Devotion for 15 March 2024 (Ides)
the Anglican Orthodox Communion Worldwide
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? 10 I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings. 11As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.”
(Jeremiah 17:9-11; all scripture quoted is from the Authorized King James Bible)
It is common knowledge to the committed Christian that the heart (even our own) is deceitful and easily led aside from the truth. But by faith and conviction, the Christian disregards the beguilement of satanic sirens of destruction to lead us from truth and into abject deception – such deception as arises to delusions of titanic proportions. Are we not approaching the realization of those delusions?
The Serpent of Eden has longed plotted to destroy the man that God had made from the beginning – through abortions, homosexuality, wars, famine, poisonous drugs, and ruthless attacks on the Holy Estate of Matrimony. According to the Worldometer, the population of the world has reached 8.1 billion in 2024. The degenerate, so-called elites, propose that the world population be reduced radically to merely one billion. Of course, that would not include the lunatics who propose such a reduction. But those who are left would be perceived as pawns of those elites pulling the puppet strings. What philosophical debauchery!
Merely twenty years ago, who would have believed that we would be scolded for denying that a man can become pregnant, or that men could compete in women’s sports, or that the greatest enemy of the world’s environment was man himself. Yet these very denials of science are being foisted upon our youth from kindergarten to college . . . and, unfortunately, the ruse is working.
A great Christian and Russian patriot who stood up against the lies of the so-called ‘elite,’ by refusing to play the game of making belief in Marxist delusions, wrote the following statement upon being exiled from Russian following long imprisonment there:
“Yes, at first it will not be fair. Someone will have to temporarily lose his job. For the young who seek to live by truth, this will at first severely complicate life, for their tests and quizzes, too, are stuffed with lies, and so choices will have to be made. But there is no loophole left for anyone who seeks to be honest: Not even for a day, not even in the safest technical occupations can he avoid even a single one of the listed choices—to be made in favor of either truth or lies, in favor of spiritual independence or spiritual servility. And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul: Let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Live not by Lies, 1974
There is One who knows the heart of man intimately and He has privileged His elect to invite Him into their hearts to sit as Sovereign and Lord of all. His Holy Word is the only assurance of truth and grace.
The very center verse of the Bible is found in Psalms 118:8 – “It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.” It is no accident that this verse is at the heart of Scripture. The principle is loudly reinforced in the New Testament: “We ought to obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)
Our introductory text contains a curious illustration – “As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.” (Jeremiah 17:11) There is a belief among the people of the Middle East that the eggs of the partridge, which she lays on the ground, are often stolen by other predators. To compensate for the loss, the partridge steals the eggs of others and hatches them as her own; but, once hatched, the babies run to their natural mother leaving the surrogate alone and unloved. Truth lies trampled in the streets of the thorough fares of man, but when truth is discovered, it rises up to claim its own and leaves the impostor childless.
The Lord God has given us Divine and Immutable truths by which to conduct our lives. The truths, or partridge eggs, of other false ideologies and philosophies will never profit us, but will leave us loveless and without our Godly Parent. Those who deny the natural and moral law of God will likewise end in ruin: “Surely every man walketh in a vain shew: surely they are disquieted in vain: he heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them.” (Psalm 39:6-7)
Is it not high time that we, as Christian and lover’s of our land and family, rise up en masse and loudly proclaim the truth over the delusional voices being sounded from the very towers of governmental power?
“Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression.”
(Isaiah 58:1)
