Ep. 10 | Dale Ahlquist - G. K. Chesterton's The Ball & the Cross

What if there was an incandescent Truth, but no one felt it worth fighting for? Meet Turnbull and MacIan, a fiery atheist editor and an ardent Catholic highlander, as they physically duel and verbally joust over the highest of things while an ideological world conspires to affect their silence. Join me and the President of the Society for G.K. Chesterton, Dale Ahlquist, as we explore Chesterton’s ingenious novel, The Ball and the Cross.
Learn more about “The Everlasting Man” at wof.org/everlasting.
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[@fragwagon]

Just catching up with this....my favorite Chesterton story. Way underappreciated!

[@heroicacts5218]

Wow! Wow! I didn’t have much expectation on this talk, but it is definitely one of the best interviews I heard about Chesterton! Amazing, congrats!

[@lourdesreeves6328]

I am checking Chesterton’s writing - thank God I was on a break to catch this live.

[@MRizzio]

If anyone from WOF reads this, or if Dale reads this, please reply because there is a gift I have in my heart to share. Pure Genius!!! Thank you Tod...excellent interview.

[@daleahlquist3440]

Well?

[@MRizzio]

​@daleahlquist3440 Well Dale, I never expected a reply but now 5 months later and now with the world very close to, or in the opening stages of WWIII, it seems we may soon be overcome by global (or cosmic) events. Well here goes... When I read The Ball and the Cross after this WOF interview I was amazed at how G.K. used the outside of the dome of iconic St. Paul's Cathedral in London as the opening setting for the battle between good and evil. St. Paul's has a sacred image that is now playing out in the battle for hearts and souls. The art above and behind the altar has Jesus Christ the King enthroned in Glory and Judgment. It is maybe the ultimate paradox that the rainbow around the throne (Rev. 4) which was and is God's everlasting sign of hanging up His bow after the first judgment upon fallen humanity, The Great Deluge, is now being used to shoot deadly arrows up at Holy Mother Church targeting marriage and family and ultimately, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb in Heaven. Providentially, this St. Paul Cathedral image of Our Lord reigning in glory with its rainbow is odd for it was what my wife and I gazed up at while on our whirlwind honeymoon in 1998. We had only two weeks earlier gazed up at a mosaic of Jesus Christ reigning in glory with its rainbow in St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice. Back to St. Paul's...this image is singularly different from the many others I have found since this battle quickened in 2008. Christ seems to have His hands up as if He is caught, red-handed and surrendering, to be crucified once again. This is the tell-tale sign of the end times battle. The Mystical Body of Christ is now being crucified for its sins---and the six band spectrum raised up over the Church by the purveyors of the anti Covenant agenda is its King of the Hill moment. That same rainbow (albeit a seven color Newtonian one) might serve as a bronze serpent in the desert to all those who have been bitten by the asp of misguided compassion at this late hour, for we are a "perverse and adulterous generation" and are ALL called to "Go and sin no more.'' John 8:11. A Covenant Awareness Banner forces the bold choice---an Eternal Covenant in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ or a signed contract with the world. When at 36:33 of this interview you rightly placed G.K. in the ring around Christ's throne in heaven it hit me like a 2x4 across my forehead. He wrote The Ball and the Cross thirty-five years before the air raid sirens sounded and the Anglican high altar was destroyed during "Britain's finest hour." St. Paul's dome was still standing after the V1s and V2s targeted London in WWII by an antichrist figure named Hitler. Christ the King was there on the Eastern Wall, holding things in being. Now Christ's Church is targeted again and we Catholics are in dire need of some banner, some sign of contradiction---do I dare say a paradox---to rally the remnant and win souls in what appears to be the final confrontation. My only hope is that it is not too late. St. Michael and Lucifer had it out in the opening scene of the novel. Chapters 10-12 of Revelation loom large today, and that mighty evangelion??? Me thinks it's Our Lord swearing an oath to the Father (who alone knows the time for D-day) with a rainbow around his head just prior to the Seventh Trumpet. Yes, IMHO Jesus Christ is personally back in charge (reassuming direct authority) with both feet firmly planted on earth (veiled as if in a cloud) as the Church's apostasy deepens. Mike Rizzio USMA 81 Strength as One Oh, and if you haven't guessed, there is much research to back up my main points and a banner that has been flown for 50 hours. ...and The Lord of the World...well GOD BLESS YOU! Come Lord Jesus! (after the illumination of conscience)

[@Apamaru]

How do you guys understand/interpret the ending? It's bothering me...