Philip Berrigan, Apostle of Peace, Dies at Age 79
Josephite Father Called Protests 'Prophetic Acts'

By Jacques Kelly and Carl Schoettler
Sun Staff

Saturday, 7 December, 2002

Philip Berrigan, the patriarch of the Roman Catholic anti-war movement whose conscience collided with national policy for more than three decades, died last night of liver and kidney cancer. He was 79 and had lived at Jonah House on the grounds of a West Baltimore cemetery for much of the past decade.

He led the Catonsville Nine, who staged one of the most dramatic protests of the 1960s. They doused homemade napalm on a small bonfire of draft records in a Catonsville parking lot and ignited a generation of anti-war dissent. More recently he helped found the Plowshares movement, whose members have attacked federal military property in anti-war and anti-nuclear protests and were then often imprisoned.

Mr. Berrigan died at 9:30 p.m. at the Jonah House, a communal living facility of war resisters.

In a final statement released by his family, he said, "I die with the conviction, held since 1968 and Catonsville, that nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself."

Though Mr. Berrigan was an Army veteran - he was a second lieutenant in the infantry - who fought across Western Europe in World War II, he persistently and publicly criticized the Vietnam War and U.S. foreign and domestic policy. He first gained national attention during part of the 14-year period during which he wore the Roman collar and clerical garb of a Josephite priest.

He eventually served some 11 years in jail and prison for his actions challenging public authority and repeated bashing of the military budget.

Howard Zinn, professor emeritus at Boston University who maintained a friendship with Mr. Berrigan through the years because they had similar views, called him "one of the great Americans of our time."

"He believed war didn't solve anything," Mr. Zinn said. "He went to prison again and again and again for his beliefs. I admired him for the sacrifices he made. He was an inspiration to a large number of people."

Mr. Berrigan saw his protests as "prophetic acts" based on the Biblical injunction to beat swords into plowshares, and that included the "symbolic" destruction of Selective Service records in raids on draft board offices in the Baltimore Customs House in 1967 and in Catonsville in 1968. He was also convicted of smuggling letters in and out of the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pa., while an inmate there in 1970, though the conviction was later thrown out. The end of the Vietnam War failed to silence him; he continued his missions of dissent until the end of his life.

In his most recent clash in December 1999, Mr. Berrigan and others banged on A-10 Warthog warplanes in an anti-war protest at the Middle River Air National Guard base. He was convicted of malicious destruction of property and sentenced to 30 months. He was released Dec. 14 last year.

Mr. Berrigan's brother Daniel, a Jesuit priest and poet who participated in the 1968 Catonsville protest, later wrote the play The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, which ran on Broadway for 29 performances in 1971 and was made into a movie a year later. It recounted verbatim episodes from the trial and the moral dilemmas of the Vietnam War era.

"We confront the Catholic Church, other Christian bodies and the synagogues of America with their silence and cowardice in the face of our country's crimes," said a statement Philip Berrigan and his eight fellow protestors issued that day in Catonsville. "We are convinced that the religious bureaucracy in this country is racist, is an accomplice in this war and is hostile to the poor."

He expanded those views to include opposition to almost any form of established government that would wage war, deploy nuclear weapons or even use nuclear power. Neither he nor any member of the Jonah House community had voted for years because of their dismissal of government.

"We don't know whether we're qualified to vote because we're all felons," he said recently. "But we intend to pursue it for the elections in 2004 because it's pretty important to get Bush out of there."

Philip Francis Berrigan was born Oct. 5, 1923, in Two Harbors, Minn., then a thriving mining town on the Mesabi Iron Range.

According to a 1976 Current Biography profile, Mr. Berrigan stressed the influence of his father, Thomas, a trade unionist turned Socialist who lost his job as a railroad engineer. Mr. Berrigan later characterized his father as a "tyrannical" man. He said he father's treatment left him apt to "bristle against authority."

"Our mother (Frida) was a mild woman, dedicated to her six sons and to her religion," said his brother, Jim Berrigan, a retired electrical engineer who lives in Salisbury.

After graduating from high school in Syracuse, N.Y., Mr. Berrigan cleaned New York Central Railroad locomotives. A good athlete, he was a first baseman who played with a local semi-professional team. He also enjoyed golf and basketball in college.

He spent one semester at St. Michael's College in Toronto before being drafted into the U.S. Army in January 1943 for service in World War II. He was an artillery man in some of the fiercest action from Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge, where he was chosen to go to infantry school near Paris. He served out the rest of the war as an infantry officer, a second lieutenant.

He earned an English degree at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. In 1950, he followed his brother Jerome into the Society of St. Joseph. The order, known as the Josephite Fathers, serves African-American communities.

Ordained in 1955, he was assigned to New Orleans, where he earned a degree in secondary education at Loyola University of the South in 1957 and a master's at Xavier University three years later.

While at Xavier, he began teaching English and religion and counseling students at his order's St. Augustine High School.

"From the beginning, he stood with the urban poor," Daniel Berrigan wrote of his brother's years in the priesthood. "He rejected the traditional, isolated stance of the Church in black communities. He was also incurably secular; he saw the Church as one resource, bringing to bear on the squalid facts of racism the light of the Gospel, the presence of inventive courage and hope. He worked with CORE [Congress of Racial Equality], SNCC [Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee], the Urban League, the forms of Catholic action then in vogue. He took Freedom Rides, did manual work of all kinds, begged money and gave it away, struggled for scholarships for black students."

Philip Berrigan, in a recent Sun interview, said his first arrest of many came in 1962 or 1963 during a civil rights protest in Selma, Ala., at which point his name began appearing in newspapers. He would become quite adept at surviving in prison. He got along with the other prisoners, even murderers sometimes, and they accepted him. He led Bible study classes and helped prisoners with educational and legal matters. If he had extra money, he would buy items from the prison commissaries for down-and-out inmates.

As an activist priest, Father Berrigan soon got in trouble with his church superiors. He was transferred to the faculty of Epiphany Apostolic College, a Josephite seminary in Newburgh, N.Y., where he again led protests on behalf of the poor.

Rosalie Bertell, 73, of Buffalo, N.Y., an activist and member of the order of the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart, said she admired Mr. Berrigan for his "blunt honesty" and for the "choices he made in life."

A longtime friend of the Berrigan family, Ms. Bertell is an internationally recognized expert on radiation and testified as an expert witness in trials where he was arrested for anti-nuclear demonstrations. "He knew the U.S. was becoming a killing machine, and he was willing to go to jail trying to stop it."

As the United States expanded its presence in Vietnam, Father Berrigan became more outspoken and visible. In 1964, he organized the Emergency Citizens Group Concerned About Vietnam in Newburgh and co-founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship in New York City.

Frustrated by the church's failure to speak out against the war, he compared its stance on Vietnam to "the German Church under Hitler."

In another speech, he asked, "Is it possible for us to be vicious, brutal, immoral, and violent at home and be fair, judicious, beneficent and idealistic abroad?"

Not long afterward, Father Berrigan's Josephite superiors transferred him again, this time to St. Peter Claver Church in West Baltimore.

"He was an excellent curate, much respected in the community back in the 1960s," said the Rev. Michael Roach, a former Southwest Baltimore pastor who is now at St. Bartholomew's Church in Manchester.

While at St. Peter Claver, Father Berrigan started the Baltimore Interfaith Peace Mission. He made frequent trips to Washington to lobby Congress and federal officials and lead vigils and other peace demonstrations.

On Oct. 27, 1967, Father Berrigan and three others dumped blood on Selective Service records in the Baltimore Customs House, "anointing" them, he said. They waited to be arrested, as they would in subsequent protests. His arrest shocked the Catholic Church.

In a statement to reporters, the Baltimore Four said that "this sacrificial and constructive act" was meant to protest "the pitiful waste of American and Vietnamese blood" in Indochina.

It was a new kind of protest. The Baltimore chancery said the action was likely to "alienate a great number of sincere men in the cause of a just peace."

Philip Berrigan and the three others were charged and convicted of defacing government property and impeding the Selective Service. While awaiting sentencing, Mr. Berrigan began recruiting brother Daniel and seven others for a second "prophetic act."

The Catonsville Nine chose Selective Service Board 33, housed in a Knights of Columbus hall on Frederick Road in Catonsville.

According to a Sun account, the nine walked into the draft board office on May 17, 1968, moved and swept aside stunned clerks and emptied filing cabinets of 600 draft records.

They set the records afire with homemade napalm in the parking lot, said a prayer and waited for arrest. They spent the night in the Baltimore County Jail in Towson.

Charged with conspiracy and destruction of government property, Mr. Berrigan and his companions were found guilty in U.S. District Court in Baltimore on Nov. 8, 1968. They were free on bail for 16 months until the U.S. Supreme Court declined to reconsider the verdict.

But on the day they were supposed to begin serving their sentences, the Berrigan brothers and two others went into hiding. Twelve days later, FBI found Philip Berrigan at the Church of St. Gregory the Great in Manhattan, and he was taken to the federal prison in Lewisburg.

Mr. Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister, a former nun, a member of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, had secretly married a year earlier, in, as they put it, "trust and gratitude." The marriage was not disclosed until 1973, when there was a ceremony at which a former monk officiated.

A fellow inmate at Lewisburg, who was allowed to take courses at a local college, carried messages between Mr. Berrigan and his wife.

Ms. McAlister kept Mr. Berrigan informed of what was being done and said in the peace movement. They were unaware that the inmate carrying their messages was a paid informer and that copies of everything they wrote were going to the FBI.

The FBI's scrutiny led to the capture of Daniel Berrigan, to the arrest of draft resisters in Rochester, N.Y., and to the indictment of Philip Berrigan, Ms. McAlister and five others.

The government indicted the Harrisburg Seven on 23 counts of conspiracy, including plots to kidnap presidential adviser Henry A. Kissinger and to blow up heating tunnels in Washington. Defense lawyers, including Paul O'Dwyer, Ramsey Clark and Leonard Boudin, saw the conspiracy indictments as a "gross caricature," and the charges were later modified.

In April 1972, a jury in Harrisburg, Pa., found Mr. Berrigan and his wife guilty on the letter-smuggling charges but deadlocked on all the other counts. A mistrial was declared. Everything was later thrown out by a federal appeals court.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Garry Wills, who lived in Baltimore from 1961 to 1980, said he participated in the anti-war demonstrations with the Berrigans.

"I've known them for decades and I've written about them, and Phil has always been an inspiration to me," Mr. Wills said. "Phil was a real pacifist. He always turned the other cheek."

Mr. Berrigan and Ms. McAlister helped start the anti-war and anti-nuclear Plowshares movement in the three-story Reservoir Hill rowhouse on Park Avenue they called Jonah House, in which they lived in community with other activists for years before moving into the old St. Peter the Apostle Cemetery in West Baltimore.

Mr. Berrigan was the author of several books, including No More Strangers, Punishment for Peace, Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary and Widen the Prison Gates. In 1996, he wrote his autobiography, Fighting the Lamb's War, and with his wife wrote The Times' Discipline, a work on their life together at Jonah House.

Survivors include Ms. McAlister; two daughters, Frida, a prolific writer who is a research associate at the World Policy Institute and a member of the War Resister's League executive committee, of New York, and Kate Berrigan, a senior at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio; a son, Jerry Berrigan, a member of the Catholic Worker who is also involved in anti-war, anti-nuclear and anti-death penalty movements, of Luck, Mich.; four brothers, the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest in New York, John Berrigan of Prescott, Ariz., Jim Berrigan of Salisbury and Jerome Berrigan of Syracuse, N.Y.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

© : t r u t h o u t 2002

It was the Christmas season on Long Island, sometime during the late 1960s, or very early 70s. The three of us, my mother, my wife, Nan, and myself, pulled into the enormous parking lot of the Smithhaven Mall. The place was packed. My habit was to stay in the car and read while the ladys went shopping, but the night was frigid cold. I decided to go inside, and find a place to sit among the santa clauses, the bright colored lights, the music and the candy canes, and spend the time studying the faces of people as they passed by instead. (Nan often had to scold me for not realizing that I was actually staring at people, wondering who they were, what they were thinking. The human face, of course, is a reflection of the Face of God, and the human mind a reflection of the Mind of God). I never made it inside of the mall that evening. As we approached the main entrance there was a line of people standing outside in the dark, in the cold, holding candles. There was a war raging in Vietnam, and these people from The Woman's International League for Peace and Justice were there to remind those of us who might have been unaware, or who had grown complacent about it all, that as we shopped others were dying, bombs were raining down on cities and villages, children were being burned to death, and that it was all happening in the name of the American people themselves. Can I have one of your candles? I asked. And may I stand here with you?

Nan and I had given up a ten-year career in the military service, for reasons we were not fully aware of until later, when we came to realize that there was actually an antiwar movement happening in America, and that we were not alone in our sentiments. It was the antiwar movement that rounded out and helped solidify our understanding of the path we were on. I was on my way to Vietnam in 1967, aboard an American aircraft carrier. We were very naive, protected from reality is a better way to describe it, as almost all American service men and women are. We were in the sheltering embrace of the American military establishment, and literally unaware of the civil rights and antiwar movements that were happening in the country at the time. Well, Nan was already singing Dylan songs around the house, I had no idea who he was. What we did sense together, however, in a very inarticulate way, was that I had no business in Vietnam, fighting a war halfway around the globe, for reasons that I did not understand, against a people that I had nothing against.

We were beginning to awaken spiritually--a process that would take some time--and had already read where it said that a person could not serve two masters. One could not serve God and men at the same time (and especially the God of Peace and men of war at the same time). Our's was a private journey back to God, and to the Bible, which we also knew very little of at the time (Catholics you know). Our understanding of things was quite imperfect. Nan, nevertheless, was already a pacifist at heart, and was in full agreement as we took our first step, left the military, packed up our belongings and our children in the back of a little station wagon, and headed out across the country for civilian life. It was a big transition, and the most immediate work I could find that matched my skills was with the Grumman Aviation Corporation. We were thankful for the job, and as I look back on it, it provided us a first hand look into the corporate side of the giant military-industrial complex. I was working there when we first met the people who, unknowingly, would become our mentors for the next few years or so. It takes a while to sort through all of these things and to finally and completely make the right choices. We were on a rapid learning curve, however, and soon understood the implications of the work I was still doing in support of America's war efforts. Woodstock, Kent State, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Black activism and the American Indian Movement, it was a dynamic time in America. We dove in, took another leap of faith and quit the job.

One night Sister Elizabeth McAlister was to speak at a local coffee house, to explain from the religious perspective what was going on in the country and with her fellowship of resisters and antiwar activists, all of whom were appearing in the headlines of late. We even persuaded my father, one of this country's greatest generation, to accompany us. Arriving, we discovered that Sister McAlister could not make it that evening but had sent a Jesuit priest, Ned Murphy, to speak on her behalf. Afterwards we offered to take Ned Murphy back to his community house in New York City, to learn more of what was happening from the spiritual (or rather, religious) point of view, but not before my father added a $50 bill to the hat that went around, and all of us wound up in the basement kitchen of the Cenacle Retreat House--drinking beer with priests and nuns! My world was changing faster than I could imagine.

A cousin of mine told us about the antiwar demonstration that was to take place in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in connection with the trial unfolding there, and the charges that were being weighed against Philip Berrigan, Elizabeth McAlister and others. He told us to meet him and his friends at the Augsburg Lutheran Church where they would be staying for the night. Our oldest daughter, Sharon, and myself got there late on the night before the demonstration, and found the church. There was little light inside as we stepped around sleeping bodies whispering "Pat Ryan, Pat Ryan, are you here?" Someone from the other side of the sanctuary hollered out, "He got ill, and went back to New York City." So there we were, on our own, at our first real demonstration against America's military machine. We witnessed a loaf of bread being broken in a thousand pieces and being shared by all at a song and prayer service the following evening. That was a mystical experience. It was very ironic, however. I went from a life in the military to the antiwar movement. Pat went from the antiwar movement into the military. He joined soon afterwards and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander in the American Intelligence Service. (He is retired now, thank God, but still believes in the mission of America's armed forces. There is a Theology of Armed Might and Pat became a believer. It is a replication of the cult of Sol Invictus that was observed by the Roman legions, which took on the patterns of Christian worship after the church gave itself over to the political order in the time of Constantine. This is what happens when the Law and the Prophets are forsaken, and men go backwards and listen to men [recruiters in this case] rather than the Spirit. Yet all things are all happening in their proper way, even if we can not understand it. My own seven-year old granddaughter, expressing the things she has been learning at her grade school, said, "Grandpa, did you ever think that the army is what makes us free?" Her teachers told her that. "My dearest one, it is Jesus who makes us free, and Jesus commanded us to stay out of the army and away from war").

It was early in 1974 when Sharon came home from school one afternoon with the Idea. "Let's give away, or sell everything we own, and get in the car and go wherever God will take us," she said. Nan and I looked at each other, looked at her, at each other again, and said "okay!" Within a month or so the house was sold, a teaching position at a local high school left behind, friends and family embraced, and we were in the station wagon heading out for only God knew where. By April we discovered ourselves in a back-to-the-land counter-cultural community in West Virginia. It was the next stage of our own journey to social and spiritual awareness, and to the beginning of this labor of love as it is, this Commentary on the Tree of Life. (Some of our children and grandchildren are still laboring and struggling with the effects of it all--with this journey out of the mainstream of American life into the conditions of rural poverty to which we gave ourselves. The spiritual rewards and simple blessings return however, one by one).

Work was scarce that following winter so several of us went over to Baltimore to find employment until springtime. Nan and our friend Lorrie found work at a Howard Johnson restaurant and I was hired on as a welder at the Sparrow's Point Shipyard. As webs are woven in life, we heard at that time that Ned Murphy was staying at Jonah House on Park Avenue. Calling over to say hello, I was invited to visit. It was there that I met Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister, and must admit that I was a little starry-eyed to be there. It was like coming up to the big leagues, if only for a game or two. I remember Elizabeth saying that they had been accused of being unrealistic, of not having any real connections to the real world, where real people were raising families and had to actually work for a living. She said in a light-hearted way that I could be their connection to the working class. It would be a meager voice, I said. I suggested that someone should publish a book of names of people in the antiwar movement, like the one the Rainbow Gathering now distributes each year, so that people traveling from place to place could be in touch with each other. I think they were a little suspicious of that suggestion.

I took part in two actions at the White House that spring. Ford was president, and the issue now was amnesty for draft resisters and those who fled to Canada and other countries. Twice we were arrested (an act which had become almost ritual by then). For the first offense we received a suspended sentence of one year in a federal prison, and for the second offense, a suspended sentence of two years--with a warning that if any of us returned to that court again for the same offenses that we would do the time. At the same time, however, there was a growing awareness. I went to the steps of the east wing of the White House, where we were arrested the first time, to recite from the book of Isaiah, to express those words of the ancient prophets that were clearly applicable to our times--at least to me they were. I was not a fundamentalist by any means yet it seemed natural to consider God, and to include God in the very events that They themselves were clearly bringing to pass. (It is true, I was developing some very apocalyptic tendencies, for which, we soon learned, there was not much tolerance or acceptance in the antiwar community)...

"As reflected in the Qumran literature, these apocalyptists saw world history in terms of warring forces, God and Satan, the spirits of truth and error, light and darkness. The struggle of God with man and the struggle of man with sin, evil, and death were objectified into a cosmic struggle. Dualistic themes from archaic myths were transformed into historical myths. The world, captive to evil powers and principalities that had been given authority in the era of divine wrath, could be freed only by the Divine Might. These apocalyptisits saw...the dawning of God's day of salvation and judgment. The old age had come to the end of its allotted time, and the (time) of consumation was at hand, the (time) when the world would be redeemed and the elect vindicated. The apocalyptist saw the signals of the approaching of the end of days. For them, the final war, Armageddon, had begun. The Messiah was about to appear "bringing the Sword." The Satanic forces, brought to bay, had already lashed out in a final defiant convulsion, manifested in the persecution, temptations, and tribulations of the faithful. In short, the apocalyptist lived in a world in which the sovereignty of God was the sole hope of salvation; in the earnestness of his faith and the vividness of his hope, he was certain that God was about to act." Understanding The Dead Sea Scrolls, by Hershel Shanks, p.163.

But did it matter? as long as the main political objectives were achieved? Well it did matter, and it still does, because all of this was bigger than mere politics. Something divine was unfolding in the earth, and people were not grasping it. And it mattered because America did not become a more peaceful nation as a result of all those activities. It became more violent, more militaristic, and more subtle as it assimilated the language, and adapted the values of the 60s to its own continuing political, economic and military agenda. Sitting in the living room at Jonah House one afternoon, I asked Philip Berrigan if he thought men could join together and bring peace to the world before the coming of Christ. Of course his view of that event and mine--and I didn't quite know what I meant by it at the time--were surely not the same. He thought for a few moments, and then said, "yes."

I wanted to stay in Baltimore, and continue in these efforts. Nan said that she was returning to West Virginia, to the log cabin we hoped to build that year, and to the community of friends we had made since moving into those hills. I followed her back to Lincoln County. There was more to learn, much more to understand. Jimmy Carter was about to appear on the world scene, and the language, the concept and the meaning of peace itself was preparing to suffer its worst, and most subtle assault. I believe that it was the Friends Service Committee (the Quakers), that nominated Carter for the Nobel Peace Prize which he has just been awarded.

In this morning's local paper there were two articles. The headlines on one read: " Nobel laureate Carter warns war only leads to more war." The other read: "Groups gather to protest."

OSLO, Norway__Jimmy Carter accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Tuesday--long awaited for his diplomacy in the Middle East in the 70s--with a warning to nations to avoid bloodshed in resolving their conflicts. With the world on edge over terrorism and a possible U.S.-led attack on Iraq, the former U.S. president told an audience at the Nobel ceremony that war only breeds more war.

"War may sometimes be a necessary evil," he said, "But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will never learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children." The Associated Press.

From Mennonites to Ivy Leaguers, Support For Antiwar Movement Building

by Allen G. Breed

From Indiana Mennonites collecting care packages for Iraq's poor to a "die-in" on an Ivy League campus, Americans took to the streets Tuesday in mostly, small, low-key events to protest a possible war with Iraq. More than 100 people were arrested...

About half of the 200 protesters outside of the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York were arrested for disorderly conduct, including clergy members. Across the country in Sacramento, Calif., nine members were taken into custody for blocking entrance to a federal courthouse...

In Hollywood, more than 100 entertainers signed a letter to President Bush saying a war with Iraq will "increase the likelihood of terrorist attacks, damage the economy and undermine our moral standing in the world."..

In the nation's capital, about 300 protesters staged a march-in to a park near the White House...About 100 students at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, marched and staged a "die-in" in front the city's federal building.

The White House said the president welcomed the protests as part of a "time-honored tradition" of democracy.

While a recent USA/CNN?Gallup Poll found a majority of Americans support sending ground troops to remove the Iraqi president, the percentage opposed has nearly doubled to 37 percent since a year ago...

The day of protest also coincided with former President Jimmy Carter's receipt of the Nobel Prize in Norway. The Associated Press.

The problem here is not George Bush's newspeak attitude toward the protests (such protests are tolerated as long as they do not outbalance or interfere with the government's sense of itself, its self-assumed right to exist, its methods of conscription, or its efforts to advance the global capitalist agenda), but the antiwar movement's almost certain, but mistaken assumption that Jimmy Carter is speaking the same language as itself, or expressing the same sentiments about war. Among the many protesters that day, Sharon Baker said: "I am opposed to any war, any time, anywhere, any place." These are not Jimmy Carter's sentiments. He is not opposed to "any war, any time, anywhere, any place." He is an Augustinian, Just War theorist. He will kill other people's children, but only if he has to. (Only if God forces him to). And therein lies the subtle and essential difference between the mind of Christ and the mind of Antichrist. Jimmy Carter is for "peace" in the morning, but will wage "war" in the evening. And he will wage war in the extreme against God Himself who is risen up now in the sum, and in the midst of all the unfolding realities of our time, bringing this age to its conclusion, and His, or rather Their own righteous order into existence.

Cursed be he who speaks with his tongue, while in his heart is not peace, but a sword...

For all things shall be laid bare in the weighing scales, and in the books, on the great judgment day...(Secrets Of Enoch LII).

__________

The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart.

His words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords...(Psalm 55:21).

__________

Blessed are the (true) peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God...(Matthew 5:9).