Mood music: Adeste Fideles -- Oh, come all ye Faithful -- in Latin

Video -- Luciano Pavarotti - Montreal - 1978:




  Dion, English:



Latin Text:

1. Adeste Fideles laeti triumphantes,
Venite, venite in Bethlehem.
Natum videte, Regem Angelorum;

Refrain:
    Venite adoremus,
    venite adoremus,
    venite adoremus
    Dominum!

2. Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine,
gestant puellae viscera.
Deum verum, genitum non factum; (refrain)

3. Cantet nunc io chorus Angelorum
cantet nunc aula caelestium:
Gloria in excelsis Deo!

4. Ergo qui natus, die hodierna,
Jesu, tibi sit gloria.
Patris aeterni Verbum caro factum;

5. En grege relicto, Humiles ad cunas,
vocati pastores approperant.
Et nos ovanti gradu festinemus;

6. Aeterni Parentis splendorem aeternum,
velatum sub carne videbimus.
Deum infantem, pannis involutum;

7. Pro nobis egenum et foeno cubantem,
piis foveamus amplexibus.
Sic nos anamtem quis non redamaret?

8. Stella duce, Magi, Christum adorantes,
aurum, thus, et myrrham dant munera.
Jesu infanti corda praebeamus;

^{Verses 1-4 by John Francis Wade, 1740-43
5-7 by Abbé Étienne Jean François Borderies, 1822
Verse 8 author unknown, 1850}

Standard English rendering:

1. O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant!
O come ye, o come ye, to Bethlehem.
Come and behold Him, born the King of angels;¹

Refrain:
    O come, let us adore Him,
    O come, let us adore Him,
    O come, let us adore Him,
    Christ the Lord!

2. God of God, Light of Light,
Lo! He abhors not the Virgin’s womb.
Very God, begotten not created; (refrain)

3. Sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation!
Sing, all ye citizens of heaven above:
Glory to God, glory in the highest!²

4. Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, born this happy morning,
Jesu, to Thee be glory given.³
Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing;

5. See how the shepherds, summoned to His cradle,
leaving their flocks, draw nigh to gaze.
We too will thither bend our hearts’ oblations;⁴

6. There shall we see Him, His eternal Father’s
everlasting brightness now veiled under flesh.
God shall we find there, a Babe in infant clothing;

7. Child, for us sinners, poor and in the manger,
we would embrace Thee, with love and awe.
Who would not love Thee, loving us so dearly?

8. Lo! Star-led chieftains, Magi, Christ adoring,
offer Him frankincense, gold and myrrh.⁵
We to the Christ-child, bring our hearts oblations;

^{Verses 1-4 translated by Frederick Oakeley, D.D., 1841
Verses 5-8 translated by William Thomas Brooke, 1885}

Amen and amen to the Heaven-sent Prince of Peace. END

Matt 24 watch, 300: Putin of Russia -- yes, the former KGB Colonel and now Orthodox President of Russia! -- warns his nation and our civilisation about the ongoing collapse of Christendom . . .

Food for thought.

Video (in Russian, with English sub-titles):



Vox Day (and I most definitely do not approve of him in general -- hence no link . . . ) has a transcript:

A further challenge for the national Russian identity is connected to the processes we observe outside of Russia. They include foreign policy, moral, and other aspects. We see that many Euro-Atlantic states have taken the way where they deny or reject their own roots, including their Christian roots which form the basis of Western civilization. 

In these countries, the moral basis and any traditional identity are being denied - national, religious, cultural, and even gender identities are being denied or relativised. There, politics treats a family with many children as juridically equal to a homosexual partnership; faith in God is equal to faith in Satan.

The excesses and exaggerations of political correctness in these countries indeed leads to serious consideration for the legitimization of parties that promote the propaganda of paedophilia. 

The people in many European states are actually ashamed of their religious affiliations and are indeed frightened to speak about them. Christian holidays and celebrations are abolished or "neutrally" renamed, as if one were ashamed of those Christian holidays. With this method one hides away the deeper moral value of those celebrations. 

And these countries try to force this model onto other nations, globally. I am deeply convinced that this is a direct way to the degradation and primitivization of culture. This leads to deeper demographic and moral crisis in the West. 

What can be better evidence for the moral crisis of human society in the West than the loss of its reproductive function? And today nearly all "developed" Western countries cannot survive reproductively, not even with the help of migrants.

Without the moral values that are rooted in Christianity and other world religions, without rules and moral values which have formed, and been developed, over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity and become brutes. And we think it is right and natural to defend and preserve these Christian moral values. 

One has to respect the right of every minority to self-determination, but at the same time there cannot and must not be any doubt about the rights of the majority. 

At the same time as this process plays out at a national level in the West, we observe on an international level the attempts to create a unipolar, unified model of the world, to relativise and remove institutions of international rights and national sovereignty. In such a unipolar, unified world there is no place for sovereign states. Such a world needs merely vassals. 

From a historical perspective, such a unipolar world would mean the surrender of one's own identity and of God-created diversity.
_________________

F/N: This seems to be from a Sept 19, 2013 meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Russia. The fuller excerpts here are well worth the reading.

Putin here alludes to Acts 17: " ²⁶ And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands and territories. ²⁷ This was so that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grasp for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. ²⁸ For in Him we live and move and exist [that is, in Him we actually have our being], as even some of ^[f]your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ . . . " [AMP]

Food for sobering thought as we approach the threshold of another new year, one that portends to be tumultuous, given Brexit, Trump and Syria, not to mention the recent UN Security Council resolution targetting Israel.

Brethren, let us pray, for kings and all in authority, that there may be stabilisation enough that we may live a reasonable life and have a climate in which the good news of the Prince of Peace can be shared without let or hindrance.  END

Trump easily wins at Electoral College despite threats, protests, pleas

. . . and Mrs Clinton had a bigger faithless elector problem.

Reuters headline (yes, Daily Mail had no easily seen, inimitable bullet point lead!):

A clip or two:

Republican Donald Trump prevailed in U.S. Electoral College voting on Monday to officially win election as the next president, easily dashing a long-shot push by a small movement of detractors to try to block him from gaining the White House . . . . [however] more Democrats than Republicans went rogue, underscoring deep divisions within their party. [which were not the focus of a media firestorm, unlike issues with Republicans] At least four Democratic electors voted for someone other than Clinton, while two Republicans turned their backs on Trump.

With nearly all votes counted, Trump had clinched 304 electoral votes to Clinton's 227, according to an Associated Press tally of the voting by 538 electors across the country.

"I will work hard to unite our country and be the President of all Americans," Trump said in a statement responding to the results.

The Electoral College assigns each state electors equal to its number of representatives and senators in Congress. The District of Columbia also has three electoral votes. The votes will be officially counted during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.

In short, Mr Donald J Trump is now the 45th President-Elect of the United States of America.

It is worth noting at this point that at least one prominent Christian figure, Lance Wallnau, has felt that God has told him that Mr Trump is a Cyrus-like, Isaiah 45 figure.

Video:



(Notice, this was spoken TO Mr Trump, six months ago, by Mr Wallnau.)

Text:

Isa 45:This is what the Lord says to His anointed,
to Cyrus [king of Persia],
Whose right hand I have held
To subdue nations before him,
And I will ungird the loins of kings [disarming them];
To open doors before him so that gates will not be shut:
² 
“I will go before you and level the mountains;
I will shatter the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron.
³ 
“I will give you the treasures of darkness [the hoarded treasures]
And the hidden riches of secret places,
So that you may know that it is I,
The Lord, the God of Israel, who calls you (Cyrus the Great) by your name.
⁴ 
“For the sake of Jacob My servant,
And of Israel My chosen,
I have also called you by your name;
I have given you an honorable name
Though you have not known Me.
⁵ 
“I am the Lord, and there is no one else;
There is no God except Me.
I will embrace and arm you,
though you have not known Me,
⁶ 
That people may know
from the rising to the setting of the sun [the world over]
That there is no one except Me.
I am the Lord, and there is no other,
⁷ 
The One forming light and creating darkness,
Causing peace and creating disaster;
I am the Lord who does all these things. [AMP]

Let us test all things, holding to the good. 

For me, I said openly that I would believe the nomination and election of Mr Trump when I see them.

I have now seen, I believe that he has won the election.

Now, he has an opportunity to make a good difference in the world. Let us pray that he does so, as scripture mandates that we do.

Let us go to 1 Tim 2:

1 Tim 2:1 First of all, then, I urge that petitions (specific requests), prayers, intercessions (prayers for others) and thanksgivings be offered on behalf of all people, ² for ^[a]kings and all who are in [positions of] high authority, so that we may live a peaceful and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.  

³ This [kind of praying] is good and acceptable and pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, ⁴ who ^[b]wishes all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge and recognition of the [divine] truth. 

 ⁵ For there is [only] one God, and [only] one Mediator between God and mankind, the Man Christ Jesus, ⁶ who gave Himself as a ransom [a substitutionary sacrifice to atone] for all, the testimony given at the right and proper time. [AMP]

This one gets stranger and stranger. END

PS: Rebuilding Jerusalem and its wall of defence -- which took quite long, was the key step to national renewal, as we can see from Nehemiah.

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