similar to a virus, except that it does not replicate itself. It stays in the computer doing its damage or allowing somebody from a remote site to take control of the computer. Trojans often sneak in attached to a free game or other utility.

The Trojan Horse

Trojan comes from Greek mythology, in which the Greeks battled the Trojans (people of Troy). After years of being unable to break into the fortified city, the Greeks built a wooden horse, filled it with soldiers and pretended to sail away. After the Trojans brought the horse into the city, the Greek soldiers crept out at night, opened the gates of Troy to the returning soldiers, and Troy was destroyed.

PCMAG.com – Encyclopedia

The valorous Trojans foolishly carried the wooden horse
inside their city as a spoil and a highly desirable and magnificent work of art, without minimally stopping to think about any possible danger to them and their city. And after a ten year-long siege and war they should have exercised more caution and attention.
In like fashion, the USA, under the pretense of modernity, freedom, democracy, equality, emancipation, social development, broadminded liberalism, peace, love and all that, have downloaded upon an unsuspecting world a growing stream of immorality and filth
to which seemingly there is no end. Their Trojan Horse, however, is not a made of wood, but of real flesh and blood stars, superstars, starlets and would-be-stars, at whose famous names and faces the world bows down. Why, even in Moslem countries you can watch the latest soap or serial or reality made in the USA. They are the vehicle trough which any and all taboos have been gradually made acceptable and even desirable and woe is you if peradventure you dare criticize or launch a warning. All is relative, all is permittable, all is OK, all is fun. A recent article on an Italian newspaper reported that the police went to arrest a young man for internet activities of pedophilia. To the shock of the arresting officers, the young man while resisting arrest was yelling at them that they were infringing upon his rights, namely that he had a RIGHT to view whatever pleased him. In other times, he would have risked lynching.

Now, after allowing this modern Trojan horse into our own cultures, we are receiving the bitter fruitt: erasure or downsizing of local culture and the assimilation of such wonderful American customs like abortion, marital infidelity, divorce, fornication, sexual perversity, drugs, stress and mental disorders, disease and so on. Like it or not, people learn from what they see and when you see filth handed to you with a laugh track, one’s resistance is gradually broken down. The most moral person, when continuously subjected to filth, will begin to feel that it is not such a bad thing after all. Why, it’s on TV, everybody does it, it’s not so bad, life is now …!

Someone may object that filth and immorality has been in existence well before America was founded and that is very true. However America has made it its business to glorify and spread it all over the world. No country can surpass America’s wizardry at film making or its TV series and soaps. If you live in a country other than the USA, just observe how many Hollywood movies are playing in your city or how many American TV programs you can watch on your local TV.

In closing, a consideration: The people of Troy got their horse for free. Not so with Hollywood, you got to pay and pay to watch their filth.

and a clarification:

I am NOT anti-American, so, please, spare me. I am simply sorry for its present sorry state which no President can fix.

If my people , which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

2CH 7:14

The state of the heart

August 20, 2008

The moral and spiritual decline of Western Civilization is nowhere more evident than in its arts and forms of entertainment. Strange Days indeed we are living. When one thinks that things can’t get any worse, immediately comes proof to the contrary. Perhaps, no photo better than the one here depicted shows the state of the heart of man circa the year 2000.

Top – A child, in Africa, dying of hunger while being devoured by insects.
Bottom: Singer Daniel Küblböck, appearing in a German TV “reality show,” immersed in 30,000 cockroaches, for a shot to fame.

Sure, there are probably much worse things one could choose to show the callousness and the dramatic moral decay of our society, but when I saw this photo, for me it was seminal. In its simplicity it shouted at my soul: shame, shame, how low have we fallen!

There is nothing to comment or to add. Unless one is lobotomized, looking at those pics sends a fit to the brain and to the heart. The comical angle (if we dare call it so) in all this is that Mr. Küblböck ’s show is of a type called “reality shows.” I find it very painful and hard to believe that our society can entertain such oddness with so much casual nonchalance. And it’s all done in the name of money and of course, the audience just loves these “reality shows,” and the weirder, the better. In the name of freedom, they are transforming people into depraved peepingtoms while making them slaves to it and wanting for more. Like a song of yesteryear proclaimed, “freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose.” Sure, after loosing his concern for others, his self-respect, his power of reaction and protest, man-2000 is loosing his soul in a relentless descent into oblivion. Lobotomized indeed. And this serves very well the ruling elites for whom, a comatose sudditance is a welcome relief. I will follow shortly with more on this subject.

March 25, 2008

I have been silent, (again) for several weeks. I have noticed there is a method to this, and not of my own doing. As a cooking pot that gets to the boiling point and then blows its lid off with its steam, I do not write at will but only when moved to do so, I find myself bubbling over with new insights and urgency in the matter of prophetical (End Times) study. I am just coming out of one of these periods and I have to say that this time, the mood is quite different. Long time readers of this column know what I am talking about.

Let me be quite explicit, without being speculative or appearing manipulative: I am quite positive that we have crossed into Final Days matters and that this year, 2008, will be a pivot point for several threads which lead into the End zone. Prophecy unfolding before our eyes indeed and while it is a sad fact that most Christians do not understand prophetical events even if slamming headfirst into one of them, nonetheless there are some who are aware of the times.

I remember seeing a movie, in my pre-Christian days, which left with me with a powerful image of what I am trying to say here. The movie, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” a sci-fi directed by Steven Spielberg, was a huge hit back then and it dealt with space aliens wanting to land on earth and all that. In the movie plot, several men and women were “impressed upon” by the aliens about their landing spot so that they would be obsessed to understand what it all meant and eventually to find their way to Devil’s Mountain, the not-so-accidental name of the mystic landing spot. Now, never mind about the aliens blah blah blah, the principle being used was very interesting. For whatever reason or criteria, somebody was being chosen while others were not. When I became a Christian (born again) and the Lord impressed strongly on my spirit the study of the Bible’s End Time prophecies, I was simply amazed that most Christians were neither interested nor concerned about them as if those prophecies were reserved for a very nebulous future and/or a very different people, if they would reach fulfillment at all. In the course of my Christian life, I found out that there were “others” who like me, were strongly impressed with the same interest and urgency regarding the Times of the End. As in the movie, those who were/are impressed with this knowledge, find it very difficult to communicate to others what they are experiencing.

Leaving the movie comparison aside, one fact however appears extremely clear: The Lord has always had His sentinels through whom He reaches out to His people and apart from the present sad and painful state of the Church, the Holy Spirit is impressing the sentinels with the urgency of the hour.

In this column, we strive to present events which we believe are related to Biblical prophecy fulfillment and as we move ahead, there is so much happening worldwide that even a child could put two and two together, but the Church, in true ten-virgins-mode, remains mysteriously asleep. But the sentinels MUST speak up and speak out.

One of the principal (if not the most important) thread which has to do with End Time prophecy is the Jewish people.
They are indeed the chosen people, and while they will fully inherit the promises of God, before that happens, Scripture, both in the Old and in the New Testament tells us that they will undergo a terrible time of trial, (Jacob’s trouble – “Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.” Jeremiah 30:7)
Unfortunately, it is not over for them. One would think that after the Holocaust of recent memory, humanity would never have to live through another such dark and evil time, but it will, and if possible, it will be even worse than that.

Sometimes I despair over the aloofness of the Jewish people. Surely some of them see the darkness coming, but most of them (like the Church) are uncaring and totally unprepared. The Christian sentinels are sounding the alarm, but alas, they are deaf and they do not hear the sound of the trumpet over the walls of Zion. Rightly God several times called them a “stiff-necked people”:

“Furthermore the LORD spoke to me, saying, ‘I have seen this people, and indeed they are a stiff-necked people.” Deuteronomy 9:13

We, at Apocalypse soon have been sounding this alarm for years, while things have been growing steadily worse.

Report: Anti-Semitism on the rise globally

March 14, 2008
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A report from the U.S. State Department details “an upsurge” across the world of anti-Semitism — hostility and discrimination toward Jewish people.

“Today, more than 60 years after the Holocaust, anti-Semitism is not just a fact of history, it is a current event,” the report says.

The report — called Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism and given to Congress on Thursday — is dedicated to the memory of the late U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, a survivor of the Holocaust, the extermination of 6 million Jews during World War II.

The report details physical acts of anti-Semitism, such as attacks, property damage, and cemetery desecration. It also lists manifestations such as conspiracy theories concerning Jews, Holocaust denial, anti-Zionism and the demonization of Israel.

“Over much of the past decade, U.S. embassies worldwide have noted an increase in anti-Semitic incidents, such as attacks on Jewish people, property, community institutions, and religious facilities,” the report says.
>>read rest of the story here

Of Mice and Men

November 7, 2007

I sustain that genetic modifications through Dna manipulations is the “sign” that we have gone too far and judgment is upon us. Specifically, this “sign” is not among those given by the Lord Jesus Christ, when His disciples asked

“Tell us, when shall these things be? and what [shall be] the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” Mat. 24:3

Certainly it would have been quite a challenge to the sacred writers to come to terms with such a concept, but regardless, if we read Jesus reply with attention and most importantly, in the spirit, we can see pointers and reflections of that very fact.
The business of creation, as I have said before, does not belong to fallen man.

Enter SuperMouse

For a while, we have been hearing of strange experiments, starting from Dolly (not the first case, but surely the most talked about) and ending up with today’s super mouse. Every time a new case surfaces, we suffer the usual diatribes of the pro and cons and then, after two days all is gone and forgotten from public view. Personally, I find it boldly daring that these kind of news surface at all. I do not want to even imagine what is NOT brought into public scrutiny.

England is much at the forefront of this type of weird “science.” Just a few weeks ago, a law was passed in the United Kingdom, allowing for the “scientific” mixing of human and animal Dna, thus producing the strange hybrid, called “Chimera” (Wikipedia).

These kind of experiments, which not long ago would have horrified any sane person are becoming so common place and are actually being welcomed by a selfish population whose only objective is to extend their self-indulgent lifestyle to the max and perhaps, eternally. The fools!

Most people are totally ignorant about how much gene and Dna manipulation has advanced. Big Pharma and Big Bio are going, excuse the pun, really big on this. They can engineer a “new” something, copyright it and just sit down and collect. These self-appointed benefactors of humanity are very shrewd in placing their money where the biggest profits are foreseen, bypassing or leaving behind “minor” infirmities or third world diseases, where there is no money to be made. And when people read that the super mouse … can run for hours at 20 meters per minute without getting tired, lives longer, has more sex, and eats more without gaining weight the unanimous reaction is “I want in.”

Egoism is a very dangerous state of being. It blinds and it leads to destruction those who practice it especially when coupled with pride.

And the LORD said, Behold, the people [is] one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Genesis 11:6

As I read these verses I am in awe: certainly the people of that time had progressed much in matters that concerned their lives and moreover they were planning for their future: We must assume that their plans for the future were wildly out-of-order if God decided to intervene. God knew that their evil imaginations could become reality, just like God knows today that these evil experiments will bring much sorrow upon a deluded humanity. Experiments, as a rule, have a way to get out of hand. Past history and literature offer ample proof to that.

Whatever man can conceive, he will realize, sooner or later, such is the power of the human mind. Today, the cat is out of the bag and it will not be placed back in. With visions of a super body and a life span approaching eternity dancing before its eyes, mankind slides instead into the ancient trap. As it was in the beginning, so … the circle closes.

Scientists have been astounded by the creation of a genetically modified “supermouse” with extraordinary physical abilities – comparable to the performance of the very best athletes – raising the prospect that the discovery may one day be used to transform people’s capacities. The mouse can run up to six kilometers (3.7 miles) at a speed of 20 meters per minute for five hours or more without stopping. Scientists said that this was equivalent of a man cycling at speed up an Alpine mountain without a break. Although it eats up to 60 per cent more food than an ordinary mouse, the modified mouse does not put on weight. It also lives longer and enjoys an active sex life well into old age – being capable of breeding at three times the normal maximum age.

American scientists who created the mice – they now have a breeding colony of 500 – said that they were stunned by their abilities, especially given that the animals came about as a result of a standard genetic modification to a single metabolism gene shared with humans.

By Steve Connor, Science Editor – The Independent
02 November 2007

As it happens, God wants the same benefits (and much much more) for his creatures, and He will soon deliver the promises to the His faithful, but it is going to be His Way, which is the Right Way. God wants to change FIRST our heart and then the our body and our surroundings, while man wants to change his body and his surroundings, and does not give a hoot about the heart and there lies the problem. All technical marvels will turn deadly in the hands of unregenerate men. Science fiction movies, unconsciously, have well depicted the hopelessness of a future without God, where danger and evil are always waiting in the wings. In God’s Kingdom there will be no place for that.

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. Apoc 21:4

The Pope and the Catholic Church

 

When Pope Benedict XVI was elected, I nurtured some reasonable hope that he would move the Catholic Church closer to the Biblical standard of truth, being an intelligent and theologically well-versed scholar. I had heard him, on a televised interview, dissect the cause of Christ just as any good evangelical would have. Moreover, his personal and extensive knowledge of Protestantism promised a solid and sound season of confrontation. However, as times goes by, he is revealing himself as an abject failure in just about any field he has addressed and an open embarrassment to many in the same Catholic church.

Indeed, he demonstrates two (at the very least) profound truths:

1) study and scholarship do not a man of God make

2) the Catholic Church remains unrecoverable

One truly remains stupefied at the gross Biblical ignorance practiced by the Catholic clergy and by the quite, resigned and naive acquiescence of their faithful. It seems the all are under a spell, and in a way, they are. As stated in other parts of this web site, I know that there are many, many Catholics which are saved. God knows the heart, and God knows how much light they received. I do differentiate between clergy and faithful, for the simple fact that the latter were until recent times ignorant of the Sacred Scriptures, at least in many countries, like Italy, were I grew up.

I was about to write a rebuttal to the pope’s latest outburst (about the Catholic Church being the only true church), just as I happened upon an article which amazingly said what I wanted to say, so I will post this whole article and my resounding Amen! to it. By the way, as the article writer, I also grew up in the Catholic Church and served Mass and was tops in catechism. Only nobody ever bothered to tell me about the New Birth, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and that He is willing and able to help anyone with a contrite heart who asks Him to. And He can do it right now and instantly, not in the bye and bye.

He is risen and very much alive and He’s got the whole world in His Hands …

Non-Catholics who are up in arms of the proclamation by Pope Benedict XVI that the only true church in the world is that of Catholicism shouldn’t even bother getting upset. Just chalk it up to an old man trying to get a little attention.

For him to even suggest that only the Catholic Church can provide true salvation to believers in Christ shows that he is wholly ignorant of the Scriptures that I have known all my life.

Sorry, let me take that back. I’ve really only known the Bible for the last 13 of my 38 years. That’s because those first 25 years were spent as a die-hard Catholic.

That’s right, I was born and raised in the Catholic Church. One of the first meetings to build the church I was raised in — Our Lady Star of the Sea in Houston — took place in my grandparents’ living room. Many of my Saturdays and Sundays were spent serving as an altar boy, Catholic Youth Organization leader, dedicated student of Catechism, and constantly reciting the Holy Rosary.

And the reality is that we were never really encouraged to study the Scriptures. The standard practice was for all of us to read the same pamphlets passed out by the church, recite the readings from the New and Old Testaments, listen to the Scripture chosen for us in the Gospel and hear a normally bland homily.

That isn’t always the case at some Catholic churches. If you visit St. Sabina in Chicago, Father Michael Pfleger will surely have your soul jumping with his strong sermons and willingness to engage the community to get involved in direct action.

Yet as I reflect on my years as a Catholic, it pretty much was a wasted experience, as there was more identification with the church, and not with Christ.

And that’s why Pope Benedict XVI is meaningless, along with his decision to re-state the primacy of the Catholic Church. This week, the pope released a document correcting interpretations of the Second Vatican Council, which some say modernized the church. But for hardliners like Pope Benedict XVI, the liberals went too far in some of their declarations.

But what ticked folks off was his assertion in the 16-page document by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that the only denominations that can call themselves true churches are ones that can trace their roots back to Jesus Christ’s original apostles. He even suggested they suffer from defects.

This is nothing but a naked attempt by Pope Benedict XVI to “own” Jesus by virtue of the Catholic Church considering the apostle Peter as its leader. He refuses to acknowledge the reality that Jesus didn’t consider a church to be most important. What was? The Great Commission.

The Bible records in Matthew 28:16 that Jesus called his 11 disciples (the other, Judas, hanged himself after betraying Jesus) to Mount Galilee and decreed, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (New International Version).

It doesn’t matter what Pope Benedict XVI has to say, or for that matter, any other religious leader. A Christian believes in Jesus Christ and what He had to say, not what a man of God has to say. This is not an attempt to completely dismiss religious leaders, but is further evidence of what happens when ego is more important than the work of Christ.

John 14:6 says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Nowhere does it say that Peter, Pope Benedict XVI or anyone else can supplant Jesus as the leader of the church.

It is these kinds of missives by Pope Benedict XVI that do nothing to support or build the community of faith. All it does is divide.

Protestant leaders: Don’t buy into the foolishness. Let Pope Benedict XVI keep running off at the mouth and making pointless declarations. If you keep bringing good news to the poor, setting the captives free and assisting those who seek to know Jesus, then you’ll make more headway in doing the work of Jesus than any 16-page document will.

By Roland S. Martin

CNN Contributor and a talk-show host for WVON-AM in Chicago

updated 5:04 p.m. EDT, Fri July 13, 2007