The Church of Smyrna speaks to the Confessing Church of Christ in This Darkening Hour: Mark Dankof on Tribulation, Remnant, and Martyrdom for the LMS-USA 2017
Jesus Christ, the Logos, speaks to the Apostle John in exile on Patmos regarding the Church of Smyrna in Asia Minor: Revelation 2: 8-11.
“And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: ‘The words of the First and the Last, who died and came to life. I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich), and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a Synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you in prison, that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.”
Jesus Christ speaks to the Apostle John on Patmos (Revelation 2: 8-11)
(Pastor Mark Dankof’s presentation to the LMS-USA national conference in Wisconsin chronicled here is a condensed and edited version of his remarks delivered on June 9th, 2017. This presentation was preceded by previous lectures in the last two (2) decades, including Creeds and Confessions as Liturgy; The Famine, The Watchman, and The Remnant; The Chosen People of God: Who are They?; and The Hands of Time and The Appearance of Logos.)
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The Logo of the LMS-USA and the Pillars of Luther’s Reformation: Christ Alone, Faith Alone, Grace Alone, Scripture Alone.
We have been privileged today to have two (2) fine presentations by Pastor Erickson and Pastor Spears. Pastor Erickson’s summation on The Early Church and the Need for Continuing Reform is an excellent overview of centuries of church history from Pentecost to the Protestant Reformation. I especially value his repristination of a list of ancient heresies similar to my own presentation in Indianapolis in 1996, since those challenges to orthodox Biblical and Creedal theology continue to reappear in various forms and guises over time, especially in this 21st century milieu of heresy and apostasy in which the Remnant Confessing Church of Christ finds itself, especially in a post-Christian Western World which includes our own United States.
Pastor Ralph Spears of Indianapolis, Indiana presents a paper on the Reformers and the Martyrs at the LMS-USA Conference in 2017.
Pastor Spears’ presentation of The Reformers underscores the character of key figures in the 16th century and their traits which mirror Biblical reformers throughout redemptive history. As he reminds us there, “Reformers are people of faith who lived and were willing to ‘lay down their lives for their conviction of faith.'” We will shortly see how the theme of Martyrdom in both of these fine discussions appears again in what I am about to share with the faithful people of Christ Lutheran Church in Chetek, Wisconsin from John’s Apocalypse (Revelation 2: 8-11).
Let me say at the outset that we will not be discussing the dreadful developments in the Lutheran Church specifically and the American Church generally which have been sufficiently covered in previous conferences. I will simply state again that in my lifetime, as American culture and life continues its precipitous downturn into the bottomless abyss, our own denominational tradition and affiliation has degenerated into an absurd dialectic between the apostate universalists, higher critical cynics, and Cultural Marxists on the left, and a compendium of isolationists and sectarians on the right for whom the use of the term evangelical is tragi-comic. In the left-right dialectic in American Lutheranism today, rampant institutional political power struggles and pathology on both ends of the spectrum are strikingly identical. The proclamation of the Gospel and Biblical teaching and instruction often seem but an afterthought, where everyday ministry to those starved for the Word, proclamation of forgiveness of sin in Jesus Christ and His love to all who believe, historic worship, and evangelical outreach and vision, are all too often lost in the shuffle of business-as-usual. Jeremiah described this very sort of scene in the 6th century B. C. context of disaster which had befallen Jerusalem and ancient Judah as the Babylonian Exile and Temple Destruction unfolded: “Her gates have sunk into the ground; He has ruined and broken her bars; her kings and princes are among the nations; the law is no more, and her prophets find no vision from the Lord.” (Lamentations 2: 9)
Pastor Mark Dankof, whose presentation on the Church of Smyrna in John’s Apocalypse instructs a segment of the Believing Remnant of the Confessing Church of Christ at the LMS-USA national conference.
If this looks increasingly like the unfolding and impending state of the American Empire and Church it should. The hour is increasingly late (Matthew 24).
Where does all of this leave the Believing Remnant of the Confessing Church of Christ? Put more directly this afternoon, where does this leave you and I as a part of such a fellowship and movement? Where is God in all of this for you and me? Where are his promises? Where is hope for the present and the future? How does he provide for the Remnant when none of the present circumstances in history are favorable to our sustenance and survival?
It is these questions to which we shall now turn. The key prototypical Confessing Church for our purposes today is the Church of Smyrna in Asia Minor during John’s exile on Patmos courtesy of the edict of Emperor Domitian of Rome (AD 81-96). As already read, our text is Revelation 2: 8-11.
Pastor Tylan Dalrymple of Christ Lutheran Church in Chetek, Wisconsin and the Subscriptional Clergy Roster of the LMS-USA.
It is noteworthy that the exile of the Apostle was due to his refusal to acquiesce to the demands of the Roman Emperor that Domitian be venerated and worshiped as the virtual incarnation of God on earth. Put slightly differently, John understood what was Caesar’s, and what belongs to Christ alone. For that faith and confessional witness, he found himself in the Roman penal colony on Patmos, an island 4×8 miles in the Aegean Sea, 50 miles southwest of Turkey. It is identically noteworthy that Smyrna (modern Izmir) was closely aligned with the Roman Empire and had a large, active, and hostile Jewish population in open hostility to the Gospel (see Romans 2: 28-29; Matthew 26: 57-27:44; Revelation 3:9 to the Church of Philadelphia). Confessing faith and witness in this context often led to incarceration and/or death.
My counsel and admonition to all of us who are Remnant Believers today: It is not hyperbole to understand and acknowledge the evidence of increasing hostility to the Gospel in a post-Christian America and Western World in the 21st century, accompanied by lawlessness, decadence, perversion, blasphemy, violence, deception and societal disintegration on a breathtaking scale. The Satanic forces in play are reminiscent of those between 81-96 A. D. during the reign of Domitian. The challenge to us is the same challenge posited to the Church of Smyrna, but so are the reassuring provisions of God to His people that underscore His sovereign control of events in history, and His love of those who are faithful. The key point is this: God’s people are entering what is eschatologically the most dangerous period in all of linear time and redemptive history (Heilsgeschichte). We must be prepared for any contingency thrust upon us by Satan and the world. But nothing can separate the believer from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8: 31-39).
Martin Luther: We are Justified by God Through Christ Alone, Faith Alone, Scripture Alone. (Pastoral Library: Christ Lutheran Church of Chetek, Wisconsin)
Let me emphasize four (4) points from the Apocalpyse in today’s conversation about the assurances of God to the Israel of God, the Confessing Church of Christ, throughout time.
The first (1) is this: God provides for His people through select individuals who accomplish the Lord’s purposes for those purchased with the Blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ. Pastor Spears’ presentation and overview illustrated some key people throughout history who carried out God’s directives to provide for and nurture those otherwise in isolation and despair in a hostile world. Look at the way in which the Word of the Lord during the persecution of believers during Domitian’s reign continues to be proclaimed through the selection of the Apostle John (Revelation 1: 1-3) on Patmos to reveal mysteries and reassure the People of God. Tellingly, John states in 1:9 that, “I John, your brother and partner in the tribulation, and the kingdom, and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus.”
(Ἐγὼ Ἰωάννης ὁ ἀδελφὸς ὑμῶν καὶ συνκοινωνὸς ἐν τῇ θλίψει καὶ βασιλείᾳ καὶ ὑπομονῇ ἐν Ἰησοῦ
ἐγενόμην ἐν τῇ νήσῳ τῇ καλουμένῃ Πάτμῳ διὰ τὸν λόγον τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὴν μαρτυρίαν Ἰησοῦ.)
John on Patmos Pens The Apocalypse: Exiled Because of Resistance to the Emperor Worship Cultus of Domitian (A. D. 81-96).
How much plainer can it be? Although we have no living Apostles or inspired writers of Scripture in our midst today, God continues to provide brothers and partners in the trials and tribulations of our lives as believers in this darkening age and world. These brothers and partners are also ours not simply in trials and tribulations, but in the Kingdom of God both present and future. Just look around this classroom. I recognize people here who joined me in the uphill fight to preserve the Biblical faith in our tradition over 30 years ago. Among those in that category, I’m unbelievably the youngest one of the 4 still left and who still perseveres alongside these men. Because of their faithfulness to the Gospel and their enduring friendships with me, I’ve been encouraged to continue when the temptation to give it up in these last 3 decades intensified. Because I continued by the grace and provision of God alone, I’ve come to know many of the rest of you who have attended these conferences for 22 years now. We are brothers and sisters in the trials and tribulations present and future. Can we be any more blessed than this?
Mysteriously, we possess the Kingdom of God now, and yet not completely until the return of the Lord. And how we presently possess the inspired, inerrant, inscripturated Word of God of the Prophets and Apostles, including John right now in our midst, assuring us of blessings present and future through Christ! This empowers God’s humble people, such as all of us gathered here in Wisconsin today, to rejoice in the midst of sorrow, to be confident in the midst of unspeakable trials and discouragements, and to have the faith which comes only from the Holy Spirit of God. Forget the numbers game of the Church Growth Movement in America. Jettison the “Health, Wealth, and Prosperity” philosophies of the televangelists and the worship fads of an American Church that looks more like the world of sin, the flesh, and Satan with each passing week. Embrace the joy of the Biblical Gospel, worship in continuity with the Confessing Church of Christ of the Ages, read and take to heart the Lutheran Confessions and what they affirm about sin and salvation only in Christ. And be confident that God has not forgotten his Remnant People wherever they may be, as He has numbered the very hairs on our heads and has our names written in the Book of Life.
30 years together in joint fellowship and proclamation of the Gospel in the Lutheran Church since 1987: Pastor John Erickson, Pastor Ralph Spears, Pastor Donald Thorson, and Pastor Mark Dankof (L to R).
The second truism (2) is this: God works through select groups of remnant believers throughout the trials and tribulatons of His people in the midst of hostile societies, natural disasters, wars and rumors of war, and upswings in Satanic activity throughout human history. When we look for a select group of remnant believers in the past to serve as a prototype to be emulated by faithful Christians today in the midst of the perils of the 21st century, we need look no further than the Church of Smyrna. What characterized this Confessing Church in the all seeing eyes and all knowing mind of our Lord Jesus Christ? He states that, “I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich), and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a Synagogue of Satan.” (Revelation 2:9)
(Οἶδά σου τὴν θλῖψιν καὶ τὴν πτωχείαν ἀλλὰ πλούσιος εἶ καὶ τὴν βλασφημίαν ἐκ τῶν λεγόντων
Ἰουδαίους εἶναι ἑαυτούς καὶ οὐκ εἰσίν ἀλλὰ συναγωγὴ τοῦ Σατανᾶ.)
The characteristics of the Confessing Church of Smyrna are thus clearly discernable, as are the characteristics of the Remnant in historical and eschatological times of political, cultural, moral, economic, and theological disturbances which seek to devour those who are Christ’s and Christ’s alone. There was and will be tribulation (θλῖψιν). There was and will be slander (βλασφημίαν) against God’s people until the end of linear time and redemptive history. These slanders emanating from the Synagogue of Satan (συναγωγὴ τοῦ Σατανᾶ) are to be understood as a phenomenon manifested in both the 1st century and the 21st (see Romans 2: 28-29 and Dr. E. Michael Jones’ The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and its Impact in World History for the enumeration of the context of Revelation 2:9).
And yet with all of these sobering facts and developments, the Lord reminds the Church of Smyrna, and our gathering here today, that we are yet rich (ἀλλὰ πλούσιος εἶ ) ! The world cannot know this richness, because it cannot know Jesus. The world cannot know this richness, which can only be revealed by the Holy Spirit of God to the believer (I Corinthians 12:3). Only the believer can possess all that is contained in this spiritual richness, juxtaposed in this case with worldly richness, and understand that tribulation, slander, and economic poverty cannot separate he or she from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8: 31-39). This is the faith that leads to eternal life. This is the faith that remains when Emperors and Empires fade away in the twilight of time and space, be it the Babylonian version, the Medo-Persian version, the Greek version, the Roman version, or the American version as the years pass in this 21st Century.
And make no mistake. There is no doctrine of American exceptionalism here to the Biblical principles that have governed Empires and Nations from Genesis to Revelation to the present.
St. Polycarp of Smyrna, rejecting Emperor Worship and the Synagogue of Satan (Revelation 2:9) for Faith in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ Only, Forever and Ever.
The third truism (3) is this: The Remnant Confessing Church that is poor but rich, sets a foundation for many fruits to be made manifest in the future glorification of God and the proclamation of His kingdom in Christ. In the case of the Church of Smyrna of the 1st century, its foundation produced the 2nd century Bishop of Smyrna, Polycarp (A. D. 69-155). He is regarded as one of the 3 chief Apostolic Fathers in history, along with Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch. It is no accident or coincidence of history that the name Polycarp literally means, “much fruit.” A disciple of the Apostle John, and ordained by him as a Bishop, we must turn to 3 primary sources for information about this embodiment of witness to the Crucified and Risen Christ whose life and death continue to resonate now, even as I speak. These 3 sources are 1) The Martyrdom of Polycarp, a circular letter composed by the Church of Smyrna and distributed to the churches of Pontus; 2) Irenaeus’ Against Heresies, which I first encountered in my first year of theological study in California almost 40 years ago; and Polycarp’s Letter to the Philippians.
Let’s cut to the chase here. If the issues of Emperor Worship and oppression of the Christian in the 21st century Western World’s Central States increasingly looks like the ideological matrix that exiled John to Patmos and executed Polycarp, can we envision ourselves having to make the ultimate choice of Christ or Caesar, Christ or Antichrist, under penalty of death for an evangelical confession and proclamation of faith?
Polycarp of Smyrna (69-155).
The subject of martyrdom came up in a systematic theology course I was taking in suburban Chicago years ago under Dr. Paul D. Feinberg at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. The question of Martyrdom for the Faith was under intense scrutiny and examination one particular day and lecture. I can’t say to anyone that I thought I was brave enough then–or now–to follow in the footsteps of Polycarp or any of the other martyrs for Christ. I will say to all of us here what Dr. Feinberg told me then in response to my questions and doubts about being able to cling to the Lord and witness to the truth under penalty of the ultimate sanction. He said that we should never ask for the dying grace of God before we actually need it (Matthew 24: 9-14). If or when we face contemporary versions of the Sanhedrin with its demands for recantation and capitulation, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit of God will give us the thoughts and the words to say when we are not capable of otherwise standing up to those who seek our very lives (Mark 13: 9-11; Luke 21: 12-15).
Polycarp understood this; the Lord was faithful to him in his ultimate hour of need. In the case of the former’s death, we read that:
In the Martyrdom, Polycarp is recorded as saying on the day of his death, “Eighty and six years I have served Him, and He has done me no wrong”, which could indicate that he was then eighty-six years old or that he may have lived eighty-six years after his conversion. Polycarp goes on to say “How then can I blaspheme my King and Savior? You threaten me with a fire that burns for a season, and after a little while is quenched; but you are ignorant of the fire of everlasting punishment that is prepared for the wicked.”
Polycarp was burned at the stake and was pierced with a spear for refusing to burn incense to the Roman Emperor. On his farewell, he said “I bless you Father for judging me worthy of this hour, so that in the company of the martyrs I may share the cup of Christ.”
These words have haunted me at night for almost 40 years since first reading them late one evening in a dormitory room on the highest peak in Berkeley, California that overlooked the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco. It was an irenic visual scene I enjoyed for almost a year. But my night thoughts about the Apostle John and Polycarp of Smyrna were anything but irenic. Would I really ever have what it took to confess the faith under their circumstances?
I don’t recall having read this sort of thing recently in any of Joel Osteen’s books I have perused at Barnes and Noble (laughter). I couldn’t find a single thing on Polycarp when I checked several of their stores around San Antonio either. His witness runs counter to everything I see in contemporary American “culture,” which like its ancient Roman counterpart is increasingly evil and antithetical to the Gospel. But if we follow John’s witness on Patmos, and the subsequent witness of the 2nd century Bishop of Smyrna, we will experience the fruits of the endurance (ὑπομένω) that God promises His people in their darkest hours, and in the darkening skies of the present historical horizon (Matthew 24:13).
Finally, there is the fourth truism (4) bequeathed to the Church of Smyrna by the Lord. It is also your promise and mine : “Be faithful unto death and I will give thee the Crown of Life” (Revelation 2: 10).
(γίνου πιστὸς ἄχρι θανάτου καὶ δώσω σοι τὸν στέφανον τῆς ζωῆς.)
It is this foundation alone which gives us peace, the peace (εἰρήνη) which only the Lord gives and which the world and its Prince with his targeted tribulations and attacks can never know (John 16:33). We are guaranteed to experience these trials and tribulations, and an intensification of such in the context of the approaching eschatological signs of the end of the age. But Jesus assures us he has overcome the world, an assurance He gives to the disciples just before experiencing the most agonizing death in all of history, a death to be followed by the evidence of his overcoming of sin and the world in the reality of the Empty Tomb.
Take heart today my friends. Be encouraged. As deception, wars and rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, persecutions and martyrdoms of believers, apostasy, evil, and lovelessness continue their present upswing (Matthew 24) leading to the appearance of the Antichrist in history, we will “overcome and will not be hurt at all by the second death” (Revelation 2:11).
We have gathered again in Wisconsin today to reaffirm the truths of God to His people in Christ, and to rejoice that as orthodox Lutheran Christians, we are but a small slice of the Confessing Church in history and presently, focusing only on the things of the Lord in Word and Sacrament and our love for one another, even in the midst of a nation and a world that increasingly does not know Him and which is coming to despise who and what we are. We must be discerning about the truth and the hour. We must be ready. And together, we shall be.
(Ὁ νικῶν οὐ μὴ ἀδικηθῇ ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου τοῦ δευτέρου.)
The Island of Patmos in a peaceful Aegean Sunset.
Mark Dankof and Patrick Slattery: National Bugle Radio: Nov 17th, 2016
Mark Dankof: The Alternative Right Slam Dunks Mainstream Media in the Trump Victory
The Atlantic November 2016
Mark Dankof and Patrick Slattery discuss the Trump Victory; the role of the Alternative Right in utilizing the Internet and Social Media to Run the Table on Mainstream Media Conglomerates; and the profile of the new Executive Editor of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, whose November 2016 issue contains a Cover Story entitled, “War Goes Viral: How Social Media is Being Weaponized.”
Mark Dankof to Coach Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs: Hang it Up, Pop
Mark Dankof in San Antonio, Texas.
Saturday, 13 November 2016
Head Coach Gregg Popovich
San Antonio, Spurs
Dear Coach Popovich:
I’m a German American married to a legal Colombian immigrant to the United States and who became a naturalized citizen. Her native language is Castilian Spanish. She is Roman Catholic. I’m a Lutheran Pastor. We both voted Trump. In one instance, my Colombian immigrant wife put a bumper sticker and button above her computer as a reminder of just one of the reasons.
A Message to Gregg Popovich: People who Affirm the Inalienable Right to Life Granted by God, not Caesar, Voted Trump.
We voted Trump for Unborn Children, Trump for Russians and Ukrainians, Trump for Libyans and Syrians whose lives are being destroyed by the Obama-Clinton ISIS and Al Qaeda surrogates, Trump for Stopping a World War III with Russia both in Syria and via NATO aggression in Eastern Europe, Trump Against Tricky Dick With a Skirt peddling influence to the Tune of $200 Million in the Family Kitty, and Trump for Average Americans Against the Globalist Cabal for Clinton and Bush.
The Odessa Trade Union Fire: Fiery Death at the Hands of the Latest “Government” installed by Killary Clinton and Victoria Nuland in Kiev.
Mark Dankof to Gregg Popovich of the San Antonio Spurs on Vladimir Putin of Russia: “Does This Look Like a Man Who Will Fail to Defend His Country’s Sovereignty and Borders Against Killary and the New World Order?”
Read the UK Independent today , Pop.
Speaking after Mr Trump won a shock victory over Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, Kremlin advisor Sergei Glazyev said the Democrat politician was a “symbol of war” and under Mr Trump the US had “a chance to change course.”
He told Russian news wire RNS: “Americans had two choices: World War Three or multilateral peace.
A. D. 70, as prophesied by Jesus Christ in Matthew 24
Read Democratic economist Robert Reich today, Pop. He’ll tell you why so many working class Democrats voted Trump in the dying Rust Belt. And yes, Trump for the Second Amendment and the Right to Bear Arms against the Soros financed Communist Revolutionaries terrorizing people on the streets of America because they didn’t vote for Killary Clinton .
Is affirming Abortion-on-Demand, Gay Marriage, Gun Control, World War III with Russia, Pay-for-Play Private E-Mail Servers, and the New World Order the way to stay in the NBA and on ESPN?
David Stockman on the Peasants’ Revolt: “The Trump Victory is BREXIT on Steroids.”
Pop, you’re a great basketball coach. I sincerely wish you many more years with the Spurs. I also defend your First Amendment right to speak your mind. But as one who can exercise that same right as an American with no money or power, I’d like to say that as a Social and Political Commentator and Moral Pontificator, you really need to Hang it Up.
Mark Dankof
San Antonio, Texas
USA
Dankof on Duke on Rense Radio: September 21st, 2016
Dankof on Duke on Rense: The 4 Horsemen of the New World Order: Demographic Revolution, Currency Inflation, War, and Cultural Marxism.
Mark Dankof on David Duke Live on Rense Radio on September 21st, 2016. Listen to the show at http://mediaarchives.gsradio.net/dduke/092116.mp3. Emphasis on Demographic Revolution, Currency Inflation, War, and Culturally Marxist Subversion as The 4 Horsemen of the New World Order and the real context of the American Presidential Election of 2016, is the overview of the analysis of events discussed on the show.
On the show, Mark promoted Dr. E. Michael Jones’ current issue of Culture Wars (Sept 2016), and an article entitled “The Israeli Surrogacy Business” by Maria Poumier (pages 8-13).
Pastor Dale Crowley and Faithfulness Unto Death: Mark Dankof for Herman Otten’s Christian News and the American Free Press
The Lord Jesus Christ to the Church in Smyrna: “Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the Crown of Life.”
“These are the words of Him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again. I know your afflictions and your poverty–yet you are rich! I know the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a Synagogue of Satan. Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the Crown of Life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will not be hurt at all by the second death.”
—Jesus Christ to the Church in Smyrna in John’s Revelation, Chapter 2, Verses 8-11
“Sorrow is better than laughter, for by the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better.”
—Ecclesiastes 7:3 quoted by Pastor Dale Crowley in a letter to Mark Dankof about the former’s struggle with old age and the rapid decline in Mrs. Crowley’s health
The message I knew would arrive came this last Thursday afternoon from Pastor Dale Crowley’s grandson: “Mark, my Granddad will be with the Lord in the next 24 hours. You are the only connection I have to his past.” On Friday night, the prophetic perception of the first message was confirmed: “Granddad went to be with the Lord at 11: 50 pm [Eastern].”
The final chapter together in this life in North Carolina.
It is difficult putting into words my feelings about a great personal friend and mentor whose life and accomplishments shall continue to resonate in the memories I have of him in our joint broadcasting ventures on my old RBN show after his days at WFAX-Washington, D. C. were cruelly preempted, as well as through our personal conversations and letter exchanges in the last 18 months of his life, and his constant provisions of books and articles that came my way over the years. Prior to the last chapter of his earthly life, he had sold his longtime family home in Virginia outside Washington, D. C., to relocate himself and his beloved wife besieged by dementia, Mary Henderson Crowley, to an assisted living facility in North Carolina. I will always remember calling him one night at his home in Virginia to obtain an update, fortuitously discovering he had sold the place and was departing the next morning for good. I had reached him in the nick of time. His missionary son was back from Cambodia and answered the phone, putting his father on the line for our usual great conversation about the closing of a chapter in his life, and the opening of what would be the last chapter before eternal glory with Christ.
Mary and Pastor Dale in a joyous moment in North Carolina.
In thinking about his unwavering faithfulness and confidence in the Triune God in the midst of overwhelming sadness at his wife’s illness, the loss of his Virginia home, and the end of his long saga as a Washington-based radio broadcaster and writer, the Gospel of John, chapter 21, verses 18-19 comes to mind. The Lord reminds Peter there of the death the latter will suffer, and the reason why: “‘I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.’ Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, ‘Follow me.’“
In Dale’s case, one of the letters to follow from North Carolina would underscore how rough the final journey through the final chapter would prove to be along the way. He wrote:
“Please pardon our silence. These have been hard times for Dale and Mary. But we don’t want to let the calamities of the past year and a half prevent us from keeping in touch with our dear friends and family. (‘Calamity’ is an important Bible word, occuring around 25 times. Look it up with a good concordance.)
“Why calamities? There was a good reason God allowed Satan to visit Job with terrible calamities. Still, we cry out to God, ‘Why?’
“Someday . . . sooner or later we’ll understand ‘Why?’ Mary’s Alzheimers/Dementia increased in severity about 18 months ago. That led to a fall, breaking a leg bone (the femur, near the hip), resulting in permanent confinement to a wheelchair.
“A year later, a dangerous cancer was found in my colon. It was healed miraculously through prayer, the healing power of God, essiac, laetrile, essential oils, and 28 radiation treatments. (They all work together.)
“Only a few weeks later, 9 small strokes hit me, requiring hospitalization and rehabilitation. Praise God, I am just about back to normal. . . .
“Please pray for Dale, Jr. and Mary Crowley. After a lifetime of work for our Lord in His harvest fields at home and abroad, it is not easy coping with the calamities of old age. We are not alone, of course. . . . Our Lord promised never to leave us. We thank God for family and friends.
“Please pray that we will have God’s love and care and grace. Even the Psalmist prayed,’God, don’t forget me when I am old and grayheaded (Psalm 71:18).’“
“Sincerely, hoping for your love and care in Christ Jesus our Lord, Dale.”
Pat and Shelley Buchanan with Dale and Mary Crowley.
Christian News readers should be fully acquainted by now with the life of Dale Crowley, his service as a Reformed Baptist missionary in Japan, his past as a member of the Asian Languages department at the University of Hawaii, and most especially the facts and many of the implications to be inferred from what happened to him at WFAX-1220 AM in Washington, D. C in early 2006 . For those uninitiated, you may access Crowley’s Spotlight on Israel, linked to both of his radio shows, “The King’s Business” and “Focus on Israel” at http://crowleysspotlightonisrael.com/. Another late friend, the legendary Michael Collins Piper, penned the story for the American Free Press of March 20, 2006 in an article entitled, “Thought Cops Tell Evangelist No More Talk of Israel on Air.” It is available online to this day on the Rense site at http://www.rense.com/general69/shh.htm under the title, “Christian Radio Host Fired for Criticizing Israel.” That fine and accurate story makes reference to “heavy handed pressure brought to bear on WFAX” to end both of the Pastor’s shows of 20 years standing on the prominent Christian broadcasting outlet in the Nation’s Capitol.
Pastor Dale Crowley and wife Mary with columnist Joseph Sobran (center), another principled victim of the Israeli 5th Column in the United States.
Piper noted then that: “The un-American thought police operating on American soil have struck once again. This time their victim is veteran Christian evangelist Dale Crowley, Jr., who has been the host of two popular radio programs broadcast over WFAX 1220 AM-radio in the Washington area for the last 20 years.
“Crowley was told by Doris Newcomb, president and general manager of WFAX, that his Saturday morning broadcast, ‘Focus on Israel,’ was terminated immediately. He was not even given an opportunity to bid farewell to his longtime listeners.
“The program was canceled by the WFAX management because supporters of Israel had complained to the radio station about Crowley’s criticisms of Israel.”
But who were these “supporters of Israel?“ And what may be inferred from the identification of some of the key players in the usual Zionist political and media monolith whose tentacles have enshrouded virtually all of “Christian” print and broadcasting outlets in the United States?
Miss Elizabeth Newsome’s Special 6th Grade Class at Hilton Elementary School on Capitol Hill in Washington, D. C., 1939. Dale Crowley second from right.
Dale Crowley and I had a number of late afternoon and evening conversations in his final days about the WFAX AM-1220 episode. We both concluded the affair can only be understood in light of eschatological deception and the death of the American Republic. After he provided me with a graph which traced the identification of some of the players in his termination with arrows drawing some links in the spider web, I would write him a letter in April of 2015. This letter provided him with more dots to connect in both of our lives over many years.The text of that communication was as follows:
April 22nd, 2015
Dankof
San Antonio, TX 78217
Pastor Dale Crowley
Kernersville, NC 27284
Dear Dale:
It has been a joy to have reached you twice by phone recently, including seven days ago when you reported the miraculous disappearance of the colon cancer. It is especially interesting that your reprieve from this health malady coincides with the Easter 2015 health report of Lutheran pastor Bill Larson up in Tacoma, who introduced me to radio at KGNW AM 82 Seattle in the 1980s with his Mission America show. Bill’s diagnosed case of heart failure in December has now inexplicably disappeared, just like your cancer. The doctors are baffled.
Even more curious to me is another intersection of people, times and circumstances: Your situation with the WFAX-AM/Washington, D. C. termination of your “Focus on Israel” show courtesy of the pressure of the National Religious Broadcasters on WFAX, and the spider web network of interlocking relationships of the Zionist-driven consortiums and players that includes Salem Communications (Epperson), Xulon Press (Freiling), Crosswalk (Salem subsidiary, Falwell, Liberty U.), Tim La Haye, and Olasky’s World magazine, is eerily reminiscent of what happened to Bill Larson and me at KGNW AM 82/Seattle when Mission America lost a pending national syndication agreement and contract right after a sinister political contact with me was made by a man with the usual connections that have plagued both of us over time.
Who comprises the New World Order? Has it infiltrated Christian Media in America?
As you will recall, Marvin Stern, the Regional Director of the Anti Defamation League of B’nai Brith in Seattle at the time (1988), invited me to a private luncheon where it was clear to me I was being tested for possible use as a friendly Zionist source in the Pacific Northwest. My placement at KGNW AM 82/Seattle, and my role as the newly elected 36th Legislative District Chairman of the Republican Party in King County/Seattle (courtesy of a deal between Pat Robertson, Jack Kemp, and George H. W. Bush forces in the Washington State Republican Party which included Della Newman, a multi-millionaire real estate magnate in Seattle who later became the U. S. Ambassador to New Zealand), had apparently resulted in a file being opened on me at ADL headquarters in New York as a possibly friendly asset (They had a negative one at that time on Ted Pike and his National Prayer Network which I was shown at the ADL/Seattle meeting, with certain information deleted in my copy. Pike and I discussed all of this many years later).
Marvin Stern and I were joined by a Terry Moore of the pro-Zionist Bridges for Peace organization [Moore and I were both graduates of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois but had never met before], the nefarious Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, Jan Van Der Hoeven of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, and a handful of Rabbis whose names I never learned. The entire afternoon was creepy. I sensed demonic influence at work and was extremely guarded, but courteous. That night, I showed up as a quiet observer at a big Pentecostal gathering for Eckstein and Van Der Hoeven at a Holiday Inn in Renton (South Seattle). The whole thing was a combination of propaganda, worship circus, and fund raiser for the State of Israel. It was a terrifying thing to witness. The Satanic deception in this mass audience was apparent. I slipped out the back door. Stern of ADL never contacted me again. I have followed Eckstein’s nefarious career closely but from afar,in all the years since.
It was in this time frame that I learned much about Congressman Jack Kemp, and the forces really behind his career, and in his organization in Seattle. Kemp and his entourage began to keep a healthy distance from me when I didn’t pass the ADL preliminary examination in 1988. As God would have it, this was all in the time frame when I began to read things about the Pollard spy case and the USS Liberty attack of 1967 in Herman Otten’s Christian News. The foundation was being laid for what I would subsequently come to understand in working for the two Buchanan campaigns in Texas in the 1990s, my time with Howard Phillips and his Constitution Party from 1996-2004, and the post 9-11 time frame both in Philadelphia and upon my return to Texas in March of 2006. I kept learning more. I kept reading more. The more I read, the worse the implications became.
The only other gathering of the type I witnessed in Seattle/Renton with Eckstein and Van Der Hoeven was a neo-Pentecostal worship circus at the American Association of Lutheran Churches (AALC) National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota at Northwestern College in 1990, put on by some Christian Zionist, Neo-Pentecostal types masquerading as Lutherans, and with connections to C. Peter Wagner’s Fuller Seminary/Pasadena Institute for Church Growth. This latter fact has become abundantly more significant to me now. Bedros Hajian of Armenian TV in Los Angeles and I did a recent show on the occultic Pentecostal movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which evolved from the G-12 Movement in Colombia. C. Peter Wagner is a major player in this New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) movement. . . .. It has really infiltrated the Christian Zionist movement and has gotten close to many of the key Neo-Conservative types in the Republican Party like Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Bachmann. George W. Bush actually appeared at a fundraiser for the NAR-affiliated Messianic Jewish Bible Institute in Dallas. What is the glue that holds all these heretical, occultic threads and actors together? I list extra-Biblical revelation, the attendant notion that the offices of Prophet and Apostle exist today, demonically inspired “signs and wonders”, the Scofield Reference Bible eschatology, apostate conclusions about the Kingdom of God, and who and what truly constitutes the Israel of God for the New Testament believer.
I am absolutely convinced that a most fascinating research project would be comparing the forces behind the end of your radio ministry at WFAX/Washington, mine as a junior broadcaster and guest recruiter at KGNW AM 82/Seattle, and the multiplicity of names, organizations, interlocking networks, and money trails actually at work in both situations. The key is the National Religious Broadcasters and Salem Communications (Salem Media Group): KGNW AM82/Seattle is now owned–you guessed it–by Salem Communications/Salem Media Group. All of this information is right on the KGNW web page. Epperson’s name is prominently splashed there. But it gets worse: I just found out through a search of a Salem Communications/Salem Media Group profile listed by the Securities and Exchange Commissions (SEC), that on January 10, 2014, Salem acquired the Regnery/Eagle publishing consortium, which includes Human Events. The editor of the latter for years was Thomas S. Winter. That once fine newspaper’s direction for a number of years in a Neo-Conservative, pro-Zionist, almost Fox News orientation, had become very clear to me. Apparently, that has now been set in stone with the Salem acquisition.
See http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1050606/000114420415015976/v403456_10k.htm if you have access to a computer where you are. It is grim.
I have been re-reading your book, “On the Wrong Side of Just About Everything, But Right About it All,” and your letter to me of August 18, 2007 from Berryville (on your 57th wedding anniversary). Your theological analysis of Dispensationalism, the sage advice of Dr. James R. Graham in spring 1952, and the application of the principles in understanding the direction a doomed American Empire is taking us, especially since September 11th, 2001, are spot on. Your analysis, and that of the late Princeton/Westminster sage, O. T. Allis, in “The Church and Prophecy” (1945), tell the tale of the tape. I conclude that the Dispensational heresies on covenants, the nature of the Kingdom of God, the identity of the Israel of God today, and eschatology are absolutely critical in understanding the nature of the eschatological heresy Jesus warned us of in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24). I’m convinced the nature of the deception Jesus reiterates throughout that chapter is the modern Dispensationalist-Zionist heresy, and its wedding to the globalist/futurist New World Order articulated by John in the Apocalypse penned on Patmos during the reign of Domitian. Even many non-Dispensationalists do not recognize this. You do, and have, for many more years than I.
So our recent conversations have spurred me to much reflection on the past and presents of our respective lives. I’m beginning the process of writing a book on my own progress over decades in understanding what you grasped before I. It will cover decades. The outline of the key events will be as follows [the outline will enable us to carry on future phone chats on anything along the timeline]. It’s all preliminary in formulation. . . .
[timeline omitted for publication]
Much to discuss and pray about over time, Dale. I’m glad you’re clicking again. You’re the best Biblical mentor and insider I have. I think often of my years in Hawaii and yours, my years in Washington and yours, yet our paths crossed only through Otten’s Christian News and RBN radio show chats in 2007. God is indeed mysterious. . . . By the way, Christian News had the equivalent of their Hall of Fame published in the last 18 months or so. It is entitled, “Soldiers of the Cross.” It is some compendium of God’s special workers and saints. You and I made the list–complete with photos. I’m not kidding!
I’ll call again this coming week. Pray for me. I shall pray for you and Mary. Mark Glenn continues to handle the situation you are aware of. He asked me to ask you to pray for the firewood crisis they are encountering. He has cut firewood to get the family through Idaho winters near the Canadian border year after year. They store the wood in storage sites on his property. Having a full time guest on the property has led to much greater consumption of the reserve. Mark may even have to buy firewood he can’t cut enough of with the increased demand. . . . It is serious, as are a number of other factors you are aware of.
Final thought: If you have access to a good computer and Skype, and would be interested in sharing your witness and wealth of insights to the right audience, I believe Bedros Hajian of Armenian TV and the Armenian-owned International Christian Family Network (IFCN) in Los Angeles would be interested in using you and me occasionally to cover items and subjects of compelling interest. Give it some thought. In the meantime, I’m getting some additional Likes and exposure for your Facebook page around the world. There is terrific potential with this to keep your message in front of a global audience and to add material to the page from time to time. It is the only methodology left to us to counter NRB, Salem, and the monolithic control of information by the demonic forces we understand all too well in the light of Biblical eschatology and personal experience. There will be time to discuss some of these matters when I call again.
In the meantime, we uplift one another and “contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3).
In Christ,
Mark
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In our very last conversation in this present life, Dale Crowley and I covered events in my own life in the past year and the way in which these events tied together circumstances in both of our callings and careers over the decades. I sent him a print copy of the Jonas E. Alexis interview with Mark Dankof for VT entitled, “The Closing of the Zionist Mind” at http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/04/29/the-closing-of-the-zionist-mind-interview-with-former-us-senate-candidate-mark-dankof/. All of my recent articles and presentations cited in that interview with links were also printed and mailed in a package. There was so much to cover, and so little time. After Mary’s passing on December 3rd, 2015, the speed of time and events seemed to accelerate. When I returned from a Lutheran Conference in New York some weeks ago, it was obvious that the Hands of Time were choosing to wave so long for now, as the late Lowell Thomas used to say.
But the conversation will be renewed in the Kingdom of God in Christ in Eternity. There will be so much joy, and so much more understanding and wisdom there. Well done, Pastor Dale, Thou Good and Faithful Servant. Romans 10:9.
John on Patmos Pens The Apocalypse: Exiled Because of Resistance to the Emperor Worship Cultus of Domitian (A. D. 81-96).
Bedros Hajian Interviews Mark Dankof on ICFN: The New World Order and Biblical Prophecy
Pastor Mark Dankof and Bedros Hajian discuss the New World Order, Biblical Prophecy, and Biblical Eschatology for the International Christian Family Network (ICFN).
The Bedros Hajian interviews with Mark Dankof on the International Christian Family Network (ICFN) in Southern California are always enjoyable. In the latest one, our hour long chat covers The New World Order and recent political events in the light of Biblical Prophecy and Eschatology. These shows have a domestic American audience both live and on YouTube archives. They also reach Armenia, Iran, Syria, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, and other places on this planet made much smaller by miraculous technologies. To access the show, click here.
Bedros Hajian interviews Mother Agnes Miriam on Syria.
NATO and Putin: The New World Order’s Dangerous Brinksmanship
[Mark Dankof’s brief remarks are a contribution to Jonas Alexis’ article for Veterans Today, entitled, “Vladimir Putin to NATO.”]
Mark Dankof in San Antonio, Texas.
“And therein we find, neglected by us, the simplest, the most accessible key to our liberation: a personal non-participation in lies! Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!“
My feelings about the irresponsible character of American and NATO policy vis a vis Vladimir Putin and Russia are a matter of public record. One can go back to my essay entitled, “America the Beautiful: Why We’re Finished” to review my published remarks several years ago on the machinations of the United States in this regard. I have also touched upon this briefly in my recently published remarks on the Brexit vote now reposted at Al Jazeerah, in occasional conversations with Press TV, and in previous work with both Patrick Slattery on RBN radio and you in a recent publish on Veterans Today.
My feelings are apparently shared by Mr. Putin himself. The Russian government has quite rightly began moving against the NGO’s linked to George Soros and other well-heeled subversives in the largely Jewish Tribal establishment promoting the toxic brew of Zionism, Central Banking, and Cultural Marxism which has completely enveloped the West and destroyed the older European Christian influences of both Europe and the United States eradicated by both World Wars in the 20th century and their aftermath. The economic sanctions, cultural subversion, and hourly global agitation-propaganda campaign aimed at the Putin regime and the Russian nation are now joined by the methodologies of black intelligence operations in places like Ukraine in February of 2014, and the overt military threat posed by the continued deployment of NATO and American military assets in Eastern Europe ever closer to Russian borders, augmented by the ongoing recruitment of countries on the Russian periphery for membership in NATO, including overtures to Montenegro, Ukraine, and Georgia. Given the specifics of Article V of the NATO charter, and the clear possibility of Russian military activity to legitimately protect their own backyard, the spectre of the likelihood of a NATO and American military conflict with Russia is made even more probable by these provocative and unjustifiable moves which have nothing to do with the Cold War doctrine of deterrence. The Guardian’s post on the recent Anaconda 2016 NATO war games in Poland, and the recent switching on of the U. S. ballistic missile shield in Deveselu, Romania, have brought the breaking of Bush 41’s promises to Gorbachev and the later unilateral American cancellation of the provisions of the ABM treaty to an entirely new level of dishonesty and recklessness.
My perspective on this and that of the Russian President and his Foreign Minister is shared by a number of other people. I would commend Eric Margolis’ “War With Russia is Coming.” Ex-CIA Station Chief and head of the Council for the National Interest, Dr. Philip Giraldi, has a July 13th release for Pat Buchanan’s The American Conservative entitled, “Russian Harassment and Other Fables.” Dr. Giraldi’s post for The Unz Review on June 28th, “The Magnitsky Hoax? Who Stole the Money?” adds to the mix. Finally, Robert Parry at Consortium News has an article out July 14. See “NATO Reaffirms its Bogus Russia Narrative.”
All of these gentlemen underscore two essential ingredients inherent in American and NATO policy where Russia is concerned: Duplicity and absolute madness. The Parry piece notes the absolutely Orwellian character of the recent Warsaw Summit Communique of the Western powers which condemn “Russian aggression” by noting the non-existent intelligence data and supporting analysis for the mantras of the Communique which repristinate memories of the Weapons of Mass Destruction fraud in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the constant glossalalia of top officials of NATO and American Neo-Conservatives on the subject of Putin and Russia, and the incessant drone of falsehoods repeated daily in the lapdog mainstream Western media.
President Barack Obama walks from Marine One on arrival on the White House’s South Lawn, July 5, 2016, a few days before leaving to attend the NATO Summit in Warsaw, Poland. Official White House photo by Lawrence Jackson
He states unequivocally:
“The leaders – at least the key ones – know that there is no credible intelligence that Russian President Vladimir Putin provoked the Ukraine crisis in 2014 or that he has any plans to invade the Baltic states, despite the fact that nearly every ‘important person’ in Official Washington and other Western capitals declares the opposite of this to be reality.
“But there have been a few moments when the truth has surfaced. For instance, in the days leading up to the just-completed NATO summit in Warsaw, General Petr Pavel, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, divulged that the deployment of NATO military battalions in the Baltic states was a political, rather than military, act.
“It is not the aim of NATO to create a military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression, because such aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing,” Pavel told a news conference.
“What Pavel blurted out was what I have been told by intelligence sources over the past two-plus years – that the endless drumbeat of Western media reports about ‘Russian aggression’ results from a clever demonization campaign against Putin and a classic Washington ‘group think’ rather than from a careful intelligence analysis.”
Mark Dankof on Vladimir Putin of Russia: Does This Look Like a Man Who Will Fail to Defend His Country’s Sovereignty and Borders?
It is critical to understand that the lies and agitation-propaganda being spun by the official American governmental and media narrative on who the aggressor and malefactor is in the present crisis mirrors the official line on how 9-11 happened and who was responsible for bringing it about. It mirrors the official line on American Neo-Conservative and Zionist untruth about Iran and the historical tragedies in the American relationship with that country since 1953. It mirrors the falsehoods of the United States and Israel about what really happened in Palestine in the late 1940s. It mirrors the official lies perpetrated about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy Assassination. For that matter, one can reach farther back in the linear historical stream to the official line perpetrated on Abraham Lincoln and the American War Between the States held so dear by American Neo-Conservatives and Lovers of Empire.
Mr. Putin’s frustration with the duplicity of the United States and NATO is compounded by the inherent madness in the direction taken by the West in all of this. This comes forth very clearly in the brief clip of his airing of frustrations aimed at the Western media after the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum of June 17th. What is breathtaking is their full participation not simply in the lies, but in their stupefying failure to see the slope toward world war and apocalypse obviously steepening in the continued pushing of the envelope by the United States, NATO, and the EU in making global conflict and some form of nuclear exchange likely. And over what? It certainly isn’t the legitimate national defense of the United States and Western Europe. It has everything to do with the ongoing exportation of a brand of coercive globalism and World Government which threaten Russian autonomy as a sovereign nation-state free of the tentacles of the Beast. The implication may well be that failure to subdue the Bear by economic sanctions, demonization, and cultural subversion, will leave overt military aggression as the weapon of final resort.
Duplicity is more than matched by literal madness and insanity. Does the American Cabal of Empire and New World Order truly believe Russia will fail to defend its national honor, history, culture, autonomy, and homeland from this unfolding onslaught? Has The Cabal and its fawning paid agents in the Western media forgotten that Russia, unlike Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, and Iran, is a nuclear power with a bona fide army and navy to match? Putin’s directed remarks to foreign correspondents on June 17th in St. Petersburg underscore his disbelief in the Pavlovian dogs of Western media. The tone of his voice, his facial intonations and body language give special power to the desperately heartfelt statements in that press conference, like “I don’t know how to get through to you people. . . . How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? . . .“
This “irreversible direction” can only be reversed by a wholesale domestic American and European revolt against The Cabal. It has not yet happened despite the wholesale destruction of the demographic, economic, cultural, spiritual, and political fortunes of millions in the West in the last 100 years of history. What remains to be seen is whether or not the threat of fire raining down on European and American cities will be enough to produce sufficient will and resolve to resist the tyranny of The Cabal and the seemingly irreversible and insane course it has charted toward cataclysm, or whether the Culture of Death and the nihilism produced by that culture for those entrapped in addictions to sexual decadence, drugs, and worship of technology will render meaningful resistance impossible.
Solzhenitsyn seems ominously prophetic when he tells us that “We are approaching the brink; already a universal spiritual demise is upon us; a physical one is about to flare up and engulf us and our children, while we continue to smile sheepishly and babble.“
