The Second Christendom

Returning From Babylon: Rebuilding Jerusalem

We have completed a second reading of Anthony Esolen's Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture [Washington DC: Regnery Publishing, 2017].  Doubtless we will end up perusing it again.  

It is somewhat distracting that the title a pre-occupation with American culture and its reconstruction.  Most of the discussion in the book arises from recent cultural history in the US, as well as commentary upon the present discontent.  Yet we venture to say that most Christians scattered throughout the West--the UK, Europe, Australia and NZ--will immediately identify with the deeper context.  The focus and intent is to recover and rebuild Christendom--or be engaged in building the Second Christendom.

For that reason we wish Out of the Ashes would enjoy a broad, sustained international readership.  In the hope that we will help stimulate an even wider group of readers, we endeavour to entice folk by pointing them to a couple of paragraphs towards the end of the book.

Refining Fire

Exiles Departing an Unbelieving Church

We have recently recommenced reading the book of Ezekiel--this time, in large chunks at a time, rather than chapter by chapter.  Ezekiel was an exile, having been "removed" from Judah to Babylon in one of the early Babylonian actions against Judah and Jerusalem.  Other exiles would follow, ending up in the final siege and destruction of the city, and the terrible slaughter of the year 586BC. 

It was in captivity that Ezekiel was called by God to be His prophet to the exiles, even as Jeremiah was called to be God's prophet to Judah.  Jeremiah has been called the "weeping prophet" because of his heart-wrenching lamentations, mourning, and weeping over the stubborn Israelites and their refusal to listen to Jeremiah's warning of imminent destruction.  If Jeremiah was the weeping prophet, Ezekiel was the suffering prophet, called by God to act out before the exiles Judah's heard-hearted refusal to listen to God, and the inevitable consequences that followed.

The first twenty-four chapters of Ezekiel document Israel's centuries of unfaithfulness and unbelief.  The exiles, watching from afar, hoping for some relief, hated Ezekiel and his message of condemnation and threat--which is to say, they hated God.  The nadir of Ezekiel's suffering comes when the Lord tells him that He is about to take his wife, but that he must not mourn for her.