AW W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc. Home Page   Volume  What is New

 

CHAPTER 8

 

IS IT FAREWELL TO FREEDOM IN THE UKRAINE ?

OR EVEN NON WELCOME TO INCREASED BARBARITY ?

and WHAT IS TO BE DONE

IN THE LANDS OF THE SOIL  AND OF THE SOUL!

News 469

See also on these manoeuvres and principles,

Volume 6, Ch. 3 in this sub-set.

 

The Australian March 27, 2014.

At this date in The Australian, there was found a publication of an article from The Times. It includes the concept that the G 7 now acting as estranged from Russia, have experienced a jolt towards increased unity between Europe and the USA, in response. The view is presented that putting "an end to Putinism is now the West's defining mission." This requires attention. The alienation and the alien features, one to the other, are seen to cohere. What works beyond ?

 

March 27, 2014

Putin, Crimea, the Ukraine ... What is going on here ? is this style of action biblically predicted? What is the nature of this multi-pressure point strategy of Mr Putin ? This Chapter reviews, as to natural rights, unnatural wrongs, perspective and developments.

In review, there are questions, that require considered answers: Putin, Crimea, the Ukraine ... What is going on here ? is this style of action biblically predicted? What is the nature of this multi-pressure point strategy of Mr Putin ? What forces, principles, fiascos, strutting, deviousness and dissembling is involved ? How do they relate to biblical principles ? This and more, Chapter 8 reviews, as to natural rights, unnatural wrongs, perspective and developments.

 

THE WRATH AND FROTH OF THE NATIONS

For Seasons and Centuries, Ukraine's area was in general not Russia's affair. It appears that in the 14th to the 17th century, it was ruled by three other powers. After the partition of Poland, it was ruled by Tsarist Russia and Hapsburg Austria. At a time when the Russian revolution moved,  it was internationally recognised as a Republic,  but in 1922 the land became a founding republic of the USSR, being its second largest unit. 

Hostile to the Ukrainian culture and language, the USSR repressed many of its leading artists and scholars, and then caused the death of millions by starvation in 1932-1933. Following the invasion of Poland, more territories  were added to the Ukraine, which fought against both Nazi and USSR totalitarian insurgencies. Krushchev added the Crimea to it in 1954, and It became independent again when the USSR was dissolved in 1991.

Thus Ukraine is not a Russian affair alone, and for long not at all. It has been given additions  from Poland and Crimea, the latter at Russian instance, and has history linked to Poland and Austria in particular, but not alone, suffered barbarism from the USSR, mass murder, extensive repression and  forced subjection and subjugation. Many leaders were shot, adding to the methods of extermination, psychological, sociological, linguistic, economic and torturous, as in starvation, millions slowly taught the triumph of force, till Russia would experience its own repayment at the hand of Nazi Germany, which later had its own accounts.

Meanwhile, following Word War II, the USSR gained in Ukraine considerable additions, not part of the land, but new areas to augment it. It is not what it was.

Hence it is by no means a Russian territory, and like many another land, has a long and varied history with various rulers, none more exterminative than the USSR, arguably the largest death machine, as it added lands from other countries to this, its prey.

It may then, prima facie, seem natural for Russia to take it over once again, since it has held it for some time now. However, both in land grabs to add to it, and in repression, forcibly to Russianize it, even to level of language, from its culture to divorce it, in hideous dreams to  dictate: it is neither a closed question nor an open door. It has been brutalised exceedingly by Russia.

That nation, in its time in the USSR, enlarged itself through rapacious violence, so that then, with the inclusion of lands of other nations (such as much of Bessarabia), as part of Ukraine following the demise of the USSR in 1991, it  is by no means so natural for that nation to come under the heel of Russia. In  fact, it is apparent that since Russia has attempted a cultural genocide,  even in expanded format, exploited a people in a partial  food genocide, that it is disqualified  from any natural incorporation of Ukraine into its pouncing and militant paws, however much it would appreciate more for its maw, its rapacious and totalitarian digestive system.

Indeed, in the agreement after the declaration of independence by Ukraine in 1991, in 1994, there came the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances*1, involving Ukraine, the UK and Russia. Those who signed promised none would threaten or use force to alter the territorial integrity or political independence*1 of Ukraine.

This now being violated*2, with the removal by his party, of the Ukrainian President, and the installation of a new President, we have the cunning take-over, close to inaction so far, of Crimea, torn from its appointed place through quite insurgency bringing it then into the capacious Russian maw. This Crimea has been a part of Ukraine territory for the last 60 years. Thus, so far from Ukraine's territorial integrity being preserved by the promissory memorandum, it was dis-integrated by the unruly nation, as it continued threatening to force its will in Syria, while rousing concern in increasing belligerence towards Estonia.

Having seized unqualified power in the Black Sea, all lost in the Crimean War,  Russia used its flayed prey, grabbing Ukrainian naval base, MIG aeroplanes and air base, as if theft were an imagination, and grabbing from your neighbour were almost  a saintly act. Not only now free to be belligerent in the Black Sea, it even used shipping and bases of others, to parade its potency. Having promised much, it invaded more, by illegal elections of a section of Ukraine,  breaking this off from the rest of the Ukraine reportedly with a new kind of Russian-based, multi-national kit in mind, the Eurasian. This fits with the former lusts of the USSR, this dream a variant, the methods similar in style.

It was a crass fault of the Allies to become partners to break Hitler's power by using another dictator, Stalin, whose hideous slaughters of opponents, suspects and victims in his way, is estimated in terms of tens of millions. In  the loss for a time, of  some  of Eastern Europe, the Allies  paid  for that calamitous choice of  comrade in arms; and now it pays more as Russia sets forth again, NATO not much in evidence as yet; for Putin has chosen his moment. He will  find of course, in du e course,  with precisely such arrogant disdain of norms and morals and other nations, such posturing and disregard, such twisting of truth, that there is a heavenly opponent, as Pharaoh likewise found. Should his hand move toward Israel, as it is already moving in Syria to support its port granted to it by that nation,  and threatening to break off engagement with others to limit  Iran's deadly weaponry and stated intent, as a retort for sanctions, then the result is assured.

Thus Russia formerly in the defunct USSR as centre, now more singular, has a recent history. First, Hitler defeated by the Allies, it becomes an outrageous assailant, first of Eastern Europe for convenience and  power  after World War II, and this despite the fact that other nations helped rescue it from Hitler nearly successful invasion of its land. A group of Eastern European nations, far from freed,   became pawns to this expansionist intolerance by a crushing, shameless, depersonalised, mass murdering, incisively irreligious but ostensibly tolerant USSR.

The heady and inhuman,  depersonalised and  matter-mesmerised insurgency knew no reluctance, its power no moral restraint, its will apparently following desire only for buttress, access, success and perhaps a sallow glory. Deluded, it proceeded to act. Then it lost, Reagan's "evil  empire" as he called it, unglued; and became ready once more to receive aid from others. From the USA, it received much in its doldrums.

The re-appearance now of totalitarian rule in the stated interests of Russia, and its dream, under Putin, with his Georgian romance already turned to steel, and the principles of the United Nations Charter*3 violated in such moves as now come on scene, as if membership there were an illusion, reminding one of the massacre of freedom of press, religion (in practice) and perspective. in former ways in former days, now in successive acts advanced: what is it like ? It is like reversion to type. Why not ? Does not President Putin, back as such again, having been PM in the interim, deem the downfall of the USSR the prime horror of the 20th century ? Has this man not said such a thing! That obliterative régime, horror at its acme, has its departure not been deemed to be  a catastrophe or horror ? What religion  does that  declare, and what portent does it suggest!

Now it seems as if the integrity of nations moves  toward becoming an oddity of youth, an illusion of dreams, of newly minted ones, illusions like the old, made so by power and thrust even in breach of an agreement in the form of a promise, now a discarded premiss as Crimea is raped, as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia were before. .

True, the Crimea is  largely Russian in various ways, though Russian speech does not imply Russian culture, as when  the Ukraine's own culture was assaulted by murder and crushed with oppression! With an army present, and the promised upholder of Ukraine's independence outrageously at work to demolish it, the recent Crimean vote had no small duress!

From the Crimea, many Tartars have been expelled in a racist violence over the years not only  by Russia after the nineteenth century Crimean war, but by the USSR after World War II, so helping a more homogeneous, if alien culture. This aids both violence and uniformity, as does the presence of the current Army, with its direction by intractable treachery. Moreover, Crimea is also part of a nation called the Ukraine, the swallowing up in part,  with armed  threat to Ukraine, is now set  to Russia's force account in line with the USSR methods and in total confrontation with the stated policy of the UN where it has such power.

As to  Crimea, it also is not a routine destination for rouble and rule by Russia. In fact, the Turks took it in 1475 and nearly 300 years later, Catherine the  Great of Russia, having power, first declared it independent (just as Putin did with the Crimea, in effect following her precedent), in 1774; and then taking it over, in 1783. The Crimean War starting 1853, ended with Russia being forbidden militarisation in the Black Sea, which bond it rejected some decades later, and indeed now it has repudiated to the point of taking the armed assets of another nation like a gilded youth driving to ruin, his father's car. It also took both the bases and equipment from the ravaged territory, a part of Ukraine, a militant gobbling of its 'protected' prey, as if it had been guaranteed and mentioned for murder, not independence, in the Memorandum, that proved so profitable in the realm of atomic power..

Thus many are the grounds for annulment of any degree of natural involvement of Russia in the Ukraine, as enlarged by Russia in 1954. In essence, its measure of claim (amongst others), is ruptured by its tyrannical misuse of the betrayed country, its Eastern European thrusts of national lust by the enlarged USSR, on a vast and inhuman scale, as by its renewed assault in Georgia, with the disclosure of a new dream association, the Eurasian congregation. It is exacerbated  by the surreptitious, promise-violating land grab of the Crimea, its  sinister  deception and the express effort to rid the Ukraine of its Ukrainian culture, together with the earlier, infamous and mass murder in the Ukraine, of millions of its people by a violence both vile and torturous, gruesome and slow, invidious and vicious. Indeed, the Memorandum may have made it easier to infiltrate that part of Ukraine known as Crimea, as if under a smoke-screen.

This leads to the whole issue of freedom. The case is one where national integrity is guaranteed and violated. Indeed, in sum, if the world wants

bullet

that intimidatory force already shown
 

bullet

 in the crushing of freedom of speech,
 

bullet

of newspaper and media liberal information,
 

bullet

 that lording  with threat to, and removal of national functions alike,
domination and State power over the individual
such as characterised the USSR, the loss of which Putin as noted, 
mourned as the worst thing in the 20th century,
which approach  likewise is increasingly evident in Putin's
push for control within and without Russia;

 

bullet

and subscribes to his despising of a promise, a warrant for independence,  EVEN WHEN this independence was based not least on the removal of atomic defence freely, by Ukraine, this once the option of a now violated trust: 

then it may seek that. It is not hard to find.

It may endorse such elevation of force over freedom. It would represent a violent abuse of the UN Charter*3;  but that is a minor affair compared with its violation of the very nature of man, dismissal of the integrity of the soul by a Statist depersonalisation which God Himself (cf. SMR - The Shadow of a Mighty Rock), does not at all pursue, having regard to the way He created man, and what is in Him (Acts 17:23-31, John 3:16-18, Titus 2-3). This arrogant extension exceeds the ways of the divinity; but it will if pursued, fall to them, as the USSR  did. Indeed, the flagrant breach of power by what lies to the North  (of Israel, as in Ezekiel 37-39), is a famed prophecy of the divine dynamic to work,  as in the Exodus, in its time, when God delivered them from a slavery both harsh and punitive. God is very patient, but very sure!

Anyone can divide up countries and ask a bit of a country whether it would like to leave it, but do  so only as a brigand; and in the Russian case, it is worse. Here is a violator of a vast military and political agreement giving it much gain, and removal of danger from a once nuclear Ukraine, now pursuing what it was to protect in its integrity, turning protection  to breach, unilaterally.

Therefore, just as Hitler  LOST land for Germany for many sad decades in the latter part of the 20th century, it is not apt for an invasive Russia, seeking natural, national interests, to GAIN it in a new phase of international  assault, and cunning neo-Anschluss action.

It may be said that the Western nations are no paragon of virtue, and there is much in this. Their moral status seems to be moving to vast breaches of biblical standards. These, in some nations, once by many viewed with favour, even though governments would  tend to breach them, are now being  dumped. in some  cases, as unceremoniously as possible. Unthinkable  deletions of design in the illusional mind of many are progressing to formal sanction. The desolation of truth in the war on it, which wages remorselessly, makes  much of the West anything but a standard bearer. In much, despising what it announces to be  unavailable, the truth, it yet preaches it as it breaches it, in its own charter and model, and in so doing is contradicting itself.

If  truth is not there, how could they proclaim it; and if reality is hidden, in the midst of endless relativity, how is absolute truth found! What is not there, perhaps like the missing jet now so conspicuous,  cannot be found. The jet may yet be found; but truth based on its denial is not available. White cannot be black, nor zero an object. Much now in the  West is proceeding  towards the  demoralised basis of the Russian enterprise, that shook the world following World War I; and if its basis is missing, so was the logic of having matter gifted from nowhere, and mind and  spirit made from it, by nothing, with laws laid down by nature, which was to have nothing like  law as its nature!  Man in masses has become deluded in many ways, pronouncing the basis  of his  own demoralised status, the truth, while excluding it by his theories of enormity (cf. News 98, SMR pp. 925ff)..

Yet for all its  forlorn escapism and irrationality in major  operational philosophies, dysfunctional dreams, the West leaves  far more to the spirit of man to  choose, in terms of ITS INTEGRITY (as a unit), than Communism and its heirs, where the depersonalising thrust against man is a murder as real as the breach of his body.

Thus,  till the present,  though much in the West has been violated in some things, such as crassly naturalistic education, to  a staggering degree, and for this vileness it is paying and  doubtless will pay, as in the callow thrusts of Russia now and of Germany earlier, for example: yet there is in democracy an option far better, pending its total abuse. So  far, in many Western democracies, there  is often a far greater liberty to proclaim, practice and teach in the field of belief and religion than any heavily controlled, totalitarian or quasi-totalitarian nation can or does permit.

If then Ukraine, or Crimea as a part of it, by gift and agreement, is  taken over by the Putin putsch, then freedom of millions lies vacant, open to the caprice, dream or desire enforced, in part or in whole, be it Russian Orthodox religion or any other compulsion, gradation, permission, condemnation or thrust; be it war or control which the government may impose, or the vastly empowered President may direct.

It is not without irony that the doughty Yeltsin, in his earlier period, showed just the individuality and courage to meet uniformitarian and totalitarian presumption which many desire and regard, but became the open door in his popularity as President, for moves toward the usurpation of personal power by Putin. They gave the President nearly carte blanche, and in Yeltsin's failure, it went to a former KGB Colonel.

 

THE ISSUES OF FREEDOM AND FAITH

How could anyone of conscience subscribe to this violation of the very soul of man, which starting by degrees, makes known, just as in Communism, that it relies on a total power which makes no distinctions!

What began again to mould Russia within as vast enterprises were subordinated to the State, now moves outward to another nation, to dismember it, deceiving it, grasping its military gear and bases. Such internal and external controls lead to a type of murder like that of culture as practised against the Ukraine, by the USSR. As to that, it had its own outreach; and just as millions of Ukrainians were slowly murdered with a bitter irony, through the impress of hunger, by that desolating power, so  does the absorptive control in Russia now move toward that, toward what is so richly regarded by Putin. There is nothing at all natural in such movements to tyrannise over truth, subordinate man to man, export the significance of the human soul, if not to Siberia, then OUT, and then more OUT of the land.

Nor is it natural to accept such desolatory aggression over the souls of men.

Increasingly for those deceived, there is no wonder left to lean on, but the puniness of man parades its emptiness. To be sure, no nation ever achieved that Christian grace more than in some part, nor was truly Christian: though some at  some times came nearer than others by a good space, and impressive attainments were made. Now the degeneration of East and West, the former so far, much more total in usurpation of independence of thought in man,  moves on toward the biblical indication of two things. A double failure is beginning to make room for a third.

Firstly, the world IS to be ruled by an international  and unified power which will  seek all the control  already deplored above,  the Communist folly merely an instance, and the Nazi one another, the Mao variation a third,  each claiming millions of lives and milestones of torture victims. Obama is quite wrong in  telling Putin that he is on the wrong side of history.

While it IS true that an aggregative trend as in the UN (SMR p. 703, #731) and the WCC (SMR p. 743, #445 cf. p. 750B, #731) is strong, it is also true that increasingly in some powerful nations, ONE LEADER is becoming,  as in a fan club, more and more conspicuous.  No more is it the government, the Cabinet which is most central, but rather it is all tagged in the name of some leader,  and in recent history HOW MANY of these have used power to gain through corruption, leading to deterioration of the nation, its confidence and its respect for its own government.

The two trends,  to aggregate socially, on the one hand, and to have a star  leader on the other, are adverse, but can be combined in a multinational aggregate with a pseudo-star or soaring sovereign intact (as in II Thessalonians 1-2, which specifies just this, before the Lord brings this Age to a close).

There is, even in the EU Constitution, no agreement about Europe's basis or background as it moves vaguely to its "common destiny", and in these terms, it is becoming just as predicted in Revelation 17ff.: Romanism is no longer in the ascendency in Europe. It so far does not even rate a mention in the Constitution, to the considerable grief of some. What then  ? It was Henri Spaak,  famed leader in the earlier Common Market stage of Europe after  World War II, who declared this: Give us a leader, and whether he be god or devil, we will follow him.

 

THE SPIRITUAL INCOME AND THE EVENTUAL OUTCOME

The deification of the State, which proceeds apace  in some relatively free countries,  can have and will have its own quasi-glorious representative, amid the other myths currently in motion, such as this: that of naturalism, lacking all basis, just going along, charmingly advancing, but never observably! (cf. The gods of naturalism have no go!). From both current trends and the Bible, the latter decisive (cf. SMR), it is clear that the human race will be moved, or forced, or both, to embrace a leader who seems to epitomise, be the pith, exhibit the forces of this world in himself, and in his false glory (II Thessalonians 2:5-10).

In fact, he will be a stooge, vassal, deceitful and deceived,  of the devil, that deceiver of the nations (Revelation 20:3,10). Always exciting to disbelieve God as at the first (Genesis 3), so to the last; and just as some seek to make pawns for their power and imperial lust, so does he make fools of them all. But for the time there is the crown and the glory (which Christ refused - Matthew 4:8-10).

Such a leader as that will of course come to grief at the hand of the One who predicted his UNIVERSAL effort to establish his own rule over the world, and the rout to follow, when that very ruler is to be stricken in a work of sudden divine power. This, we read, can be compared IN KIND to the complete and remorseless actions against Egypt, in the day of the Exodus of Israel from that land (cf. Micah 7:15), Being this time, world-wide, this divine action will be intense and utterly overwhelming (cf. II Thessalonians 1, Revelation 19), a culminating desolation.

This will lead on to that time when the sheep and the goats, those pardoned and received by the Lord, in integrity and not in duress, and those rejecting Him and rejecting the truth (John 14:6) will be exposed to judgment as in Matthew 25.

Such events come  as the moral vacuum of  East and West increases, and power with arrogant dreams and corruption mix like parents of a child of ruin, the final offspring at large. Such drastic desolation was  always predicted as in Ezekiel 21:27. Human governments will not keep their power, but be overthrown, until HE COMES WHOSE RIGHT IT IS. That refers to the Creator-Redeemer (Colossians 1:15, Hebrews 9:12, Acts 4:11-12), with His offer of eternal life in the presence of God, who IS eternal by nature. Long has this His Gospel been paraded, even through millenia following the day of Christ, whose pardon preceded it, and gave it base in grace.

Foretold were not only  the coming of Him who was

bullet

predicted precisely,
 

bullet

right to His death date

(Daniel 9 cf. The Christian Prescription
Ch. 2),
 

bullet

as a sacrifice for sin,
 

bullet

once and for all,
 

bullet

but much more.

Indeed, in the Old Testament, centuries before Christ walked on the littoral given to man, the reason for His coming, the manner of it,  details concerning His arrival, definition of His duties and power, including healing, the point of His coming sacrifice, and the rupture of death in resurrection attendant on that gracious act, both as further testimony to His authenticity and the grandeur of His gift: these were merely some of the identification kit and exposure, as if they were a motor cycle escort for a General, holding, the plan of salvation which  God has for the human race. This Gospel is not dynamically aggressive, as human versions usually manage to be in the  end if not at the first; but it allows as is fitting for love and personal liberty, readily for rejection. You don't have to let this life-saver work his expertise on you, if you value yourself above your God. Rejection is permissible (Matthew 23:37), but it does not bend the truth.

If any person would find God to be as desirable as hell, and accordingly run away if ever placed near Him (a norm on this earth), then what ? Then that is the affair of that one. making his own way in a free society! No one has to be a friend, marry or mask truth. In truth, each is living by something, whether known or unknown to the person concerned; even if having no religion be the chosen desire;  for even that IS a religion.

For those concerned, it means that you recognise no God, find no need to deal effectually with your creation or origination or destiny, are in yourself the nearest to final arbiter, set your will in the heavens or if you do not believe in them, aloft, and reject, disregard or despise  all claim by any to be God, to have messages from God or to be relevant to your life. It has quite a DOCTRINAL Base, hidden by apparent indifference. People act on a basis, whether they admit it, know it,  care or not. It is subject to scrutiny, if not by man, then by God. Vagueness is always a possible religion; but it is not without its hidden points. So man tends to meander in a vagueness, at time drastically dynamised, which does not mask the underlying reality. Yet God is both active and aware, down to the coverage of all things (Ephesians 1:11).

The answer is thus bountifully provided, unchanged for millenia both before and after Christ.. This divine good news is focussed on this decisive, short action by God. It is called the Gospel, its centre the Messiah, the sacrifice for sin, its export for sin, leading to the transfer of guilt to the only One guiltless enough to suffer it and yet live. Death unable to snuff Him out, in trying, was itself aborted as a penalty, for those who receive Him (II Timothy 1:8-12). This is first in spirit and mind; and then when, as was the case with Christ's coming and the given date (The Christian Prescription Ch. 2), the time comes for realisation in full (I Corinthians 15:50ff). This time, one of deliverance and judgment, there is no date given, for it is withheld (Matthew 24:36-51). Then, the redeemed body of each Christian (just as each was born once and then again)  is restored in resurrection, He not only the ground of it, but the prototype through incarnation.

Vast is the array of preludes prescribed in Scripture, just as were the predictive details concerning His coming to save in the first place; and these  continue like railway stations on a branch line, each coming into view at its time (cf. SMR Ch. 8 -   and 9, and esp. Answers to Questions Ch. 5). In  fact, action  to come from  the area North of Israel is foretold as one of the coming events, in violence, following the restoration of Jerusalem to Israel (as in Luke 21:24, Ezekiel 34-39, Zechariah 12ff.).. Moscow, as a matter of interest, is almost due North of Jerusalem.

 

 


 

 

NOTES

 

*1

Budapest Memorandum,

Provisions of the Memorandum are cited are these:

  1. Respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty within its existing borders.

  2. Refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine.

  3. Refrain from using economic pressure on Ukraine in order to influence its politics.

  4. Seek United Nations Security Council action if nuclear weapons are used against Ukraine.

  5. Refrain from the use of nuclear arms against Ukraine.

  6. Consult with one another if questions arise regarding these commitments.

 

*2

Wars and  Rumours of Wars (Matthew 24:6) and  their Cause.

Russia in March 2014, on the heels of its outrageous violation of the protective Memorandum noted, has been soundly rebuked. The retaliation,  the dream of a reciprocal assault on others to keep the balance, merely makes farce out of force.

Some of the USA will not be allowed into Russia, so there! That will save me from a trip to Siberia, says one. If, however, the use of sanctions against some Russians, the invasive superpower violating the Memorandum in rude breach and  stunning indifference to promise, is now itself to be called a breach, and not a rebuke, then words have no meaning. If in this,  guile does not have its masterpiece, it is at least  well provided for!

That might suit the Russian power, but it cannot disguise its act of rupture, ravagement, theft, or make due rebuke for it itself, in some  vague way,  to constitute a breach of it, rather than an admonition to cease. Cease what ? Cease this corruption, this adventurer's wand - or rather a swagger stick, against an undertaking which being given, helped to remove the power of Ukraine to resist just such aggression as has now come, by treachery, to a part of its territory. Wheel out the atomic weaponry, was the cry, and we'll wheel in your security!

Not so, they USED the agreement in order to invade, quietly taking over vital structures. Thus with agreement on independence for Ukraine broken by the invader, Russia gained elements of a monopolistic power against Ukraine, and breaching the same, has used its threat to intimidate, and its power to disregard the integrity of the nation as in poker, showing a full hand of weapons, aimed to dispossess the victim, and repossess the land. What it undertook to protect, it apparently despises, its word kept with all the integrity of chaff. The promise goes to the sin bin, to sponsor or support or guarantee Ukraine's freedom. This is rejected in favour of the pursuit of power to the life road, to advance. Its canny and unscrupulous achievement  is like a left followed by a right; but in this there is nothing right at all.

Meanwhile, the lupine breach has other results elsewhere, precisely opposite to the irenic intention in the Memorandum. Thus Poland is now moving swiftly towards  gaining new more modern protection from incoming drones and missiles, seeing no reason to rely on an increasingly rambunctious-seeming Russia; and it ponders the need for atomic weapons.

It was  Obama who delayed the earlier installation of this new invasion-protection armament, thus now leaving Poland more liable to the repetitive Russian violations of its territories which has occurred over the years,  and the ruinous insurgencies,  divisions of its land and seizure of parts of it, which characterise its past dealings. Europe indeed has reason to consider the rampaging of a Russia which had no pangs in instituting a multinational grab after World War II, and is now showing in Syria, in Estonia, in Crimea and the Ukraine - as conceived now stripped, the workings of its new dream.

If all the nations pursue their expansionist dreams, some hurrying, some scurrying, some flurrying, some for a time flourishing (the 3rd Reich was short, but pungent), along the lines of the delusive false  prophets and their messages as in Jeremiah 23, leading to Israel's ruin at that time: then what ?

Then,  war is prescribed, personality is despised, irruption is de rigueur and folly proves once more, its close association with the human race. Biblically, it is in the category called sin, and unchangingly for some four millenia on record, there is the same prescription from God, for its resolution and available remit. HE has the answer; sin is the provocation; and the Designer has designated the Cure. It does however, like an antibiotic in its place, need to be taken (Matthew 23:37, Ezekiel 33:11, Revelation 20), not merely mused on. Such dreams may enlarge the mind, but shorten the life.

In this case, eternal life stands as a validated  offer from  God (cf. Ch. 3 above), whose word is never able to be overthrown,  does not change, and declares to the command-made man, the everlasting provision available for his life. Just as the inscriptions of the DNA, (Daniel 9 cf. The Christian Prescription Ch. 2), which slowly deteriorates, and far better even than this, there is laid the way to find a life which does not fade. Here is the longed for gift to many, and rejected relief to those who find in this earth, no salvation, wisdom or enduring wonder, amid the appalling squabbles and inglorious lusts (cf. SMR Ch. 3).

Without God, you wander, like a child, however seemingly knowing; with God, you wonder and adore, worship and relate, and find the beginning and the end for man, the one the ultimate from the first, and the other, the glory  till the last. If you make your own, you burn your fingers and heart and soul; if you find the One who speaks, both to create life and advise man, then it is not at your prescription, or that of any other, but at His own. That is the wonder of worship of Him who is the Truth (John 14:6), that you do not deal with visions but reality, not with hopes but with happenings, not with dreams but with dynamic, not with tides and weather data, but with unchanging message, the prescription for man.

Take it, or live a lost life, and  all that this entails in a responsible being, made so by creation. Secure it, whatever the insults to God that may be thrown in to your lot, as what should dwell in love, sustains itself in hatred or  aversion, submitting to none and to nothing, as if, by unexceptionable right,  belonging there. The divine plan is simple (John 3:15-19), ultimate, unforced on man (Matthew 23:37, John 3:19),  susceptible to violation (Jeremiah 9:6), even by deceit and dextrous deviations; but for all that, it remains the same. It is not moved by one dot, nor dinted by anyone of  imperial power, be it personal in type or national, or international, or fashionable, or despised. Holiness  dispenses with hype, as does hype with reality. Yet the word of God remains the same. It not only happens; for it proceeds, however molested, in immovable majesty (Isaiah 14:27, Matthew 5:17-20).

Galatians presents this divine Gospel in stark simplicity, and invariant uniqueness,  as befits the word of the all-knowing author of time, and God of eternity.

 

*3

 Articles 1, in Chapter 1 of the Charter of the United Nations declares this (red added to the point):

CHAPTER I: PURPOSES AND PRINCIPLES

Article 1

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

  1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
     

  2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
     

  3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
     

  4. To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common
     

Article 2 (in part)

  1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
     

  2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
     

  3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
     

  4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

The violation of these principles by a non-quashable member of the Security Council merely makes the  membership a mockery, as was the devious and surreptitious infiltration in defiance of these things, guaranteed freedom on top of it, and the gain which Russia secured in stripping Ukraine of atomic weapons in exchange for the guarantee, the second in the field as above, but this one in a particular  trading exchange. This not only removes freedom from the nation, but does so in a case where vast violations of historic criminality have already occurred when Russia was a principal element in the USSR.