In the future it will be wise to speak…well, with wisdom, in what is posted initially in a public setting. It seems bots are often only interested in certain words and phrases at the start of things. So my first paragraph might seem somewhat disconnected. You’ll get the hang of it.

So Alaric was a Visigoth leader who led his forces into Rome on August 24, AD 410. He did not have to do much in the way of fighting: internal traitors had been working for years to bring Rome down, and they finally succeeded in so doing (a lesson to be learned, though, in our case, a bit too late). His soldiers did a little looting, a little burning, but in general treated the citizens with mercy, before leaving the city.

The empire-wide impact of the fall of the Eternal City, though it was not badly damaged, cannot be underestimated. Augustine wrote his great work, The City of God, in response to the shattering of the mindset of the citizens of the Empire. They had reason to be concerned, as the death and destruction that would come over the next four to five centuries were remarkable.

The events of just a few days had, over the next centuries, huge impact on the lives of millions. History works that way. Movements intersect, amplify, and create huge rifts in the fabric of culture. Decay that had not been clearly seen all of a sudden brings the collapse of what had seemed stable and enduring.

We are a communicating culture. We have become accustomed to free speech—RAPID free speech, in fact. No generation before us has had this level of privilege. To be read by large numbers of people only a few generations ago would have required years of work and preparation. You had to prove your worth, earn your place. And of course, the farther back we go in history, the fewer and fewer people we “hear” from.

So it is a shock for most of us to all of a sudden (despite years of warnings by the likes of Francis Schaeffer) run headlong into the face of totalitarianism. Real, I have the power, I will silence you, I will force you to think as I tell you to think, totalitarianism. We have all lived in the fantasy that “that can’t happen here.” I can, and it has. Over the next few weeks we will see a breath-taking display of just how deep hatred of God’s ways, God’s law, of God’s very name, goes in the heart of the Culture of Death.

As we seek to hold forth the bright light of the Gospel in the midst of this deep darkness, we will no longer be able to use many of our normal means of communication, teaching, exhortation and encouragement. We hope that our blog, and this “micro blog,” will be some of the last bastions.

Please note the little RSS symbol up at the top of the column. It has been a long time since most of us have used RSS feeds, but as Big Tech enforces its totalitarian authority over us all, we will need to find other means of communication. RSS readers are easily obtainable and will help you to collate the feeds you wish to follow and benefit from.

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