The Awakening

President Bush said yesterday that he senses a "Third Awakening" of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as "a confrontation between good and evil."

Here's Jonathan Edwards, he of The Great Awakening:

Let the most perfect union with God be represented by something at an infinite height above us; and the eternally increasing union of the saints with God, by something that is ascending constantly towards that infinite height, moving upwards with a given velocity, and that it to continue thus to move to all eternity. God, who views the whole of this eternally increasing height, views it as an infinite height. And if he has respect to it, and makes it his ende, as in the whole of it, he has respect to it as an infinite height, though the time will never come when it can be said it has already arrived at the infinite height.

The Awakening is never an Awakened, an achievement. This is because there is indeed infinite sin and evil in the world and only God would encompass a total awakening, the achievement. But God has given us his spirit in the flesh who will help us Awaken. Unfortunately, we cannot hear his message. He doesn't help matters by referring to himself as evil.

"A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me,"...

...Bush said during a 1 1/2 -hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades....

Nonetheless, infinite battle against evil is what lies upon our horizon. This is the struggle of the Awakening. And notice our penchant for labeling "heroes." There are slight categorical differences or differences in practice due to cultural variations, but notice also that if we substitute the term "martyrs" for "heroes," we are essentially speaking of the same type of being who surrenders mind and body to the Awakening.