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LA TRÊVE DE DIEU
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December 29, 2023
French news focuses on what strikes the eye, not on what's important.
The media on all sides are full of bloody images of terrorism in France and Israel, and of a limited number of wars such as Nato's in Ukraine and Israel's in Gaza. There is even an epidermal intolerance of opinions that differ from those of the Élysée's resident in the mainstream media and among the GAFAMs.
It's all superficial. The substance is rarely, if ever, discussed. Yet nothing happens by chance, and the main cause of the decline of the West, which is very visible today, is de-Christianization, in other words, the loss of faith in God; the Christian social order, which we used to call Christendom, has been fought against in the West, which is therefore undergoing barbaric social disorder on a massive scale. But contrary to what many so-called Christian (false) prophets tell us, the future belongs to victorious Christianity, and we are not at the end of the world.
The population is being replaced by a Muslim population: today, between 6 and 11% of the population is Muslim, and the fertility rate of these communities is higher than the French average, since they account for 1/5 of births! The French president is living in a parallel world, refusing to see it, and he wants to increase this immigration, while further facilitating genocide by abortion.
Following the legalization of induced abortion in 1975, the average fertility rate is currently 1.8 children per woman, below the simple renewal threshold of 2.15. There are officially 234,000 abortions per year for a population of 68 million, with around 723,000 births per year. But there is obvious under-reporting, and abortions caused by abortifacient contraception are not included; in actual fact, there are around 500,000 abortions a year, i.e. around 40% of children conceived! It's a national suicide. And the victims don't have a voice, and they don't appear on TV.
Since 1974, between 10 and 20 million children have been eliminated by abortion. This is more monstrous than the great civil war of 1914-18. It creates a vacuum. This vacuum is naturally filled by immigration. This immigration is causing a change in culture; it's disturbing French cultural habits, but it's not the initial cause of the problems; it exists because of the mass extermination of children, which doesn't seem to bother the French adult population. Her indignation against Islamist terrorism has no credibility, therefore, because of her wilful blindness to the mass genocide of the unborn.
The State of Israel was born in 1947 following the Shoah, under the impetus of a Zionist movement, facilitated, if not engendered, by an erroneous premillenial theology, to which we shall return.
The average fertility rate is currently around 3 children per woman. There are 20,000 abortions a year for a population of 8.7 million, with around 180,000 births a year. Israel is not a Jewish religious state; it was originally a socialist state that has little in common with biblical Israel.
In the Gaza Strip, the mainly Muslim Palestinian population has a fertility rate of around 3.9 children per woman. There are around 5,000 (illegal) abortions per year for a population of 2.2 million, with approximately 68,000 births per year.
These 2 populations hate each other. There are sporadic acts of Palestinian terrorism against Israel; and brutal, disproportionate Israeli military operations against Palestinian civilians, which are no less barbaric.
The French president knows nothing of history or diplomacy, and instead of playing the role of peacemaker, he lines up like a poodle behind his master, the senile Biden, taking Israel's side. As a result, Israel has a free hand to flatten Gaza and slaughter civilians, and terrorism is brewing in France.
Ukraine is an artificial state born of Bolshevism, bringing together heterogeneous populations (former Poles in the west, Russians in the south, Hungarians, Romanians, Ukrainians in the north, etc.). It's a highly corrupt state that has become the USA's playground since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The CIA organized the Maïdan putsch in 2014, which triggered a Ukrainian civil war: since 2014, Russian-speaking populations have been persecuted and bombed by a regime closer to Nazism than to democracy. France and Germany were supposed to intervene to stop this civil war (according to the Minsk agreements), but did nothing. Since 2022, Russia has finally intervened to protect the Russian-speaking population of Dombass.
The American neo-cons hate Russia and have therefore pushed Ukraine into war with Russia, promising that Russia would collapse. In reality, it's Europe that's suffering the consequences of stupid sanctions, which according to an incompetent and arrogant French finance minister (B. Lemaire) were supposed to cause Russia to collapse! But Russia is overflowing with resources and is developing despite the sanctions (or thanks to them). It is also militarily far superior to NATO.
Russia and Ukraine emerged bloodless from the Bolshevik disaster in 1989: in the USSR, there were 7 million abortions a year for a population of 290 million.
Today, the Russian state has identified this demographic problem as a major issue of survival. It now encourages fertility, and abortions have fallen to ~350,000 a year for a population that stagnates at around 285 million. It is likely that abortion will be banned in the years to come, as Russian society wants to survive, and (Orthodox) Christianity is making a comeback.
The images of terrorism and war crimes conveyed by the media are horrifying and arouse public indignation. Images of children being aborted by the millions never appear on the same media; yet these children suffer identical cruelty and barbarity, and there are far more of them. Double standards, hypocrisy in action!
So we're living in wonderful times, when Western decision-makers are no longer an elite, but scum; but they've been elected by people who no longer know God, and who no longer have any vision of their Christian roots. How did we fall so far?
Bad theological choices have led to this blindness, on the soil of the French revolution at the end of the 18th century.
Christianity overcame the Roman Empire, which had been the most powerful empire until then, and which was fundamentally barbaric, worshipping only force. Christianity extended from Armenia to Europe in the broadest sense. Gaul was also evangelized and rejected the Arian heresy (Unitarians denying the Trinity) embodied at the time by the Burgundians and Visigoths.
Christianity then structured the country for the centuries now pejoratively referred to as the "Middle Ages". Despite what ideological historians (like Michelet) tell us, this was a period of unprecedented civilizational development. Society was highly decentralized, with kings having far less power than today's states.
We have had kings who were more or less Catholic, but who became corrupted, particularly since Francis I, by claiming to be above the law, inspired by the pagan "renaissance".
This "renaissance" had a deleterious influence on the Church, triggering the Protestant Reformation movement. This reformation aimed to return to early Christianity, putting the Bible before traditions, some of which had become scandalous (indulgences, in particular). Northern Europe sided with the Reformation. But the nature of the conflicts between the political powers and the churches remained the same, on both the Protestant and Catholic sides: politicians wanted to increase their powers, to the point of "absolute power". When power is absolute, it is absolutely corrupt.
In France, this led to a bloody, anti-Christian revolution, illustrated by the genocide of part of the population (the Vendean populicide) and by useless, murderous European wars, in the name of the " republican values ", which are therefore anti-values.
This anti-Christian revolution in France spread anti-Christian persecution throughout Europe and Christendom. But this revolution was not the result of an intrinsic weakness of Christianity, but rather the consequence of its corruptions: the complicity of the churches with corrupt political powers, the contamination of their theologies by ancient philosophies (Greek, Latin) and the "Enlightenment", even reaching apostasy with liberal theology.
In the 19th century, the Protestant churches (Catholicism was also affected) underwent two subversive currents, apparently opposed, but both facilitated by the French Revolution and the "Enlightenment":
The word "liberal" is itself based on a misunderstanding: it comes from the word "liberty", but in the case of philosophical liberalism it's about being "liberated" from God and his Law, whereas in Christianity it's about living in the freedom for which God defines the framework.
Liberal theology is inspired by the so-called "philosophy of enlightenment" of the 18th century. It holds that Man, not God, determines reality, meaning, ethics and law (as Satan promised in Genesis 3). Among the first "liberals" were deniers of the Trinity (Unitarians, i.e. Arians) and deniers of hell (Universalists). This theology distorted the postmillennial eschatology dominant in Protestant society into a belief in a progressive Millennium (the social gospel).
"Liberal Christianity" (or modernism) originated in Europe and infected America with a secular humanist worldview; it's a counterfeit of Christianity that merely follows the spirit of the times and has produced people like Hegel (the inspiration for Marx), Ferdinand Buisson (the brains behind Jules Ferry) who wanted to establish a civil religion whose temples are the public schools, President Wilson, etc.
Liberal theology has systematically adopted false prophets: Darwin with his eugenics, Marx with the "social gospel" and liberation theology, Freud with his perversity, and today wokism; this counterfeit of Christianity is therefore complicit in the great iniquities of the 20th century: world wars, Nazism, Communism and the destruction of families.
In reality, "liberal" theologies are not Christian, since they reject the very foundations of Christianity, while mimicking its forms and language. Serious theologians such as Gresham Machen (1881-1937) have long since demonstrated this. Liberalism is actually anti-Protestant in that it rejects the authority of the Bible.
There are still pockets of liberals in the "Fédération Protestante de France"; we remember their infamous theologian André Dumas (1918-1996), an open eugenicist who campaigned for the legalization of abortion in France. One of their denominations (the EPUdF, which closely resembles an elderly home) now blesses homosexual "marriages". It's hard to understand why evangelical denominations that claim to be faithful (Baptists, Pentecostals, Salvation Army) still remain in this vicious federation. It's probably due to their common rejection of God's Law: the antinomian heresy.
This is a doctrine according to which Christians are freed by grace from the obligation to obey the Law of Moses1. Antinomians reject the very notion of obedience as "legalistic"; for them, a holy life derives solely from the inner workings of the Holy Spirit, or what they interpret as such.
Traces of this can be found in Carpocrates, denounced by St Irenaeus of Lyons (140 - 200), as well as in the spiritual movement of the "Frères du Libre-Esprit", between the 12th and 16th centuries.
Today, it is frequently found in evangelical churches.
To consider that God's grace nullifies God's Law is contrary to Jesus' teaching: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." (Matt. 5:17-18).
The Catholic Church has long condemned this antinomian heresy. Luther and Calvin condemned it too.
God's Law is always in force, and it is this Law that structures the Christian life (what we call sanctification) and establishes a Christian social order, what Jesus calls the Kingdom of God. For conversion is only the beginning, and Christians are not saved from sin only to look after their own self-interest: « But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.» (Matt. 6:33)
Premillennialists claim that Christians will fail to evangelize the world, which will inevitably get worse and worse, and that they will be defeated in a great Tribulation, followed by the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, which will usher in 1000 years of peace (the Kingdom of God on earth, the Millennium) for all, and then that Satan will be finally vanquished after a short final battle. Some also foresee the rapture of the church into Heaven, but not all agree on its timing.
It is a modern form of the Chiliast heresy of Cerinthus (50-100). The early church soon rejected premillennialism, but it resurfaced in the 19th century, and many replaced the victory of Christianity with the preaching of the defeat of Christ and the victory of paganism, apparent in the French Revolution. But this was an error of analysis: the revolution was a battle lost because of the corruption of Christians, not the loss of the war because of the intrinsic failure of Christianity.
Manuel Lacunza, (1731-1801), a Chilean Jesuit hermit, wrote the 3-volume "The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty" in Spanish in 1790. In it, he developed a premillennial eschatology based on an unsound interpretation of the Apocalypse. For him, the church was to fail and to be replaced by a restored Jewish nation that would become the true church of God, the center of the world, the source of worldwide missionary activity.
His manuscript was published in Cadiz around 1810 under the pseudonym Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra. Further editions followed from 1812 to 1826. In 1819, the Spanish Inquisition ordered the book's withdrawal, and in 1824 Pope Leo XII placed it on the index of forbidden books. But it was translated by the Reverend Edward Irving (1792-1834), who published it in English in 1827. This was a success for the Jesuits, in that they sought to counter the Reformation's earlier identification of the anti-Christ with the present papacy. This premillennial eschatology was copied by John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) virtually unchanged; it was a complete break with the accepted eschatology of the day, and had a powerful influence on the entire Western Protestant world.
The churches affected by this defeatist theology (promoted by Darby, Moody, etc.) claimed to be "fundamentalists" and withdrew from all social, political, economic, scientific, artistic, cultural, etc. action, and, believing in the inescapable failure of the churches, saw the future in the Jewish people and promoted Zionism; the anti-Christians thus had free rein to implement great iniquities.
There are currently several competing variations on this premillennial eschatology2, but they almost all derive from Darby, who adopted Lacunza's system as his own. He propagated a system of interpretation of world history (which appears in the Scofield Bible commentaries) based on 7 "dispensations"; these constitute temporal periods, marking a particular relationship between God and man :
For Darby, all the dispensations have been failures, and the time of the church is almost over, the latter to be replaced by the people of Israel for the last dispensation!
Darby has never been rigorous in his biblical studies, and his interpretation of Matthew 24 and the Revelation is futuristic, whereas much of what is announced in these texts has already come to pass (the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, as all serious theologians understand and as the historian of that time, Josephus, confirms).
Darby thus denies the victory and present reign of Christ, yet secured by the cross and resurrection: "And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen." (Matt. 28:18-20).
In opposition to this commandment, a premillennialist eschatology leads Christians to disengage from any positive action on the world, according to the pietistic fallacy: "You don't polish the brass on a sinking ship"; this acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy, as places of influence and power are then taken by pagans.
In this movement we find many false prophets who have announced the return of Jesus on specific dates (Gary DeMar cites the most notable contemporary ones as Hal Lindsey, Edgar Whisenant, Charles Taylor, who made fools of themselves by announcing the return of Christ in 1988, 89, 92, 94, etc.). Pre-millennialism is now keeping a low profile; it has been destroyed in terms of scholarship by numerous works to which it has failed to respond.
The connivance of the "liberals" and the withdrawal of these " pessi-millenarians" led to a growing secularization of the world:
Today, the "liberal" churches have imploded because they are in self-destruction mode: despite their money (the support of the Rockefellers, Carnegie, Ford, etc.), their rejection of the faith has stripped them of all vitality, and all that remains are elderly people: the Christians who were there when they were appropriated by the liberals have left for other conservative (of the faith) churches.
Giving in to pessi-millenalisms, the "fundamentalist" and conservative churches lost their social relevance, refusing to confront the liberals and themselves destroying their areas of action and influence. They retreated into the personal lives of Christians, as well as into the family and local churches. In 1972, however, it was discovered that they had experienced a strong growth between 1925 and 1972.
But God is not a loser; those who don't love him love death, and die. So after World War II, God stirred up a new wave of theologians (O.T. Allis, C. Van Til, R. J. Rushdoony, K. Gentry, G. North, G. DeMar, G. L. Bahnsen, G. Grant, Vishal Mangalwadi, etc.) who countered these 2 currents by publishing a huge number of books: sound refutations and a biblical worldview to rebuild Christianity. They have indirectly influenced and continue to influence the whole of American Christianity in the right direction, even if few openly acknowledge it.
Evangelical churches survived and are experiencing a revival, particularly since the great trauma of 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court imposed unlimited mass abortion in its insane Roe v. Wade decision!
Faced with such an abomination, and in contradiction with the premillennial theology of their pastors, the parishioners of these churches (but unfortunately not enough of their clergy) reacted and began to get involved in politics and social life. In 1976, they elected Carter, who claimed to be a Christian (even though he was Rockefeller's accessory in the liberal camp). This was of course a great disappointment, as Carter was simply using the Christian vote to carry out his left-wing policies; but the return of conservative Christians to the cultural struggle is in itself a great victory. Their confrontation with liberalism has already won back freedom of education in the USA (home-schooling counteracts the corrupting indoctrination of children) and overturned the infamous Roe vs. Wade ruling in 2022.
In France, there is an analogy here with Fillon, and then with Zemmour, both of whom sought to exploit the Christian vote while giving it no influence whatsoever:
We remember when the abortionist candidate Juppé accused on 22/11/2016 Fillon over abortion; Fillon, who was culturating a Catholic image, then immediately retorted: "It's an unspeakable polemic. I could never have imagined that my friend Alain Juppé would have fallen so low. I've been a member of the French parliament for 30 years. Did I ever once take a stand against abortion? Just once?"
As for Zemmour, he doesn't want to touch the Veil law, believing that there would be no opposition to abortion in France worthy of consideration; he thus despises Christians.
These politicians have an unacceptable conception of religion. Like the Freemasons, they want to confine faith to the personal sphere: it should not be seen outside, and should have no cultural, social or political impact! But Jesus is the King of kings, His Law is above human laws, and He reigns: it is His kingdom that Christians are commissioned to extend: "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven."
Modern nationalism is a product of the French Revolution. Christianity is by nature universal (this is the meaning of the adjective "Catholic"). There is a Christian community that transcends borders. National communities do not necessarily represent Christian values, although it is good that they oppose tyrannical supra-national entities such as the EU, the UN or NATO.
These politicians, like those on the left who promote eugenics, don't deserve the Christian vote. They may have nationalist objectives, but their focus is on superficial issues such as insecurity and immigration. They don't dig deep, and refuse to tackle the root cause of the problems they are highlighting: mass abortion, which is a violation of God's commandment "You are not to commit murder.".
Indeed, it's an illusion to claim to re-civilize a barbaric society without questioning its barbarity. And abortion and (abortive) contraception are the mother of the barbaric transhumanism (eugenics) that is infecting contemporary culture and devastating society.
Western societies cannot even survive with abortion and contraception, because God and His Law cannot be mocked for long. A paganized West has no future other than civil war, genocide and slavery; indeed, this is the dream of the European Union, the successor to the Third Reich. The only enduring civilization is Christian, and to civilize is to Christianize. And this cannot be done from the top down, i.e., the initiative is never political: politicians always follow the wind, and their role has to diminish.
To rebuild a Christian civilization in the West, we need to start by rejecting the perverse and/or erroneous theologies that have handicapped us and led us to the present catastrophe. Then an active minority will emerge, able to propose and implement, from the bottom up, a Christian social order to replace the current socialist and statist barbarism, which can only collapse.
And if, by some misfortune, the West fails to be reborn this way4, Christendom will still be victorious elsewhere, most likely in Africa and India first...
Thierry LEFEVRE, La Trêve de Dieu
J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937), Christianity and Liberalism, 1923
Oswald Thompson Allis (1880-1973), Prophecy and the Church, 1945
R.J. Rushdoony (1916-2001), Institutes of Biblical Law (3 volumes), 1973, 1982, 1999
David Chilton (1951-1997), The Days of Vengeance – An exposition of the book of Revelation, 1987
Gary North (1946-2022), Rapture FEVER - Why Dispensationalism Is Paralyzed, 1993
Gary North (1946-2022), Crossed fingers: how the liberals captured the Presbyterian Church, 1996
R.J. Rushdoony, God’s plan for victory – The meaning of postmillenialism, 1997
Ovid E. Need, Jr – Death of the Church Victorious – Tracing the roots and implications of modern dispensationalism, 2004
Marvin Olasky & John Perry, Monkey business – The true story of the Scopes trial, 2005
Vishal Mangalwadi, Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations, 2009
Gary DeMar, Last Days Madness - Obsession of the Modern Church, 2019
1. However, antinomianism should not be confused with the discontinuation of certain ceremonial laws that only made sense under the Old Covenant (ended in 70 A.D.), principally those relating to circumcision or animal sacrifice.
2. We don't have the space here to describe the various nuances of premillennialism. These details can be found in the works cited in the bibliography.
3. The trial of Tennessee state v. Scopes. Scopes, from the liberal camp, was accused of teaching Darwinian evolution in public school. He lost to the Christian camp in 1925. This delayed the public teaching of this theory until 1960. Nevertheless, the trial was a media defeat and triggered a huge amount of misinformation, especially as the Christian leader who supported the prosecution at the time (Bryan), died 5 days after the trial. The only remaining Christian leader was Machen, who died in 1937.
4. There are historical precedents for Christian defeats, usually due to heresies that opened the door to Islamic conquest: North Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, etc.