Jesus Christ Was Born in Judea, But He Was Never a Jew!

Many among the Christian community try to justify their "Israel First" and their Messianic (Hebrew Roots) doctrine by claiming that Jesus Christ is Jewish, that He came from an ethnic Jewish lineage, and to deny their claim is anathema to God! Sadly, they fail to understand that to box Jesus into a specific ethnic group is to deny that "Immanuel" was born by His father God (who has no ethnic origin) and a virgin, the only known and recognized person in the history of mankind. Yet, Christian Zionists and Talmudic Jews cling to this rhetorical claim, failing to heed the exact and specific word of God to the contrary. Many modern day preachers, teachers, pastors and evangelists, who were trained by Bible scholars who have adopted the non-biblical doctrine of Premillennial Dispensationalism, spew forth this doctrine to seminary students and their respective flocks to their own peril.

Athanasius of Alexandria, historically he has been credited as being the first person to identify the same twenty-seven books of the New Testament that are familiar to Christians today. While most of today's theological pundits merely repeat what they have been taught by their contemporaries, many who choose to be teachers or preachers would be wise to search out the wisdom brought forth by our early church fathers. Following is a commentary by Athanasius who answers the question of whether Jesus Christ is of Jewish lineage (by providing scripture to confirm his conclusion to the question), as well as clear evidence that the Jews then (and even today) have denied the reality of God's visitation in the person of Jesus Christ. Athanasius also debunks the current "70 Weeks" theory that theorists and pundits use in attempts to promote the theory that there will be a specific Seven Year (Great) Tribulation period, and that the so-called "Anti-Christ" will enter into a seven-year agreement with the current state of Israel, and break it at mid point, to prove their "Rapture to Heaven" myth.

Way too many Christians have bought into these theories (which have no biblical support) and, sadly, repeat these myths to their children and their friends (and their Internet adherents) creating greater confusion among the disciples. Most are too lazy to do diligent research on these matters, finding it easier to repeat the soothing gospel we were warned would prevail as the days get closer to the return of Jesus. 

"We have dealt thus far with the Incarnation of our Savior, and have found clear proof of the resurrection of His Body and His victory over death. Let us now go further and investigate the unbelief and the ridicule with which Jews and Gentiles respectively regard these same facts. It seems that in both cases the points at issue are the same, namely the unfittingness or incongruity (as it seems to them) alike of the cross and of the Word’s becoming man at all. But we have no hesitation in taking up the argument against these objectors, for the proofs on our side are extremely clear.

First, then, we will consider the Jews. Their unbelief has its refutation in the Scriptures which even themselves read; for from cover to cover the inspired Book clearly teaches these things both in its entirety and in its actual words. Prophets foretold the marvel of the Virgin and of the Birth from her, saying, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name ‘Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us.’” [Isaiah 7:14] And Moses, that truly great one in whose word the Jews trust so implicitly, he also recognized the importance and truth of the matter. He puts it thus: “There shall arise a star from Jacob and a man from Israel, and he shall break in pieces the rulers of Moab. [Numbers 24:17] And, again, “How lovely are thy dwellings, O Jacob, thy tents, O Israel! Like woodland valleys they give shade, and like parks by rivers, like tents which the Lord has pitched, like cedar-trees by streams. There shall come forth a Man from among his seed, and he shall rule over many peoples.” [Numbers 24:5-7] And, again, Isaiah says, “Before the Babe shall be old enough to call father or mother, he shall take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria from under the eyes of the king of Assyria.”  [Isaiah 8:4] These words, then, foretell that a Man shall appear. And Scripture proclaims further that He that is to come is Lord of all. These are the words, “Behold, the Lord sitteth on an airy cloud and shall come into Egypt, and the man-made images of Egypt shall be shaken.” [Isaiah 19:1] And it is from Egypt also that the Father calls him back, saying, “Out of Egypt have I called My Son.” [Hosea 11:1]

(34) Moreover, the Scriptures are not silent even about His death. On the contrary, they refer to it with the utmost clearness. They have not feared to speak also of the cause of it. He endures it, they say, not for His own sake, but for the sake of bringing immortality and salvation to all, and they record also the plotting of the Jews against Him and all the indignities which He suffered at their hands. Certainly nobody who reads the Scriptures can plead ignorance of the facts as an excuse for error! There is this passage, for instance: “A man that is afflicted and knows how to bear weakness, for His face is turned away. He was dishonored and not considered, He bears our sins and suffers for our sakes. And we for our part thought Him distressed and afflicted and ill-used; but it was for our sins that He was wounded and for our lawlessness that He was made weak. Chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His bruising we are healed.” [Isaiah 53:3-5] O marvel at the love of the Word for men, for it is on our account that He is dishonored, so that we may be brought to honor.

“For all we,” it goes on, “have strayed like sheep, man has strayed from his path, and the Lord has given Him up for our sins; and He Himself did not open His mouth at the ill-treatment. Like a sheep He was led to slaughter, and as a lamb is dumb before its shearer, so He opened not His mouth; in His humiliation His judgment was taken away.” [Isaiah 53:6-8] And then Scripture anticipates the surmises of any who might think from His suffering thus that He was just an ordinary man, and shows what power worked in His behalf. “Who shall declare of what lineage He comes?” it says, “for His life is exalted from the earth. By the lawlessness of the people was He brought to death, and I will give the wicked in return for His burial and the rich in return for His death. For He did no lawlessness, neither was deceit found in His mouth. And the Lord wills to heal Him of His affliction.” [Isaiah 53:8-10]

(35) You have heard the prophecy of His death, and now, perhaps, you want to know what indications there are about the cross. Even this is not passed over in silence: on the contrary, the sacred writers proclaim it with the utmost plainness. Moses foretells it first, and that right loudly, when he says, “You shall see your Life hanging before your eyes, and shall not believe.” [Deuteronomy 28:66] After him the prophets also give their witness, saying, “But I as an innocent lamb brought to be offered was yet ignorant of it. They plotted evil against Me, saying,‘Come, let us cast wood into His bread, and wipe Him out from the land of the living.” [Jeremiah 11:19] And, again, “They pierced My hands and My feet, they counted all My bones, they divided My garments for themselves and cast lots for My clothing.” [Psalm 22:16-18] Now a death lifted up and that takes place on wood can be none other than the death of the cross; moreover, it is only in that death that the hands and feet are pierced. Besides this, since the Savior dwelt among men, all nations everywhere have begun to know God; and this too Holy Writ expressly mentions. “There shall be the Root of Jesse,” it says, “and he who rises up to rule the nations, on Him nations shall set their hope.” [Isaiah 11:10]

These are just a few things in proof of what has taken place; but indeed all Scripture teems with disproof of Jewish unbelief. For example, which of the righteous men and holy prophets and patriarchs of whom the Divine Scriptures tell ever had his bodily birth from a virgin only? Was not Abel born of Adam, Enoch of Jared, Noah of Lamech, Abraham of Terah, Isaac of Abraham, and Jacob of Isaac? Was not Judah begotten by Jacob and Moses and Aaron by Ameram? Was not Samuel the son of Elkanah, David of Jesse, Solomon of David, Hezekiah of Ahaz, Josiah of Amon, Isaiah of Amos, Jeremiah of Hilkiah and Ezekiel of Buzi? Had not each of these a father as author of his being? So who is He that is born of a virgin only, that sign of which the prophet makes so much? Again, which of all those people had his birth announced to the world by a star in the heavens? When Moses was born his parents hid him. David was unknown even in his own neighborhood, so that mighty Samuel himself was ignorant of his existence and asked whether Jesse had yet another son. Abraham again became known to his neighbors as a great man only after his birth. But with Christ it was otherwise. The witness to His birth was not man, but a star shining in the heavens whence He was coming down.

(36) Then, again, what king that ever was reigned and took trophies from his enemies before he had strength to call father or mother? Was not David thirty years old when he came to the throne and Solomon a grown young man? Did not Joash enter on his reign at the age of seven, and Josiah, some time after him, at about the same age, both of them fully able by that time to call father or mother? Who is there, then, that was reigning and despoiling his enemies almost before he was born? Let the Jews, who have investigated the matter, tell us if there was ever such a king in Israel or Judah—a king upon whom all the nations set their hopes and had peace, instead of being at enmity with him on every side! As long as Jerusalem stood there was constant war between them, and they all fought against Israel. The Assyrians oppressed Israel, the Egyptians persecuted them, the Babylonians fell upon them, and, strange to relate, even the Syrians their neighbors were at war with them. And did not David fight with Moab and smite the Syrians, and Hezekiah quail at the boasting of Sennacherib? Did not Amalek make war on Moses and the Amorites oppose him, and did not the inhabitants of Jericho array themselves against Joshua the son of Nun? Did not the nations always regard Israel with implacable hostility? Then it is worth inquiring who it is, on whom the nations are to set their hopes. Obviously there must be someone, for the prophet could not have told a lie. But did any of the holy prophets or of the early patriarchs die on the cross for the salvation of all? Was any of them wounded and killed for the healing of all? Did the idols of Egypt fall down before any righteous man or king that came there? Abraham came there certainly, but idolatry prevailed just the same; and Moses was born there, but the mistaken worship was unchanged.

(37) Again, does Scripture tell of anyone who was pierced in hands and feet or hung upon a tree at all, and by means of a cross perfected his sacrifice for the salvation of all? It was not Abraham, for he died in his bed, as did also Isaac and Jacob. Moses and Aaron died in the mountain, and David ended his days in his house, without anybody having plotted against him. Certainly he had been sought by Saul, but he was preserved unharmed. Again Isaiah was sawn asunder, but he was not hung on a tree. Jeremiah was shamefully used, but he did not die under condemnation. Ezekiel suffered, but he did so, not on behalf of the people, but only to signify to them what was going to happen. Moreover, all these even when they suffered were but men, like other men; but He Whom the Scriptures declare to suffer on behalf of all is called not merely man but Life of all, although in point of fact He did share our human nature. “You shall see your Life hanging before your eyes,” they say, and “Who shall declare of what lineage He comes?” With all the saints we can trace their descent from the beginning, and see exactly how each came to be; but the Divine Word maintains that we cannot declare the lineage of Him Who is the Life. Who is it, then, of Whom Holy Writ thus speaks? Who is there so great that even the prophets foretell of Him such mighty things? There is indeed no one in the Scriptures at all, save the common Savior of all, the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. He it is that proceeded from a virgin, and appeared as man on earth, He it is Whose earthly lineage cannot be declared, because He alone derives His body from no human father, but from a virgin alone. We can trace the paternal descent of David and Moses and of all the patriarchs. But with the Savior we cannot do so, for it was He Himself Who caused the star to announce His bodily birth, and it was fitting that the Word, when He came down from heaven, should have His sign in heaven too, and fitting that the King of creation on His coming forth should be visibly recognized by all the world. He was actually born in Judea, yet men from Persia came to worship Him. He it is Who won victory from His demon foes and trophies from the idolaters even before His bodily appearing—namely, all the heathen who from every region have abjured the tradition of their fathers and the false worship of idols and are now placing their hope in Christ and transferring their allegiance to Him. The thing is happening before our very eyes, here in Egypt; and thereby another prophecy is fulfilled, for at no other time have the Egyptians ceased from their false worship save when the Lord of all, riding as on a cloud, came down here in the body and brought the error of idols to nothing and won over everybody to Himself and through Himself to the Father. He it is Who was crucified with the sun and moon as witnesses; and by His death salvation has come to all men, and all creation has been redeemed. He is the Life of all, and He it is Who like a sheep gave up His own body to death, His life for ours and our salvation.

(38) Yet the Jews disbelieve this. This argument does not satisfy them. Well, then, let them be persuaded by other things in their own oracles. Of whom, for instance, do the prophets say “I was made manifest to those who did not seek Me, I was found by those who had not asked for Me? I said, ‘See, here am I,’ to the nation that had not called upon My Name. I stretched out My hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people.” [Isaiah 65:1-2] Who is this person that was made manifest, one might ask the Jews? If the prophet is speaking of himself, then they must tell us how he was first hidden, in order to be manifested afterwards. And, again, what kind of man is this prophet, who was not only revealed after being hidden, but also stretched out his hands upon the cross? Those things happened to none of those righteous men: they happened only to the Word of God Who, being by nature without body, on our account appeared in a body and suffered for us all. And if even this is not enough for them, there is other overwhelming evidence by which they may be silenced. The Scripture says, “Be strong, hands that hang down and feeble knees, take courage, you of little faith, be strong and do not fear. See, our God will recompense judgment, He Himself will come and save us. Then the eyes of blind men shall be opened and the ears of deaf men shall hear, and stammerers shall speak distinctly.” [Isaiah 35:3-6] What can they say to this, or how can they look it in the face at all? For the prophecy does not only declare that God will dwell here, it also makes known the signs and the time of His coming. When God comes, it says, the blind will see, the lame will walk, the deaf will hear and the stammerers will speak distinctly. Can the Jews tell us when such signs occurred in Israel, or when anything of the kind took place at all in Jewry? The leper Naaman was cleansed, it is true, but no deaf man heard nor did any lame man walk. Elijah raised a dead person and so did Elisha; but no one blind from birth received his sight. To raise a dead person is a great thing indeed, but it is not such as the Savior did. And surely, since the Scriptures have not kept silence about the leper and the dead son of the widow, if a lame man had walked and a blind man had received his sight, they would have mentioned these as well. Their silence on these points proves that the events never took place. When therefore did these things happen, unless when the Word of God Himself came in the body? Was it not when He came that lame men walked and stammerers spoke clearly and men blind from birth were given sight? And the Jews who saw it themselves testified to the fact that such things had never before occurred. “Since the world began,” they said, “it has never been heard of that anyone should open the eyes of a man born blind. If this Man were not from God, He could do nothing.” [John 9:32-33]

(39) But surely they cannot fight against plain facts. So it may be that, without denying what is written, they will maintain that they are still waiting for these things to happen, and that the Word of God is yet to come, for that is a theme on which they are always harping most brazenly, in spite of all the evidence against them. But they shall be refuted on this supreme point more clearly than on any, and that not by ourselves but by the most wise Daniel, for he signifies the actual date of the Savior’s coming as well as His Divine sojourn in our midst. “Seventy weeks,” he says, “are cut short upon thy people and upon the holy city, to make a complete end of sin and for sins to be sealed up and iniquities blotted out, and to make reconciliation for iniquity and to seal vision and prophet, and to anoint a Holy One of holies. And thou shalt know and understand from the going forth of the Word to answer, ⁵ and to build Jerusalem, until Christ the Prince.” [Daniel 9:24-25] In regard to the other prophecies, they may possibly be able to find excuses for deferring their reference to a future time, but what can they say to this one? How can they face it at all? Not only does it expressly mention the Anointed One, that is the Christ, it even declares that He Who is to be anointed is not man only, but the Holy One of holies! And it says that Jerusalem is to stand till His coming, and that after it prophet and vision shall cease in Israel! David was anointed of old, and Solomon, and Hezekiah; but then Jerusalem and the place stood, and prophets were prophesying, Gad and Asaph and Nathan, and later Isaiah and Hosea and Amos and others. Moreover, those men who were anointed were called holy certainly, but none of them was called the Holy of holies. Nor is it any use for the Jews to take refuge in the Captivity, and say that Jerusalem did not exist then, for what about the prophets? It is a fact that at the outset of the Exile Daniel and Jeremiah were there, and Ezekiel and Haggai and Zechariah also prophesied.

(40) So the Jews are indulging in fiction, and transferring present time to future. When did prophet and vision cease from Israel? Was it not when Christ came, the Holy One of holies? It is, in fact, a sign and notable proof of the coming of the Word that Jerusalem no longer stands, neither is prophet raised up nor vision revealed among them. And it is natural that it should be so, for when He that was signified had come, what need was there any longer of any to signify Him? And when the Truth had come, what further need was there of the shadow? On His account only they prophesied continually, until such time as Essential Righteousness has come, Who was made the Ransom for the sins of all. For the same reason Jerusalem stood until the same time, in order that there men might premeditate the types before the Truth was known. So, of course, once the Holy One of holies had come, both vision and prophecy were sealed. And the kingdom of Jerusalem ceased at the same time, because kings were to be anointed among them only until the Holy of holies had been anointed. Moses also prophesies that the kingdom of the Jews shall stand until His time, saying, “A ruler shall not fail from Judah nor a prince from his loins, until the things laid up for him shall come and the Expectation of the nations Himself.” [Genesis 49:10] And that is why the Savior Himself was always proclaiming “The law and the prophets prophesied until John.” [Matthew 11:13] So if there is still king or prophet or vision among the Jews, they do well to deny that Christ is come; but if there is neither king nor vision, and since that time all prophecy has been sealed and city and temple taken, how can they be so irreligious, how can they so flaunt the facts, as to deny Christ Who has brought it all about? Again, they see the heathen forsaking idols and setting their hopes through Christ on the God of Israel; why do they yet deny Christ Who after the flesh was born of the root of Jesse and reigns henceforward? Of course, if the heathen were worshipping some other god, and not confessing the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses, then they would do well to argue that God had not come. But if the heathen are honoring the same God Who gave the law to Moses and the promises to Abraham—the God Whose word too the Jews dishonored, why do they not recognize or rather why do they deliberately refuse to see that the Lord of Whom the Scriptures prophesied has shone forth to the world and appeared to it in a bodily form? Scripture declares it repeatedly. “The Lord God has appeared to us,” [Psalm 118:27] and again, “He sent forth His Word and healed them.” [Psalm 107:20] And again, “It was no ambassador, no angel who saved us, but the Lord Himself.” [Isaiah 63:9] The Jews are afflicted like some demented person who sees the earth lit up by the sun, but denies the sun that lights it up! What more is there for their Expected One to do when he comes? To call the heathen? But they are called already. To put an end to prophet and king and vision? But this too has already happened. To expose the God-denyingness of idols? It is already exposed and condemned. Or to destroy death? It is already destroyed. What then has not come to pass that the Christ must do? What is there left out or unfulfilled that the Jews should disbelieve so light-heartedly? The plain fact is, as I say, that there is no longer any king or prophet nor Jerusalem nor sacrifice nor vision among them; yet the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of God, and the Gentiles, forsaking atheism, are now taking refuge with the God of Abraham through the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Surely, then, it must be plain even to the most shameless that the Christ has come, and that He has enlightened all men everywhere, and given them the true and divine teaching about His Father.

Thus the Jews may be refuted by these and other arguments from the Divine teaching."

                                              ~

[Athanasius of Alexandria (A.D. 297 – 373) Bishop of Alexandria, was a chief theologian and early Church Father of the Christian faith. To this day he is widely respected within Western Christianity, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism. As a staunch Trinitarian, Athanasius spent much of his life battling against the groundwork laid by his predecessor, Arius, a nontrinitarian. In his writings Against the Heathen, Orations Against the Arians, and The Incarnation of the Word of God, Athanasius stresses the urgency of holding to the faith proclaimed by the apostolic teachings of Scripture. Historically he has been credited as being the first person to identify the same twenty-seven books of the New Testament that are familiar to Christians today.

At the Nicaean Council of A.D. 325, the young Athanasius made the following statement: “Jesus, who I know as my Redeemer, cannot be less than God.” This passion for exalting the Eternal Trinity forced him into exile five separate times by Roman Emperors. However, as providence would have it, Athanasius returned undis turbed to his home in Alexandria to spend his final years writing and preaching, until his death at the age of seventy-six.]

For more information about his books and web sites, please click on Joe Ortiz.

Bishop Williamson contra the Votaries of Holocaustianity, By Michael Hoffman

Elijah against the Baal priests

By Michael Hoffman

http://revisionistreview.blogspot.com/2013/04/bishop-williamson-contra-votaries-of.html

Enclosed (below) is the publication for the first time of an obtuse and ignorant eight page letter sent to Bishop Richard Williamson in 2011 by his subordinate, Fr. Niklaus Phluger, "First Assistant" to the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) Superior General, Bernard Fellay.  Phluger is a German Catholic priest of Bishop Richard Williamson's former SSPX fraternity. Bishop  Williamson, you may recall, made international headlines by refusing to recant his statement to a Swedish television station that the persecution of Judaic persons had been exaggerated, that no one was gassed in homicidal chambers, and that the Six Million death toll was an unconscionable exaggeration. For his remarks, he was expelled by Fellay from the SSPX seminary in Argentina where he was rector,  and expelled from Argentina by the government. He faces continuing prosecution in criminal court in Germany (where he gave the interview to Swedish TV).

Lacking the courage of the recusant Catholic priests who were racked, drawn and quartered and beheaded in Elizabethan England for holding to the truth that the rule of God is higher than the rule of monarchs, the German SSPX have been soiling their pants in terror over the prospect that if they embraced their own Bishop Williamson's right to have an opinion, as a Shepherd, on what St. Paul called "Jewish fables," (Titus 1:14), they would have to suffer the full fury of the government of Germany in closing their schools and imprisoning them. Any Amish or Old Order Mennonite of my acquaintance, and I have known about one hundred or so of them these past 25 years, would willingly suffer imprisonment, or flee with school children if necessary, in order to defy the state on a point of truth vs. lies, but not the German SSPX, or the SSPX in general under Bishop Bernard Fellay.

In their timidity, the SSPX leadership have adopted the rabbinic Holocaustianity theology of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, while claiming to uphold "traditional Catholicism." Where was Holocaustianity in the pontificate of Pope Pius XII? Robert Faurisson of France has written at length on the subject of Pius XII refusing to uphold the lie of the extermination gas chamber legends.

In Rev. Phluger's hectoring missive to Bishop Williamson, reference will be seen to certain infallible "Holocaust" sources with which he upbraids Bishop Williamson, such as (Jean-Claude) Pressac, who gave up in despair and admitted defeat in his goal of proving the existence of execution gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and most amusingly of all, to Dr. Raul Hilberg. Bishop Williamson cannot believe Hilberg or think him credible, because Williamson took the trouble to read this writer's book, The Great Holocaust Trial, which documents Hilberg's response to questions put to him during the 1985 trial in Toronto of Ernst Zundel, by the late traditional Catholic defense attorney Doug Christie. In court, Mr. Christie challenged Hilberg to furnish one scientific report of gassings in Auschwitz. Hilberg's response: "I'm at a loss." He couldn't do it! At the second Zundel trial in 1988, Hilberg was invited by the prosecution to testify and face cross-examination one more time by Christie (backed again by Faurisson's research). Hilberg refused, for obvious reasons. 

"Traditional Catholic" defenders of Fellay's SSPX who are traducers of Bishop Williamson, have told this writer that secular history has nothing to do with the SSPX's mission. If that is the case, why was Bishop Williamson being forced both by the pope's Vatican Secretariat of State and Bishop Fellay to recant his doubts about the homicidal gas chamber allegations? If Bishop Williamson had doubted the number of people who died in the Black Hole of Calcutta in British India, or at Elmira Prison Camp in New York during the Civil War, or under Ariel Sharon's carpet-bombing of downtown Beirut, Lebanon in August of 1982, neither the Vatican nor Fellay would have uttered a word of censure or reproach. Yet when it comes to what J.-M. LePen rightly termed "a detail of history" -- the claims of Auschwitz "extermination gas chambers," Williamson must bow to the secular consensus, or be denied exercise of his episcopal office (according to the pope's Secretariat), and face expulsion from the SSPX ( by order of Fellay).

Why the special solicitation for one detail of secular history above all others? The world's only "Holocaust" (or 'Shoah' as Pope John Paul II started to term it in line with Talmudic mystification), has become a false religion, a religion of Judaism for gentiles. It is a fiendishly sly marketing strategy for Judaizing the West and rendering Christ's Church Militant a pile of quivering jello. 

We have heard nothing from Bishop Fellay or Fr. Phluger comparable to the windage they have exhaled concerning the shoah-bizness, concerning the concerted movement led by multi-millionaire Hollywood movie director James Cameron to deny the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The worldwide organized movement of Resurrection-denial, with its origins in the Israeli state, is not a subject of anxious concern for modern Catholic popes or "traditional Catholic" Bishop Fellay. What does passionately concern and engage them, is the rise of any movement that obstructs the march to replace Calvary with Auschwitz as the central ontological point of suffering in the history of the West. The use of "Holocaust" as a brand and trademark of Judaism and the Israeli state leaves no intellectual, sociological or cultural room for any other holocaust. It eclipses, first, the holocaust on Calvary, and then every other holocaust throughout history including the Judaic-Communist holocaust of millions of Christians in Russia and Eastern Europe from 1917 onward. 

The tragic deaths of hundreds of thousands of Judaic persons under the Nazis is given the name of Holocaust though very few of even the most frenzied partisans of Zionism and Talmudism claim Judaic persons died by fire in concentration camps. However, the mass incineration of Japanese in Tokyo, Germans in Dresden and Arabs in Beirut may not, under any circumstances, have their deaths by fire hallowed by the dictionary denotation of immolation by fire -- holocaust. Even the mass murder of unborn children by abortion is not permitted to enter the linguistic sanctuary and be titled a holocaust, without incurring rabid howls of outrage from Zionists and rabbis.

This whole degenerate process, the friends of the SSPX tell us, has no bearing on the mission of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (SSPX founder). Bishop Williamson had better believe about World War II what the ignoramuses of the SSPX leadership believe, in line with their Israeli army-connected SSPX lawyer, Mr. M. Krah, that the Kabbalistic Six Million figure, and the allegations of mass extermination gassings in the magic gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, are Holy Writ. These alleged thinking human beings in the SSPX, supposed heirs of St. Thomas Aquinas, have not bothered to read Dr. Arthur Butz, Dr. Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolf,  Carlo Mattagno, Fred Leutchter, Richard Widmann, Samuel Crowell, the transcript of the second Zundel trial, my book on the first Zundel trial, or any other dissenting, alternative, skeptically scientific work that contradicts the Official Holocaust Liturgy of the New Church of the Gas Chambers, which all Catholics must believe on penalty of sharing the same fate as Bishop Williamson -- expulsion, financial hardship, criminal prosecution, and ritual assassination of reputation by the media, and by fellow Catholics.

In the first years of the new millennium we watch in horror as revolutionaries accomplish every one of their objectives: homosexual "matrimony," women in combat, raw violence and hard-core pornography spilling from the TV and the Internet unobstructed, and Talmudic Judaism and the Antichrist Israeli state everywhere on the rise. Month after month the enemies of God succeed in reversing, in just a few years' time, four thousand years of divine law and western heritage. Can anyone be so dense as to fail to see that, connected to this decay process of human alchemy, is the "Holocaust" propaganda that enshrines Judaic suffering in World War II to the level of a cosmic idol to which everyone in the West must bow? 

The papacy, the Vatican, and the SSPX have all bowed, have all consented to this idolatry. In these dark times, Bishop Williamson and a tiny handful of cast-off priests (Frs. Pfeiffer, Hewko, Chazal and a few others) stand like Elijah against the Baal priests.

[Hoffman is the author of Usury in Christendom: The Mortal Sin that Was and Now is Not]

______________________________

Letter of Fr Nicholas Pfluger to Bishop Richard Williamson

January 1,  2011

Your Excellency,

Dear Bishop Williamson,

For months I have been meaning to write to you in order to bring up everything so to speak incomprehensible and also false in the things you have been saying over the last few years. I put it off since you never brought up arguments and obviously feel personally hurt – rather unusual for a free-thinking man. But after I could not help reading in your latest “Eleison Comments” that “World War III may not be far off”, I am now writing before time becomes short, because one never knows when time will run out.

This prophecy of yours took my mind back to the after-dinner speeches at the Episcopal Consecrations of 1988, After the main event all four newly consecrated bishops said a few words. Bishop Tissier as usual was very theological and dogmatic. Bishop de Galarreta was short and discrete. Bishop Fellay was pastoral and balanced. But you were principally concerned with war. Perhaps you were already thinking of World War III when you cried out to the assembly, “It’s war, it’s war !”. At that time it was still the Russians who were due to attack. It would be quite a task to count up all the times in the last 22 years that you have prophesied with precise dates the Third World War and the Chastisement. At least a dozen times for sure. A task also to work out why you have never asked yourself the question whether your forecasting arises from objective analysis and not rather from subjective utopianism.

Alas, I know you do not ask yourself such questions. Nor do you ask why I, and with me Menzingen and almost the entire Society of St Pius X and the world while we are about it, why we merely shake our heads and are simply disappointed. (I attach extracts from two e-mails, the first coming from a former pupil of yours, the second from a German town mayor.) For you it is clear. Always somebody else is to blame. Everybody else is clueless, blind to reality, agents of some organization or other, be it Freemasonry or the Mossad or the CIA,  most recently and emphatically “the Jews” – the list is long. In brief, anybody who disagrees with you is either stupid or wicked or both. To any of the people who have rejected your constant warnings of war and your crude political and economic theories, and who have criticized you for them – there are many such people, and some have even been offended -- have you ever apologized ?  Have you apologized to one single one ?  Would you ever be capable of saying, “I was wrong” ?

In fact that is a blatantly semitic way of thinking: to pin one’s own faults on a scapegoat, which bears the guilty for everything. That is what Hitler did. The Germans’ own defeat of November 9, 1918 produced a hatred for international Jewry, which was responsible for all evil in the German nation and therefore had to be “fought openly and without mercy”.

This problem is to be seen at another point in the latest “Eleison Comments”. You wrote there: “Derivatives… act upon the delicate mechanisms of world finance like weapons of mass destruction, because they easily fabricate an unreal world of colossal and unpayable debt.”  To which one smart reader replied, “The Bishop is showing off – “delicate mechanisms of world finance” -- as though he sees through the mechanisms of world finance and could point out their weaknesses.” You could not do that. No more can you see through the highly complex connections of politics, or the Nazis’ mass-murder of Jews. You have an opinion, then you look around for a few unconnected details which somehow fit this opinion (for instance the “Leuchter Report”), and you hawk it all as the truth.

On September 11, 2001 you were beginning your Confirmations tour in Switzerland. That evening, when Islamic terrorists crashed hi-jacked aeroplanes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York and brought the Towers down, we arrived at about 6pm in Littau and Brother Anthony showed you the new church of the priory still under construction. He also mentioned something of the Twin Towers in New York with 50,000 people killed. You asked me to listen to the news. At 6.30pm the Confirmation ceremony began and you declared it was “the Jews”. How could you know that so fast ?  You could not. You had no information leading to any such conclusion. Many of the faithful were disappointed that you had nothing spiritual to say, a few were impressed that you seemed to have the solution so fast. From that day on, if not sooner, my colleagues and I saw clearly that basically you are never looking for the historical truth, but only for what is true for you, what you want to be true. You have, as I formulated it last year, an idealistic view of history, And at table in a priory, I said you are an idealist. You were deeply offended, as someone told me. But actually the truth goes a little further. You are the caricature of an idealist.

There is a famous quotation attributed to you concerning the so-called “Protocols of the Sages of Sion”, namely : “God put it in men’s hands”. You thus raised the “Protocols” to the level of divine Revelation. That is inevitable if people want to believe in them, because the Tsarist government granted long ago that they were the product of its own secret service, and all further investigations led clearly to the same conclusion. Have you read any of these investigations, for instance the official account of the Berne Trial of 1934 ?  No, of course you have not. Yet you are certain that the “Protocols” are authentic. Why ?  Because you want them to be.

It is the same with the Nazis’ extermination of Jews. Did you read the book of Pressac which we had sent to you ?  Of course not. Have you read the standard work on the subject, Hilberg’s “The Extermination of European Jewry”?  Not either. Attorney Krah recommended to you at least once to ask David Irving, a recognized expert in archives and until recently your mentor, what the facts are. You would not listen. That is hardly surprising, given that in the meantime Irving is not calling in question the mass-murder of millions of innocent Jews, including by gassing. On a different tack he is upholding abstruse theories on the side, but he is not so blind as to deny the obvious. But why go in for studying history ?  You know it all without having to study, because you insist on your idea of reality. Idealism, as I said.

Thus there cannot have been any industrial mass-murder of Jews because you do not want there to have been. Because it does not fit your world-view. Therefore any document proving that there was such mass-murder, is a forgery, and any witness testifying that there was, even if it was SS perpetrators themselves, is suborned, and every scientific researcher coming to the same conclusion is a liar. Similarly anyone not subscribing to your theories on 9/11 is not Catholic. You have put as much in writing, indeed that is your key question : as you once asked the Superior General, “Do you believe in the Twin Towers ?”

I am sorry that I have to speak so harshly to you. I would have preferred to start this letter in a friendly and non-aggressive way, asking after your health and the weather in London. The weather has got to be bad in Paris because we have been waiting over five hours to take off, so I am writing this letter in a Boeing 777. I would prefer to be writing about Christmas customs in Asia and the wonderful people in particular that I had occasion to meet there, or to be writing with my thanks for having visited Japan as a Society priest as far back as 1978. At that time, by the way, only one thing mattered to you and that was to preach Jesus Christ, and him crucified; there was only one question, and that was the Truth which is Christ himself. But since then two other questions have arisen for you. The first, as you recently wrote to one of our priests, is: “Were six million Jews gassed, yes or no ?”  With all respect for your episcopal rank as bishop, that is not an “objective question”, it is not even a question, it is pure nonsense. Name me one serious historian, name me one single man who still claims today that six million were gassed. Not murdered, but gassed. You will not find one, is my impression. You are the one and only person who maintains any such thing. In psychology that is called a fixation. As for your second question, “Do or do not the Six Million have a religious importance ?”, your answer is unsatisfactory and false. It goes without saying that every historical question also has a religious dimension. Nobody disputes that, but our Founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, gave us a clear standpoint from which to judge of history, politics, social doctrine and so on, and that is Jesus Christ himself, the Social Kingship of Christ. That is it. And no stupid ideological or idealistic theories. As I said, under normal circumstances, this letter would not be adopting such an approach or treating of such matters. But 2010 was not a year calling for any normal way to approach things. Unfortunately.

In exchanges with various people, colleagues, priests, relatives, friends, outsiders, I have frequently tried to understand you. I am terribly sorry to see how you are running to waste, how you are burying yourself in the most abstruse theories and then passing them off as divine truth. Were a good fairy to grant me three wishes, one would certainly be for you to come up with the strength to recognize reality. But there are no such fairies, and in their stead a quotation comes back to me from my Greek studies : whom the gods wish to destroy, they first strike blind.

Your Excellency, allow me a family reminiscence. You are well aware how highly my family held you in esteem, and how you enjoyed visiting our home. Back in the late 1970’s my parents were there, and you were a young priest spending the night with us, because you were celebrating Mass in the family Chapel nearby on the following morning. You were in a discussion with my father. Mother was also present. You surely remember my mother, a quiet, reserved woman, a still water running deep, at opposite poles to my father. That evening the discussion between my father and you was heated. Mother had kept quiet all evening so it was quite unexpected when she suddenly said in her quiet and almost shy way, “Father, remember your own mother was also a woman.” End of discussion.

Your scorn of women, your hatred of Jews, your lack of measure were always there, only we paid no attention. We were too busy defending the Faith, rescuing the Mass, battling with modernists in the Church, to pick up on these repulsive aspects of your behavior. You were the English gentleman, eccentric for sure, but cultured, unconventional, charming. Of course the doubts grew as time went on. How often you tripped up and let yourself be influenced by strange people and ideas (I think for instance of Fr. Urrutigoity, or your notion of the Tridentine seminary being “out-of-date”). But we pushed these doubts to one side. We rather felt than consciously knew that something was not quite right. Only in 2009 did we begin to think things over and check them out. At which point we realized how deep the problem ran – a veritable abyss !  Not to say that we were in no way responsible. A few months ago, a District Superior said to me who is not much younger than yourself, “The crazy ideas of Bishop Williamson were familiar to us, and we knew all about them.”

Long before 2009 a friend said to me that on reading the things you write, he is always asking himself if your ever gaining influence and power is something to be desired, and his answer is always, no. Moreover, were you to become influential or powerful, he, one of our active faithful, would join a Christian resistance group. Such were the doubts, such the feeling of unease.

In his latest book the Pope has talked about you in some detail. He says that in your case one notices a lack of experience of the mainstream Church. You went straight from Protestantism – or at any rate nominal Protestantism – into the narrow world of the Society of St Pius X. Of course we were upset and indignant. On behalf of the Society, Fr Gaudron criticized the Pope’s remark and pointed out that when you converted you were for a while in the official Church. However, the Pope may have been referring to something else. You converted in the middle of the confusion following on the Council, when the old religion was seen as being worthless and its collapse was visible. Everybody felt homeless. That may be why you lack this deep feeling of what it is to be a Catholic. How else is your love of provoking people to be explained, even in front of the Blessed Sacrament ?  Is it just to provoke, or is it something more ?  What would the Pope say if he knew how constantly you refuse to speak about the virtue of love ?  yet God is love, and we read in St Jerome’s Commentary for the Feast of St John Evangelist how at the end of St John’s long life all he would ever call for was love. And there go you, saying to a Superior who asked you on a priests’ Retreat not to talk only about politics and gas-chambers and the Twin Towers, “Love – I despise the word !” And just what would the Pope say if he heard you answering orders of the Superior General with a vulgar swearword, repeated three times ?  Call such a reaction sarcasm if you like, but it is not exactly Catholic. Genuine Catholicism can be recognized by breadth of thinking, by love of the Church, by generosity of outlook, if you like, but not by hurtful slander of people who think differently, such as you are now doing through your friends on the Internet. Whoever does not share your view of history is a “Jew”. And anyone drinking wine with Jewish colleagues is behaving like a Jew and undermining the Society of St Pius X. Even the Nazis did not go that far. Two years ago you told me that as Rector of the Seminary in Ridgefield you invited a Rabbi. Did that make you also into a Jew ? 

One of the first and most basic criticisms of the Council comes from the psychoanalyst Alfred Lorenzer, “The Book-keepers’ Council” (for a long time this book could be found in the book-racks of our chapels in Germany). One may or may not care for psychoanalysis, but Lorenzer gives a marvelous description of what religion, Catholicism in particular, means for man. It is something that one picks up even before language or rational consciousness. He calls it a “system of symbols”. It has something to do with liturgy, with song, with certainty. It precedes and follows all awareness. One is, quite simply, Catholic. Whatever the Pope says, whatever happens, one is Catholic. The most unlikely people keep finding it is there inside them, and then suddenly they are proud of it. The two  Spiegel reporters that you called “rats” and whose reporting was by the way most helpful to the Society, are a case in point. The older one, Wensierski, is Catholic, a man who has gone along with all the errors and confusion of the last 40 years. He has written nasty articles criticizing the Church, but as a reporter he also got himself thrown out of communist East Germany because he supported resistance groups. A difficult man for sure, and stolid, but fully convinced of his own Catholicism, enthused by the Society church of St Nicolas du Chardonet in Paris, and ever concerned to convert his younger colleague who at that point parts company with his elder. Simply being Catholic, belonging to this inconceivable, fantastic, great, unique Church, way beyond all human imagining, constantly being pronounced dead yet arising joyfully once more to life, ever ready to pick one up again, to forgive, to be generous, where one is always back at home – what is more beautiful on the face of the earth ? So when I read writings of yours, and remember various things you have said, then I am afraid you have no share in its happiness. That is what I think a colleague meant who has been a Superior in the Society for many years and esteems you as much as ever, when he said, “Gentlemen, why has nobody got the gumption to say that in what he says, in the provocative way he says it, in the freelance way he crashes around inside the Society, Bishop Williamson is a liberal ?  Why indeed ?

In your commentaries on the talks going on between the Society and the Curia you give the impression that the worst thing you can imagine is a re-union, a Catholic return to normal. When I read that, when cradle Catholics read that, we just do not understand. When it comes to living our religion, there is nothing we wish for more than to be able to live undisturbed like Catholics, and nothing makes us suffer so much as finding ourselves in a situation where our conscience, as enlightened by the centuries-old Magisterium, makes that impossible. Your very logic with regard to Rome is false, a vicious circle – “Because they are modernists, we cannot and may not talk with them.” Yet faith comes from hearing. Then can the Pope and the Curia never become Catholic, because nobody talks to them ?  What is the point of our praying and going on mission ?  Quite independently of your revolutionary attitude whereby, just because you are a bishop, you know it all, both what is Catholic and what is not, and how the Society should behave towards Rome, and forget the Superior General. Anyone would think the world turns

around you. As I said, maybe the Pope was referring to this unbending narrow-mindedness. For indeed the relation to reality alone makes something true, and not because one wants it to be true. I do not think one can be Catholic if one does not grasp with all one’s senses what that means. This grasp you obviously do not have. I repeat, your sermons against love in Zaitzkofen and St Nicolas de Chardonnet are legendary. The verdict is pronounced in Goethe’s “Faust, Part One”: “Unless you feel it, you will not get it.”

Our venerable Founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, fully embodied this Catholic way of being. How he would let loose, many an evening, against Cardinal Ratzinger !  Only to admit ruefully on the following morning that he had exaggerated, and then he would praise the Cardinal’s piety. But when did you yourself once admit that you were wrong ?  The Curia pushed its humiliating of the Archbishop beyond all limits, but he remained Catholic. That is what we hoped for from you.

The Society is cast for the role of an outsider. That tempts us to grant a measure of sympathy to any other outsiders. I consider this is a trap. We are not truly outsiders. There are many others, romping around the Internet, who are truly outsiders. Ever since your interview of November 1, 2008, on Swedish TV, I have had plenty of opportunity whether I wanted to or not, to confront Holocaust-deniers, or “Revisionists” as you call them. Goodness gracious, what miserable minds !  Precisely, not Catholic. When I think of the court case of Horst Mahler, supposedly converting because of you… That is pure Hegelianism, but certainly not Catholic. And then all the crazy ideas of your supposed friends, Butz, Faurisson and so on. Men neither nice nor Catholic. Be it Neo-nazism, “Third Position”, Antisemitism, or any kind of extremism, one has the impression that it is all about finding excuses to avoid having to hold down a regular job. When it comes to slandering, I repeat, they are fast on the uptake, as happens on the Internet too. Unfortunately you were not able to resist the temptation to join in. Morally speaking that has always been sinful. One of the people slandered has, to my way of thinking, neatly summed up what kind of people are behind the slandering : “Uneducated, unbalanced, sexually frustrated, male losers.” The one constant feature in the lives of such men is often their extremism. Yesterday they were tough British Nationalists opposed to North Irish Catholics, today they belong to the “Third Position”, tomorrow they will probably be followers of Islam. The solidarity between Nazis and Islamists became clear at the Holocaust-denying Conference in Teheran, and you too never tire of declaring that Western society, our own civilization, no longer deserves to exist. I find all that repulsive, but hardly surprising. Some time ago Hitler declared that National Socialism could not be understood without Wagner and Nietsche. But when it comes down to presenting such nonsense as though it were a religious duty to do so, then I step into the lists for the greater glory of God. I cannot and will not let the name of God be misused for such weak-mindedness. I have already written to you once that I certainly did not become a priest in order to preach hatred of Jews. Nor did I enter the Society to canonize Hitler. I am horrified to see you spreading around videos which justify the mass-murder by Hitler. And now you set up to be defending your honor ?  Just what honor ?  The honor of trampling on the historical truth ? Your Excellency, kindly defend the honor of the Society, the honor of Our Lord !

I admit that in the past we have been too negligent in this respect. We kept quiet when we should have spoken out, we looked away, we practised a false tolerance. We should have contradicted you much sooner. We might have brought you to think again at a moment when you could still turn back. The situation with the supposed “excommunications”, each day’s worries, our concern with the problems in the Church and our respect for your rank all distracted us from recognizing and correcting our own weaknesses and shortcomings. In 2009 we were punished for it. Instead of a triumph after the lifting of the excommunications we were humbled and pilloried. I am not complaining: those whom God loves, he chastises. But I hope that we are learning from our mistakes. There can be no more false tolerance. We are no longer looking away. We are speaking up. We are no longer letting political sectarians enter the Society as parasites to heat up their little brew on our stove, on the grounds that they are not allowed to do it anywhere else. You cannot really be claiming that the Society and the General Superior must share and promote your Nazi ideas !

The way to salvation is the truth. The Church was always generous in this respect, demanding the acceptance only of defined dogma. The Church leaves room for freedom. You are not so generous. You turn everything into a question of absolute truth. Well then, you are being measured by your own standard. You will not get around having to accept the truth as it really is, and you will have to take leave of your own fabricated version It is a difficult path to tread, because it leads to hurtful admissions, to turning off the path so far trodden, to a new beginning, involving the closing down of a previous life. As I sit here I pray and hope that you will nevertheless make the effort, and I promise you to help you on your way, but I cannot help sensing that, indignantly refusing to do so, you will distrust me, consider I am stupid or wicked or both, and not be able to see how far you have distanced yourself from what you are always invoking: the truth.

I am not here making myself out to be higher than you. I do not want to judge, I want to save. The way you have developed causes me endless grief. On reading some novels one constantly wants to get involved in the story oneself, to shake up the leading character and cry out to him to wake up before it is too late !  He does not do so, and the tragedy plays itself out. Radetzky March by Joseph Roth is one such novel, centering on the fall of the Austrian monarchy. The hero is a tragic figure so charismatic, intelligent and attractive that despite all his negative qualities one cannot help falling under his spell, so that one is constantly crying out to him to wake up. But he never does, and so the novel ends in catastrophe.

We have flown over Beijing and just passed Ulan Bator, so now we fly the length of Novosibirsk. The sun is setting to the west, it is a beautiful evening. I think back to our faithful in Japan and Korea, how their souls are thirsting for truth. And Ernst Hello comes into my mind : “There is only one tragedy, and that is that we are not saints.” Yet there you go, wanting us to talk about the length of chimneys in concentration camps. Goodness gracious !  And I am reminded of war rhetoric. And of how in the courtyard of Econe, after the Episcopal Consecrations, when journalists asked what should be done with enemies of the Church, you made clear gestures in front of the cameras filming to show that a machine-gun was the answer. Perhaps Cardinal Ratzinger as he then was also saw that. I do not know. But I do remember that on the way home a colleague expressed his concern about the future Bishop Williamson.

He did not turn out well. The damage you have done to the Society and to the entire Church with your false political ideas is immense. However I am personally convinced that graver than all your political theories is your un-catholic pessimism, your defeatism in face of the crisis of the Faith and the collapse of Church life. A colleague in the USA summed up your “theology” as follows: Bishop Williamson says, “Grace builds on nature (that is perfectly Catholic). Now the nature of modern man is completely ruined and corrupted. So forget the supernatural and firstly restore nature.” I am under the impression that your pessimism in religion and your “waiting for Godot” attitude in politics stem from this under-estimation of the supernatural. Your Excellency, allow me to remind you that grace exercises a function of healing nature. It is a dangerous temptation in the face of the present crisis to seek after untried natural solutions, and to think that the world can be overcome by worldly means. Faith alone conquers the world, says the Apostle, and for Pius X lack of faith and ignorance are the problem of modern times, not the Jews !  That is what was so fascinating in Archbishop Lefebvre: he believed in love, and believed that the tried and true means of grace are sufficient to spread the Kingdom of Christ.

All the above and much more as well came into my mind as I read your latest forecast of war. Maybe we should still “let the sparrows chirp”, as Don Bosco said, and concern ourselves with Christ and his Church, rather than busy ourselves with financial markets and chemical gas compounds. Do you not agree ?

That is why I am writing to you. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”

God bless !  And Happy New Year !

Yours in Our Lord,

Fr. Niklaus Pfluger.

Post-scriptum 1  --  text from a former English-speaking pupil of Bishop Williamson.

What you wrote reminded me of your analysis of BW as a follower of Nietzsche. In my paper on BW I drew parallels between BW and Evola. I just read that Evola was heavily influenced by Nietzsche, which is very interesting. At the heart of this is a non-Christian answer to evils of modernity. Do you know a particular work of Nietzsche that resembles BW?

As for BW’s Catholicism, I have often been tempted to say what you have. But I always limited myself to his written works. The problem with analyzing BW’s writings is that he is not a Thomist and does not use his writings to define his thought. BW uses language in a very post-modern fashion. He uses words to move the listener to a desired action as opposed to defining his ideology. This makes it very difficult to sit down and say “BW believes this or that” because BW seldom succinctly tells you his ultimate ideology. 

One easy test that can be applied to BW is to sit down with his seminary letters on one hand, and on the other hand pick any book written by Archbishop Lefebvre. The Archbishop will have constant references to “Our Lord Jesus Christ.” BW will have few, if any. This might sound trite, but I think this is a sign of a real problem. Without judging the BW’s internal forum, there is an appearance that he uses religion as a political tool. His recent and persistent actions support this conclusion.

Post-scriptum 2  --  text from a German town Mayor.

Allow me to make reference to Bishop Williamson. I know that it is not my business to judge. Take whatever I say as merely one opinion amongst many others :  the damage that Bishop Williamson has done to the Society of St Pius X, to the Church and to the Pope is enormous. Despite his great merits in the service of Tradition, to me personally it seems that to keep him in the Society is no longer to be endured. Even if on the Superior General’s orders Bishop Williamson lets go his extreme-right lawyer, having chosen him in the first place shows what he really thinks. If after the whole Swedish TV disaster his attitude is still to choose such a lawyer, his attitude is not going to change on the orders of the Superior General. On the contrary, he resembles somebody asleep who would appear to wake up, but whose inner attitude remains just as dangerous for Tradition as it was before. In weighing up the decision, can all his service to Tradition in the past be seen as merits that he could still gain for Tradition in the future ?  I would say, absolutely not. What service can Bishop Williamson still render Tradition ?  Where can he still be employed, and at what risk ?  What must happen first ?  He is unwelcome anywhere. With this inner attitude of the extreme right I do not think he can be tolerated inside the Society. The choice of an extreme right lawyer was no accident. Bishop Williamson is an intelligent man, and knew exactly what he was doing. The longer he is kept within the Society, the more he will pull the whole of Tradition over into the extreme right camp. Such a prospect is most painful for me when I consider the sacrifices made by middle-class families that want nothing to do with right-wing extremism, far from it !  Are you not ostracized enough as it is because of your Traditional way of thinking ?  You yourself say that families are often at the limit of what they can do. I am enclosing a local newspaper report and I can assure you that as town Mayor I am exposed to attack as much as ever. After this report I can count on having t undertake quite unnecessary defensive action. That Society Headquarters  have repudiated Holocaust-denial is no more being reported in the media. I ask Headquarters to consider how much longer the faithful precisely in Germany can go on being associated with the extreme-right attitude of Bishop Williamson. What is the reason why Bishop Williamson is being kept on regardless?

End quote from Fr. Niklaus Phluger, "First Assistant" to Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) Superior General Bernard Fellay.  

___________________________

Christians Are Urged by the Gospel to Unmask Idols!

                   The Prophet Nathan confronts King David of his sin of murder and adultery

Whether we like to admit it or not, we worship many idols on a daily basis, never recognizing nor acknowledging that we are sinning against God. These idols take many forms, including money, fame, power, as well as abiding in societal, political and yes, even religious realms. Some even make their personal relations with their spouses and their children more important than God and abiding in His will.

Many will look lightly upon this message, some going as far as to state that where sin abounds in abundance, God's grace is greater. Here is where Christians (true believers and followers of Jesus Christ) have to make a major decision: "Come out of her, my people, as we are urged by Christ in Revelation 18:4.

More importantly, the church has failed one of its many tasks, that of unmasking these idols, especially in the political arena. Rather than exposing the evils of today's political leaders, many Christians have become involved with their political machinations. Way too many Christian leaders believe they can solve today's problems by becoming active in politics. Unlike the prophet Nathan, who confronted King David for stealing Uriah's wife. The courage the prophet Nathan displayed could have cost him his life, for daring to accuse King David of the sin of adultery and murder. Unlike Nathan, today's Christian leaders bow before today's political leaders solely to taste a little bit of their power.

In the book, Idols For Destruction, author Herbert Schlossberg, remind us that it is the duty of believers to be active in the unmasking of these idols:

"One major function of the Church is to unmask the idols and expose them for what they are. There is no basis for this to be done except the authority of the biblical witness. Unmasking the idols destroys their effectiveness, stripping from them the false teachers their guise as angels of light. As Gabriel Vahanian puts it. Christian faith can be true to itself only if it is iconoclastic. If it is to have any effectiveness, it must be actively engaged in breaking the idols.

We have reached a point in history in which it is essential to pay closer heed to the four Gospel and associated portions of the New Testament. There "the world" is identified as the system of political cultural, and religious leadership that arrayed itself against God and refused to listen to the prophetic word that exposed its wrongdoings. It is that world which Jesus said "hates me because I testify of it that its works are evil, (John 7:7)." The leadership of the early church recognized that the disciples were not different in that respect from their Lord. "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God, (James 4:4)." The Pauline summary for living an evil life was "Following the course this world, (Ephesians 2:2).' A Polish bishop, afterwards known as Pope John Paul 11, speaking in the United States in 1976, put it this way: " We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel."

Even when the lines are not drawn so clearly between the gospel and an idolatrous environment,  an inevitable tension exists between Christian faith and society. Notwithstanding the uncritical acclaim sometimes accorded to Europe in the thirteenth century or New England in the seventeenth, it is questionable whether Christendom - the identity of the kingdom of God with any society - has ever existed. As long as the biblical world view is not identical with any other religious, cultural, or political system, attempts to relax the tension between them, to accommodate the church to the 'best" of the surrounding society, surrenders the gospel to what will debase it. Theologies of peace that avoid conflict at any cost produce a tame church without offense, without effectiveness.

Such toothless theologies flourish when people do not take the New Testament seriously enough. Those documents appear dated because they cannot be reconciled with the prevailing wisdom. But it is easy to forget that they were always "dated" and for the same reason. The pathologies that required biblical text to be written on the economic, social, familial, sexual, and legal aspects of life have always been there.  Those texts cannot in fact become out-of-date because they rest on truths that come from outside of time and stand in judgment of all societies that contravene them.

Schlossberg  adds that "believers in Christ were urged to live as pilgrims, strangers, and exiles in the midst of an evil society, (1 Peter 2:11)." He concluded this particular thought by mentioning what many in the church feel is near and close,  Armageddon!

"In the apocalyptic vision, it is the kings of the earth that represents the ultimate evil, (Revelation 18:9), and so it may be with authorities with which we have to deal. There is no official edict that cannot be abrogated by the refusal of people to obey it. This choice was faced by and stated starkly by the early leaders of the church: We must obey God rather than men, (Acts 5:29)."

What's it  gonna be Christian? Are you going to join a political party in an attempt to change it from within? More importantly, are you prepared to examine how many idols you currently bow before, to see if you are truly walking with Christ? Or will you continue to bow before the myriad of idols destined for destruction?

For more information about the author and his books, please click on Joe Ortiz.