Special to CosmicTribune.com, December 14, 2025

Contrarian Coffeehouse

The passage in Luke 4:3-13 is about the 3 Temptations of Christ. In Satan’s 1st Temptation, Jesus was asked to put material needs first after his 40 day fast. His answer was to put God, the truth, and spiritual life first. In his 2nd temptation, Satan offered to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if he would worship him. Jesus’ answer was that only God should be worshipped. Righteousness is more important than getting power.

In the 3rd Temptation, Satan brought Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem and urged him to show his authority by throwing himself off and having the angels save him. Jesus refused to use his spiritual power and authority to test God or for a selfish purpose.

Jesus’ answers to all three temptations essentially were: my relationship with & obedience to God is most important, no matter what the result is. He was also effectively declaring the 3 Blessings (Genesis 1:28) : Myself, my Family/tribe, my Kingdom DON’T BELONG TO YOU!

Let us reflect on the worldwide “Temptations” in our time, with an analogy of going to a doctor because of a serious health problem, but getting the wrong diagnosis and an ineffective, if not harmful “cure.” Take a closer look at the toxic ideologies that have led to massive suffering in the past and are rising again in our world today. These are the satanic temptations on the worldwide level, America, especially, as a providential nation, must overcome.

Communism seeks to create an Ideal World while denying people their autonomy and personal freedom. In North Korea, if discovered to be a Christian, there’s a good chance you will be executed, and your family sent to a concentration camp. In China, if you don’t belong to an approved state-controlled church, you risk being arrested, sent to a prison, work camp, be organ-harvested.

What about the founder of Communism, as we know it today? Was Marx really an atheist or was he a Satanist rebelling against God’s sovereignty? Here is a poem he wrote as a young man, before he wrote any of his well-known pieces:

The hellish vapors [that] rise and fill the brain, Till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed. See this sword? The Prince of Darkness sold it to me. For me he beats the time and gives the signs. Ever more broadly I play the dance of death.[1]

Either way, it’s fair to say that Marx was obsessed with hatred, death and destruction. And so were all of the famous Communist leaders, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. who put his ideas into practice.

Author/talkshow host Dennis Prager often speaks about the importance of Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) to guide our lives. If you think about it, it’s sad that the human race needs the Ten Commandments, which means that our default is to worship a lot of false gods and even do evil things in the name of God.

The founders of America knew both the Old and New Testaments very well and this knowledge provided important guidance as they sought to structure our government, resulting in our Constitution, but as America drifts away from Biblical values, it increasingly has become divided. Acts of evil are rationalized by many in our universities. Modern ideologies teach there is no truth or authority that needs to be honored and that it’s justifiable to steal, covet, lie, & murder. To someone who doesn’t understand the truth and love of God, these commandments likely seem to be an inconvenient hindrance to fulfilling their agendas.

Given the election of Zohran Mamdani, an outspoken member of the Democratic Socialists of America, which calls for the abolition of private property, as mayor in New York City, it is relevant to take a look at Communism from the viewpoint of the Ten Commandments. After all, Marx theorized that Socialism is the necessary stage to establish his utopian vision of Communism.

Communism versus the 10 Commandments

The Bible says “No Other Gods,” but Communism says “There is NO GOD! We will be saved not through faith in Christ, but rather through class warfare in the name of the Proletariat! We will make everyone bow down to the leaders of the Revolution!”

What about the 3^rd commandment, “don’t do evil in God’s name?”

Since Communism denies that God exists, we might say that they are not doing evil in His name. But after the Bolshevik Revolution, after getting rid of thousands of observant Orthodox Church priests, in the following decades the Soviets infiltrated the remaining churches with KGB-controlled “priests” who submitted their sermons to be approved by the Soviet government. The Soviet Union successfully infiltrated Communist ideology into 352 denominations/ churches around the world through the World Council of Churches. These represent more than a half BILLION Christians, including the Orthodox, Anglican, Baptist, Evangelical, Lutheran, Methodist, and United churches. Without fail these churches have defended Soviet & CCP actions around the world and spread their propaganda.

The same is true for the CCP-approved & controlled churches. In 2018, Pope Francis entered into an unpublished agreement with Communist China giving it authority over whom could be appointed as Roman Catholic Bishops in China. In that same year the Chinese government ruled that all children in the nation under the age of 18 were prohibited from participating in religious activities. In 2019, Christian churches in China were ordered to take down displays of the Ten Commandments and replace them with quotes from Xi Xinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

In 1932, a 13-year-old Russian boy named Pavlik Morozov was praised in the Soviet press as a martyr. He had denounced his father for hiding wheat from communist officials, which led to his father’s imprisonment. Pavlik was in turn killed by his family members. Monuments to Pavlik were erected across the Soviet Union. He was listed in the Soviet youth pioneer organization as Pioneer #001, an example of a youth who chose the state over his own father. In 1972 he was memorialized as a hero on a Soviet postage stamp. A sobering example of the power of state indoctrination.

To “Don’t Murder,” Communists say “why not? There is no God to stop us.” To “Don’t Commit Adultery,” they say “why not? we want to abolish the family anyway.” To “Don’t Steal,” they say, “our number one goal is to abolish private property! Everything belongs to the Collective!” To “Don’t Bear False Witness!” they say psychological warfare and lying are our best weapons. To “Don’t Covet,” they say, “since the Capitalists got everything from our labor, we deserve to get everything they own!”

37,000 Americans died to liberate South Korea from Communism. What if President Truman had decided to not get involved? Then Communism would have taken over and there would be no freedom of speech or religion throughout the entire Korean peninsula.

National Socialism versus the 10 Commandments

What about National Socialism? There were real problems in Germany of the 1930s, but what was Hitler’s prescription, and did it make things better or worse for the German people? Sometimes Hitler made references to God, but it was a god that endorsed the superiority of the Aryan Race. Once he even said he wished that Islam had invaded all of Europe because then the Germans, instead of being weakened by Christian ideas about love and forgiveness, would have conquered the world.

What about the 3^rd commandment, “Don’t Do Evil in God’s Name?” In public speeches, Hitler portrayed himself and the Nazi movement as faithful Christians. In 1928 Hitler said in a speech: “We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity… in fact our movement is Christian.” But according to Joseph Goebbels, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party, Hitler hated Christianity. In an April 8, 1941 entry, Goebbels wrote

“He hates Christianity, because it has crippled all that is noble in humanity.”

Though raised a Catholic, Hitler “believed neither in God nor in conscience”, but had contempt for its central teachings. “In Hitler’s eyes, Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular. Its teaching was a rebellion against the natural law of selection through struggle and the survival of the fittest.”

Some Nazis, such as Hans Kerrl, who served as Hitler’s Minister for Church Affairs, advocated “Positive Christianity“. Kerrl accused dissident churchmen of failing to appreciate the Nazi doctrine of “Race, blood and soil” and gave the following explanation of the Nazi conception of “Positive Christianity”, telling a group of submissive clergy in 1937:

Dr Zoellner and [Catholic Bishop of Munster] Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the son of God. That makes me laugh… No, Christianity is not dependent upon the [Apostles’] Creed… True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially the Fuehrer to a real Christianity… the Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation.

Those of “non-Aryan” descent were expelled from the church, and many clergy, particularly in annexed regions, were arrested or murdered. From the beginning in 1935, the Gestapo arrested and jailed over 2,720 clerics who were interned at Germany’s Dachau concentration camp, leading to over 1,000 deaths of clergy.

While a gas chamber was built at the main Dachau camp, it was reportedly never used for mass extermination. Instead, mass executions were carried out by shooting, and thousands of sick and weak prisoners were sent to the Hartheim “euthanasia” killing center in Austria to be murdered with gas. Thousands of Soviet prisoners of war were also systematically executed by firing squad.

Murders and persecutions galvanized leaders like Bishop Clemens von Galen to speak out more forthrightly. His sermons influenced the White Rose resistance movement of students in Munich and, in the city of Lubeck, inspired 3 priests, Johannes Prassek, Eduard Muller and Hermann Lange. With their Lutheran counterpart, Rev. Karl Friedrich Stellbrink, they were beheaded in 1943 after a show trial in a Nazi court.[2]

An estimated 3,000 Polish clergy members were murdered, with at least 1,811 dying in concentration camps. In some dioceses, nearly half the priests were killed.

Clergy in Germany and other occupied countries (France, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Italy, etc.) were closely watched, frequently denounced, arrested, and sent to concentration camps, especially to the dedicated “Priest Barracks” in the Dachau camp. Protestant pastors who resisted the regime were also persecuted and killed, including figures like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul Schneider.

What about the commandment, “Don’t Commit Adultery?” Nazi families were encouraged to have as many children as possible, but if it was an Interracial Marriage there was strong pressure to divorce, Non-Aryan husbands were often sent to forced labor battalions, but being married to an Aryan was linked to higher survival rates of the non-Aryan. There were also numerous cases of the children of interracial marriages being forcibly sterilized. Many Nazi leaders had mistresses on the side.

Don’t Steal or Covet? Many Nazis became wealthy through the theft of jewelry, expensive art, other valuables from people who had been eliminated.

Don’t Bear False Witness? Accusing your political opponent for what you did is the best way to gain total power. One of the most infamous instances is the Reichstag Fire of 1933. The Reichstag building in Berlin, home of the German parliament, was set ablaze late in the evening on Feb. 27, just 4 weeks after Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor.

Though he now headed the government, Hitler and his Nazi Party did not yet have dictatorial power. Other parties still existed and sat in the parliament. What the Nazis needed was an excuse to crush their political opponents; the Reichstag fire gave them just what they wanted.

On April 29, 1945, 32,000 prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp were liberated by the 42^nd and 45^th Infantry divisions. The 42^nd was from NY. The 45^th , composed of National Guard troops from Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico fought in over 500 days of combat in campaigns in Sicily, Italy, southern France, and Germany, before liberating Dachau.

21^st Century Fascist Violence in America

You might think Fascism is something that would never happen here in the U.S. In December, 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down outside a Manhattan hotel. Six weeks before the father of two was executed, the suspect Luigi Mangione mused that the Healthcare CEO “had it coming.” So if there is something you don’t like in America, don’t bother to dialog and persuade people about your ideas, just kill them to make it better!

Coffeehouse

  The temptations of Christ and communism’s siren song