I was initially surprised to discover that David Herbert Lawrence had written a book on Revelation. It was his last serious work, and it was only published posthumously. He wrote it after writing a review and a forward for two different books by other men about Revelation.

I became less surprised as I read the first chapter of this work. I read a couple of his books in my youth, and, while the writing was certainly good, the topics and explorations were ultimately pretty boring. His books were very shocking in his time in England, but by 1970’s America they were no longer shocking; and his reliance on the shock value took a lot away from their overall value in my opinion: there is so much more about human relationships to plum than he seemed to have time for.  Reading a bit about his life and his opinions, it becomes pretty clear that he thought very highly of mankind in general, and himself in particular. Idolatry would not be too strong a word.

But what was he to do with his very strong Christian upbringing? He had been castigating his upbringing in his fiction, but as his health failed, he could not help but think about the hereafter. Writing the review of Dr. John Oman’s book, and then the forward for Frederick Carter’s book about a decade before his death, may have brought some of those thoughts to the forefront of his mind. As we will see, though, even when he turned his mind to Revelation, he had great difficulty looking beyond himself.

As an aside, I attempted to find the two books by Oman and Carter: I could find no free pdfs, but Amazon had the book by Dr. Oman and a later version of Mr. Carter’s book. I ordered Dr. Oman’s book; from what I’ve read about Dr. Oman I think we will find that his total focus is on love and grace, but his book looks fairly serious. Mr. Carter is a different matter. The original book that had the introduction by D. H. Lawrence was called: THE DRAGON OF THE APOCALYPSE. I’ve been unable to find that title. The one available is called SYMBOLS OF REVELATION, but it turns out to be more about astrology and the zodiac than about Revelation. I think I can do without Mr. Carter’s book.

Here’s the beginning of the quote from D. H. Lawrence:

“Apocalypse means simply Revelation, though there is nothing simple about this one, since men have puzzled their brains for nearly two thousand years to find out what, exactly, is revealed in all its orgy of mystification. On the whole, the modern mind dislikes mystification, and of all the books in the Bible, it finds Revelation perhaps the least attractive.”

I think he is speaking for himself here. Personally, my mind likes a mystery, which is a big reason for my attraction to Revelation. I agree that there are many people who don’t like mysteries or complexities, but certainly not everyone.

On with the quote:

“That is my own first feeling about it. From earliest years right into manhood, like any other nonconformist child I had the Bible poured every day into my helpless consciousness, till there came almost a saturation point. Long before one could think or even vaguely understand, this Bible language, these ‘portions’ of the Bible were douched over the mind and consciousness, till they became soaked in, they became an influence which affected all the processes of emotion and thought. So that today, although I have ‘forgotten’ my Bible, I need only begin to read a chapter to realize that I ‘know’ it with an almost nauseating fixity. And I must confess, my first reaction is one of dislike, repulsion, and even resentment. My very instincts resent the Bible.”

Mr. Lawrence uses the phrase “nonconformist child” as if either all children are naturally ‘nonconformists’, or like he was one of a type of ‘nonconformist’ child…depending on how you accent the line. However, neither interpretation is likely true. He was assuming a certain knowledge here on the part of his readers. He attended church with his mother in a Nonconformist Congregationalist Church. The Nonconformist Churches were Protestant Churches that did not ‘conform’ to the leadership and beliefs of the established Church of England. He was a Nonconformist child. This bit of subterfuge leads me to wonder if he wasn’t a believer as a child, and later felt duped or stupid for being so. But maybe I’m reading too much into it.

Unfortunately for Mr. Lawrence, he does not seemed to have had much interest in the spiritual at all. So far, what I’ve read of him is totally focused on the physical world, and that focus does not take one to God usually. But let’s continue:

“The reason is now fairly plain to me. Not only was the Bible, in portions, poured into the childish consciousness day in, day out, year in, year out, willy nilly, whether the consciousness could assimilate it or not, but also it was day in, day out, year in, year out expounded, dogmatically, and always morally expounded, whether it was in day-school or Sunday School, at home or in Band of Hope or Christian Endeavor. The interpretation was always the same, whether it was a Doctor of Divinity in the pulpit, or the big blacksmith who was my Sunday School teacher. Not only was the Bible verbally trodden into the consciousness, like innumerable foot-prints treading a surface hard, but the foot-prints were always mechanically alike, the interpretation was fixed, so that all real interest was lost.”

This was a young man with a very fertile imagination. The rigidity that he complains of would have been like a prison for him. But again, his thoughts did not run to the spiritual: perhaps because there was little of a spiritual nature in the religion of his youth. Perhaps all he was able to relate to in the religious teachings he received were the worldly references; perhaps there were only worldly references. I feel that I should also say that if the teachings had varied, rather than all being the same, I can’t help but believe that he would have complained of inconsistency.

Back to the quote: 

“The process defeats its own ends. While the Jewish poetry penetrates the emotions and the imagination, and the Jewish morality penetrates the instincts, the mind becomes stubborn, resistant, and at last repudiates the whole Bible authority, and turns with a kind of repugnance away from the Bible altogether. And this is the condition of many men of my generation.”

With such a wonderful description, what turns the mind “stubborn” and “resistant”? It seems to me that an imaginative boy, listening to the emotional poetry and penetrating morality, that he could experience flights of fancy that no one need know about. Is it possible that he did have those flights of fancy but was punished when he revealed them? It’s possible I guess.

On with the quote:

“Now a book lives as long as it is unfathomed. Once it is fathomed, it dies at once. It is an amazing thing, how utterly different a book will be, if I read it again after five years. Some books gain immensely, they are a new thing. They are so astonishingly different, they make a man question his own identity. Again, other books lose immensely. I read War and Peace once more, and was amazed to find how little it moved me, I was almost aghast to think of the raptures I had once felt, and now felt no more.”

This is very true, yet he neglects to fathom why it is so: we return to a book a different person than the one who read it years earlier. It’s telling that he gives War and Peace as an example. Tolstoy was one of my all time favorite authors in my youth. War and Peace is a rip-roaring yarn, including war, love, relationships, and many other aspects of life that Mr. Lawrence obviously related to as a young person. But that’s not what I loved about it: I loved the spirituality of it. Pierre, the main character, goes through pages and pages of introspection and spiritual thought. And it turns out that War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and Resurrection are a trilogy of spiritual thought, with each book having a young man who thinks deeply, with the conclusion being in Resurrection that a person can only influence those around him (as in the influence of emulating Christ). Tolstoy’s ideas reached much further with his books than Pierre, Konstantin, or Dmitri were able to reach as characters; and today, we have a greater reach without having to be great novelists.

But of course, Mr. Lawrence is going to continue with this idea:

“So it is. Once a book is fathomed, once it is known, and its meaning is fixed or established, it is dead. A book only lives while it has power to move us, and move us differently; so long as we find it different every time we read it. Owing to the flood of shallow books which really are exhausted in one reading, the modern mind tends to think every book is the same, finished in one reading. But it is not so. And gradually the modern mind will realize it again. The real joy of a book lies in reading it over and over again, and always, finding it different, coming upon another meaning, another level of meaning. It is, as usual, a question of values: we are so overwhelmed with quantities of books, that we hardly realize any more that a book can be valuable, valuable like a jewel, or a lovely picture, into which you can look deeper and deeper and get a more profound experience every time. It is far, far better to read one book six times, at intervals, than to read six several books. Because if a certain book can call you to read it six times, it will be a deeper and deeper experience each time, and will enrich the whole soul, emotional and mental. Whereas six books read once only are merely an accumulation of superficial interest, the burdensome accumulation of modern days, quantity without real value.”

This is a lovely paragraph. Remember that I said that we, ourselves, are different when we return to a book? That is still valid here.  And, what Mr. Lawrence either left out or didn’t know, is that a born-again Christian has the Holy Spirit residing within, and that Spirit brings to light things we are reading that we never saw before. This is especially true when reading the Bible, but can also be true of inspired commentary or devotional material. 

I know this sounds weird if you haven’t experienced it; many simply refer to the Spirit as ‘that still small voice.’ 

Mr. Lawerence goes on:

“We shall now see the reading public dividing again into two groups: the vast mass, who read for amusement and for momentary interest, and the small minority, who only want the books that have value to themselves, books which yield experience, and still deeper experience.”

This kind of ruins the paragraph before. Mr. Lawrence is looking to separate himself from “the vast mass,” without realizing that many people, then and now, reread favorite books. 

Now we get to his views on the Bible:

“The Bible is a book that has been temporarily killed for us, or for some of us, by having its meaning arbitrarily fixed. We know it so thoroughly, in its superficial or popular meaning, that it is dead, it gives us nothing any more. Worse still, by old habit amounting almost to instinct, it imposes on us a whole state of feeling which is now repugnant to us. We detest the ‘chapel’ and the Sunday School feeling which the Bible must necessarily impose on us. We want to get rid of all that vulgarity—for vulgarity it is.”

As I scanned ahead, I noticed that in a later chapter he admits to some re-enlivening of the Bible for him when he discovered that there were other translations besides the King James. But obviously, that didn’t keep him from writing this horrible paragraph. My impression is that he liked his point of view, it got him the attention he seemed to crave, and nothing was going to change his mind. 

Finally something regarding Revelation:

“Perhaps the most detestable of all these books of the Bible, taken superficially, is Revelation. By the time I was ten, I am sure I had heard, and read, that book ten times over, even without knowing or taking real heed. And without ever knowing or thinking about it, I am sure it always roused in me a real dislike. Without realizing it, I must, from earliest childhood have detested the pie-pie, mouthing, solemn, portentous, loud way in which everybody read the Bible, whether it was parsons or teachers or ordinary persons. I dislike the ‘parson’ voice through and through my bones. And this voice, I remember, was always at its worst when mouthing out some portion of Revelation. Even the phrases that still fascinate me I cannot recall without shuddering, because I can still hear the portentous declamation of a nonconformist clergyman: ‘And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon it was called’—there my memory suddenly stops, deliberately blotting out the next words: ‘Faithful and True’. I hated, even as a child, allegory: people having the names of mere qualities, like this somebody on a white horse, called ‘Faithful and True’. In the same way I could never read Pilgrim’s Progress. When as a small boy I learnt from Euclid that: ‘The whole is greater than the part’, I immediately knew that that solved the problem of allegory for me. A man is more than a Christian, a rider on a white horse must be more than mere Faithfulness and Truth, and when people are merely personifications of qualities they cease to be people for me. Though as a young man I almost loved Spenser and his Faerie Queen, I had to gulp at his allegory.

“But the Apocalypse is, and always was from earliest childhood, to me antipathetic. In the first place its splendiferous imagery is distasteful because of its complete unnaturalness. ‘And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne and round about the throne were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. 

“’And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle…’ 

“A passage like that irritated and annoyed my boyish mind because of its pompous unnaturalness. If it is imagery, it is imagery which cannot be imagined: for how can four beasts be ‘full of eyes before and behind’, and how can they be ‘in the midst of the throne and round about the throne’? They can’t be somewhere and somewhere else at the same time. But that is how the Apocalypse is…”

This is still not really much about Revelation, it has pretty much everything to do with Mr. Lawrence and his feelings. I can agree that there definitely are/have been some very pompous preachers who can be very difficult to listen to; and that if I were trapped as a child with one of them, I might have a similar reaction. But it’s a broad brush that paints all preachers in that way, and we are reading the writing of an adult here, who, upon growing up could have explored his world a bit more. Yes, he traveled extensively, but apparently he always brought himself along: the person who liked his point of view.

Here’s a bit from the next chapter:

“It is very nice, if you are poor and not humble—and the poor may be obsequious, but they are almost never truly humble, in the Christian sense—to bring your grand enemies down to utter destruction and discomfiture, while you yourself rise up to grandeur. And nowhere does this happen so splendiferously as in Revelation. The great enemy in the eyes of Jesus was the Pharisee, harping on the letter of the law. But the Pharisee is too remote and subtle for the collier and the factory-worker. The Salvation Army at the street corner rarely raves about Pharisees. It raves about the Blood of the Lamb, and Babylon, Sin, and Sinners, the great harlot, and angels that cry Woe, Woe, Woe! and Vials that pour out horrible plagues. And above-all, about being Saved, and sitting on the Throne with the Lamb, and reigning in Glory, and having Everlasting Life, and living in a grand city made of jasper, with gates of pearl: a city that ‘had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it’. If you listen to the Salvation Army you will hear that they are going to be very grand, very grand indeed, once they get to heaven. Then they’ll show you what’s what. Then you’ll be put in your place, you superior person, you Babylon: down in hell and in brimstone.”

Whoa. He hates Christians too. First of all, the poor are not anymore humble than the rich or middle class. Being poor does not make one automatically humble, as Mr. Lawrence points out: in the Christian sense. It may not even make one grateful in the Christian sense. But, Jesus made the point that it’s easier to enter heaven if you are not rich…i.e. too comfortable. The poor often have no one but Christ to turn to, and if that’s the only help you have, you will humble yourself to receive it.

As for the humble being first and the grand being last, this is not a Revelation concept…it’s from the Gospel, that he doesn’t appear to remember. Revelation is not talking about the rich, the poor, the Pharisees or the factory workers. It is talking about the Wrath of God. And those suffering the Wrath of God are those who refuse God…everyone who refuses Him, no matter what station of life he or she is in during that time.

Regarding the Pharisees, Jesus was not against them for “harping on the letter of the law”, He would have actually appreciated that. The Pharisees were, among other things, making up their own rules and harping on those, instead of the law.

And, as for the Salvation Army, especially in the late 1920’s and into the 30’s, it was one of very few social safety nets. The people who lost everything during that time were actually pretty humbled and needed some words of hope; Mr. Lawrence totally missed the fact that all of that splendor was available for him, and Babylon, as well. I am not a fan of using Revelation as scare tactics to get someone to accept Christ. Yet, the fear of the Lord includes the fact that He can do what He wills in our lives, and eventually, those that don’t turn around, are going to have to deal with the Tribulation as outlined in Revelation.

A bit more bile, and then an interesting few paragraphs about his childhood in general:

“This is entirely the tone of Revelation. What we realize when we have read the precious book a few times is that John the Divine had, on the face of it, a grandiose scheme for wiping out and annihilating everybody who wasn’t of the elect, the chosen people, in short, and of climbing up himself right on to the throne of God. [I don’t need to repeat what I said a few paragraphs ago about what Revelation is about. The tone is decidedly not ‘we win, you lose!’ ] With nonconformity, the chapel people took over to themselves the Jewish idea of the chosen people. They were ’it’, the elect, or the ’saved’. And they took over the Jewish idea of ultimate triumph and reign of the chosen people [known as replacement theology]. From being bottom dogs they were going to be top dogs: in Heaven. If not sitting actually on the throne, they were going to sit in the lap of the enthroned Lamb. It is doctrine you can hear any night from the Salvation Army or in any Bethel or Pentecost Chapel. If it is not Jesus, it is John. If it is not Gospel, it is Revelation. It is popular religion, as distinct from thoughtful religion.

“Or at least, it was popular religion when I was a boy. And I remember, as a child, I used to wonder over the curious sense of self-glory which one felt in the uneducated leaders, the men especially of the Primitive Methodist Chapels. They were not on the whole pious or mealymouthed or objectionable, these colliers who spoke heavy dialect and ran the ‘Pentecost’. They certainly were not humble or apologetic. No, they came in from the pit and sat down to their dinners with a bang, and their wives and daughters ran to wait on them quite cheerfully, and their sons obeyed them without overmuch resentment. The home was rough yet not unpleasant, and there was an odd sense of wild mystery or power about, as if the chapel men really had some dispensation of rude power from above. Not love, but a rough and rather wild, somewhat ‘special’ sense of power. They were so sure, and as a rule their wives were quite humble to them. They ran a chapel, so they could run their household. I used to wonder over it, and rather enjoy it. But even I thought it rather ‘common’. My mother, who was Congregationalist, never set foot in a Primitive Methodist chapel in her life, I don’t suppose. And she was certainly not prepared to be humble to her husband. If he’d been a real cheeky chapel man, she would no doubt have been much meeker with him. Cheek, that was the outstanding quality of chapel men. But a special kind of cheek, authorized from above, as it were. And I know now, a good deal of this special kind of religious cheek was backed up by the Apocalypse. 

“It was not till many years had gone by, and I had read something of comparative religion and the history of religion, that I realized what a strange book it was that had inspired the colliers on the black Tuesday nights in Pentecost or Beauvale Chapel to such a queer sense of special authority and of religious cheek. Strange marvelous black nights of the north Midlands, with the gaslight hissing in the chapel, and the roaring of the strong-voiced colliers. Popular religion: a religion of self-glorification and power, forever! and of darkness. No wailing ‘Lead kindly Light’! about it.”

What’s really fascinating in all this, is that, again, Mr. Lawrence did not attend the Primitive Methodist chapels that he describes so vividly. His mother had ‘married beneath her’ due to her family’s financial downturn; her family were tradesmen and very middle class, her husband was a coal miner from a coal mining family. She was very frustrated and trained her children to dislike their father and look down on his work and the town they grew up in. She was a Congregationalist.

Mr. Lawrence grew up in Nottingham Shire (county) and attended the Eastwood Congregational Chapel with his family – a ‘Nonconformist’ chapel. Nottingham has this whole website of church documents, including a mass of D. H. Lawrence specific stuff. Here’s a quote from the biography listed in that mass of paperwork:

“Although he was training to work as a teacher, his writing, reading and thinking became increasingly important to him. He started to rebel against chapel; his friends were astonished one night in 1908 when, walking home to the Haggs with the Chambers family, he launched into a savage denunciation of the minister, the Reverend Robert Reid (1865-1955). Only the previous year, he had engaged in a scholarly dispute with Reid over contemporary objections to Christianity (Letters I: 36-7, 39-41), and Reid had chosen to deliver a series of sermons in the Eastwood Congregational Chapel specifically aimed at Lawrence and his increasingly free-thinking friends. Lawrence had been reading Schopenhauer, Haeckel and William James since before going to college, but now moved decisively against Christianity, and eventually (under the influence of one of his teachers at College) declared himself to be a Pragmatist of the William James sort: agnostic, not atheist.”

So, he was just starting to be a ‘free-thinker’ the year before going to college at Nottingham University, and, like today, came home with a whole new point of view…including a revision of his past. Evidence of this is pretty explicit in his line in the first paragraph on Revelation: “And without ever knowing or thinking about it, I am sure it always roused in me a real dislike. Without realizing it, I must, from earliest childhood have detested the…way in which everybody read the Bible [aloud]” He’s sure, but he didn’t really know, realize, or think about it…until college.

Lest you think that even Congregational churches of the late 19th and early 20th century might have been ‘fire and brimstone’ in nature, here are some quotes about what they were like from various sources:

“Congregational churches shared fully in the civil life and prosperity of the Victorian era. Many new buildings were erected, often in ambitious Gothic style. The churches’ association with the Liberal Party was greatly strengthened, and the restrictions against Dissenters were steadily removed. Thriving churches in new suburbs developed into hives of social, philanthropic, and educational activity, and their ministers deeply influenced public life. Although the picture of the philistine Dissenters drawn by the poet and critic Matthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy (1869) contains a measure of truth, it underestimates the zeal for self-improvement and the desire for a richer life that existed in Victorian Congregationalism.

“The Liberal victory of 1906 represented the peak of the social and political influence of Congregationalism. After that, Congregational churches shared in the institutional decline of most British churches, but they continued to show theological and cultural vitality.” [from britannica.com/topic/Congregationalism]

“At the end of the 19th century, the dissenters, or Non-Conformists were renamed the Free Churches. They included the XVIIth century dissenters (the Congregationalists – also called the Independent Church – the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Quakers), and the 18th century dissenters (the Methodists).

“In 1828, the Act which enabled the Non-Conformists to stand for Parliament was the beginning of a long struggle for equality with the Anglicans (for example, they were only allowed to go to university in 1871).

“The number of Non-Conformists increased gradually throughout the century and they built many chapels. The Congregationalists and Baptists doubled their numbers, but the Presbyterians lost much of their popularity and many became Unitarians, that is to say, they rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Due to an internal conflict, the Methodists lost many of their number around 1840, but regained them later.

“The first congress to assemble all the Free Churches together was held in 1892; in 1896 this became the Council of Evangelical Churches, which existed to further a better collaboration between its various members.” [from https://museeprotestant.org/en/notice/protestantism-in-england-in-the-xixth-century/ ]

“Throughout their history, Congregationalists have shared the beliefs and practices of the more liberal mainline Evangelical Protestant churches of the English-speaking world. The English historian Bernard Manning once described their position as decentralized Calvinism, in contrast to the centralized Calvinism of Presbyterians. That description contains much truth about their doctrines and outlook through the early 19th century, but it underestimates the Congregational emphasis on the free movement of the Spirit, which links the Congregationalists with the Quakers and partly explains their reluctance to give binding authority to creedal statements. They have not been slow to produce declarations of faith, however. In addition to the Savoy Declaration, the Cambridge Platform, and the Kansas City Creed, lengthy statements have also been made both by the United Church of Christ and by the English Congregationalists. No great authority is claimed for any of these, and in recent generations most Congregationalists have regarded the primitive confession, “Jesus is Lord,” as a sufficient basis for membership.

“Similarly, Congregationalists have always stressed the importance of freedom. Even in the days of Cromwell, they were tolerant by the standards of the time. They contributed greatly in the 18th century to the establishment of the rights of minorities in England through the activities of the Protestant Dissenting deputies, who had the right of direct access to the monarch. Both in England and in America, the long-faced and repressive Puritan of tradition owes as much to the caricatures of opponents as to actual fact.

“Practices: Congregationalism has always considered preaching important, because the Word of God as declared in Scripture is regarded as constitutive of the church. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are considered to be the only sacraments instituted by Christ. Infants are baptized, normally by sprinkling. The Lord’s Supper is normally celebrated once or twice a month and has not always been given a central place in the Congregationalist service, often following a preaching service after a brief interval during which many of the congregation leave. In recent times, the unity of sermon and sacrament as parts of the same service has been emphasized much more strongly. Traditionally, public prayer is extempore, but from the 20th century service books and set forms have increasingly been used. Since the 18th century and the work of the great Congregationalist hymn writer Isaac Watts, hymns have featured prominently in Congregational worship…Congregationalists do not see the need to make the sign of the cross or to invoke the assistance of saints; Jesus Christ, they believe, is their only mediator.” [from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Congregationalism/Teachings ]

“Many leaders of the new non-conformist movement came from relatively humble origins. They were not the sons of aristocratic families, who were populating the Anglican clergy of the same era. They were the sons of traders, from unfashionable towns in the Midlands or North of England, or from Scotland or Wales. But these were the very areas of life that were prospering under non-conformity and, in doing so, were driving the industrial revolution, which changed the face of Britain completely in the 19th century, and was soon exported throughout the world.” [from https://conglib.ac.uk/the-reformation-and-non-conformity/ ]

I have real trouble picturing Mr. Lawrence’s Non-conformist Congregationalist pastor ‘douching’ the Bible on young Bert’s head (his nickname was ‘Bert’). Even the “day in, day out, year in, year out” dogma he complains about so bitterly is hard to imagine. Congregationalism has never expounded rigid dogma, to the point that today they will not expound any creed at all.

One more paragraph:

“The longer one lives, the more one realizes that there are two kinds of Christianity, the one focussed on Jesus and the Command: Love one another!—and the other focussed, not on Paul or Peter or John the Beloved, but on the Apocalypse. There is the Christianity of tenderness. But as far as I can see, it is utterly pushed aside by the Christianity of self-glorification: the self-glorification of the humble.”   [from APOCALYPSE AND THE WRITINGS ON REVELATION, by D. H. Lawrence, 1931]

This last paragraph pretty well sums up his opinion. There is his kind of Christianity, and everyone else’s. His kind of Christianity is focused just on love, and everyone else is focused on fear and self-glorification. We are admonished in the Bible not to judge others; but we are also admonished to be discerning. I think Mr. Lawrence would agree with my discernment that he was a ‘free-thinking’ leftist. I put ‘free-thinking’ in quotes because it does not describe someone who is free in their thinking, it actually describes an ideologue…someone who conforms blindly to a particular ideology. A person who does this conforms not only his thinking about his present and future to the ideology, but conforms his past as well; he can see no other point of view. 

He has basically accused Christians of being ideologues, while missing the point that he was one himself.  There are Christians who cannot discuss their faith rationally and refuse to even consider other points of views, and of them I could agree to the appellation of ‘ideologue.’ But many, if not most, Christians are usually ready and willing to discuss their beliefs and consider the beliefs of others…and just because they will not turn from their beliefs readily doesn’t make them ideologues.

A lot of the troubles that we have today stem from the time of D.H. Lawrence. Marxism was just starting to get a foothold in the world. Mr. Lawrence was too self-centered to actually be a communist: he owned a ranch in New Mexico that functioned as a commune for 2 years…and he spent 11 interrupted months there in total. Obviously, communal living was difficult for him, never mind actual communism. But, as a leftist, he is still a favorite of the current tribe.

That’s more than enough today. I think this is my longest post, but not quite long enough to make it 2 parts.  Back to Revelation next time.