Metábasis eis állo génos (2-19)
It took me over nine months, but I’ve finished The Gulag Archipelago. Some quotes from the end of Volume 3:
Let us put it generally: if a regime is immoral, its subjects are free from all obligations to it. (Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, Vol. 3, 394)
A fish does not campaign against fisheries—it only tries to slip through the mesh. (452)
But then, only those who decline to scramble up the career ladder are interesting as human beings. Nothing is more boring than a man with a career. (455)
All you freedom–loving “left–wing” thinkers in the West! You left laborites! You progressive American, German, and French students! As far as you are concerned, none of this amounts to much. As far as you are concerned, this whole book of mine is a waste of effort. You may suddenly understand it all someday—but only when you yourselves hear “hands behind your backs there!” and step ashore on our Archipelago (518)
Kings multiply kingship:
And Judah and Israel dwelt safely, each man under his vine and his fig tree, from Dan as far as Beersheba, all the days of Solomon. (1 Kings 4:25, NKJV)
So do deacons multiply deaconship:
And the saying pleased the whole multitude. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte from Antioch, whom they set before the apostles; and when they had prayed, they laid hands on them. (Acts 6:5–6, NKJV)
Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, “Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” This is desert. So he arose and went. And behold, a man of Ethiopia, a eunuch of great authority under Candace the queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge of all her treasury, and had come to Jerusalem to worship, was returning. . . . (Acts 8:26–28, NKJV)
By contrast, rulers that stifle their people are cutting off their own arms:
In a multitude of people is a king’s honor,
But in the lack of people is the downfall of a prince. (Proverbs 14:28, NKJV)
Daniel’s behavior under the decree of Darius (Daniel 6) is calculated specifically to avoid even the public appearance of breaking covenant with God. If someone spied on our front doors for the past year, what would they see? Could they convict us of faithfulness to worship God?
In the ark of the covenant were hidden some of God’s treasures: his ten words, heavenly bread, and Aaron’s rod of authority. Access to God and his treasures was restricted:
Then He struck the men of Beth Shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the LORD. He struck fifty thousand and seventy men of the people, and the people lamented because the LORD had struck the people with a great slaughter. (1 Samuel 6:19, NKJV)
It is hard to forget the corresponding scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Today it is God’s church where his treasures are hidden. In a sense, these treasures are available to all who approach humbly, but there is still a great judgment upon those who treat the ark of the church without such humility. Zechariah captures this dichotomy dramatically. Everyone stands in one relation or another to the new Jerusalem:
And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles.
And it shall be that whichever of the families of the earth do not come up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, on them there will be no rain. If the family of Egypt will not come up and enter in, they shall have no rain; they shall receive the plague with which the LORD strikes the nations who do not come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations that do not come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. (Zechariah 14:16–19, NKJV)
But as long as it is today there is still an opportunity:
Fill their faces with shame,
That they may seek Your name, O LORD. (Psalm 83:16, NKJV)
The Mars Hill Audio Journal volume 150 was recently released. Myers interviews David Smith on the use of technology. David observes that “technology is making it easier for us to communicate at a distance and harder for us to communicate when we’re close to each other.”
I worked at Kmart:
I gotta have my orange juice. 
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