“And there is not just Hitler; there is a ‘Hitler-thing.’ So, there are Hitlers in this world who would not think twice about doing the same thing.”
Pastor Douglas Neverson of the Kingstown Evangelical Church made the comment as he delivered the sermon at a service on Sunday morning. He was at the time speaking of the continuing atrocities committed by persons who have lost their souls because of greed and power, among other things.
Neverson emphasized that even though Hitler’s atrocities were committed a long time ago and he has since long dead and gone, there are those around who are of a similar mindset, believing they can do anything to anybody.
There are the people just right here in this time, in this century, whose very beings are only concerned with wicked and evil continually,” he said.
“When we think of Adolf Hitler, we think of such things as the holocaust, we think of the inhumane things that have been done to people, we think of all of the atrocities that have been committed against people,” pastor Neverson also said.
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German leader who came to power with the goal of establishing a new racial order in Europe dominated by the German “master race.” He was appointed chancellor of Germany in 1933 following a series of electoral victories by the Nazi Party and he ruled absolutely until his death by suicide in April 1945.
Upon achieving power, Hitler smashed the nation’s democratic institutions and transformed Germany into a war state intent on conquering Europe for the benefit of the so-called Aryan race.
“All around us, in every century, men and women have sold out themselves, sold out their real being, sold out the real person to gain whatever they would want to gain and have become destitute and despicable.
“There is no doubt, for any sane person, as we look around us, to acknowledge that that is real. And I say that we can do that here around us, or all over the world because it’s there for us to see,” pastor Neverson said.
Pastor Neverson’s sermon was based on Mark 8: 35-36 (King James version of the Bible) which states: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it. [36] For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
He emphasized greed and the lust for power.
“What good can it do if you gain everything and lose you, the real you?” pastor Neverson asked.
Pastor Neverson also mentioned other persons who became well-known to the world for their atrocities.
“There are the men and women around us – the Marie Antoinettes who will not worry about committing such atrocities,’ Neverson said.
Marie Antoinette was also known as Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna. She was the last queen of France who helped provoke “the popular unrest” that led to the French Revolution and to the overthrow of the monarchy in August 1792.
Revolutionaries blamed her for all the ills of the kingdom. They claimed that Marie-Antoinette “was nothing short of pure evil.” And she was described as a ‘woman in fury’ and “a murderous plotter who dreamed of ‘Swimming in the blood of the French.’
Pastor Neverson also said there are the ‘Unabombers’ “who will not hesitate to do all the things they will do.”
The ‘Unabomber’ is Ted Kaczynski, an American domestic terrorist who attended Harvard University and received a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan.
Kaczynski taught at the University of California at Berkeley before retreating to live as a recluse in western Montana, in a 10-by-12-foot cabin without heat, electricity or running water in the 1970s. From this isolated location, he began the bombing campaign that killed three people and injured more than 20 others over a 17-year period.
The primary targets were universities, but he also placed a bomb on an American Airlines flight in 1979 and sent one to the home of the president of United Airlines in 1980.
FBI agents arrested Kaczynski in 1996, and two years later he was sentenced to life in prison.
