China's war on transcendence and the Antichrist
Category: Religion & Ethics
Via: donald-j-trump-fan-1 • 4 years ago • 23 commentsBy: Wallace Henley
There is no morality without God. There is no life with out God. There are no human rights without the creator who created us in His image and gave us those rights along with free will. Neither dictators who act like the anti christ nor he himself can usurp the role of a transcendent God in our lives.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party have declared war on Transcendence.
“Transcendence” refers to that which goes beyond and extends above the “immanent,” the horizontal scale. The Truly Transcendent is infinite, meaning “unlimited.” The immanent is finite, bounded.
Yet the finite hungers for the infinite. Ultimately this is an intense desire for theInfiniteTranscendent Being — God.
Without a healthy understanding of and reverence for Transcendence humans have no standard for good. If there is no absolute standard for good, then there is no standard for identifying evil.
Theologian Alvin Plantinga says that a strictly finite worldview “has no place for genuine moral obligation of any sort.” Richard E. Simmons III, in his book, Reflections on the Existence of God, discusses the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals. Robert H. Jackson, the chief prosecutor, “appealed to a law beyond the law, a universal standard.” A system of ethics, he believed, as Simmons describes it, “has to be transcendental, and its basis cannot rest in the finite world.”
If there is no standard for identifying evil, then anything goes — from heists to Holocausts. Without the Transcendent standard how can anything be judged as truly wrong?
However, Thomas Jefferson was thinking about Transcendence and the injustice of slavery, when he said, “I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
Most of the groups that Xi Jinping’s government is now persecuting from among their own people are those who look beyond the earthly tyrants to Transcendent authority. It’s not just Christians and their institutions in China that are under attack, but Muslims and Buddhists, and any others who look to authority above and beyond the stern councils of Beijing. That includes spiritual movements like Falun Gong. A shocking Canadian report exposed “large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners.”
This passion to try to squelch the recognition of and hunger for Transcendence should come as no surprise, since all authoritarians ultimately come to this. If there is a Transcendent Being whom people worship, then the dictators are not at the top of the pole of power.
They are compelled to eliminate every trace of Transcendence. In doing so they run into a confession of St. Augustine: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”
A few centuries later, French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, in his Pensees (French for “reflections,” or “thoughts”), wrote: “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? Thus he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can only be filled with the infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”
Xi Jinping and all the totalitarians can try to stifle the passion in the human soul for Transcendence and replace it with sloganeering, great spectacles of armies and weapons paraded before the nation and world, as well as their own personages, but none of these can fill the “infinite abyss.”
Those of us who ministered in the former Soviet Bloc after the collapse of Communism were amazed at how quickly churches, seminaries, and ministries sprung up everywhere.
When I think of Xi’s current war on Transcendence, I remember an afternoon in 1971 in the New Territories north of Hong Kong. President Richard Nixon, my boss at that time, would a year later surprise the world by traveling to China. On that 1971 day, however, China was closed tight to the United States and much of the world. Yet l could look a hundred yards ahead and see a farmer in China working his fields.
“There are some Chinese who believe Mao will never die,” said my host. They have faith that at some future point he will ascend into the mountains and continue to rule China forever, my friend continued.
To suggest that there were Chinese who, in the officially atheist state, had already exalted Mao to transcendent status — in their minds at least — proved both Augustine and Pascal right: the human soul must have Transcendence just as the human body must have oxygen or water.
Take away true Transcendence and we begin glorifying and worshipping everything around us.
The Antichrist spirit exploits this. “Anti,” in New Testament Greek, means “in the place of” as well as “against.” The Antichrist spirit is therefore that of opposition and imposition. The desire is not only to oppose Christ but to push Him aside and put oneself on the Lord’s throne.
Lucifer tried this before creation, and, in the words of Jesus, fell from Heaven “like lightning.” (Luke 10:18) This has been the outcome for earthly despots driven by the Antichrist spirit to seize the thrones of their nations, civilizations, and, finally, the world itself.
Nero tried. Stalin attempted. Hitler blitzed. Now Xi Jinping is making his run on the throne of time and history. However, the Chinese are spiritually hungry. During the relaxation of Marxist totalitarianism prior to 2018, great churches bloomed overnight —the churches Xi is now bulldozing, bearing crosses he has ripped down.
Xi’s war on Transcendence is not new. The outcome has already been written in the soul of humanity.
Wallace Henley is a former pastor, White House, and congressional aide. He served eighteen years as a teaching pastor at Houston's Second Baptist Church. Wallace, the author of more than twenty books, now does conferences on the church and culture, church growth and leadership. He is the founder of Belhaven University's Master of Ministry Leadership Degree.
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Take away true Transcendence and we begin glorifying and worshipping everything around us.
The Antichrist spirit exploits this. “Anti,” in New Testament Greek, means “in the place of” as well as “against.” The Antichrist spirit is therefore that of opposition and imposition. The desire is not only to oppose Christ but to push Him aside and put oneself on the Lord’s throne.
Lucifer tried this before creation, and, in the words of Jesus, fell from Heaven “like lightning.” (Luke 10:18) This has been the outcome for earthly despots driven by the Antichrist spirit to seize the thrones of their nations, civilizations, and, finally, the world itself.
Nero tried. Stalin attempted. Hitler blitzed. Now Xi Jinping is making his run on the throne of time and history. However, the Chinese are spiritually hungry. During the relaxation of Marxist totalitarianism prior to 2018, great churches bloomed overnight —the churches Xi is now bulldozing, bearing crosses he has ripped down.
Xi’s war on Transcendence is not new.
As the death toll from the coronavirus reaches 724 and the number of confirmed cases rises to 34,546, Christians in China — where the illness originated — are distributing masks and sharing the love of Christ on the streets in the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak.
While fear and insecurity have gripped the 11 million residents of Wuhan, a city in China’s Hubei province, Christians there have been out on the streets giving out masks and sharing the love of Jesus and the hope the Gospel brings, according to Christian Broadcasting Network’s Asia correspondent Lucille Talusan.
“They're very courageous,” she was quoted as saying. “They give out masks and they say that they are Christians and they share the love of Christ and point to Jesus to bring hope to them and their families and the whole of China. ... This is really a break-through.”
The coronavirus originated in Wuhan about two months ago and can lead to respiratory illnesses which are fatal in some cases. While at least 724 people have died from the disease and 34,546 people have been confirmed to have the illness, the actual numbers are believed to be much higher, according to Bloomberg.
Earlier during the week, a Chinese pastor living Wuhan, identified only as “A Wuhan Pastor,” wrote to the international faith community, urging them to pray and revealing that fellow pastors from around the world had been reaching out.
“It is readily apparent that we are facing a test of our faith,” the pastor wrote. “The situation is so critical, yet [we are] trusting in the Lord’s promises, that his thoughts toward us are of peace, and not evil (Jeremiah. 29:11), and that he allows for a time of testing, not to destroy us, but to establish us.”
He continued, “Therefore, Christians are not only to suffer with the people of this city, but we have a responsibility to pray for those in this city who are fearful, and to bring to them the peace of Christ. … [When] disaster strikes us, it is but a form of God’s love. Spoken for today, Wuhan’s pestilence cannot separate us from the love of Christ; this love is in our Lord Jesus Christ.”.......
This ispo facto declares that all who do not follow the Christian God (what you always mean by 'God') are immoral. Is that what you mean to declare?
Where do you find the rules for morality — the true guide to morality? Where do people go to find out what is moral and what is immoral?
Try for once to stay on the topic of the seeded article and discuss its content. Christians are filling a void in people’s lives in China despite the efforts of the dictator there otherwise.
Your opening commentary in the body of the article was:
You opened with a declaration of truth and thus we all have the right to address your declaration.
“Transcendence” refers to that which goes beyond and extends above the “immanent,” the horizontal scale. The Truly Transcendent is infinite, meaning “unlimited.” The immanent is finite, bounded.
Yet the finite hungers for the infinite. Ultimately this is an intense desire for theInfiniteTranscendent Being — God.
Without a healthy understanding of and reverence for Transcendence humans have no standard for good. If there is no absolute standard for good, then there is no standard for identifying evil.
Theologian Alvin Plantinga says that a strictly finite worldview “has no place for genuine moral obligation of any sort.” Richard E. Simmons III, in his book, Reflections on the Existence of God, discusses the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals. Robert H. Jackson, the chief prosecutor, “appealed to a law beyond the law, a universal standard.” A system of ethics, he believed, as Simmons describes it, “has to be transcendental, and its basis cannot rest in the finite world.”
If there is no standard for identifying evil, then anything goes — from heists to Holocausts. Without the Transcendent standard how can anything be judged as truly wrong?
However, Thomas Jefferson was thinking about Transcendence and the injustice of slavery, when he said, “I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
Most of the groups that Xi Jinping’s government is now persecuting from among their own people are those who look beyond the earthly tyrants to Transcendent authority.
Representatives from five religious groups affected by severe religious persecution, including a Christian, Yazidi, and Uyghur Muslim, identified the most pressing issues facing their communities and shared how the international community can help.
During the National Prayer Breakfast sideline event on religious persecution around the globe co-hosted by the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and 21Wilberforce, moderator Naomi Kikoler, director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, interviewed five host representatives from communities affected by religious persecution.
The panel included Yasmin Ullah, president of Rohingya Human Rights Network; Nawaf Ashur, representing the Free Yazidi Foundation; Loay Mikhael, head of foreign relations for the Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Popular Council; Omer Kanat, executive director of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, and Bob Fu, the founder and president of China Aid.
Kikoler noted that much of the persecution facing groups around the world is the result of years of ignored warning signs. The obligation of world leaders today is to recognize these warning signs and “act before it’s too late,” she said.
The panelists then identified risks facing their individual communities right now.
Fu, a Christian, applauded the panel for bringing different religions together, emphasizing that “one faith community cannot fight this battle alone.”
He said that over the last two years, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “war on religion” has reached its “worst” in 40 years. He accused Xi of turning faith into a “tool for the indoctrination of Communist ideology.”
For example, all religious leaders must pledge to obey the Communist Party’s ideology in their pulpit before they can be allowed to practice their religion, Fu said. Additionally, millions of Chinese Christian children have been forced to renounce their faith by signing a Communist Party prepared document.
“Clearly the aim is to exterminate any independent faiths,” he said, referencing not only the Christian faith, but the faith of Muslims, Buddhists, and others.
“This is a very, very serious signal,” he said.
Fu also addressed the persecution experienced by members of China’s Early Rain Covenant Church, revealing that in addition to constant surveillance, at least 80 believers experienced “tremendous torture and trauma.”
“The camera recorded their false confession against their own pastor, Wang Yi, who was sentenced to nine years imprisonment,” he said. “After these false confessions, many were traumatized. They feel guilty of betraying the pastor. Some showed suicidal tendencies.”
Ullah spoke on behalf of the Rohingya community, an ethnic and religious minority group that exists in Myanmar (formerly Burma) and has been the victim of state-sponsored persecution. Close to a million people have been displaced or killed as a result of systematic persecution.
“We are seeing more and more of the element of re-traumatization within the community,” she said. “A lot of my people are living in a very restrictive condition inside one of the largest refugee camps in the world. Imagine having to eat rice once a day, every day. What do you think that would do to your body? Imagine young children fearing going to sleep because they fear that small rats would come and eat away at the tip of their fingers.”
“It eats away at your psyche and it eats away at your hope of being able to live a better life,” she added. “When we don’t try to resolve it in a more urgent manner, this is what it does to human beings and we’re going to have to brace for generations of Rohingya to come that are going to be completely traumatized.”
Ashur revealed that for the Yazidi community living in Iraq, there hasn’t been much “positive development” when it comes to safety and security.
“ISIS perpetrators who have committed genocide against Yazidis, they’re still living in much of Nineveh province,” he said, adding that tens of thousands of Yazidis remain displaced.
“We have a whole generation of traumatized people,” he said, adding that those who have survived the Islamic State's persecution are “severely traumatized” by what they endured.
“People have lost their entire families,” he said.
Ashur said that the relief efforts carried out by both the U.S. and Iraqi governments “haven’t translated on the ground,” adding that the continued instability in Iraq prompts the Yazidi people to fear another genocide might soon happen or another iteration of IS will appear.
Mikhael added that the persecution facing Christians and other minorities in Iraq is “unprecedented.” He explained that because of persecution at the hands of IS, the Christian population in Iraq dwindled from 1.5 million to just 250,000. He revealed his own family was forced to relocate “all over the world” due to persecution.
“We are all over the world,” he said, “not because of our choice, but because we were forced to flee. The challenge is tremendous.”
After IS was driven out of Iraq, Christians hoped that life would return to normal and be “prosperous” once again, Mikhael said. Yet, thousands remain displaced, jobless and traumatized with “life taken from them in the presence of the international community.”
Mikhael criticized the Iraqi government for its inaction, explaining that no official has tried to “do something tangibly on the ground to bring those communities back to their lives.”
“It’s really unspeakable,” he said. “I believe, to restore the dignity, you need to create jobs, you need to improve security, you need to have a well do to that.”
He urged the international community to make efforts to improve life for Christians, Yazidis, and other minorities in their home countries instead of accepting thousands of refugees every year.
“People want to stay,” he stressed. “Nobody wants to leave.”
Kanat opened up about the risks facing Uyghur Muslims in China.
“The persecution of the Uyghurs by the Chinese authorities has been going on for several decades,” he said. “But in 2017, it turned into all war against the Uyghur religion, culture, and family life. The Chinese government is carrying out a campaign to exterminate Uyghur identity.”
About three million people — most of them from the Uyghur community — are thought to have been detained in China’s secretive “re-education camps” without trial. According to Kanat, it’s the largest incarceration of a religious group since the end of World War II.
In these prisons, people are forced to renounce their religion, culture, and identity, he said, adding that the worst is “yet to come,” as mass murder and genocide are “impossible outcomes.”
When asked how the international community can better serve those persecuted and prevent further oppression from occurring, Ullah said that the U.S. has an obligation to signal to other countries the importance of treating every human with worth and dignity.
“Learn the stories of the survivors, learn to speak to them if you have access to one,” she advised listeners. “Make them feel that you respect them as humans. That is the fundamental right … that we owe to each other.”
Fu encouraged the international community to “pay attention to the truth” and “spread true information about faith communities and persecution” on social media.
He also stressed that faith communities must unite and speak with “one voice and for each other.”
“That is a powerful message,” Fu said.
The people’s need for the transcendent can not be replaced by finite man and our regimes or substitutes. No amount of persecution of any transcendent belief system can make people whose void is filled by God give that up, even under the thuggish jack boot of the state.
You didn't address TiG's question, which is in direct response to the opening statement of the article.
The opening statement of the article is: “Xi Jinping and his Chinese Communist Party have declared war on Transcendence.
“Transcendence” refers to that which goes beyond and extends above the “immanent,” the horizontal scale. The Truly Transcendent is infinite, meaning “unlimited.” The immanent is finite, bounded.
Yet the finite hungers for the infinite. Ultimately this is an intense desire for theInfiniteTranscendent Being — God.” I saw no post from him that addressed it.
And still don’t.
A NewsTalkers article consists of the title, quote, your overall comments and then the content of the optional seed. You opened this article with:
That was your opening sentence in the article. And morality is further discussed in the seed content (which is part of this NT article). For example:
You are in the wrong.
Okay, where is this standard? Where do we go to find the moral standard that deems Islamic honor killings immoral but capital punishment and war are moral?
What about slavery? Slavery is "moral," because god doesn't condemn it outright, right?
As you know there is a whole list of unresolved questions.
Indeed. And I doubt there is the intellectual honesty required to address them logically.
Those questions are only unresolved in the limited info so called logic of the finite secular mind.
So logically speaking opposition to the points made by the seeded article are an endorsement of the actions of Xi and others before him who tried to put the state or human imagination in place of the transcendent?
Non answer.
Your dodging of the question, and your ad hom attack/sweeping generalization is noted.
Caring about what you think of my opinions and world view has never been a priority of mine.
There was no sweeping anything. Do you endorse the actions of Xi toward people who think and believe as I do in China? That is the actual topic of the seeded article.
You've already and repeatedly demonstrated you do not understand what a sweeping generalization is.
Do you plan on actually answering TiG's question, which addressed what is stated in this article? Or are you going to continue to deflect?