By Theodore Shoebat
The major Mexican cartel, Los Zetas, is using a network of crematoria ovens to incinerate the bodies of hundreds of innocent people, in order to prevent the public from knowing of the massive and systematic extermination of human beings it has committed in between the years 2011 and 2013, at which period of time the cartel cult maintained total government control over most of the state of Coahuila.
The cartel even used the government owned Piedras Negras prison, in which they tortured, murdered and incinerated “more than 150 people” as we learn from one report. The official investigation done on this situation confirmed this story, even revealing details more unthinkable and deplorable. The deputy Juan José Yañez, who conducted the investigation of the case of Piedras Negras, said Los Zetas had full control of the prison. Yanez recounted, “The inmates would say, ‘They (the victims) are not going to be found, because they are burned'”.
In March 2011 Las Zetas moved around a ton of cocaine a month through the northern part of Coahuila to Eagle Pass (Texas), earning between 6 and 12 million per month. That’s when the local Las Zetas captain, Mario Alfonso Cuellar and his associates, Héctor ‘The Black’ Villanueva and Jose Luis Moreno ‘La Guiche’ Garza Gaytan (who later fled to the US) were blamed for the by hierarchy of the Zetas because of the absence of a lot of money.
The response of Miguel Angel Trevino Morales, alias ‘El 40’, one of the main leaders of Los Zetas, was to order a “systematic extermination” in the area of Allende and the nearby towns of Cinco Manantiales and Piedras Negras. “The order was simple: kill all associates, in any way, or maintain contact with Villanueva Garza Gaytan,” a report states, adding that it was when the cartel began to “reunite entire families, friends, distant relatives and innocent people who had any of those names, even if they were not related.” They began to kill people just for having the last name of Villanueva. The same report continues to say:
For the unknown slaughter of Mexico, Los Zetas conducted a systematic extermination by killing and incinerating more than 400 people in Allende and surrounding villages
>The Evangelical movement in America has helped produce terrorists who are just as violent as Muslim terrorists: they are called the Knights Templars, and they are heavily influenced by major Evangelical leader, John Eldredge. The Knights Templar cult wants to advance their Evangelical ideology throughout Mexico, and they have slaughtered and raped countless Catholic Christians.
Violence plagues Mexico, and the reason for its tremendous murder rate is that the people have swayed from its Catholic roots. Anti-Catholic ideologies and ancient paganism, cloaked in modern facades, has only resulted in endless corpses, rivers of tears, rivers of blood, ceaseless destruction, a corruption that appears to be never ending and that knows no boundaries, callousness and innumerable cries that are crying for justice from underneath the earth. People express different theories as to why this is, but the only explanation that stands the test of time is that Mexican society has become more and more rebellious against the Catholic Faith.
The Templars, amongst the most powerful of the Mexican cartels, are most definitely an anti-Catholic Evangelical cult. It is not just a “drug cartel.” It is an Evangelical cult that slaughters and sexually enslaves Catholics. When people want to join the Templars they are “to accept Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior” in a church service.
After ISIS took over Mosul, there were many articles that were frequently read and distributed about the tyranny of the terrorist group and the dismal life under their control. But, so few articles were written and read about life under the Evangelical protestant cult of the Templars.
In Michoacán, the Evangelical based cult, the Templars, uses rape as a weapon to instill fear and terror in areas they control. When they used to control the countryside, they would go into people’s homes and say things like: “Bathe your daughter, she is going to stay with me for some time”. They wouldn’t return the girl until they got her pregnant. This is an Evangelical cult, inspired by the heretical teachings of John Eldridge, that is doing this. This is a protestant terrorist group, worse than ISIS, right across the border, and we have heard nothing from any of the religious leaders in America about this very sad and dismal situation that has been taking place in the state of Michoacán for years.
In one event, recounted to me through a Mexican contact, a Templar cult member entered a small shop and demanded from its owner that he hand over his daughter to him. The Templar snatched the daughter, but the father, still using his whits, told the cultist that if he would just wait a moment he would give him the store’s money. The Templar conceded to this offer and waited. Meanwhile, the father went into another room where he grabbed a .22 rifle (the type that you need to reload after every shot), aimed it at the Templar’s head through a hole in the wall, and with single breath and immense faith, he pulled the trigger. The Templar dropped dead. The daughter was rescued. The father took his daughter and fled the town, never being seen by the town’s local since.
When the Templars enter a neighborhood to kill somebody, all of its inhabitants turn off their lights and lock their doors, not knowing who is going to be killed. This is an Evangelical cult that has been slaughtering Catholics just as ISIS has been killing Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Christians in Iraq and Syria. But the Evangelicals in America never brought this up, and nor did they “speak out” about it as they have done with ISIS. The whole thing is utter hypocrisy, with Evangelicals not speaking against other Evangelicals while they portray themselves as courageous for protesting against ISIS and other Islamic terrorists.
Even the FBI has described the Templars as an Evangelical cult, saying that is an “an evangelical-criminal organization based on a bizarre fusion of Christian teachings, the writings of [American Evangelical] John Eldredge (Wild at Heart et al.), and the teachings of the original La Familia leadership.”
The cartel’s founder, Nazario Moreno, left his home state of Michoacán and went to the United States where he would leave the Catholic Faith and become “born again,” adhering to Hispanic evangelical preachers. Moreno became hugely influenced by the Evangelical teacher, John Eldridge, who operates from Colorado Springs, a hotbed for heresies, cultists, and American religious charismatics.
Nazario Moreno, Evangelical cult leader
John Eldridge experienced inspiration during a hunting trip in the Sawatch mountain in Colorado, in which, he says, he was guided by “the Holy Spirit”. The Mexican writer, Humberto Padgett paralleled this spiritual experience of Eldredge with Nazario Moreno’s religious experience in the Cerro del Hungaro, or the Hungarian Hill, which lies in his hometown of Apatzingan in Michoacán. It was on this hill where Moreno began his Pensamientos, a book that shares his religious beliefs. Moreno’s book is mandatory reading for the Templar cult, as is Eldredge’s book, Wild at Heart, which served as the spiritual foundation for the Templar heresy.
While Eldredge never explicitly orders to kill anybody, his theology does act as an underpinning that would help form an ideology for a violent religious cult. You can see this in the excerpts of Eldredge’s book that Moreno was influenced by. One of them is:
“Aggression is part of the masculine design; we are hardwired for it. If w e believe that man is made in the image of God, then w e would do w ell to remember that ‘the LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name’ (Ex. 15:3).”
John Eldredge, heretic who inspired major Mexican cult leader and mass murderer, Nazario Moreno
This heretic believes that “aggression” is a return to the original state of man before the fall, and not a result of the fall of man. He teaches a definite heresy in his book: that Adam lived in a wild, uncouth terrain before God placed him in the Garden of Eden. So Eldredge, by saying God moved Adam to the Garden of Eden from the rugged wilderness, blames God for weakening and pacifying man. In his book he writes:
“Eve was created within the lush beauty of Eden’s garden. But Adam, if you’ll remember, was created outside the Garden, in the wilderness. In the record of our beginnings, the second chapter of Genesis makes it clear: Man was born in the outback, from the untamed part of creation. Only afterward is he brought to Eden. And ever since then boys have never been at home indoors, and men have had an insatiable longing to explore. We long to return; it’s w hen most men come alive.”
Eldredge teaches a very dangerous and demonic heresy. What he is inculcating is that the true, authentic self — the self that purely is in the image of God — is a wild and animalistic being, pacified and chained by God, needing to break through the chains that God put on him, so that he can be free to be uncouth, to be wild, to be violent and malicious. Eldredge, essentially, makes God into the hinderance of the true “wild” state of man. God impedes Adam’s true wild self by putting him in the paradise of Eden. This is absolutely contrary to the teachings of the Church Fathers. The heretic Eldredge says that man’s original state is to be found in a savage pre-Eden land, where he is to be ruthless and berserk. The Fathers of the Church, on the other hand, teach that man’s original state is to be found in the Garden of Eden, before the Fall, when Adam lived purely in the image of God, purely in divine union and theosis, and in a state of perpetual contemplation in the Holy Trinity.
“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.”
Before the Fall of Man, before humanity’s mother sunk her young teeth into the forbidden fruit, before Eve used her enamoring beauties to rouse Adam to consume that which was prohibited by Heaven, man was united with God. But even after man fell into the bondage of vice, still there was infused into his soul the desire to be in union with the Absolute Truth, to be unified with Love, to be one with God. As St. Maximus the Confessor once wrote: “The inclination to ascend and to see one’s proper beginning was implanted in man by nature.” (Ambiguum 7, 1081D)
This is the ascension of the soul to the Divine Wisdom, the true enlightenment, the union with the Holy Trinity through “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:24) St. Paul spoke of this return to the original state of man prior to the Fall, through Jesus Christ, when he said, “Now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12) Through Christ we know our essential nature, what our true selves were designed to be without the taint of sin and evil, and this occurs when, in the words of Maximus the Confessor, “the image returns to the archetype for which it now longs.” We — humanity — are images of God, created and designed to become one with the Divinity of Christ, through the suffering and triumphant Humanity of Christ. It is by the suffering of the Crucified King, that we know true Kingship; it is by the thorns, the blood, the tears, the dolor and agony, that we know what true love is. One of the most beautiful expression’s on the pain and transcendence of the Crucifixion, is the piece written by Benedetto Ferrari, called his Cantata Spirituale,
Those sharp thorns
Which you foster and nurture
In the forests of the abyss,
Afflict and wound,
Oh cruelty!
My Lord, my God.
They, the divine arrows,
Are beaten down and tempered
With the Heaven-borne and tempered
With the Heaven-borne fire,
They charm and sooth,
Oh, great mercy!
The devout and faithful heart.
And you, my soul,
Do you not recognize suffering,
Do you not yet feel love?
So, will that be your way
To live without love, without pain?
No, no, turn your heart,
Pleasing and meek,
O blessed fervor!
Towards such grievous agonies.
And the due reverence,
Repentant and in tears,
Exhale from our breast
the most fervent, the sweetest
Sentiments and sighs of love.
Thus, my soul,
You will recognize suffering,
And you will understand love.
The suffering of Christ brings us to love — true love — and not the superficial insanity that we today incessantly label as “love.” In love there is no fear, as we learn from the Apostle John, and what fear did our first parents have when they lived in the Garden? The only fear they had came as a consequence of their wretched disobedience. But before this, they lived in pure love, for they lived in God Who is Love, not suffering fear, but living in ascending ecstasy and bliss. Christ returns us to the original state, bringing us to virtue and asceticism, to the mountain of the Beatitude, where judgment, and mercy, and faith (Matthew 23:23) prevail. But the heretic, Eldredge, teaches a false christ, a christ who does not bring us back to our original state, but who hinders this return, and who brings us back, not to perfection, but a wild and violent fantasy land of his own creation.
Adam and Eve, by rebelling against God and eating the fruit, revolted against the government that God established. Eldredge, when we look closely to his writings, wants us to rebel against the government established in Eden as well. By saying that God weakened man in Eden, and that the original state of man is found in the wild terrain, and not in Eden, this wicked heretic would have Adam rebel out of the Garden, just as the devil wanted Adam and Eve out of the Garden, to live wild and feral lives.
The christ of Eldredge is not the Christ of the monastics or of the Fathers, not of the holy martyrs and warriors who like good soldiers fought the good fight until the death and nobly earned their crown, but a christ more akin to the social darwinist John Denver who sang “I am the eagle, I live in high country in rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky. I am the hawk, and there’s blood on my feathers.” Eldredge wants us to look to animals as expressions of God’s nature, animals that tear to pieces their victims. In one part of his ridiculous book he says,
“If you have any doubts as to whether or not God loves wildness, spend a night in the woods . . . alone. Take a walk out in a thunderstorm. Go for a swim with a pod of killer whales. Get a bull moose mad at you. Whose idea was this, anyway? The Great Barrier Reef with its great white sharks, the jungles of India with their tigers, the deserts of the Southwest with all those rattlesnakes—would you describe them as “nice” places? Most of the earth is not safe; but it’s good.”
Eldredge takes the violent nature of these animals and affirms that God declares it to be good. After God created the animals of the seas and of the land, the Scripture states that God saw that it was good. Yet this heretic wants to apply these very words to the violent and cruel ways of animals, making it seem as though God had the bloodthirsty manners of certain animals to be good. The original design of animals was not to eat each other, but that
“The wolf and the lamb shall feed together; the lion and the ox shall eat straw; and dust shall be the serpent’s food: they shall not hurt nor kill in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord.” (Isaiah 65:25)
Going contrary to the Scripture, this heretic makes the violent nature of animals as somehow a part of the nature of God. In one part of his ridiculous book he says, “This whole creation is unapologetically wild. God loves it that way.” He says that the wilderness and wild animals are God’s “way of letting us know he rather prefers adventure, danger, risk, the element of surprise.” The god of Eldredge is a darwinistic deity, where survival of the fittest and animalistic living is a divine way of life, the ultimate form of self-actualization and self-liberation.
In the same rubbish book he says that God is “the wild one in whose image we are made.” Such a way of speaking of God is pagan, and I cannot help be reminded of how the pagans “changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things.” (Romans 1:23) To bear the image of God has no association with animals and brute beasts. God is Justice, and in animals there is no justice. But the heresy of Eldredge is utterly contrary to the teachings of the authorities of the Church. Look to the words of the fourth century Christian scholar, Lactantius, when he wrote:
“It would be a long task if I should wish to trace out the things most resembling the skill of man, which accustomed to be done by the separate tribes of animals. But if, in the case of all these things which are wont to be ascribed to man, there is found to be some resemblance even in the dumb animals, it is evident that religion is the only thing of which no trace can be found in the dumb animals, nor any indication. For justice is peculiar to religion, and to this no other animal attains. …But the worship of God is ascribed to justice; and he who does not embrace this, being far removed from the nature of man, will live the life of the brutes under the form of man.” (A Treatise on the Anger of God, ch. 7, ellipses mine)
Do you see the difference, between the writing of a true Christian monastic and philosopher versus the heretic Eldredge? The first wants us to emulate God and to eschew the ways of animals; the second wants us to be as animals as though it is an emulation of God, and to imitate the brute beasts under the form of a human.
The cult and cartel leader, Moreno, emulated Eldredge. As Eldredge was a counselor, so Moreno became a counselor for drug addicts. Moreno’s wife hosted “self-improvement” seminars in Michoacán. Moreno became a preacher, starting his own church and erecting himself as the “Messiah,” (See Al Cimino, Drug Wars) using the Bible to create a facade of holiness, just as all of the protestant cults in America have done and still do.
LEFT: Heretic John Eldredge. RIGHT: A Templar member named Broly Banderas. He is a part of a cult inspired by this heretic Eldredge
Spanish translation copies of Eldredge’s book were printed and distributed to members of the Evangelical Templar cult. According to the Mexican justice department, Moreno and his cult paid rural teachers and the National Council of Educational Development to spread Eldredge’s book throughout the countryside of Michoacán, in order to further corrupt and inundate this darwinistic and paganistic heresy to Mexican youths.
This indoctrination with heresy, no doubt, has been done in order to recruit young people into Moreno’s cartel cult. In the cult’s training camps Eldredge’s book was studied, and new recruits — no doubt after reading this disgusting book — were made to do bloody and violent acts so that they will be “prepared to do the Lord’s work” and to execute the “orders from the Lord.” (See James J.F. Forest, Intersections of Crime and Terror, p. 117) Such ways of thinking could only come from the deranged and heretical mind of a cult, and this ideology was greatly influenced by a demonic theology contrived in Colorado, by a heretic named John Eldredge, who has been praised as some man of God, when in reality he is a hireling and a wolf.
He fabricated a pernicious theology based on a heretical interpretation of Eden and Adam’s first home that has absolutely no basis in the teachings of the Fathers nor the scholars of the Church, and solely serves an ego drunk off fantasy and filled with empty grandeur of wildness, a naturist spirituality reminiscent to those of the Nazis and of the heartless hippies, and an empty teaching that reduces the Faith to the wilderness, to Americanist individualism, and to the manners of animals.
There are thousands of serious and dedicated members of Moreno’s cult in Mexico, and each one had to read Eldredge’s book. I find it very difficult to believe that Eldredge did not know that Moreno was distributing many copies of his book throughout his body of members. Either way, when Eldredge’s knowledge of this became public, he really didn’t seem to care, and nor did he express any significant moral outrage. Eldredge himself said:
“At first, I was really mad that they hijacked my book for their purposes… But on second thought . . . maybe it will touch the hearts of the people who use [it].”
“Touch their hearts”? Talk to the people in Mexico who have had to endure through the evils of Moreno’s cult, and ask them how many Templars have had their hearts touched by Eldredge’s book? The answer is none. In another statement Eldredge states:
“You know, at first I was shocked and angry… But after I had thought about it, I thought that I’m delighted that ‘Wild at Heart’ has found itself into their cult because hopefully it will bring change.”
Well, if there is anything true in this statement it is that Eldredge is “delighted” that the cult is reading his book, and that he has many loyal fans in Mexico who are “wild at heart,” but he most definitely is not “angry”.
If we are to look to animals for inspiration, and to deem their violence as “good,” then why should we then stop ourselves from emulating the animals in their violence and cruelty? Why then can’t we tear other human beings apart as the lion mutilates the zebra, an action deemed by Eldredge as “good”? Why should we hinder ourselves from ignoring the spirit and obeying our “wild” side, and do as the animals as the beasts do, and be ruthless, fierce, cunning, deceptive and murderous?
This is why the heresy of Eldredge was a fitting influence for a violent evangelical cult in Mexico, which enjoys skinning and decapitating its victims. Nazario Moreno, the founder of the La Familia cult in Mexico, made Eldredge’s book required reading for his members. Laura Miller, in an article published in the New Yorker, wrote:
Also required reading in the cartel was the book from which Moreno González cribbed much of his pop philosophy, “Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul,” a paean to muscular Christianity by John Eldredge, an American evangelical who lives in Colorado Springs.
Moreno’s cult commenced a whole movement of Evangelical jihad, in which killing for their cause was seen as some sort of divine right. Moreno, inspired by the heresy of Eldredge, wrote a book called Pensamientos, or Thoughts, in which he said:
Hello friends, fellow Christians. We are beginning an arduous, but very interesting, task: the building of consciousness… Today, we need to prepare to defend our ideals so that our struggle will bear fruit (and) organize so as to go down the best path, perhaps not the easiest, but the one that can offer the best results.
In an article written by Alfredo Garcia, Moreno’s “’Pensamientos’ reveals a man who sees himself as the leader of a group of warriors on a divine mission, a theme that arises in Eldredge’s book.”
In the city of Uruapan, members of the La Familia cult kidnapped several people from a mechanics shop and decapitated them with bowie knives. In the same city, armed members of La Familia entered a discoteque where they forced the patrons to lie flat and then proceeded to throw decapitated heads on the floor. La Familia called this “Divine Justice,” which means that they kill people for their religion, which is a protestant Evangelical sect. They left a note at the sight of the carnage that said:
“The Family doesn’t kill for money; it doesn’t kill women; it doesn’t kill innocent people; only those who deserve to die. Everyone should know…this is divine justice”
The cult ran drug rehabilitation centers in Michoacán, and once their patients purged themselves of their drug addictions, they were told that they had to work with La Familia or be killed. According to Luna, Mexico’s Public Safety Secretary (2010):
“One of the gang’s alleged recruiters, detained last spring, ran drug rehabilitation centers, helping addicts to recover and then forcing them to work for the drug gang or be killed”
La Famila would also go to Mexico’s politicians and bribe them for their allegiance and cooperation. Those politicians who refused to take money from the cult were killed. In 2009, twenty politicians were murdered by La Familia because they refused to bow down to them, while numerous politicians, including seven mayors, have been known to work with this cult.
Templars, evangelical terrorists
What is happening in Mexico is truly a holy war over the very soul of the country. It is not some secular “drug problem” that so many say it is, it is really a religious, spiritual and cosmic struggle between Catholic Mexico and the pagan and heretical invasive cults that have flooded the whole country. As Robert J. Bunker and John P. Sullivan wrote:
Traditional Mexican values and competing criminal value systems are engaged in a brutal contest over the hearts, minds, and souls‘ of its citizens in a street-by-street, block-by-block, and city-by-city war over the future social and political organization of Mexico.
In the Islamic nations they have jihadists, and in Mexico we are seeing the “rise of what appears to be cartel holy warriors”, as we learn from the above quoted authors.
The brutality is so egregious and diabolical, one must read the descriptions of the killings to get an idea — an idea that will scratch the surface of this ineffable evil — of just how high the flames that these cartels have fanned to burn their consciences are. One description speaks of a victim who was “clearly still alive when the assailants castrated him. Music can be heard playing in the background as one of the men step in and strategically peels back the face and skin of the victim before decapitating him. After it is over, the people standing around joke and laugh while they take cell pictures of this gruesome act.”
In 2011 two “men were both skinned alive before their hearts were removed.” This type of killing is most definitely ritualistic, and not only this, it is a revival of the pagan brutality that once dominated Mexico before the Catholic Church took it over and vanquished this sinister religion. But now it is coming back. Because of sinister ideas such as “freedom of religion” and “the market place of ideas”, all beliefs are given free reign and are enabled to inundate and thrive in the society.
Many arrogant and pompous people in Mexico have been striving with unquenchable rage against the Catholic Church, and so they are teaching the pernicious religions of paganism and devil worship, saying things such as, ‘There is nothing wrong with this beautiful religion. The Catholic Church enslaved the Indians, and so we should follow the faith of our ancestors.’ Now, mind you, these very deviants say such ridiculous things in Spanish — the language of the Catholics who invaded Mexico — and the great majority of them either are mixed with Spanish blood or are pure Spaniards by race. Yet, they act as though they are the heroes for the Indians or the indigenous people.
Look at the Cristeros, Catholic warriors who fought against the anti-Christian regime of Plutarco Elias Calles: they were indigenous, they were Mestizos, they were of pure Spanish blood. It did not matter; their diversity was transcended by Jesus Christ, in Whom there is neither Jew nor Greek, all were one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3:28)
Cristeros, Catholic warriors who fought and died for the Faith
These riotous and rebellious people want to destroy the unity that the Universal Faith brings, and cause division by bringing in violent and bloodthirsty religions. This is what the Templars, the death cult cartels, and all of the promoters of occultism and demonism have done. The cruelty that has been witnessed can only come from the destruction of the human conscience, and this can only be done by rejecting the Most Holy Trinity, in Whom there is Love, and the Divine Humanity by Whom man can unite with Divinity. The Word of God — the Christ — reaches “unto the division of the soul and the spirit” (Hebrews 4:12).
Paganism enslaves man to his animalistic nature, and brings the spirit to the prison of the passions. Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life, splits the spirit from the sinful nature, and rather than having the soul enslaved by the flesh, He has the soul led by the spirit. This is because the soul, when lost to the desires of the flesh, becomes fettered in bondage, and the person sears his conscience.
The soul will cry out for liberation, and the wicked person would be struck by the hand of his conscience, and although he would experience a bitter agony, he would ignore it, lost in his own enslavement. It is why Caligula, one of the greatest persecutors of the Christians, would stand miserable in the night, unable to sleep for he was haunted by the faces of his victims, waiting for the break of day. Although he was a pagan, he still had a conscience, and because of this an inner conflict occurred in his soul, but rather than acknowledging this conflict, he ignored it and kept his soul vanquished by his sinister addiction to bloodshed.
Christ shines light on our sinful selves, and compels us to see it to where we have no choice but to fight our passions, or allow them to conquer us. If we fight, if we have a will to resist, then Christ leads us in this battle against the self, and from there, to liberation of egoism. As Fulton Sheen wrote:
“The voice of the Spirit is within the soul; the peace which It brings, the light which It sheds, and the strength which It gives, are unmistakably there. The regeneration of man is not directly discernible to the human eye.” (Life of Christ, ch. 7, p. 107)
Temptations lie before us; our animal impulses command us to go forth and indulge. But with Christ, the conscience speaks, the voice of the Spirit is obeyed, and the soul is free. Freedom is a state of mind. You can live in the most despotic of nations and be freer than the most wealthiest of men, if you live in Truth Who “shall make you free.” (John 8:32)
“Now the Lord is a Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” (2 Corinthians 3:17) This is not speaking of some enlightenment era freedom, or moral anarchy, where people can do whatever they want “as long as they don’t hurt anyone,” which is the type of nonsense interpretation that we hear so much today. No.
This is the true liberty, where the soul is not led by the flesh but by the Spirit. For Christ is here, “to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:19). This is true freedom, to not be like the animal who follows his impulses (as Eldredge would have us), but to be free from such slavery, to rise above our ego and transcend mortal bondage, to be emancipated from mental slavery, and become one with humanity under Christ Who is the Uniter of all Humanity, for in Him is Deity and Humanity in union. St. John of Damascus said:
“When it follows that the irrational beings are not free, since, instead of leading nature, they are led by it. And so it is that they do not deny their natural appetite, but, just as soon as they feel an appetite for something, they move to act.” (Orthodox Faith, 2.27)
A passion, be it to violence or to lust, is transient and temporary, and that which is temporal will swiftly disappear as fast the brief pleasure it gives. To continue in the indulgence of these passions will further drag the soul down to the prison of the flesh, no matter how much it cries for liberation. But from God, there is an ever flowing strength to fight away the temptations of demons, and this is, in the words of St. Augustine, “the universal way for delivering the soul” (City of God, 10.32).
Deeper and deeper does the soul go into the abyss, as the temptations are continuously satisfied in vain and unquenchable lust, and as this perpetuates, so the distance between God and the soul widens. There comes a point when the conflict between flesh and spirit is no more, and the conscience is uprooted and neutralized. This is that state of which St. Paul spoke, when “God delivered them up to shameful affections.” In this contagion of a never ending urge to satisfy the thirst for depravity and blood, men are
“filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy.” (Romans 1:29-31)
Does this not perfectly describe these criminals in cartels? They are filled with every sort of cruelty you can imagine, and every depravity as well.
It is believed that hundreds of thousands of women in Mexico have been forced to become sex slaves, with women being raped thousands of times each. “As the drug war has become more intense, the networks that traffic women have made their pacts with cartels,” says Jaime Montejo, a spokesman for Brigada Callejera, a sex-worker support group in Mexico City. “Those that don’t cannot survive.”
According to Ioan Grillo, the cartels — including the Templar cult — are kidnapping women and girls and forcing them to be personal sex slaves. Rosi Orozco, who served as a Mexican federal deputy, says:
“Human-trafficking crimes have a devastating effect on victims and their families… There are parents who are searching and searching for their children and can’t sleep because of this nightmare.”
Teresa Ulloa, director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean, said:
“The cartels know that drugs can only be sold once, but women can be sold again and again and again”
They say that all of this violence is due to the Drug War, and that if drugs were just legalized the cartels would go out of business. But this is a spiritual problem, with a spiritual source, not a secular economic one. They speak of the Drug War as the root of the dilemma, but they do not mention the hatred for humanity as the problem; they do not mention the hatred for women, the enmity against God. Even if you legalized drugs, the cartels would continue on with their reign of terror — it would never end — as long as the hatred for God and for humanity continues to rage in the hearts of these reprobates. What is happening in Mexico is not a war over drugs, but a war over humanity and the soul of mankind.
A woman in Mexico was kidnapped by the Zetas cartel and was repeatedly raped and forced to clean the blood off of clothes the machetes. She was eventually freed by one of her captors. A mother was searching for her missing daughter for two years. She eventually found the corpse of her daughter in Oaxaca. She was raped over and over again, and then decapitated.
Just 100 miles from Texas, there was a massacre in which Las Zetas, a major drug cartel, slaughtered seventy-two people in the San Fernando ranch. The victims were from Ecuador and other South American countries, traveling by bus to the US to look for work. Now of course they did not talk about this at the same scale that the media did when it came to ISIS. But, these seventy-two people were true martyrs. They were kidnapped by the pagans and then told that they had to work for Las Zetas. They refused, and they were killed. According to one report a survivor of the massacre
“told investigators that Zetas gunmen intercepted the migrants as they moved toward the border, then took them blindfolded to the ranch where they were told to hand over cash, the source said. The migrants had little cash, the teen reportedly said, and the gunmen then told them they could work as Zetas assassins and get paid $2,000 a month. It was not clear if they were supposed to work in the United States. When the migrants refused, the gunmen opened fire, the source described the teen as saying.”
These people were martyrs. Now there will be people who will argue that we cannot call them martyrs because, to them, a martyr can only be someone who refuses to verbally deny Christ. To this perspective, somebody has to physically grab a Christian and tell him to deny Christ, and then upon refusal kill him. But this is only one form of martyrdom. Christ said, “Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:10)
To refuse to join a cartel is righteous, and for this righteous action, these people in Mexico were killed. They suffered for righteousness’ sake. Therefore, they are martyrs. Lets not forget, that just as we considered the Eastern Orthodox Christians who have died in Iraq and Syria as martyrs, then we must also consider the Catholics killed in Mexico as martyrs. Just as Christians have been killed for refusing to join Islam, these Christians have been killed for refusing to join the cartel cult.
All of the chaos and bloodshed can be attributed to many political reasons; it can be ascribed to the government or to politicians, and such would — on the surface — be correct. But ultimately all of the violence is a result of the Mexican people straying from their Catholic Faith and culture. Cults such as the Templars or the pagan witchcraft of the other cartels, would have never obtained any sort of power if it were not for the Mexican people rebelling against the Catholic Faith. Everybody wants change, change in government, change in laws, change in fashions and styles.
But nobody wants to change, to change their hearts and their souls, to change their minds, to transcend the bondage of flesh into true liberation and to union with the Spirit. The Mexican people have entered themselves into a rebellion, a rebellion that has opened the doors of the soul to the thief who comes for no other reason “but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.” (John 10:10)
Rebellion only leads to more rebellion. Rebellions have no end. They only continue to rebel against the ones who commenced the rebellion. Rebels will revolt against their leaders, just as their leaders rebelled against their former predecessors. This is why the protestant Evangelical group, the Templars, fit so well in this spiritual anarchy that has struck Mexico. Protestantism is a rebellion that only perpetuates more protestantism. By its very nature, protestantism has no end. It only breeds more and more different strands of protestantism, in a contagion of never ending revolts and chaoses. Anglicans broke off from the Catholic Church, only for Puritans to protest against them later. Moreno started his cult as La Familia, and only to later start a new group, the Templars. Moreno, as I have been told, was later killed by his own followers. And now many major members of the Templars broke away and started a new cult called the Third Brotherhood (La Tercera Hermanidad). The chaos never ends.
People will offer this policy and that idea to supposedly end the violence, but it will never end until the nation is united with the One Who is the Beginning and the End. Mexico must return to the Catholic Church if it is going to have any order and harmony in its society. Or else, it will continue to have one of the largest murder rates on earth.
Until the people understand that revolt against the Absolute Truth never ends and only transpires into more chaos and bloodshed, then the tears and blood of the people will perpetually flow. Once the people realize that order can only come from God — the Creator of order and harmony — then the people, being self-governed by the law of God in their hearts — will destroy and uproot these evils. The French Catholic writer, Joseph de Maistre, wrote that “when man works to restore order, he associates himself with the author of order” (Considerations on France, ch. 10).
We see the state as the solution to the current problems; we see the state as an end unto itself. Let us throw aside such a destructive belief. The state must be a vehicle for righteousness, it must be led by virtue, and not the leader of virtue. Once the government is led by virtue, then it will no longer be a rebel that ceaselessly rebels, but a bulwark that does not crumble to the waves of collective corruption, but rather would be impervious to its tyrannical streams of poison.
As the philosopher wrote, “It is the nature of this Government, therefore, to be infallible — that is to say, absolute — else it would no longer govern.” (De Maistre, The Pope, 1.1) You may bring up the constitution of a nation as a guide to bring the people back to its moral aptitudes, but the most important constitution of a nation is written on the hearts of the people, and it matters more than the one written on paper. As De Maistre said, “The natural constitution of a nation is always anterior to its written constitution” (De Maistre, Study on Sovereignty, 1. 8)
The violence will never end. Like a ravaging river it will continue on. The blood of the innocent will continue to pour, and hope will continue to diminish, until the people turn their gazes to the shining horizon of Hope, the Sun of justice (Malachi 4:2), and open the doors of their souls to the rays of Love and Harmony.
Look to the warriors of your ancestors, O Mexico! Look to the Cristeros who fought valiantly for their Faith against the tyrannical government of Calles, the despot who tried to start his own church and to eclipse the Catholic Church with his cult. Do you not know that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church of Christ? The violence in Mexico has become so great and it only continues to get more and more dismal, which means that the nation of Mexico will inevitably implode into a revolution. The restoration of the Cristeros will be on the dawn of that twilight of hope. We are already seeing this revolution blooming, in the movement of the Autodefensas, which consists of thousands of Mexican Catholics who have fought and defeated the Templar cult in the majority of the lands that it once ruled. The glimmering flame of hope will only be found in a people searching for that which is timeless, not for that which is capricious and volatile; the gleaming spark of hope will be beheld only in a people who seek “for a city that hath foundations; whose builder and maker is God.” (Hebrews 11:10)