July 27, 2016
It happened yesterday, 125 kilometers north of Paris in the French village of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray . Two ISIS sympathizers stormed the sanctuary during a Mass said by the elderly Rev. Jacques Hamel. The attackers forced the old priest to his knees and then cut his throat as the congregation watched in what must have been unimaginable terror. The killer's monitoring bracelet, the result of a previous arrest due to terrorist activity, was switched off, creating a four-hour window of opportunity during which his movements would not be tracked by local authorities. This, apparently, in accordance with the French criminal justice system. According to what I've read, nothing like this has ever happened before. As the Islamic State spreads further across the Western world in its active mode, we are likely going to see more of what happened in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray.
You and I, friend, have read the signs and portents in the earth. We know the Word and are familiar with its pronouncements. We know that history won't let go of present day and will continue to raise up phantoms from long ago. Christianity vs. Islam, that centuries-old struggle, insoluble by any human method, will simply continue until our Lord Jesus Christ returns.
It seems like a great many monitoring bracelets, worn by creatures both human and demonic, are being switched off by the One who made them.
THE SECOND COMING
by W.B. Yeats
You and I, friend, have read the signs and portents in the earth. We know the Word and are familiar with its pronouncements. We know that history won't let go of present day and will continue to raise up phantoms from long ago. Christianity vs. Islam, that centuries-old struggle, insoluble by any human method, will simply continue until our Lord Jesus Christ returns.
It seems like a great many monitoring bracelets, worn by creatures both human and demonic, are being switched off by the One who made them.
THE SECOND COMING
by W.B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Though you may not be able to wrench your mind from black thoughts of the blood-dimmed tide, never forget that He who is in us is greater than he who walks in the eye of the widening gyre.
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