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This New Year's Day, January 1, 1987, our message will be delivered by our son, Sean Christopher Prophet.
Good afternoon and happy New Year.
Our subject today is "Apathy in America."
Apathy is tantamount to suicide. And we've heard from beloved Jesus that "Communism is organized suicide."1 So we can conclude that apathy is the state of consciousness that breeds and allows Communism to exist.
Apathy in America today and into the 1990s is by nature a willing espousal of the values of the beast of socialism. The American people are willfully apathetic and do not want to be told the truth. They will resist that truth when it is given to them in any form because that truth would force them to change their outlook and their attitudes in such a way that they would rather die than change.
The false prophets in the established churches and in the media are responsible in large part for this entrenched apathy. This state of consciousness will bring World Communism into this country and/or an annihilating Soviet first strike, as Saint Germain has said.2
In any event, it will mean an end to freedom and opportunity for spiritual and technological evolution. We've heard from many of the Ascended Masters on this subject, and they have given us hope. However, the only thing that can change the world situation and reverse or abate this prophecy is the complete and total reeducation of the people on a planetwide scale and the giving of the violet flame and "Archangel Michael's Rosary for Armageddon" by Americans and the people of the earth.
I'd like to examine now the construction of the word apathy and several synonyms. Apathy, as defined by Webster's dictionary, is a "lack of feeling or emotion," or "impassiveness." The second definition is a "lack of interest or concern," or "indifference."
The construction of the word is a- + pathos - a, of course, meaning "without"; and pathos is from the Greek, "suffering, experience," or "emotion." It means "an element in experience or in artistic representation evoking pity or compassion," also "an emotion of sympathetic pity."
And so we observe that the people of America are without the capacity to feel compassion - except in a very superficial way - for those around the world who are suffering; and they are not prepared to challenge the cause of that suffering in any direct way that is effective to end that suffering. That is the real meaning of the word apathy. It's when people do not have the capacity to confront the cause of suffering and to defeat it.
From "apathy" to "indifference" we zero in on the state of being "apathetic" or "indifferent":
Indifferent is defined as "neither good nor bad."
Definition 1: "marked by impartiality," or "unbiased."
2: "that does not matter one way or the other; that has nothing that calls for sanction or condemnation in either observance or neglect: of no importance or value one way or the other."
3: "marked by no special liking for or dislike of something; marked by a lack of interest in or concern about something," and again "apathetic."
4: "being neither excessive nor defective."
5: "being neither good nor bad: mediocre" and "being neither right nor wrong."
6: "characterized by lack of active quality: neutral."
7: "capable of development in more than one direction; especially: not yet embryologically determined."
We also have the synonym impassive:
1: "unsusceptible to pain; unsusceptible to physical feeling: insensible; unsusceptible to or destitute of emotion: apathetic."
2: "giving no sign of feeling or emotion: expressionless."
3: "not moving in any way: motionless."
And we are given again some synonyms for the word impassive - one being apathetic, with this defined as "a puzzling or deplorable indifference or inertness"; and "stolid," which "implies an habitual absence of interest, responsiveness, or curiosity concerning anything outside of an accustomed routine."
So we've come full circle and that's the end of our definitions. I will now go through on a point-by-point basis and talk about each one.
First we have indifferent - "neither good nor bad." We've seen the popularization in society today, even by the established churches, of the notion that "good" and "evil" are relative terms and the espousing of situation ethics. It's also been in the schools - the teaching of secular humanism. And that has evolved as a philosophy and a way of life for many people in this country. It is an extremely dangerous ideology.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has had considerable contact with the ideology of Communism, which is not really any different from secular humanism. He spent a good deal of his life in the Soviet Union. He was born there. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 while still in the Soviet Union, and for his writings and works he was exiled therefrom. Prior to his exile, he spent eight years in labor camps where he garnered many of the experiences that have made him such a dynamic speaker and such a freedom fighter.
From this he wrote The Gulag Archipelago in three volumes and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I believe he had a job as a teacher. He was living in a small home and he was constantly bothered by the Soviet secret police, so he hid his writings. The entire book of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was written on six sheets of paper! This is the extent to which individuals in the Soviet Union are forced to go to get their message to the West.
I'll read to you now from one of Solzhenitsyn's speeches - one he made before the AFL-CIO in 1975, published in The Voice of Freedom. He has written other things since then, but I believe this to be extremely important.
Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality. It scoffs at any consideration of "good" and "evil" as indisputable categories. Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter. Depending upon circumstances and the political situation, any act, including murder, even the killing of thousands, could be good or could be bad.
It all depends upon class ideology. And who defines class ideology? The whole class cannot get together to pass judgment. A handful of people determine what is good and what is bad. But I must say that in this very respect Communism has been most successful. It has infected the whole world with the belief in the relativity of good and evil.
Many people besides the Communists are carried away by this idea today. Among enlightened people it is considered rather awkward to use seriously such words as "good" and "evil." Communism has managed to instill in all of us that these concepts are old-fashioned concepts and laughable. But if we are to be deprived of the concepts of good and evil, what will be left? Nothing but the manipulation of one another. We will decline to the status of animals.3
Many parts of the world are well on their way.
President Reagan gave a speech in 1983 in which he called the Soviet Union an "evil empire."4 He was reviled for this and many in the media gave an outcry, saying that he was hindering the cause of world peace and that he was a warmonger. What else should he have called it when the facts are so clear? When is a spade not a spade?
We come to Definition 1 of indifferent - and that is "marked by impartiality," or "unbiased." I'd like to talk about the media in this case and their treatment of President Reagan and the entire American way of life.
The media prides itself on being unbiased. And for a free and independent media to be unbiased when the facts about Communism are as clear-cut as they are is at least hypocritical if not an act of treason. For journalists to be "unbiased" about two political systems, it stands to reason that both systems should meet the standards of human dignity.
One cannot be unbiased when faced with the animalistic nature of the Soviet system. To treat the Soviet Union as an equal to the United States of America is, in fact, bias of the worst kind. Any decent human being would be biased against Adolf Hitler, so why not against the perpetrators of a far more serious and long-term holocaust?
By neglecting to provide the American viewer with the full scope of Soviet activities - while scrutinizing every domestic issue - the media, which has been given a direct line into American living rooms, imparts a negative bias towards our government and a distrust of our leaders. The excuse which has sometimes been given about the lack of coverage of the Soviet Union and Communist-backed insurgencies is that they control physical access to a given country, usually banning the media.
Now, Americans have an extreme distaste for those who withhold information or hide the truth. Witness what is going on right now in Washington. We have two former members of the government - John Poindexter and Oliver North - who have, within their constitutional rights, taken the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify. They are being reviled. And many in the media are calling this an act of treason.
So why do we not apply the same standards to the Soviet dictators?
The Soviets withheld information about Chernobyl for three days. This is a matter of global consequence. It will cost thousands of lives in Western Europe because people were not evacuated due to the fact that they did not have the information.
A few months after Chernobyl there was a conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency and many scientists went to get the Soviet view of what happened at Chernobyl. It seems that most scientists came away satisfied and were even praising the Soviets for their new openness. Basically, the West has already forgiven them for their three-day silence, and Chernobyl is a part of history.
We should interview the Soviets and let them speak about their environmental pollution and their "wars of national liberation" and let the American people decide. We have the right to have investigative reporters bringing us continual updates on Soviet activities worldwide, much as we are given updates on our own government's doings.
Soviet state spokesmen like Vladimir Posner and Georgi Arbatov, who speak regularly on American television posing as "objective" spokesmen or scholars, have no objective viewpoint and nothing new to say. They are representatives of the Politburo and the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee and are simply spouting that line.
We need to interview the members of the Communist Party Central Committee, the real decision makers, and put them on the spot. If they have nothing to hide, let them withstand the direct scrutiny of Ted Koppel or other probing reporters. And let them be asked real questions and be confronted with the evidence and be called to accounting by informed reporters who can challenge their lies with facts! [14-sec. applause]
If they will not grant interviews, let us show it, "60 Minutes" style, with the door slamming in the camera lens. If they threaten our networks or our network correspondents or throw the networks out of the country, let us say so on the evening news so that the American people may see the manipulation and blackmail that occurs behind the scenes.
Finally, let us insist on free access to the Soviet people by the press, without the threat of imprisonment or loss of status in society for granting frank interviews with Western reporters. Let us have watchdog groups that constantly report to the American people and track Soviet citizens who are brave enough to be interviewed. If they are harassed by their government, let there be a worldwide outcry against this barbaric society that does not allow its citizens the freedom to speak their minds!
We must get over the idea that bias is a dirty word. Webster defines bias as simply "an inclination of temperament or outlook." As representatives of the American people, the journalists are our eyes and ears and thus have a duty to be biased in favor of our interests and the protection of our way of life.
These journalists are not elected but they can influence policy in a very real way. Therefore, their views should reflect a cross section of the views of the electorate. However, they are also in the position before the fact of shaping those views. Thus, by the abuse of the power of the press in presenting a one-sided view, their view, a vicious cycle has developed.
Word choice has become a way that the media has imparted bias without changing the empirical content of a story. The very word anti-Communist has been poisoned by the media. Accusations of McCarthyism have surfaced whenever anyone mentions Communism - to the point where no journalist dare use the term in its true sense for fear that he will end his career.
I will read again from Solzhenitsyn:
Whoever says "anti-Communism" is saying, in effect, anti-anti-humanity. A poor construction. So we should say: that which is against Communism is for humanity. Not to accept, to reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being. It isn't being a member of a party. It's a protest of our souls against those who tell us to forget the concepts of good and evil.5
Many times in frank discussion about the Soviet system, when you confront people with a heinous act or crime that the Soviet government has perpetrated they will say, "Sure, there's not a Russian behind every tree." But there might be! We might, in fact, be putting ourselves in mortal danger by not thinking that there's a Russian behind every tree.
I've also been called a "knee-jerk anti-Communist." Well, what does that mean?
Many times the media will substitute the word Marxist or leftist for the term Communist, such as with the government of Nicaragua or other Soviet client states. They will not call them Communists. They also use the term Russian interchangeably with the word Soviet. As Solzhenitsyn has said, this is a dangerous practice.
This reading is from a book by Solzhenitsyn, The Mortal Danger: How Misconceptions about Russia Imperil America. This section is titled "Russia and the U.S.S.R.":
To begin with, there is the careless and inaccurate use of the words "Russia" and "Russian" in place of "U.S.S.R." and "Soviet." (There is even a persistent emotional bias against the former: "Russian tanks have entered Prague," "Russian imperialism," "Never trust the Russians," as against "Soviet achievements in space" and "the triumphs of the Soviet ballet.") Yet it ought to be clear that these concepts are not only opposites, but are inimical. "Russia" is to the Soviet Union as a man is to the disease afflicting him. We do not, after all, confuse a man with his illness; we do not refer to him by the name of that illness or curse him for it.
After 1917, the state as a functioning whole - the country with its government, policies, and armed forces - can no longer be referred to as Russia. It is inappropriate to apply the word "Russian" to the present authorities in the U.S.S.R., to its army, or to its future military successes and regimes of occupation throughout the world, even though the official language in each case might be Russian. (This is equally true of both China and Vietnam, only in their case no equivalent of the word "Soviet" is available.)
A certain American diplomat recently exclaimed: "Let Brezhnev's Russian heart be run by an American pacemaker!" Quite wrong! He should have said "Soviet heart." Nationality is determined not by one's origins alone, but also by the direction of one's loyalties and affections. A Brezhnev who has connived at the ruin of his own people in the interests of foreign adventures has no Russian heart. All that his ilk have done - to destroy the national way of life and to pollute nature, to desecrate national shrines and monuments, and to keep the people in hunger and poverty for the last sixty years - shows that the Communist leaders are alien to the people and indifferent to its suffering.
(This is equally true of the ferocious Khmer Rouge, the Polish functionary who may have been reared by a Catholic mother, the young Communist activist, taskmaster over a group of starving coolies, or the stolid Georges Marchais with his Kremlin-like exterior; each has turned his back on his own nationality and has embraced inhumanity.)
For present-day purposes the word "Russia" can serve only to designate an oppressed people which is denied the possibility of acting as one entity, or to denote its suppressed national consciousness, religion, and culture. Or else it can point to a future nation liberated from Communism.
There was no such confusion in the 1920s when progressive Western opinion exulted over Bolshevism: the object of its enthusiasm was then named "Soviet" outright. During the tragic years of the Second World War, the concepts "Russian" and "Soviet" seem to have merged in the eyes of the world (a cruel error, which is discussed below). And with the coming of the cold war, the animosities generated were then directed principally toward the word "Russian." The effects are being felt to this day; in fact, new and bitter accusations have in recent years been leveled against all things "Russian."6
This is a real tragedy for the Russian people - that they should be associated with this Soviet Communist dictatorship which keeps them in bondage and gives them a bad name.
Definition 2 of indifferent: "that does not matter one way or the other; that has nothing that calls for sanction or condemnation in either observance or neglect: of no importance or value one way or the other."
How many times have we heard that the Soviet Union and the United States are both corrupt, both are likely to cheat on arms control, and both abuse human rights equally in the Third World? It's a very common liberal argument.
This is the perfect outpicturing of Definition 2a of indifferent: "that does not matter one way or the other." In fact, the indifference has tipped the scales in favor of the Soviets. Our press and media are harder on our own government than they are on the Soviets, fostering the illusion of equality.
We'll take the example of Amnesty International, a human rights group that is dedicated to the exposure and condemnation of human rights violations wherever they occur (according to them). Amnesty International is likely to report approximately the same volume on Eastern and Western human rights abuses in a given time period. Though it would seem that this is fair, it is not, because the two sides are not equal in human rights abuses by any stretch of the imagination. This dulls the sensitivity of the West to reports of Soviet human rights abuses. "We do the same thing," they say.
Indifference is then established. Equality is established. The concept of a "good nation" versus the "evil empire" seems ludicrous. Thus Amnesty International, while posing as a human rights group, serves the cause of Communism. It would be better that they said nothing.
If you ever need evidence of Sino-Soviet crimes, you need look no farther than the Guinness Book of World Records. Under the section of crime, World Communism is center stage.
The mass murder of the Chinese people on their own soil which took place in Communist China under Mao Tse-tung is the worst crime in history, with estimates varying between 32.25 to 61.7 million from 1949 to 1971.7
Second in line in Guinness is the Soviet Union with its great purge of 1936-38 under Stalin, listing 8-10 million victims. The Ukrainian famine and purges (also under Stalin) claimed an additional 10-15 million.
These estimates are on the low side. When you include all Communist murders, including the more recent genocides in Cambodia and Afghanistan, you see that the Soviets and other Communists have murdered 190 million people since 1917.8 190 million! This is more than the entire pre-World War II population of the United States of America! These executions have been mostly for political crimes and some for no crime at all, as in the Ukrainian famine caused by Stalin.
What sort of a system is this, to do such a thing? We'll ask Solzhenitsyn.
The system was installed by armed uprising.
It dispersed the Constituent Assembly.
It capitulated to Germany - the common enemy.
It introduced execution without trial.
It plundered the villagers to such an unbelievable extent that the peasants revolted, and when this happened it crushed the peasants in the bloodiest possible way.
It reduced twenty provinces of our country to a condition of famine. ...
A system that, in the twentieth century, was the first to introduce the use of hostages, that is to say, not to seize the person whom they were seeking, but rather a member of his family or someone at random, and shoot that person.
This system of hostages and persecution of the family exists to this day. It is still the most powerful weapon of persecution, because the bravest person, who is not afraid for himself, still shivers at the threat to his family.
It is a system which was the first - long before Hitler - to employ false registration, that is, to say: "Such and such people have to come in to register." People would comply and then they were taken away to be annihilated.
We didn't have gas chambers in those days. We used barges. A hundred or a thousand persons were put into a barge and then it was sunk.
It was a system which deceived the workers in all of its decrees - the decree on land, the decree on peace, the decree on factories, the decree on freedom of the press.
It was a system which exterminated all additional parties, and let me make it clear to you that it not only disbanded the party itself, but destroyed its members. All members of every other party were exterminated. It was a system which carried out genocide of the peasantry; 15 million peasants were sent off to extermination.
It was a system which introduced serfdom, the so-called "passport system."
It was a system which, in time of peace, artificially created a famine, causing 6 million persons to die in the Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. They died on the very edge of Europe. And Europe didn't even notice it. The world didn't even notice it - 6 million persons!9
If any of you should run into someone who compares Communism to other authoritarian regimes in other parts of history that have been supposedly "just as bad," here's the evidence. It is documented that in Russia during the eighty years prior to the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, during which time there was sedition, assassination attempts and the actual assassination of a tsar (when the country was in a state of turmoil due to political, social, and economic changes), an average of seventeen persons per year were executed. During the Spanish Inquisition at the height of its terror, perhaps ten persons per month were executed.
Immediately following the Bolshevik Revolution, the Cheka, which was the predecessor to the modern KGB, was murdering a thousand a month without trial. Stalin, not to be outdone, killed forty thousand per month, not counting the artificial famines. Forty thousand per month executed without trial or hope!
Now, according to Guinness, the great Nazi holocaust which we hear so much about comes in a distant third with "only" 5.8 million victims. But just because the dead of Hitler's war machine scored third is no reason we should ignore them; nevertheless, to spotlight these atrocities while avoiding the record of World Communism is to invite this hellish nightmare to repeat itself. Our fixation with the holocaust sends the message to the Communists that their murders, continuing to the present, must be acceptable because we do not speak of them.
Witness: the people of Tibet have lost 1.2 million lives, one-sixth of their population - from starvation, execution, torture, prison and forced labor conditions, battles and uprisings, and suicide - under Chinese rule since 1950. Now even unborn Tibetans are being exterminated by way of aggressively pursued forced sterilization and forced abortion, including full-term babies murdered at birth.10
Yet the holocaust is to this hour held up as the pinnacle of Evil, with endless television specials, books and documentaries. We even have Elie Wiesel, who has just won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the holocaust and on world peace. He doesn't mention a thing about the Communist holocausts - only about nuclear disarmament. While horrible beyond description and painful to the present, the Nazi holocaust killed only 3 percent of the number killed by World Communism.
Where are the television shows on World Communism? Who will speak out against this terror? It is easy to decry Hitler. He is dead, he is no threat. The Soviets are alive and marching in every corner of the globe and no voice speaks out against them, save the few. Only when Evil is denounced as Evil will it come to an end. Failure to denounce Evil is indifference in its most pernicious form.
In Definition 2b of indifferent, Webster states that indifference finds "nothing that calls for sanction or condemnation in either observance or neglect": the state of indifference finds "no importance or value one way or the other."
Is there nothing in the Soviet regime that calls for sanction or condemnation?
What about South Africa, whose crackdown on dissent has resulted in worldwide sanctions and condemnation, even though the crackdown is as a result of a ruthless, "necklacing," Soviet-backed Communist insurgency? South Africa was an ally of ours. They have many strategic minerals which are vital to us in our war against the Communists. Yet we sanction them and we continue to trade and give money to the Soviets.
Did you know that the "evil" South Africans feed and give medical care to sixty-three thousand black Mozambican refugees who have fled their black-ruled Communist "paradise""? Why does Mozambique, a Soviet client, have to put land mines on its borders to keep its population from escaping to "tyranny" in South Africa?
But how many people in America even know where Mozambique is? When my sister told her USC roommate she was writing a letter to the editor about Mozambique, her roommate said, "Who is she?"
Our failure to address international injustice across the board is national indifference on a grand scale - by the only nation that has the power to do something about it.
Definition 3: "marked by no special liking for or dislike of something; marked by a lack of interest in or concern about something: apathetic."
A poll recently taken by Newsweek magazine revealed that when asked to rate one's feelings toward a particular country on a scale of one to ten, Americans rated the Soviet Union a two. This would seem to signify that our nation dislikes the Soviets. However, they are unwilling to back up their inherent dislike for the Soviets with any action. What most Americans want is peace, disarmament, and a nuclear freeze.
Americans are so afraid of war - that war might break their little bubble - that their fear neutralizes their sense of loyalty and duty. But war is far less dangerous than totalitarianism. All the wars in this century have taken perhaps 60 million people, whereas the Communists have killed 190 million people. Which would you rather have: war or totalitarianism? At least with war you have a fighting chance to survive as a free people!
It is clear that most Americans do not like the Soviets but from their actions it would appear that they do not dislike them either. This is indifference - "marked by no special liking for or dislike of something." America continues to supply the Soviets with grain, credit, and technology. This is nothing new. We have built the Soviet Union since its pre-revolutionary days and continue to do so. And we have built ourselves a formidable enemy.
World Communism is not the crime of the century: the crime of the century is the apathy of the Americans! We are the ones who could have prevented and can still prevent World Communist genocide perpetrated by an evil ideology and an evil system which fulfills Jesus' prophecy for our time: "The brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death."[Mark 13:12]
I will read again from Solzhenitsyn, The Voice of Freedom:
We are slaves there from birth. We are born slaves. I'm not young anymore, and I myself was born a slave; this is even more true for those who are younger. We are slaves, but we are striving for freedom. You, however, were born free. If so, then why do you help our slave owners?
In my last address I only requested one thing and I make the same request now: when they bury us in the ground alive - ... as you know, this is a very unpleasant sensation: your mouth gets filled with earth while you're still alive - please do not send them shovels. Please do not send them the most modern earth-moving equipment.
By a peculiar coincidence the very day when I was giving my address in Washington, Mikhail Suslov was talking with your senators in the Kremlin. And he said, "In fact, the significance of our trade is more political than economic. We can get along without your trade."
That's a lie. The whole existence of our slave owners from beginning to end relies on Western economic assistance. As I said the last time, beginning with the first spare parts used to reconstruct our factories in the 1920s, from the construction in Magnitostroy, Dneprostroy, the automobile and tractor factories built during the first five-year plans, on into the postwar years and to this day, what they need from you is economically absolutely indispensable - not politically, but economically indispensable - to the Soviet system.
The Soviet economy has an extremely low level of efficiency. What is done here by a few people, by a few machines, in our country takes tremendous crowds of workers and enormous masses of materials. Therefore the Soviet economy cannot deal with ever problem at once: war, space (which is part of the war effort), heavy industry, light industry, and at the same time the necessity to feed and clothe its own population.
The forces of the entire Soviet economy concentrated on war, where you won't be helping them. But everything which is lacking, everything which is needed to fill the gaps, everything which is necessary to feed the people, or for other types of industry, they get from you. So indirectly your are helping them to rearm. You're helping the Soviet police state.
To get an idea how glumsy the Soviet economy is, I'll give you the following example: What kind of country is it, what kind of great power, which has tremendous military potential, which conquers outer space, but has nothing to sell? All heavy equipment, all complex and delicate technology, is purchased abroad. Then it must be an agricultural country? Not at all; is also has to buy grain.
What then can we sell? What kind of economy is it? Can we sell anything which has been created by socialism? No! Only that which God put in the Russian ground at the very beginning, that's what we squander and that's what we sell. What we got from God in the first place. And when all this will come to an end, there won't be anything left to sell.
The president of the AFL-CIO, George Meany, has quite rightly said that it is not loans which the United States givers to the Soviet Union, it is economic assistance. It's foreign aid. It's given at a level of interest that is lower than what American workers can get for their home mortgages. That is direct aid.
But this is not all. I said in my last address and would like to repeat it again, that we have to look at every event from the other point of view - from the point of view of the Soviet Union. Our country is taking your assistance, but in the schools they're teaching and in the newspapers they are writing and in lectures they are saying, "Look at the Western world, it's beginning to rot. Look at the economy of the Western world. it's coming to an end. The great predictions of Marx, Engels, and Lenin are coming true. Capitalism is breathing its last. It's already dead. And our socialist economy is flourishing. It has demonstrated once and for all the triumph of Communism."
I think, gentlemen, and I particularly address those of you who have a socialist outlook, that we should at last permit this socialist economy to prove its superiority. Let's allow it to show that it is advanced, that it is omnipotent, that it has defeated you, that it has overtaken you. Let us not interfere with it. Let us stop selling to it and giving it loans. If it's all that powerful, then let it stand on its own ... for ten or fifteen years. Then we will see what it looks like.
I can tell you what it will look like. I am being quite serious now. When the Soviet economy will no longer be able to deal with everything, it will have to reduce its military preparations. It will have to abandon the useless space effort and it will have to feed and clothe its own people. And the system will be forced to relax.11
Americans do not care that they are picking up the tab on the world's largest concentration camp! They lack interest in this issue. They're simply indifferent. It just doesn't seem to matter to them that their money and technology are going to support slavery. No politician has ever put this on his agenda in a serious way. When the citizenry is impassive their leaders reflect it, which is to say we have no leaders.
With our voters turnout for the last congressional election as low as 37 percent of those eligible, our apathy is complete. This 37 percent represent about 17 percent of the overall population. Our future is being decided by 17 percent of the population! What's more, there is a 20-percent illiteracy rate among adult Americans and an even higher level of low literacy - such as being able to read road signs but no text.
How many of our voters are educated on the issue? If they get their information exclusively from television, not many. We can assume that maybe one in ten takes the time on independently research each issue on the ballot. The rest base their vote on the information they receive from the media. It is certain that they will not hear much about the evils of World Communism from their television sets and more than likely that they will hear a lot about peace and disarmament.
Thirty-seven percent voter turnout, educated or not means that the majority of the public is not interested in the destiny of our nation. This is Definition 3b - "marked by a lack of interest in or concern about something."
Apathy is a reaction to a reality that is too terrible to accept, particularly when individuals feel powerless to act against that reality. This has come out in a variety of ways. People who fear nuclear war will live "for the moment" because they feel they might not be alive tomorrow. If they are not going to be alive tomorrow, why should they vote or care about the issues? This is a step toward spiritual suicide.
Americans also have a fear of the Soviet war mentality on a subconscious level which begets a fear that they might anger the Russians and bring their wrath if they do not learn to live with them. Apathy and pacifism then become acts of desperation on the part of an anxious people - which the German angst best conveys. This state of mind is only one step removed from actual physical suicide.
We come to Definition 4 - "being neither excessive not defective." America has been subject to many changes in national outlook. One of the most profound was that which took place with the coming age of the early baby - boom generation in the 1960s. Born into an era of prosperity, many lacked direction and purpose and turned their youthful energies toward protest. Patriotism went out of style and was replaced by internationalism, and the lack of support for things American, including the Vietnam War.
This movement was led by the poets and minstrels of the era - the rock stars. John Lennon and his contemporaries provided the "leadership" and "ideals" that somehow our government was no longer capable of providing. Unfortunately, the rock stars led the nation down a primrose path. Peace and love are great but they mean nothing to the Communists except to prove to them that the West is growing weak and spineless.
What manifested in the protest and flag - burning was not apathy. It was activism at its worst. But this activism served to redirect and break down our national will and in fact in creased the mounting wave of national apathy that was a major factor in our loss in Vietnam and the subsequent Cambodian genocide. Following the American pullout from Vietnam, seventy-five thousand Vietnamese was executed for political reasons by the Communist government between 1975 and 1983. And worse, four million innocent Cambodians were killed from 1975 to 1979 by their Communist countrymen, the Khmer Rouge. And their blood is on the hands of the American people!
As we entered the 1980s and the Reagan era, flag - waving was back. This time it was superficial, though, and served only to convince ourselves that we were in such great shape that we need do nothing further. Thus, Americans will not be excessive in defense of freedom, but neither do they feel they are defective. And most Americans are smug about it.
We come to Definition 5:"being neither good or bad," or "mediocre; being neither right nor wrong." This is a very curious state of affairs - how someone can think that they can be in the middle, "neither good or bad."
Many of you may have head of Ian Anderson, the lead singer of the group Jethro Tull. He is known to be extremely cynical. This is a sample of his lyrics: "Here's the everlasting rub - / Neither am I good nor bad./ I'd give up my halo for a horn/ And the horn for a hat I once had." This is the ultimately rebellion. He's placing himself above God and the Devil and answering to no one. That is what the American people are doing. They want to answer to no one - "neither good nor bad."
The Bible is very clear on this issue, saying in Revelation 3:15, 16: "I know thy works, thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."
We must take a unified national stand in order to survive. If we refuse to think in terms of absolute Good and Absolute Evil, we will be swallowed up by the Evil. God cannot and will not (according to his own Law) protect us if we will not see Evil. We will be as the lukewarm ones whom he spews out of his mouth. God will allow the Soviet Union to destroy our nation as our judgement, much as he allowed the Assyrians to dominate and destroy the Israelites. History is repeating itself. And "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,"12 to quote Santayana one more time.
You cannot be "neither good nor bad." You cannot be "neither right nor wrong." If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. If you do not stand for Absolute Good, you have already chosen Absolute Evil. The conclusion of C. S. Lewis, in his Screwtape Letters is: once a soul has chosen mediocrity, the Devil has already won;
This brings us to Definition 6 of indifferent - "characterized by lack of active quality: neutral."
Neutralism and pacifism are diabolical and seductive concepts. I have developed these concepts further in "The Psychology of Pacifism and the Strategy of Nuclear War," published in Heart magazine, Winter 1985. You may want to reread that. I recently reread that article and there were things in it that I had forgotten, even though I wrote them.
Suffice to say that Americans and the rest of the population of the NATO alliance flirt dangerously out on neutralism:
This is very dangerous for one's view of the world when this feeling comes in: "Go ahead, give it up." We already hear voices in your country and in the West - "Give up Korea and we will live quietly. Give up Portugal, of course; give up Japan, give up Israel, give up Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, give up ten more African countries. Just let us live in peace and quiet. Just let us drive our big cars on our splendid highways; just let u play tennis and golf, in peace and quiet; just let us mix our cocktails in peace and quiet as we ar accustomed to doing; just let us see the beautiful toothy smile with a glass in hand on every advertisement page of our magazines."13
It's a sad state of affairs. Just before I left my last job in the television industry to return to my studies at Northwestern, I had a friend who I'd been talking politics with say to me, "Well, Sean, what's your prophecy? What do you say is going to happen in the next five or ten years?"
"Well," I said "if things go as they are, we're going to have the Soviets here in out government or we will have already been the victim of a first strike."
He looked at me for a while, looked away and then said, "Boy! ... Well, ten years is a long time."
Nuclear war is unique. When the Allies were attacked in the first half of the twentieth century, it was our ability to crank up weapons production quickly and outproduce the enemy that was crucial to our victory in the two world wars - along with the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for their country.
In a nuclear war, what you have is what you use to fight the war - period. There is no time for production. Hence, you must always act as if you are at war. The British ought to know this. Prior to World War II, when they were faced with the choice of building either an offensive bomber force or a strategic defense, they opted for strategic defense. As a result, they won the Battle of Britain and saved their nation from a Nazi invasion. Yet one of the liberal opposition parties in England today - the Labor Party - has already pledged, if elected, to remove all nuclear weapons from their territory.
There is a similar situation in Canada. The extremely liberal New Democratic Party (NDP) has pledged it will withdraw Canada from NATO if it comes to power. Due to parliamentary politics, The NDP might conceivably force a Liberal Party government to do the same - and the Liberals are currently in first place in the polls. The consequences of a Canadian withdrawal from NATO could potentially be catastrophic if they forced the United States to remove its radars and optical tracking systems that are part of our warning system against ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and aircraft.
Lately, when taking their positions on defence, the American people have counted on the balance of nuclear forces, which have been told exists between the superpowers, to prevent war. They think that we don't need any more weapons because we already have enough to kill each other ten times over.
This is a fallacy. There is no overkill. Overkill is a simplistic argument which adds up the number of megatons on both sides, figures out how may. Hiroshima - sized bombs that makes, multiplies that by the number of people of killed at Hiroshima, and claims we don't need any more weapons.
Mount St. Helens released about five hundred times the force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, yet it killed only seventy - two people. Bombs only killed people if there are people under them to be killed. And we know from Soviet military doctrine that they do not target people. They would just as soon disarm us and take our country whole.
The Soviets target military installations, such as missile silos. And you need two or three weapons for each missile silo to be sure you have destroyed it. They can destroy our land-based missiles in a first strike because our missiles are not mobile and they know exactly where they are. Thus, we do need more missiles. We need mobile, land-based missiles. And we need them now!
The American people are unsophisticated in their belief of overkill. It is gross oversimplification. They do not understand the issues which face them. And they must understand issues soon or we will face the ultimate destruction.
We must always act as if we are at war. The war is going on in many other countries in the world. Just because it's not here, just because it doesn't touch us, just because, as Solzhenitsyn said, we can drive our cars and - probably not many people here play golf, but you get the picture - doesn't mean we're not a part of it and it's not a part of us.
There is no balance between the superpowers. The Soviets have, and have had since the mid - seventies, military superiority. Our nation cannot act neutral and survive. The will of the people must back a consensus for action - now. Nuclear deterrence is not defense. Defense takes the will of the people - to sustain and back their armed forces to protect their interests. Will is the most important aspect of defense.
We have the second most powerful military in the world. And yet we will not even come to the necessary and sufficient defense of the freedom fighters in Afghanistan or Nicaragua. This is a lack if will. We could invade Nicaragua and Cuba and drive those Communists out in probably two months, if we so chose. And we should! [17-sec. applause]
We Americans are soft. No American alive today has ever seen war on our soil. Every American alive today will see war on our soil if we do not stand strong during this time of relative peace.
In the Soviet Union those who love freedom understand that a price must be paid. They are willing to be locked up and tortured for what they believe in, for they have nothing else. They have very few consumer goods in the Soviet Union - nothing to distract them from the cause of freedom.
Irina Ratushinskaya is a Russian who loves freedom. I will read you her story now. This is from the Chicago Tribune. The headline is "Soviets Let Dissident Poet, Who Wrote in Soap, Leave."
KIEV, U.S.S.R. - Dissident poet Irina Ratushinskaya, considered by many Western critics and Soviet emigre writers to be among the most talented Soviet literary figures, received permission Saturday to leave the country.
During an interview in her Kiev apartment, Ratushinskaya said she would depart the Soviet Union with more than 250 new poems secretly composed on a bar of soap during her 3-1/2 years in a labor camp.
The poems were committed to memory and the soap scrubbed to obliterate any evidence of the underground verses that could result in additional months tacked to her 12-year sentence for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda."
This is how they treat their writers.
Ratushinskaya, 32, was unexpectedly released from prison Oct. 9 in what was deemed a goodwill gesture prior to the Reykjavik summit. She and her husband, Igor Gerashchenko, 33, hope to leave for London next week on a medical visa granted Saturday.
The poet said she also is planning to visit the Chicago area, where she has been invited to read her poems at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Soviet authorities had blocked numerous official invitations mailed from the West in the two months since she was freed.
But Ratushinskaya received a number of invitations through protected diplomatic channels from Great Britain and the United States, among them a letter from Northwestern University Medical Center promising treatment for the respiratory ailments, heart problems and kidney disorders she contracted in prison.
Ratushinskaya and her husband said they do not plan to renounce their Soviet citizenship, and both pledged to return in order to work for democratic reforms.
But as Ratushinskaya's conversation was interrupted numerous times by painful spasms of a raw, hacking cough, it became clear that medical treatment is, for now, the first priority.
"I went into prison a healthy woman. They took care of that right away," she said of the strict labor camp in central Russia.
After her conviction in April, 1983, for circulating her unofficial verses, Ratushinskaya lost 44 pounds on a prison diet of bread and water one day, soup the next.
April 1983. Tell this to anyone who doesn't think this is going on now. I am sure everyone in this room can remember where they were in April of `83. And I am equally sure that this torture is going on today.
Because of her frequent protests over prison conditions, she spent a total of 120 days in a solitary confinement cell kept at a temperature just above freezing.
In 1985, prison authorities told her she would be held for life, and she said she staged a hunger strike for better treatment that "brought me near death." She was refused any medical attention.
Writing poetry was banned in the camp and could result in an extended sentence. Paper and pen were given to inmates only for writing two letters a month, which had to pass through censors.
But Ratushinskaya said she unfettered her creative muse by composing verses on a bar of soap, using a burnt and sharpened match-head as a quill to scratch in the letters and words.
"When I finished a poem, I would wash my hands and it would be gone," she said in her first personal interview with a Western reporter since returning from the labor camp.
Ratushinskaya composed 250 poems during her captivity, and had to memorize each one to avoid detection. As a ritual to help maintain her sanity, she would spend an hour every day cataloguing the verses in her head.
A correspondent, testing her ability to know a huge volume of poetry by heart, selected titles at random from her portfolio and asked her to repeat them in full.
In a husky voice free from the falsetto that is a cultural affectation of so many Russian-speaking women, Ratushinskaya began reciting verses shaped by Christian imagery, regional nationalism and stark memories of dark prison nights.
She also managed to smuggle many poems out of prison, but declined to describe the method because it is still being used as an underground channel of communication by gulag inmates.
This brings up an issue which has come up many times. Every time someone escapes or every time they catch someone smuggling Bibles into the Soviet Union, the Western media publishes the method! This is wrong. Here we have these freedom fighters and they grant interviews and they tell how they escaped and the Western media publishes it! And the Soviet Union, in turn, seals that method of escape.
We visited a museum at the Berlin wall which shows all the ways by which people have escaped. I am sure it is frequented by all the Soviet authorities. This is an important issue. We should protect the possibilities for freedom at every hand. Our loyalties as world citizens ought to be to the freeing of every body and soul from the bondage of totalitarian systems.
Since her release, Ratushinskaya has written nine new poems, but has not begun a major planned work of prose for fear it would be confiscated when she leaves the country. She also has not been allowed to own a typewriter.
Tell this to the professors in the political-science departments of the universities of America - who sit at their word processors in their air-conditioned offices pontificating on the need for `peace' while Russian literary genius languishes for want of paper or typewriter!
Her most recent poem, completed Oct. 24, is written to a "country of thoughtful train stations and eternally poor women," and says in part:
With doubt, you have punished all your children
Your reprimands, until gray hair.
And how shall we live, you and me?
You are looking, but covering your eyes with your hands.
To forget? To curse? To make the sign of the cross?
Sitting in her apartment in Kiev's academic neighborhood, Ratushinskaya looked the part of a Beat Generation poet with her raven-black hair cut to pageboy length and dark turtleneck. Her bookshelves included Russian translations of Twain and Cervantes.
She speculated little on the cause of her early release from prison and the other events of the last months, except to say that they may reflect discussions in the Kremlin over reforms in the Soviet system and a strategy to improve its image abroad.
"I believe there are talks at high levels about democratization, and that has brought about the release of some political prisoners," she said.14
Now, the only reason there would be any talks about democratization would be as an image tool for the Western media and to keep the American people asleep. Those at the top of the Soviet system will never democratize because if they did it would mean that they would have to loosen the reins of power and in so doing their leadership would be overtaken. They will never do this. Entertain no illusions.
This article was from the point of view of her being inside the Soviet Union. A later article which shows a picture of her in London speaking with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher following her exit from the Soviet Union expresses her freedom of conscience voiced as free speech to a free press:
Meanwhile, dissident Soviet poet Irina Ratushinskaya, allowed to leave the Soviet Union last week, met with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in London Monday. ... Her husband said she intended to remain in the West.15
In her previous article she said that she was going to stay in the Soviet Union. This is because she was afraid to speak her mind for fear that she would not be allowed to leave. So now she's here, now she can speak her mind.
We need to be willing to pay the price, as Americans have always paid the price, spiritually, economically and militarily to keep the West free - that the flame of hope be not extinguished in the hearts of the oppressed.
But the American people do not realize that this is their calling. For them not to face up to the reality that the Russian people are kept in constant psychic domination and fear is very, very naive. We look at their society as a mirror image of our own, thinking that every institution in our society has an equivalent in Soviet society, including courts. And it is not the case. You'd be surprised at what people I've talked to mistakenly think about the Soviet Union.
It is clear, then, that our media could save thousands if not millions of lives by keeping the pressure on the Soviets. You can look at those evening news anchormen. The blood is on their hands and on the hands of the forces of control at CBS, NBC and ABC. They have the power to mold and marshal public opinion, hence the absolute power to save these lives.
And since they're not doing it, we must!
There was another story that I recently read of an inmate who died because the Western press ignored him. This is taken up by Jeane Kirkpatrick in a Christmas editorial published by the Chicago Tribune. But first let's hear again from The Voice of Freedom:
We, we the dissidents of the U.S.S.R., don't have any tanks, we don't have any weapons, we have no organization. We don't have anything. Our hands are empty. We have only a heart and what we have lived through in the half century of this system. And when we have found the firmness within ourselves to stand up for our rights, we have done so. It's only by firmness of spirit that we have withstood.
And if I am standing here before you, it's not because of the kindness or the good will of Communism, not thanks to detente, but thanks to my own firmness and your firm support. They knew that I would not yield one inch, not one hair. And when they couldn't do more they themselves fell back.
This is not easy. In our conditions this was taught to me by the difficulties of my own life. And if you yourselves - any one of you - were in the same difficult situation, you would have learned the same thing. Take Vladimir Bukovsky, whose name is now almost forgotten.
Now, I don't want to mention a lot of names because however many I might mention there are more still. And when we resolve the question with two or three names it is as if we forget and betray the others. We should rather remember figures. There are tens of thousands of political prisoners in our country and - by the calculation of English specialists - seven thousand persons are now under compulsory psychiatric treatment.
Let's take Vladimir Bukovsky as an example. It was proposed to him, "All right, we'll free you. Go to the West and shut up." And this young man, a youth today on the verge of death said: "No, I won't go this way. I have written about the persons whom you have put in insane asylums. You release them and then I'll go West." This is what I mean by that firmness of spirit to stand up against granite and tanks.16
Former United States ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, gives us, then, some thoughts on this same issue. This is entitled, "Keeping a Spotlight on the Oppressed":
It has become traditional for major newspapers in many American cities to focus in the weeks before Christmas on the most needy people in their area in hopes that the glow of the season will stimulate special sympathy and generosity for those oppressed by poverty, old age, ill health, bad luck and bad management of their own lives.
It is a good tradition that illuminates the social problems of great cities by showing how they affect the lives of concrete persons. Similarly, great political abstractions like freedom, repression and pluralism also are most easily grasped when their impact is seen through the experiences of particular people. Human rights activist and former gulag inmate Anatoly Shcharansky told American audiences last week that focusing public attention on particular prisoners can make a life-and-death difference.
The recent death in a Soviet prison of Anatoly Marchenko was caused not just by Soviet abuse, Shcharansky said, but by Western indifference. Recalling his own long imprisonment, Shcharansky told a New York audience: "In my case there were strong campaigns all over the world; protests from the top levels and grass-root levels. In this [Marchenko] case, the public opinion of the West reacted quite differently. The results you see yourself."
Shcharansky's view is shared by other former political prisoners - Huber Matos, Armando Valladores, Jacobo Timerman, among many others - who have credited their release and survival to international public attention. Spokesmen for Iran's Baha'i community credit public attention with the dramatic decline in government executions of Baha'i members [from 100 in 1983 to three in 1986].
In this Christmas season, we should focus on just a few of the world's neediest political prisoners who are being denied their most basic human rights.
Dr. Josef Begun, a 55-year-old Soviet citizen of Jewish descent, has been convicted three times for the crimes of teaching Hebrew, cultivating the study of Jewish culture and history and seeking permission to emigrate to Israel. Dr. Begun, a mathematics graduate of Moscow University, first applied for an exit visa in April, 1971.
During his current imprisonment,17 Begun has been subjected to especially harsh treatment. He has spent several periods in a special punishment cell [for giving a lecture on the Holocaust and wearing a yarmulke]. His health has deteriorated seriously, his coronary heart disease exacerbated by the harsh conditions under which he must live.
Begun, recently hospitalized again, was never active in politics. His crimes consisted of giving Hebrew lessons when he was denied all other employment. ...
This is what the Soviets do to individuals who speak out for political or religious freedom. They deny them employment. And since the government is the only employer, they have nothing. They have nowhere to go, no place to turn to. So they must seek, then, to gain employment from the underground.
Begun is not alone in paying a heavy price for his religious interests. Richard Schifter, assistant secretary of state for human rights, pointed out recently that during the last 12 months at least 90 other Soviet citizens have been sentenced to long prison terms for religious practices.
Dr. Anatoly Koryagin, 47, is the Ukrainian psychiatrist who in the late 1970s exposed the Soviet practice of confining political dissidents and religious observers to psychiatric hospitals, where they are given pain-inducing, mind-destroying drugs. Now, however, it is Dr. Koryagin who needs help.
For blowing the whistle on these practices, now well documented, Dr. Koryagin was sentenced to seven years in prison and sent to the dreaded Chistopol prison, where he has suffered repeated beatings, a grossly inadequate diet and seriously deteriorating health. Now that his sentence has been extended,18 his wife - who has not been allowed to visit him for more than two years - and his friends are gravely concerned for his life.
But Soviet citizens are not the only ones who risk harsh punishment for exercising human rights. There are other prisoners in other lands.
What can we do for these and thousands of others who have been brutally denied their legal and human rights in Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, Iran and elsewhere? Anatoly Shcharansky tells us these countries want access to Western technology and credits. Therefore, he says, "linkage can help open the gates."
So can our continuing attention.19
Another friend of mine whom I have spoken with at length about politics said to me when Shcharansky was released and spoke in New York, "Sean, what do you think of this Shcharansky character?" I said, "Well, I think he's a great freedom fighter and I am glad that he was released." And he said, "They ought to hang the so-and-so. He'll probably make millions on his book."
Can you believe this callous indifference? These attitudes are fairly widespread, too. People cynically feel that Soviet dissidents have betrayed their country and that all they want to do when they get to the West is exploit their fame and take advantage of capitalism. That's what people believe.
Our attention on these dissidents is activism - the opposite of apathy. And that is what is needed.
Indifferent - Definition 7: "capable of development in more than one direction; especially: not yet embryologically determined." This last definition is the key to America's future - "not yet embryologically determined."
America is in its infancy and has yet a grand destiny to capture and fulfill. Even the quality of indifference implies the capability for development in new directions.
The Soviet Union fears this development. They fear a united West because they know they could not triumph against it. That is why Western public opinion is so important to them. That is why they devote so much of their time and energy to appeasing the public, such as by releasing dissidents who become favorites of the American media.
They will even put themselves at a disadvantage to score points with the American electorate. For example, they initiated a unilateral nuclear test ban in 1985, calling on America to follow suit. Each time we tested a weapon, they said to the world, "Look, America is the aggressor. They are testing and we are not. Furthermore, we'll extend our test ban to show good faith in hopes of creating world peace and an end to the arms race."
You know, of course, that some of the most important nuclear tests in recent years have been on the Star Wars program. We've been testing the X-ray laser and other nuclear-driven devices. These are vital to our future and it would serve the Soviet cause well if we stopped testing. To do so would not be serving the cause of world peace, however.
This is nothing but unabashed rhetoric of the worst kind. Sure, they may not have set off any nuclear bombs in the last year and a half, but what about toy bombs, blowing off children's hands? What about bayoneting pregnant women in Afghanistan? What about 1-2 million Afghans martyred in the most heinous act of genocide since the Ukrainian famine? This really shows the Soviet spirit of peace!
Oddly, many of these brutalities went unreported in the American media. A study commissioned by Sen. Gordon Humphrey reported that in 1985 the three major networks devoted less than one hour total to coverage of Afghanistan.20 But night after night we hear of South Africa, U.S. "aggression" in Nicaragua, and the Iran/contra affair.
I do not believe that Americans are so apathetic that they would let these things go by if they knew. If the people knew of the 1-2 million Afghan deaths and countless maimings, as well as of the 5 million refugees who have fled, they would demand an end to it.
Thus, the solution lies in the reeducation of the people. Solzhenitsyn should be quoted in every elementary and secondary school, college campus and institution of learning. Every American has the right to know the truth about World Communism and its capitalist collaborators. And we should start them young instead of allowing our children to be indoctrinated with socialist philosophies and mentalities.
Our message as presented at the Teaching Centers and Study Groups of Church Universal and Triumphant must go beyond the spiritual message. Saint Germain has spelled it out and he is talking to the American people. We must be his mouthpiece. We must watch the news, even if it is depressing. We have the obligation not only to be up-to-date on the facts but also to decree on them nightly. We must anticipate every move of the Soviets and do all in our power to prevent a Soviet first strike and a complete Communist takeover in Central America as prophesied.
It is our duty as soldiers in Armageddon to be informed. We must interpret world events in light of prophecy and present our findings with the documented research to back them up. The time for preaching a spiritual teaching devoid of politics is over. The Spirit of prophecy abroad in the land bears relevance to every area of our lives, but nowhere more vitally than in the political arena. Politics involves the use and abuse of the power of the people. Therefore, our survival depends on the acceptance by the American people of Saint Germain's message as a political message. That is exactly where the ancient prophets of Israel and Judah stood and that is where my father and mother stand today.
Saint Germain has not minced words about dealing with the Soviets. He has made two statements which Americans should be concerned about: One is that we have every reason to believe, to be concerned, and to be prepared for a Soviet first strike upon these United States;21 and the other is that if the Nicaraguan contras are not aided and supported, totalitarian encroachment in this hemisphere will not be stopped without bloodshed in these United States.22
This should end debate on both issues.
As we know from history, however, Saint Germain has been ignored by people at their peril. Europe has been subject to war on its soil for nearly two centuries because Saint Germain has been ignored. Let us pray and act in time that it does not happen here.
Now, Mother has been working this fall on an extremely important book which she announced at Thanksgiving - that is Saint Germain On Prophecy. I've read the advance text of this book and I assure you that it is the most important book that Mother has ever written. It will change the world - if people are ready for change.
It will not only be sold through our national bookstore accounts but it will be sold in grocery stores and drug stores, where the common people can have access to the teachings. [21-sec. applause]
I am sure all of you are familiar with Saint Germain's messages of the past year. These messages are included in this book, Saint Germain On Prophecy, along with a special section on Saint Germain's embodiments and his work as the Wonderman of Europe and the sponsor of America. There is also a section of dictations by the beings of the elements talking about coming earth changes, and the most exciting section of all - Saint Germain's interpretation of the prophecies of Nostradamus. [13-sec. applause]
Nostradamus, who gained a reputation as a learned physician and healer, as well as a prophet in his own country and time, is highly thought of today even beyond the new-age movement. A number of people have written books about Nostradamus and they have interpreted him in a number of ways. But according to Saint Germain, their approach has not always been correct. Saint Germain has given Mother new interpretations whereby we see that certain coming events spoken of in dictations of the Ascended Masters were actually predicted by Nostradamus four centuries ago. These interpretations by the one who originally dictated the quatrains in the "upper room" at Salon have never before been released.
Now for those who need more evidence than the current prophecies of Saint Germain through the Messenger, Nostradamus is very clear. Without going into a lengthy discourse on Nostradamus as I am sure all of you will want to read it for yourselves, I can tell you that Nostradamus predicted much of what is coming to pass before our very eyes, and the Master's message for today is contained in part in the prophet's copious works.
Now, I should explain for those who are not familiar with his writings that Nostradamus wrote in a cryptic style due to the religious persecution that was taking place in his time. Not only did he write in code, he sealed his prophecies in four-line verses called quatrains in sets of one hundred called centuries. Originally, the sixteenth-century seer wrote the quatrains in chronological order, but he had to mix them up so that there would not be any clear message for which he could be punished by the ruling authorities.
The prophecies are so obscure that it is difficult to tell when they will come true. Sometimes dates can be fixed through astrological clues or a technology described. Nostradamus' meaning is often unclear until the events he predicts come to pass or are about to come to pass. He was very precise and said that he meant his verses to have only one meaning and application.
The interpretation of Nostradamus is equally important as the interpretation of the Bible - because he spoke of events that may come to pass in our lifetime. A good number of his quatrains bring out the ride of the Four Horsemen. Thus, if he is misinterpreted, we will suffer for want of knowledge in discerning the signs of the times.
Nostradamus even foretold the current Iran/contra crisis in Washington. He said that there would be such sedition through spies and traitors that the "profligate ones," i.e., the U.S. Congress and the American people, would be in despair:
Will come to trouble the great besieged chief:
Within there will be such sedition
That the profligate ones will be in despair.23
Indeed, there is such sedition in America and by Americans today - through technology transfers to the Soviet Union and traitors like the Walker spy ring (whose espionage has enabled the Soviets to track our submarines) - that both Congress and the people are in despair as to how to counter the Soviet threat which is, in fact, supported by our own technology.The question is: How far must our nation be torn down, by both the profligate and the seditious ones? How many must lose their lives and how many years must our civilization be set back in the process?
If the Soviet Union were to conduct a first strike against our military targets, we would be virtually helpless to retaliate. They could invade and conquer us. An all-out nuclear war in which they attacked our cities would put us back to an agricultural society or worse and kill four-fifths of all Americans.
If America is physically destroyed or conquered, the blame lies with us. The fallen ones are on their way to being judged. We are the Lightbearers and we are responsible for the future of our nation. "For evil to triumph, all that is required is that good men do nothing" - a very famous quote from Edmund Burke.
World Communism needs the cooperation of the West. Without it, it would itself be destroyed in a very short time. Look at the devil Peshu Alga, who recently went to his final judgment.24 He needed his consort as the negative polarity to ground his "deified evil." Without that electrode of the feminine (or negative) polarity, Peshu Alga could never have committed the crimes against God that he did. The Soviets are like Peshu Alga and America, the consort. It is up to us. We have to stop being the negative electrode for an anti-God ideology and an anti-God system! Let's start by stopping technology transfers to the betrayers of humanity.
Americans, if they allow this to go on, are in fact worse than the Russians. The Russian people are powerless to do anything. The American people have "all power given unto them in heaven and earth" to do everything about it. This is the supreme testing we now face as a nation.
If we allow this to happen - if we stand by, do nothing, and allow America to remain without a strategic or civil defense against a Soviet first strike, if we allow freedom to be lost in this hemisphere through our failure to support the freedom fighters in Central and South America, if we allow Congress and the powers that be to betray the contras, then heaven help us! For we will be judged more severely than the Russian people. Russian people are not responsible - it is fallen ones who make up the Soviet leadership who are to blame for the murder and mayhem that follow in the wake of Communist world takeover, nation by nation! But Americans are. We Americans are responsible.
There is the matter of the aid to the contras - an issue which has divided the nation. One would think that organized religion would support aid to the freedom fighters who oppose Communism. Communism has been the biggest enemy of religion since 1917 and has slaughtered millions of religious devotees worldwide. Don't you remember what Lenin said? "We must combat religion - this is the ABC of all materialism, and consequently Marxism."25
Does it surprise you to hear, then, that the Chicago Tribune recently reported that a private network of church groups in the United States had given $42 million in aid - not to the contras, but to the Communist Sandinista government of Nicaragua - in 1985?
They have this philosophy they are preaching now called "matching funds." They tell their congregations that President Reagan is a terrorist and that he is foisting war upon the people of Central America and that their congregations have to donate money to help establish and maintain peace in Central America. And that money is shipped to the Sandinistas as aid.
What can we say about the false pastors of our time, except "Let the LORD's judgment be upon their heads!"
I will read to you now from chapter 16 of Saint Germain On Prophecy. This section is entitled "The LORD's Prophecy Concerning the False Prophets of Peace":
Not only is this denouement of the twentieth century to be reckoned with by a people who have forsaken their God (Europeans, who, though they may deny it, in actuality have been heavily saturated by `fallout', the dark karma, from Chernobyl), but also must it be dealt with by the profane priests and prophets (European as well as some American Catholic, Protestant and Jewish theologians along with the psychic peaceniks):
So this is what I AM THAT I AM as the Lord of Hosts [Sanat Kumara] says about the prophets:
"Now I will give them wormwood for their food, and poisoned water to drink, since from the prophets of Jerusalem godlessness has spread throughout the land." I AM THAT I AM, Lord of Hosts, says this:
"Do not listen to what those prophets say: they are deluding you, they retail visions of their own, and not what comes from the mouth of I AM THAT I AM; to those who reject the word of I AM THAT I AM they say, `Peace will be yours,' and to those who follow the dictates of a hardened heart, `No misfortune will touch you."'
(But who has been present at the council of I AM THAT I AM? Who has seen it and heard His Word? Who has paid attention to His Word in order to proclaim it?)
Now a storm of I AM THAT I AM breaks, a tempest whirls, it bursts over the head of the descendants of the Wicked One; the anger of I AM THAT I AM will not turn aside until He has performed, and has carried out, the decision of His heart. You will understand this clearly in the days to come.
"I have not sent those prophets, yet they are running; I have not spoken to them, yet they are prophesying. Have they been present at my council? If so, let them proclaim my words to my people and turn them from their evil way and from the wickedness of their deeds!
"Am I a God when near - it is I AM THAT I AM who speaks - and not one when far away? Can anyone hide in a dark corner without my seeing him? - it is I AM THAT I AM who speaks. Do I not fill heaven and earth? - it is I AM THAT I AM who speaks.
"I have heard what the prophets say who make their lying prophecies in my name. `I have had a dream,' they say, `I have had a dream!"' [Jeremiah 23:15-25, Jerusalem Bible]
And again the prophet Jeremiah converses with I AM THAT I AM who appears to him in the Person of the Lord of Hosts:
"Ah, Lord I AM THAT I AM," I answered, "here are the prophets telling them, `You will not see the sword, famine will not touch you; I promise you unbroken peace in this place."'
Then I AM THAT I AM said to me,
"The prophets are prophesying lies in my name; I have not sent them, I gave them no orders, I never spoke to them. Delusive visions, hollow predictions, daydreams of their own, that is what they prophesy to you.
"Therefore, I AM THAT I AM says this:
"The prophets who prophesy in my name when I have not sent them, and tell you there will be no sword or famine in this land, these same prophets are doomed to perish by sword and famine.
"And as for the people to whom they prophesy, they will be tossed into the streets of Jerusalem, victims of famine and the sword, with not a soul to bury them: neither them nor their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters. I will pour down on them their own wickedness [karma]." [Jeremiah 14:13-16, Jerusalem Bible]
What follows is "The LORD's Chastisement of the House of Joseph."
But to America, Britannia and the English-speaking peoples - the seed of Joseph, of his sons Ephraim and Manasseh - the LORD has declared through the lovable Amos:
Seek I AM THAT I AM and you shall live, or else He will rush like fire on the House of Joseph and burn it up, with none at Bethel able to put out the flames.
It is He who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns the dusk to dawn and day to darkest night. He summons the waters of the sea and pours them over the land. I AM THAT I AM is his name.
He blazes out ruin on the stronghold and brings destruction to the fortress - trouble for those who turn justice into wormwood, throwing integrity to the ground; who hate the man dispensing justice at the city gate and detest those who speak with honesty.
Well then, since you have trampled on the poor man, extorting levies on his wheat - those houses you have built of dressed stone, you will never live in them; and those precious vineyards you have planted, you will never drink their wine.
For I know that your crimes are many, and your sins enormous: persecutors of the virtuous, blackmailers, turning away the needy at the city gate. No wonder the prudent man keeps silent, the times are so evil.
Seek Good and not Evil so that you may live, and that I AM THAT I AM as the Lord of Hosts may really be with you as you claim He is.
Hate Evil, love Good, maintain justice at the city gate, and it may be that I AM THAT I AM as the Lord of Hosts will take pity on the remnant of Joseph. [Amos 5:6-15, Jerusalem Bible]26
Both Saint Germain and Nostradamus have predicted the ultimate triumph over Evil and World Communism. It is prophesied. We have to make it happen. Even so, we have to change the prophecy of destruction and death in order to fulfill the prophecy of the triumph of Good.
Now I'm going to read to you the final chapter in Book Two of Saint Germain On Prophecy - "Nostradamus' Conclusion of the Matter."
Nostradamus foresaw the end of Soviet Communism. It is an astonishing prediction of an event anticipated by the martyrs of Soviet Communism who have been massacred by the millions, of whom it is written:
And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:
And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. [Revelation 6:9-11]
But Nostradamus' prediction is even more remarkable since it places the point of the unraveling of the Big Lie near Kiev at the Dnieper, about 15 miles from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant:
Here's the quatrain and you'll see that it takes much interpretation:
The law of More will be seen to decline:
After another much more seductive:
Dnieper first will come to give way:
Through gifts and tongue another more
attractive.27 III.95
Of this most transparent prophecy Leoni writes, "For the reader in the second half of the twentieth century, this is one of the most interesting of all the prophecies of Nostradamus - one full of portentous meaning for this era. ... We now have the generic name `communism' to apply to the utopian ideologies of which Sir Thomas More's Utopia is the common ancestor. Undoubtedly this work, published in Latin when Nostradamus was in the midst of his education, was read by him.
"The prophecy implies a widespread success of this ideology prior to its decline, and mentions that the decline will start where the Dnieper is located. This is the principal river of the Ukraine. In Nostradamus' day it was one of the most backward parts of Europe, part of the Polish-Lithuanian state for three hundred years, and hardly an area Nostradamus would choose for the locale involving any contemporary movement of this nature, such as the Anabaptists.
"Accordingly, it is not unreasonable to speculate on a possible twentieth-century fulfillment of this prophecy, involving the Soviet Ukraine and perhaps its chief city (which is on the Dnieper), Kiev. The nature of the more seductive law and the more attractive tongue are subjects for further speculation."28
Utopia is many things to many people. Historians have taken Utopia as a blueprint for British imperialism, humanists as a manifesto for total reform of the Christian renaissance, and literary critics as a work of a noncommitted intellectual.
In it More describes an ideal society where all property is held in common and food is distributed at public markets and common dining halls. With its sweeping condemnation of all private property, Utopia influenced early Socialist thinkers. Karl Kautsky, the German Socialist theoretician, saw Utopia "as a vision of the socialist society of the future"29 and hailed More as the father of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Yet More's Utopian society and Soviet Communism have striking differences. For instance, in Utopia, citizenship was dependent upon the belief in a just God who rewards or punishes in an afterlife.
Professor John Anthony Scott says that More's "views on communism and private property have been explained as an expression of the medieval monastic ideal, in which Christian men and women took vows of poverty and chastity, shared all things in common, and devoted themselves through prayer and good works to the service of the poor and the sick."30
Now let us examine Nostradamus' prophecy for the decline of World Communism and the far-reaching consequences of the judgment of Wormwood at Chernobyl.
In previous chapters we've learned that chernobyl is Ukrainian for "wormwood," the name of a bitter herb that grows in the place that bears its name. (This information was also published in a 1986 Pearl of Wisdom.31) The judgment of a fallen angel named Wormwood is prophesied in Revelation 8. The New York Times reported that Russians have been pondering this scripture as prophetic of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl.
Quatrain III.95 describes three kinds of society: The first is an idealistic communism embodied in Utopia ("the law of More"). After it declines there appears "another" - the second form of communism - which is "much more seductive," World Communism Soviet-style.
Communism, as we know it, is a seductive metaphysical theory that could not be farther from the basic principles of Thomas More in its atheism, aggression, and unvarnished imperialism. It has been seductive since the first alluring promises of "Peace, Land, and Bread" were made by the Bolsheviks in 1917.
In reality Soviet Communism has from the beginning sown the seeds of its own decline. But the day and date of the initiating of the spiral of its decline is calculated at the triggering of events which give way at the Dnieper - the Chernobyl disaster.
That the Soviet Union is due to self-destruct is evident from its karmic history. The only mitigating factor of the due date has been and continues to be the intercession of Western capitalists and the international bankers, spies, fifth-column sympathizers and agents of the United States government - conscious and unconscious.
The Soviet Union was never a duly elected or popularly supported regime. In effect, Lenin and his confederates waged a premeditated war against those whom they ruled. He realized long before the Bolshevik Revolution that that would be the case and cultivated terror as an instrument of revolution and governance. As early as 1905 he was looking forward to the use of terror such as gripped France in 1793 "to settle accounts with Tsarism" following the revolution.32
In 1908, Lenin wrote about "real, nationwide terror, which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory."33 On the night of July 16, 1918, the Emperor Nicholas II, his wife, four daughters, and the czarevitch were brutally murdered in the basement of the House of Special Purpose by order of Lenin. Their bodies were burned and thrown into an abandoned mine shaft.
Lenin and his confederates also recognized that since they could never rule popularly they would have to institutionalize terror as a means of control. Thus the Cheka, or secret police, was created to be the direct agent of state power. Some years later Lenin's favorite Bolshevik historian, Pokrovsky, said that the secret police "sprang from the very essence of the proletarian revolution."34 Between 1918 and 1919, the Cheka executed one thousand people a month without trial.
The Soviet Union is ruled by a dictatorship that installed itself by force and maintains itself by terror. It is compelled to continually increase its power to stay in power, lest it be overthrown. Indeed, it cultivates violence as a form of vital energy.
This is just the feeding of the fallen ones off the lifeblood of the Lightbearers. They need to have this killing in order to survive.
By the time Lenin was no more in 1924, five hundred thousand people had already died in Soviet prisons or camps.35
In 1937-38, during the heyday of Stalin's great terror, forty thousand people were shot each month. While the estimates vary, the Soviets have killed somewhere between 35 and 45 million of their own people since 1917.
Because of its obsessive need for power and control, the Soviet state must of necessity stifle economic production. Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia was a net exporter of wheat. After the Revolution, the Communist leadership succeeded in institutionalizing agricultural shortages.
Likewise, prior to the Revolution "airplanes and automobiles of indigenous Russian design were produced in quantity," says Antony Sutton.36
But not so after the Revolution. As we have already seen, the Soviet Union was built by the West, simply because it could not build itself. Soviet Communism cannot produce a viable economy. And because of its political and economic weaknesses, it cannot change. Today it is still essentially the same state created by Lenin and Stalin whose traditions are embodied by paranoid leaders clinging tenaciously to power over their subjects.
The current rulers in Moscow manage a far-flung empire of gulags (prison camps), forcibly "treat" dissidents with painful, personality-destroying drugs in special psychiatric hospitals, and still haul people off to be shot.
The KGB (the latest edition of the secret police [and descendant of the Cheka]) still practices terror against the Soviet population. It is joined in this endeavor by an even more sinister, more secretive organization - the GRU, or Soviet Military Intelligence. Once a GRU agent is recruited, he's an agent for life. Those who try to defect are incinerated in a crematorium. "Few people, inside or outside of Russia, have ever heard of the GRU," says Robert Moss. "Yet its budget for foreign intelligence operations is larger than that of the KGB."
I must tell you there's a book which everyone here should read. It's called Inside the Aquarium by Viktor Suvorov. It's about the GRU. The GRU is the most diabolical organization on this planet. In their training they have instituted something which I don't think any society has ever done before - and that is the use of so-called puppets. Now, a puppet is a prisoner - most likely a political prisoner - and specifically a prisoner in good physical shape. They use these people for hand-to-hand combat training and they kill them. So you can bet that every GRU or KGB agent has already killed several people before he ever gets to the West. It's nothing new to them. But it should give us pause:
If they are conditioned to kill their own people to further the ends of the state and World Communism, who won't they kill!
Puppets are also used to clean up accidents like Chernobyl. Somebody had to tunnel underneath that reactor and dig it out. Who do you think they got to do it? Lightbearers, political prisoners - with virtually no protection.
Continuing on page 196 of Prophecy:
Moss says that the GRU has "been responsible for some of the most stunning coups in the annals of Soviet espionage." Among other things, GRU agents "stole the secret of the atomic bomb for Russia."37 Today they are in the United States like red ants carrying off technology for the Red Army.
Oppression is present everywhere in the Soviet Union. But it is in keeping with the law of karma that the unraveling of the Soviet Empire should begin near Kiev. For it was at Kiev that Stalin waged war against the peasants, and thus came to pass the darkest and most diabolical period in Russian history.
According to historian Robert Conquest, during the early part of this century the Russian intelligentsia saw the peasants as "the People incarnate, the soul of the country, suffering, patient, the hope of the future." But they could also be stubborn and resistant to change. And that bothered the Communists. Lenin complained that the peasant, "far from being an instinctive or traditional collectivist, is in fact fiercely and meanly individualistic." Stalin thought the peasants were scum.38
The first stage of Stalin's war was directed against the "kulaks" - supposedly rich, greedy, brutal farmers who, according to Soviet propaganda, exploited the labor of others. In reality, the kulaks were highly productive farmers who might typically own between ten and twenty-five acres of land and as many as three cows. They formed the backbone of Soviet agriculture and the foundation of the Russian food chain. Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks quickly moved against them. "The kulak was an ideological enemy," says Antony Sutton, but his ability to produce made him "at least up to 1928-29, indispensable."39
Starting in the winter of 1929, Stalin had them "dekulakized," i.e., deported to work camps in the Arctic in the dead of winter. Conquest, who chronicled this tragic chapter of history in his recently published The Harvest of Sorrow, writes that upon arrival the peasants had to build their own shelter. Three million died in the early stages of this "resettlement" process, mostly children.
Stalin then pressed ahead with the collectivization of agriculture. He succeeded in ruining it and killing tens of thousands of peasants who resisted in the process. Then he began his assault on the Ukraine and surrounding areas.
The Ukrainians, many of them kulaks, had been a problem for the Soviets from the beginning. In the free elections of 1917, they voted overwhelmingly against the Bolsheviks. They had strong nationalistic yearnings, their own flourishing culture, and they resisted collectivization.
But Stalin had a way to deal with them. In 1932-33 he engineered a genocidal famine. His method was simple. In July of 1932 he requisitioned 6.6 million tons of grain from the peasants of the Ukraine. It was more than they could possibly produce. But Stalin forced them to deliver what they did have and sent "brigades" with crowbars to search the peasants' houses to make sure they were not holding out. If they found grain, they shot the peasant who hoarded it or sent him to a labor camp.
Stalin sealed the border between Russia and the Ukraine and famine set in. Between 1932-33, 7 million people died of hunger, 6 million of them Ukrainians.
We've already referred to this. Solzhenitsyn talked about this forced starvation of a people by their Satanic overlords. It is a well-known fact. It is basically ignored. Now will you believe that the U.S.S.R. is the "evil empire"!
Another process which Solzhenitsyn described is the present-day policy of the removing of the remaining farmers from lands they are permitted to farm on their own. (A few were allowed to return to self-determination after collectivization because the collectives weren't meeting their quotas!) Those farmers who still exercise private control over their plots, "for the glory of the Motherland," use about 2 percent of the nation's farmland. But they produce 30 percent of the nation's milk, eggs, and vegetables and about 60 percent of its potatoes, berries, and fruit. (The collective farms simply can't compete with free enterprise!)
Yet these farmers are being taken from their land, put into concrete industrial buildings, and told what part of the land they can work. Solzhenitsyn said they started in 1975 and should be finished within fifteen years. By 1990 there should be no Soviet farmers left on their own land.
The conclusion of the matter is the third type of society described in quatrain III.95: "Through gifts and tongue another more attractive." The key to deciphering this line lies in the words "through gifts" of the Holy Spirit and "tongues" of angels. In other words, this line describes a pristine and primitive form of communism - the Community ... of the Holy Spirit.
This society supersedes the first two and is a return to Eden. It is built on the ideals of the earliest golden ages and those to come. Its foundation is the God flame of its members who endow every aspect of its life with the light, love and presence of the Trinity.
Here the Universal Christ is the basis of an individualism where members of society are free to declare: "I am my brother's keeper" and to fulfill it voluntarily, creatively in a world climate of spiritual freedom. This spiritual freedom is reflected in an abundant life based on the free sharing of the fruits of one's labor - as Christ said, "Freely ye have received, freely give."
The Spirit of this Community is abroad in the hearts of the people today and it will take hold and flourish after coming earth changes - long after Soviet Communism passes away - as it surely will. For at Chernobyl, Wormwood and his karma fell where he created it.
Yes, Chernobyl - Star of Wormwood, Star of Soviet Destiny, How art thou, so great a star, fallen from heaven burning, burning like a ball of fire!40
This is the end of Book Two of Saint Germain On Prophecy.
All of you and the members of this Community worldwide are the Spirit of that Community and the Masters have great hope for us and faith in us. I can say this, speaking as the voice of my father, Mark Prophet: I pledge myself to the Coming Revolution in Higher Consciousness and the battle of Armageddon.
My fellow Community members, will you join me?
["Yes!" 56-sec. standing ovation]
Thank you all for being here so that I could deliver that message.
"The Summit Lighthouse Sheds its Radiance O'er All the Wroldto Manifest as Pearls of Wisdom"
The delivery by the Messengers' son, Sean C. Prophet, of his first sermon on New Year's Day, January 1, 1987, at the Royal Teton Ranch, was edited for print as this week's Pearl.