A Word of Encouragement
I write this word of encouragement to those whose ears are fit to hear. You others, you have my respect, but also my pity.
Myself, my faith that Mr. Trump will serve his second term, to which he was lawfully elected by a landslide, is unaltered by recent events.
Things look dark. We live in an Empire of Lies, where all the publicly controlled information has been corrupted to the point where nothing can be trusted, not even basic information. The deception is at times blatant and at times subtle. At times, it is so subtle that even a trained skeptic on his guard can be deceived, and unwittingly adopt the assumptions language of the enemy, and spread his ideas.
In the absence of trustworthy facts, it is rational to rely on assumptions issuing from eternal truths.
A man trapped in a maze of mirrors must close his eyes and proceed by touch, because the hand is harder to deceive than the eye.
And, as that one book of paramount common sense, which has guided the Western World for generations to all her successes, the Bible, tells us, the wise walk not by sight, but by faith.
Legally, Mr. Trump appears to have no further options, no further avenues to redress the injustice done to his voters, who were defrauded in the greatest and most blatant fake election in world history.
Nonetheless, this appearance is no more to be trusted than the appearances that Mr. Trump was a Russian spy, or that he was impeached for abuse of power, or any of the other myriad lies and libels which have hounded his political career since he first announced his candidacy.
There were several venues which could have examined and publicized and rectified such fraud: an independent judiciary, culminating the Supreme Court; local election officials, state officers, governors; state legislatures; police agencies, including the Department of Justice and the FBI; the Electoral College itself; the Congress; the Vice President, in his office as president of the Senate.
All these venues have failed, and failed outrageously.
All have betrayed the Constitution, the Union, and the dreams of this nation.
The Press, our Fourth Estate, betrayed its duty as public watchdog safeguarding our Lady Liberty. Not only did that dog not bark, but instead bears fangs to rip out the throat of Liberty. More blame falls on them than on any other.
Allow me to state publicly the source of my confidence in triumph, despite all appearances of desolation and defeat.
As a Christian, despite the recited prayers and written scriptures, clouded minds like my own tend to forget that God desires no man’s death.
Heaven desires salvation even for those destined to damnation.
All these evil men, God wishes to save. These backstabbers, traitors, cowards, liars, deep-staters and swamp creatures, plutocrats and anarchists, rioters, looters, lowly criminals, power-mad politicians, smooth-faced sons of the Father of Lies, all of them.
They are sunk in the darkness, murk, and sticky swamp-water of sin, as are we all. They deserve hellfire, as do all Sons of Adam.
Christ loves them, as improbable as this seems.
These dark days are meant to bring all this treason to light, and all frauds to stand naked.
Yes, even the judges and politicians and public servants whom Trump’s faithful aid and support alone elevated to office, who now will not lift a hand, save to plunge a dirk in the spine. The ungrateful friend is the lowest and most loathsome of created beings. Even such as they, the love of heaven seeks to save.
I am a deeply cynical and skeptical man, a cautious and logical thinker, not easily fooled, a newspaperman, a lawyer, and someone who has seen the darker side of life that few people, aside from police walking the beat, doctors in emergency rooms, and priests in the confessional box, have seen.
But even I was shocked at the level and the depth of the rot brought out by the desperate attempts of all the worldly powers to defeat the patriots backing Trump, to ruin our nation, and to quench forever the lamps of Western Civilization.
At first, I thought this was just worldly greed or powerlust or jealousy. But as events unfolded, and as the worldly powers became more and more unhinged, their words more hysterical, their crimes more obvious and shameless, their lust of violence more unfettered, I came to believe worldly causes could not explain what I was seeing.
The derangement of the enemy, their wild words and crazed violence, their meaningless actions, have a supernatural cause. No rational and no worldly cause explains such behavior.
The worldly appearances, like shadows in a mirror, were merely reflections of a deeper and fuller reality. I realized that the worldly struggle was, as any well-meaning Christian could have told me long ago, the image cast into our realm of a spiritual war invisible to us, where the myriad warrior angels streaming from the brilliant battlements of heaven engage the winged demons boiling out of the smoking pits of hell. The war rages all around us. That it is in the unseen realm is perhaps a mercy to us: the sight would blast mortal eyes. But the same war rages in the heart and soul of every Son of Adam who walks the earth.
These dark days, these treasons, these lies, all had to be brought into the light. There are men I would have thought to be friends and staunch allies of patriotism, of the Constitution, of the cause of freedom, who strangled their own ideals, and stabbed friends and allies in the back, in a fashion none could have foreseen nor expected.
This is bigger than Trump, bigger than any political party. It is bigger than the nation, bigger than the cause of liberty or law or Western Civilization itself. What happens in this nation over the next month will influence and establish the world over the next several generations. This is a war for the soul of the world.
Without these days of darkness, without the desperation and the appearance of victory for the worldly powers, they would never have shown themselves, never have flown their true colors, never have cast public votes for treason.
The penalty for treason is the only criminal penalty written in the Constitution. It is death.
They have written out their death warrants with their own hands.
They have damned themselves by failing to keep faith with nation, law, sworn duty, patriotic love, personal honor, alliance, friendship, humanity. They have failed to keep faith with God.
It is my belief that God permits these dark days, and offers the worldly powers the appearance of victory, out of an abundance of mercy no human heart understands.
A man who signs of his own death warrant has a moment when he stands and looks with horror and regret at what he is doing, and what he has done. He sees his own name, written in his own hand, on the instrument that condemns him to mortal death and perhaps to eternal death.
It is an opportunity to step back. Before he damns himself, while he is still alive, he can step back, and perhaps blot out the name written there.
In the meanwhile, we must suffer all the libels, slanders, and worldly contempt, and all the fear and terror which the loss of our way of life, our liberty, and civilization itself should and do entail. We are right to be fearful: we face a fearsome foe. We are right to be angry: our anger is righteous.
But we are wrong to lack faith in God.
Imagine, if you will, that you and I were standing next to Mary Magdalen in the crowd watching the crucifixion of Christ.
Earlier, we had been among the crowd, and when we heard that our beloved friend and master, Jesus son of Joseph, the great prophet, was being taken before Herod, we thought that he might have the absurd and obviously false charges against him dropped. Jesus had done no wrong: he healed the leper and granted sight to the blind. Surely someone would vindicate him! No one was more innocent! But, no, then we heard that Herod sent him back to Pontius Pilate.
So perhaps I said to you that, as a lawyer, I knew the Roman law was harsh but fair, and that the Roman Procurator surely would not want his record marred by such a clear injustice. Pilate would vindicate him. And then you said to me that you had no trust in Roman law, but the custom of the feast was to let the crowd call the name of a prisoner to be pardoned; and you said the crowd was the same folk who, a week before, had been calling out Hosannas to welcome him, and laying palm branches in his path. The people would vindicate him. And Mary Magdalen perhaps tells she heard from a servant that the wife of Pontius Pilate told him of her dream, warning him not to meddle with that just man. Surely a man will listen to his wife!
But nothing came to anything. Our friend and master is nailed to a cross and hung naked in the midday heat, with flies landing on his bloody face.
Mary, out of whom the master cast seven devils, then says a miracle will save him. You and I would like to believe that, but hope is dead. The disciples have not organized a militia, and will not rush up Golgotha. The disciples fled. No last-minute pardon is coming from the Roman Prefect.
But then the crowd starts mocking Jesus, asking him to call on Elijah to descend from heaven and save him, and pull Jesus down off the cross, if he is the messiah in truth. Mary Magdalene suddenly has a weird and wild look of hope on her face! “Elijah will come!”
You and I roll our eyes. We remember that, before the Master cured her, she was possessed, and saw things that were not there.
But then the sun goes dark. It is midnight at midday. From the Temple comes the sound of wailing, of surprise. Some unseen hand has torn the veil in the Holy of Holies.
Mary sinks grips your elbow. Elijah is coming! The miracle is happening! It is here!
She sinks to her knees in fervid prayer. You and I look up, uncertain. Will Christ be lifted down from the cross?
But, no. He croaks, “It is finished.”
His mother is allowed to hold his dead body in her arms. The corpse-handlers cover his face, but his mother keeps pushing the burial cloth aside to look at Christ’s bruised and stained features one last time.
Surely heaven will hear her prayers. If Lazarus was raised from the day by prayer, surely Christ can be!
But then nothing. No miracle. He saved others. He could not save himself. The tears of his virgin mother avail nothing. Eventually she ceases to weep.
Slaves wrap up the body and cart it away. The body has not even yet been properly prepared for burial, because by now it is sundown.
In the hours before Nicodemus volunteered to inter the corpse in a dignified fashion in the tomb, as far as you and I know, the body is going to be dumped in a common grave somewhere, because that is the fate of robbers and traitors who die by crucifixion.
Had you and I been there, at that time, there would have been no evidence on Saturday that the whole thing was over.
We thought the messiah would drive out the Roman. We thought his outrageous promises of his mounting the Throne of David, and his kingdom lasting forever, would be kept. We saw him cure the sick and restore the insane and cast out devils.
On Holy Saturday, you and I would have no idea that Easter Sunday was coming.
To us, it would be the day of preparation before a feast day, just like last year and the year before. You and I would not know this day to be the central point in human history, unless, perhaps, you had paid attention to the cryptic words Christ spoke, and understood their spirit.
Imagine, if you will, that you and I were standing next to Mary Magdalen after the Crucifixion. To us, at that moment, all the evidence was in. The thing was done. All was over. All dreams were dead. All hope was fled.
But one of the three of us would see him tomorrow, risen. The other two would not, at first, have believed her.
In this hour, to us, for America and for Christendom and for the World, is like that Holy Saturday. All the promises have come to naught.
In this hour, there is no worldly sign of hope.
Logically, that means either that there is no hope, or it means worldly signs are not trustworthy. Take your pick.
Do not mistake the point of my story. I am not saying any mortal man is a messiah or anything like that.
I am saying the opposite. Place no faith in princes, for they will fail you. Put no faith in institutions, laws, promises uttered by any Son of Adam. No mortal is the messiah. Mortals cannot save.
But neither place your faith in what the powers of the world tell you, or what the uncertain evidences of the senses seem to suggest.
I am reluctant to say it, for I am eager for bloodshed, but let us likewise place no faith in the courage and zeal of patriots eager for rebellion to set right by force of arms these grave injustices.
Let us be still and wait upon the Lord.
Our weapons are meant to defend the innocent when the police come to the door at midnight without a warrant.
One cannot rightly use arms except against the armed; one uses the law against the unlawful. Your prayer is a more powerful weapon, and will do more good.
There will be no armed rebellion to right this injustice, if I read the signs of the times aright. Swords will not be necessary. Heaven will fight for us.
And the word of heaven is sharper than any two edged sword.
Heaven is not done with the West, nor, despite the myriad sins of the United States, will God smite this nation as he deserves.
Myself, I base this hope on the fervor and number of the faithful, and on the signs that a great awakening in at hand.
And Trump may himself no longer believe he will serve out the second term he lawfully won by a landslide. What he believes or does not believe is a small matter.
Within a month, we will all see if these bold words of mine are the folly they seem to be.
If I am wrong, I am a fool, and I have fooled others. But I will not be any more or less unhappy in that hour than wiser souls now weeping and gnashing their teeth. But if I am right, our enemies will be repenting and lamenting in jail, or slain at each other’s hands.
Expect darker days ahead, to be sure.
The worldly powers will now exult themselves, thinking their victory inevitable and their power secure. Voices will be silenced, violence unleashed, wickedness revealed.
As their schemes come unraveled, there will be violence. If the past is any judge, most of the violence will be against the wicked and between them. The Devil always destroys his weapons when they fail him.
But Mr. Trump will serve his second term.
He won the election, and he won it by a landslide. We all know it. The enemy knows it. All of them know.
Only the poor fools who still have faith in faithless liars, betrayed by those they trust the most, swim in ignorance. Blame them not. They know not what they do.
Friends and allies flee. Those who swore are forsworn. Let them. This is done to make clear that no human aid is needed.
Let us pray that those who know will repent, and those who do not know will come to know.
What power do worldly men have to stop, or silence, or hinder prayer? What power do they have to stop or silence or hinder the Almighty?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
