Satan’s final furious effort to destroy the church

“And when the thousand years are finished, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall come forth to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the war: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up over the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where are also the beast and the false prophet; and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Revelation 20:7-10).

Many questionable theories have been built upon the Gog and Magog of John’s vision. Some say the scene points to a great physical battle to be fought in Palestine at some future date with Russia, the United States, and other nations participating. Unfortunately for the theory, God through Ezekiel explains who the Gog and Magog are. “Thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Art thou he of whom I spake in old time by my servants the prophets of Israel, that prophesied in those days for many years that I would bring thee against them?” (38:17). God said that He had spoken of Gog’s coming, but no prophet ever named Gog or Magog. Yet the prophets foretold over and over of the heathen enemies who would come against Israel and who would be defeated and destroyed by His hand. Therefore we conclude that Gog of the land of Magog symbolized all the heathen enemies of God’s people from the time of the prophets to the Roman Empire, all of who sought to thwart His purpose and to destroy His king. The seer now prophesies that toward the end of time there would be a horde gathered and led by Satan in a final furious effort to destroy the church.

Far from a physical conflict, this battle will be a moral and spiritual one. Satan’s Gog and Magog symbolize such forces and agencies as atheism, humanism, communism, materialism, astrology, and all manner of false and perverted religions. Gog and Magog also represent such forces as anarchy (rebellion against all principles and standards of truth); corruption in government and business; immorality with its decay of home, lack of natural affection and devotion to children; sodomy; alcoholism; and total abandonment to a base and sordid life of the flesh. Satan will use the anti-God, immoral standards and practices that he is using today, but probably to a more intense and flagrant degree. Gog and Magog do not gather around a conference table and offer themselves to the devil in a nefarious pact; but being deceived, they are drawn to him as were the kings of old.

Homer Hailey, The Book of Revelation: An Introduction and Commentary (pp. 396-7)

Whether charity is caused in us by infusion?

The Apostle says (Romans 5:5): “The charity of God is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, Who is given to us.”

As stated above (II-II:23:1), charity is a friendship of man for God, founded upon the fellowship of everlasting happiness. Now this fellowship is in respect, not of natural, but of gratuitous gifts, for, according to Romans 6:23, “the grace of God is life everlasting”: wherefore charity itself surpasses our natural facilities. Now that which surpasses the faculty of nature, cannot be natural or acquired by the natural powers, since a natural effect does not transcend its cause.

Therefore charity can be in us neither naturally, nor through acquisition by the natural powers, but by the infusion of the Holy Ghost, Who is the love of the Father and the Son, and the participation of Whom in us is created charity, as stated above (II-II:23:2).

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (II-II Question 24, Article 2)

The daunting level of responsibility that freedom imposes

Image: Shelby Steele

The greatest black problem in America today is freedom. All underdeveloped, formerly oppressed groups first experience new freedom as a shock and a humiliation because freedom shows them their underdevelopment and their inability to compete as equals. Freedom seems to confirm all the ugly stereotypes about the group—especially the charge of inferiority—and yet the group no longer has the excuse of oppression. Without oppression—and it must be acknowledged that blacks are no longer oppressed in America—the group itself becomes automatically responsible for its inferiority and non-competitiveness. So freedom not only comes as a humiliation but also as an overwhelming burden of responsibility. Thus, inevitably, there is a retreat from freedom. No group that has been oppressed to the point of inferiority is going to face the realities of new freedom without flinching. Almost always, oppressed groups enter freedom by denying that they are in fact free, this is a way of avoiding the daunting level of responsibility that freedom imposes.

Shelby Steele, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (pp. 67-8)