Election 2024: of Coalitions and Crumbling Lawfare Tactics

According to recent polling, because of the former president’s term in office and the bona fides of the America First agenda, the Trump coalition may very well be expanding right before our eyes. Against Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump is attracting the support of 51% of voters under the age of 30, 48% of the Hispanic vote, and 28% of the African American vote. These numbers pose a mortal threat to Mr. Biden’s wobbly candidacy. (WASHINGTON TIMES)

Alex Marlow and Steve Hilton were on FOX BUSINESS to discuss President Trumps excelling in the polls. This is with a hat-tip to BREITBART.

The below is a bonus and shows how this coalition spoken to above and the crumbling “lawfare” route the Democrts were banking on may produce a hearty win for Trump in 2024:

This is the first 19-minutes of BANNON’S WAR ROOM (3/16/2024 Episode 3467). If the trend holds that their “lawfare tactic” continues to erode, then trying to present winning ideas is also most probably an abject failure as well. Since no real accomplishments exist.

Again, good news if this trajectory holds.

Nathan Wade’s Testimony Found False, What About Willis’?

  • “What I don’t understand is how the court can find that she [Willis] did act improperly in her public statements. He shreds the testimonies, he strongly indicates that he did not believe Mr. Wade, but then he ignores the fact that they testified largely in tandem. Willis adopted his testimony, she supported his testimony. So, if he was false, she was false. And it’s very hard to separate these conjoined twins. It takes quite a surgeon.” — Jonathan Turley, via DAILY CALLER

  • “It really is an astonishing opinion in its disconnect because he clearly did not believe Nathan Wade and many people believe Nathan Wade committed perjury,” Turley said. “But these two essentially testified in tandem – she [Fani Willis] adopted his testimony. So if he lied, then she pretty much lied the same way. They both maintained that the relationship began after he was hired and really held a sort of unified front. I think that what the judge was trying to do in giving these two options to Wade was to gently give a third option to Willis. And that option is to remove yourself, take the ethical course. And I think that’s very clear in his opinion. Nobody reading this opinion with these damning findings could possibly believe that Willis can continue to be part of this case,” Turley continued. “She’s prosecuting people for the underlying conduct she’s accused of committing with Nathan Wade – false statements given to a court, false filings that have been submitted. How could she possibly continue that without damaging her case? But the problem is that she’s had this opportunity to take the high road, repeatedly. She clearly has never wanted to do that, and this will probably be her last chance to do the right thing and remove herself.” — Jonathan Turley, via DAILY CALLER

THE NATIONAL PULSE may have broken a story that would allow the Judge to take the “option is to remove himself, and take the ethical course.” [Adapted from Turley]:

Judge Scott McAfee, who ruled on Thursday that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can continue prosecuting her RICO case against Donald Trump, donated to her in 2020.

[….]

McAfee ruled she can remain on the case despite the “appearance of impropriety,” however, as long as Wade is dismissed. There was a widespread expectation she would not receive such a favorable ruling, considering the evidence that emerged during the hearings. The fact that McAfee previously donated $150 to Willis in 2020 — the year she was elected — is now being flagged as a possible conflict of interest.

Chris Cuomo vs. Candice Owens | Non-Sequitur Galore

On the Patrick Ben-David Podcast, Chris Cuomo fails to grasp Candice Owens main point, which was that if you compare Joe Biden to any world leader [the most recent example she used was of Tucker Carlson’s interview with dictator Vladimir Putin] in a side-by-side speaking comparison, you will notice a stark difference. Cuomo merely rejects that argument by making a wholly unrelated assumption about what Candice was saying. And taking his totally unrelated interpretation and putting it forward as if it were a cogent response to Candice. But even that misrepresented response by Cuomo – if – put side-by-side with Biden, would make Biden look like a preschooler.

  • The original Patrick Ben-David Podcast can be found here
  • The video from The Gutfeld Show is here

John F. Kennedy Would Not Recognize Today`s Democratic Party

UPDATED AGAIN w/RFK Jr. @ Bottom (Originally posted in Nov 2013)

  • On racial preferences, JFK, in 1963, said he opposed them: “I don’t think that is the generally held view, at least as I understand it, of the Negro community, that there is some compensation due for the lost years, particularly in the field of education.
  • On tax cuts, in a 1962 speech Kennedy said: “It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. … The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy, which can bring a budget surplus.”
  • On dealing with foreign enemies, JFK believed, as Reagan did, in peace through strength, not strength through peace. In his inaugural address, Kennedy said, “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
  • On the Second Amendment, this lifetime member of the NRA believed it conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms. In 1961, Kennedy said: “Today we need a nation of minutemen: citizens who are not only prepared to take up arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as a basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom. The cause of liberty, the cause of America, cannot succeed with any lesser effort.”
  • Abortion was not an issue during the 1960 presidential campaign. Nor was it an issue during his presidency. Kennedy did say this: “Now, on the question of limiting population: As you know, the Japanese have been doing it very vigorously, through abortion, which I think would be repugnant to all Americans.”

(Read It All – Larry Elder)

Rethinking History

“I’d be very happy to tell them I’m not a liberal at all.” ~ John F. Kennedy, 1953

What Dennis Prager was asking James Swanson (audio below) was “what about the newer understanding that JFK was conservative?” (Prager has always echoed Reagan’s statement: “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.” This fresh look at history supports this long held belief  by many ex-Dems.) When historians go through Kennedy’s speeches and candid confessions, as well as policy, they are more-and-more coming to the following conclusion:

A short excerpt from an article by Ira Stoll, in the October 2013 edition of THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR, (In case you bump into a subscriber wall, here is the entire article for free: GOP Briefing Room”)

….WHAT I TAKE to be the truth about John Kennedy and his conservatism has, in the years since he died, been forgotten. This is partly because of the work of liberal historians and partly due to changes in America’s major political parties. Yet calling Kennedy a conservative was hardly controversial during his lifetime. “A Kennedy Runs for Congress: The Boston-bred scion of a former ambassador is a fighting-Irish conservative,” Look headlined an article in June 1946. “When young, wealthy and conservative John Fitzgerald Kennedy announced for Congress, many people wondered why,” the story began. “Hardly a liberal even by his own standards, Kennedy is mainly concerned by what appears to him as the coming struggle between collectivism and capitalism. In speech after speech he charges his audience ‘to battle for the old ideas with the same enthusiasm that people have for new ideas.’”

The Chicago Tribune reported Kennedy’s election to the U.S. Senate in 1952 by describing him as a “fighting conservative.” In a June 1953 Saturday Evening Post article, Kennedy said, “I’d be very happy to tell them I’m not a liberal at all,” adding, speaking of liberals, “I’m not comfortable with those people.” In 1958, Eleanor Roosevelt was asked in a television interview what she would do if she had to choose between a “conservative Democrat like Kennedy and a liberal Republican [like] Rockefeller.” She said she would do all she possibly could to make sure the Democrats did not nominate a candidate like Kennedy.

On the campaign trail before the 1960 election, Kennedy spoke about economics: “We should seek a balanced budget over the course of the business cycle with surpluses during good times more than offsetting the deficits which may be incurred during slumps. I submit that this is not a radical fiscal policy. It is a conservative policy.” This wasn’t just campaign rhetoric—Kennedy kept his distance from liberalism right up until his assassination. “Why are some ‘liberals’ cool to the Kennedy Administration?” Newsweek asked in April 1962. The article went on to explain: “the liberal credentials of young Senator Kennedy never were impeccable…He never was really one of the visceral liberals…many liberal thinkers never felt close to him.”

Even after Kennedy’s death, the “conservative” label was used to describe the late president and his policies by some of those who knew him best. One campaign staffer and congressional aide, William Sutton, described Kennedy’s political stance in the 1946 campaign as “almost ultraconservative.” “He was more conservative than anything else,” said a Navy friend of Kennedy’s, James Reed, who went on to serve Kennedy’s assistant Treasury secretary and who had talked for “many hours” with the young Kennedy about fiscal and economic matters. Another of Kennedy’s friends, the Washington columnist Joseph Alsop, echoed these sentiments in a 1964 interview:

The thing that’s very important to remember about the president was that he was not, in the most marked way, he was not a member of the modern, Democratic, liberal group. He had real—contempt I’m afraid is the right word—for the members of that group in the Senate, or most of them…What he disliked—and here again we’ve often talked about it—was the sort of posturing, attitude-striking, never getting anything done liberalismThis viewpoint was completely foreign to Kennedy, and he regarded it with genuine contempt. Genuine contempt. He really was—contemptuous is the right word for it. He was contemptuous of that attitude in American life.

Alsop went on to emphasize “the great success that the Kennedy administration had with an intelligent, active, but (in my opinion) conservative fiscal-economic policy.”

In January 1981, in the early days of the Reagan presidency, a group of Kennedy administration veterans gathered at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston for a private conversation. One of the participants, Ted Sorensen, said, “Kennedy was a fiscal conservative. Most of us and the press and historians have, for one reason or another, treated Kennedy as being much more liberal than he so regarded himself at the time…In fiscal matters, he was extremely conservative, very cautious about the size of the budget.” Sorensen made a similar point in a November 1983 Newsweek article, saying, “He never identified himself as a liberalOn fiscal matters he was more conservative than any president we’ve had since.” In a 1993 speech, Kennedy’s Treasury secretary, Douglas Dillon, described the president as “financially conservative.” Combine that position with hawkish anticommunism, and it is hard to find much overlap with liberals

[….]


Article will continue after

dealing with the Left’s latest lunacy…


The Left recently said JFK was killed by Right Wing or Conservative ideals. This is laughable!

REASON.COM has a great short blurb to set the record straight:

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein asks the obvious question after reading various attempts to blame the assassination of John F. Kennedy on a generalized “atmosphere of hate” pervading Dallas, Texas in the early 1960s. Was Dallas a hotbed of right-wing paranoid fantasies back then? Sure was. But—and this is really kinda important—it wasn’t the likes of nutjub Gen. Edwin Walker who plugged the president. It was Lee Harvey Oswald, a Castro supporter who had defected to the Soviet Union out of a mix of Marxist idealism and anti-Americanism.

Look, guys. Lee Harvey Oswald murdered JFK. Oswald was a Communist. Not a small c, “all we are saying is give peace a chance and let’s support Negro civil rights” kind of Communist, but someone so committed to the cause (and so blind to the nature of the USSR) that he actually went to live in the Soviet Union. And when that didn’t work out, Oswald became a great admirer of Castro. He apparently would have gone to live in Cuba before the assassination if the Cubans would have had him. Before assassinating Kennedy, Oswald tried to kill a retired right-wing general. As near as we can tell, he targeted Kennedy in revenge for Kennedy’s anti-Castro actions.

More here.

DAILY SIGNAL has an excellent commentary dealing with this rewriting [literally] of history, but here is Rush Limbaugh’s short take:

A little pop quiz. What do you call a politician who is pro-life? What do you call a politician who is for lower taxes? What do you call a politician who is for a strong national defense? What do you call a president who is a proud nationalist, proud to be an American? What do you call that person?

That is John Fitzgerald Kennedy. That is who JFK was. And that is the second attempted Drive-By Media Democrat Party distraction today. Although there’s a little bit more justification for spending time on the 50th anniversary of that assassination than there is on this nuclear option business. Let me tell you how ridiculous this is getting. You and I all know, Warren report, whatever, we all know that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy. (interruption) I know. I can hear right now people throwing things at the radio, shouting things at the radio. We know that Lee Harvey Oswald fired on the president, okay? We know this, and we know what about Lee Harvey Oswald?

Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist. We know that a leftist, a communist assassinated JFK. That is the official Warren report conclusion. And yet the media cannot let go of the fact that because there were a lot of white Republican businessmen in Dallas, that it was a climate of hate, a climate of fear, a climate of extremism in Dallas that led to Kennedy’s death. Every conspiracy theory that you have heard that makes you think Lee Harvey Oswald was not the assassin was started by the Democrats. Every one.

(RUSH LIMBAUGH archives)


The American Spectator continues:


[….]

THE QUESTION OF Kennedy’s ultimate political convictions is more than a matter of mere historical curiosity. Kennedy consistently ranks near the top of public polls asking about the greatness of past presidents. His popularity suggests that the American people think his record is a model worth emulating. Simply to ape Kennedy would be impossible, of course. The Soviet Union is gone, tax rates now are lower than when Kennedy wanted to cut them, and the state universities of the South have been racially integrated. But if the contours of the foreign policy, tax, and education fights have shifted, Kennedy’s course in them may nonetheless inform our choices today, as it has since his death. And other issues of Kennedy’s time are still with us, including economic growth, government spending, inflation, and, as he put it, “Christian morality,” the “cynical philosophy of many of our intellectuals,” and “the right of the individual against the state.”

Calling Kennedy a political conservative may make liberals uncomfortable—perish the thought!—by crowning conservatism with the halo of Camelot. And it could make conservatives uncomfortable too. Many have long despised the entire Kennedy family, especially John’s younger brother Ted. But conservatives need not always trust received wisdom, especially when it comes to conservatism. Better, then, to forge ahead, to try to understand both the 29-year-old Navy veteran speaking at Faneuil Hall and the president he became.

UPDATE:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: “How I See The State Of Our Union” (Response to Joe Biden’s SOTU speech):

  • “Neither my uncle nor my father would recognize the version of America that we have today. We’ve become a nation of chronic illness, of violence, of loneliness, depression and division and poverty.”

A lot of the stats he references have good answers, however, the reason for this is that he is speaking in the vain of thee Democrat Party his father led. Not the LBJ party. That said, know this is a campaign video.

“Professionals Know Best” Admit To Ruining Children’s Lives

Reality is a bitch! And even those involved in the delusion of thinking one can change sexes in people struggling with internal issues as deep as thinking they can be something they are not. JUST THE NEWS has this article n papers and conversations regarding this attempt to fix an issue that makes the matter worse. This is the subtitle to the article:

  • World Professional Association for Transgender Health members swap candid stories, seek advice in private forum, panel discussion. Testosterone wreaks havoc on women’s bodies over time. WPATH dismisses “scare tactics.”

So what is the main idea herein? JTN starts out with the breakdown:

  • A tranche of internal discussions among leaders and practitioners in the so-called gender-affirming-care industry stands to amplify concerns about the safety and effectiveness of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and genital surgeries on children with gender dysphoria.

Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger quickly explains these files and why he is publishing them (see his Twitter/X “THREAD“):

Of course we all know/knew this, but here is more professional and candid conversation by those pushing the idea and their seeing the wasteland they are making [reality] and trying to rationalize their choices. (The video below the article excerpts talks about this delusion, the time put into this “venture” [child abuse] and trying to continue the rationalization that they were “on the side of the angels”.) I mean, we are talking about double mastectomies on 12 and 13-year old females with perfectly healthy breasts. And politicians lie about it.

Take for instance Jamie Reed, someone dedicated to the task at hand, hitting the rough road of reality (NEW YORK POST),

In a stunning condemnation, Jamie Reed, 42, a former case manager at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, said she quit in November after four years “because I could no longer participate in what was happening there.”

“What is happening is morally and medically appalling,” the whistleblower warned Thursday in a piece for The Free Press.

According to Reed — who describes herself as a queer “progressive” and married to a “trans man” — soon after she started working at the pediatric gender clinic, she was “struck by the lack of formal protocols for treatment,” leaving physician co-directors as the “sole authority.”

She said little was needed for kids to begin transitioning — a letter of support from a therapist “who they had to see only once or twice for the green light,” and a single visit for girls to an endocrinologist for a testosterone prescription. ….

(NEW YORK POST | An entire EPOCH TIMES interview with Jamie can  be see HERE)

See more on this via The Federalist: “Boston Children’s Hospital Touts Hysterectomies And Other Mutilation For ‘Trans’ Minors

So… back to the JUST THE NEWS article…

A tranche of internal discussions …

…. [that] show members of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health admitting that some young patients or colleagues developed life-threatening medical conditions or even died after years of treatment.

These are more serious than the sexual dysfunction and developmental problems, such as sterilization, inability to orgasm, weaker bones and sudden spikes in brain pressure, already reflected in research and even federal guidance on gender affirming care.

“The WPATH Files” came from “one or more” people with access to the organization’s member discussion forum, whose conversations confirm that “transgender medicine is neither scientific nor medical,” Twitter Files journalist and contrarian environmentalist Michael Shellenberger wrote in a lengthy X thread Monday night.

Shellenberger’s Environmental Progress research group summarized and posted the leaked communications, which appear to have been copied from printouts based on the skewed orientation, squished spacing and degradation of forum pages.

“WPATH serves no purpose, contributes nothing beneficial to the field of gender medicine, and leads medical and mental health professionals astray,” says the report, written by journalist Mia Hughes. “Several European nations have already abandoned the group’s guidelines, indicating the extent to which WPATH has become obsolete.”

A 16-year-old patient developed “two liver masses” after several years on a menstrual-suppression drug and one year of testosterone, “and the oncologist and surgeon both have indicated that the likely offending agent(s) are the hormones,” a doctor wrote in the forum.

Another responded that a female colleague who identified as a man died of liver cancer, which “[t]o the best of my knowledge was linked” to taking testosterone for nearly a decade.

Three years of testosterone gave a young woman pelvic inflammatory disease, with vaginal atrophy typical of postmenopausal women and “a persistent yellow discharge we often see as a result” of treatment, a nurse practitioner wrote. Hughes said PID’s fatal risks include ectopic pregnancy and “spread of infection to other body parts.”

The report states the names of members were redacted “except in the case of the WPATH president, surgeons, and other prominent members” and did not edit the files.

Only one WPATH member answered a request for comment, with “legal threats,” and an email obtained by Environmental Progress showed “WPATH advising against replying and informing the recipients that WPATH was seeking legal counsel,” the report says.

“WPATH is and has always been a science- and evidence-based organization whose recommendations are widely endorsed by major medical organizations around the world,” President Marci Bowers said in a statement the group gave Just the News.

We are the professionals who best know the medical needs of trans and gender diverse individuals – and stand opposed to individuals who misrepresent and de-legitimize the diverse identities and complex needs of this population through scare tactics,” Bowers wrote. ……….

All this leads me to this excellent discussion about what was revealed by this WPATH admissions and the coming fallout. The opening and detailing of past medical hype and women and others who just went along professionals who best know  is eye-opening:

Join Genspect and FAIR in Medicine to discuss the WPATH Files Report with Stella O’Malley, Carrie Mendoza, MD, and Mia Hughes, the report’s author from Michael Shellenberger’s Environmental Progress. What are the key insights from the report and leaked documents? What have we learned about WPATH’s public versus private culture? How will this information impact advocacy moving forward? Join us for the first in a series of webinars about the WPATH Files from Genspect and FAIR in Medicine.

RELATED:

RPT SCOTUS Prediction: 9-0 or 8-1

So at 8:20 AM (Feb 8th, 2024) I said this on my Facebook:

  • Listening to the SCOTUS hearing on the 14th Amendment challenge. I think it may be a 9-0 decision. Maybe an 8-1?

UPDATE!

The rest of the original post….

Here is some later discussion of this:

‘Parade Of Horribles’: Johnathan Turley Skewers Colorado Lawyer After SCOTUS Ballot Hearing on Thursday

RPT Primary Voter Guide (March 5th, 2024)

Here are my resources used for this March 5th Primary.

Here is my – just in the nick of time – voter guide:


VOTER GUIDE

Download and print the one-page PDF


CITY/LOCAL

State Senator 23rd District: James “DJ” Hamburger

Member of the State Assembly, 40th District: Patrick Lee Gibson

United States Representative 27th District: Mike Garcia

COUNTY

Supervisor 5th District: Kathryn Barger

District Attorney: David S. Milton

JUDGES JUDGE OF SUPERIOR COURT OFFICE

#12: Lynn Diane Olson
#39: Steve Napolitano
#48: Renee Rose
#93: Victor Avila
#97: Sam Abourched
#115: Keith Koyano
#124: Emily Theresa Spear
#130: Osman M. Tahir
#135: Mohammad Ali Fakhreddine
# 137: Tracy M. Blount

Member County Central Committee, 40th Assembly District :

(Any 7 Republicans will do, but these are my seven):

Nune Gipson | Veronica Hixon | Aakash Ahuja | Melissa Lundie | Denise Lite |  Lucie Volotzky | Joe Messina

STATE

Measure 1: NO!

NATIONAL ELECTION

Presidential Preference: Donald J. Trump

United States Senator: Steve Garvey [temp as well]

Google Gemini AI Story Gets Worse | Matt Walsh

Today on the Matt Walsh Show, you might think the story of Google’s woke dystopian AI program can’t get any worse, but it has. I’ll explain. Also, the media claims that conservatives at CPAC are plotting the end of democracy. A pundit on MSNBC inadvertently claims that America is a fundamentally christian nationalist country. The Left freaks out after a court in Alabama grants personhood rights to human embryos. And Kristen Stewart is on a press tour and she really wants you to know that she’s gay. Why do we need to know this? and why is she wearing a mullet?

SAFETY TIP: How To Stop a Dog Attack/Fight 101

I combined three of the best videos I have come across over the years to give you a working tactic to stop a dog fight or attack. It is a good skill to have in your wheelhouse.

Here are the original files used, in order of appearance:

  • How To Stop an Attacking Dog Assault from Biting a Victim – AKBAN Self-Defense Bite Release (YOUTUBE)
  • Stop Any Dog Attack Fast (YOUTUBE)
  • How To Stop a Dog Fight Instantly- “Unlock” a biting dog in SECONDS!!! (YOUTUBE)

Leaves from a Russian Diary | Pitirim Sorokin

The original file is here, via Voices of the Past — they have great stuff, go heck their channel out. I just posted on Mr. Sorokin earlier today, This will be a separate post from that.

Here is a small clip regarding

Sorokin’s enthusiasm for the Revolution was quickly tempered, however, by the widespread outbreak of uncontrolled homicidal violence from many quarters which followed the collapse of Tsarist rule. The ruthlessness, fanaticism, and calculated cruelty displayed by Lenin and the Bolsheviks were particularly unsettling to Sorokin since, like a tornado, it seemed to sweep up everything in its course. By the end of 1917, less than a year after the overthrow of the Tsar, Sorokin had clearly become disillusioned with political revolution and expressed this disillusionment in a particularly poignant entry in his diary:

This is the last day of 1917. I look back on the year with feelings of bitterness and disillusionment. The year 1917 gave us the Revolution, but what has Revolution brought to my country but ruin and disgrace? Has it brought us freedom? Has it bettered the condition of the people? No, the face of revolution unveiled is the face of a beast, of a vicious and wicked prostitute, not that of the pure goddess which has been painted by historians of other revolutions. I could pray that these historians themselves might live through a real revolution. (LRD 112)

His active opposition to the Bolsheviks led to his imprison­ment in early 1918, though with the help of his wife Elena and a sympathetic benefactor he was released from jail after a two-month stay. Soon after his release, however, he resumed his opposition to Bolshevism and took part in an abortive attempt to liberate northern Russia from Bolshevik rule. He was later hunted down and finally surrendered to the pursuing Communist Cheka, whereupon he was thrown into a Bolshevik prison for the second time and informed that he would soon be executed. This confron­tation with death had a lasting impression upon him and seems to be partially responsible for the later rekindling of his earlier Christian spirituality and his later emphasis on the central need in human affairs for the healing and reconciling power of agapic love. Sorokin was saved from the firing squad only by virtue of the intersession of two of his former university friends—both Com­munists who had gone on to assume important positions in Lenin’s cabinet. Lenin himself issued the order to spare Sorokin, though only after having written an article in Pravda that held Sorokin up as a model of the futility of any kind of centrist position between the Communists and the pro-tsarist reactionaries. (Sorokin’s two brothers, however, were not so fortunate—both of them eventually perished in clashes with the Bolshevik regime.)

Sorokin had correctly perceived the nature of Bolshevism from the very beginning, and unlike many Western intellectuals who had to await the revelations of Khrushchev’s 1956 “Secret Speech” or Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, he harbored no illusions that ruthless men in power would bring about a socialist utopia. ….

Rediscovering the Genius of Pitirim Sorokin

 

Government Should Subsidize What Works, the Family | Pitirim Sorokin

This is the first time I have heard of Pitirim Sorokin, so naturally I went on a bender. After reading quite a bit this morning, I can see that he was in one sense an early Thomas Sowell. here are two small quotes from his work, THE AMERICAN SEX REVOLUTION (free PDF)

The reasons for this high evaluation of marriage are obvious. Marriage is a social evidence of the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and civic maturity of the individual. It involves the momentous transformation of a boy into a husband-father, and of a girl into a wife-mother, with corresponding changes in their social position, privileges, and responsibilities.

[….]

Preceding chapters have shown a rapid increase of divorce, desertion, and separation, and of premarital, and extramarital relations, with the boundary between lawful marriage and illicit liaisons tending to become more and more tenuous. Still greater has been the deterioration of the family as a union of parents and children, with “fluid marriages” producing a super-abundance of the physically, morally, and mentally defective children, or no children at all.

As a consequence, in spite of our still developing economic prosperity, and our outstanding progress in science and technology, in education, in medical care; notwithstanding our democratic regime and way of life, and our modern methods of social service; in brief, in spite of the innumerable and highly effective techniques and agencies for social improvement, there has been no decrease in adult criminality, juvenile delinquency, and mental disease, no lessening of the sense of insecurity and of frustration. If anything, these have been on the increase, and already have become the major problems of our nation. What this means is that the poisonous fruits of our sex-marriage-family relationships are contaminating our social life and our cultural and personal well-being. They have already passed beyond the phase of being possibly dangerous, and have become ugly and deadly realities as solid and certain as any facts can be.

See another free resource from Sorokin: Contemporary Sociological Theories: A Popular Scientific Study

Here is a decent synopsis of The American Sex Revolution by Francis Russell:

In the mid-1950s the Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin published a provocative little book on The American Sex Revolution that would prove uncanny in its prescience. Indeed, Sorokin’s book makes for most engaging reading today as it may be the only work of social criticism written during the middle years of the 20th century that so accurately gauged the direction in which America and Europe were headed that its analysis is even more relevant to the social situation that exists at the present time than the one that existed when it was first written. A full half century after its appearance, hardly a page of The American Sex Revolution is dated, and readers today will look repeatedly at the publication date for reassurance that the book was actually written during the supposedly tranquil years of the Ozzie and Harriet era.

The harmful trends that Sorokin described in his book, many of which were cause for only moderate concern in their own time, would become much more extreme in subsequent decades, and today are generally acknowledged as a major source of social and cultural decline in what is not inaccurately described as a “”post- Christian”” West. These include declining birth rates and diminished parental commitment to the welfare of children; vastly increased erotic content in movies, plays, novels, magazines, television shows, radio programs, song lyrics, and commercial advertising; increased divorce, promiscuity, premarital sex, extramarital sex, homosexuality, spousal abandonment, and out-of-wedlock births; and related to these developments, a growing increase in juvenile delinquency, psychological depression, and mental disorders of every description. So extreme have some of these trends become, particularly since the late 1960s, that many today can look back nostalgically upon the 1950s when Sorokin issued his warnings as a period of great social stability, “family values,” and dedication to traditional Christian understandings of sex, marriage, and child rearing.

(INTERCOLLEGIATE STUDIES INSTITUTE)

Here is a VERY LONG quote from one of the sources Dr. Mohler is most likely referencing, of which the above quotes are taken from:

Birth, marriage, and death are the great events in the life of any individual, for they mark the be­ginning, middle, and end of each human existence. All societies have viewed them as of the utmost importance, not only for the individual, but also for the survival and well-being of the community. Thus every society has most carefully defined and regulated the customs concerning these events. And of them, marriage has been considered as important, and has been as carefully regulated, as have the mores relating to birth and death.

The reasons for this high evaluation of marriage are obvious. Marriage is a social evidence of the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and civic maturity of the individual. It involves the momentous trans­formation of a boy into a husband-father, and of a girl into a wife-mother, with corresponding changes in their social position, privileges, and responsibilities. For a large majority of men and women, marriage is the most vital, the most intimate, and the most com­plete unification of body, mind, and spirit into one socially approved, indivisible “we”. In a good mar­riage, the individual egos of the parties merge. The joys and sorrows of one become the joys and sorrows of the other. All their values, aspirations, and life-experiences become fully shared. Their mutual loyalty is unconditionally pledged until death do part them. The bond of marriage is truly sacred and indissoluble.

Such an all-embracing union serves as the most powerful antidote against loneliness. It develops and expresses love at its noblest and best, in the moral ennoblement of the married and the true socialization of their children.

From the remotest past, married parents have been the most effective teachers of their children, and the family has been the most important school for the transformation of newly-born human animals into intelligent, socially responsible personalities. This decisive educational role is well summed up in the dictum: “What the family is, such will the society be.”

Furthermore, the cultivation of mutual love and the task of educating their children stimulate married persons to release and develop their best creative impulses. For surely the mission of molding their own and their children’s personalities is as ennobling as the creation of a masterpiece in the arts or sciences. And regardless of education, social status, religion, or economic conditions, each married couple derives from a good marriage the fullest satisfaction of this crea­tive urge which is in all of us. In this sense, marriage is the most universal and the most democratic school for the development of the creative potential of every human being. This creative urge is possibly the most distinctive mark of the human species, and its satis­faction is an absolute necessity for human happiness. 

Enjoying the marital union in its infinite richness, parents freely fulfill many other paramount tasks. They maintain the procreation of the human race.

Through their progeny they determine the hereditary and acquired characteristics of future generations. Through marriage they achieve a social immortality of their own, of their ancestors, and of their particular groups and community. This immortality is secured through the transmission of their name and values, and of their traditions and ways of life to their children, grandchildren, and later generations.

The fulfillment of these tasks explains why mar­riage has been regarded by all societies as the cul­minating point of human existence, and as the most decisive factor in the survival and well-being of the societies themselves.

In contrast to marriage, illicit sex relations cannot and do not fulfill these tasks. The relations between a prostitute and her client, between a mistress and het patron, and between all sorts of incidental “lovers”, have never been considered as evidence of mental, moral, or social maturity of the partners. On the contrary, they have been viewed as a sin, or as a crime, or as a symptom of moral and social degeneration of the partners involved. Usually, illicit sex relations rarely go beyond a shortlived “copulational” union. Each partner remains a mere sex apparatus for the satisfaction of the lust of the other. The partners remain largely unknown to each other; their egos are not merged into one “we” nor is their selfishness tempered by mutual devotion and love.

Incidental sex liaisons do not yield any consortium omnir vitae, divini et &maxi juris communicatio, as the Roman Law defined marriage. [Translation: the partnership of all life, the sharing of the divine and the greater right.] For a short moment of sensual pleasure the parties usually pay the costly price of frequent and lasting periods of anguish, anxiety, fear, remorse, hate, and pain. Frequently the evanescent sex pleasure wrecks their whole life. In many countries adulterers and fornicators have even been punished by death, mutilation, torture, dishonor, or imprisonment.

Nor, with the exception of common law “mar­riages”, are these liaisons schools of moral, mental, and social education of the partners. To the contrary they often lead to demoralization, social irresponsi­bility, mental disorders, and crime; and they thus do not contribute to the development of the creative potential.

Finally, these relations do not serve the vital task of procreation, of determining the qualities of future generations and the social immortality of the partners. Asa rule, they remain sterile and childless. If some­times they lead to the birth of children, these are stig­matized as “illegitimate” and “born-out-of-wedlock,” victims of animal passion and human folly.

Any considerable change in marriage behavior, any increase in sexual promiscuity, and illicit relations, is pregnant with momentous consequences. A sex revo­lution drastically affects the lives of millions, deeply disturbs the community, and decisively influences the future of society. If, therefore, the American nation and, indeed, Western society as a whole are passing through such a revolution, it deserves as much public attention as any political or economic change.

The questions now before us are: Is indeed our nation drifting toward an unknown destination, carried by the powerful undertow of a sex revolution? If so, what are the evidences of it? What are its possible consequences? And where might it carry us? A careful survey of the factual evidence gives fairly con­clusive answers to these vital questions.

A FEW TELLING STATISTICS

In 1870 there was one divorce for every 33.7 marriages contracted; in the last few years, one per 2.5 to 3. In 1890, we had three divorces per 1000 married females; in 1946, 17.8 per 1000. In 1867 we had 0.3 divorces per 1000 of our population; in 1947, 3.4. The supposedly sacred bond of marriage is now being broken several times more frequently than in preceding decades. And, with minor fluctuations, divorce has been and is steadily increasing.

Similar is the increase of “the poor man’s divorce.” According to the National Desertion Bureau, deserted wives comprise between 3 and 4 per cent of all married women. In 1953, desertion cost the American taxpayer about $252,000,000 for the support of aban­doned wives and children, about three and a half million of whom received little or no money from the father.

As a result of the mounting number of divorces, separations, and desertions, about 12,000,000 of the 45,000,000 children in the United States do not live with both parents. Due to no fault on their own part, these children are deprived of security and love, and forcibly exposed to all the indemencies of the half-parental and non-parental homes, or of no homes at all. If divorce and desertion mean the disintegration of marriage and the family as a union of husband and wife, these deserted children signify the disintegra­tion of the family as a union of parents and children.

Further disintegration manifests itself in the shrinking of the size of the family. The percentage of families with six or more members was 51.8 in 1790, 32.8 in 1900, 20.1 in 1930, and only 15.7 in 1940. The percentage of childless married couples has now reached between 15 and 20; these and one-child marriages comprise between 40 and 45 per cent of all families. In the childless marriage the family as a union of parents and children does not exist; in the marriage with only one child, it fails in the task of providing for the future of our nation, for to maintain the present population, the family must average 2 or 3 children.

These figures suggest that the candle of the American marriage and family is being burned at both ends,—both as a union of husband and wife, and as a. union of parents and children. And with their dis­integration, marriage and the family progressively fail in the performance of the tasks of maintaining the well-being of the individual and ensuring the survival of the nation itself.

[….]

If the present rate of decline of premarital virginity continues, this virtue is likely to become within a few generations a myth of the past. And the present increase of extramarital relations threatens to replace the monogamic marriage itself by some sort of polygamous, or polyandrous, or anarchic, or “communal” pseudo-marriage.

[….]

Philosophies viewing sex as one of the two main factors of historical processes; sociological theories of marriage as an institution established mainly or only for satisfaction of the sex drive; educational theories prescribing the teaching experimentally of the facts of life to children as early as possible; various yarns advocating in the name of science such practices as free love, experimental sexual relations for teen-agers, trial and companionate marriages, and so on and so forth,—these and similar gospels have successfully penetrated the disciplines of the social sciences and are regarded by many as “the last word”.

In spite of the utterly unscientific nature of these theories, and notwithstanding their extremely degrading effect; in spite of the fact that they drag into filthy sewers almost all the great values of humanity, beginning with love, marriage and parenthood, and ending with the fine arts, ethics, science, and religion; in spite of all this, these theories continue to be accepted by many so-called scientists, and to win an ever-growing public. Their outstanding success is a tragic sign of sexual obsession and of mental aberration, which now extend to a legion of our writers, artists, business men, government officials, teachers and preachers, social workers, and the public at large.

[….]

The growth of sexual anarchy, divorces, desertions, and orgies; of emancipation and “masculinization” of women and effemination of men, together with radical changes in marriage and family laws, which largely dis­solved their sacredness and inviolability, and an atten­dant decrease of birth rate, proceeded hand in hand with a growth of irreligiosity and of vulgar sensualist ethics and frame of mind. This demoralization spread over all classes of Roman society. In the time of Julius Caesar, about 600,000 of the proletarian population were sup­plied by the State with rations of oil, pork, wine, clothing and other necessities, and special “cards” (lasciva nomismats [playful coins]) entitling the bearer to the services of the Roman prostitutes.

The sensual ethic of this period is well illustrated by epitaphs on the tombstones of many an obscure person: “Horror does not seize me when I think of the putrefac­tion of my body; nothing further touches us.” “I was; I am not; I do not care.” “Es, bibe, lode, veni” (Eat, drink, play, come hither). “Indulge in voluptuousness, for only this pleasure wilt thou carry away with thee.” “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” “What I have eaten and what I have drunk,—that is all that be­longs to me.” “Baths and wine and love impair our bodies; but baths, wine, and love make life. While I lived, I drank willingly; drink, ye who live.” “The su­preme end is pleasure.” Such cynicism, skepticism, and sensualism must have been profound and widespread to have found expression on the tombstones of ordinary persons.

Subsequently, despite temporary improvements and minor fluctuations, sexual and sociopolitical disorders continued to undermine the dominant Sensate form of Roman culture, society, and Empire and brought them to their irretrievable decay. Salvation and regeneration came from Christianity with its anti-materialistic, anti-sensualistic, and anti-erotic system of values and moral commandments. Forbidding even a lustful look at a woman or man, declaring sinful all premarital sex rela­tions, extolling sexual chastity and continence, and allow­ing sexual life only in the form of the socially sanctioned marriage, Christianity was able to curb greatly the pre­vailing sexual anarchy and to restore the sanctity of marriage, and the family, and the normal or lawful forms of sex activity. During the subsequent centuries of European history the dose connection between the sexual and the sociopolitical disorders can be observed in the periods of almost all great upheavals and revolutions in practically all European countries.

[….]

During the French Revolution, the tidal wave of sexual anarchy swept over the whole nation. The divorce decree of September 20, 1792, eliminated practically all obstacles to divorce and lowered the minimum age of mar­riage to thirteen for women and fifteen for men. The di­vorce rates skyrocketed so high that in 1796-97 their number surpassed that of marriages. Still greater was the increase in desertions. The number of foundlings born out of wedlock and abandoned rose from 23,000 in 1790 to 63,000 in 1798. There was a similar increase in the number of prostitutes, whose “disorders and shameless behavior surpassed in heinousness all that can be conceived.” Not only grown-ups, but even children behaved in a scandalous way. “The restraints of sexual instincts were abandoned. In summer among the crowds standing in line before shops, abominable scenes of hu­man bestiality and of Paris impudence could be seen… . Many prostitutes brought their bedding and openly per­formed all kinds of sexual abominations.” The festivals of “Liberty” and “The Goddess of Reason” were ac­companied by orgies and saturnalia. After the Termidor, “the young men and women grew openly licentious, and ribaldry became a fashion…: All else was forgotten in the lust of pleasure. Next to the sans culottes we see the `shirtless girls’… . The family pot is overturned… . Women pass from hand to hand. Some married one sister after another, and their own mothers-in-law. The dregs of society resemble Sodom and Gomorrah.” And side by side with this common licentiousness, sadistic actions became daily occurrences. In brief, debauchery reached its maximum.

[….]

An increase of licentiousness occurred in the upper and to some extent the middle strata of Russian society before the Revolution of 1917. Rasputin and other sex gluttons corrupted the aristocracy, and their influence added powder to the gigantic magazine of accumulated antagonisms among the various classes and groups of Russia. There followed after the Revolution a period of sex anarchy, details of which will be given in a later chapter. Suffice it to say for the present that in the first phase of the Revolution, roughly from 1918 to 1926, the institutions of marriage and the family were virtually destroyed within a large portion of the urban popu­lation, and greatly weakened throughout the whole Russian nation.

These examples, corroborated by evidence from al­most every important revolution and social disturbance from the oldest Egyptian upheaval c. 2500 B.C. to the present time show the close connection between sexual and sociopolitical revolutions. It is for this reason that every debauchee is a contributor to social and political disorders, one of the “revolutionaries” undermining the existing system of values, institutions, and order. And conversely, political and social revolutionaries contribute to the spread of sexual anarchy.

[….]

The preceding chapters have demonstrated the far-reaching influence of excessive sexual freedom upon its devotees and upon society. We now come to a yet more momentous problem: What, if any, is the relationship between the disorderly and the tempered sexual life, on the one hand, and the creative growth and the decline of society, on the other? Does the sex factor appreciably condition the sociocultural progress or regress of groups: tribes, nations, religious bodies, empires, and other com­munities? If it does, then which of the prevailing modes of behavior,—free or tempered, restrained or unrestrained, —helps the society’s cultural growth, and which mode contributes to its decline?

TWO GENERALIZATIONS

The subsequent propositions tentatively answer these questions. We shall begin with two main generalizations, followed by several propositions of a qualifying character.

  1. The regime that confines sexual life within socially sanctioned marriage, and that morally disap­proves and legally prohibits premarital and extramarital relations provides an environment more favorable for creative growth of the society than does the regime of free or disorderly sex relationships which neither morally disapproves nor legally prohibits premarital and extra­marital liaisons.
  2. The regime that permits chronically excessive, illicit, and disorderly sex activities contributes to the decline of cultural creativity.

What are the proofs for these generalizations?

In the first place, all the detrimental effects,—physi­cal, mental, moral and social,—of illicit and excessive sex behavior given in the preceding chapters form a body of evidence clearly supporting these propositions. If sex gluttony and illicit sex activity are harmful to their devotees in all these respects, then they cannot but be harmful to the creative growth of societies which tolerate them.

Yet another set of proofs is highly important. It consists of a careful, systematic, inductive comparison of the prevailing modes of sexual life in: (a) preliterate so­cieties with more advanced, and those with less advanced cultural and social organizations; and (b) historical societies in the periods of their growth, and in the periods of their decline. This sort of confrontation shows that the more advanced or creative preliterate societies display greater restraint and more tempered sexual life than the more primitive or less creative groups. Further, the comparison demonstrates that in the life processes of historical societies, the periods of their cultural and social growth have been almost uniformly marked by a very tempered sexual regime, while the periods of their decline have been stamped by sexual anarchy.

A third set of evidence is supplied by recent “experi­ments” in this field, including the Communist regimes in Soviet Russia and China, and the verifiable increase of sexual freedom among Colonial peoples, a freedom resulting from the impact of Western culture.

When all three classes of evidence are considered, the resultant testimony is conclusive, especially when compared with the few fragments of uncertain “proofs” sometimes brought forward by the partisans of sex freedom.

[….]

To put the matter another way, reduction of sexual freedom is accompanied by a rise in cultural creativity. Among 59 preliterate societies investigated, in those where the young men and women were permitted pre­nuptial freedom, their mentality tends to be shaped into a Zoistic mould. If they are compelled to accept occa­sional continence, their mentality is moulded into a Deistic form. Finally, if besides prenuptial continence, monogamic faithfulness is required, especially from women, the mentality of the society tends to become Rationalistic.

Civilized societies which have most strictly limited sexual freedom have developed the highest cultures, In the whole of human history not a single case is found in which a society advanced to the Rationalistic culture without its women being born and reared in a rigidly enforced pattern of faithfulness to one man. Further, there is no example of a community which has retained its high position on the cultural scale after less rigorous sexual customs have replaced more restricting ones. Thus, when under the influence of Christianity the sexual freedom of the Teutonic tribes was limited, this restriction was one of the most important forces affect­ing subsequent cultural progress. And when the poly­gamous Moors in Spain married monogamous Christian and Jewish women, they progressed from a Deistic to a partly Rationalistic culture.

The explosions of creative energy in polygamous societies are due to two factors: to the previous existence of a strict postnuptial monogamy of several generations, as among the early Persians, the Huns, the Mongols, and the Macedonians; and to a strict prenuptial chastity and postnuptial monogamy of the women in the polygamous groups.

When the ruling group and the society as a whole relax their code, within three generations there is usually a cultural decline, as was the case in the later stages of the Babylonian, the Persian, the Macedonian, the Mongol, the Greek, and the Roman civilizations, as well as at the end of the Old and the Middle Kingdoms and of the New Empire, and during the Ptolemaic period, in Egypt. Considering that prenuptial chastity and strictly monogamous marriage, for women at least, are a maxi­mum reduction of sex freedom (next to absolute celibacy, which if general would lead to the extinction of the group) we find that among civilized societies those which have remained strict in their sexual codes for the longest period have reached the highest levels.

Unwin finds that the Babyions, the Egyptians, the Athenians, the Romans, the early Arabians, and the Anglo-Saxons had a strict monogamy during the early period of their social expansion and cultural and intel­lectual growth. The authority of the pater families over the members of his family, and of the husband over his wife (manus mariti) was unlimited. Sexual life was con­fined within marriage, and the mores were chaste and temperate. Violations of the prescribed rule of conduct did occur now and then, of course, but they were few, and were unanimously disapproved and severely punished. These limitations of sexual activity permitted such socie­ties to accumulate an enormous reserve of social energy which found its outlet in creative growth,—intellectual, aesthetic, religious and social. Hence there occurred a vigorous expansion of these societies, accompanied by an astounding ability to defend themselves against their enemies.

With the expansion and growth of these societies, however, the stern regulations of sex relationships were progressively replaced by weaker ones. Sexual freedom widened until it encompassed the whole society, and eventually turned into anarchy. Wives and children were emancipated from the absolute power of the pater familiar, and their newly won equality brought with it sexual freedom. Within three generations from the moment of significant expansion of sexual freedom, the cultural and social creativity of these societies began to decline.

This lag between the development of sex freedom and the decline of creativity is due to the fact that the younger generations need time to be “educated” in the new patterns of behavior. Thereafter, the decline proceeds hand in hand with the expansion of sex freedom. However, if the sex anarchy is checked, and replaced by new restrictions, the process of decline may be halted and within a century or so, may be replaced by a cultural and social renaissance. When it is not checked, the decline of the societies soon becomes irreversible and leads to their historical degeneration.

With unrelieved monotony this cycle has been re­peated many times.

Such are the essential conclusions of Unwin’s study. Though in some secondary points it is questionable, its main conclusions have been confirmed by other scholars, and are identical with the two propositions given at the beginning of this chapter.

The third set of evidence referred to earlier in this chapter is supplied by experiments in Soviet Russia in the 1920’s and by the degeneration of many preliterate colonial peoples.

Most instructive is undoubtedly the radical attempt of the Soviets to eliminate “capitalistic” monogamy and to establish complete sexual freedom as a cornerstone of the Communist economic and social regime.

During the first- stage of the Revolution, its leaders deliberately attempted to destroy marriage and the family. Free love was glorified by the official “glass of water” theory: if a person is thirsty, so went the Party line, it is immaterial what glass he uses when satisfying his thirst; it is equally unimportant how he, satisfies his sex hunger. The legal distinction. between marriage and casual sexual intercourse was abolished. The Communist law spoke only of “contracts” between males and females for the satisfaction of their desires either for an indefinite or a definite period,—a year, a month, a week, or even for a single night. One could marry and divorce as many times as desired. Husband or wife could obtain a divorce without the other being notified. It was not even necessary that “marriages” be registered. Bigamy and even polygamy were permissible under the new pro­visions. Abortion was facilitated in state institutions. Premarital relations were praised, and extramarital rela­tions were considered normal.

The old pragmatic test: “By their fruits ye shall know them”, provides the answer to the question whether this sex freedom was practical.

Within a few years, hordes of wild, homeless chil­dren became a real menace to the Soviet Union itself. Millions of lives, especially of young girls, were wrecked; divorces skyrocketed, as also did abortions. The hatreds and conflicts among polygamous and polyandrous mates rapidly mounted,—and so did psychoneuroses. Work in the nationalized factories slackened.

[….]

This vicious cycle has been repeated many times. Greece before the second half of the sixth century B.C. bad a strict code governing sexual life, which was con­fined to indissoluble marriage. All transgressors were punished, frequently by being outlawed from family and kindred. At the end of that century, however, a moderate relaxation of legal and factual restraints became notice­able, and during the fifth and the first half of the fourth centuries B.C., this freedom continued to grow without degenerating into sexual anarchy. These same centuries are marked by an explosion of creativity in many fields. This is the Greece of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in philosophy; of Polydetus and Polygnotus in painting; of Pheidias, Praxiteles and Scopes in architecture and sculp­ture; of Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophides, Euripides, and Ads-tophanes in literature; of Terpander, Simonides of Kios, Agathocles, Melanippides the Older, Phrynis, Bacchilides in music. The same period witnessed the greatest number of scientific discoveries and technological inventions made by the Greeks, (6 and 3 in the eighth and seventh centu­ries; 26, 39, 52 in the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries; 42, 14, 12 in the third, second, and the first centuries B.C.). Finally, in the same period Greece reached the zenith of her political creativity add influence (See the details in my Social and Cultural Dynamics, vols. 1, 2, 3, passim. See there also references to a vast literature on these problems. This note concerns also the subsequent cases.)

Beginning with the second half of the fourth cen­tury B.C., sexual freedom increasingly tends toward anarchy; and during the third, second, and first centuries B.C., it spreads throughout the entire Hellenistic world. This same period witnesses a rapid decline of Greek creative genius in all cultural fields, accompanied by depopulation, demoralization, and the loss of political independence.

A somewhat similar cycle occurred in Rome. There, until the third century H.C., sexual life was strictly regulated. However, under the impact of Greek influence, an expansion of sexual freedom begins and gains in the second and first centuries B.C. And exactly these cen­turies saw a notable growth of cultural creativity, led by Virgil, Lucretius, Varro, Cato the Younger, Ovid, Cicero, and other eminent writers and philosophers. While in the period preceding the first century B.C., the number of Roman scientific discoveries and inventions fluctuated from 1 to 5 per century, it rises to 20 in the first century B.C., to 35 in the first century A.D., and then rapidly subsides to 13, 6, 15, 4, 1, 0 from the second through the seventh centuries A.D.

The great flowering of Roman culture occurred during the age of Augustus. He tried to stem the drift toward sex anarchy, which was increasing especially among the upper classes of Rome, and through a series of rather stern law had some limited success. But all in all, he and his successors largely failed in this task. Debauchery continued rampant in the first three or four centuries A.D.; and with minor fluctuations this same period saw a decline of the creative power of Rome, and brought the Western Empire to irretrievable decay in the fifth century.

Still another example of this minor cycle is given by Italy and other European nations during the Italian Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. Before the thirteenth century, the behavior of their populations was restrained not only by the strict code of Christianity, but also by the family mores of their “barbaric” ancestors. The family was strong; marriage was a sacrament indis­solubly binding the parties, premarital and extramarital relations were prohibited and punished.

The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are marked by an obvious relaxation of these restraining codes; and during the next two, the sexual freedom of the Italian, and in a lesser degree of the European, populations rapidly increased and spread until it became, especially in the upper and intellectual strata, sex anarchy. In the seventeenth century, thanks to the Catholic Counter-Reformation and the vigorous efforts of ascetic elements in the Protestant Reformation, the further spread of anarchy was prevented, and sex freedom was notably curtailed. Subsequently, for some hundred and fifty years, these countries were distinguished by a fairly liberal but orderly and limited sexual freedom.

The centuries from the thirteenth to the seventeenth were also a period of great creative energy. They gave us Giotto, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Gemini, and a vast galaxy of the great painters and sculptors of the Italian. Renaissance; Brunellechi, Alberti, and Bramante in Italian architecture; the “ars nuova,” A. and G. Gabrieli, Gesualdo, Palestrina, and other masters of the Italian school in music; Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio, Lorenzo Valla, Ariosto, Tasso, Boiardo in literature; Guicchiardini, Machiavelli, and other eminent social and political thinkers; St. Thomas Aquinas, Pico della ,Mirandola, G. Bruno, Marcilius Ficinus, and others in philosophy; Galileo and others in science. The number of scientific discoveries and inventions in Italy increased from two in the twelfth to 1.4 in the thirteenth century, and then to 27 in the fourteenth, 45 in the fifteenth, 114E in the sixteenth, with a temporary decline to 111 in the seventeenth, and 75 in the eighteenth—the decline due possibly to the delayed consequences of the sex anarchy of the sixteenth century.

Somewhat similar were the courses of increased sex freedom and of cultural activity in several European countries during the same period, but possibly in none did the populations morally degenerate to the extent that the people of Italy did during the Renaissance. As already mentioned, the vigorous efforts of both the Catholic and Protestant churches stemmed the tide of sex anarchy, and permitted the West, for at least two cen­turies, to continue creative activities in all fields of culture, although it should be noted that the least fruit­ful of these were religion and ethics.

After the Victorian age in England, and somewhat earlier in Europe and the United States, the expansion of sex freedom resumed, and in the twentieth century has progressed to the extent of being near to anarchy. In conjunction with other forces, it has already brought two world wars and many smaller conflicts; the gigantic Russian revolution and a legion of lesser civil wars; a chronic political and social anarchy; and an appalling increase in crime. It has also manifested itself in a con­spicuous decline of creativity in all fields of culture except those of science and technology, and even in these latter the creativity is becoming more and more destruc­tive rather than constructive.

Such are typical cases illustrating the supplementary propositions concerning minor fluctuations of sexuality and creativity,

[….]

Preceding chapters have shown a rapid increase of divorce, desertion, and separation, and of premarital, and extramarital relations, with the boundary between lawful marriage and illicit liaisons tending to become more and more tenuous. Still greater has been the deter­ioration of the family as a union of parents and children, with “fluid marriages” producing a super-abundance of the physically, morally, and mentally defective children, or no children at all.

As a consequence, in spite of our still developing economic prosperity, and our outstanding progress in science and technology, in education, in medical care; notwithstanding our democratic regime and way of life, and our modern methods of social service; in brief, in spite of the innumerable and highly effective techniques and agencies for social improvement, there has been no decrease in adult criminality, juvenile delinquency, and mental disease, no lessening of the sense of insecurity and of frustration. If anything, these have been on the increase, and already have become the major problems of our nation. What this means is that the poisonous fruits of our sex-marriage-family relationships are con­taminating our social life and our cultural and personal well-being. They have already passed beyond the phase of being possibly dangerous, and have become ugly and deadly realities as solid and certain as any facts can be..

Our trend toward sex anarchy has not yet produced catastrophic consequences. Nevertheless, the first syn­dromes of grave disease have already appeared.

[….]

To be successful, this disinfection requires the free cooperative participation of every responsible mem­ber of our society, and especially of its creative leaders. And this participation must be consistent, devoid of the prevalent hypocrisy and self-contradiction of many a dregs, by not sponsoring unsuitable programs of radio, television, movies or press entertainment, by contributing nothing to all the causes, persons, and institutions which breed and propagate the `sexual borers.’

[….]

Cleansed from the sexual poisons, our women and men will regain not only their vital, mental, and moral sanity, but also the full integrity of the total person, enjoying the grace of total love at its happiest, noblest and best. These total persons can hardly fail to develop and release a vast stream of creative forces for re­juvenating and recreating our culture and social life. The renaissance of our culture and social institutions in its turn will retroactively exert an ennobling and creative in­fluence upon the total personalities. Through this mutual invigoration of the personal, the cultural, and the social creative forces, the whole human universe will be im­proving and progressing from the initial kingdom of the human animal through the more and more ennobled kingdom of man, to the magnificent kingdom of the semi-divine Man-Creator.


Pitirim A. Sorokin, The American Sex Revolution (Boston, MA: Porter Sargent Publisher, 1956), 4-9, 14, 42-43, 96-98, 100-101, 101-102, 106-108, 110-114, 123-127, 132-133, 184-185, 185-186.

Almost 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. In this video, Thomas Sowell explains the cause of this rise in the black communities, which many attribute to the legacy of slavery

The Church and A.I. | Drs. Al Mohler & Kevin DeYoung

Dr. Al Mohler and Dr. Kevin DeYoung covered a variety of topics in this Q&A style presentation. A question was asked about artificial Intelligence (A.I.). The event took place at Crossroads Community Church in the Santa Clarita Valley:

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I am reding a book right now with some other men, and I thought this section speaking about Revelation smacked of A.I.

Revelation 13:13-15 (commentaries below)

It also performs great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth in front of people. It deceives those who live on the earth because of the signs that it is permitted to perform in the presence of the beast, telling those who live on the earth to make an image of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. It was permitted to give breath to the image of the beast, so that the image of the beast could both speak and cause whoever would not worship the image of the beast to be killed.

Satan and Miracles

Some have argued that Satan can also perform miracles (Matt. 7:22–23; 2 Thess. 2:9). But Satan, being a finite creature, is unable to perform truly supernatural acts as God does, for only a supernatural being (God) can perform supernatural acts. For example, Satan is unable to create life or resurrect someone from the dead. If Satan possesses the power to raise the dead, this would present a serious problem for using the resurrection of Jesus Christ to confirm his deity. Some have used Revelation 13 to support the contrary view; however, careful examination reveals the contrary.

In Revelation 13 the Antichrist is fatally wounded and then is miraculously healed of his wound (vv. 3, 12). Some believe that the Antichrist is killed and then is raised to life by Satan. Tim LaHaye presents this scenario in his endtimes fiction series.7 But the New International Version translates verse 3: “One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed.” The Greek reads, hos esphagmenen eis thanaton. New Testament scholar Leon Morris states that this may be translated “as though slain.”8 Therefore, we can conclude that the Beast is not really killed but is seriously wounded and near death. He is then healed from this wound but not resurrected from the dead.

Revelation 13:15 states that the Beast “was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that it could speak” [see more]. Some believe that Satan demonstrates the power to create life in this passage. First of all, whatever power the Beast has is given to him by God. So the source of this “breath” or “life” does not originate with Satan but is granted to him by God. Further, the word breath is a translation of the Greek word pneuma. Some translate this word as “life,” but the New International Version says “breath,” which is a more accurate translation. Pneuma is quite different from the Greek word for life, which is zoe. The image is not given life but breath, which could indicate that the image has the appearance of life. John Walvoord states, “The intent of the passage seems to be that the image has the appearance of life manifested in breathing, but actually it may be no more than a robot. The image is further described being able to speak, a faculty easily accomplished by mechanical means.”9 There are numerous scenarios that provide reasonable explanations for how the image appears to receive a lifelike appearance.

So neither passage provides any real support for the view that Satan can resurrect the dead. The whole of Scripture speaks against it, for everywhere God alone is presented as the Creator of “every living thing” (Gen. 1:21 NKJV). Indeed, God himself says, “I, even I, am He, and there is no God besides me; I kill and I make alive” (Deut. 32:39 NKJV; cf. Job 1:21). Even the magicians of Egypt acknowledge that only God could create life out of dust, for they say of Moses’s miracle, “This is the finger of God” (Exod. 8:19). To claim that Satan can do miracles on a par with God’s supernatural acts to create life or raise the dead is to destroy the whole apologetic foundation on which Christianity rests (1 Cor. 15:12–19). Satan is a master magician and a superscientist. He does many things that look like miracles, but the Bible calls them “lying wonders” or “false signs” (2 Thess. 2:9 NKJV). Only God has the ability to perform a truly supernatural act. Satan is a finite creature, and as such he cannot match the infinite power of God. Hence, Christ’s miracles are unique.

FOOTNOTES:

7 Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, The Indwelling (Wheaton: Tyndale, 2000), 364–68.

8 Leon Morris, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: Revelation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1987), 162.

9 John Walvoord, The Revelation of Jesus Christ (Chicago: Moody, 1966), 208.

Norman L. Geisler and Patrick Zukeran, The Apologetics of Jesus: A Caring Approach to Dealing with Doubters (Baker Publishing Group, 2009), 30-32.


Commentaries


15 Again, the oft-repeated “authorization” clause of Daniel 7 appears (cf. esp. Dan. 7:6b LXX: τῷ θηρίῳ καὶ γλῶσσα εδόθη αὐτῷ [“on the beast, and speech was given to him”]; cf. Dan. 7:4b). The second beast’s ability to “perform great signs” in v 14 and now its ability to give “breath” and power to speak to the first beast’s image recall various pseudo-magical tricks, including ventriloquism, false lightning, and other such phenomena, that were effectively used in temples of John’s time and even at the courts of Roman emperors and governors.264 The “signs” may also include demonic activity, since demons were thought to be behind idolatry (see on 9:20).265 “It was given to him to give breath” is a metaphorical way of affirming that the second beast was persuasive in demonstrating that the image of the first beast (e.g., of Caesar) represented the true deity, who stands behind the image and makes decrees. This could include magical tricks but is broader, referring to anything that convinces people that the image represents true deity (as in Wis. 14:18–21). Because of the transtemporal nature of ch. 13 seen so far, the “image” transcends narrow reference only to an idol of Caesar and includes any substitute for the truth of God in any age.

264 See Scherrer, “Signs and Wonders”; G. Kittel, TDNT II, 388; Ramsay, Letters, 98–103; Acts 13:6–12; 16:16; 19:19; pseudo-Clement, Recognitions 3.47; Homilies 2.32; Justin, Apology I 26; Irenaeus, Contra Haereses 1.23; Lucian, Alexander 24–33; De Syria Dea 10; Eusebius H.E. 2.13.1–4; Theophilus, Ad Autolycum 1.8; cf. the tradition about Simon Magus, who purportedly gave life to statues.

265 Cf. Scherrer, “Signs and Wonders.”

K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle, Cumbria: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 1999), 711.

In addition to requiring the construction and veneration of the image, the false prophet proceeds to give breath to the image of the beast (v. 15) so that it is even given the ability to speak, which to Ryrie may

indicate a supernatural miracle (performed by the power of Satan) which actually gives life to the image. Or, the word [for “breath”] may be translated “wind” and indicate some magical sleight of hand which the second beast performs that gives the appearance of real life to this image. The speech and movements of this image could easily be manufactured.

Walvoord takes a similar view:

    • The intent of the passage seems to be that the image has the appearance of life manifested in breathing, but actually it may be no more than a robot. The image is further described as being able to speak, a faculty easily accomplished by mechanical means.

These comments fail to note, however, that the very ease with which technology today can generate speech and robotic movement would seem to remove any occasion of marvel at the ability of the second beast to manufacture such phenomena.

In Gaebelein’s opinion, the image will probably be set up outside of Palestine, possibly in Rome. Most dispensationalists (e.g., Weidner), however, think that this image will be set up in the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, constituting it the “abomination of desolation” spoken of by both Daniel (9:27; 11:31; 12:11) and Jesus (Matt. 24:15).


Steve Gregg, Revelation, Four Views: A Parallel Commentary (Nashville, TN: T. Nelson Publishers, 1997), 299–301.

15a καὶ ἐδόθη αὐτῷ δοῦναι πνεῦμα τῇ εἰκόνι τοῦ θηρίου, “It was permitted to give life to the cult image of the beast.” This reflects the world of ancient magic in which the animation of images of the gods was an important means for securing oracles. The general Greek view was that images of the gods were not the actual gods themselves but only reminiscent of them (Cicero De nat. deor. 2.17; Dio Chrysostom Or. 12.60–61; Origen Contra Celsum 7.62). According to Heraclitus, people who approach lifeless things as gods act like a man who holds conversations with houses; they have no idea of the nature of gods or heroes (H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. [Zürich; Hildesheim: Weidmann, 1951] 1:151–52 [Herakleitos, frag. B5]). Plato reflects this view: “we set up statues as images, and we believe that when we worship these, lifeless though they be [ἀψύχους], the living gods [τοὺς ἐμψύχους] beyond feel great good-will towards us and gratitude” (Laws 11.931A; LCL tr.). While ceremonies were used to consecrate cult images (Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. Rom. 8.56.2; Minucius Felix Octavius 23; the term for dedication is often ἱδρύειν; see Dio Chrysostom Or. 12.84), there is no evidence that the ancient Greeks used magical rituals for the purpose of giving life to such images (E. Bevan, Holy Images: An Inquiry into Idolatry and Image-Worship in Ancient Paganism and in Christianity [London: Allen & Unwin, 1940] 32; Burkert, Greek Religion, 91). The popular view in the Hellenistic and Roman world, however, was that the gods inhabited their statues (Plutarch De Iside et Osiride 379C–D; MacMullen, Paganism, 59–60).

There were many reports in the ancient world of statues turning (Dio Cassius 41.61; 54.7), sweating (Cicero, De div. 1.43.98; Plutarch Cor. 38.1; Anton. 60), weeping (Augustine Civ. dei 3.11), or speaking (Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. Rom. 8.56.2); several similar stories are collected in Plutarch De pyth. orac. 397E–398B; see C. Clarc, Les théories relatives au Culte des Images chez les auteurs grecs du iime siècle aprés J.-C. (Paris: Fontemoing, 1915) 45–49, and O. Weinreich, Antike Heilungswunder (Giessen: Töpelmann, 1909) 146. This popular view has links with the doctrine of ἔμψυχα ἀγάλματα, “animate images,” which was held by some Neoplatonists (such as Porphyry and Iambichus) and which is reflected in some of the Hermetic literature. Magical rituals for achieving animation are preserved in the magical papyri (see PGM XII.14–95; Hopfner, Offenbarungszauber 2:210–18). Christians such as Minucius Felix were convinced that unclean spirits concealed themselves inside cult images and were able to give oracles (Octavius 27). Much earlier, Babylonians had rituals intended to give life to statues of the gods (A. L. Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia [Chicago: University of Chicago, 1964] 186). In ancient Egypt, beginning at an even earlier period, statues of the gods were vitalized through a ceremony of “opening the mouth” (Morenz, Egyptian Religion, 155–56; E. Otto, Das altägyptische Mundöffnungsritual [Wiesbaden, 1960]). Magical animation rituals were also performed on mummies (E. A. W. Budge, Egyptian Magic [New York: Dover, 1971] 201–3). The magical rituals for animating images of the gods in Egypt probably influenced that special branch of magic called theurgy, connected with Julian the Theurgist (the putative author of the Chaldean Oracles; see R. Majercik, The Chaldean Oracles: Text, Translation, and Commentary [Leiden: Brill, 1989] 1–5).

Theurgists developed a special complex of rituals called τελεστική (also called ἡ θεουργικὴ τέχνη by Iamblichus De myst. 5.23), which was primarily concerned with the consecration and animation of statues in order to receive oracles from them (Proclus In Tim. 3.6.13; Asclepius 3.37; see H. Lewy, Chaldaean Oracles and Theurgy [Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1978] 495–96; E. R. Dodds, “Theurgy,” Appendix II in The Greeks and the Irrational [Berkeley: University of California, 1951] 291–95). τελεστική apparently involved placing a selection of σύμβολα (various materia magica such as stones, herbs, animals, and scents) within the cavity of a statue for the purpose of establishing a sympathetic relationship with the god (Iamblichus De myst. 5.23; Asclepius 3.38; Chaldaean Oracles frag. 224). Images of the gods could thus be animated by placing those material elements that had a “sympathetic” connection with the deity inside the image, and with the prompting of a consecration ritual, the divinity could be persuaded to appear and answer oracular inquiries put to him or her by the theurgist (see Majercik, Chaldean Oracles, 27). This procedure is reflected in the Hermetic treatise Asclepius 3.38 (tr. W. Scott, Hermetica 1:361):

And these gods who are called “terrestrial,” Trismegistus, by what means are they induced to take up their abode among us? They are induced, Asclepius, by means of herbs and stones and scents which have in them something divine.

The doctrine of ἔμψυχα ἀγάλματα is also found in Asclepius 3.23B, “But the gods whose shapes are fashioned by mankind are made of both substances, that is, of the divine substance, which is purer and far nobler, and the substance which is lower than man, namely, the material of which they are wrought” (tr. W. Scott, Hermetica 1:339). When Asclepius doubts that Trismegistus is referring to statues, the god replies (3.24a; W. Scott, Hermetica 1:339–41):

I mean statues, but statues living and conscious, filled with the breath of life [statuas animatas sensu et spiritu plenas], and doing many mighty works; statues which have foreknowledge, and predict future events by the drawing of lots, and by prophetic inspiration, and by dreams and in many other ways; statues which inflict diseases and heal them, dispensing sorrow and joy according to men’s deserts.

The motif of statues coming to life occurs in Greek mythology; Ovid, for example, tells the story of Pygmalion, whose love turned an ivory statue named Galatea into a living woman (Metamorphoses 10.243–97).

15b ἵνα καὶ λαλήσῃ ἡ εἰκὼν τοῦ θηρίου, “that the cult image of the beast might speak.” For the ancients, a statue that speaks is a statue that gives oracles. The Cynic philosopher Oenomaeus of Gadara (fl. a.d. 120), skeptical of oracles, wrote a lost work entitled Γοήτων φώρα, “On the Detection of Charlatans,” preserved in fragmentary quotations in Eusebius, who summarizes his views (Praep. evang. 5.21.213c; Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel, tr. E. H. Gifford [Oxford: Clarendon, 1903]):

For he [Oenomaus] will not admit that the oracles which are admired among all the Greeks proceed from a daemon, much less from a god, but says that they are frauds and tricks of human imposters, cunningly contrived to deceive the multitude.

Alexander of Abonuteichos was presented by Lucian (hardly an objective reporter) as a charlatan who constructed a serpentine image representing Glaucon-Asklepios, complete with a movable mouth and concealed speaking tubes for giving oracles (Alex. 12–26). Similarly, Hippolytus describes a “talking skull” rigged up by combining a human skull with a windpipe of a crane to function as a speaking tube (Ref. 4.41). Other reports also mention talking statues (Suetonius Gaius 57.1; Ps.-Lucian De Syria Dea 10). According to Athenagoras (Legatio 26.3–4), statues of Nerullinus in Tralles and Peregrinus Proteus at Parium reportedly gave oracles (though whether such oracles were based on the interpretation of the “behavior” of the statues, such as movement, sweating, etc., or were thought to be communicated in human language is not mentioned; the former is more probable than the latter); see Nilsson, GGR 2:525. There is no evidence that imperial cult images were believed to actually give oracles, however. A close parallel to Rev 13:15 is found in the Oracle of Hystaspes (Lactantius Div. Inst. 7.17.5; tr. McDonald, Lactantius, 518): “He [a king from Syria] will order fire to descend from heaven, and the sun to stand still in its course and a statue to speak [imaginem loqui].” Plutarch reports that when a certain statue was set up in a temple, it spoke twice (Coriolanus 37.3). Plutarch, however, ever the rationalist, thought that articular speech from a lifeless object was impossible (Coriolanus 38.2). The third wonder, making a statue speak, was part of the repertoire of ancient magicians.

Religious fraud was not unknown in the ancient world. Scherrer (JBL 103 [1984] 601–10) has argued that “special effects equipment” were used to produce speaking and moving statues as well as simulated thunder and lightning in the imperial cult. Athenaeus reports a moving image (Deipn. 5.198F). Simon Magus reportedly tells Peter statuas moveri feci, animavi exanima, “I made statues move; I gave breath to inanimate objects” (Ps.-Clem. Recog. 3.47.2; cf. Ps.-Clem. Hom. 2.32). Theophilus Ad Autolycum 1.8, speaking to pagans, observes “you believe that statues [ἀγάλματα] made by men are gods and work miracles.” According to Philostratus, Vita Apoll. 1.27, a satrap in charge of the gates of Babylon required that everyone who entered the city first worship a golden image (χρυσῆν εἰκόνα) of the king, though this requirement was not made of emissaries from the Roman emperor, and Apollonius himself also refused to perform this ritual (1.28).

15c καὶ ποιήσῃ ὅσοι ἐὰν μὴ προσκυνήσωσιν τῇ εἰκόνι τοῦ θηρίου ἀποκτανθῶσιν, “and cause whoever did not worship the cult image of the beast to be executed.” The subject of the aorist subjunctive ποιήσῃ, “he might cause,” is ambiguous. Since it is parallel to λαλήσῃ, “he might speak,” in v 15b, the subject of which is ἡ εἰκών, “the cult statue,” it is logical to understand ἡ εἰκών as the subject of ποιήσῃ so that it is the speaking statue who causes those who refuse it worship to be executed. It is possible, however, that the logical subject of ποιήσῃ is the second beast, acting on behalf of the first beast, who orders the executions. The execution of those who resist appears to be a doublet of v 7, in which it is said that the first beast made war on the saints and conquered them. Philo claims that the emperor Gaius organized “a great and truceless war” against the Jews for refusing to worship him (Leg. 119), though the historicity of this claim is doubtful (Bilde, ST 32 [1978] 72–73). Here the image of the beast is apparently given exclusive worship, though this is not characteristic of either Greek or Roman religious protocol.

According to some scholars, allegiance to Rome meant the worship of Caesar (Syme, Tacitus 2:469). Yet the primary issue reflected in the sources is not simply sacrificing to the emperor (strictly speaking the living emperor was not a divus, “god,” until he was officially enrolled with the gods after his death by an act of the Senate, though two emperors, Gaius and Domitian, apparently claimed to be gods during their lifetime; see Comment on 4:11) but sacrificing to the gods (Pliny Ep. 10.97.1; Acts Carpus [Greek Rec.] 4; Mart. Fruct. 2.2; Mart. Justin 5.8). Yet toward the end of the second century a.d. Tertullian observed that the twin charges against Christians were that they did not worship the gods and they did not sacrifice on behalf of the emperors (pro imperatoribus; Apol. 10.1). The problem is understanding what is involved in the term προσκυνεῖν, “worship.” Did this involve compulsory sacrificing to the emperor along with the other gods? In Pliny Ep. 10.96.5 (LCL tr.), the sincerity of apostate Christians was tested only by requiring that they sacrifice to the gods:

Among these [i.e., those denounced as Christians] I considered that I should dismiss any who denied that they were or ever had been Christians when they had repeated after me a formula of invocation to the gods and had made offerings of wine and incense to your statue (which I had ordered to be brought into court for this purpose along with the images of the gods), and furthermore had reviled the name of Christ: none of which things, I understand, any genuine Christian can be induced to do.

The execution of Christians or Jews in connection with their rejection of the eschatological antagonist is reflected in Apoc. Pet. 2, where it is said that when the deceiver (who is not the Christ) is rejected, he will kill many with the sword.


David E. Aune, Revelation 6–16, vol. 52B, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1998), 762–765.

Revelation 13:15

It was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast (13:15): Some Bible expositors believe the antichrist’s image will breathe and speak mechanically, like some robots today. Others say that some kind of hologram may be employed. Satan certainly has great intelligence and could likely accomplish this sort of thing. Still others see something more supernatural going on here. J. Hampton Keathley offers this explanation:

We are told that the false prophet is able to give breath to the image. This gives it the appearance of life. However, it isn’t real life but only breath. Since breath or breathing is one of the signs of life, men think the image lives, but John is careful not to say that he gives life to the image. Only God can do that. It is something miraculous, but also deceptive and false… Then we are told the image of the beast, through this imparted breath, speaks. This is to be a further confirmation of the miraculous nature of the beast’s image. Some might see this as the result of some product of our modern electronic robot-type of technology. But such would hardly convince people of anything spectacular. Evidently it will go far beyond that.1

Christian scholars may differ on the specifics, but the apparent animation of the image sets it apart from typical Old Testament idols. “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see” (Psalm 135:15-16). “Woe to him who says to a wooden thing, Awake; to a silent stone, Arise! Can this teach? Behold, it is overlaid with gold and silver, and there is no breath at all in it” (Habakkuk 2:19).

That the image of the beast might even speak and cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be slain (13:15): The ultimate goal of the false prophet’s supernatural acts is to induce people around the world to worship the antichrist. Because the antichrist puts himself in the place of Christ, the antichrist seeks worship, just as Jesus was worshiped many times during His three-year ministry on earth (Matthew 2:11; 28:9,17; John 9:38; 20:28).

Exodus 34:14 instructs us, “You shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” When the antichrist demands worship, he places himself in the position of deity. Those who refuse to worship him are slain.

[1]  J. Hampton Keathley III, “The Beast and the False Prophet (Rev. 13:1- 18),” Bible.org


Ron Rhodes, 40 Days Through Revelation: Uncovering the Mystery of the End Times (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2013), 162-163.