If I am in it [grace], may God keep me in it, and if I am not, may it be God’s will to put me in it.
Joan of Arc, [at her trial]
Men do not share the same spiritual rank. There are the elect ones … who are granted revelation, and then there is the great mass of mortals who would flounder about in eternal darkness if God did not from time to time set astir the ‘highest virtues’ in some individuals who become capable of steering their fellow men in the right direction.
Eric Voegelin [1]
There have been many pretenders in history, many actors who rule through the mask of personality. These know how to imitate the good, the truthful and the just; yet they are empty shells seeking compensation through a mere increase of political power. They always strive to break down the checks and balances around them. By nature, these pretenders hate those who seek “justice and all things honorable … for their own sake.”[2]
The martyr of the Roman Republic, Marcus Cicero, wrote: “if it be true that virtue is sought for the sake of other benefits and not for its own sake, there will be only one virtue, which will most properly be called vice.” Cicero added that “all good men love fairness in itself and Justice in itself, and it is unnatural for a good man to make such a mistake as to love what does not deserve love for itself alone.”[3]
What we need more of in the world is goodness, justice, and honesty. What kind of man or woman, or what kind of ruler, cultivates Justice for its own sake? Who is kind or generous to others, without reward? “It cannot be doubted,” wrote Cicero, “that he who is called generous or kind answers the call of duty, not of gain.”[4]
In a wicked world, however, filled with the cynicism of those who merely ape goodness, everything partakes of a general corruption. In the midst of this swamp, who dares to step forward and say the truth, or do the right thing? Eric Voegelin wrote about an “elect” in history, who somehow serve justice. These are frail human beings, to be sure; yet Providence operates through them – mysteriously, inexplicably, and tragically.
“The fate of the elect,” noted Voegelin, “is miserable. They are slandered, exiled, killed, and punished as subversives. Even when their message becomes socially effective, it promptly declines into superstition as the historical-human form of revelation comes to be mistaken for its essence, and fanatical literalists obscure the function of its message….”[5]
Such was the history of the French saint, Joan of Arc. She was a good-hearted peasant who heard the voice of God, obeyed that voice, and saved her country. For that obedience she was burned alive as a heretic by Catholic clergyman in the pay of her country’s enemies. Without her intervention, France would not exist today. It would have become part of England; but Joan of Arc frightened the invading English soldiery. According to Henry Hallam. Many English soldiers “hung back in their own country, or deserted from the army, through fear of the incantations by which alone men always make sure of Providence for an ally….” Suffering one defeat after another at Joan’s hand, the superstitious English “at once ascribed [their defeats] to infernal enemies; and such bigotry may be pleaded as an excuse, though a very miserable one, for the detestable murder of this heroine.”[6]
Joan’s story is hardly believable. It is a story attested to by dozens of sworn witnesses. She was an illiterate teenager of peasant stock who went to the King of France with a message from God. The King was to give her command of an army to break the back of the invading English. And this is exactly what she did.
The skeptical David Hume, who never read the witness testimonies described Joan’s career as “one of the most singular revolutions, that is to be met with in history.”[7] In order to explain away Joan’s success, Hume erroneously described her as “a country girl of twenty-seven years of age … who was a servant in a small inn, and who in that station had been accustomed to tend the horses of the guests, to ride them without a saddle to the watering place, and to perform other offices … which commonly fall to the share of the men servants.”[8]
Hume was mistaken, however. Joan was not 27, but 17; and she did not work at an Inn. She was a teenager who worked on her parents’ farm. Sworn testimonies about Joan’s life were sealed in French archives, unknown to Hume and the “enlightened” eighteenth century. Not ready to let ignorance stop him, Hume preferred to believe that she “mistook the impulses of passion for heavenly inspirations … to expel the foreign invaders. An uncommon intrepidity of temper made her overlook the dangers, which might attend her in such a path….”[9]
According to Hume, the Middle Ages were sunk in gross superstition and ignorance. The people of that time believed in fantastical things, spiritual things. Joan of Arc may have heard voices, but they were not of God. Was Hume correct?
In military terms, Joan of Arc’s victories over the English were more than a David versus Goliath story. To defeat the English, she had to revive a France that was in complete collapse. In fact, the British military historian J.F.C. Fuller described King Charles VII of France as “a weak king and a degenerate” who was “unable to count upon the support of anyone except his Armagnac captains, who were little better than brigand chiefs….”[10] When he had the money for mercenaries, Charles used Scottish adventurers who, with his Armagnac captains, were wiped out by the English and the Burgundians on 31 July 1423 at the Battle of Cravant. The following year, noted Fuller, another of Charles’s armies was destroyed by the Duke of Bedford, who “inflicted a terrible defeat, as disastrous as Agincourt” (the latter battle famously recounted in Shakespeare’s play, Henry V).[11]
Through a political intrigue of the Duke of Brittany, King Charles lost two of his “favorites” to assassination and, to the bargain, was made into a fool. This weakened Charles further, leaving him in an untenable political position. The national party of France was paralyzed by civil war. In consequence of this weakness the English (with the approval of their Burgundian allies) decided to besiege Orleans, one of the most populous fortified cities in France. If the city fell, the last vestiges of Charles’s kingdom would have stood little chance of surviving. The English built seven forts around Orleans to starve the population. By February 1429 the city was running out of food.
This is the background to Joan’s story. The City of Orleans, at this time, became a symbol of French resistance. Every attempt to relieve the city had failed. The English seemed invincible. They had destroyed the chivalry of France. They had even destroyed the brigands and the mercenaries sent against them. The French aristocracy had failed. The monarchy had failed. Then came this seventeen-year-old girl, Joan of Arc.
J.F.C Fuller wrote, “The story of Joan of Arc is one of the most extraordinary in all history and one of the best documented. Though she did not know her own age, the probability is that she was born early in 1412 at Domrémy in the duchy of Bar on the border of Lorraine which in 1429 was commanded by Robert of Baudricourt. Her parents were peasant folk.”[12]
When Joan was thirteen years of age she began to hear voices “unheard by others.” These were accompanied by “a cloud of brilliant light.” Joan was instructed by the voices that she would go to Baudricourt and he “would provide her with the means to travel to the king’s court at Chinon. She was to inform Charles that she had been sent by God to raise the siege of Orleans and to lead him to Rheims to be consecrated king of France.”[13]
During her retrial by the Church, held in Domrémy, Joan’s Godfather, Jean Moreau, testified that Joan’s father was named Jean, and her mother was Isabelle. They were farmers. Joan had been baptized in the Saint Remy Church. They were good and pious people. According to Moreau, Joan “was well and properly brought up in the faith and in sound morals, and she was such a good girl that almost everyone in Domrémy loved her. And Joan knew her Credo, her Pater noster and the Ave Maria the way little girls of her age do.” Joan’s parents were “not very rich.” She was accomplished at sewing and spinning. She occasionally plowed and watched cattle. She went to mass and confession. Moreau made mention of a strange tree in the village, called “the Ladies’ Tree,” where fairies used to be seen. “But people do say that since they read the Gospel of Saint John … they do not come anymore.” Moreau denied that Joan ever went there alone.[14]
Joan’s godmothers gave similar testimony. They all denied that Joan had anything to do with the “Ladies’ Tree,” except that she, like all the girls and young men of the village would “go under the tree … on Laetare Jerusalem Sunday, which is called Fountains Sunday….”[15] The local priests spoke well of Joan. Her childhood friends admitted that they sometimes teased her on account of her piety. One of Joan’s friends admitted to crying bitterly at her departure from Domrémy: “I loved her very dearly, you see, because she was so kind, and I was her friend….”[16]
The testimony of Michel Lebuin is intriguing. He was about Joan’s age. He said, “All I know is that once Joan told me herself, on the eve of Saint John Baptist, that there was a maid between Coussey and Vaucouleurs who would have the King of France anointed within a year. And the very next year the King was anointed. I do not know anything else.”[17]
Durand Laxart was Joan’s “uncle” through her mother’s cousin Jeanne. He was the man who took Joan to Robert de Baudricourt, the commander of Vaucouleurs. He described Joan as everyone else did; as pious and good-natured. She told Laxart, “Was it not said that France would be ruined through a woman, and afterward restored by a virgin?” It was Laxart who conveyed her request of an escort “to the place where my lord the Dauphin was. This Robert told me several times to give her a good slapping and take her back to her father….”[18]
Here is the answer one would expect from a no-nonsense military man. But Joan was not dissuaded, according to Laxart. She went to Lord Charles, Duke of Lorraine. Somehow she had gotten a safe-conduct pass to see him. The Duke gave her four francs with which to buy “men’s clothing, breeches, gaiters, and all that she needed.” Her uncle and another man bought her a horse for twelve francs out of their own pockets.[19]
What happened next in the story is very damning to Hume’s skepticism. Returning to Vaucouleurs, Joan somehow convinced Robert de Boudricourt to provide her with an escort to Charles. From there she rode into history and changed the future. Hume wrote: “It is the business of history to distinguish between the miraculous and the marvellous; to reject the first in all narrations merely profane and human; to doubt the second; and when obliged by unquestionable testimony, as in the present case, to admit of something extraordinary, to receive as little of it as is consistent with the known facts and circumstances.” [20]
This is the same David Hume whose writings caused “the scales to fall” from Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian eyes; and whose writings influenced Darwin’s theory of evolution, who woke pedants from “dogmatic slumbers,” and more. Hume explained Joan of Arc as follows: “It is pretended that Joan, immediately on her admission, knew the king, though she had never seen his face before, and though he purposely kept himself in the crowd of courtiers, and had laid aside everything in his dress and apparel which might distinguish him: That she offered him, in the name of the supreme Creator, to raise the siege of Orleans, and conduct him to Rheims to be there crowned and anointed; and on his expressing doubts of her mission, revealed to him, before some sworn confidents, a secret, which was unknown to all the world beside himself, and which nothing but a heavenly inspiration could have discovered to her: And that she demanded, as the instrument of her future victories, a particular sword, which was kept in the church of St. Catherine of Fierbois, and which, though she had never seen it, she described by all its marks, and by the place in which it had long lain neglected. This is certain, that all these miraculous stories were spread abroad, in order to captivate the vulgar.”[21]
Hume would have us believe that Joan was a pretender. The whole episode was a fraud. But the testimonies at Joan’s vindication say that she predicted her future actions and successes in advance. She said she would go to the King. She said she would relieve the siege of Orleans. She said she would see the King crowned at Rheims. These testimonies were given under oath by people who believed their souls would be damned if they lied.
This brings us to the testimony of Jean de Novelonpont, one of Robert Baudricourt’s soldiers, who spoke of his first encounter with Joan at Vaucouleurs. He said she was wearing a red bodice and skirt. The clothing, he added, was that of a poor person. Having heard what she was attempting to do, he said to her, “What are you doing here, my dear? Is it not fated that the King shall be driven from his kingdom, and that we shall all turn English?”
Joan answered him, “I have come here to the royal chamber to speak to Robert de Baudricourt, to ask him to escort me, or to have me escorted, to the King. But he pays no attention to me, or to what I say. But all the same, before mid-Lent I must be with the King, even if I have to wear my legs down to the knees. For there is no one on earth, be he king, or duke, or the King of Scotland’s daughter, or anyone else, who can restore the kingdom of France, and he will have no help except through me, although I would much prefer to stay with my poor mother and spin, for this is not my station. But I must go, and I must do it, for my Lord wishes me to perform this deed.”[22]
De Novelonpont was immediately struck by her seriousness. He was later tasked as one of Joan’s escorts to the King. He said it was an eleven-day ride, partly through enemy country. He asked her several times whether “she was going to do what she said.” She said he should not be afraid. Since she was commanded by God to do this, all would be well. She had known about her mission for four or five years. “I was in such awe of her that I would not have dared go near her,” de Novelonpont testified. “And I tell you on my oath that I never had any desire or carnal feelings for her.” This soldier was convinced by Joan. “I had great trust in what the Maid said,” he explained, “and I was on fire with what she said, and with a love for her which was, as I believe, a divine love. I believe that she was sent by God. She never swore, she loved to hear the Mass, and crossed herself with the sign of the cross. And so we escorted her to the King….”[23]
On 23 February, 1429, toward noon, Joan arrived at Chinon. She had sent a letter ahead, announcing her arrival. King Charles could not immediately decide whether to see her. De Novelonpont said, “I know that when she arrived at Chinon there had been a discussion in the Council as to whether the King should entertain her or not.” He added that “certain of the King’s counselors said that he must put no trust whatever in Joan, and others said that since she claimed to have been sent by God and had something to say to the King, the King ought at least to hear her.”[24]
Another witness, Simon Charles, affirmed that the King had received a letter from Robert Baudricourt saying that Joan should be received by him, for she had crossed enemy territory to reach him, fording many rivers. Simon Charles said, “When the King learned she was approaching, he withdrew behind the others; Joan, however, recognized him perfectly, made him bow, and spoke to him for some minutes. And after hearing her, the King appeared to be joyous. Then, still not wanting to do anything without the advice of the churchmen, he sent Joan off to Poitiers to be examined…. When he learned that they had examined her, and was told that they had found nothing but good in her, the King had armor made for her, and she was put in command of the conduct of the war.”[25]
And now for General Fuller’s commentary on Joan’s conduct of the war: “On April 27, dressed in full armour and carrying a banner on which was blazoned ‘Jesus Maria,’ she set out for Orleans at the head of three to four thousand men and a convoy of supplies.”[26] This is not a terribly large force for storming English fortifications. Nevertheless, they had a maid in armor who was the very model of innocence. Her fame had spread throughout the country. She had addressed a letter to the King of England:
King of England, render account to the King of Heaven of your royal blood. Return the keys of all the good cities which you have seized, to the Maid. She is sent by God … and is fully prepared to make peace, if you will give her satisfaction; that is, you must render justice, and pay back all that you have taken.
Joan also addressed the English soldiers and other lords. They were warned to go home. Joan’s “voices” directed her to relieve Orleans from the north, the strongest section of the English fortifications. But the French commanders did not obey her, marching the army to the south side of the besieged city and encamping there for the night. In the morning Joan realized they had deceived her. She was angry, confronting the French commanders with their deception. Fuller recounts the following conversation between Joan and the King’s bastard cousin, the Duke of Dunois:
JOAN: Are you the Bastard of Orleans?
DUKE: Yes, and I rejoice at your arrival.
JOAN: Is it you who advised that I should come here, on this side of the river, and that I was not to go straight on to where Talbot and the other English are?
DUKE: I and the wisest among us advised that this be done, believing it to be best.
JOAN: In the name of God, the advice of the Lord is more certain and wise than yours. You thought to deceive me, but you have deceived yourselves; for I bring you the greatest help that has ever been brought to knight or city, seeing that it is the help of the King of Heaven….
Fuller then says, “Joan demanded that an attack should be made forthwith on Saint Jean le Blanc, the nearest English bastille on the south side of the river; but her companions protested….”[27] The Bastard of Orleans had assembled a flotilla along the river. They forced Joan into it, but the wind did not cooperate and they could not sail. Toward the end of the day, Joan told them the wind was about to change. Suddenly the wind changed, the sails filled, and the boats went up river. The French commanders were spooked by this, and decided to follow her next set of orders. The army circled round to relieve the city from the north, where the English were strongest. On April 29, at eight o’clock that evening, Joan led the army with her banner, riding a white horse. She entered Orleans without resistance. The English were hiding in their fortifications. They had let her through to the city. She lodged at the city treasurer’s house.
On April 30, wishing to avoid bloodshed, Joan sent a letter to the English commander, Talbot. He returned her message with an insult. She called out to one of the English units. They mocked her as a “cow girl,” saying they would burn her when they caught her. The English were making a serious tactical mistake by sticking to their fortresses. They had lost their mobility. During that day, the French mounted an attack on the weakest of the forts while Joan was sleeping. She heard the fighting and arrived in time to see the French being attacked in flank from another English fortress. In the bloody battle the English lost a key position. Orleans rang its church bells, celebrating the first French victory in a long while.
On May 5 Joan rested the army because it was Ascension Day. She fired a crossbow with a message into the English fortifications, warning them to leave the field. The English shouted, “Here comes news from that Armagnac harlot!” This reduced Joan to tears.
On May 6 the French commanders planned the battle without her. On seeing this, she admonished them, turned to her confessor and said there would be a bloody battle and that she would be wounded above the breast. And it was true. May 7 was, according to General Fuller, “the most fatal day of the war” for England. For some reason the English abandoned another of their positions, seeking the security of the strongest fort of all. The French commanders did not want to storm such a strong position. They wanted to besiege it; but Joan “would have none of this, for rightly she sensed that the psychological moment had come: enthusiasm was at its height and the populace ecstatically supported her; she was not to be gainsaid, and it was she who dominated the situation.”[28]
At seven in the morning, Joan ordered trumpets to sound the assault. The French were using scaling ladders against the English fortress. Joan was hit between the neck and shoulder with an arrow, penetrating to a depth of six inches. She pulled the arrow out and retreated to tend her wound. The French army lost heart and wanted to stop the assault. She told them to eat and rest as her wound was dressed, and she prayed for half an hour. When she returned and the assault resumed, the English lost heart entirely and began evacuating the fortress through a drawbridge. Joan saw the commander who had brought her to tears earlier and shouted, “You called me a harlot, but I have pity on your soul and the souls of your men.”[29] Immediately the draw bridge collapsed into the river. The English commander of the fort, named Glasdale, fell into the river with his men and drowned. The next day, May 8, the rest of the English army abandoned the other forts and marched away. The siege was not only lifted, but the English had been decisively defeated.
The Duke of Bedford wrote about this battle to King Henry VI sometime later: “…there fell, by the hand of God, as it seemeth, a great stroke upon your people that was assembled there [at Orleans] in great number, caused in great part … by a lack of sound faith, and unbelieving doubt that they had confronted the arm of a fiend, called the Maid; that used false enchantments and sorcery; the witch struck and discomfited … a number of your people there, but as well reduced the courage of the remnant in marvelous ways….”
Despite the alleged witchcraft of Joan, the English decided to fight a battle. According to Fuller, “The prestige of the English in the field was still so high that when, on July 19, the French caught up with Talbot, they hesitated to attack, and the Duke of Alençon asked Joan – who was not on the battlefield – what he should do. In a loud voice she answered: ‘Make use of your spurs!’ Those around her were perplexed ‘What say you?’ they asked. ‘Are we to turn our backs on the English?’ ‘No!’ Joan replied, ‘it is the English who are going to turn their backs on us. They will be unable to defend themselves, and you will have need of your good spurs to catch them up.’”[30]
It happened exactly as she predicted. The English were defeated and fled in panic. Talbot was captured. This was the Battle of Patay. Nothing could stop Joan’s Frenchmen now. Town after town fell. Joan took Rheims as she had prophesied. Charles VII was officially crowned and anointed. As Mark Twain related in an essay on Joan of Arc, “the King was grateful for once in his shabby poor life, and asked her to name her reward and have it. She asked nothing for herself, but begged that the taxes of her native village might be remitted forever.”[31] King Charles agreed to this request, noted Twain. But in 1789 King Louis XVI forgot what was owed to Joan of Arc. He began taxing Domrémy. Coincidentally, a revolution began in that very year. On 21 January 1793 Louis was beheaded by guillotine on the Place de la Révolution.
When gratitude lapses, thrones can lapse. Did these kings of France understand what they owed the Maid of Domrémy? She had, on Divine command, returned a kingdom to a king. But also, she had preserved the nation of France. She might have asked for anything: Money, land, a princely husband. But as Cicero wrote, “if it be true that virtue is sought for the sake of other benefits and not for its own sake, there will be only one virtue, which will most properly be called vice.”
Joan had one other request of King Charles. She wanted to return home to be with her mother and childhood friends. Her mission was over. She did not like the gore of battle. But none of this mattered as Charles could not afford to let her go. And so, feeling useless, “she wanted to march on Paris, take it, and drive the English out of France.” According to Twain, “She was hampered in all the ways that treachery and the King’s vacillation could devise, but she forced her way to Paris at last, and fell badly wounded in a successful assault upon one of the gates.”[32]
Joan was dragged off the battlefield against her will. The king broke up his army and made an armistice. Joan was then kept in what Twain described as “a gilded captivity.” Finally, while leading forces on 24 May 1430, in the area of Compiègne, Joan was captured in a skirmish. Sadly, the King and the nobles of France would not raise the money to ransom her. Instead of being rescued, she was purchased by Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais. Ostensibly, noted Twain, he had purchased her “for the Church, to be tried for wearing male attire and for other impieties…. She was now shut up in the dungeons of the Castle of Rouen and kept in an iron cage, with her hands and feet and neck chained to a pillar….”[33] And yet, as Twain noted, “nothing could break that invincible spirit. From first to last she was a prisoner a year; and she spent the last three months of it on trial for her life before a formidable array of ecclesiastical judges…. The spectacle of that solitary girl, forlorn and friendless, without advocate or adviser … fighting that long battle serene and undismayed against these colossal odds, stands alone in its pathos and sublimity; it has nowhere its mate, either in the annals of fact or in the inventions of fiction.”[34]
Joan’s ecclesiastical judges were determined to find her guilty. As Twain aptly noted, “Every advantage that learning has over ignorance, age over youth, experience over inexperience, chicane over artlessness, every trick and trap and gin devisable by malice and the cunning of sharp intellects … were employed against her without shame; and when these arts were defeated by the marvelous intuitions of her alert and penetrating mind, Bishop Cauchon stooped to a final baseness which it degrades human speech to describe: a priest who pretended to come from the region of her own home and to be a pitying friend and anxious to help her in her sore need was smuggled into her cell, and he misused his sacred office to steal her confidence; she confided to him the things sealed from revealment by her Voices, and which her prosecutors had tried so long in vain to trick her into betraying.”[35]
Joan later said to Bishop Cauchon, “Ah, you set down everything that is against me, but you will not set down what is for me.” Her moral greatness, wrote Twain, “was peer to her intellect….” But more than this was “her steadfastness, her granite fortitude.” She was threatened with torture, especially of the rack; her sleep was broken. She suffered from the ingratitude of those who had abandoned her, the treachery of her judges, the chains of the prison, and all the attending discomfort. In the end, she was convicted.
As Eric Voegelin said: “The fate of the elect … is miserable. They are slandered, exiled, killed, and punished as subversives. Even when their message becomes socially effective, it promptly declines into superstition as the historical-human form of revelation comes to be mistaken for its essence, and fanatical literalists obscure the function of its message….”
Joan of Arc was burned alive at Rouen, in Normandy, on 30 May 1431. Those who watched her burn uttered such “pious lamentations” that the spectators – even the English men at arms – could not restrain their tears. It was also reported that the executioner could not reduce her heart to ash. According to Twain she “went to her martyrdom with the peace of God in her tired heart, and on her lips endearing words and loving prayers for the cur she had crowned and the nation of ingrates she had saved.”[36]
“Realistically and objectively,” wrote Régine Pernoud, “Joan was a heretic who had been duly condemned by an ecclesiastical court. She had performed some remarkable exploits, it is true, and her trial had been conducted under conditions that made the court’s decision suspect.”[37] Twenty-five years after her death the Pope authorized a retrial. Joan was vindicated. The human condition is so miserable, noted Voegelin, that the misuse of religion will always be with us. The true ground of spirit is “unfathomable,” he added, “while the conversio remains the way to escape the dogmatomachy of the literalists….”[38]
Did God decide that France, as a nation, would continue to exist? Mystery though it be, and impossible by all human reckoning, the thing happened. But there is a special postscript for Americans. If not for the survival of France, and for the long enmity of France for England, the United States of America would never have come into existence. Without the French Army and Navy, Lord Cornwallis would not have surrendered to Washington at Yorktown. For America to exist, France had to exist. For France to exist, Joan of Arc had to exist.
If that is not Providence, what is?
Links and Notes
[1] Eric Voegelin translated from the German by M.J. Hanak, The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Vol 6, Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002), p. 394.
[2] Cicero trans. Clinton Walker Keyes, De Legibus, (The Loeb Classical Library) I. xviii.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Anamnesis, p. 395.
[6] Henry Hallam, View of the State of Europe During the Middle Ages (New York: A.C. Armstrong and Son, 1880), Vol. 1, p. 88.
[7] David Hume, The History of England, Vol. II (USA: Liberty Classics, 1983), p. 397.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid, p. 398.
[10] J.F.C. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World Vol. I (New York: Da Capo Press, Inc., 1954), p. 477.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid, pp. 480-481.
[13] Ibid, p. 481.
[14] Regine Pernoud with a Foreword by Katherine Anne Porter, The Retrial of Joan of Arc: The Evidence for Her Vindication (Kindle Edition), pp. 70-71.
[15] Ibid, p. 74.
[16] Ibid, p. 80.
[17] Ibid, p. 83.
[18] Ibid, p. 86.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Hume, pp. 398.
[21] Ibid, p. 399.
[22] Pernoud, p. 96.
[23] Ibid, p. 97.
[24] Ibid, pp. 107-108.
[25] Ibid, p. 108.
[26] Fuller, p. 481.
[27] Ibid, pp. 482-483.
[28] Ibid, p. 487.
[29] Ibid, p. 488.
[30] Ibid, p. 490.
[31] Mark Twain, Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays, 1891-1910 (USA: The Library of America, 1992), p. 586.
[32] Ibid, pp. 586-87.
[33] Ibid, p. 588.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid, p. 589.
[36] Twain, p. 591.
[38] Anamnesis, p. 395.
Quartlery Subscription (to support the site)
JRNyquist.blog
$15.00
A book you should not miss
Now they are portraying her as gender-neutral. Sick world
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gender-neutral-joan-of-arc-at-globe-qn5thkz5n
To use such a person for such a purpose … invites unsuspected harms.
You mean that it taints it, right? People like that seem to think that just because she was a young girl who had dressed for a while in men’s clothing; and that since she had performed actions that, for a long time had been considered mainly the province of males, it’s suddenly OK to recast her as “non-binary” (the more I hear it, the more I hate the term).
No, no.
The “misuse of religion will always be with us”.
Today, the religion is secularism, communism, or more aptly, satanism.
Everything you write educates me. Once again, thank you.
Thank you Jeff for that great history lesson.
Greatly encouraged by the story Jeff, I am edified and my faith in the Creator of the Universe is increased.
Thank you
And for Australia to exist as it does today, America had to exist, France had to exist and Joan of arc had to exist….. a few months before the declaration of independence the last boat load of convicts arrived in the American colonies. With the war of independence, Great Britain had to find new quarters for her convicts, so they started confining convicts to old naval hulks off the coast. The conditions were bad and many died…. the solution in 1787 was to send the convicts to New Holland aka Australia….. and on January 26th 1788 they arrived. So that is why Australia became an English speaking nation.
A few years later in 1800 the French sent Nicholas Baudin on an expedition to survey New Holland…..if the timing of American independence was a little latter Australia may have been French speaking…. c’est la vie
In Echo of those oosters before me. And God Bless.
Sp(posters)
You have one of those keyboards too. 🙂
Accorging to Our Lady of La Salette’s Church approved message to the child Maximin Giraud at 1846, America will convert to Catholicism and by its help all nations will be converted, for America is the country “in the North of Europe, then Protestant” [north, etymologically means left and/or down]. I said this before, but I’ll leave the original letter sent to the pope with Giraud’s message bellow:
[Footnote: By the way, the Dimond brothers [benedictines] are precisely the ones likely to fulfill the office by which America will overcome its odds ; they are the Joan of Arc of today, especially if Maximin Giraud’s secret is distinctly predicted to about our times.]
[On September 19, 1846, we saw a beautiful Lady. We never said that this lady was the Blessed Virgin but we always said that it was a beautiful Lady.
I do not know if it is the Blessed Virgin or another person. As for me, I believe today that it is the Blessed Virgin.
Here is what this Lady said to me:
“If my people continue, what I will say to you will arrive earlier, if it changes a little, it will be a little later.
France has corrupted the universe, one day it will be punished. The faith will die out in France: three quarters of France will not practice religion anymore, or almost no more, the other part will practice it without really practicing it. Then, after [that], nations will convert, the faith will be rekindled everywhere.
A great country in the north of Europe, now Protestant, will be converted; by the support of this country all the other nations of the world will be converted.
Before all that arrives, great disorders will arrive, in the Church, and everywhere. Then, after [that], our Holy Father the Pope will be persecuted. His successor will be a pontiff that nobody expects.
Then, after [that], a great peace will come, but it will not last a long time. A monster will come to disturb it.
All that I tell you here will arrive in the other century, at the latest in the year two thousand.”
Maximin Giraud
(She told me to say it some time before.)
My Most Holy Father, your holy blessing to one of your sheep.
Grenoble, July 3, 1851.]
Well, we’re 22 years past the year 2000, and America didn’t become Catholic.
Now what?
Apparitions of a lady have been seen all over the world. This is a controversial subject.
The message describes successive events, not simultaneous events. Thus, the arrival of the events in their entirety simply means the beginning of the chain of events. Two things that clearly arrived are the above-mentioned “great disorders” [e.g. the transformation of the Church externals into a communist social engineering instrument [something Olavo de Carvalho admitted as a palpable fact], the homosexual lobby/LGBT motif “masses” etc.] and the persecution of the pope, for as explained by a Fatima historian, Friar Michel de La Sainte Trinité, Pius XII was increasingly backed into a corner and suffered terribly by the intrigues and betrayals of clergymen; then Monsignor Montini [later Paul VI], he dicreetly took away from the Curia because he realized Montini was a Soviet agent [he also apparently considered resignatin after discovering this betrayal]; he also attempted to summon an ecumenical council to condemn modernism, but it was so clearly boycotted by the very comission supposed to promote it, that he dropped the project and became ever more silent and intimidated in certain discipline and doctrinal matters. The final phase of his reign was pitiful and sad. He resented his situation as dreadful and relative to a supreme punishment looming, as one of his statements recorded; the dramatic situation is described in detail in Friar Michel’s The Whole Truth About Fatima third volume. Another sign the La Salette message got things right is that Our Lady of La Salette is depicted with a Russian Tiara, which is interesting for is implies the Russian punishment to be made clear by 1960 (according to the Fatima seer Lucia in a 1957 interview with father Fuentes).
An Apparition without qualification is in and of itself controversial within and without the Catholic domain, and connotes the probability of error or a pejorative quality; but in the pre-Vatican II Church era officially approved Apparitions were quite rare and bore much scrutiny into them; and were an occasion for reverence and orderly sentiments; and the traditional Church handling of this kind of thing was always with a view to not stir people. This is why a famous approved Marian Apparition in Brazil, in the thirties, of Our Lady of Graces in Pesqueira (state of Pernambuco), an Apparition which explicitly confirmed the Message of La Salette by the way (addressed to two little girls), had to do with a skeptic German priest [named Father Kehler] settled in Brazil who severely threatened the girls and tried to trick them into confessing they were lying a number of times etc. He treated them, if in a much more human and compassionate way, like Joan of Arc was treated by those who inquired her; and it took some time for him to even take the investigation seriously or get stumped.
Another point is in these controversial matters there is always some common ground that can be agreed upon by people willing to admit conclusions from accepted premises. For instance, a Roman Catholic and an Eastern Orthodox and/or at least some Protestant denominations could agree that prophecies the notoriety and reputableness of which were centuries old prior to the religious splits in question are reputable enough that their possibility could be entertained. That is why if I quote the Prophecy of the Popes from St. Malachy to an Eastern Orthodox the latter should pay it some mind, since St. Malachy’s days predate the last historical vestiges of Eastern rite individuals giving reverence to Western leaders etc.
If I quoted the La Salette Secret to a Muslim audience made of readers of René Guénon, they would probably not reject it in principle, Guénon even professed to strictly believe in the Great Catholic Monarch [supposed to restore order in the whole world] Prophecies suggested in the Secret of La Salette, although he was a Muslim sheikh bound by his links to a sufi society not to have any personal idiosyncratic ideas. The point being that not everything is what it seems, when it comes to religion.
0
I love Joan of Arc very much.
Wow! Wonderful article. Learned much more about the remarkable young woman, Joan of Arc. Thank you!
People may appreciate this biography. It has become a classic book, also exhibiting the Providence of God over nations. It shares how God used a small group of humble prayer warriors, during WW II, to also shift the course of history. The power of just a few, with a “sincere and pure devotion to Christ” — willing to partner with His beautiful righteous ways, heart and leading– in spite of hardships and suffering. 💕
https://www.amazon.com/Rees-Howells-Intercessor-Norman-Grubb/dp/0875081886
France gifted the United States the Statue Of Liberty, modeled after a mythological Roman liberty goddess. This pagan symbol is an affront to the Christian principals enshrined in the Declaration Of Independence and the original thirteen states constitutions.
I was harassed by a horrible lady from Honolulu, who claimed to be Havvai’ian royalty and a feminist. She asserted that she was heir apparent. Further, she held to pagan beliefs.
We discussed Bible Prophecy, and she got mad at me personally, because the Bible indicates that she can’t be the Antichrist.
“But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” — 1 Timothy 2:12 KJV
So, if I understand aright, Stan, you would have burned Joan of Arc as a heretic. No doubt you recall the Old Testament figures, Ruth and Esther?
Ruth and Esther didn’t prophesy, but Miriam (Exodus 15:20), Deborah (Judges 4–5), and Huldah (2 Kings 22:14, 2 Chronicles 34:22) in the Old Testament, and Philip the Evangelist had four virgin daughters who were prophesying (Acts 21:9). So I guess it was alright for a woman to prophesy.
Since that lout, Willard, made a stink about Joan of Arc as a prophet, and since I erased two dozen of his posts, I will merely cite Mark Twain’s account of Joan’s accurate prophecies: “Her history has still another feature which sets her apart and leaves her without fellow or competitor: there have been many uninspired prophets, but she was the only one who ever ventured the daring detail of naming, along with a foretold event, the event’s precise nature, the special time-limit within which it would occur, and the place — and scored fulfilment. At Vaucouleurs she said she must go to the King and be made his general, and break the English power, and crown her sovereign — ‘at Rheims.’ It all happened. It was all to happen ‘next year’ — and it did. She foretold her first wound and its character and date a month in advance, and the prophecy was recorded in a public record-book three weeks in advance. She repeated it the morning of the date named, and it was fulfilled before night. At Tours she foretold the limit of her military career — saying it would end in one year from the time of its utterance — and she was right. She foretold her martyrdom — using THAT WORD, and naming a time three months away — and again she was right. At a time when France seemed hopelessly and permanently in the hands of the English she twice asserted in her prison before her judges that within seven years the English would meet with a mightier disaster than had been the fall of Orleans: it happened withn five — the fall of Paris. Other prophecies of hers came true, both as to the event named and the time-limit prescribed.”
We’ve heard from this poster under a few different names.
My favourite quote of hers:
“I will be the mother of a king, a pope, and an emporer.”
Her fearlessness was noted, and they asked her if there was anything she was afraid of. She answered, “Treason.”
Today, we are surrounded by treasonous leaders.
As President HW Bush kept telling Saddam Hussein, “We’re gonn’a get’cha, we’re gonn’a get’cha,'” while campaigning for international support to invade Iraq, Russia was transporting WMDs from Iraq to the Bekaa Valley of Syrian occupied Lebanon. By the time Bush garnered a UN Resolution for the US to invade, he knew the WMDs were no longer there, because he watched Russia truck them off on spy satellite TV, like in the movie, Patriot Games, and latter when O’bama, Biden, and Hilarity, did the same, watching the assassination of, Bin Laden.
France and Germany signed on to the UN Resolution, yet complained incessantly about the US invading Iraq. France and Germany had constructed underground facilities for Saddam, against international sanctions. Of all the various different countries that criticized the US invasion of Iraq, not one of them ever proposed to rescind the UN Resolution for the US to execute the war on their behalf.
Can allies be guilty of treason against an ally?
Hello Barth, I mean Commit, I mean Radiofort, I mean…
Stan, why did you steal what you typed here from Martin Armstrong’s blog and pass it off as your own?
Plagiarism Mr. Willard? Really? I suppose trolls must find source material SOMEWHERE.
I owe a correction. That was plagiarized from the Generational Dynamics website. A post made by the owner of that blog.
So, Stan Willard and whatever other handles he uses, doesn’t even have an original *twisted* thought. How pathetic. He really does need to come full circle and get a life.
Can you provide a link, Thomas?
What are you getting at here, Jeff? I get the feeling that you are somehow laying the groundwork to build a case in support of France, for some unknown purpose? Or is there some French gal you support to be, Queen of the World, or something?
Wat an asinine comment. He’s telling us an inspiring story about an incredible person in order to encourage us in these dark times coming on America, and to motivate us to hold to virtue.
I myself would not make light of the account of such a person as Joan of Arc.
She did not claim to be a prophet. Her predictions seem to have been in alignment with her mission, which she accomplished. No need for us to continue back and forth on it. We have each stated what we think about it. I know what God says about the test of a prophet, but I don’t think she was claiming to be one. However, one day we’ll both know for certain. Until then, I will have to regard her as a heroine.
Just because she didn’t use the ‘P’ word doesn’t mean that she didn’t present herself as a Prophet. She made predictions attributed to the Voice Of God. She did say that these voices told her that she would be released by her captors from prison. If they hadn’t burned her at the stake, and if these events were before Christ, she would have become a rock pile.
The danger of listening to so much as even one of Joan of Arc’s predictions, is that ultimately the listener must conclude that the voices lie. For those who don’t know Scripture, they might chalk it up to fickleness on the part of a slandered source.
Joan slandered God.
You are a dogmatizer, Willard. Joan of Arc was not a shriveled little fraud like you. You dare to post here, using a pseudonym. She went to the King of France in person, daring all. She lived, and she died, for a Truth she was entrusted with. In comparison, you are a coward. You sit there and judge a martyr with dead formulas. You burn her at the stake all over again. Joan of Arc died for her beliefs. What have you done? — You empty bag of wind!
Nice comment, GreyKnight.
“Name one female Prophet quoted in ancient Hebrew Scripture.”
Deborah Judges 4,5
Miriam, Exodus 15: 20-21
Huldah 2 Chronicles 34: 22-28 and 2 Kings 22
Noahdiah Neh 6:14
Anna Luke 2:36
Phillip had four prophetess daughters Acts 21:9 They are not named.
So far, Miriam, and Huldah seem to check out, okay, at least. Thanks again, Lori.
Good job!
😆
I am relating history with an eye to lessons for political philosophy. It basically agrees with Carlyle, Cicero, and Voegelin’s insights.
Whatever that’s supposed to mean, as if anybody’s read any of that, but it sounds like a good, clue
It’s an inspiring story you, witless monkey.
I think he’s just trying to get under your skin. Also, he must be a bitter person to try to tarnish the glory of such a noble soul as Joan of Arc, which you described to us very well.
Why do you want to sully a noble name? Why do you want to quench the hope that the story of Joan of Arc inspires? Why are you working in conjunction with our enemies to demoralize us? Why would you try to negate the great work of Mr. Nyquist with your cynicism? Are you working a shift at the Russian troll farm?
I’m finished taking up space commenting to you, which is what you want people to do to deflect from constructive conversation on what Mr. Nyquist wrote.
I recommend you to get a life.
I am deleting Willard. He is a troll come to attack me personally with slander.
Watching you try to insult Jeff is like watching a craftsman spend years building a majestic cathedral, and a vagrant bum comes along and takes a dump on the front steps.
That’s how out of your league you are. When you wish to publish an article with numerous citations refuting anything he said, or to do any work whatsoever besides drooling all over another man’s life’s work, let us know, although I suspect that day will be never.
You should thank your lucky stars Jeff is overly kind, because I wouldn’t allow your filth to contaminate this space.
Missing facts which are substantial in this work…
The very good account and approved by the Catholic Church is this link:
https://archive.org/details/JoanOfArc1901/page/n5/mode/2up
But to address this work of Mr. Nyquist – since this involves the situation in the Catholic Church at the time, and there was the time of Great Schism, to which belonged these people who judged St. Joan, and since she was appealing to the judgment of the Sovereign Pontiff at her trial, which this Bp. Cauchon denied (by this and that he belonged to the Avignon section which denied the true Pope’s election etc.), he and his accomplices were all heretics – now God testified to this FACT at her execution, where God forced by His Divine grace ALL present, including the judges and this Bp. Cauchon (the name means pig in French) – they ALL began to weep, all of them…at the same moment !
Mr. Nyquist has not explained this important fact that St. Joan was not judged by the Catholic Church, but by schismatical section of rebels, who in fact sold her to the English Army and it was the English was were her jailers and in fact executioners.
Moreover, Mr. Nyquist is using works of Protestant writers, and it was the Protestant heretics who were distorting the facts about this particular case and attempted to accuse the Catholic Church of injustice, which is such a gross LIE that one has to seriously think that the devil himself is involved in their fraudulent judgment…and Protestant heretics nor any other such like people do NOT have the authority to pass judgment on these INTERNAL matters of the Roman Catholic Church.
St. Joan of Arc was canonized by the Catholic Church, her Feast is May 30.
Now to the second point – the comparison of France when this Divine help came from God at the time when France was truly Catholic, and England was getting close to the time when that wicked King Henry VIII severed the country from the bosom of the Catholic Church (St. Thomas More, St. John Cardinal Fisher etc.), the Protestant revolt came about and thus the founding of the USA and some kind of Divine help cannot be contemplated as comparing situation with that of France and St. Joan of Arc – as even in the Holy Scripture, Gospel of St. John IX one reads about the man born blind, whom Our Lord cured and the man was later questioned by the Pharisees, who wouldn’t believe him the miracle as they were questioning whether him who cured the blind man was “of God”, and did not believe the miracle, as Our Lord cured the blind man on Sabbath day.
But the man replied : “Now we know that God doth not hear sinners, but who is a server of God and doth His will, him He heareth…”
So to understand it properly – God does not hear prayers and petitions of unrepentant sinners, including, most of all, prayers and petitions of heretics, infidels and apostates and immoral men etc., and so He will ONLY hear such men’s prayers if they ask Him for mercy and will renounce their heresies and evils, and obey God in all that He has instituted, which means they have to abjure their heresies, become truly Catholic (which is nothing else but Catholic Tradition – so the Bergoglio’s Novus Ordo APOSTATE pro-communist SECT occupying the Vatican does NOT qualify and is EXCLUDED), and they have to be admitted, but solely upon their sincere conversion, into the true Catholic Church, which today is back in the catacombs…persecuted by the devil and his collaborators.
3rd Secret of Fatima is NOT a small matters. Because of sin God has taken this chance to obtain His mercy AWAY from this wicked evil world, and so to agree among themselves on that HERETICAL LIE and thus abominable compromise that they are free to believe what they wish about God is an ABOMINATION to God and He will not help as He had mercy on then fully and truly Catholic France.
St. Joan of Arc was the Divine Instrument of Justice for France against the unjust English invaders, and she was betrayed by evil heretics who as such lost authority to judge her religion and that’s why they wouldn’t allow her appeal to be send to Rome to the Pope, as they were afraid that he would exonerate her and make her free, which wouldn’t work for the English and the Burgundian traitors.
The work of Mr. Nyquist’s on this subject is not completely honest…and leaves the Catholic Church attacked, but the Church had spoken by the Authority of the great Pope Leo XIII, which is at the end of the book referenced above. You can download the book as PDF file.
The book above is much better source and the truth, unlike the non-Catholic and the true ecclesiastical authority lacking sources referenced by the author.
Evil times are here and so those who would like to avoid them in the Camp of the Saints (Apocalypse 20), they have to be truly Catholic – “One body and one Spirit…One Lord, ONE FAITH, one Baptism (Ephesians 4 : 4 – 5).
This response has been produced solely to defend the truth and to help those who love the truth above all else to see it and to convert and amend, as otherwise they will be visited by God’s punishment…as it is nearly here.
The true Catholic Church can NEVER be destroyed, as the Church is Divine Institution and protected, helped and defended by God Himself – always.
As Catholics we wish all men to be saved, but they have to do it God’s way, not their way outside the Church that God instituted, that doesn’t work with God and never will.
In the pre-Vatican 2, ‘Handbook Of Catholic Practices,’ it is written (paraphrased):
‘Even Protestants are Christian.’
May I ask your opinion, Concerned, is it fair to say that the true Universal Church (Catholic / completely whole) has a history of being dominated by heretical leadership?
Geez.
Thank you for writing the truth.
In reply: Those who claim absolute truth are in a very curious position vis-a-vis politics. As an American I do not wish to refight the religious wars of the Reformation. So I hope we can agree to live in peace despite theological deferences. There is, however, a difference between divinely inspired individuals and institutions made up of functionaries who carry the label “Church.” The misuse of religion readily recurs throughout history, and is often connected with theological/political dogmatizing. History does not show us many institutions or elites free of this fault. Related to this, I am skeptical of any organized group that claims mystical infallibility. Joan of Arc was an individual. She was, curiously, inspired to a unique military task. If you were English, she was a witch. If you were French, she was a saint. What was she objectively? Dogma cannot tell us. Spiritual sensibility, spiritual apperception, spiritual experience, is all we have to make sense of the evidence — to accept or deny dogma itself. A tricky business to be sure. On another point, I did not quote from only Protestant writers. Hume was an atheist, Fuller was Pagan, Twain was a Presbyterian, Pernoud was Catholic. In essence, all were in agreement that Joan was extraordinary. Only Hume insinuated that she was not divinely inspired. As for the Catholic Church possessing the whole Truth, it is not my place to say. Your definition of the Church is mystical and does not reflect the human organization described in historical accounts, which have been handed down to us. I do not dispute your definition. I simply use the common language of history to describe an historical institution, which may not be the thing you call “Church” at all. Therefore, using the language of historians, the clergy that condemned Joan were Catholics, operating under the Inquisition. Her retrial was at the behest of the Pope, who wanted to see Justice done. But justice was not done in the first instance. I am not writing a Catholic apologia so as to preserve some theological principle. History is history. If you say everything done by the Church is perfect and Holy, then the Church, logically, could not have burnt Joan of Arc at the stake. You are right by definition. But if the Church is made up of imperfect men, who are able to do wrong, then the Church did burn Joan of Arc. I am writing of history and therefore write of an historically real body of men who carried the seals, offices and powers of the Church with them. The person being burnt was burnt by THEM. The essay was not a theological commentary or an attack on the Catholic Church.
Mr. Nyquist,
Catholic Church (not the Bergoglio Sect today) cannot err in matters of Faith and Morals, even though the men in Her are imperfect, because the Divine Assistance of the Holy Ghost is with them, including the true Pope.
So it is impossible that the Catholic Church would examine St. Joan and have her burned as heretic.
Those people that judged her were already outside the Catholic Church, they belonged to the section that was with the impostor Pope of Avignon. This is the history of the Church. (References abound, including the work of Bp. Karl J. Heffele etc, Labbe, and the work that was posted above about the ecclesiastical trial and exoneration).
It was stated that St. Joan asked that her case be referred to Rome to the Pope, the Avignon heretics refused, which is a matter of a record. So they violated the Church Law which is explicit on this matter and was in place even back then.
Moreover, any possibility of a heresy which the local bishop was not able to or could not have decided, which this was evidently the case, was always referred to the Pope to decide, these people have disregarded that safeguard and had no problem burning the Saint.
The subsequent trial of St. Joan was not needed per se as back then all knew who these people were and that they belonged to the Avignon schismatics, so this way the Catholic Church was protected.
You do refer to Inquisition, but that tribunal was instituted by the Kings, not by the Church, it was the secular power that ran these tribunals and the Protestant accounts on the subject are so grossly exaggerated that it is no need to even go there, the case is clear, lies remain lies, false heretical accusations remain as such regardless what other intentions there may be.
It is with sorrow that it can be seen here that people truly don’t understand the point and that you have taken on such a difficult subject which has been decided by the Catholic Church long ago and that this is truly domain of the Church as it is a matter of Catholic religion, and not some kind of subject that is open to discussions and deliberations, as if this was some kind of free for all matter of intellectual inquiry. It is not.
Also the Catholic Church was not in position to intervene back then as the territory was held by the Burgundians and English and they were already determined to kill St. Joan as a which, and they cooked up the scheme of trapping her in the heresy of wearing the man’s clothing, which is against the Divine Law (Deuteronomy 22 : 5).
That St. Joan was Divinely inspired to wear man’s clothing was understood even back then, and that her mission to save France came from God Himself was indisputable by the miracles and infused knowledge that she possessed from God and that was impossible to be obtained in any other means.
If she was NOT Catholic, she would have NEVER received anything from God, and back then at the time (1431 AD she died) the heresy of Luther was not yet in existence, and all people were truly Catholics and nothing else (with the exception of infidels and minor heretical sects).
Since you have taken on the subject, and implied that the situation today could be referred to as how France was saved back then, that of itself is incomparable because today the whole world is nothing but in the horrible state of the (foretold) general apostasy.
It was written here in previous posting by this author what the situation is today and that apostate Sect that occupies in sacrilege the Vatican is not the Catholic Church, which is also foretold and written in the Holy Scripture…so there is no excuse.
You have left out the fact that the Catholic Church did judge the case and found St. Joan innocent and the party that judged her guilty, including the local bishop and the English. They were loosing the war, they wanted to kill the maid because they feared her as she was leading the French forces to victory, by Divine help.
She was the proof most exalted that without the help of God nothing can be done, and if people are not truly His, which means if they are not truly Catholic as St. Joan and those with her were, then God will not help – and so the message for today is this – if people are not truly Catholic they will be defeated as the English were being defeated by St. Joan, and that she was betrayed by the King of France, who was very weak in action, God permitted that to show people in future that without being perfect in front of Him God will not help them, no matter how much they pray to Him for help. But subsequently France was freed and the English had to leave.
————–
The war is coming, Russian and Chinese communism is coming worldwide, and God will permit this to take place in punishment of the widespread apostasy, heresy and denial of the revealed Faith, which is nothing else but Catholic Tradition, the ONE Faith St. Paul speaks about.
You have been warned, and so the human free will is yours – and Christ Our Lord, God Himself, has all the consequences of the choices men make…
The English-aligned clergy who desired Joan’s death were not partisans of Avignon. It was the French Kings, not the English-aligned clergy, who were supposed to have brought the Popes to rule from Avignon for over seventy years. After all, most Popes of the fourteenth century were French. In those days the majority of the cardinals were French. Later, after much trouble with the Italians, an attempt was made to move the papacy back to Rome. But Romans wanted an Italian Pope; and the Roman mob, allegedly placing the cardinals under duress, forced the election of Pope Urban VI, who was so hostile to the French cardinals they removed to Anagni and elected Robert of Geneva, who became Pope Clement VII in 1378. Several attempts at reconciliation failed, until a third Pope was elected by the Council of Pisa in 1409. So, they had three Popes at once. Finally, at the Council of Constance in 1417, it was agreed to dismiss all these Popes (and to excommunicate the Avignon Pope). They subsequently elected Martin V to rule from Rome. Thus, the Avignon papacy ended 13 years before Joan of Arc was tried for heresy by Bishop Cauchon. Therefore, Bishop Cauchon and his colleagues were hardly schismatics. First, the schism had long ended. Second, Cauchon was serving the English and not the French monarchy (which had established the Popes at Avignon). Regarding the thinking of Pope Pius II, even after Joan’s vindication, we read the following analysis from the Holy Father, “So long as she was alive, even as a prisoner, the English … did not feel safe. They dreaded her spells and desired her death. As soon as the judges had ascertained that she had once more put on men’s clothing they condemned her to be burned as one who had relapsed, and, in order that her ashes might not be honored, they caused them to be thrown into the Seine.” Remarkably, Pope Pius added, “Whether the work that she did was divine or merely human I dare not decide. Some believe that when the French princes were at variance with one another and unwilling to submit themselves to one leader, someone, wiser than the rest, invented this stratagem to arrest the continued success of the English. It was thought that a virgin with a divine mission would improve discipline, for what man refuses to obey God? And that is how the conduct of the war came to be entrusted to the Maid.” Pius then admits that Joan’s successes raise the possibility she was genuinely inspired. But as he clearly said, he did not “dare” decide the question, even after her vindication. I quote this passage from the book you yourself linked and cited earlier in this thread, as it seems you did not bother to read it. To reframe the argument: To wash away the reality of human behavior in the Church, you have presented a circular argument. If someone in the Church does something wicked, they are not in the Church. Then who remains in the Church? Does anyone? You say the current Pope in Rome is not God’s representative on earth. But this is a Protestant argument, not Catholic. Truly, your dilemma is painful to watch. Religious dogmas are never borne out by history. Mystics like Joan are problematic for institutions like the Church. There is the bureaucracy and then there is God. There is that direct spiritual connection that Joan had, and there are the principles of an organization led by mortal men. I do not care whether you agree to call that organization the Catholic Church or not. History tells us what that organization is at any given time. A circular argument cannot change the facts. The Catholic Church burned Joan of Arc at the stake. To deny this you must say the Church is not the Church. Where is this Church, then? A thing of fantasy, or of history? You cannot have it both ways.
You are right Mr. Nyquist, I don’t know why the other fellow claims that they weren’t Catholic. They were Churchmen, but bad Churchmen just as Judas was an Apostle but turned traitor, so did they betray their Master for worldly gain.
We have to own our own when they are bad. This is human frailty at work, after all.
Concerned: I am offended by your comment, because here where we face a common enemy, you seem to want to divide us into a religious war. Is that your intent?
We may discuss our theological differences elsewhere, but here we need to stand shoulder to shoulder. Is that your desire too?
Who cares, let him/her state their religious opinion in peace. I read a bunch of religious opinions on this site all day and don’t get offended if someone is merely promoting their religion.
If it devolves into slandering or personally attacking other religions, on the other hand, maybe. But every person who sincerely believes in their religion sincerely believes it is the only one and that all others are false. You find that offensive? You will be quite offended all the time if so.
Besides, Concerned always shares some interesting historical knowledge and minutia. I tend to agree with them that it is possible mankind may face a punishment for their behavior.
Perseus: what offends me are Concernd’s attacks on other people and teachings, not his statements of faith. I don’t want to repeat his attacks here, but they are meant to divide us, not help us work together. We face a common enemy who wants to destroy us both, we can’t be divided when facing that enemy.
Many times I disagree with theological statements on this blog, but I hold my tongue (keyboard) because to voice (type) my disagreement would only serve to divide us. The theological statements don’t offend me. The attacks offend me.
” God does not hear prayers and petitions of unrepentant sinners, including, most of all, prayers and petitions of heretics, infidels and apostates and immoral men etc., and so He will ONLY hear such men’s prayers if they ask Him for mercy and will renounce their heresies and evils”
I hate to get into a religious debate and will not if this leads to subsequent angry replies, but I’ve had many miraculous answers to prayer without being Catholic, including stories you might consider completely insane (so I dare not even relate them). Would you propose the Devil did it then? This line of argument/assertions is not a successful one for you, I’m afraid.
Here is the thing. Indeed.
Concerned: I would encourage you to think very deeply about two verses of scripture: John 14:6 and Mark 9:38-41.
TO MR. WILLARD:
Canon 1325, 1917 Code of Canon Law:
A baptized Christian, who calls himself a Christian, yet obstinately denies or calls into doubt any of the truths to be believed by Divine and Catholic faith, is a heretic; if he abandons the Christian faith altogether he is called an apostate; if, finally, he refuses to be subject to the Supreme Pontiff, or to have communication with the members of the Church subject to the
Roman Pontiff, he is a schismatic…
——-
So your assertion #1 is contrary to this Canon 1325, so where did you read this inaccuracy sir ? There is ONLY ONE Christian Faith which is Catholic Tradition, so those who don’t profess it and believe it, they are not Christian by this same definition and the Catholic Church has never taught something different, so your reference above is inaccurate.
———–
#2 is a heresy – no such possibility exists that the Divine Institution Roman Catholic Church would fall into the hands of heretics, as then that of itself would mean that God has forsaken His Church and permitted servants of Satan and thus the devil himself to take over – which is heresy and can NEVER happen, as Our Lord promised to be with His Church all days even unto to consummation of the world…
Again, Canon Law, the only valid Code, the 1917 Code, protects the Catholic Church and the Papacy by Canon 2314 and by Canon 188 (#4), and also by the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Paul IV Cum Ex Apostolatus Officio (1559 AD) – point 6.
So there is no chance that the leadership as you call it, which means the Papacy, would fall into the hands of heretics, as they as such by publicly professing a heretical lie automatically cease to be members of the Church and automatically loose their clerical office without any declaration and by the force of Law.
The Novus Ordo Sect today does not have ANY authority to elect the Pope and to appoint Cardinals etc., as heretics and apostates are by the Law (Divine, Church) excluded.
Catholics are not permitted to believe otherwise, those who do so knowingly are IPSO FACTO excommunicated as heretics.
I referenced the Handbook Of Catholic Practices, prior to the apostasy of Vatican II. The current pope is a Jesuit. The Jesuits are of the Bavarian Illuminati, as are Skull & Bones Fraternity of Yale University, where most all US Presidents are supposedly graduates.
Nevertheless, Dubya Bush and his cousin John Kerry, got their diplomas from Yale without attending class. This from a now retired professor of German who was a student in classes where they never showed up. Bush is credited with a higher GPA than Kerry.
There is something wrong with your reasoning and applying the tactics of shifting the subject when the previous one doesn’t work. So you have to figure it out when you will be asked to pay for it by God, as attacking His Church is a sin of sacrilege, and yes, you were told the truth.
Moreover Bergoglio is NOT a Pope much less is he a Jesuit, as the Order does not allow apostate enemies of the Catholic Church as members and Bergoglio is nothing but communist criminal who is excommunicated and does NOT posses the Papacy at all…but it seems that either you don’t want to see the truth, even though the Canon Law was posted here, or you just continue attacking the Church as the usual enemies do – and so God will repay it, it is His Church, Divine Institution.
To be a heretic does NOT pay.
Canon law is not scripture. For the Christian scripture is the final authority on doctrine and practice.
The Roman Catholic Church feel in to the hands of heretics centuries ago. That has not changed.
You wouldn’t know what the Holy Scriptures are if it weren’t for the Church, where do you think they came from? Furthermore the Holy Scripture contradicts you in more ways than one: “As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction.”II Peter 3:16. So much for your doctrine of private interpretation.
“And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to his disciples, and said: Take ye, and eat. This is my body. [27] And taking the chalice, he gave thanks, and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this. [28] For this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins.” Gospel of S. Matthew 26:26-28.This is clearly Transubstantiation; He did not say this is a symbol of my Body.
“Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. [20] Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” Gospel of S. Matthew 28:19-20.
Note that He didn’t say for three hundred years only, then there will be a long dark age during which the gates of hell will prevail against the Church (contradicted by the Gospel of S. Matthew 16:18) which will be dispelled when a worthless degenerate drunken whoremonger named Luther comes to tell everyone that they needn’t actually obey God’s law but can rather do whatever the flip they please so long as they believe.
This by the way contradicts the Epistle of S. James “21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works, offering up Isaac his son upon the altar? [22] Seest thou, that faith did co-operate with his works; and by works faith was made perfect? [23] And the scripture was fulfilled, saying: Abraham believed God, and it was reputed to him to justice, and he was called the friend of God. [24] Do you see that by works a man is justified; and not by faith only? [25] And in like manner also Rahab the harlot, was not she justified by works, receiving the messengers, and sending them out another way?
[26] For even as the body without the spirit is dead; so also faith without works is dead.” This is why Luther wanted to excise the Epistle from his corrupted version calling it “an epistle of straw”. So much for reverence for the Holy Scriptures.
Walter: “…which will be dispelled when a worthless degenerate drunken whoremonger named Luther comes to tell everyone that they needn’t actually obey God’s law but can rather do whatever the flip they please so long as they believe.” This slander against Luther is false because he said nothing of the sort, nor did he act out what you state. This is an unnecessary attack not only against Luther himself, but against anyone who follows his teachings. I could blister this blog with attacks against the Roman Catholic church which, unlike your false slander above, are true, but I won’t because here we discuss a common enemy who wants to destroy us both. While I will never become a Roman Catholic, I defend that church against false attacks by our common enemy.
We need to be united against our common foe, not squabbling among ourselves. We need to recognize that though we disagree on theology, we can work together where we agree against a common foe. Specious attacks against each other won’t help us unite.
Walter, the Church you reference did not exist when the scripture was written. The Roman Catholic Church did not exist until, at least, Augustine, who is recognized as the first Roman catholic Theologian.
At this point, I can confidently predict that you will accuse me of knowing no Church history. You could confidently predict that what I will call you, but not post here. Heretic is the least of those labels.
Thank you, Jeff, for this beautiful and inspiring account of St Joan. We are, as you say, under God’s providence, so that we must not despair, and he may use weak vessels, like Joan, in the most hopeless of circumstances so that we place our trust in Him.
There seem to be some commenters above who still prefer that we “shoot at each other from the church towers”, as I think you put it, and I apologize on their behalf. I would have expected my fellow Catholics to receive this new article of yours with delight.
God bless you.
I am deleting Willard, who has taken to attacking me personally. He gives himself away as something other than he pretends.
Beautiful reply. I agree with you that this is an article that we should unite around in appreciation for Joan of Arc’s life. Bringing theological differences into it only detracts from Jeff’s message.
Thank you for this, Mr. Nyquist. I always figured she had to be a special person, but had never looked much into her, especially her character. She is definitely a person we can draw much inspiration from.
There are many more false prophets than there are true Prophets Of God. I can’t wait for Jeff to respond to our comments. Dimes to doughnuts, he’s illustrating with his essay, how gullibility can lead to disaster. Whatever he feels one way or another about Bible Prophecy, Joan does not discredit Bible Prophecy. I don’t find any long term predictions of the future by her, and there supposedly were witnesses whom testified that she felt betrayed by her voices, that they told her she would be freed. It’s not clear that these witnesses were telling the truth, however. I feel, and one can’t trust feelings, but I do feel that her legend might well figure into some future deception.
Time will tell
She was freed. Death is freedom for a Christian, because to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. This also happened to one of the TenBoom sisters; God told her she would be ‘home’ by Christmas, and indeed she died before Christmas and was home with the Lord. How else would a Christian take it??
Absolutely amazing! Thank you for writing about Joan of Arc.
Jeff, such an interesting and uplifting story.
Another thing……talk about the sovereignty of God; He wanted France so that there could be an America so that there could be an Australia and an Israel, etc. He has a butterfly flap it’s wings off of Africa to start a storm in the Americas. I love to see how God works in this way, and He picks humble nobodies to do great things, and picks people who think they are somebodies for nothing.
Thanks again.
I like the butterfly analogy.
…because we all come to this blog to read stupid religious debates about Pope Harmonious IX and protestant “heretics.”
That was not the point Jeff was making about Joan of Arc.
They wouldn’t get the point if it stuck them in the rear. How does Jeff put up with all of this crap? “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.” 🙂
LOL. Yes.
Jeff Nyquist says:
August 17, 2022 at 3:28 am
To use such a person for such a purpose … invites unsuspected harms.
I thoroughly enjoyed this post Jeff. God has moved women to act at times in our history when men have not stepped up into the gap. Perhaps to reinvigorate us men to perform our duties as He intended. I’m wondering too if you’ve let the “religious battles” continue here in the comments to prove your earlier point, but I hope it doesn’t persuade you to close all commenting privileges. I do enjoy the interaction of many commenters with yourself and their insights.
I’ve continually bitten my tongue (as I know others have) when wanting to reply to obvious scriptural error (from my POV) and so wanted to post thoughts that may have never been contemplated from what so often has proven to be a “closed circle of study” amongst so many. But I will state that I have no need of any intercessor between myself and God other than Jesus Christ. I won’t bend a knee or kiss a ring of any other who may pull his britches on same as me. And the Bible is no longer “chained to the pulpit” so we have no excuse not to delve into It daily “to see if these things are so”.
God is in total control and I have no need to fear any non- existent fallen angel “devil” – have we really thought this out ? Is God and His abode (Heaven) not perfect ? “In the last days they would give heed to doctrines of devils and seducing spirits (off the top of my head and not verbatim)”. Lucifer is used once in the Bible and it is in reference to the king of Babylon. John said in his day there were many antichrists and yet we look for “one” and refuse to see the many about us. I’ll snip this short …
There is a wicked conspiracy in our land (worldwide) – Ezekiel 22: 25 – 31 / Proverbs 1: 20 – 33. Our enemies are within / without and rapidly closing the noose each day. May God grant repentance amongst His people and open our eyes. And may He grant strength / guidance / wisdom to each of us in whatever respect He has called us to duty (eyes, ears, feet, etc.). Thanks for your continued labors.
Willard is having fun at our expense. He is a troll.
I raised this issue myself, so I cannot rightly blame anyone for reacting theologically. The Russians are not the only people who use provocation as a method.
They were chained to the Pulpit in the old days because they cost the equivalent of hundreds if not thousands of dollars ignoramus. I take it that you never learned the simple fact that printing presses have not always existed. Your ridiculous doctrine of private interpretation is contradicted by the Holy Scripture itself in II Peter 3:16. You pretend to revere the Scripture & then deny the existence of the devil which is clearly taught in the Holy Scripture. I’m not surprised, you prideful sectaries like to make it up as you go along.
As for intercession the refusal to pray that God’s Most Holy Mother & the Saints would intercede for one’s soul is rather like a dung-brained fool whose ship sinks in the middle of the Ocean refusing to be taken aboard a passing ship saying, no I’ll reach land all by my glorious exalted self. Do you really think that you are as good as Holy men who died in torments rather than drop a grain of incense to Caesar? If so your pride is as diabolical as it is foolish.
Thank you, Walter. How I have resisted the “provocation” referred to by Jeff. I toyed with linking the interesting recent comments of Fr. Ripperger, the exorcist, about the demon who revealed to him that St. Joan was his nemesis under the aspect of the temptation to treason by reason of ambition. Fr. R. describes exorcism as being on the receiving end of a sewer pipe, as one can imagine, but that over time one gleans spiritual insights, like a lost wedding ring amidst the effluvium, from what the demons divulge.
Of course private interpretation is incoherent. And whence do Protestants derive their unquestioning dependence on the sole authority of that Scripture which they subject to such varying and sometimes contradictory interpretation? The Bible makes no such claims for itself. It does, however, make such a claim for something else, calling it “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1Tim 3:15). That thing is the Church. Not the “churches,” which in their myriad numbers and conflicting interpretations erupted in a Babel of discordant and defiant voices in order to protest (“Non serviam.”) But the Church: One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.
Deborah, Sola scriptura is the only way you are not going to find your way leading off into never never land. that the Bible makes no such claim for itself, is irrelevant. Either scripture is self consistent, of Christianity is just as irrational as every pagan religion. If a doctrine clashes with scripture, then that doctrine must be rejected, as God does not contradict himself.
A book full of parables and metaphorical meanings, along with very complex concepts, does not rely on the linear thinking that grants consistency. In this matter, Consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds. When something is inherently beyond human understanding especially.
Jeff: the Bible has great consistency. The parables are clearly marked as parables. So there should be no confusion arising from them. I’m not sure you mean the same thing with “metaphors” as do I. But the Bible uses the same logic but applied in a different way than did the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, as do most modern philosophers as well, such that those whose minds are steeped in the philosophical tradition of the Greek and Roman philosophers don’t understand the Bible nor its consistency.
Likewise those who have drunk deeply of Biblical thinking find western philosophy based on the Greek and Roman tradition as ultimately self-contradictory and illogical.
Ohengineer is quite right to mention the Bible as consistent.
Early Church fathers, like St. Augustine, were steeped in the philosophical traditions of the Greeks and Romans. The only contradiction I see, is where you write that “minds steeped” in ancient philosophy “don’t understand the Bible.” But these were the people who established Christian theology in the first place. The New Testament was written in Kione Greek, which has words that attend to ancient philosophic understandings, You cannot divorce a language from the origin of its words (or the meanings). For example, from the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the word,” Here we find that “word” is a translation of the Greek “logos.” Philo Judaeus used “logos” to discourse on the relationship between revealed faith and philosophic reason. The ancient Greeks developed words like this for discussing spiritual things. Those words are used in the New Testament. What is inconsistent in history, in terms of splits in the Church, is our understanding of those words and concepts. I do not want to see Christians fighting each other, or name-calling, because of theological disagreements. This essay on Joan of Arc broke down into very damaging arguments in which Catholics and Protestants traded insults. If you hate Catholics, or if you hate Protestants, you can go off and hate them somewhere else. I DON’T WANT IT ON THIS WEBSITE. If I cannot write about Joan of Arc as a historic person, as an inspiring person, without Catholics and Protestants making a little Northern Ireland of it, then I might as well stop writing altogether. People say that you do not want to know how your sausages are made. You say that your sausages are NOT made without pagan ingredients and the Catholic sausages are. I don’t want to hear it. I do not want to hear about sausage-making at all. It makes me sick, and any persistence in it will end by converting onlookers to paganism.
I appear to have issues posting a comment. Testing…
I am having trouble seeing all the posts myself.
Issue I am experiencing is when I click “Post Comment”, I encounter the message “Error: Please fill the required fields.”, despite being logged in to a WordPress account.
I don’t know if that is of any help, but thought I’d mention it just incase.
I am trying to resolve the error. Thanks for letting me know.
Anthony, I have encountered a problem with logging onto WordPress through this site for some reason. It acts like it is trying to log on, but simply goes on endlessly. I let run for 5 minutes one time just to see what would happen.
When I click on email, my email pops up as one of the options, and when I click on name, the line is automatically populated with my handle. But it won’t let me log on. It’s something peculiar to the site, but what I do get is livable, so I just move on.
Deborah Cole, I thank you, Fr. Ripperger is indeed a most excellent priest, I listen to all of his talks gladly. May God & His Most Holy Mother bless you with the Grace of Final Perseverance.
I enjoyed reading this story of Ms. Joan of Arc. We certainly have need of the strength and resolve that she exemplified. In desperate times, men (and women) of true purpose will make themselves known.
—
What I also find interesting and instructive is the manner in which a few commenters in this thread insist on advancing their particular religious points of view, knowing full well that these are contentious subjects. Some readers are not of the same denomination; others are not religious at all. I would gently remind them of Mr. Nyquist’s response from a previous discussion thread:
“…you can pat yourself on the back for dividing my readers and blotting out my message. This goes to show the sophistication of your side’s “divide-and-conquer” game. And I must thank you for providing my readers with a good object lesson on how communist tactics work. Most of my countrymen are clueless about this, and always fall into your little trap. Your kind also like to stir up religious animosities, too. Just get old Jeff talking about religion and he is bound to offend Catholics or Protestants or Jews or agnostics. Whittle my audience down as much as you can. In consequence, I have been attacked as a Catholic shill and as a Jewish shill and as an agent of fundamentalism. I beg everyone’s pardon, but I just want my country defended. Is that such a bad thing? Everybody wants to divide and break up with other Americans. I can assure folks that they won’t survive doing that. The only defensible formation we have is America. If America divides we’re all dead. I’m about uniting the country against a COMMON ENEMY.”
Thank you, Anthony. I was having trouble seeing all the postings. Some kind of bug on the chat.
I enjoyed reading this story of Ms. Joan of Arc. We certainly have need of the strength and resolve that she exemplified. In desperate times, men (and women) of true purpose will make themselves known.
Willard: You are a sick, poor, nasty excuse of a human being. You have no business here. Get out.
The history following Joan of Arc is an illustration of how God operates in history. The US was raised up for specific reasons, many of which only God knows. That France was needed to help the raise up the US, is something that any one paying attention to history has noted. God is not, as many hold, in control. he could be if he wishes, but that would mean he is directly responsible for the evil that takes place in the world. He is in charge and allows things, normally, to take their own path, but, at times, intervenes to bring about the circumstances he wants for his own reasons.
Providence is a fact that can not be escaped. God uses who he wishes to use, no matter what they are, to accomplish his purposes. That Joan happened to be Roman Catholic, is irrelevant. What she accomplished is what matters. I’m grateful for what she accomplished, even though the one result that matters most to us now is fading away.
Jesus said “Occupy until I come.” Joan is one example illustrating why we are to obey what Christ said about our activities. As Jerry Pournelle liked to say, “despair is a sin.” For the Christian, the fight is what matters. God gives the victory as the fight is actually His. What God regards as victory may have not have the look we like.
Go ahead & call me what you will, it is an honour to be insulted by a Schweinekerl like you boy.
I speak German. It’s rusty, but your lame attempts at insulting me are simply an indication you are at the end of any argument. I have not tried to insult. But of the truth bothers, you need to step back and reevaluate your position.
You speak of the your reverence for Holy Scripture, yet I very much doubt that you believe the doctrine of Transubstantiation which Christ Himself teaches clear as day. You can’t have it both way. You say you believe that Jesus Christ is God, yet you refuse to believe that He was able to keep the promise He made, again clear as the light of day, that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church. According to your doctrine of demons they did so prevail for a good 1200 years at least, until the whoremonger Luther came to clear everything up. This means you either call Christ a liar, or you say that He was overpowered by the devil in which case He most certainly cannot be God. There is no escaping logic by magical thinking & emotion. Your fake made up religion is dependent upon fantasy, lies & calumnies.
You understand German? Very good, why don’t you go & read some of the father of your movements works in the original? You will find gems such as the blasphemous claim that Jesus Christ committed adultery with S. Mary Magdalene, you will be told to go & sin boldly even though Jesus Christ says not to sin ever, that not all those who say Lord, Lord will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven but those who do the will of His Father. Can you give a reason for the difference in theology between the Saints & Doctors of the first ages of the Church & your beloved heresiarchs? Do you honestly believe that S. Ignatius of Antioch, S. Justin Martyr, S. Cyprian, S. Augustine, S. Chrysostom, S. Ambrose taught the same doctrines as your accursed innovators?
As for your Sola Scriptura, how do you know it is the Word of God, who told you that? Who determined its canon? What became of the many souls who lived & died illiterate? Why do you believe a doctrine such as the Trinity which is never explicitly taught in Holy Scripture. Who’s to say that you shouldn’t be a modalist instead? Your Sola Scriptura is not itself taught in the Bible, not even in your mutilated, corrupted mistranslated versions. Tradition however is: “15 Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” II Thessalonians 2:15, taken from your King James version so there will be no horrid popish influence.There is also the account of S. Philip & the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts:26-40 wherein S. Philip asks if the eunuch, who was reading Holy Scripture could understand what he was reading. He confessed that he could not unless some man would show him. Your doctrines refute themselves. You believe because you want to believe them, not because they are true, Whether you had your brain thoroughly washed as a small child, or you were overcome with tender emotions (no logic or reasoning, that is too disagreeable for prots) at some temple (as your buildings are not churches) service I don’t know, but I do know that if you were truly good-willed you would not hate & resist God’s Church.
That’s about enough for now amadan, ha ha, let’s see if you can figure out what language that one comes from & what it means. It’s from the language of a great many of my ancestors who were never broken by you prots. You did your worst for several centuries enslaving, pillaging, burning & massacring but you couldn’t make a dent. They were finally broken by the subversive measures of the Communists & largely apostatised at last. The Communists are a far more formidable enemy to the Church than you sectaries ever were, but they too will be overcome at last by the Wrath of The Almighty. The persecuted Catholics of China are already like unto the Martyrs who suffered under Caesar. Just as no one thought the Church could even survive, much less triumph in the year 303, so think all of the many infidels & heretics now that the Church will never rise again; yet it will as it did in 313 & the following centuries.
Mr. Nyquist, I thought you did not want this to be a religious forum. What really does this have to do with Russian/Chinese war preparations in the current timeframe? It seems to be quite off track from your normal message.
Thanks Jeff! What a beautiful inspiring testimony of faith and courage.
I believe the next couple years are going to call for great faith and courage from Gods children…
May we be led by the spirit of God and not lean on our own understanding.
May we imitate Christ’s humility, attitude and obedience-obedient to death even death on a cross.
Study the character and humility of Jesus because nothing is as dangerous as pride. Pride is the root of every sin and evil and can turn angels into Devils. The lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every trouble, defect and failure.
God hates pride because it can destroy us.
May we deny self and humble ourselves daily to serve Him alone.
Hope for the world will not come in “religion” but through humble servants who consider others better than themselves-not looking out for their own interests, but the interests of others…giving their lives courageously for their brothers and sisters.
Be careful who you follow, follow Jesus…
“Those who guide this people mislead them, and those who are guided are led down a path of destruction” Isaiah 9:16
Thank you for everything Jeff!
God Bless You!
Thank you Jeff for the inspiring history. If only all of us could be like her.
A beautiful story and a phenomenal article. Thank you for writing it, Jeff.
I would delete and block the demonic trolls, btw. They know they cannot convince and are satisfied merely to divert the spirit here, from one of unity, wonder, and awe at this marvelous woman, to one of division, bickering, spit, and nastiness. To simply change the spirit here is a win for them.
Good Evening Jeff,
To answer your question in the previous article comment thread. I did send you the PayPal payment on July 27th 2022. I Have not received the book nor a response back from any of my emails. I moved into a home .. have a new address .
I am emailing you my new address and PayPal payment proof now. Please accept my apology for using the comment section for discourse over the book purchase . I’m just anxious to get started on reading it. Please check your email for my new address.
Great article Mr. Nyquist!
I think it was no coincidence that the revolution started the same year king started to tax Joan of Arc’s village again.
What do you make out of Mar a Lago raid? Is it somekind of provocation? I hear people saying they would like to find some excuse to postpone midterm elections. Or find some stolen documents that would prevent Trump from running again.
In Bible times, a prophecy’s Divine sanction was not demonstrable by its fulfilment, as Deuteronomy 13:1-5 reveals, nor by the beneficial providences it may have led to (since all things work together for good for them that love the Lord), but by its conformity to the Word of God alone.
Sure, Joan of Arc’s resistance was a necessary step in ensuring the emergence of the United States which was an important historical development, not that the US is an end in itself, but because it will (in my personal view) be the starting location of Christ’s promised Kingdom of Daniel 2, that grows to fill the whole earth. By the same token, Lot fornicating with his own daughter led to the emergence of the Moabites, one of whom was the godly Ruth, who was a biological link in Christ’s earthly lineage. Neither case proves God’s approval of the preceding acts committed, but rather shows how God orders all things for the good of His cause.
Joan of Arc was a Papist and as such, an adherent to an idolatrous apostasy that applies Christian nomenclature to its pantheon of gods and goddesses, renamed “saints” and which denies the sole sufficiency of Christ for salvation, and robs Him of His exclusive claims to Mediatorship and earthly Kingship, applying them to “co-redemptrix” Mary and the Pope respectively. Therefore, there is no possibility Joan of Arc was God’s prophetess, but rather was merely an instrument of His providence.
Joan of Arc did not engage in theological discussions like the ones initiated here. As nearly all religious people, Joan of Arc did not read theological texts. She was illiterate. She could not even read the Bible. There were no Protestants then, as Protestantism resulted from the growing literacy of the following century. Nobody in the world was then known to claim that men could read and correctly interpret the Bible on their own. This claim would have been seen as heretical then, and still is in the Eastern and Western Catholic traditions. As far as actual theology, philosophy, or understanding God in any real sense, most people then as now were/are simply following what the Church Fathers told them, or some theologian told them — in terms of what the words on the pages of the Bible actually mean. Many disagreements arose once people started reading the Bible on their own. Bloody wars followed, which ought to sober us. Joan of Arc had direct experience of divinity, which is not taken from rationalizing a translated text. Direct experience of the divine is a mystery referred to by the ancient philosophers using concepts which are largely unfamiliar to people who do not have ancient languages or learning. Thus, our discussions here are probably without real understanding. None of us know, in the sense of firsthand knowledge, what the full Truth is. We simply follow one of the teachings, from one denomination or another. A dogmatic pronouncement by a Catholic on why others are heretics, or a dogmatic pronouncement on why Catholics are heretics, amounts to a trading in insults. It gets us nowhere. It does not improve our understanding, but only shows how clouded our understandings really are. Men have argued and killed each other over religion for centuries. I suspect that doctrines are fixed to prevent the disunity and death that arises from doctrinal disagreements. God is a mystery which men refuse to respect, and cannot by nature wisely discuss. They disrespect divinity with their untoward certainties. Meanwhile, our common enemy has gotten hold of our institutions to advance ideas that are clearly evil. Yet, the rendering of a simple historical account, suggesting that God intervenes in history, leads to strident declamations about who is “saved” and who is damned. Who has the truth and who does not. The communists have thrived on all this, growing stronger and stronger, while we mistake our own preconceptions for God. Think of the killing that has logically followed from the arguments presented right here, on this site. This is no joke or exaggeration. Joan of Arc was burnt to death by Christians who were following dogmatic prescriptions about how a woman must dress. They said Joan was committing a sin by wearing men’s clothing. She owed obedience to the Church, they said, allowing no exception for someone who showed every sign of being above the institution that commanded her. There are many related questions here that might be raised. But no discussion of any question is possible if, by dogma, we know all the answers already. Somebody must be wrong in their assertions. How can it be settled? If a messenger came from God to save us, half the people reading this would reject that messenger. Is this not a familiar story? God sends us the Truth and we crucify it. Then we add injury to insult by erecting our own version of what happened, and building institutions on common misunderstandings. As it happens, God made man in His image and we have been trying to return the favor ever since.
“History does not show us many institutions or elites free of this fault. Related to this, I am skeptical of any organized group that claims mystical infallibility.”
This reality invokes gratitude (utter debt and gratitude) for the miracle and gift of the Holy Spirit, which by grace comes to inhabit the human heart. Not a building, or institution, or constitution, or sect, or nation, or single tradition … the Holy Spirit inhabits no other vessel than the faithful human heart.
Such that when institutions fail, when the histories and accounts of prevailing authorities fall into sin, untruth or deception – the Holy Spirit abides in the heart of man. A bedrock and a mystery, equally. For if the Word as Truth was immediately recognizable and self-authenticating as made manifest in history (as those who chastise other claims that it is), there would be no need for human courage to hear and discern the Voice of God in the intimacy of their own heart and soul, despite whatever heresies or deceptions abound. God’s is a Voice known ever from the interior. We follow the wisdom of man always with discernment, under guidance of the Holy Scripture and the gift of the Holy Spirit that is indwelling and thus a Voice we hear, always alone. If it were otherwise, there would be no occasion for human courage. Thank God Joan of Arc heeded the interior voice of God, undeterred.
An individual act of will and conscience ultimately resists human accounts or explanations, because many such accounts and explanations are possible, but the record of an event (and often there are many) are not the same as the authentic truth of the Holy Spirit, known only from the interior. This is the nature of the irreducible mystery of faith, and listening, and knowing, and acting. May we now, too, live in age of courage.
“There were no Protestants then, as Protestantism resulted from the growing literacy of the following century.”
Hussites could be considered protestants, the believes of the moderate branch were so compatible with Lutheranism they later merged with Lutheran protestants after Luther’s reformation. Luther himself admitted he was inspired by Jan Hus who he admired, he wrote “I could not understand for what cause they had burnt so great a man, who explained the Scriptures with so much gravity and skill.”.
The more radical branch of Hussitism, founded by Petr Chelčický, survived in form of several protestant Churches, the biggest one is Moravian Church in America I believe. Petr Chelčický was a farmer and a scholar at the same time by the way, so it is not true that working people were illiterate back then.
Commit: It is curious. Eric Voegelin considered the entire Protestant Revolt as a manifestation of that same “gnostic” spirit that later brought forth communism and Nazism. I am dubious as to the correctness of Voegelin’s tantalizing conceptual schema, but you seem to be making his case.
Actually it was not that uncommon that the common people could read and write, in their own languages. But they were considered illiterate if they couldn’t read and write Latin. France didn’t have a John Wycliffe (1328–1384) who translated the Bible into English so that every plowman could learn it. Wycliffe’s followers were not the theologians such as those who presided at Joan’s trial, but the common people who were persecuted.
The tradition that people read the Bible for themselves goes way back. To Judaism. The first translation of any complete book from one language to another was the Septuagint. This was written so that Greek speaking Jews who didn’t know Hebrew could still read the Bible for themselves. It had only the Old Testament because the New Testament hadn’t been written yet. Almost as soon as the New Testament was written in koiné Greek, the lingua franca of its day, Latin translations were made of it for the common “uneducated” Romans. Before the Vulgate. So important was everyone reading the Bible to the early Christians that there are more surviving copies of the Bible, in spite of persecution where many were burned, than any other ancient book.
The problem is not that everyone reads the Bible for himself. Rather that too few people READ it. That includes theologians.
But then something happened during the medieval period.
Yet there is no substitute for knowing the Biblical languages of Biblical (not modern) Hebrew, Aramaic, and koiné Greek. For example, the word in Hebrew that is often “translated” as “eternal” actually has the meaning of “unknown, unspecified length of time”. So the law used to condemn Joan was not eternal. Hinted at in Deuteronomy 18 and baldly stated in Jeremiah 31, that law was to be replaced, along with the rest of the Mosaic code. Replaced it was at the Last Supper.
Final point—does God speak to people in clear voices? I know a guy, a Bible scholar, who one morning heard a still, small voice but very clear, tell him about an event that would happen later that day and his role in it. Everything that he was told in the morning was fulfilled that evening. He hesitates to tell about it. Did God speak to Joan? Are we in a position to judge?
Some words of Jesus (and a few from Paul, John, and James) that may be relevant to this discussion.
Joh 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Mat 5:39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Mat 5:44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
Joh 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
Joh 13:35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Joh 14:15 If ye love me, keep my commandments.
1Jn 2:3 And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.
1Jn 2:4 He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.
1Th 5:15 See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men.
Jas 2:13 For he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath shewed no mercy; and mercy rejoiceth against judgment.
So, we are commanded to love one another, including our enemies (how much more other Christians). This love is to be as He loves us; and how does He love us?
Rom 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Luk 23:34a Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do…
Are you really such an ivory-skulled imbecile that you can’t tell the difference between venerating a man because he served God in an extraordinary way & asking for his prayers & worshipping Jupiter or Diana? If so you’ve got brown matter in your head that stinks rather than grey matter boy. Every time you’ve asked your minister to pray for you you’ve committed a sin of idolatry. It is much more likely that you are actuated by malice as no one could be that flipping stupid.
S. Ignatius of Antioch, the Martyr was one step removed via S. Polycarp from S. John the Apostle & he believed in the Real Presence. Was the Church already “corrupted” then in the 2nd century boy? How can you trust the Holy Scriptures seeing that they were preserved by us horrible Papists, we might have changed them on you you know. Perhaps you ought to become a Mohammedan, after all at least the Koran was never tainted by Papists, Mohammed said he got it directly from Heaven.
Your kind always foams at the mouth with hatred against the true Church as you are filled with the spirit of your father the devil. Mr. Nyquist by contrast is an honourable man of good will, rather like Agrippa or the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius, may he be uninfluenced by your vile kind sectary & be converted to the True Faith.
Oh my.
The Church was on its way to being corrupted, boy. Clergyism rose in the second century, and much of the non sense surrounding it we see today in the Roman catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy.
Simply believing in the real presence is a problem as Paul said it was memorial. God is present when 2 or more gather in His name, but it isn’t in the bread or wine. That is heresy.
You either take scripture for what it is, the word of God, or you reject it and place the rambling of a magisterium above it, as the RCC has done. The choice is as stark as choosing to be Christian, or being something non-Christian. The RCC chose the latter.
I am detecting rising radioactivity on all sides.
Lol!
Well, ole boys, it’s not good for us to be at each other’s throats, boys. Oh boy, oh buddy boy. Come on guys, relax. We’re not going to change each other’s minds at any rate.
Mr. Nyquist, I ordered Harry Wu’s autobiography which i have seen/heard you refer to more than once. I cant put it down. Now reading it along with your new one. Cant put either one of them down when I get a chance to read.
Nice.
Yep, and it’s a sure sign when people resort to name calling rather than debating ideas that their arguments don’t hold water.
Thank you Jeff! I love inspirational stories and reminders that God is in control. We have so many desperate situations going on in the world today, it can be overwhelming.
I just read the Feds are reducing Arizona’s water allocation from the Colorado River system by 21% in 2023. Farmers in Arizona provide many things including 90% of the US’s leafy greens each November through March.
“The reductions could be the beginning of a water crisis for the 40 million Americans in seven states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California, and Nevada) that heavily rely on the river for freshwater and power.”
I’ve heard multiple analysts say 2023 will be the “year from hell”. I’m praying and also preparing just in case.
Primary Water is abundant… It is all about control.
Ahhh, OK. Interesting!
I am firmly of the belief that we are seeing the beginning God’s judgement on the US for pursuing depravity and corruption. Things are going to get bad in the US fairly soon. I don’t know the extent, but it is instructive that a country as important to the world as the US is not found anywhere in bible prophecy.
Question for Jeff: You said, “Religious dogmas are never borne out by history.” What (Catholic) religious dogma did St. Joan’s history violate?
I just reread the context of your comment, regarding women’s dress, referring to “dogmatic prescriptions” which St. Joan supposedly violated. While female modesty is a high value within Catholic culture, closely related to the virtue of purity, there has never been a dogma pronounced on this specific matter. “Dogma” has a very precise meaning within the Catholic context. Did she violate norms? Absolutely. On the other hand, did an astounding number of people understand intuitively that she was a soul of predilection, held to different standards because of a unique mission entrusted to her by God? Yes. They accepted without indignation that if a woman is appointed to be a warrior, something which already turns cultural norms on their head, she must dress like a warrior. (Perhaps they recollected the Scripture, “Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array?”) Her dress did not cause scandal among the masses of believers. It was only those who had an interest in destroying her who brought up the issue of male dress.
PS – Yes, Deborah, you make a good point. What I should have said, in focusing on the dishonesty of Joan’s judges, is that dishonest people can use the letter of the law to hang an innocent person; for the spirit of the law is never exactly the same as the letter of it. A similar problem arises with all established precepts, like dogmas. There are always exceptions.
@CONCERNED wrote
“back then at the time (1431 AD she died) the heresy of Luther was not yet in existence, and all people were truly Catholics and nothing else (with the exception of infidels and minor heretical sects).”
the Hussite movement was anything but a minor sect. It was a successful national liberation movement with elements of true proletarian revolution.
Back then, the Catholic Church demanded dual loyalty from its members even more than today, any nationalist or progressive movement had to face crusades. The Church was the biggest landlord, allied with other land lords and bankers (despite officially opposing usury) even against the kings.
Joan of Arc’s letter to Hussites, but given she was illiterate she probably only knew Hus and other scholars based on smears. https://archive.joan-of-arc.org/joanofarc_letter_march_23_1430.html
Who can forget those great “proletarians” Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, who lived in austere poverty and never exploited the poor. Lenin, for example, who never exploited the working class, when he ordered the lynching of 100 of them for objecting to his theft of their possessions? Or Mao, who rejected the self-indulgent life of the “bourgeoisie” and famously never led a life of luxury and self-gratification, that is when he wasn’t stuffing his face with food or ravaging kidnapped young women?
Or Marx, that great proletarian, who mooched off his parents and everyone else, wallowed in filth and muck, and exploited everyone around him, including his housekeeper, who he impregnated and then further exploited by denying his child? That righteous man who condemned materialism and then celebrated when a relative died, due to the inheritance he would receive?
Ahh, when one thinks of humble, noble Marxist proletarian heroes, there are so many that come to mind…
Show me morally perfect leaders.
You write this on a forum that praises Donald Trump as somehow a great example of Christian morals.
I was talking about Hussite revolution, which was indeed started by urban proletariat in 1419. Later hijacked by upper classes, but still progress was achieved. Very similar development occurred during French revolution. No proletarian revolution was ever sustained until Lenin developed the theory.
1.) This forum in general doesn’t praise Trump as a great example of Christian morals. You lied with that statement.
2.) To compare Trump with the mass murderers Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, etc is utterly ridiculous. There is no comparison. Whatever time it took you to type that comment was completely wasted.
Finally!…. a posting where I can appropriately ask about your perspective on George Washington’s “Three Visions of America”! I would be very much interested how you process its historical validity thru both your political science lens, but also thru the lens of faith- to whatever degree you feel comfortable. It is recorded in our Library of Congress even though it is a second person account.
https://heavenawaits.wordpress.com/george-washingtons-vision-of-the-3-perils-facing-america/
Since divisiveness and strife have interjected themselves above, I will share my rather simple approach to this document in the Library of Congress, just to be open and transparent. Not looking to “feed the trolls” here at all, nor give room for any further harrassment to you or others. I’ve sincerely wanted to hear your perspective on this and thought other readers may find it at least interesting, if they never read it before.
Personally, for what it is worth, with any “word”, I do not accept it outright as a TRUTH from God. But, I duly note it. I try not to be prideful and “despise” or “scorn” prophesy like Paul specifically warns against in I Thess 5. It needs time and “testing”. Then, it gets put on a shelf in my mind so it is not overly focused on it, but not forgotten about it either. Then, I try to pray about it as it comes up in my memory. Prayer is the wisest, safest way to interact with “words”. Take it before the Throne and ask that His will be perfectly done done on earth, just like it is in heaven and how can I partner with His heart in the matter, in prayer and/or in deed? Asking for His wisdom, insight, understanding, and revelation on the matter. ( Ephesians 1:16-18)
Specifically, with this second person record of Washington’s vision, I am alerted and paying attention. The “dark” “red cloud from across oceans” is notable, eh? Also, it is within the Biblical, historical character of the Lord to give angelic or Personally delivered words, of national and global importance, particularly to founding fathers/mothers. Time will tell.
It is an interesting story. And we never quite know where, in the imagination, a fictional story might come from. Did Alexander himself have a premonition? Along these lines, there was a fictional account of the sinking of an ocean liner called the Titan, if memory serves. All the details were identical to the sinking of the Titanic. Only it was fictional, and it was written years before the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank. Perhaps someone can look up the details for us.
I found it! Morgan Robertson’s vision of the Titanic Disaster. Robertson was a writer born in 1861. After enjoying a career at sea and other businesses, he got this idea for a sea story. It was about the maiden voyage of an unsinkable British luxury liner. He christened the Ship, the Titan. This ship struck an ice field and sank. He envisioned this story in 1897.
Oh wow. So, that today is called “Predictive Programming”!!! We have accidently tripped back into conspiracy theory land! 🤣😂 Which, BTW, really does seem to be really happening to some degree, on some level…..
Oh my. That response did not come off very clear or respectful. I’m sorry. I was in a rather goofy mood last night and my laughter reaction was at ME and how quickly I can still default back to the old mindset of conspiracy theories.
But, I agree with your point of how fiction can point to truth, uncannily — both historically and in our times. Within the last couple of years, the author, Joel Rossenberg, said that exact thing in an interview. He writes fiction regarding mideast geopolitics. More than once, his book has gone to the publisher/printer (out of his hands and revisions) and then his plot starts suddenly happening in real time as the book is released for sale. People were calling him a prophet and he was refusing that label during the interview. But, he did admit it was more than “uncanny”. He just developed the plot using his usual methods — no visions or direct words from God, that he was aware of, anyways.
“Predictive Programming” by Hollywood also seems possible/probable. (What is your perspective on that?) But, if true, that would be of a totally different nature, intention, and spirit. It makes sense that it may purposefully be happening for nepharious motivations. Satan is a mere counterfeiter, afterall. He is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. He does not know the future, so he can only scheme, tempt and manipulate events and people. But, the Lord gives “words of knowledge or wisdom”, prophesy, visions etc out of His nature of love– to warn, protect, give an awareness to pray for or against something in partnership with Him, sometimes to bring discipline and warning to change course and return to His ways. But, mostly He does it edify, comfort and encourage people — that He is real, He is the “God who sees” and He is Emmanuel, God with them. (I Cor 14:1-5, I Cor 12& 13. It’s all meant to be about love, “the more excellent way”.)
This is another example, but this outrightly states it’s a vision encounter the author had back in the late 1980’s. He put it our there in black and white. Accountable. No dates or anything given. But, many of these things are unfolding now or are on the horizon. Time will tell the fullness of it. He is a pastor and shepherds the message of the experience by explaining the shakings on earth he saw from the viewpoint of heaven, so as to prepare mindsets and hearts to approach the coming troubles from heaven’s perspective, and not in fear. We often only see negative earthly outcomes with shock and trembling. But what the enemy means or pushes into evil, (to kill, steal and destroy), God intends to work it for good, redeem. Scripturally, as the years and decades roll out before us, darkness and evil will increase, but also His glory and light will shine brighter and brighter in contrast. The darkness will get darker, but the Light will get lighter. (Isaiah 60:1-3)
This message is one of those things I do not take as an ABSOLUTE/INERRANT “Word from God”/TRUTH, but I have on a shelf in my heart and mind, for those pondering and prayer moments. Wait. Test. Discern.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1599331047/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Of course, one can search out the author and find slander and malignement. Who can one look up and not find negative? (He is very good friends with Ret. General William Boykin and they have even written a book together.) My pastor says, “Of course, even the so-called ‘good’ leaders (both secular governmental and spiritual) are going to fail and let you down. They are weak and broken people, prone to sin — just like us. When God looks thru the earth, He has no other choices to choose from.” Only Jesus is completely perfect and beautiful in all His ways. We all only “see in part and know in part”. (ICor 13:9) But, I believe Joyner truly did “see” some things, to some degree, regarding the coming days. But, the wise pastoring of the message is what is key.
Back on the “shelf” it goes.
Another more recent, for further prayerful, consideration and discernment.
https://www.amazon.com/Second-American-Revolution-Civil-War/dp/1607086786/ref=m_pd_aw_sim_sccl_1/132-3014905-9448164?
A common phrase would describe it thus: “life imitating art”.
The story of George Washington’s vision at Valley Forge, supposedly told by Revolutionary War veteran Anthony Sherman on the eve of the Civil War, is an apocryphal story written by Charles Wesley Alexander, a Philidelphia journalist who indulged in writing patriotic fiction. It is not true, though it is uncanny.
Ok then! Thank you for your response and insight to its historical validity. Have read that, but sometimes the “fact checkers” are far from trustworthy and “protest too much” on far too many subjects. But, can put that up on a higher, out of reach, shelf now. Thank you.
Uncanny, is right…..
It is indeed uncanny. Fiction is sometimes a vehicle for truth.
As a writer myself, I can understand how true this statement is. Thank you, Jeff. 😊
Are you published? LuLu.com charges nothing but a commission on sales. They list your book at all the usual outlets.
Frankly, I did not accept it as from God, as it has none of the hallmarks of such. A number of people accept it as such, alas.
It is fiction. I already explained where it is from.
@Fred Willard: As though I would stoop to get writing/publishing advice from the likes of you!
“So there is still hope, according to this vision, for America, if it will live for God, and be faithful, and it will eventually be victorious, with God’s help, after being overcome in the third peril (attack by foreign nations).”
I like that part at the end. Just like 2 Chronicles 7:14 it says “IF” God laid out what needs to happen for the land to be healed. Sadly, not many heed His voice. Maybe if we’re attacked and invaded by foreign nations that will change.
2 Chronicles 7:14 has Israel in view. No other nations was called by the name of God. No other nation afterwards qualifies either. God has laid out the outline of what will happen in the last days. We the outline of Church history in the letters to the 7 churches in Revelation chapters 2 & 3. The basic outline of secular history of the end times is laid by Jesus in Matthew 24 and Luke 16. A detailed outline is seen in Revelation 4 through the end.
America will not return to its foundations and will fall. But, and it is a big but, Christ told the disciples to “occupy til I come.” The real Church is the salt and light of the world.
ohengineer, if Jesus lives in our hearts and we’re in right standing with God, are we not His people? I’m not talking about a nation.
Yes! There is always great hope as we return to Him. ❤ He is so merciful.
Maybe u have heard of David Barton, an early American historian? He has some great teachings how the 1st and 2nd Great Awakenings in America were around the troubling times of the Revolution and then the Civil War. He argues we are now in the early frontal winds of the 3rd Great Spiritual Awakening. Troubles can help turn people back to the Lord or search Him out for the first time. And, the hidden ones He has been preparing on the backside of mountains and wildernesses of life are refined and ready to arise to meet the crisis of the hour, “for such a time as this.” God Himself gives the Rx in Joel 2:12-29 for the pickle we people get ourselves into, over and over thru history, as we spurn Him and His ways. That kind, “great perhaps” in verse 14 is like the II Chronicle 7:13-15 promise. And, He promises to never leave or forsake us in the midst of any troublings. ❤️🙏
I love listening to David Barton! 🙂 I pray we DO see a 3rd great spiritual awakening! I don’t know what else could possibly turn things around. When Israel was in bondage, THEN they cried out to God. That may well be our future, too. But as you said, He is sooo merciful!
PRAYINGINOK.
The Church is one of two “God’s people.” Those that have been born again, accept Christ as Lord and Savior, are God’s people, but that changes nothing in who 2 Chronicles 7:14 is addressed to. One of the rules of hermeneutics is determine who the passage is addressed to. The Church is not a nation as Israel is, although it is sometimes referred to as a nation. Christians can not point to common descent from someone like Abraham, as Israel can. The descent of Christians is spiritual, and not of blood. For example, Paul referred to Timothy as his son.
I’ve been grafted in. 🙂 Romans 11
Hello Mr. Nyquist, thank you for this beautiful article inspired.
Every time I hear the life of Saint Joan of Arc, I have tears in my eyes. What a life! What a Saint!
Since I am a francophone, I would like to add a few essential points that you may not know about Jeanne d’Arc’s divine mission.
You should know that there is a posthumous mission of Joan of Arc:
Bring Jesus Christ back to the throne of France, in the hearts of the French and in the laws. Her earthly mission was to restore in his rights the French kingship (by divine right) in anticipation of the future restoration of Christ’s kingship over the nations starting with France, then Europe and the rest of the world.
France was born on the baptismal font of Reims, at the baptism of Clovis, Christmas 496. It is no coincidence that Jeanne was born in Domrémy, indeed it was Bishop Saint Rémy – Dom Rémi in Latin – who baptized King Clovis. This king of the Salian Franks was a pagan married to a Catholic: Saint Clotilde. Thanks to the prayers, patience and tears of Clotilde the «proud Sicambre» ends up bending his back. At the Battle of Tolbiac Clovis’ troops were outflanked by the Alamans (ancestors of the Germans), Clovis exclaimed, “God of Clotilde, if you give me victory I will convert and serve you.” Against all odds and while the situation seems desperate from a military point of view the Franks prevail over the Alamans. Clovis kept his promise and demanded baptism. On this famous Christmas evening 496 the church of Reims was packed to overflowing with 3,000 Frankish lords converted like their king Clovis. But the sacristan was unable to cross the compact crowd in the direction of the baptistery to bring the Holy Chrism to Saint Rémy. Suddenly a dove appears a bulb in the beak, flies over the crowd, Saint Rémy receives the heavenly oil of the miraculous bulb. The water of baptism mixed with a portion of the miraculous Chrism flows on Clovis’ forehead…
The bulb and its contents are preserved for later consecrations. Each prince of France will become king by the anointing of this heavenly liquid. This is the origin of the royalty of divine right.
The bishop of Rheims, the oil of the heavenly dove (Holy Spirit), and the good royal offspring. All this makes the king of France.
In France the king is not king because son of the deceased king, it is by God that the king is king. The king of kings makes the king. Jesus makes France.
The French Revolution won France’s eldest daughter by beheading Louis XVI. The Bolshevik Revolution will be the continuation and amplification of the French Revolution. Jesus made Christianity. Communism defies it. Atheistic materialism condenses in itself several centuries of anti-Christian hatred, various and varied materialisms that I will not detail here. Let’s just say that the current globalism is the update of communism after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Let’s go back to Sainte Jeanne d’Arc.
Remember this episode:
The Triple Donation.
What is the Triple Donation?
Shortly after the victory of Orléans, Jeanne addresses Charles on June 21, 1429 in the Abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire:
“Sire,” said she, “do you promise to give me what I ask of you?” The King hesitates, then consents. “Sire, give me your kingdom.” The King, stunned, hesitates again; but, kept by his promise and subjugated by the supernatural ascendant of the girl, “Jeanne,” he replied, “I give you my kingdom.” After which, seeing this one all forbidden and embarrassed by what he had done: «Here is the poorest knight of France: he has nothing anymore». The Maid requires that a notarial deed be solemnly drawn up and signed by the four secretaries of the King. “Notary, write,” said the inspired maid, “on June 21 of the year of Jesus Christ 1429, at 4 o’clock in the evening, Charles VII gives his kingdom to Joan. Write again: Jeanne gives France to Jesus Christ. Our Lords, she said in a loud voice, now it is Jesus Christ who speaks: “I, the eternal Lord, give it to King Charles”.
In short, Charles gives his kingdom to Joan who gives it to Jesus who gives it back to Charles. This is the whole summary of traditional French political doctrine as God wants it. Intermediate powers play their role, but everything goes through Jesus Christ. It is a model of governance for nations. Secularism since the French Revolution is an absolute enemy of this good governance. Communism and globalism are the children of the French Revolution. All have in common the desire to govern without the true God, our Lord Jesus Christ. Here is the breaking point between traditional European society and modern society from the philosophy of enlightenment.
Do you want the light of men or the Light of God?
This is what Jeanne constantly tells her interlocutors:
“God first served”.
“The advice of the Lord is better than that of men”.
Jeanne is of God.
France was of God.
The French Revolution is of Satan, as Joseph de Maistre understood very well.
The world born of revolutionary ideals is of Satan, all under the influence of the Devil.
Do we want the Truth of God or the lies of men?
All the Johannine epic, all this struggle of biblical proportions is to be understood in the light of the good fight City of Good/ City of Evil, as already explained in his time Saint Augustine. I refer you to the Testament of Saint Rémy, almost copied and pasted from the admonitions of Moses to the Hebrew people. “People of Israel, behold, I place life and death before you, make your choice.” Whenever France is faithful to the promises of her baptism – serving Jesus Christ and having him worshipped – she is prosperous and great, that if she betrays her promises, breaking the Tolbiac pact, she is harshly punished. And Europe plunges in its wake and the whole universe of souls is affected. Before striking Rome (through modernism, the Second Vatican Council and Bergoglio) it was necessary to disarm its armed arm, the nation of very Christian kings, crusades and cathedrals.
Jeanne was given to the world through France as an example of fidelity and Christian Restoration.
From 1896 to 1903 the Blessed Virgin appeared at Tilly-sur-Seulles in Calvados, France. The seer, Marie Martel, also saw Saint Joan of Arc several times. One day the Blessed Virgin told her that Jeanne would reappear at the time of great danger and, again, she would come to save France. She would reappear wherever she had passed. The Blessed Virgin also declared: “The Republic is the kingdom of Satan.”
Nowadays many privileged souls receive heavenly messages concerning the salvation of France, the world, etc. Jeanne appears regularly, she announces the brutal fall and miraculous recovery of France, the eldest daughter of the Church.
On Palm Sunday 2016, Jeanne’s ring returned to France through the former French presidential candidate, the Catholic sovereignist patriot, Philippe Devilliers, on the advice of lawyer and historian Jacques Trémolet de Villers, as well as the best specialist of life, works, spirituality and especially of the posthumous mission of Jeanne d’Arc: Louis-Hubert Remy(!). Joan returns to France at the (liturgical) moment when Jesus triumphantly enters Jerusalem… as a king, at least in the hearts of the Israelites. A huge procession passed through France and Joan’s ring was offered to the veneration of the faithful and patriots. This remarkable relic includes the motto of Saint Joan of Arc “Jesus Mary”; Jeanne returns to the Kingdom of Saint Louis as she left: “Jesus Mary”.
You can watch the ceremony of homage to the Ring of the Saint:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nAYZywj3GE
I study many old and new prophecies and revelations, we know that the reign of the Antichrist is at the door, France will fall lower than all nations but she will be the first to rise (Marthe Robin). God’s plan once again passes through his heroine to make it clear to men that He is demanding their homage, not just their prayers, but their state of mind and the entire mental structure of our society. Emmanuel! How long will men rule their lives away from the Lord who died on the cross for them?
The covenant with Jesus must be restored. No man can have two masters. If Jesus does not rule, another will come in his place…
In France the king calls himself “lieutenant of Christ”, the true king of France is Jesus Christ. This is THE model. This is the purpose of the life and death of Saint Joan of Arc. This is the reason for so much suffering allowed against the maid, for the purpose is rooted in Blessed Eternity. Paradise – the true one – is at this price, but we know that the pure blood of Joan – of Jesus – did not flow in vain. The Almighty has already accepted her/his precious holocaust.
Other videos about the return of Jeanne’s ring:
http://www.actionroyaliste.fr/le-retour-de-lanneau-de-sainte-jeanne-darc/
As a final point, I will be brief, but it is important to mention:
France was very officially consecrated by Louis XIII to the Immaculate Heart of Mary (day off on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, August 15), therefore the Kingdom of France belongs to the Virgin Mary. France is the dowry of Mary. This is known as the “Vows of Louis XIII”. After 22 years of barren marriage, Queen Anne of Austria (wife of Louis XIII) made say 3 rosary novenas in honor of the Blessed Virgin by a holy man, Brother Fiacre of Saint Marguerite. At the end of these supplications, 9 months to the day after the queen give birth to Louis XIV. Hence the nickname given to the miracle child: Dieudonné [Godgiven], because God gave. Unfortunately Louis XIV will take himself for the sun king at Versailles, forgetting that only God gives THE Light. Moreover, he would not consecrate his kingdom to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as the seer of Paray-le-Monial, Sister Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, had received the express request of Christ Himself. It was the appearance of the Sacred Heart on June 17, 1689.
100 years to the day after this refusal of obedience to the Almighty, the French Revolution began on June 17, 1789, ending 13 centuries of union between the Throne and the Altar. Consider that the kings of France took over the very Christian reign of the first Roman emperor converted to Christianity: Constantine the Great, son of Saint Helena, put an end to the persecutions of Christians by the Edict of Milan, 313, granting freedom of worship, then in Nicaea in 325 this Catholic king had the high dignitaries of the early Church draft the Creed, the basis of our Faith common to Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants. It is from this period that the term «catholic» dates, which is believed everywhere by everyone and always (implied in my empire).
Immense victory of Faith over paganism.
People often reproach the Catholic Church for having compromised itself with temporal powers but they forget that when Christians did not reign by their kings the princes of paganism persecuted them, slaughtered them by the millions.
The assassination of Louis XVI inaugurated a long list of murders of Christians because christians. Victory of paganism over faith. Inexorable steamroller of the Revolution…
Today we suffer under the tyranny of the New World Order, the various candidates for world rule arguing over the corpses of our degenerate societies, not knowing that God alone reigns.
“Without Me you can do nothing”. (Jn 15:5)
“Who is not with Me is against Me, and who does not gather with Me disperses” (Mt 12:30).
“Be one with Me as I am one with my Father” (Jn 17:21).
There, it was a small digest of the political history of France, the real history of the real France.
I understand spoken or written English but I wrote this in French, then submitted to machine translation, if not clear ask and I will answer directly in English.
The future is dark but THE Light will prevail.
Be infinitely blessed by Our Lord Jesus Christ.
PS: for those who read French, I advise you to obtain “La Mission divine de la France” by the Marquis de la Franquerie, as well as “La mission posthume de Sainte Jeanne d’Arc – Et le règne social de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ”, by Monseigneur Delassus. From the same author another excellent book: «The Anti-Christian Conspiracy», an admirable synthesis of secret societies’s history.
“Fiction is sometimes a vehicle for truth.”
Jeff, thank you for this inspiring essay. Joan of Arc has always been one of my favorite people in history. Recently, I read Mark Twain’s Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc. It was his last book. You and your readers may be interested in knowing that he spent 12 years researching it, much of that time in France. For a man who was known for poking fun at the church and people of faith, he was in AWE of Joan of Arc. He says in his epilogue that much of the trial dialogue is taken verbatim.
One more quick little story about Mark Twain. Once, a young boy approached him excited to meet the world-renowned author. Mr. Twain asked him, Which book of mine are you reading, son?”
The boy replied, “Huckleberry Finn, sir.”
Twain said, “Oh, put that book down. Go get yourself a copy of Joan of Arc. That’s what you should be reading.”
At the end of his life, Twain was asked which of many works was his favorite. His reply? Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc.
So, Jeff, this is what’s truly sad. People don’t know these stories. I would venture that 99.5% of people never knew that Twain wrote a full novel about Joan of Arc. I have a friend who was an English literature major, and I was the one who told her about his book. At first, she couldn’t believe that as a English lit major, she was never taught this. This gem has been hidden, in my opinion, as part of the progressive agenda to erase the history that doesn’t feed the left’s narrative. Thank you again. Maybe some of your readers will be inspired to pick up this wonderful book and share it with others. You’re right. We do need inspiring especially right now. We are being isolated and demoralize daily by the news. These stories which in this case are TRUE, are even more important because they offer hope. The butterfly effect is real.
Would Joan have been so courageous is her voices had told her the truth of her ultimate future? Just like how Russian soldiers who were told it was only a drill for them to invade Ukraine.
Your ignorance is outweighed by your bombast.
I don’t know, Lady. His ignorance is astounding.
Joan apparently knew of her future and spoke of it. This is covered in Mark Twain’s essay, which I have quoted from.
Halt’s Maul Schweinescheisse.
Scandalizing us auf Deutsche, LOL.
She did know her future. Proving that she was indeed courageous. I can understand how that may be a foreign notion to you.
Yes, of course she predicted the future, but the voices were proven to be not from God, because as she said, they told her that she would be released. Her ultimate future of being burned at the stake was not told to her. She was not released in the context of which she had been told by the voices in her head.
I do not believe you have a sincere bone in your body, Stan.
Jeff, you evade the point. Idolatry is a major sin. The United States is cursed by erection of the goddess of Liberty in US waters, and cursed by installing female political leaders.
I am sorry, Mr. Willard, but you are the idolater here. Your idols are the dogmas, the very human interpretations, by which you pretend to understand God. Such empty arrogance bears bitter fruit; for your narrow dogmas, once applied, have no grace in them, and no tolerance (even for your own country). You condemn other people and damn the Statue of Liberty as a pagan idol. Do you realize how much we owe to the ancient Greeks and Romans? Are you an idiot who would condemn America’s system of ordered liberty because it was borrowed from the “pagan” Roman Republic? Nobody worships the Statue of Liberty. It is not regarded as a deity in any real sense, but as symbol of what we have established. If our liberty was so evil, and if America was an evil worshipper of this “goddess,” then why did God allow this country to prosper through two world wars? How are your words constructive or useful in any sense? Are you on the side of good, or on the side of evil? You would burn Joan of Arc at the stake, when nearly all historians — Protestant and Catholic — find her to be an inspiring person. What do your opinions amount to, then? What if America’s leaders thought like you? Would America be saved or destroyed? I say that you are a catastrophe, Mr. Willard. May God save us from your kind. An American who hates the Statue of Liberty, who would burn Joan of Arc as a witch, and whose intolerance is modeled on superstition rather than grace, cannot save anything or anyone. I cringe when I read your posts. “Idolatry is a major sin. The United States is cursed by erection of the goddess of Liberty….” What kind of self-hating bigotry infects you? Yes, our maladies have a spiritual root. But I fear you are part of the disease. And I see little understanding in you.
I think he is a little touched in the head.
“May God save us from your kind” — J.R. Nyquist. Indeed, thank you for saying that.
Also, I would say “save us from the kind” of commenter Vomit; he’s pretty destructive verbally and psychologically–like a plague upon this otherwise insightful forum.
Twain’s essay on Joan of Arc is a fantastic read as well. He was greatly moved by the transcript of her trial.
I can’t wait to read it.
The success of the United States of America, is due to the Anti Federalists, such as George Mason, who insisted on the inclusion of the Bill Of Rights. It is the Masonic Masons and their Satanic Roman and Egyptian symbolism and rituals, who wreak havoc. Bring back the Anti-Masonic Party!
Mr. Nyquist, you have struck on the truth. East German Communists honour Luther as a sort of ideological forerunner of their own movement. Protestantism is the revolt of the devil against God in Heaven enacted again in Christendom. The heresiarchs were the revolutionists of their day. If you read of Calvin’s tyranny over Geneva you will be struck by the similarities with modern Communist states; informers everywhere, secret police always watching & dragging away those who opposed Calvin, the sending forth of spies & agents to other countries to set up cells, foment revolution & if possible take over as they did in parts of France & the low countries & in Scotland.
Just as Lenin promised peace, land & bread so the sectaries promised “freedom”. What they actually brought was tyranny. Great multitudes of peasants starved to death in England when the monasteries they relied on to help them during lean years were handed over to Henry the lecher’s cronies as loot. In many of the German states the number of holidays was drastically reduced under the new Lutheran regime & taxes increased.
Where before there had been order now all was anarchy. The heresiarchs told the masses that they could make of the Bible what they wished & many did just that such as the Anabaptists led by Jan Bokelzoon who set up a proto-communist regime in Munster which ruled from February 1534 to June 1535. Bokelzoon took a dozen or so wives saying God told him to do so. By Protestant standards who can say that this blasphemous claim was not true? However much most may deny it their general tendency is to believe that any idea that comes into their minds & is to their liking must be from God. Bokelzoon used the example of the Patriarchs of the Old Testament to justify himself. Is there any Protestant authority that could say he was wrong?
Luther says this, Calvin says that, Zwingli says something else, are they all of them right? How can this be? Is God the author of confusion? At least Bokelzoon returned to the True Church before his execution. In the end all that most of the leaders of the new movement really wanted was to loot as much as they could of the Church’s property & to establish themselves in on a perch high & secure enough that they could thereafter empty their bowels on the masses below them without fear, they possessed a character exactly similar to modern Communists in that regard.
European society was still too religious to proclaim atheism at the time so a form of religion had to be kept up, but the corruption in morals brought about by the new doctrines ( such as that good works are not necessary, a man is saved or damned regardless of what he does, so if he prefers to be a scoundrel so what?) that room was soon made for atheism to raise its filthy head. It appeared in the Protestant countries first, fellows such as Viscount Bolingbroke & Thomas Hobbes in England & Pierre Bayle son of a Calvinist minister & Spinoza in the low countries. From such as these came Voltaire, Diderot, Robespierre, Saint Simon & so on, & from them came Marx,Engels, Bakunin, Lenin & Stalin.
Robespierre was not an atheist, by the way. They chopped his head off because he would not go so far.
Very interesting; I had not known that about him before.
It’s an odd detail of Robespierre’s history.
Indeed.
The translation of the Bible into the vernacular opened up and enlightened western Europe, even India, and of course America. The works of Adam Smith, John Locke, and Montesquieu et al emerged to inspire humanity in biblically sound principles in economics and politics. Read Vishal Mangalwadi. His works trace the church and the Bible’s positive influence in a way that shows the finger of God in the unfolding of history. He grew up in India, converted to Christianity and is a philosopher. Very interesting man who I think is a uniting writer and champion of the Church, the Bible, and Western Civilization. He shows how these institutions are an influence for spreading God’s word and a force for justice, goodness, wisdom, and courage.
I had not heard of Mangalwadi. And yes, I see he refers to Milton and English literature — which had a decisive influence on our freedom of speech. The birth of freedom, and the civilization we have today, does indeed owe a great deal to the English language. Here, the controversies within the West have been so very important. We have the battle between conservatives and liberals, etc.
Walter: how can I trust a single thing you have written here, when you have presented false information in previous messages?
I tell the truth swine, your good for nothing kind lies.
You seem to be in a name-calling mood lately.
In an argument, I know I have won, that my opponent can’t answer my point, when my opponent starts calling me names. That’s usually when I have caught him in a logical fallacy or a lie.
A favorite among lefties is “racist”. What are we finding here?
Greyknight: he called me a liar first. In the old days he might have been horse-whipped for such a thing. All the same I do wish I hadn’t called him swine now, I lost my temper.
Breaking news:
Multiple Explosions Rock Russia’s Crimean Port City Of Sevastopol
Not sure what all is involved, just sharing.
The Ukrainians have developed some kind of new long-range weaponry of their own. So far it is a mystery how they are doing these attacks. There has been panicked traffic along the Kerch bridge moving east. Russia has moved naval units east of Kerch. The war is reaching a critical stage. So much to report on that front, and some of it frightening in terms of the Biden administration machinations to destroy the Kiev government. The promised weapons have not been pouring in. Subversion from the American side, in apparent secret collaboration with Russia, is already in evidence. This supposed $40 billion in aid never arrived. I have it from multiple sources now, in Washington and in Kiev.
Thank you for the update on this situation! It is appreciated. 🙂
Thsnks for the update. The news is confusing on this. Is the rail line across the Kerch operating or not? My understanding is that is the main supply line for the Russians in that area.
The Russians have built a bridge across the Kerch straits through which supplies flow. I have been told that the traffic carrying Russians in flight has been growing. Quite a few military families live in Crimea. Their relocation suggests where things are headed.
Disgusting and sickening. Betrayal.
Very sickening. Makes me feel sick when I think about the cowards and traitors in our executive and Congress. They talk so tough and act as if they are so virtuous, but they are actually the scum of the earth.
Thank you Jeff! I heard the first shipment of grain allowed to leave Ukraine went to Syria. So much deception going on!
I never believed our promised aid would reach the Ukranian war effort. My question has been, “Where would it actually go?” Would weapons shipments somehow wind up in Russian or their allies hands, would transport information be leaked and the shipments destroyed, or would it even be sent? As for money, I figured it would possibly be sent to corrupt elements, ie Russian agents, within the Ukranian government. There was never a doubt in my mind that the Biden administration and Democrats would not betray Ukraine.
My sources indicate that the $40 billion in resources was actually never approved. It was simply announced and became an official talking point. People can say anything they like. What they actually do is something altogether different. However, I am sure the Biden administration is kicking themselves for giving over the 12 HIMAR artillery pieces. Everyone thought the Russians counter intercept rockets of that kind. Oops. They cannot. Now the Russians are being picked apart.
May be the hand of Providence in regards to the HIMARs.
These are terrorist attacks, there is no footage of any missiles flying.
How much money has supposedly been conjured up for the benefit of Ukraine? There have been so, many bills rammed through it’s hard to keep track. Then there’s the lack of accounting for specifically what the funds are to capitalize. Is this money going to black ops? Or is it going to Swiss bank accounts of Democrat politicians? Wouldn’t it be great if it were going to the US Space Force, super advanced weaponry?
Commit, it’s called war. It isn’t terrorism. The Ukrainians have hit military targets. Russia has been shelling civilians and civilian infrastructure with malice aforethought. I realize that’s hard for people like you to absorb, but you could work at it and get over your asinine ideology.
I’d like to recommend some books: History of The Variations of The Protestant Churches by Bishop Bossuet, The History of Heresies & Their Refutation By S. Alphonsus Ligouri, The Great Heresies by Hilaire Belloc, The History of The Protestant Reformation In England & Ireland by William Cobbett (himself an Anglican sadly, but he told the truth) & An Essay on Catholicism, Liberalism & Socialism by Donoso Cortes, a descendant of the Spanish hero who brought the True Faith & Christian civilisation to the heathen savages of Mexico. It’s well for them that Prots didn’t conquer them or they would have been exterminated by means of the deliberate distribution among them of small-pox contaminated blankets among other means.
Review the history of the Spanish conquest and its impact on native populations. It isn’t pretty. If you actually think all was well just because the Conquistadores were Roman Catholic, you are most naïve.
Fr. Malachi Martin said in the 1990’s that the 3rd Secret of Fatima foretold that the defeat of Communism & the renewal of the world would come about through Ukraine. Where would he have got such an idea at the time? Alois Irlmaier foretold exactly what is occurring now in the 1950’s, he foresaw the time of great prosperity, the apostacy, invasion of foreigners, inflation & the coming world war. He was shown these things due to his devotion to Our Lady. The heresies of which Mohammedanism is one will be finally eradicated & the True Faith will prevail over all the earth as is foretold in Holy Scripture. May this blessed time come soon & God’s enemies be overthrown & put to confusion:
Quare fremuerunt. The vain efforts of persecutors against Christ and his church.
[1] Why have the Gentiles raged, and the people devised vain things? [2] The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes met together, against the Lord and against his Christ. [3] Let us break their bonds asunder: and let us cast away their yoke from us. [4] He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them: and the Lord shall deride them. [5] Then shall he speak to them in his anger, and trouble them in his rage.
[6] But I am appointed king by him over Sion his holy mountain, preaching his commandment. [7] The Lord hath said to me: Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. [8] Ask of me, and I will give thee the Gentiles for thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession. [9] Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron, and shalt break them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. [10] And now, O ye kings, understand: receive instruction, you that judge the earth.
[11] Serve ye the Lord with fear: and rejoice unto him with trembling. [12] Embrace discipline, lest at any time the Lord be angry, and you perish from the just way. [13] When his wrath shall be kindled in a short time, blessed are all they that trust in him. The 2nd Psalm.
The Almighty will crush His enemies after this modern Sojourn in Egypt on the part of His people,which is the Holy Roman Catholic & Apostolic Church.
Wanted to share what is allegedly a Russian paratrooper’s memoir of his experiences in the Ukraine war. His name is Pavel Filatyev. I ran the Russian document through Google Translate. English version is here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hx6dsp1sn9nr004/ZOV%20-%20English.pdf?dl=0
Original Russian document here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6x6l3fnosxtekf8/ZOV%20-%20Russian.pdf?dl=0
An excerpt from the beginning:
“’And how did Ukraine threaten Russia?’
Everyone around is talking about the fact that Ukraine wanted to join NATO. But
do we attack all the countries that want to join NATO? Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland are already in NATO. Finland now joins NATO. Turkey shot down our plane not so long ago, but we it was quickly forgotten, Japan claims our islands. Damn it, the United States borders on us in the East, but for some reason all this is not a reason to start a war. We’re
not attacking them, or is it just for now? It turns out that this is not the reason.
‘If we had not attacked Ukraine, would it have attacked us?’
Many echo the TV that we launched a preemptive strike, but how can you believe that Ukraine would have attacked Russia, Crimea, if the Armed Forces of Ukraine could not even hold their borders, they are waging a defensive war suffering huge losses, anyone knows that the war in defense is easier than attacking. How could this country, which defends itself with difficulty, slowly but losing its territories, attack? And wouldn’t it be easier for our army to strengthen the borders and defenses around Ukraine and, in the event of their attack, meet the enemy on the defensive, break their offensive potential and go on the counterattack, after all, in this case, our losses would be much less, and the world community would not be able to accuse Russia of an aggressor and glorify our country as an occupier and invader. It turns out that Ukraine was going to attack Russia is also not true?
‘Ukraine was enslaved by Nazism and they infringe on the Russian population?’
But strange as it may seem, when communicating with people who were in Ukraine before the war, no one could remember a specific case that someone somehow infringed or offended him for having a Russian surname or not being able to speak Ukrainian. And some isolated cases of domestic conflicts on ethnic grounds can be found in any
country in the world.
‘We attacked to save the DNR and LNR’
What are the DNR and LNR? Indeed, in fact and legally, these are two regions that were part of Ukraine, which rebelled and decided to become independent. Wouldn’t it be the same if Karelia wanted to go to Finland, Smolensk region to Lithuania, Rostov to Ukraine,
Yakutia to the USA or Khabarovsk to China, isn’t it the same? Why are we defending the LDNR? Did ordinary people in Donbas feel better? After all, in the Russian Federation we
they would not have tolerated this, just as they did not once give independence to Chechnya, paying for it with thousands of lives. Why did we do the same with our neighbors? But at the same time, the top of the LPR and DPR, despite the support of the Russian government, could not provide their people with social security and give them security, which is why people fled en masse to Russia, Crimea and Ukraine. Communicating with people who fled the war in Donetsk and Luhansk, I did not hear cases of Nazism that are shouted about from our media. But all as one talked about the fact that they fled from the war and that they just want to live and work in peace.”
Proof it is not another fake? If you follow Russian sources, they never claim to be fighting only Ukraine.
Very good.
The Halt’s Maul comment was meant for Willard. I mistakenly thought it’d show up under his sacrilegious comment.
Looks like the Scheisse is on you.
No I don’t think so, let me check my shoes……no I didn’t step in any willard today ha ha ha! Come on give me another you calumniating cowardly coprophage.
Hello Jeff,
Do you think that Pavel Filatyev is a real defector?
Thanks.
Nelson. Good question. I have not read Filatyev’s book. He appears honest. One never knows without more information, but someone that young is not likely to be a false defector. When Russian soldiers come forward, telling stories of atrocities from their own side, and admitting their own crimes, you have to take it seriously. This becomes a matter of the soul. I do not know if Filatyev has made any such confession, but Daniil Frolkin of the 64rth Motorized Rifle Brigade has publicly confessed that his unit, under direct orders from Russian generals, participated in robberies, looting and murder. Frolkin even confessed to killing a Ukrainian civilian in the village of Andryivka. It will be, indeed, these voices of conscience that give hope for Russia’s future. Russia suffers terribly under the moral degradation of Putin’s gang. Any Russian courageous enough to denounce the invasion of Ukraine is pure gold. Such people are true heroes, risking everything to tell their countrymen the truth about the war. The Russian generals want their troops to commit atrocities so that these troops cannot defect to the Ukrainian side. This is what the Kremlin fears. It really is very simple. Order your own people to commit unspeakable crimes and they cannot criticize your policies of mass murder and oppression.
A very inspiring article. The lack of people of valor seems to lead quite some people astray nowadays, the whole Q anon stuff that claimed everything will be alright, Trump has got this, don’t do anything folks, people just want to believe and follow a morally sound leader these days, this is why some people tend to support Trump to the point of worship. Putin’s strategy of posing as a Christian/Traditionalist leader also feeds from this desire for morally sound leaders people have.
“Putin takes on Globalists”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qoij5XWCWz0
very insightful, especially for people on this site believing the opposite
It’s a scissors strategy. Communist infiltrators on one side, Moscow Center on the other.
You have mentioned this in quite a few of your video interviews, so I have become somewhat familiarized with the term, and with what it means. They must have been some very clever, devilish people to have come up with such a political strategy.
You control both blades of the scissors. Based on dialectics. You use a conflict to create something new that you dominate.
Right. Thank you.
Haha!
“How Russia Is Using Conservatives to Spread Its Propaganda” by Trevor Loudon
https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-russia-is-using-conservatives-to-spread-its-propaganda_4372003.html
Very insightful, especially for people in America believing the opposite.
Putin is a globalist. The only difference between him and the other camp is he wants to be the head honcho. That’s why the WEF kicked him out.
Here’s a good song to cheer everyone up who got upset with each other in the comments section. I’m about to turn it up and head home from the workweek. Cheer up Walter. Ohengineer is not your enemy,😊
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzl416fjUSY
Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. Proverbs 27:6
By telling the truth, I do not become his enemy.
I know it. But he seems to take it that way. Hopefully he will come around, because we all have to pull together to fight the oncoming enemies.
Seems like the relationship between some Catholics and Protestants is similar to the one between the Elves and Dwarves in the Lord of the Rings books/movies. Some clearly detest one another, but unite to face the common enemies in the end.
However, some of them got along even before necessity compelled them to, after they recognized the value in one another.
We can hope. But I don’t hold out a lot of hope. I go over to Church Militant from time to time to check on Michael Voorhis’ ravings on the US. He’s of the opinion the inquisition needs to return and that the problems in the US go back to Protestants founding the country. There is a huge hump for them to get over and many, if not most, can’t quite get over that hump.
I did laugh at his attempts to insult me in German. I lived in Germany for 6 years and, while I’m rusty, his attempts stood out as quite lame. He’s not being a netter kerl (nice guy) when he acts that way. Someone else doesn’t know how to spell the “S” word. The double “s” is not the proper spelling. It requires an “ß.”
I think there is some truth to the comparison of the elves vs dwarves thing. I have had Roman Catholic friends and we have discussed theology without getting rancorous. The one characteristic they exhibited was a lack of arrogance for the magisterium, knowing that people can be wrong and simply having the Holy Spirit makes no one infallible, including men’s organizations we like to call Churches. In the end, most left the RCC when they started asking questions and the most substantive reply they got was “just believe.” I got into a discussion with the Bishop of Nashville many years ago and the discussion ended with a shrug from him when I asked a question. He had no answer because he found himself in a theological corner he saw no way out of.
While I am a serious student of scripture, I do not see myself as some sort of super theologian. I do seriously pursue God, and the study of His word is the one of the most important components of that.
Tienes derecho que no puedo escribir bien en la lengua alemana, puedo leerlo mas mejor. Sin embargo ya supe la regla con respecto a la ortografia, pero el teclador no tiene necesaria. ! Que lastimas! No voy a insultarte de nuevo pobre chico. Me provocaste por las calumnias que has escrito contra Dios y Su Iglesia, pero es suficiente. “Caso que no quieran recibiros, ni escuchar vuestras palabras, saliendo fuera de la tal casa o ciudad, sacudid el polvo de vuestros pies.” Evangelio de San Mateo 10:14.
Was Joan Van Ark named after our dear, beloved, heroine?
Valene & Gary Ewing
https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/557/a35/99b6f953ccbc68e01409b2fbe63535d645-14-sookie-eric-true-blood.rsquare.w700.jpg
“… but it is instructive that a country as important to the world as the US is not found anywhere in bible prophecy.”
Ohengineer – while I do enjoy and agree with the majority of your comments, I do wish folks would consider the other side of the coin without (as you so often do) taking every contrary (and well intentioned) opinion as a personal joust to be thrust aside with animated vigor. Come and let us reason together …
I too agree that America (and other [backsliding] Christian nations) are coming under Divine judgement and it will only rapidly increase. To what severity and for what length of time, possibly even under enemy occupation – only God knows. But I wholeheartedly disagree that we will be totally destroyed. And to this last thought I address your above quotation and reply – how could a once great and astoundingly blessed nation such as ours NOT have been mentioned in scripture ? Have we perhaps misidentified latter day nations and even the people of the Book themself ? I submit that indeed we have and the errors do not stop there.
Why take such consideration as an affront and get so bent out of shape – and I’m not addressing you specifically but many others I have encountered over the years and come to recognize the standard responses. I was there one time myself. And no, I do not present myself as all knowing or having reached that plateau of perfect understanding. I too have been at my quest for Truth for many years and don’t take Christ’s warning of laying stumbling blocks before those who seek Him lightly. I reconciled myself long ago that if my pursuit led me on another course away from long cherished ( actually read – indoctrinated) beliefs but were ultimately Biblically sound, so be it. Emotions and feelings of hurt ego (if they exist) must be cast aside and we plow forward. Seek and ye shall find – how bad do we want it ? Proverbs 25:2
The majority of prophecy we look to yet be fulfilled is already past history, but we fail to see this for we look in the wrong directions and at the wrong people. Please do not arbitrarily thrust labels upon me to seemingly disavow what may be proven so with honest study, as “racist” isn’t the only oft misused catch all phrase thrown about and does nothing to discount the reality that has unfolded.
But I too am certain these vast schisms in people’s beliefs will continue until Christ’s return and only He will set all alright. I am no enemy of any who profess Christ Jesus in truth and love. I’ll cut this short before Jeff’s “roving and patrolling hovercraft” detects rising levels of “radioactivity” in the waters and sends a heatseeker my way. May God bless ya brother and all that are His.