He Came as a Thief in the Night

  1 John 4:18 - King James Version <18> There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. Matthew 24:6 - King James Version <6> And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. This commandment not to fear is one of the more extraordinary features of Christianity. We are not to be troubled about the morrow, as we read in the Sermon on the Mount. Again and again it is reiterated. And look what it says: "perfect love casteth out fear". That means if you get afraid and worried that is an indicator of your personally not possessing that perfect love, be it even so that you are improving in it. How it works: Jesus does not necessarily answer questions we have about the terrible troubles of this world, its wars and tumults and pestilences. But the presence of His Spirit bypasses that middle man of d...

  "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats, followed by analysis 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...

In <<Apocalypse Revealed>> we read, "they who are in evil are angry, and they who are in falsity are in wrath" (AR635). Here we see the customary association between good and truth or, as in this case, evil and falsity. As everyday life confirms, people do not simply get angry all by itself; rather, their anger exists alongside some target or other, someone or something upon which their anger so to speak condenses and with which their anger has a kind of marriage. We see a similar association when fantasy accompanies lust, and we may say in both cases that our anger or lust gets wallpapered over by the objects of our anger or lust. In this regard, consider the following verses. 1 Peter 5:8 - King James Version <8> Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Galatians 5:15 - King James Version <15> But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of an...