By Theodore Shoebat
A major bishop for the Catholic Church in Hungary, Laszlo Kiss-Rigo rebuffed Pope Francis’ desire for Europe to absorb the Islamic refugees, saying that the refugee inundation is really an invasion. Here is the video:
According to the report:
Pope Francis, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, received on Monday an extraordinary rebuff from the top Catholic leader in southern Hungary, Bishop Laszlo Kiss-Rigo, who said the pontiff was wrong in saying that Catholics had a moral duty to help the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees streaming into Europe.
“They’re not refugees. This is an invasion,” said Kiss-Rigo. “They come here with cries of ‘Allahu Akbar.’ They want to take over.”
Europe is being overwhelmed by non-believers posing as refugees who pose a serious threat to the continent’s “Christian, universal values,” he said.
The bishop is not alone in his doubts and fears on the wave of Arabic-speaking foreigners crossing into European borders. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban also sees the flow of migrants as a threat to predominantly Christian Europe.
At the risk of drawing global scorn, Orban has taken steps to try and halt the exodus of refugees mostly coming from Syria. He has restricted the flow of refugees, even throwing some of them into prison.
“I’m in total agreement with the prime minister,” Kiss-Rigo said in an interview by the Washington Post on Monday.
The bishop said the many of the so-called refugees do not deserve assistance because they “have money.”
They leave garbage along their path and refuse the food offered them by humanitarian workers, said Kiss-Rigo, who has been serving for nine years as bishop for southern Hungary, a region where some 800,000 Catholics live.
“Most of them behave in a way that is very arrogant and cynical,” he said.
Kiss-Rigo said Pope Francis is greatly misinformed about what is really happening. He “doesn’t know the situation,” he said.
What is important for a nation is not being conformed to the capriciousness of the times, but to maintain Christian identity. So I would like to present a short essay, On Christian Identity and the Nation.
God became Man, so that humanity can become one with God. This union between man and God is not only within an individual sphere, but a national capacity. In a nation of Christian identity, it is not just the individual who comes into union with God, but the entire nation, with all of the people working together for the advancement of Christendom and God’s law.
Pilate stared Truth right in the eye, and asked, “What is the truth?” And Truth simply gazed back at him. Pilate was in the presence of Truth, and the answer to his question stood right before him. God is the Truth; He is the reason for our existence and the uncaused Cause of our existence and all of the cosmos.
Christ in trial
Without Him, we would not be. Therefore, because He is the reason for our existence, then He must then be the One in Whom our identities are in. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20).
Christ died for us so that we may die unto ourselves, and put on Jesus Christ. “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.” (Romans 13:14) God is the unmoved Mover, and while nothing can move Him, He moves all things. As St. John of Damascus wrote:
But, since everything that is moved by another, then who is it that moves this? And who is it that moves that? And so we go on endlessly in this way until such time as we arrive at something that is immoveable. For the first mover is unmoved, and it is just this that is the Divinity. Furthermore, how can that which is not locally contained be moved? Therefore, only the Divinity is unmoved, and by His immovability He moves all things.” (1)
Christ at the center of the constellations
God is the Eternal Mover; He moves all things and stirs the hearts of kings, from evil to goodness, from tyranny to justice, and takes their souls from the grip of Satan and brings them to His tabernacle, which lies in the temple of the human body, and in the divine santurary of the spirit, brings them into union with the Mind of God. As King Solomon wrote:
The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will. (Proverbs 21:1)
The holy king, David, with inspired mind, wrote:
Let my sentence come forth from thy presence; let thine eyes behold the things that are equal. (Psalm 17:2)
Notice what this beautiful verse says: let my judgment, as a king, come not from my own heart, but from God Himself, in His presence. St. Augustine, writing on this Psalm, said: “From the enlightening of the knowledge of You, let Me judge truth.” (2) When the king acts righteously, and fights evil, he is in the presence of God; he is in union with God. Pilate stood in the presence of God, and yet he still in the vagrancy of his soul wondered as to what the truth was, and in this state his judgement did not come for God, in Whose presence he was in, but from the capricious desires of the mob. Pilate believed that a troublemaker stood before him, but indeed it was he who stood before Truth, and being not able to see Truth, and soaking in the bile of human delusion, he enslaved himself to puffed up slander.
Christ before Pilate
Peter walked on the water, and by this he represented the Church rising above and ruling the nations. “And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus.” (Matthew 14:29) As long as Christendom keeps its Christian identity, and walks toward Jesus, it shall rule the nations. But when it sees the raging and raving seas of the mob, and like Peter, becomes afraid (Matthew 14:30), it shall, like Pilate, deny the Truth that is before them, and crucify our Lord Himself for the pleasing of the wicked masses.
Christ keeps St. Peter from sinking
The nations who do this will slaughter the innocent of whom Christ said, “inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.” (Matthew 25:40) And who are these words addressed to, but the nations? For Christ foretells that in the Day of Judgement it will not just be individuals who will be judged, but whole nations:
All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. (Matthew 25:32)
St. Peter
There are, then, wicked nations who are under the influence of Satan, and there are good nations that are one with God and used as His instrument to execute His wrath against the satanic countries. Hence Christ told His Disciples to not teach only individuals, but all nations, and bring them into the Holy Trinity:
Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. (Matthew 28:19)
Christ wanted to bring nations into the Holy Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Because God the Son is very Man, then by these beautiful words, is He inviting nations to become united with the Holy Trinity, through Him. By His Humanity is humanity redeemed, and nations showed the door into the heavenly Wisdom of God, that is, Jesus Christ.
When God became Humanity, He became us. Thus the Apostle says that God “hath raised us up together, and hath made us sit together in the heavenly places, through Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 6:2) There are those who will argue and say, ‘I thought God could not change! How then could He become man without changing?” Mankind, from his initial and intended state, was created to become one with God; so then, God becoming Man never involved anything against His nature nor the nature of man, and nor did it make God change, since it is of His nature to become one with humanity. It was of the nature of both man and God to unify. St. John of Damascus, when discoursing on the unity between Man and God, beautifully wrote:
We do say that the entire substance of the Divinity was united to the entire human nature, because God the Word lacked none of those things which He implanted in our nature when He formed us in the beginning; He assumed them all — a body and a rational, intellectual soul, together with the properties of both, for the animal which lacks one of these is not a man. He in His entirety assumed me in my entirety and was wholly united to the whole, so that He might bestow the grace of salvation upon the whole. (3)
God did not become Man in the sense that He put on sinful flesh, but that He became Man in his original state: sinless and in perpetual contemplation on God and in God. When man was first created, Adam walked and lived in continual and blissful contemplation; he lived in God and was adorned with God, being clothed with Him. “For,” says St. John of Damascus, “while in his body he dwelt in this most sacred and superbly beautiful place, as we have related, spiritually he resided in a loftier and far more beautiful place. There he had the indwelling God as a dwelling place and wore Him as a glorious garment. He was wrapped about with His grace, and, like some one of the angels, he rejoiced in the enjoyment of that one most sweet fruit which is the contemplation of God, and by this he was nourished. Now, this is indeed what is fittingly called the tree of life, for the sweetness of divine contemplation communicates a life uninterrupted by death to them that partake of it.” (4)
The saints in Heaven, in eternal and everlasting contemplation on Christ
Man walked with God, unhindered by the distractions of fleshy thoughts and anxieties, fears and worries, journeying through the path of light, living in constant meditation that ceaselessly remains, not cut off by death, but perpetuating in the utmost ecstasy in the Beatific Vision. This was the original state of man, before the woman consumed the fruit and treacherously got her husband to sink his teach into its forbidden flesh.
Christ preaching to those in the waiting place
So thus, God did not change anything of His nature when He became Man, but rather He unified with the original nature of Humanity — to be in union with God in beautiful theosis — when he was to be one with his Creator. When God became Man, He was simply showing us the original state of mankind. Mankind was created to be in union with God; and God became Man so that man can unite with God. By God becoming one with Humanity, He also showed us the original state of government. When Adam and Eve lived on the earth, they were humanity, and they were their own government. Just as the first governor, Adam, lived in a state of perpetual union with God, so the state suppose to do the same, existing under the influence of God, always waiting for the commands of God’s Church, with her prophets and mystics who live as bridges between man and God. “Kings reign by me, and rulers dispense justice through me.” (Proverbs 8:15)
All of the justice executed by kings and rulers is done because God moved them to do so. All of the evils done by kings is thus done by the influence of Satan, such as when “Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.” (1 Chronicles 21:1) There are therefore kings influenced by the devil, and those who rule under the inspiration of God. When David was under holy inspiration, he was about to fight the Amelekites — the enemies of God — and “strengthened himself in the Lord his God.” (1 Samuel 30:6)
When the people of Israel wanted to live righteously, they did this not as mere individuals, but as a whole nation, and “entered into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s Law” (Nehemiah 10:29). When Josiah decided to destroy paganism and homosexuality in Israel, he “made a covenant before the Lord, to follow the Lord and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes, with all his heart and all his soul” (2 Kings 23:4). To follow God with all heart and soul, is to be one with Him.
Read the words of Truth Himself, when He said of those who follow Him, “my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him.” (John 14:23) God unites with His children, and if His children are a nation, then He will unite with that nation, and use it for His righteousness, to defeat the wicked and conquer evil. He will live amongst the nation, and in the words of Gregory Palamas, “judging it right to dwell in believers by the authentic adoption, according to the gift and grace of the Holy Spirit. So, when you hear that God dwells in us through the virtues, or that by means of the memory He comes to be established in us, and do not imagine that deification is simply the possession of the virtues; but rather that it resides in the radiance and grace of God, which really comes to us through the virtues.” (5) If a man can be mystically unified with God, then an entire nation can as well. And if God became Humanity, then a whole civilization of humanity can be unified with Him in mystical theosis.
In the case of King Josiah, what occurred for him to turn to God and fight evil? The priest, Shaphan, read the Scriptures to him. “And Shaphan read it before the king.” (2 Kings 22:10) The Church, then, must be the light to the king, acting as a mediator between man and God, bringing the truth of law to ruler, just as Shaphan did with Josiah; Samuel with Saul; Nathan with David; Melchizedek with Abraham; Elijah with Ahab. King Jehoshaphat was in God when he did “what was right in the sight of the Lord” (1 Kings 22:43) and “exterminated the remnant of the male cult prostitutes who remained in the days of his father Asa.” (1 Kings 22:46)
Shaphan reading to King Josiah
By fighting evil the king maintains peace. Pope Innocent III described peace as “the bond of love” (6). Peace is the bond of love, and whoever breaks peace hinders this bond, and whoever goes against peace goes against God, the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). Those who against God are enemies of peace, and thus of the union between the State and God. When the king protects peace, he practices love, and thus he is in Love, that is, he is in God. When the king is lax then he will fall into the evil of David. For “David remained at Jerusalem” when his men “destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah.” (2 Samuel 11:1) He was lax and idle, and in the wanderings of his mind turned from fighting evil to murdering his fellow man. Such is the ways of government: if they do not see the devil as their enemy, they will see man as their enemy. But it takes a prophet, like Nathan, to bring the king back to God.
Nathan chastises David
If God united Himself with Humanity, then He most certainly can unite Himself with a nation and a civilization. Christ said, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5) While everyone reads these words and thinks of it as a delightful maxim on meek people, such words are really of an imperial nature, speaking of the Empire of Christ with the meek and humble citizens of God conquering evildoers. For in the Psalms it says,
For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: and thou shalt seek his place, and shalt not find it. But the meek shall inherit the land, and shall delight in abundance of peace. (Pslam 36:10-11)
The holy prophet, in the same Book of Psalms, writes of the meek joyfully living in the nations who now submit under God’s authority, with Christ ruling them as Emperor over them:
The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the Lord that seek him: your heart shall live for ever. All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee. For the kingdom is the Lord’s: and he is the governor among the nations. (Psalm 22:26-28)
Christ, with sword in hand, soaked in blood, uses His enemies as footstools as they bend their necks to be struck by His blade. He conquers and is victorious, and crushes His enemies like grapes in the winepress, covered in their blood, He arises above the nations, and receives nothing but universal obeisance. And in His victories, He leads the righteous nations who bow before Him.
God will take even the most savage of nations and bring its people to spiritual awakening through His Spirit, and bring them into conformity with Him. The prodigal son left his father to satisfy his fleshy desires, only to eat amongst the pigs, and realizing his enslavement to sin, and how he lost humanity and became like an animal, he returned to his father to feast with him.
A nation functions no differently than an individual. A nation enslaves itself to the devil, degrades itself to the lowest of wickedness and becomes a land of savage animals, and suddenly it comes to enlightenment, and coming to the God Who became Humanity, it returns to being humanity, leaves off its animalistic ways, and puts on Jesus Christ.
The Prodigal Son reunites with his father
The light of God transcends the individual, and brings the collective into the mystical union. Individuals not only maintain Christianity, but the governmental institutions as well labor and see to it that Christian identity is honored and esteemed, and never belittled. St. Theophan the Recluse wrote:
God leads us in the way of the cross, tests us in this life, and brings us to the eternal life of everlasting bliss. This divine order includes and contains all people, events, and institutions, and even the very principles by which everything runs. (7)
Institutions would include governments, and these too are involved in participating in God. Good does not stay still, it expands; it does not remain indifferent, it conquers. We as human beings were created to participate in the Good. As St. John of Damascus says,
Now, because the good and transcendentally good God was not content to contemplate Himself, but by a superabundance of goodness saw fit that there should be some things to benefit by and participate in His goodness, He brings all things from nothing into being and creates them, both visible and invisible, and man, who is made up of both.” (8)
By being in union with God, man becomes an instrument for God’s justice, and thus by the state being in union with God it is used by God, “for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well” (1 Peter 2:14) and to be “the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” (Romans 13:4)
In the war between good and evil, the physical world is used by God to defeat spiritual darkness. Hence God used a flood in one time, and the armies of Israel under Joshua in another. The flesh is under the command of the Spirit to vanquish the works of the devil. In the Sacrifice of Christ, “the flesh served as an instrument of the divinity.” (9) If the Humanity of Christ served as an instrument for the Divinity, that he might destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), then humanity itself comes into union with God, through the Humanity of Christ, and is used as His instruments to expand His justice.
St. John Chrysostom said in one homily, “He hath made us His own body, He hath imparted to us His own body”. (10) Christ became us, and so we, in putting on Christ, become like Him and fight His enemies. When Christ destroys the works of the devil, we are obligated to follow His war, for He became us, and it behooves us to emulate Him.
This is not an individualistic matter, but a collective and universal one. The Scripture does not say that individuals in Nineveh came to God, but that “the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.” (Jonah 3:5) The state was not left out but took part in enforcing the pious identity that the people adopted, for “word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.” (Jonah 3:6-8)
The nation adopts the Faith, and the state partakes in its role to see to it that the Faith is respected and observed. This is what happens when God unites with a nation.
When the Antichrist will come, God will “raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men.” (Micah 5:5) These are seven nations, and they will be united with God and participate in His power and goodness.
The prophet Joel, foretelling on these times, says that Christ “the Lord hath uttered his voice before the face of his army: for his armies are exceeding great, for they are strong and execute his word: for the day of the Lord is great and very terrible: and who can stand it?” (Joel 2:11)
The armies will be great, because they will be with God and in God Who “shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21), and with this new body in the armies of Christ “They shall run like valiant men: like men of war they shall scale the wall: the men shall march every one on his way, and they shall not turn aside from their ranks. No one shall press upon his brother: they shall walk every one in his path: yea, and they shall fall through the windows, and shall take no harm. They shall enter into the city: they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up the houses, they shall come in at the windows as a thief. At their presence the earth hath trembled, the heavens are moved: the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars have withdrawn their shining.” (Joel 2:7-10)
This will be the power of the Christian nations under Christ; they will be beyond mortal, and shall be like Christ, being led by Him. Joshua took up twelve stones before conquering Canaan, and Christ took up twelve men to conquer the world. Conquer, then, O Christendom, and let Truth be seen in all the world.
We have to prepare our minds and intellect for this spiritual war that we are in. This is why I made a 2-disk DVD series on teaching the warring spirit of the Christian Faith.
For too long Christianity has been watered down in our modern day as a pacifist faith with no inclination of fighting evil. But is the Church here to be weak and useless? This shocking and riveting two disk DVD set lecture series, passionately shows how Christianity is not here to be feeble, but for warfare, to be militant against tyranny and the forces of darkness.
You will not be dissatisfied after watching this lecture, and Bible studies will forevermore never be the same again.
(1) John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith, 1.4
(2) Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 17
(3) John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith, 3.6
(4) John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith, 2.11
(5) Palamas, The Triads, iii. i. 27
(6) Innocent III, Novit ille qui nichil ignorat, Translated by K. Pennington
(7) Theophan, Turning the Heart to God, ch. 5, p. 18
(8) John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith, 2.2
(9) John of Damascus, Orthodox Faith, 3.15
(10) Chrysostom, Homily 3, on Ephesians 1:15-20
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