History and current events are littered with the déjà vus of men and women from high station to low who abused the power they were given or that they took upon themselves—abuses perpetually manifest from within the microcosms of family and local institutions to the macrocosms of nations, empires, and global organizations.
The proofs are everywhere, but somehow most of us keep pretending—hoping—that we can safely trust in the arm of flesh despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and despite all God's laments1 (not to mention the laments of His prophets2) about the nature of mankind. The Savior Himself warned:
Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues;3Why do we persist in thinking—imagining—that those who pursue power, wealth, or fame can be trusted in any degree? We seem to have so many things inverted, but C.S. Lewis puts it upright.
I am a [small d] democrat[4] because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are [small d] democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they are not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a henroost, much less a nation. Nor do most people— all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumours. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows.5If we imagine we are personally immune from what “fallen nature” does with power, then we are tragically unprepared for what is coming—our own complicity in the “Lucifer Effect”6 that is enveloping the world because we seeing will not see, and hearing will not hear what our fallen nature has done, is doing, and will do when responding to situational or systemic social forces.
And where does paranoid power often flex its muscle in an attempt to puff, prove, and preserve itself?—as always, against the most weak and vulnerable—especially women, teenagers, and children. Weinstein and Epstein are only the merest tip of an immense iceberg that thousands upon thousands (high and low, Right and Left) are desperate to keep hidden in an attempt to retain their power, their wealth, their fame, their “respectability,” their jobs. Yes, many thousands have been duped into criminal behaviors in honey-pot and yacht ops, and subsequently blackmailed for their silence and cooperation in control and power agendas. Thus corrupt power continues to corrupt everything it touches and we continue to pretend that mankind is “so wise and good.”
How long, with all the headlines and witnesses of recent decades, before we finally abandon the delusion that there is “No Such Thing As This”7 in our advanced day and age?
How long will we continue to allow government and court records to be sealed to conceal horrific crimes and frauds under color of National Security? or for the so-called preservation of “intelligence” assets? How long must innocent or duped persons be targeted, maligned, prosecuted, or “suicided” to take the heat off the power-mongers who orchestrate it all?
How long, O God, how long?8
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1. https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2014/01/gods-lament.html
2. Old Testament | Psalms 40:4 ~ Blessed is that man that maketh the LORD his trust, and respecteth not the proud, nor such as turn aside to lies.
Old Testament | Psalms 118:8–9 ~ It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in princes.
Old Testament | Psalms 146:3 ~ Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.
Old Testament | Jeremiah 17:5 ~ Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.
New Testament | Colossians 2:8 ~ Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
Book of Mormon | 2 Nephi 4:34 ~ ... I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh; for I know that cursed is he that putteth his trust in the arm of flesh. Yea, cursed is he that putteth his trust in man or maketh flesh his arm.
Book of Mormon | 2 Nephi 28:31 ~ Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, or maketh flesh his arm, or shall hearken unto the precepts of men, save their precepts shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost.
Doctrine and Covenants | Section 1:19 ~ The weak things of the world shall come forth and break down the mighty and strong ones, that man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh—
Book of Mormon | Mosiah 23:13 ~ I desire that ye should stand fast in this liberty wherewith ye have been made free, and that ye trust no man to be a king over you.
Old Testament | 1 Samuel 8:9-18 ~ ...howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them. And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king. And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day. (Bold emphasis added. See also Book of Mormon | Mosiah 29:13-27 re the manner of kings.)
Or open the scriptures at random to see example after example of the “nature of man”; a good one being Old Testament | Isaiah 59; another Book of Mormon | Helaman 6:16-40.
3. New Testament | Matthew 10:16-17. (Bold emphasis added.) The subsequent text is even more dire: Matthew 10:18-28 ~ And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household? Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known. What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
4. Definition of democrat, noun, dem·o·crat | \ de-mə-ˌkrat \ 1 a: an adherent of democracy (from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/democrat )
5. Lewis, C. S.. The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings (p. 227). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition as quoted from ‘Equality’, Present Concerns (Bold emphasis added.)
Consider also:
[Death {by the will and timing of God}] is a safety-device because, once Man has fallen, natural immortality would be the one utterly hopeless destiny for him. Aided to the surrender that he must make by no external necessity of Death, free (if you call it freedom) to rivet faster and faster about himself through unending centuries the chains of his own pride and lust and of the nightmare civilisations which these build up in ever-increasing power and complication, he would progress from being merely a fallen man to being a fiend, possibly beyond all modes of redemption. Miracles, ch. 14 from Lewis, C. S.. The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings (pp. 235-236). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. (Bold emphasis added.)
6. https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2019/06/the-spirit-of-power.html
7. https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2016/09/no-such-thing-as-this.html (Notice the attempt to conceal information by deleting? censoring? concealing? witness and testimony from YouTube. Searching with keywords may discover the witness posted elsewhere in the web.)
8. My Daily Prayer: https://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.com/2017/12/my-daily-prayer.html
