Chapter IX

On the Rise of the World-Church

And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more. (See Matthew 23:39).

Wherefore I take you to record this day,THAT I AM PURE FROM THE BLOOD OF ALL MEN. (In other words, whoever they are that have anything to do with the shedding of blood, with warfare between nations, or the taking of human life, no matter what the reason, have nothing to do with Paul or his doctrine of Christ. They did not learn it from him).

For I have not shunned to declare unto you ALL the counsel of God.

Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. (With the blood of all the righteous and the suffering in the earth).

For I know this, that after my departing shall GRIEVOUS WOLVES enter in among you, not sparing the flock.

Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them.

Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of Three years I ceased not to warn you Night and Day with tears.

And now brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among them that are sanctified.

I HAVE COVETED NO MAN'S SILVER OR GOLD, OR APPAREL. (Think of the imperious Roman and Orthodox churches).

Yea, ye yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto my (own) necessities, and to them that were with me.

I have showed you all things, how that so labouring you ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord (speaking through the voice of the Fellowship of the Mystery), how he said, It is more blessed to give than receive...(Acts 20:25-35; Deut.31:10-30).

Some fifty years or more after Paul passed from the historical scene, written Gospels began to appear and were added to the canon of accepted church documents, among these were the writings of Paul himself. In the Gospel of John we read:

John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven,

Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before him.

He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom's voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled...(John 3:27-29).

Who is John referring to? Turning back to Paul's writings we find him alluding to Psalm 19:1-6 (Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race), when he says:

That I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither labored in vain...(Philippians 2:15,16).

Please discover in the text from the Book of John one of many instances where the Gospels are cryptically referring to Paul (or Elisha), who came after John the Baptist, and who will appear again in our own time at the Eighth emanation on the Tree of Life named Majesty, as it is also written: The kingdom of heaven is like a certain King who made a marriage for His son. (Matthew 22:2)...

And when the sons of the prophets...saw him, they said, The spirit of Elijah doth rest upon Elisha. And they came to meet him, and bowed themselves to the ground before him...(2 Kings 2:15).

Or as the apostle Peter will say:

And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;

As also in ALL his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood (see Hebrews 5:11-14), which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction...(2 Peter 3:14-16).

1 Corinthians, chapter 2; 2 Corinthians 12, and 13...KJV

But we have devoted the previous chapter to it. By the time of the First Council of Nicaea, with all of the conflicts and arguments about the person and the nature of Christ that attended it, it will be evident that the Mystery of Christ had been successfully sealed from even the mind of Christendom itself.

"For what things foreigners, when they solemnize such festivals, are not able to observe but for a few days' time, and call them Mysteries and Sacred Ceremonies, we observe with great pleasure and an unshaken resolution the whole of our lives. What are the things, then, that we are commanded or forbidden? They are simply and easily known. The first commandment is concerning God, and affirms that God contains all things, and is a being in every way perfect and happy, and self-sufficient, AND SUPPLYING ALL OTHER BEINGS; THE BEGINNING, THE MIDDLE, AND THE END OF ALL THINGS. (In other words, God is realized in the life of every living soul, and in the sum of every natural and human event, past and present. The same yesterday, today, and forever..."Happy," however, is not a word we would use to describe God's disposition in the 20th century. Fierce and Terrible in judgment describes it better). He is manifest in His works and benefits, and (is) more conspicuous than any other being whatsoever; but as to His form and magnitude he is most obscure (to the unaided eye that is). All materials, be they ever so costly, are unworthy to compose an image for Him; and all arts are unartful to express the notion that we have of Him...

We see His works, the Light, the Heaven, the Sun and the Moon, the Waters, the generations of Animals, the production of Fruits. These things have God made, not with hands, not with labour, not as wanting the assistance of any to cooperate with Him; but as His will resolved that they should be made, and be good also...All men ought to follow this Being, and to worship him in the exercise of virtue; for this way of worship of God is the most holy of all others. (Those who have formulated elaborate rituals and liturgies to guide themselves in these mysteries might say that Josephus is encouraging us to a form of Nature worship. But the objective of every ritual is finally to bring about an attitude of worship toward the God of Nature Itself, Himself, Herself, Themselves--They are ALL ONE).

There ought also to be ONE TEMPLE FOR ONE GOD; for likeness is the constant foundation of agreement. This temple ought to be common to all men, because He is the common God of all men. HIS PRIESTS ARE TO BE CONTINUALLY ABOUT HIS WORSHIP." Josephus, Contra Apion, Book II.22-24.

As one comes to know the Mystery they will realize how adept Josephus was in the Mystery itself. He is hiding as much in his narrative as he reveals:

(He writes): "Now at the time when this great concussion of affairs happened, the affairs of the Romans themselves were in great disorder. Those Jews also, who were for innovations, then arose when the times were disturbed; they were also in a flourishing condition for strength and riches, insomuch that the affairs of the East were exceedingly tumultuous, while some hoped for gain, and others were afraid of loss in such troubles; for the Jews hoped that all their nation which were beyond Euphrates would have raised an insurrection with them. The Gauls also, in the neighborhood of the Romans were in motion, and the Celtae were not quiet; but all was in disorder after the death of Nero...I thought it therefore an absurd things to see the truth falsified in affairs of such consequence, and to take no notice of it..." Preface to the Wars of the Jews.

It is against the background of these great turmoils that Josephus writes The Antiquities and the Wars of the Jews. It is against this same background that we must discover the history and the formation of the early Church. We have already seen, that even though we read in the early narratives of the Church--the Book of Acts for instance, as well as in the works of Josephus--of place-names, and of events pertaining to them, that the authors are not always speaking of the same places that we think they are. But rather they are drawing upon the existence of a secret geographical and historical tradition, wherein many of the religiously strategic places and areas of the world at that time had an original, or corresponding place of the same name somewhere else, either to the West, or above in the North (and even in the South as we shall see, as we trace the Mysteries out of Africa to America in these last days). Or, as in the case of the City of Jerusalem itself, its Higher Counterpart is stretched out across the earth from one end of the Mystery to the other...

The City Above, the Mother of Us All...(Galatians 4:24-26).

Thus we find Paul "hastening to be at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost." (Acts 20:16). And he arrives there, as it is written: And the brethren received him gladly (Acts 21:17). But just where has he arrived? We want to imagine that he arrived at that city in Palestine (but it is very probable that Paul has never set foot in that city at all). The Book of Acts has him at Jerusalem at the time of the martyrdom of Stephen (as well as several other times), and he says so himself. (Acts, chapter 7; 22:19,20). But we have placed these events in the city of Vindebona, in the Center of Europe. (Please see Chapter 2). We have also reasoned that where it says that Paul spoke to the people in the Hebrew language (Acts 21:40), that he was speaking a European dialect to European Jews who had fallen out over the centuries into the East. Many of these, while speaking now in the greater parts of that world in either Greek or Aramaic (which had become a kind of ancient Yiddish), would have also retained their original Gaelic-like tongue. (The language that we associate with Hebrew today was not spoken in those times, until its purely written and liturgical forms were forced out of the cryptic Hebrew texts and made to sound as it does today)...

"To write concerning the Antiquities of the Jews, who they were (originally) and how they revolted from the Egyptians, and what country they travelled over, and what countries they seized upon afterward, and how they were removed out of them, I think this not to be a fit opportunity, and, on other accounts, also superfluous; and this because many Jews before me have composed the histories of our ancestors very exactly; as have some of the Greeks done it also, and have translated our histories into their own tongue, and have not much mistaken the truth in their own histories. But then, where the writers of these affairs and our prophets leave off, thence shall I take my rise and begin my history." Josephus' Preface to The War of the Jews 6. Translated by William Whiston.

The only ones who are not familiar with what was then a very normal state of Jewish affairs are those of us here at this end of the age who are left with the accounts. Yet who in those times even knew that such other religious accounts of those times, such as the Gospels and the Book of Acts, were being composed? The Jews certainly didn't, until a hundred years or more later when the first copies of them began to appear, and the common recollection was already dimmed, and all things were in a state of flux? Who could dispute such accounts? (What are we disputing here? Who? What? What Jesus? When? Where?) Some did, but to what effect? And besides, who outside of this Circle of now-Christian adepts, Essenes and Nazarites, could interpret these accounts? They were religious documents (not historical documents but supra-historical), and there meanings were (purposefully and hermetically) sealed.

"The gradual reduction of almost the whole of the known world to the political power of Rome had brought about new possibilities of knowledge. Old barriers, such as State frontiers, disappeared, and the whole world becoming one State, its different cultures and its myriad religions began to interact and to fuse as never before. Everywhere men were now in a position to study religions and compare the differences of rite and legend and the elements all had in common. Soon the chief divinities of one heathen system began to appear in the Olympus of another system, and their legends to be similarly transferred.

The new religion of Christ Our Lord, from the moment it moved outside of the Jewish 'milieu' in which it was first preached, was thus immediately brought up against the influence of worldwide religious activities. In every city there were philosophical mystics and moral teachers ready, with their host of disciples and adepts, to see affinities between their own beliefs and the teaching of the new arrival. Moreover, once the Church began to make converts from this class it was but natural that these would be attracted to the task of converting their former associates, and that they would be endeavored to present Christianity to them in the only language in which it could be understood, i.e. through an adaptation of the terminology of their own philiosophico-religious beliefs." A Popular History of the Catholic Church, by Philip Hughes, p.4.

Paul, in his own travels, was eventually delivered to the Roman governors, one of whom also says: But if it be a question of words and names, and of your law, look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters (Acts 18:15), and another, Agrippa, who tells Paul: Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. (Acts 26:19-29). These governors had jurisdiction over the affairs of all the Jews in that area of the world. Did their jurisdiction, and that of their predecessors, the Herods, extend into Europe? Quite so. We can find Herod I commanding a fleet of ships on the Black Sea in support of Rome at the Bosporus. And in volume VIII of the Ante Nicean Fathers, Moses of Chorene has him sending an army of Thracians and Germans against one Agbar. (And then it must not be forgotten that the Herod of the Gospels is also an apocryphal figure, as it is written: Beware the leaven of Herod...Mark 8:15)...

We also learn that the office of Tetrarch, which the Herods occupied, was also a Celtic institution which the Celts brought with them when they (these "Jews"), fell out of Europe and crossed into Asia in the centuries before the time of Christ:

"Each of these tribes now settled in Anatolia took over its own province, as Strabo says: 'The Trocmians were in the eastern part of Galatia, the Tolistoagii in the western part, the Tectosages between them.' For administrative purposes each of these provinces were divided into four; each division under a leader who Strabo called 'tetrarch,' to whom a judge, military governor, and two lesser commanders would be attached." The Celts, The People Who Came Out of Darkness, By Gerhard Herm, p.42

Strabo has no idea, of course, that he is dealing in part here with Jewish History, but these Celts will be among those to whom Paul will later address his Letter to the Galatians--concerning matters that not only affected the collective well-being of Israel in those times, but, more importantly, that have to do with the whole Zionist state of affairs in our own. In all events, if Paul had indeed come to that city in Palestine to offer a morning sacrifice (Acts 21:13), Josephus makes no mention of it in his accounts. Paul appealed to Caesar and was sent to Rome to make his offering there. His mission was to the Gentile world.

It is also likely that James and the elders never appeared there either (at least not in terms of the Gospel narratives), even though some of the Apostles did return to the East after the persecutions and the martyrdom of Stephen (Acts 11:19 to 12:2)--but officially no further, we reason, than Antioch, as it was written of that city made of Stones in the East: Ye shall henceforth return no more that way. (Deut.17:14-16). Josephus, however, seems to place the elders in that city, and leaves us a record of the execution of James, the brother of the Lord, Antiquities XX.9.1 (not James, the brother of John, who was martyred years earlier). And as James was among those who greeted Paul at Jerusalem (Acts 21:17,18), there are two possibilities. Either the saints did descend to that city in order to fulfill certain prophecies and precepts of the Law, or we have another instance of geographical word play, of which New Testament narratives are replete.

For here we have no continuing City, but we seek one to come...Hebrews 13:14; Matthew 24:7-22.

As far as these Essenes were concerned, and afterwards for Paul (or "Elisha"), wherever the elders were, that is where the City was. (Hebrews 12:22,23; Heb.13:14). Thus for them the Eastern point of these mysteries laid somewhere near Mount IDA (IuDeA), in the area of those Seven Cities of Asia: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. (Revelation 1:4; 11). But in any case, no matter where any of these events occurred, Paul could still say: "...yet brought up in THIS CITY at the feet of Gamaliel. (Acts 22:1-3). His view of THIS CITY also came to span the horizon from East to West.

A. E. Waite, in his work entitled The Holy Kabbalah A Study of the Secret Tradition in Israel as unfolded by the Sons of the Doctrine for the Benefit and Consolation of the Elect dispersed through the Lands and Ages of the Greater Exile, leaves us a Talmudic account of (the great second century) Rabbi Judah the Prince which will also shift our attention to that hidden place in Central Europe. Speaking of the centuries-long composition of Mishna-Torah (the Talmud), he says:

"It is claimed that this source goes back to the period of Esdras, but the most that can be admitted is that the materials embodied in the literature (the Talmud) are older than their earliest collected forms. These materials were certain MISHNAYOTH, a term signifying repetitions--namely, notes of academic teachings, which received many subsequent additions. Prior to the year 220, A.D., a considerable portion of these was compiled by Rabbi Judah the Prince, by whom they were methodised carefully, short comments of his own being also added occasionally..."

And then Waite adds a footnote which says:

(He was the third patriarch of the Western Jews, and a legend says that, HAVING CONVERTED THE EMPEROR MARCUS AURELIUS, he compiled the Mishna at the command of that Prince). p.27.

It will be remembered that the Emperor Marcus Aurelius is more associated with Vindabona than he is with Rome (think of the movie The Gladiator), and it was in that city-above that emperor wrote his own famous Analects. We have also learned in Avot (The Sayings of the Fathers), that Gamaliel was a teacher of those who inhabited both "the Upper Galilee and the Lower", and of those who dwelt everywhere among the dispersed, in the "Upper South, and the Lower South." The Nag Hammadi Texts also speak of a certain Gamaliel, an angel or a spirit of some Kabbalistic proportions who seems to overshadow our Gamaliel of Talmudic fame. (We think they are the same)...

Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee (of the Gentiles)?

Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?

So there was division among the people because of him...

Have any of the rulers of the Pharisees believed on him?

BUT THIS PEOPLE WHO KNOWETH NOT THE LAW ARE CURSED.

Nicodemus said unto them, (he that came to Jesus by night, being one of them),

Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth?

They answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search and look, for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet...(John 7:41-52).

Again, what Galilee is the Gospel referring to? Certainly not that barren drift of land in the Middle East, but the Galilee of the Nations, the Great Circle of the Gentiles...

By way of the sea, beyond Jordan, in Galilee of the nations...Isaiah 9:1. (The City of David is situated there in the very center of this Circle...Psalm 48:1,2).

But how are we to get Paul up in Central Europe (the "Upper Galilee") during the time of the martyrdom of Stephen and the first general persecution of the Church? Paul himself provides the clue when he says: I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia (Acts 21:39,40), which does not mean, as we readily assume, that he is from anywhere in the East at all. Employing the same narrative methods as we have from the beginning of this work we read from The Histories of Herodotus:

"Now the Phoacaeans were the first of the Greeks who performed long voyages, and it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with the Adriatic and with Tyrrhenia, with Iberia and the city of Tartessus..." (p.74).

NOTE..."The Iberia of Herodotus is the Spanish peninsula. Tartessus was a colony formed there very early by the Phoenicians. It was situated beyond the Straits at the mouth of the Baetis, near the mouth of the modern Cadiz. Tarsus, Tartessus, Tarshish, are variants of the same word." The Histories of Herodotus, Translated with notes by George Rawlinson, p.111.

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"Tarsus, the capital of Cilicia, has been identified by various authors with the biblical Tarshish. Josephus relates how Jonah embarked at Jaffa "to sail to Tarshish" in Cilicia." (Antiquities 9.208). Encyclopedia Judaica.

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"'The heart of the Open Sea' is mentioned with 'the ships of Tarshish' at Ezekiel 27:25,26. (Compare Psalm 48:7; Jonah 2:3). In view of these points, Josephus's identification of Tarshish with the city of Tarsus in Cilicia (in Asia Minor) does not seem to be well founded." Aid To Bible Understanding.

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"(Present day) Cilicia was named after the mythical Cilix, who settled there after searching for his sister Europa at the bidding of their father Agenor, king of Tyre or Sidon. (Places originally situated out on the Atlantic). After the Trojan War, according to another legend possessing some historical foundation, parts of the coastland were settled by Greeks (Europeans) known as Cilices (originating according to Homer, from the Troad in the Northwestern part of the peninsular) led by Mopsus the seer and later reinforced during the age of colonization." Encyclopedia of the Classical Age.

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"SPAIN...Jews lived in Spain in very early times, although the legend that Solomon's treasurer Adoniram died there, as well as the story that the Jews of Toledo, in a letter addressed to the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, declared against the crucifixion of Jesus, cannot be credited. Yet it is certain that the Apostle Paul intended to visit Spain to proclaim his new teachings to the Jews living there, (Romans 15:24, 28), and that Vespasian, and especially Hadrian, who was himself a Spaniard, transported several Jewish prisoners to Spain...and the ancient coins unearthed in ancient Terragona give evidence of an early settlement of Jews in Spain..." A Jewish Encyclopedia.

Thus we reason that Paul is from this Tarsus, and this Cilicia, not on the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean but on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, outside of the Pillars of Hercules; and that he was brought up under the tutelage of European rabbis not Asian. And he emphasizes the point, but in the most casual way, when he says:

But now having no more place in these parts, and having a great desire these many years to come unto you;

Whensoever I take my journey into Spain, I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my journey, and to be brought on my way thitherward by you, if first I be somewhat filled by your company...(Romans 15:23,24, 28).

History does not refute it, but rather, through its own glaring silence on the matter, supports it. Likewise, of the events of Acts, chapters 1 to 7, which are supposed to be happening in that city in the East, Josephus, again, makes no mention--and this purposefully, because they did not happen there. He picks up the story at Acts 11 and 12, after the Church finds its way back into the East after the persecutions suffered at the hands of the Jewish-Druid priests of Central Europe. It was then that Herod slew James, the brother of John, with the sword. (Acts 12:1,2). These adepts in the Mystery of Christ all considered themselves to be the Morning Sacrifice, and so gave their lives as God required them. (See Exodus 29:37-46).

Josephus gives us another cryptic hint as to his knowledge of the dimensions of this mystery, and of the fact that the central doctrines of the early Church were emanating now out of Europe rather than the East, in his treatment of the story of Archelaus, the ethnarch of Judaea, and his wife, Glaphyra, who were exiled by Caesar to the city of Vienna in Gaul (France). See how he carefully blends the ideas contained in Hosea, chapter 2, Ezekiel 16, and Jeremiah 31:31-33, into his narrative:

"But in the tenth year of Archelaus's government, both his brethren and the principle men of Judea and Samaria, not being able to bear his barbarous and tyrannical usage of them, accused him before Caesar, which obliged him to behave himself with moderation among them...And when he was come to Rome, to Caesar, upon hearing what certain accusers of his had to say...banished him, and appointed Vienna, a city of Gaul, to be his habitation...

Now before Archelaus was gone up to Rome...he related this dream to his friends: THAT HE SAW EARS OF CORN, IN NUMBER TEN, FULL OF WHEAT, PERFECTLY RIPE; which ears it seemed to him were devoured by Oxen. And when he was awake, because the vision seemed of great importance to him, he sent for the diviners, whose study was employed about dreams. And while some were of one opinion, and some of another, Simon a man of the sect of Essenes, desired to speak his mind freely, AND SAID THAT THE VISION DENOTED A CHANGE OF AFFAIRS, AND THAT NOT FOR THE BETTER (for the old order of things); that oxen, because that animal takes uneasy pains in his labours, denoted afflictions, and indeed denoted a change of affairs; BECAUSE THAT LAND WHICH IS PLOUGHED BY OXEN CANNOT REMAIN IN ITS FORMER STATE (see 1 Cor.9:7-10); and that the ears of corn being ten, determined the like number of years, because an ear of corn grows in one year; and that the time of Archelaus's government was over...

Ten Sefirot on the Tree of Life...from one end of the earth to the other.

The like accident befell Glaphyra his wife...who, as I said before, was married, while she was still a virgin, to Alexander, the son of Herod, and brother of Archelaus; but since it fell out that Alexander was slain by his father, she was married to Juba, the king of Libya; and when he was dead she lived in widowhood in Cappadocia...Archelaus divorced his former wife Miriamme, and married her, so great was his affection for her; who during her marriage to him saw the following dream: She thought she saw Alexander standing by her; at which she rejoiced, and embraced him with great affection; but he complained of her, and said: 'O Glaphyra; thou provest that saying to be true, that assures us that women are not to be trusted. DID THOU NOT PLEDGE THY FAITH TO ME? AND WAST THOU NOT MARRIED TO ME WHEN THOU WAST A VIRGIN? AND HAD WE NOT CHILDREN BETWEEN US? Yet hast thou forgotten the affection that I bare to thee...out of a desire of a second husband. Nor hast thou been satisfied with that injury...but thou hast been so bold as to procure thee a Third husband to lie by thee, and in an indecent and imprudent manner hast thou entered into my house, and hast been married to your husband Archelaus and my brother. HOWEVER, I WILL NOT FORGET THY FORMER KIND AFFECTION FOR ME; BUT WILL SET THEE FREE FROM EVERY SUCH REPROACHFUL ACTION, AND CAUSE THEE TO BE MINE AGAIN AS THOU ONCE WAS.' When she related this to her female companions, in a few days' time she departed this life.

Now I do not think these histories improper for the present discourse, both because my discourse now is concerning kings; and otherwise also on account of the advantage hence to be drawn, as well for the confirmation of the immortality of the soul, and of the providence of God over human affairs, I thought them fit to be set down." Antiquities of the Jews, Book XVII.13.

Let those who speak (or write, or interpret scripture) (do so) as the oracles of God, wrote Peter. (1 Peter 4:11). We must look, then, into the history of the Church, as we look into the Oracles of God, and we must be instructed by what we find there. We must also look into the events of our own times in the very same light. (At this writing a PBS "Frontline" special is being aired on the life of Pope John Paul II. And he has just completed his historic tour to the Holy Land. This, and each subsequent chapter of this work in one way or another will look at John Paul's Church in light of these oracles. A Newsday review entitled "Taking A Hard Look at the Pope" asks: "On the other hand, you have to ask, Is he a prophet? Did he come here with a message? Did he see something that many of us are missing?..." This is the question that must be raised. Does he see anything? Can he interpret either the Scriptures or the times we live in, in light of the oracles? Does he have access to the Oracle as a high priest should? We shall see for ourselves...The answer, however, is no...1 Samuel 2:31-36. KJV).

"In the deliberative council of the community there shall be Twelve laymen and Three priests schooled to perfection in all that has been revealed in the law. (Understand Matthew 17:1-7)...

So long as these men exist in Israel the deliberative council of the community will rest securely on a basis of truth. It will become a plant evergreen. Insofar as the laymen are concerned, it will indeed be a sanctuary, and insofar as the priesthood is concerned, it will indeed constitute the basis for a true 'Holy of holies.' The members of the community will be in all justice the witnesses of God's truth and the elect of his favour, effecting atonement for the earth and ensuring the requital of the wicked. They will indeed be a 'tested bulwark' and a 'precious corner stone' (Isa.28:16) which shall never be shaken or moved from their place. (See Hebrews 12:13-29). The Manual of Discipline, the Dead Sea Scriptures, pp.60,61.

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"Church or Kirk, from Kir-rock, the (Druid) Circle of Stones, by contraction Kirk, and by corruption Church. It is to be noted that these stones, circularly placed, had always a high stone, for the seat of the president...It was called the Stone of Power. This Stone stood sometimes single, in which case it occasionally served as an altar, or high stone of sacrifice." An Attempt to Retrieve the Original Language of Europe, London,1776.

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Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisy, and envies, and all evil speakings.

As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby

If so ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

To whom coming, AS UNTO A LIVING STONE, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious,

Galatians 2:6-9; Matthew 17:1-9.

Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, AN HOLY PRIESTHOOD, TO OFFER UP SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES, ACCEPTABLE TO GOD BY JESUS CHRIST.

Wherefore it is also contained in Scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief Corner Stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.

Unto you therefore which believeth he is precious; but unto them which be disobedient, the Stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the Head of the corner.

And a Stone of stumbling, and a Rock of offense, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: WHEREUNTO THEY WERE ALSO APPOINTED.

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of the Darkness (out from among the nations of the world that is) into the Light...(1 Peter 2:1-9).

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"And Joshua said, You above all know, Lord, what moves the heart of the sea before it rages, and you have searched out the constellations and numbered the stars and regulated the rain; you know the number of all generations before they are born. And now Lord, give to your people a wise heart and a prudent mind: and when you give those orders to your heritage, they will not sin against you and you will not be angry at them...

And Joshua went down to Gilgal (Galilee, the Great Circle of the Nations). (Gilgal, the great Wheel of Genesis, the Circle of Transmigration), and built an altar with very large stones and did not lift an iron tool to them as Moses had commanded. (See Exodus 20:25,26; Deut.27:5). And he set up large stones on Mount Ebal (the Mount of Judgment) and whitened them and wrote on them very plainly the words of the law. (See Deuteronomy 11:26-32; De.27:12-26). And he gathered all the people together and read aloud the words of the law. And he came down with them and offered peace offerings...And all the house of Israel sang together in a loud voice saying, Behold our Lord has fulfilled what he said to our fathers: To your seed will I give this land (this state of Mind) in which you may dwell, a land flowing with milk and honey. (See also Deut.8:7-9). And, behold, he led us into the land of our enemies and delivered them broken in spirit before us (see Ps.51:14-19), and he is the God who sent word to our fathers in the secret dwelling places of souls...

And Joshua blessed them and said, The Lord grant that your heart may abide in him all the days and you do not depart from his Name. May the covenant of the Lord remain with you and not be broken, BUT MAY THERE BE BUILT AMONG YOU A DWELLING PLACE FOR GOD, as he said when he sent you into his inheritance with joy and gladness." Pseudo-Philo 21:1-10, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha.

History clearly reveals that there were two churches in those first several centuries; the first, which we have also followed into Europe, as well as other places, and identified with an original Celtic Church (the direct result of the Apostles' first missionary efforts, filling up all those stone circles with their now-Christian presence), and the emerging World-church which also came up in time, accompanied, however, by a powerful Roman presence with which it was now in league. Under the pretext of driving pagan-Druid influence out of its newly acquired domains, both in Britain and on the continent, it also, slowly but methodically, and often-times violently, drove the first and true Church (which it could not distinguish from other Druids, and which likewise would not accede to its accords) into near oblivion as well. This first Druidic branch of the Church had, by necessity, to slide back into the mist as it was, with the long-fabled Tuatha de Danaan before them, for the very simple reason that it was wholly pacifistic in nature, and thus it could not stand up for very long before the militaristic doctrines of the Romans, and then later before the Gothic onslaught. It was simply overwhelmed by the force of history (as was intended by God). Nevertheless, its risidual influences were to be found everywhere throughout the continent and beyond after that, and its written records were preserved as well. (The primary Gospels being a chief example, along with the wealth of other gnostic texts that followed them). Everyone of these early adepts carried with them the "Stigmata," or the marks of their mystical connection to the Mystery of Christ. And everyone of them stood ready to be persecuted for the faith (which is, of course, the true meaning of the sacrifice of the Mass...a Daily Sacrifice, one Lamb in the morning, one Lamb in the evening...day by day, year by year, century by century)...

These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.

(1) And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death."

(2) Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over all."...

(4) Jesus said, "The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child Seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same...(The Gnostic Gospel of Thomas).

And besides the fact that these "living circles of stones" (these Friends in the Spirit which are still found wherever the spirit of Christ truly exists), were only to be found among this true Church (creating the foundation for the later tales of the Knights of the Round Table, Excalibur and the Holy Grail), is the realization that James, and not Peter, was the head of this Church...

The disciples said to Jesus, We know that you will depart from us. Who is to be our leader?

Jesus said to them, Wherever you are go to James the righteous, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being...(Gospel of Thomas 12).

Peter, a true interpreter, did not consider himself to be the head of anything, and how much less would he have considered himself to be the head of such a troublesome colossus as the World-church that ironically grew up in his name. Peter knew full well that the mysteries commit themselves to small remnants and not to Giants; and that they do not align themselves with the mind of Caesar but are instead hidden from him; and he knew, as do all right-minded souls, that the Mysteries and the precepts of God are in direct opposition to Caesar, especially when he, and the religious institutions aligned to him, try to draw the souls of men away from God to themselves and away from the truths that God has hidden in the midst of the Earth to the misdirections of nations and men:

Mind not high things (says the Truth) but condescend to men of low estate...(Romans 12:16).

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Evil men understand not judgment (and hardly did they understand it in Europe during the events of the 20th century) but they that seek the Lord understand all things...(Proverbs 28:5).

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With all lowliness and meekness with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love, some apostles, some prophets, for the edifying of the Body...(Ephesians 4).

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Therefore I speak to them in parables: because they seeing, see not; and hearing, they hear not, neither do they understand.

And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias (Isaiah), which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and not understand; and seeing, ye shall see, and shall not perceive:

For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them...(Matthew 13:13-15; Isaiah 6:9,10).

The following account of James, and the necessary questions it raises, is taken from G.R.S. Mead's Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.

"Eusubius tells us that in his day 'the most accurate account' of James was to be found in the fifth book of the Commentaries of Hegesippus, who, he says, 'flourished nearest to the days of the Apostles'; modern scholarship, however, assigns the date of Hegesippus's 'Memoirs' to about 180 A.D.. Eusubius then proceeds to quote from Hegesippus the story of the martyrdom of James, the setting and the tone of which is very Jewish. The most interesting part of the story, however, is the description of James himself, where we read:

'He was holy from his mother's womb, drank no wine or strong drink, nor ate animal food; no razor came upon his head; he neither oiled himself nor used the bath; HE ALONE WAS PERMITTED TO ENTER THE HOLY PLACES, for he never wore wool, but always linen. AND HE USED TO GO ALONE IN THE TEMPLE, and was found on his knees, interceding for the people, so that his knees grew hard like a camel's because of his kneeling in prayer before God, begging forgiveness for the people. Indeed, on account of his exceeding great righteousness he was called "the Righteous" and "Olbias" which means in Greek "defense of the people" and righteousness.'

Here we have a picture of a rigid ascetic, a Chassid, an Essene, a Therapeut, a Nazir, (a Rebbe), for from his mother's womb he was vowed to holiness. It is difficult, however, to understand what is meant by the sentence which I have translated, 'he alone was permitted to enter the holy places'--generally rendered the 'Holy of Holies' or the 'Sanctuary.'

It is, of course, impossible to believe that James could have been permitted to enter the Holy of Holies of the Temple in Jerusalem, which no one but the high priest, and he only on a certain day, could enter. Nor can we suppose that James alone of all men was accorded the privilege of entering the 'shrines,' WHATEVER THEY MAY MEAN; it can only mean that such men alone as those who have kept the same rigid rules as James could do so...

Of course the answer to it all lies in an understanding of the dimensions of God's Holy Temple (which Temple Ye are), and the words: "...that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in...Isaiah 40:21,22.

"Eusubius gives us some further information of the most interesting nature when he quotes from the sixth book of Clement of Alexandria's lost work 'The Institutions,' where Clement writes:

'Peter and James and John, after the ascension of the Savior, though they had been preferred by the Lord, did not contend for the honour, but chose James as the bishop of Jerusalem...'

And in the same book Clement adds: 'The Lord imparted the gnosis to James the Just, to John and Peter, after his resurrection, these delivered it to the rest of the Apostles, and they to the Seventy.'" Mead, pp.225, 26.

We have already seen how in the proto-Hebrew/Phoenician and Greek scripts the number 70 forms a circle, "The Circle." The numbers Three, Twelve, and Seventy, all represent in different ways the same circular connections that exist between the cosmic and human dimensions of the Mystery of Christ on the Tree of Life.

The early Church was an old Oracle dressed in new garments as it were, but clearly an upstart in the minds of those who had a religious, social, political, or commercial stake in the old status-quo. As they came back up into Europe (the Holy Place), and as some of them began to gather out of the various religious traditions of their time those things that would go to make for a unified view of Divine Reality, they appeared to others as troublemakers plain and simple--a secret religious (radical) cult--based in (experimental) "communistic" principles mind you. To the establishment it was as if they were trying to foster a new kind of anarchy and confusion in the world. And they no doubt appeared to many to be in league somehow with those Jews who were attempting to cast off the yoke of Rome in the East. This first Church had to tread carefully, as well as boldly, through the political currents of their times. Their view of the world, although it took into account the real-politik of the age, transcended the affairs of that world itself. Their's was the worldview of the true Bodhisatvas. Having annihilated their own affections for the things of that age through the mystery of the Cross (through the teachings of the Great Universal Mandala into which they had become initiated), they had come alive to the hidden meanings of things that overshadowed and permeated the whole of their reality--a reality, they understood, that would not reveal itself again until the last days. (This mystery was contained in the overshadowing presence of the Holy Ghost). And because this first Church was not interested in coming to political power in its own time, or at any time throughout the whole period of the coming Age of Wickedness as these Essenes called it, it left the world at large to what it could make of Paul's teachings (which were also wholly Kabbalistic in form, Vedic as well as Buddhist in nature, but also concealed), and virtually disappeared. Among the things that these adepts took with them was the mystery of the Omphalos, or the Navel Stone of the World-mystery, and the fact that this place was situated in the center of Europe and not in Palestine:

EVEN SHETIYYAH..."The Rock from which the world was woven, and the Foundation Rock. Both meanings presuppose the belief that the world was created from the Rock which, placed at the center of the world in the Holy of Holies of the Temple in Jerusalem, constitutes the focal point of the world." Encyclopedia Judaica.

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"And what did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He placed thereon his Right Foot, and sank the stone to the bottom of the depths, and He made it the keystone of the earth, just as a man who sets a keystone in an arch; therefore is it called Foundation Stone, for there is the Navel of the Earth, and there from was all the earth evolved, and upon it the Sanctuary of God stands, as it is said, 'And this Stone which I have set for a pillar shall be God's House.'

Hence we may learn that Jerusalem stands upon Seven hills, and there he saw the Even Shetiyyah." The Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer the Great.

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"In historic times the oracle appears in possession of Apollo, (the Sun); but the original possessor, according to the story, was Gaea, the Earth (the wife of Uranus), (thus Heaven and Earth)." (Aesc. Eumen 1, 2):

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'Ancient Europe had no gods. The Great Goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless, and omnipotent...Men feared, adored, and obeyed the matriarch; the hearth (the Fire) which She tended in a cave or hut being their earliest social centers, and motherhood their prime mystery...'

Then it was shared with Her by Poseidon (the god of the middle regions) (Eurip. lon. 446), who gave up his part of it to Apollo (and this we assume when Israel came up into Europe in the time of Joshua). According to the Homeric Hymn to the Pythian Apollo, the god took forcible possession of the Oracle soon after his birth, slaying with his earliest bow-shot the Serpent Pytho, the son of Gaea, who guarded the spot. To atone for the murder, Apollo was forced to fly and spend Eight years in menial service before he could return forgiven. A festival, the Septeria, was held every year, at which the whole story was represented: the slaying of the Serpent, the flight, atonement, and return of the god...The Dragon was symbolically slain, and his house, decked out in costly fashion, was burned...

On the walls of the entrance hall were short texts written in gold, attributed to the Seven Sages...In the temple proper stood the golden statue of Apollo, and in front of it the sacrificial hearth with the eternal fire. Near this was a globe of marble...THE OMPHALOS...OR THE CENTER OF THE EARTH." An Encyclopedia of Classical Studies.

While tracing these oracles that were spread across the whole ancient world, back to the center of the Mystery itself, toward which all of these oracles once pointed, we must take notice of those whom history knows as the Jewish and Christian Sibyllines. These prophetesses are an essential link between the ancient world of the Divine Mother and the mysteries of the "Son." According to the Prologue to the Sibylline Oracles in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha they were "ten" in number. The first of them was of Chaldean origin, "a daughter of Noah" it was said. (Recall that MacDari attributes the word "Chaldea" to an old Celtic term "Caul" meaning a "veil," "secret," "hidden"):

"Sibylline Oracles are a widely attested phenomenon in the ancient world. They are found in Greek HEXameters. (One of the Sibyls was located at Delphi). Many of the alleged Sibyls were Asiatic and their type of prophecy is widely assumed to have come to Greece from the East...although there is no clear evidence to support or refute this view...The Sibyl is always depicted as an aged woman uttering ecstatic prophecies. Ovid tells us that she was granted by Apollo that she might live as many years as there were grains of sand on the seashore. (See Genesis 22:17)... According to Heracleides Ponticus (c. 360-325 B.C.) the Sibyl was older than Orpheus. If any historical prophetess ever underlay the figure of the Sibyl, she was already lost in the mists of legend by the fifth century. According to Heraclitus she "reaches through thousands of years" with her voice. Her prophecy was even said to continue after death, while her soul revolved in the face of the moon." The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume I.

The following remarkable study is taken from a work entitled Jesus Christ, The Sun of God, Ancient Cosmology and Early Christian Symbolism, by David Fideler:

SIMON PETROS: THE OMPHALOS OF CHRISTIANITY

"The esoteric cosmological symbolism of the early Christian gnosis was based upon the inherited teachings of the earlier Greek theological science. In the same way that Apollo possessed his omphalos stone at Delphi, it was imperative that the New Song of the Solar Logos be built upon an appropriate foundation. Thus in the words of Jesus, 'I say unto thee, thou art Peter, and upon this rock (petra) I will build my Church.' The Greek word Peter is literally (petros) rock, and elsewhere Jesus gives Simon the name of 'Cephas' , based on the Aramaic word for rock: 'Thou art Simon, the son of John, thou shalt be called Cephas (which is interpreted Peter)."

"The name Cephas was not chosen at random for, by gamatria, it amounts to 729, and represents the CUBIC foundation stone facing. This number was most important to Plato, and the Pythagoreans; not only is it a Cube (9 X 9 X 9), but it is also a Square (27 X 27), and is associated with the Solar year.

Most appropriately, in the important yet little-known Clementine Homilies, Simon Peter teaches the following doctrine: "God possesses 'shape,' for Beauty cannot exist without shape." (Read The Mystical Shape of the Godhead by Gershom Scholem). This shape may be perceived by the pure in heart, although God's shape does not exist in three-dimensional space. Rather the form of God underlies the structure of three-dimensional space. God exists at the center of and heart of the universe and His form is that of the "Cube" or three-dimensional coordinate system: from His form radiates the six directions of space while He contains within the Seventh point of rest. 'He is, as it were, in the center of the infinite, being the limit of the universe...For in Him the six infinities end, and from Him they receive their extension to infinity."

"The number of Cephas, 729, was significant to Plato and, presumably, to other Pythagorean thinkers in the ancient world. In The Republic, Plato states that the Tyrant is 729 times worse than the good man, implying that the good man is 729 times better than the tyrant. Concerning the number 729, Socrates remarks that it is 'a number which is closely concerned with human life, if human life is concerned with days and nights and months and years.' This is proven correct by the magic square (above) which contains the first 729 numbers. There the number 365 appears in the centermost cell, alluding to the Solar nature of the Omphalos Stone.

In earlier Greek gematria, 729 is the number of DELPHINION , a temple of Apollo Delphinios. Interestingly, Plutarch, a priest of Apollo at Delphi, notes that 729 is a number of the Sun in one of his Pythagorean essays." Jesus Christ, Son of God, pp. 276-79.

We have seen in the previous chapters how the Mystical City Above also appears in the Book of Revelations in the form of this cube (see Revelation 21:16). And now we see how the whereabouts of this City in the center of the Oracle was also hidden in the numerical structure of the name Petros, or Peter; and knowing how James and not Peter was the Head, or the Bishop (or the Pope), of this first Church, (continued)...

Blessed be my son Jacob (James),

And all the sons of God Most High unto all ages:

May God give unto thee a seed of righteousness;

And some of thy sons may He sanctify IN THE MIDST OF THE EARTH;

May nations serve thee,

And all the nations bow themselves before thy seed.

Be strong in the presence of men,

And exercise authority over the seed of Seth...(The Book of Jubilees 22).

...we ask: How is it that this Pope who has come so majestically in our times across the face of the earth in the name of Peter is unaware of these things? And if unaware, or ignorant of these things, what are we to make of Rome's claim that upon the apostleship of Peter, thus upon all of his successors in Rome, does the Crown of the Church and the continuity of Christendom rest? And how is it that he does not know that the time of Christianity has come? (that it is about to end...here in the West)?

For there must be heresies (even Giant Heresies) among you that those who are approved may be made manifest...(1 Corinthians 11:17-34).

Popular Church history would have the Eastern and Roman orders emerging in form from the Jewish Temple in the East after the time of Christ, when in reality they emerged, or descended from the Jewish-Druidical order of priests of Europe--but not directly. (Please understand these things in the chapters devoted to the Holy Name and the name of Jesus). The Papacy has more to do with the Roman empire and the reign of Caesar in the world than it has with the reign of Christ. It is part of the political and religious structure of the age that is passing, and cannot inherit any part of the age to come. We follow this realization, and trace this pathway from the High Druids Priests of Europe (Simeon the Just was the last well-noted of these High Priests), but through the reign of Caesar first, before it leads to the institution of the Papacy. We follow it from even before the time of Julius Caesar himself, through the title that was bestowed upon him after his return from the North--the title of "Pontifix Maximus," the chief priest-king of the state mysteries...

"PONTIFEX...The title given by the ancient Romans to members of one of the two celebrated religious colleges, the other being known as the College of Augurs. Originally there were Five pontiffs of this order of priests, the president being styled Pontifix Maximus, but the number was afterward increased to nine and still later to 15. The pontiffs were not charged with conducting sacrifices, nor were they obliged to worship any particular divinity, but they had general control of the official religion, and their head was the highest religious authority in the state, thus being neither subject to the people or the senate. Only patricians were eligible to membership in the Pontifex until 300 B.C., when the number was increased to nine under the Ogulnian law, and four of the Pontiffs were selected from the plebians...In 81 B.C. the number was increased to 15 by Sulla, and Julius Caesar added himself shortly after as the 16th, holding the position of Pontifex Maximus. With the beginning of the empire, the highest dignity was bestowed upon the emperor and the title passed in succession to the ruling sovereign. In the time of Theodosius the title became equivalent to Pope, and it is now one of the designations of the head of the Roman Catholic Church."

The great historical heresy of the Roman church will not simply lie in the fact that it appropriated this title to itself after the fall of the Western empire, but in the fact that--through its league, or marriage as it was, with the cult of the Roman emperors--it acquired the exclusive right to this title by both insistence and force, proving then, and for all future times that it had no deep connection, or understanding of the teachings of Christ. They went out from us, wrote John, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us they would no doubt have continued with us...(1 John 2:19). In its ongoing complicity with the powers of this age the emerging World-church could do nothing but increase the state of transgression it was already in. The succeeding popes and emperors (seeing the world through their own eyes, and not those of the Spirit), naturally came to see themselves as agents of good, that is, of righteous order in the world, and all who opposed them as evil; and themselves as particularly raised up by God in the world to destroy this evil (and even each other at times). In so doing the World-church became the increasing force for evil in the world, and a full player in all of the disorder and confusion that grips the world today. (The true Church, mind you, has always been a remnant and a stranger in the midst of all this disorder...and now even more so here in America).

Ralph Woodrow (who, like many others who have studied the history of the Catholic church with a more-than-critical eye--as every thinking Christian should) says:

"But how could one man be at the same time both the head of the Church and still be Pontifix Maximus, the head of the pagan mysteries? In an attempt to cover this discrepancy church leaders have sought for similarities between the two religions...One striking similarity that was found was this: The Supreme Pontiff of paganism bore the chaldean title, 'peter,' or 'interpreter--the interpreter of the mysteries.' Here then was an opportunity for the compromising leaders of that time to "Christianize" the pagan office of Pontifix Maximus, the office of the Bishop of Rome...by associating the 'Peter' or 'Grand Interpreter of Rome' with Peter the Apostle...

But this presented its problems (Woodrow goes on to say)...In order to connect the Apostle Peter with this pagan office...it was necessary to teach that the Apostle Peter had actually gone to Rome. Babylon Mystery Religion, pp.80-83.

Woodrow runs against tradition when he says that Peter had never been to Rome. William Stuart McBirnie, in his Search For the Twelve Apostles cites evidence for Peter's travels in the East and throughout Europe, and of his presence in Rome he says:

"The common tradition that St. Peter founded the church at Rome is unverifiable. Paul could hardly have named so many Roman Christians in the last chapter of Romans if there had not been churches there long before any possible visit of St. Peter. Danielou observes however:

'Was Paul's the only mission to the West? The Acts tell us in 43, after the death of James, Peter left Jerusalem "for another place" (Acts 12:17). He is lost from sight until 49, when we find him at the Council of Jerusalem. No canonical text has anything to say about his missionary activities during this time. But Eusubius (270-340 A.D.) says that he came to Rome about 44, at the beginning of Claudius's reign.'"

McBirnie cites and then dismisses what others say is a veiled reference to Rome in the term Babylon. (1Peter 5:13). Though Peter almost certainly traveled to the "circumcision" at Babylon, we accept the double usage seeing how the mysteries of Babylon had to pass through Rome on their way here to the West. It is almost also certain that he appeared in Britain to help establish the church there, along with a Joseph of Arimithea and the other adepts in the Christian mysteries. And it is even possible that he sailed away to the farthest West itself as the prophet Ezekiel did, and as Paul also did during his wanderings in "Arabia." (The connections between the two continents and their common religious traditions are preserved everywhere in the histories and the oral teachings of Indigenous American peoples, in the stories of the "Feathered Serpent, as well as in the words of the Psalms themselves...Psalm 19:1-6)...

"We have sufficient evidence that there was a Christian church planted in Britain during the Apostles' time. (Collier mentions some resonings of Eusebius, then continues)...The next authority shall be that of Theodoret, who amongst the nations converted by the Apostles, expressly mentions Britain. Theodoret's testimony is confirmed by St. Jerome in his commentary upon Amos, where he tells us that St. Paul having been in Spain sailed from one ocean to another; that he imitated the course of the Sun of Righteousness, of whom it is said, His going forth is from one end of heaven unto the other; and that his progress reached as far as the extremity of the earth." The Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain from the Planting of Christianity to the Reign of Charles the Second, by Jeremy Collier, 1708.

Clement, in his Recognitions and in his Homilies has our Simon Peter (the true Interpreter) engaged in a series of disputes with that other Simon (Acts 8:9-24), which carried him from one place in the empire to another, and which, Clement says, carried him to Rome as well, because the other Simon did not only arrive there himself but completed his life there. And this episode provides us with another set of reflections, or mirror images--in this case the spirit of true Gnosticism against that form of worldly "gnosticism" that will eventually result in the formation of the great World-church itself. Not that Simon Magus was personally responsible for the creation of the Roman Catholic Church, but that in the figure of this Simon is embodied the roots and the branches of that form of religious heresy that will grow up in so many others as well to become the Great Roman Church as we know it today.

Thou art Peter and upon this Rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell (the lower world of the West) shall not prevail against it.

And I give unto thee the Keys of the kingdom of Heaven (of the upper worlds), and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven...(Matthew 16:18,19).

We should recall from the third chapter that the use of the terms "hell" or "hades" in the scriptures had nothing to do with a place on the other side of life, but with the very human condition that all of us find ourselves in at this time in history, and particularly the Western state of mind that we have fallen into--of which it is written that "the gates of this (Western) realm shall not prevail against the Nation-church." Likewise it should be pointed out what happens to a Rock when it is dropped in the water, as the mysteries of Israel were in the midst of the Nations. It sinks to the bottom. So the rock called Peter, after it was committed to that place named Beauty in the center of the Oracle, also sank down, down, down, until it arrived at this same place on the Tree of Life named Foundation. As it went it passed clean over the head, or rather, over the mind of Rome:

The Mind of Peter is presently situated here in the West. Open up the prophetic books of Peter in our own time.

"Clement to James, the lord, and Bishop of bishops, who rules Jerusalem, the holy church of the Hebrews, and the churches everywhere excellently founded by the province of God, with the elders and deacons and the rest of the brethren, peace be always.

Be it known unto you my lord, that Simon who for the sake of the true faith, and the most sure foundation of his doctrine was set apart to be the Foundation of the Church,and for this end was by Jesus himself, with his faithful mouth, named Peter, to whom first the father revealed the son; whom the Christ, with good reason blessed; the called, and elect, and associate at table IN THE JOURNYINGS OF CHRIST...who, as being fittest of all, WAS COMMANDED TO ENLIGHTEN THE DARKEST PART OF THE EARTH, NAMELY THE WEST, and was enabled to accomplish it...And to what extent do I lengthen my discourse, not wishing to indicate what is sad, which yet of necessity, though reluctantly, I must tell you--he, himself, by reason of his immense love toward men, having come as far as Rome, clearly and publicly testifying in opposition to the wicked one who withstood him, that there is to be a good King over all the world; while saving men by his God-inspired doctrine--by violence--exchanged this present existence for life." Epistle of Clement to James, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. VIII.

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(James writes back in another place): "Peace be with you from peace, love from love, grace from grace, faith from faith, life from holy life.

Since you asked that I send you a secret book which was revealed to me and Peter by the Lord, I could not turn away or gainsay you; but I have written it in the Hebrew alphabet, and sent it to you, and you alone. But since you are a minister of the salvation of the saints, endeavor earnestly and and take care not to rehearse this text to many. The Apocryphon of James.

The secret, of course, had not only to do with the universal and prophetic dimensions of the Christ-mystery, and with the location of that City hidden in its midst of it, but with the realization that when Peter returned from the West on his way to Rome, he had to also pass through Jerusalem (in Europe) to fulfill the commandment which says:

Then the priest shall come and look, and behold, if the plague be spread in the house, it is a fretting leprosy in the house,: it is unclean.

And he shall break down the house, the stones of it, and the timbers thereof, and all the mortar of the house; and he shall carry them forth out of the city (Jerusalem) into an unclean place (Rome).

Moreover he that goeth into the house all the while it is shut up shall be unclean till Evening. (Leviticus 14:44-46).

Legend, and therefore the sacred oracles, already had it that old Chronus (the mystery of Time) had fled away from Olympus to a place named Italy after the old order changed hands. And with him came the idea of an Eternal City set upon Seven hills (Cibola)...

The Seven Hills (or Empires)...Vienna, not Rome...Revelation 17:9-18.

The Western Italia, not the European.

But we have already seen in a previous chapter that the Olympus from which Chronus fled lay beyond that mountain in Greece, in the center of Europe, and that the "Italy" towards which the god fled, the same toward which Aeneas's ships were originally pointed, actually lay far off at the Western ends of the earth...

Thus we learned that it was to Eden that Chronus fled, to await the day when the great Circle would be completed, in the fulness of time itself. And we learn from the Scriptures that within the structure of this myth (or rather this reality) was a belief older than the Gilgamesh epic that one should be born in this city, a priest-king (or a priest and a king...Genesis 3:15), who would grow up in time to correctly interpret the mysteries, and rule the world. Thus appeared the spirits of the many antichrists in the world, each imagining in their turn that they were the one: all the Pharaohs, the Assyrians, the kings of Babylon, Haman (of the Persian epic), Alexander, all the Caesars, the Holy Roman emperors and Napoleon--and eventually the Presidents of the United States of America. After all, Ronald Reagan not too many years ago laid claim to the myth for America as well. And yes, the Papacy. (Anyone who--in the name of Christ, and in the name of these mysteries--consorts with the nation-states in their drive to power, and anyone who partakes in anyway, or supports, or rationalizes in anyway, the taking of human life and the forceful suppression of knowledge and oppression of other peoples and nations, is an antichrist (and now they are all caught). In the greatest sense, it is the seat of Power itself which makes of anyone who occupies it an antichrist).

Virgil in the meantime has Aeneas not merely fleeing the destruction of Troy, but also setting out on a sea-journey to the ends of the earth (to a land named Hesperia), and he has Aeneas's son, Ascanius, or Iu'lus, setting out with him. Virgil will say that this scion of the ancients, this son of Rome, this son of Troy, this son of the Danaans (the children of Israel), this son of God, is none other than Julius Caesar himself:

"These were Jupiter's words to Venus...That's enough of fear; your children's fate is firm; you'll surely see the walls I promised you, Lavinium's city; and you shall carry your great-hearted son, Aeneas, high as heaven's stars. My will is still the same; I have not changed. Your son (I now speak out--I know this anxiousness is gnawing at you; I UNROLL THE SECRET SCROLLS OF FATE, AWAKE ITS DISTANT PAGES) will wage tremendous war in Italy and crush ferocious nations, and establish a way of life and walls for his own people--until the time of his Third summer as the king of Latium, until he has passed Three winters since he overcame the Latins. But then the boy Ascanius, who is now carrying Iu'lus as his surname (while the state of Ilium held fast, he still was known as Iu'lus), with his rule shall fill the Wheeling Months of THIRTY mighty years. He shall remove his kingdom from Lavinium and, powerful, build Alba Longa's walls. For full three hundred years, the capitol and rule of Hector's race shall be at Alba, until a royal priestess, Ilia, with child by Mars has brought forth Twin Sons.

And then, rejoicing in the tawney hide of his nursemaid, the She-wolf, Romulus shall take the rulership and build the walls of Mars' own city. Romulus shall call that people Romans after his own name. (See Acts 20:29; Romans, chapter 1 and consider the chapter entitled, Jesus Christ, Social Revolutionary). I set no limit to their fortunes and no time; I give them empire without end...This is what I decree. An age shall come along the way of gliding lustra when the house born of (Troy) shall hold both Phthia and illustrious Mycenae and rule defeated Argos. Then a Trojan Caesar shall rise out of that splendid line. His empire's boundary shall be the Ocean; the only border to his fame, the stars. His name shall be from great Iu'lus, and shall be Julius...

With battle forgotten savage generations shall grow generous. And aged Faith and Vesta, together with the brothers Romulus and Remus, shall make laws. The gruesome gates of war, with tightly welded iron plates shall be shut fast. (See Isaiah 2:1-4; Micah 4:1-3, 9,10). Within, unholy Rage shall sit on his ferocious weapons, bound behind his back by a hundred knots of brass; he groaning horribly with bloody lips." The Aeneid,Book I.356-419.

Aeneas at last arrives at the place of the Seven Hills (where the Oracles have it that the throne of God's kingdom will be established); or imagines that he has, because the Fates have blown him way off course. He arrives instead at that place we now know as Italy and to all the events that will lead to the founding of...not the true Eternal City, Jerusalem, but Rome. Do not fail to see, however, that the true meaning of these oracles remains buried in "the Woods of Ida" (IudeA). Where? In upper Europe.

"So did Creusa cry; her wailing filled my father's house. But even then comes a sudden omen--wonderful to tell: between the hands, before the face of the grieving parents, over Julius's head there leaps a flametip that seems to shed a radiance: the tongue of fire flickers harmlessly...Shuddering in our alarm, we rush to shake the flame out of his hair and quench the holy fire with water. But Anchises raised his glad eyes to the stars and lifted heavenwards his voice and hands: O Jupiter, All-able one, if you are moved by any prayers, look on us. I only ask you this: if by our goodness we merit it, then, Father, grant us your help, and let your sign confirm this omen.

1 KINGS, CHAPTER 8...(KJV).

No sooner had the old man spoken so then sudden thunder crashed upon the left, and through the shadows ran a shooting star, its trail a torch of flaming light. It glides above the highest housetops as we watch, until the brightness that has marked its course IS BURIED IN THE WOODS OF IDA (IuDiA): far and wide the long wake of that furrow shines, and sulpher smokes the land. At last, won over by this sign, my father rises to greet the gods, TO ADORE THE SACRED STAR: Now my delay is done, I follow where you lead." The Aeneid, Book II.920-954. Translated by A. Mandelbaum.

As 'the Fates" would have it, and according to the epic Roman myth that Virgil later spun around him, Julius Caesar did return from "the Woods of Ida" (IuDeA in the north). Add to that the title of Pontifix Maximus, and we begin to sense something of the mystique with which the later Roman pontiffs clothed themselves in their own ascent to ecclesastical and political power after the fall of the Western empire. This emerging Catholic order not only adopted the garments and apparel of the prelates of the Roman government, but also the vestments of the Druid priesthood, which it also conscripted from the North, an inevitability also alluded to by Paul in Acts 20:25-33. But then, when this Roman order did not only align itself with the political powers of the age (in violation of all the precepts of Christ), and as it became a political and "religious" power in its own right, it began to fulfill a realm of prophecy that it didn't even know existed. It is discovered in the structure of what some have recognized as "the mystery" of the Hebrew Kings. And it leads to the words which say: And the judgment was set and the books were opened. (Daniel 7:10; Revelation 20:12; 13:8).

Acts 13:38-41/Habakkuk, chapter 1. Daniel 9:11,2/Jeremiah, chapter 25...KJV.

Measure thou the time diligently...then thou shalt understand it is the very time wherein the Highest will begin to visit the world which He made. Therefore, when there shall be seen earthquakes and uproars of people in the world; then shalt thou well understand that the Most High spake of these things from the days that were before thee.

The times of the Highest have plain beginning in wonders and powerful works, and endings in effects and signs...(2 Esdras 9:2-6; Ezekiel 12:23).

We will treat this Mystery of the Hebrew Kings, and the meaning of the sequence and the dates of their individual reigns, in the chapter on The Nature and the Mark of the Beast. It is the key to opening the books of the Prophets in our times. Suffice it to say here that next to the name of each Hebrew king are two sets of dates, one marked B.C. and the other A.D.. The first set of dates points to the times that characterized the hidden life of Israel in those centuries before Christ; the second set reveals the things that began to unfold again out of books of the prophets in our own times. The first narratives were composed in types and images, and in the embodying of certain epic and spiritual principles in such figures as Saul, D.V.D, and Solomon. The second narrative, or rather the second reading of these same texts opens the mind to the Presence of God in the affairs of our own times. (The 25th chapter of Jeremiah, for instance, is a description, not of ancient times but of the entire 20th century, and the United States of America is the Chaldeans of Habakkuk, chapter 1)...

As such we will open up the Books of Samuel at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, and find the whole period of the Inquisitions and the Reformation described in those conflicts that were waged there between Israel and the Philistines. As in more hoary times, when the children of Adam mingled themselves with other states of mind, and brought forth "giants" (Genesis 6), (which means that they brought forth children whose perceptions of the world were confused, and who, in turn, grew up to govern the thinking of "large" amounts of other people in the earth), so the Giant, Goliath, represents the entire hierarchy and collective spirit of this great World-church. This Giant was reborn in the events of this age, and grew to power when church prelates began to familiarize themselves with the vacant seats of Roman senators, sitting in them contrary to the law which said:

Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land whither I bring you to dwell therein spue you not out.

AND YE SHALL NOT WALK IN THE MANNER OF THE NATIONS WHICH I CAST OUT BEFORE YOU: for they committed these things, and therefore I abhorred them...(Leviticus 20:21-23).

And in coveting these seats of power, indeed the very seat of the Roman emperor itself, they became to the true Nation-Church what the Philistines were to ancient Israel: an opposing force and their spiritual oppressors.

"With each passing year, 'news' is downloaded into 'history.' And while nothing is so fleeting as a headline, our collective understanding of the past is also under constant revision. As Samuel Butler, the 19th Century English novelist, put it, 'God through his omnipotence cannot change the past. Therefore he created historians.'

The struggle against communism ended less than a decade ago, and yet historians are sending some Cold War protagonists on the 'up' escalator, toward heroic immortality, and others on the 'down' escalator toward either ignominy or oblivion.

As he recuperates...in a Rome hospital, Pope John Paul II is heading higher...From Warsaw to Moscow, from Washington to Rome, historians are harvesting long-stashed files...Two new books, both reliant on recently uncorked information, illustrate this up-and-down process. 'His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time,' by Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi, will force a major reassessment of the Pontiff's role as a geopolitical strategist as well as a religious leader. As they make clear, 'HE IS THE LAST OF THE GIANTS ON THE WORLD STAGE.'" Newsday, James P. Pinkerton.

The intensity of the struggles that were being waged between the children of Light and the World-church, during the times that led to the events of the Reformation, is described in the Fourth chapter of First Samuel. The literary image is that which followed the Golden Age of the Papacy, when practically all of Judaeo-Christendom was under its sway (except those who were then under the sway of Goliath's brother--the Eastern church and its own peculiar nationalist and imperial tendencies). To understand it better we must return to the first centuries of the Christian era, and to those words that were beginning to take effect in the life of the Church. For just as these latter times have unfolded according to the visions of the Prophets, so the early Church entered Europe (just as Israel did in ancient times), fulfilling the hidden precepts and requirements of the Law of Moses and the prophetic import of the books of Joshua and Judges:

And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel; and he said, because the people have transgressed my covenant which I commanded their fathers, and have not hearkened unto my voice.

I will not henceforth drive out from before them of the nations which Joshua left when he died, (which means, as the Universal Mystery of Christ-Joshua died out from the understanding of the people),

That through them I might prove Israel, whether they will keep the way of the Lord to walk therein, as their fathers did it or not.

Therefore the Lord left those nations, without driving them out hastily, neither delivered he them into the hands of Joshua.

Now these are the nations which the Lord left, to prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan.

Only that the generations of the children of Israel might know to teach them war, at the least aught as before knew nothing thereof...

Namely FIVE LORDS OF THE PHILISTINES, and all the Canaanites, and the Sidonians, and the Hivites that dwell in mount Lebanon (the Lebanon of Europe...1 Kings 5:9; Hosea 14:5), from mount Ba'al-Hermon unto the entering in of Hamath.

And they were to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses (now Paul)...(Judges 2:20 to 3:4).

We will explore the epic and allegorical meaning of Israel's battles in a following chapter, but it is well to briefly rehearse Paul's words here, or rather his marching orders, which the World-church has so obviously set aside:

And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.

Now therefore endure hardness AS A GOOD SOLDIER OF JESUS CHRIST.

No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life (and this means with the affairs of the nations of the world); that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.

And if any man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned (from Kether downwards), except he strive lawfully...(2 Timothy 2:2-5).

__________

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh (we do not kill other human beings; we do not fight in the causes of other nations),

For the weapons OF OUR WARFARE are not carnal, but Mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.

Casting down imaginations, AND EVERY HIGH THING THAT EXALTETH ITSELF AGAINST THE KNOWLEDGE (The Gnosis) OF GOD, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

And (only then) having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your (own) obedience is fulfilled...(2 Corinthians 10:3-6).

One young Jewish man said (and in his own unknowing, but deeply religious kind of way he was speaking for almost every young Christian and Muslim as well, who were ever sent away by their religious leaders to fight in the wars between peoples and nations): "We Jews follow both the Oral and the Written law." As far as war is concerned such a thing is impossible. For one cannot "kill" and "not kill" at the same time--unless, of course, one accomplishes the killing in the ways of the true spiritual warrior. Choose LIFE, Moses said, so that thou and thy seed may live. All wars come from God. They come as a judgment against those who will not stop fighting them. The 20th century has been the greatest judgment of all (as are the ongoing judgments against the Jewish State), and will culminate in either the transformation or the destruction of all the warring elements in the earth

We have already traced the spirit of the Canaanites out of ancient Europe into the East in ancient time, and then, following the course of the Sun or Righteousness (Malachi, chapter 4), we have followed this entire mystery back again, back up into the original land of Canaan, across the pages of history right into the uproars of the 20th century. But who are these Five Lords of the Philistines? We discover that they not only prefigured the heads of the Five Ecclesiastical Cities of the Greater Catholic church: Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem (in Palestine), Antioch, and Alexandria, but in time, as Rome ascended in power among them, these Five became the Grand Inquisitors: the Priests, Monsignors, Bishops, Cardinals, and Popes of the great Western-church:

And the Philistines put themselves in array against Israel: and when they joined in battle, Israel was smitten before the Philistines: and they slew of the army in the field about Four thousand men...(1 Samuel 4:2-)...

The Waters of Shiloh were already flowing through Israel on their way toward the last days, carrying with them the doctrines of Divine Grace and Salvation through Faith. These doctrines had been clearly annunciated in the writings of Paul and were, now more than ever, being resorted to by those who were trying to cast off the oppressive yoke of Rome. Thus:

When the people came into the camp the elders of Israel said, Wherefore hath the Lord smitten us this day before the Philistines? LET US FETCH THE ARK OF THE COVENANT (The Mysteries) OUT OF SHILOH UNTO US. It may save us out of the hands of our enemies.

So all the people went to Shiloh (which is a state of mind, not a place) that they might bring the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord which dwellest between the Cherubims, (between the Male and Female principles, but in neither of them exclusively...in other words, along the Central Pillar of the Tree of Life)...

See also: that when the people fetched the Ark, Eli's sons, Hophni and Phinahas, were among them. (1 Samuel 4:4; 2:12). This means that the reformers were not all pure themselves, and that they did not understand the depths of the mysteries themselves, or the full meaning of those things that were unfolding around them. For the father of these two, Eli--who represented the church's last connection to the old ways and the forgotten things--was himself of old age. And his eyes were dim, and he could not see. (1 Sam. 4:15). And besides, the sons of Eli were wicked also. There was wickedness and worldliness in both camps. (1 Sam.2:12-17; 27-36; 3:11-14; 2 Timothy 4:3). Nevertheless:

When the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord came into the camp, ALL ISRAEL SHOUTED WITH GREAT JOY, SO THAT THE EARTH RANG AGAIN...

And when the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, what meaneth the noise of this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews? And they understood (that the people were printing tracts and bibles, and preaching, and throwing off the shackles of spiritual oppression).

And the Philistines were afraid, for they said, God is come into the camp. And they said, Woe unto us! For there hath not been such a thing heretofore.

Woe to us! who shall deliver us out of the hands of these mighty Gods? these are the Gods that smote the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness...(1 Samuel 4:5-8).

The Philistines girded themselves for the battle, issuing encyclicals and bulls, and sending out ambassadors, saying:

Be strong, and quit yourselves like men, O ye Philistines, that ye be not servants unto the Hebrews, as they have been unto you: quit yourselves like men, and fight.

And the Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled every man to his tent: AND THERE WAS A GREAT SLAUGHTER: for there fell of Israel Thirty thousand footmen/

AND THE ARK OF GOD WAS TAKEN...(1 Sam.4:9-11).

But who may hold the word of God in captivity for long?

When the Philistines took the Ark of God, they brought it into the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon...

And when they arose early in the morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord; and THE HEAD OF DAGON, AND BOTH PALMS OF HIS HANDS were cut off upon the threshold; only the stump of him was left to them...(1 Sam.5:2,4)

Dagon was said to have been a Fish-god, but what is it but another, more ancient manifestation of the Christ-mystery. The Crucifix, which is the central object of worship in the Roman church, must be contemplated as one contemplates a Mandala for all of its meanings. One must spend long hours before it, in solitude, penetrating its secrets, being penetrated by them, by the dim flickering lights, and by the smell of incense and candle. One must slowly become what they contemplate. And if allowed into the Mystery one might then discover how the two Palms of this image of Christ are connected to those places on the Oracle where both the names of John the Baptist and Paul are found; and that the Head, or the Mind of Christ, is connected on the central pillar of the Oracle to the Mind of God (and therefore to all the mysteries of the East). One might then see how the World-church has been cut off from these realizations; indeed from the very gift of prophecy itself (not only then, but right into our present time). Catholicism was rendered incapable of perceiving the past, the present, or the future, because of all the graven images it created for itself--again, in violation of the precepts of God:

EAST

WEST

Deuteronomy 32; 1 Samuel 2:1-10; Psalm 18:1-11; Isaiah 66:15-18; Daniel 12; 1 Corinthians 2; 2 Thessalonians 1, and 2; Hebrews 12; Revelation 10...(KJV).

Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto thee in Horeb out of the midst of the Fire:

Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female,

The likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air,

The likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth:

And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, and shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven...(Deuteronomy 4:15-24).

Of course the Hebrew Scriptures are full of such literary images, so the rules of circumspection must prevail. (See Exodus 23:13; Ephesians 5:15). The intent of the commandment is not merely to dissuade us from worshipping, or becoming fixated on the material order of things--the illusions of materiality--but from attaching ourselves to any imperfect notions of God whatsoever, or to any human images or personalities, doctrines, or philosophies, that even suggest the possibility of there being more than One Force in the universe, or more than One source from which both "good" and "evil" flows. And it is to keep us from being in violation of the Universal Law of Correspondences. According to this Law every created thing in the Universe is a mirror reflection of some other reality, and contains within itself the meaning of something else. The Sun is a reflection of a greater reality, as is the Moon and the Stars. The various creatures of the natural realm, beasts, birds, and fish, are a reflection in themselves of the various spirits and levels of consciousness that motivate and govern human behavior. Studying the salient characteristics of the animal creatures we live with, we realize how many groups of humans, as well as individuals personalities in our time, possess these same characteristics. Some are gentle and can be trusted, and some are strong yet do not hunt or kill others in order to nourish themselves. (We notice that none of the creatures that are acceptable upon God's altar are meat eaters or hunters). Others (many of the very personalities who are revered among us) run in packs and are vicious (even if they seem otherwise among their own kind); some are like lions, some are like bears, others are self-reflexive and subtle like the serpent. Some are like vultures and other birds of prey. Some are bottom feeders, some are like sharks. Thus the words: And the vilest men are exalted...

The Lord of hosts (the Angel of Divine Presence...Exodus 23:20-23; 24:9,10), whose image has been fixed in a purely male form upon millions of graven crucifixes, is the very same who was literally put to death by the Roman church itself, a million times. The Lord has been put to death in the millions of individuals, both male and female alike, whom the Roman church has murdered in inquisitions and wars of conquest over the centuries since the time of Christ. And this same Lord--the same who has commanded us to make no image of Him--is also the very one who has risen up in the totality of every human event and in all the judgments of the 20th century because of it. Thus the commandment: Beware, you saw no image. Lift up the mind and see it. The reference to the hosts of heaven--which we are commanded not to worship--is not to those stellar bodies that illuminate the night sky, but to their reflection in the earth--to the powers and principalities that rule over the very present affairs of humankind, of which Paul speaks when he says):

Let no man (therefore) beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility (or submission) and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind...(Colossians 2:18,19).

__________

He who sees Me (the Universal Self) present in all beings, and sees all beings existing in Me, I am never out of sight of him, nor is he ever out of sight of me...(Bhagavadgita, chapter VI).

Thus with the word of God plaguing the land of Canaan They sent therefore and gathered all the lords of the Philistines unto them (to the Council of Trent) saying, what shall we do with the Ark of the Lord?

And they said, if ye send it away, send it not away empty, but in any wise send him a trespass offering: then ye shall be healed, and it shall be known to you why his hand is not removed from you.

And they said, What shall be the trespass offering which we shall return unto him? They answered, Five Golden emerods, and Five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines: for one plague was on you all, and on your lords.

Therefore ye shall make IMAGES of your emerods, and IMAGES of your mice that mar the land; and ye shall give glory unto the God of Israel: peradventure he will lighten his hands from off you, and from your gods, and from off your land...(1 Samuel 6:1-5).

The Philistines were being smitten "in their secret parts" (1 Sam.5:9). The whole life of the Roman church was being called into question, its spiritual, political, and its military, as well as its sexual practices. These are the "emerods." The "mice" symbolize the small, mostly unseen but constant attacks upon the seed of God's word--so that, if released in the camp, by the time of the great Harvest in the last days, when the Word of God should be sown once again in the hearts of men, the seed itself would be diminished, or too corrupted, or gone. All that would be left would be the World-church's faulty and unenlightened interpretation of it. (Or rather, its own present non-interpretation of it. It is the same Non-Word which Pope John Paul also imagined could carry the day at the time of his elevation). Did the Philistines repent? No, they made "images" of their transgressions--an "image" of repentance. Instead of surrendering to the Spirit of the times they staged a counter-reformation, and satisfied themselves that they had made all the necessary spiritual adjustments...

The Philistines sent the Ark of God back to the children of Israel. They had no choice. Knowledge was surpassing them. The Spirit, who listeth where She will, was leaving them behind. The mysteries of the times were unfolding everywhere around them; and the Word of God was being translated into the languages of the people, and into the language of science, despite their continued and violent attempts to supress it...

In the words of the proverb: "To every cow her calf, so to every book its copy," and according to the words of Peter which say: As newborn babes, desire the sincere Milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby. If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious, TO WHOM COMING, AS UNTO A LIVING STONE, disallowed of men, but chosen of God and precious (1 Peter 2:1-4), so the Book of Samuel instructs the Philistines:

Now therefore make a new cart, and take two Milk Kine, on which there hath come no yoke. (These two are the Written and the Oral traditions, and in a sense the Old and New testaments). And tie the Kine to the cart, and bring their Calves (their new Versions) home with them.

And the Kine took the Straight Way of Beth-She'mesh (which means, toward the House of the Mystery of the Sun), and went along the highway (toward the West and the fulness of time) lowing as they went, and turned not aside to the Right hand or the Left, and the lords of the Philistines went after them unto the borders of Beth-She'mesh, (which means, to the limits of their own understanding)

And they of Beth-She'mesh WERE REAPING THEIR WHEAT HARVEST IN THE VALLEY, and they lifted up their eyes, and saw the Ark, and rejoiced to see it.

And the cart came unto THE FIELD OF JOSHUA, a Beth-Shemite, and stood there, WHERE THERE WAS A GREAT STONE: they clave the wood of the cart (which means they began to take it apart to understand its workings--its meanings), and offered the Kine (as) a burnt offering unto the Lord. (This, of course, is the Word of God in themselves).

And these are the golden (Solar) Emerods which the Philistines returned for a trespass offerings unto the Lord; ONE FOR ASHDOD, ONE FOR GAZA, ONE FOR ASKELON, ONE FOR GATH, ONE FOR EKRON...(1 Samuel 6:12-17).

How do we connect these five ancient place-names with Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria? First of all we realize that the Old Testament narratives, while they have a certain historicity to them, that is, while they were written upon the backdrop of certain historical events, were penned in epic and allegorical form, and in Hebrew types and images. The Philistines, for instance, are not a people that ever existed in the political sense at all--at least not in Palestine. (Or at least not as they have been "literally" described in the Bible. Certainly we can see that Goliath--like Samson the Philistine killer before him--is a figure of the Hebrew literary genius as well). The Philistine spirit, however, symbolized what were to the ancient Hebrew scribes a very real and potent opposition to the truth--as real to those in their times as the great World-church has been to the true Church in this age. Like the Phoenician state of mind (and from the Hebrew point of view no doubt identical to it), the doctrines of the "Philistines" were very close to the teachings of Israel; so close, in so many ways--what with all of its mysteries and rituals, its cult of Dionysus--that it posed the most formidable threat of all to the traditions of Israel. And this because, being the worldly heresy that is it was, all dressed up in the apparel of the Truth, it allowed its adherents to continue in their worldly ways, and to fulfill their natural drives and instincts for power (or to servitude), without forfeiting the benefits of religion. The Philistine spirit just took what it could make of the World-mysteries, and brought them to the people in a way that enhanced their own power and the people's willing, and humble subservience to them, just as the great World-church does today...(This is not to say...that true Christian insight has not been born out of this great state of Darkness. The Catholic church, like all the other major religious traditions in the earth (and despite itself), has given birth to thousands upon thousands of "true" Christ-conscious souls, many who are even able to solve the riddle...

And Samson said unto them, I will now put forth a riddle unto you, if ye can certainly declare it unto me WITHIN SEVEN DAYS...and find it out, then I will give you THIRTY sheets, and THIRTY change of garments...

And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not IN THREE DAYS expound the riddle...(Judges 14:12-14).

Historians connect the Philistines with a group of Sea Peoples who it is said colonized the Eastern Mediterranean shores in ancient times, "possibly from Crete." But even if we can find such a people there it is certain that the place-names associated with them did not originate there in the East, but rather came with them. The names themselves (which were later associated with various places in Palestine), and their original meanings, remained back in Europe, hidden in the writings and the literary methods of the Hebrew scribes. It was later, after these things were neatly concealed from the eyes of the world, that others came down to Palestine and said, "this must be that place, and that must be this place," and so assigned to various places there names that never existed there before. The chief architects of this method of "scholarship by fiat" in this age was Helena, the mother of Constantine, and the priests that attended her in her pilgrimage to the Holy Land:

"Helena was among the first pilgrims to the Holy Land and there 'she' discovered the places made holy by Christ's life and death. (And millions have been making pilgrimages to these same places ever since; not to mention those other thousands upon thousands who have fought and died over them). She built the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem, (of course, she and those who followed in her scholarly footsteps had to first decide where Bethlehem was--which they did), and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem, and according to legend, she found the TRUE CROSS on which Christ had been crucified. FOR THIS THE CHURCH CANONIZED HER. (This was her most amazing accomplishment, seeing how the True Cross was by then being carried throughout the earth by all of the righteous in the earth).

Helena was the mother of the first Christian emperor, Constantine, whose reign from 306-337 AD saw the emergence of Christianity from a persecuted sect to the powerful State Church of the Roman Empire. (Who except Catholics themselves does not know that this is where Christianity prostituted herself and became a State Cult rather than the religion of Christ)?

It was just before this crucial battle (with his enemy, Maxentius) that Constantine saw above the Setting Sun the sign of Chi-Rho, the first two letters of the Greek word Christos, outlined in rays of light and with the words: 'In this sign thou shalt conquer.' (Which was also a sign of the Roman military cult of Sol Invictus...see Isaiah 66:4)... Constantine attributed his victory to the Christian God. From that time on he praised the blessings that Christ had conferred on him and described himself as belonging to the Christian Church. He legalized the church calendar and designated SUNday as a holy day. Furthermore he appointed Christians in ever-increasing numbers to the higher administrative posts of the Empire. (And the apostasies have not abated yet). (continued)...

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When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee"

And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.

Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat...

Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats.

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, saith he to thee; but his heart is not with thee

The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up, and lose thy sweet words...(Proverbs 23:1-8).

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After Constantine became master of the East, he assembled Christianity's first general council at Nicaea (where those who were closest to the truth did not show up, and others who knew something of the truth were excommunicated or declared nonexistent) and the next year he wrote to Macrius, Bishop of Jerusalem, ordering the building of a magnificent church upon Mount Calvary. Helena, though now probably in her late seventies, superintended this pious work. She also hoped to discover the Cross on which Jesus had died. (Which of course she did). Other chronicles say that Helena was directed by dreams to go to Jerusalem and search for the Holy Sepulcher.

Helena found the place WHERE SHE BELIEVED the tomb to have been, but it was covered with earth, and A TEMPLE OF VENUS (the Morning Star) had been erected upon it. She had this pagan temple destroyed, and ordered her workmen to excavate for the sacred cave. One can imagine the emotion Helena felt as she stood at the spot where Mary Magdalene had seen Christ's empty tomb and the place she had gone to report to the disciples the miracle of the Resurrection." (Very interesting, seeing how this ''Resurrection" would not be complete for another seventeen hundred years). Helena--Mother of Constantine.

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"'WHAT ABOUT A PLACE LIKE PHILISTINE GATH. YOU'RE NOT AT ALL SURE, ARE YOU, OF THAT IDENTIFICATION?'

'To this day, nobody knows Gath's identity.'

'YOU GAVE A SETTLEMENT THAT NAME.'

'Yes, a town, because it's somewhere in the neighborhood. "It has to be."

When we came to name the new town of Arad, we had a problem. Yohanan Aharoni and Ruth Amiran were excavating Arad--it includes a beautiful ancient Israeli fortress and an Early Bronze Age town. The new town was 8 kilometers away from the ancient site. Aharoni suggested we call the new town Arad. I said to him, "Look, its 5 miles away." "So," he said to me, "You know that names travel." I said, "But not such a distance!" He said, "Well, this is the Negev, and in the Negev names travel further away than in the hills." So we named the new town Arad.'" Biran at Ninety, Biblical Archaeology Review, p.45, Sept/Oct. 1999.

For the Hebrew scribes names did certainly travel. In fact their use of the term "Philistia" was not simply used to describe the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, and the borders of Palestine as we know them, but to describe the seacoasts of the entire Western mystery, from the East as far as Eden in America. We understand it in the term Whole Palestina (Isaiah 14:25-32), and in the words that say:

Are ye not as children of the (original) Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the Lord. Have I not brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? And the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?...(Amos 9:7).

These names (as old as the Torah itself), all came back up into the center of the Mystery with the children of Israel in the time of Joshua (see Genesis 26:1 and 20:2), long before the Philistines as they are described in the Books of Samuel even existed. (Please follow this line of thought in the article entitled "The Search For History in the Bible," in the March/April 2000 edition of the Biblical Archaeology Review). And as a result, the mystery of the Philistines, and the names and the places later associated with them, actually took literary form in Europe and remained hidden there in the books of the Hebrew prophets (some have associated Gaza with Cadiz in Spain), until they spread themselves abroad again after the time of Christ--in the Mystery of Christ. As the World-church established its various seats of power throughout the Mediterranean world it carried with it, back out of Europe as it were, the whole effect and intent of the prophetic word itself. They were the Philistines. Understanding these things in this light we simply associate Ashdod with Rome, and this because as the one rose to prominence in ancient times so the other ascended to the same height of ecclesiastical power after the time of Christ.

And the golden Mice according to all the cities of the Five lords, both of fenced cities,and country villages, EVEN UNTO THE GREAT STONE OF ABEL, whereupon they set down the Ark of the Lord: WHICH STONE REMAINETH UNTO THIS DAY IN THE FIELD OF JOSHUA, the Beth-Shemite...(1 Samuel 6:18)...

Sunrise service on Stone Mountain (The Great Stone of Abel)

It is very hard to resist associating this Great Stone of Abel with Stone Mountain, Georgia. But in any case we discover that the Ark has returned to the West, to Eden (the original Ethiopia), and to the place of the original transgression, where the older son of Eve (Eve being the Church of those ancient times) first slew the younger. (Genesis 4:1-15). (Open the Book of 1 John in our own time).

But God smote the men of Beth-Shemesh, because they had looked into the Ark of the Lord, even he smote of the people Fifty thousand, Sixty, and Ten men, and the people lamented, because the Lord had smitten so many people with a great slaughter...

This means that neither the Catholic nor the great American Protestant church which grew out of it were ever allowed to look into the mysteries of God, because of their now mutual attachment to the ways of this world and to the powers of this age. Besides all the judgment wars of Europe, the American Civil War was, up to our own time, the most fitting description of this slaughter, as it is also written: For I will kindle a fire in thee...(Ezekiel 20:42-49). (It is also worthy to note the great desecration that has been committed upon Stone Mountain, Georgia. There is an immense image engraved into it of three very spiritually ill Confederate leaders, each of them deeply possessed of the vainglorious ideals of military might--ideals which yielded to those individuals and states who cherished them the demonic right to exercise and extend their power over the lives of other human beings, all in complete violation of the teachings and precepts of Christ. The Roman church was there, thick in the mix of it all, in Richmond and Atlanta).

And the men of Beth-she'mesh said, who is able to stand before this holy Lord? and to whom shall he go up for us?

And they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kiriath-jearim, saying, The Philistines have brought again the Ark of the Lord, come ye down, and fetch it up to you...(1 Samuel, chapter 6).

This means that the Spirit finally committed the Ark to the care of those who live in the "forest," or "the City of the Forest," (1 Samuel 6:20 to 7:1), which means, to those who live deepest, or closest to the Inner mystery of the Tree of Life. It was committed to them until DaViD (the Messiahs) should bring it up in time to Jerusalem. (1 Chronicles 3; 2 Chron.1:4).

History knows of no Philistine presence anywhere in the world at the time of the Patriarchs, yet the Hebrew scriptures mentions them in connection with Abraham (Genesis 20), and in the story of Isaac and Abimelech (Genesis 26), further demonstrating how in the minds of the Hebrew scribes the Philistines have always represented those worldly religious forces that always exist in opposition to the precepts and doctrines of Light. Isaac himself, according to the methods of these same Hebrew scribes, is a type and figure of the Christ-mystery as Paul will later say: If ye be Christ's then ye are Abraham's seed. (Galatians 3:8-29). Paul would also have us realize that the entire Abraham-Sarah-Isaac-Ishmael-Hagar episode (and therefore the Philistine episode), like the greater portion of the Torah itself, is allegorical and archetypal, and must be read as such. These are allegories not quite like any others in literature, however, for these have literally reached right out of the literary realm to govern the religious, thus the social and political realities of the world itself. (See Galatians 4:21-26). In other words, the things that were written in the ancient Hebrew texts did not "happen" as they were described, they are "happening" as they were described:

Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in that same year an Hundredfold and the Lord blessed him. (See Matthew 13:8, 23...Thirtyfold is Hokhmah-Hesed-Netsah on the Tree of Life; Sixtyfold is this plus Binah-Din-Hod--which implies an understanding of both sides of the Tree of Life, whether it be Christian and Jewish, or a male and female. One Hundredfold indicates an understanding of the entire World-mystery from one end of the Tree of Life to the other).

And Isaac waxed great, AND WENT FORWARD, AND GREW, until he became very great.

For he had possessions of flocks, and possessions of herds, and a great store of servants: AND THE PHILISTINES ENVIED HIM.

For all the wells which his father's servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, THE PHILISTINES HAD STOPPED THEM AND FILLED THEM WITH EARTH. (With the doctrines of men).

AND ISAAC DIGGED AGAIN THE WELLS OF WATER, which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father, AND HE CALLED THEIR NAMES AFTER THE NAMES BY WHICH HIS FATHER HAD CALLED THEM.

AND ISAAC'S SERVANTS FOUND A WELL OF SPRINGING WATER. (See John 4:10-14).

And the herdsmen of Gerar did strive with Isaac's herdsmen, saying, The Water is our's; and he called the name of the well (STRIFE) because they strove with him.

And they digged another well, and strove for that also; and he called the name of it (ACCUSATION).

And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not; and he called the name of it (BROAD PLACE); and he said, For now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land.

And he went up from thence TO BEER-SHE'BA...(Genesis 26:12-23).

These verses tell of the Strife between Israel and the World-church, which came in time to Accusation, and finally to the lines of conciliation that were drawn between the two as God reopened the sea-lanes to the Western ends of the earth. Beer-She'ba means "the Seventh Well" whose waters flowed from the center of "Many-Fountained Ida"--the very center of the Mystery itself. And though this well was virtually hidden from the mind of the World-church, the Roman emperors and Feudal lords, and the now-modern states it supports, all of them were allowed to trample over it anyway. (See Revelation 11:2). But because they had no idea where this well was situated , it still flows, as it is written:

In the last day, that day of the great feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.

He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, OUT OF HIS BELLY SHALL FLOW RIVERS OF LIVING WATER...(John 7:37,38).

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Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea, come buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.

Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, EVEN THE SURE MERCIES OF DAVID.

I have given "him" for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people..(Isaiah 55:1-4).

Learning how to read and interpret the oracles, we come to realize that this great ecclesiastical heresy grew in large part out of its inability to interpret the words: And he hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father. (Revelation 1:6; Ex.19:5,6). Without access to the Oracle, and yet assuming the authority of interpretation to itself, the emerging World-church took it to mean Emperors and Popes (or Czars and Patriarchs or Metropolitans), and so began the oppression. But so are the words fulfilled which say:

But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.

For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned...(Matthew 12:36,37).

The great world-church must give account of such words as these:

"...What sort of people do you think they are, those enemies of the priests and rebels against the Catholic Church, who are alarmed neither by the severe warning of the Lord, nor by the vengeance of future judgments? For this has been the source from which heresies and schisms have arisen, that God's priest is not obeyed, nor do people reflect that there is for the time one priest in the Church, who for the time is judge instead of Christ; and if the whole brotherhood would obey him, according to divine teachings, no one would stir up anything against the college of priests...

Peter, however, on whom the Church has been built by the same Lord, speaking one for all, and answering with the voice of the Church, says, 'LORD, TO WHOM SHALL WE GO?'" Pope St. Cyprian (Letter LIX) to St. Cornelius.

We do not need to quote from all of the books that have written on the subject (on the heresy of the Roman Order), they are voluminous; it is enough to simply ask our Catholic, and otherwise Orthodox brothers and sisters to read these books with an open mind, and to awaken to all of the injustices, disorders, tortures, persecutions, murders, pogroms, genocides, intrigues with tyrant rulers, and holy wars that have been released upon humanity by the priests of this church in the name of Christ. All these things, no matter what excuses are used to justify or rationalize them in the eyes of a spiritually maturing world, have never been the work of Christ, but Antichrist.

"POPE PROVES WHITEHEAD RIGHT...The distinguished philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead (1891-1947) said, 'The greatest disaster in the history of the human race has been Christian theology.' I have asked, was that too strong, or is there much truth in the observance?

The Pope is in Denver as I write these words, 'lecturing the United States...on killing.' (Abortion). What gall, what arrogance. How insulting. How insolent. The millions slaughtered by the Roman Catholic Church throughout history is a nightmare. At least five million women slaughtered as 'witches' by the Inquisition (yes that's million). Until the advent of Nazism in modern Germany, Europe knew no system of organized terrorism to rival the 500 year reign of the Inquisition. Protestants continued the blood bath following the Reformation.

I thought again of Alfred North Whitehead's observation, as the Pope apologized this week in Mexico for the brutal slaughter of the Aztecs and Maya by Cortez and his Christians. Four hundred seventy years too late, he says 'sorry folks.' Yes, perhaps Whitehead was right." William Edelen, California.

UM, SORRY ABOUT THAT

"When the French Roman Catholic Church apologized last week for collaborating with the Nazis, it felt a little late. But it turns out a half-century is a rather prompt turnabout. Here's how long it has taken the church to vent its guilt:

NEARLY 2,000 YEARS. 1995: Pope regrets church's stance against women's rights.

450 YEARS. 1995. Pope asks forgiveness for Counter Reformation stake burnings.

450 YEARS. 1993 Pope expresses guilt for church's condoning slavery.

359 YEARS. 1992. Church begs pardon for arresting Galileo Galilei in 1663.

57 YEARS. 1997. Church apologizes for its silence during 1940 Vichy regime. Time Magazine.

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"'SUMMA THEOLOGICA' immortalized St. Thomas Aquinas...It is a complete, scientifically arranged exposition of theology and at the same time a summary of Christian philosophy." Catholic Encyclopedia.

"Heretics may be not only excommunicated, but also justly put to death." Saint Thomas Aquinas.

"Let the secular power be compelled, if necessary, to exterminate to their utmost power, all heretics denoted by the Church." Council of the Lateran, 1215 AD

"When those adjudged guilty of heresy have been given up to the civil powers by the bishop or his representative, or the Inquisition, the 'pdesta' or chief magistrate of the city shall take them at once, and shall, within five days at the most (five days of fearful, excruciating torture), execute the laws made against them." Bull Ad Extirpanda, 1252, by Pope Innocent IV.

"The death sentence is a necessary and efficacious means for the Church to attain its ends, and when rebels against it and disturbers of the ecclesiastical unity, especially obstinate heretics and heresiarchs, cannot be restrained by any other penalty from continuing to disturb the ecclesiastical order and impelling others to all sorts of crimes, particularly ecclesiastical crime...It (the Church) can and must put these wicked men to death." Canon Law.

"Heresy is an awful crime against God, and those who start a heresy are more guilty than they who are traitors to the civil government. If the state has a right to punish treason with death, the principle is the same that concedes to the spiritual authority the power of life and death over the archtraitor." Brooklyn Tablet, November 5, 1938.

It is plainly hyprocritical to ask the world's forgiveness for such crimes when those who are truly-wise in the world can see that the same structure of power and authority that ordered and sanctioned these atrocities in the name of Christ is still in place in the world; and that it is ever poised to participate in new atrocities, and to spill more blood--only now some of them will do it in the name of ending atrocities and the spilling of blood. The sins of the world are being visited upon the world; and the spiral of violence and death is closing in on all who have participated in it in the past. This spiral began to close in the most dramatic and graphic ways at the time of the First World War and now we see that all the belligerents are bound in bundles to be burned. (Matthew 13:30).What are these "bundles" but "common states of mind"--worldly religious and political states of mind that have engendered death for all those who have been subject to them, and not life, judgment and not redemption.

Ye say if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.

Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets (the heretics).

Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers...(Matthew 23:30-32).

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And Isaac on that day cursed the Philistines and said, Cursed be the Philistines unto the day of wrath and indignation--from the midst of all nations. May God make them a curse, and a derision and an object of wrath and indignation in the hands of the Gentiles, and in the hands of the Kittim. And whosoever escapes the sword of the enemy and the Kittim (the powers of the West), may the righteous nation root out in judgment from under heaven; for they shall be the enemies and foes of my children throughout their generations in the earth...(The Book of Jubilees 24:20-).

The authors of the Books of Chronicles put it in another, more merciful way:

And let it be, when thou hearest the sound of (the Holy Spirit) going in the tops of the Mulberry trees (the Fruitful Trees), then thou shalt bestir thyself: for then shall the Lord go out before thee to smite the host of the Philistines...

(For then shall the Philistines be delivered into the hands of DVD, the Messiahs, the King of Israel)...(2 Samuel 5:22-25; 1 Chronicles 14:13-17).

(We also invite our Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican brothers and sisters who are able, to officiate with the remnant of our time in the true meaning of the Sacrifice of the Mass--a meaning which has eluded the World-church, Not discerning the Lord's Body...1 Corinthians 11:17-29).

A Cloud Without Rain.

For every High Priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins:

Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself is also compassed with infirmity.

And by reason thereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, of offer for sins,

And no man taketh his honour unto himself (nor is he appointed to such an office by other men), but he that is called of God, AS WAS AARON.

So also Christ glorified not himself to be made a high priest; but He that said unto him, Thou art my son, To day I have begotten thee...(Hebrews 5:1-5).

And I saw an unclean spirit COME OUT OF THE MOUTH OF THE DRAGON (Rome), For these are the spirits of devils (worldly ones), working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them together to the battle of the Great Day of God Almighty... (Revelation 16:13,14).

How is John-Paul II helping to gather the nations to Armageddon? By his unwitting complicity in unleashing the present state of world affairs upon the world itself--through his clandestine support of Solidarity in Poland and the resulting collapse of the Soviet Order. But the answer lies more directly in his inability to discern in the face of the Powers of this age, and in all the events of our time, the very Terrible Presence of God itself (Exodus 19:9-11). Please be very aware: God is not a Catholic. God is not an American, nor is God a Christian, a Muslim or a Jew. God is not a Westerner. God is all that exists, and all that is happening at this time in the affairs of humankind. (continued)...

"They pay no heed to the real hidden meanings of things, but divert themselves instead with all kinds of iniquitous arcane lore…They do not know the hidden meaning of what is actually taking place, nor have they ever understood the lessons of the past. Consequently, they have no knowledge of what is coming upon them, and have done nothing to save their souls from the deeper implications of present events.

This, however, will symbolize things for you. What is going to happen is, as it were, that all iniquity is going to be shut up in the womb and prevented from coming to birth. Wrong is going to depart before Right, as darkness departs before light. As smoke disappears and is no more, so will Wrong disappear forever. But Right will be revealed like the Sun. The world will rest on the sound Foundation. All who cling to rarefied arcane lore will cease to exist. The world will be filled with knowledge, and ignorance exist no more. The thing is certain to come. The prophecy is true, and by this you may know that it will not be revoked:

Do not all peoples hate wrongdoing? Yet, is it not rampant among them all? Are not the praises of truth sung by all nations? Yet is there a single race or tribe that really adheres to it? What nation like to be oppressed by a stronger power? Or who wants his property plundered unjustly? Yet, is there a single nation that has not oppressed its neighbor? Or where in the world will you find a people that has not plundered the property of another?" The Dead Sea Scriptures, by. Theodor Gaster, p.429.

...Thus in his self-attempts to bring (what would surely be a false) peace and (a false spirit of ) reconciliation among the various factions and nations of the world, in the Face of the God of All Nations--as if this God of War would actually abandon His resolve to deliver Sophia (Wisdom Herself) from Her captivity to the Dark forces of this age. For how else, says Paul, shall God judge the world? (Romans 3:5,6).

But of the times and seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.

For yourselves know perfectly clear that the day of the Lord so cometh as a Thief in the Night.

For when they shall say, Peace and Safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, AS TRAVAIL UPON A WOMAN WITH CHILD, and they shall not escape...(1 Thessalonians 5:1-3).

ACTING FALLIBLE

PAPAL SIN, STRUCTURES OF DECEIT, By Gary Wills

A Book Review by Richard Rorty

Most large organizations have a procedure for repudiating the actions of a chief executive who as made autocratic and disastrous decisions. In theory, the Roman Catholic Church does too: a General Council has the right to change church doctrine or policy. But in the last couple of centuries, papal bullying has reduced councils to impotence. So Catholics who think as Gary Wills, that the papacy is disgracing the church have no one to turn to except their fellow congregants.

Wills, an eminent historian and one of the most intellectually distinguished members of the Catholic laity in the United States, has written a devastating, no-holds-barred, indictment. (May we add at the outset that Wills' contentions, as we shall see, tend to suffer from an overly Catholic and American point of view themselves. Maybe it is just an overly scholarly point of view. Maybe it's just his attachment to Augustine). In Part I of Papal Sin--Historical Dishonesties--he shows how the hierarchy has persistently lied and weasled about what the church did and did not do during the Holocaust. Part II--Doctrinal Dishonesties--argues that recent popes have turned Leninist: they have cared more about retaining their grip on authority than about the needs of those whom they claim to serve.

In the last two parts of the book--"The Honesty Issue" and "The Splendor of Truth"--Wills writes about his heroes: Lord Acton, Cardinal Newman and St. Augustine. He offers them as examples to whom the church might turn in order to escape from the Orwellian "structures of deceit" currently built into the papal office...

"The pope alone, we are now asked to accept, is competent to tell Christian people how to live...The Holy Spirit now speaks to only one person on earth, the omnicompetent head of the church, a church that is all head and no limbs. If that were so, then the body of Christ would be shamefully reduced."

But he has many other examples of dishonesty: tortured interpretations of Scripture, blatant distortions of ecclesiastical history, endless hypocritical whining and just plain lies. He is startingly frank on issues that most Catholic writers avoid, as when he writes, "In fact, the admission of married men and women to the priesthood--which is bound to come anyway--may well come for the wrong reason, not because women and the community deserve this, but because of panic at the perception that the priesthood is becoming predominantly gay." He is equally blunt about the present pope, whom he describes in the same sort of terms Acton used of Pius IX: "The rest of the church must live in structures of deceit because this one man is true to his intensely personal vision."...

Wills takes with utter seriousness the text (John 14:6) that says that Christ is truth. He praises Augustine as the theologian who best understood and explicated this claim, and as authority for the view that "the new papal sin, of deception, is worse than the vivider old sins of material greed, proud ambition or sexual license. It is spiritual sin, an interior baffling of the Spirit's access to the soul." But Wills might have a harder time getting Augustine to go along when he says: "I do not think that my church has a monopoly on the Spirit, which breathes where She will, in every Christian sect and denomination. In fact She breathes through all religious life, wherever the divine call is heeded, among Jews and Buddhist and Muslims and others." That is the language of Acton's 19th century, not of Augustine's 4th.

Wills is a historian of American freedom whose writings have breathed new life into the words of Jefferson and Lincoln. Predictably he wants a free and democratic Catholic Church, one which has no time for heresy hunting, and in which the popes live up to their ancient title: "servant of the servants of God." Yet Augustine spent a lot of time detecting and denouncing heresies, and so must any institution which is going to claim a special, privileged, hookup with the divine. If God really is generous enough to acknowledge the Jews and the Buddhists as heeding his call, then it is not clear why we need a church of Christ...The church's traditional view has been that God is not that generous, and that Christians must believe that Christ's apostles and their authorized successors--but not those of Buddha or Joseph Smith or Muhammad--provide the necessary means to salvation. For better or for worse, Augustine would have agreed. Wills does not... The New York Times Book Review, June 11, 2000.

First of all, Augustine and John Paul II have much more in common than they differ. Augustine (who feared, mistrusted, or despised, almost all "women," virtually cutting himself off from the mystery of Life itself), also reasoned for himself, and therefore for the entire Catholic church, that:

"Divine providence is concerned with salvation, not with history as such, therefore the intrinsic dualism characterizing the historical process--the struggle between the heavenly and the profane cities--would be resolved only beyond time and history...

History, devoid of all human progress, was therefore regarded by Augustine as without meaning, and his attitude toward history, and hence the world, was thus based on alienation from it, and not upon reconciliation...Nor, believed Augustine, did sacred providential history lend any significance to profane history. As R.A. Markus puts it:

'Since the coming of Christ, until the end of the world, all history is homogenous, it cannot be mapped out in terms of a pattern drawn from sacred history, it can no longer contain decisive turning points endowed with a significance in the ultimate tableau of man's doings and sufferings; but it is a significance to which God's revelation does not give a clue.'" Avihu Zakai, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Zakai describes Augustine's world-view as "a permanent pilgrimage upon earth--as resident strangers and aliens." With this we agree, for our long-home is in the heavens beyond. But Augustine's, thus the present Pope's world-view--firmly rooted in a clear inability to perceive or interpret the signs of the times, or even in a desire to do so--would leave those who are presently in charge of the world still in charge, with only the Papacy's guiding religious principles, as it were, to assist them. The conditions of our pilgrimage would remain the same--and for the great mass of humanity they are the conditions of powerlessness, anonymous suffering, and absolute despair...with no hope of "salvation."...

Peace, peace, and there was no peace. The true Shepherd leads the flock by Still Waters.

And the world would continue that way, with all of the great personalities of the age still parading themselves before us, still blessing us with their empty, high-sounding religious and political phrases, and their unfulfilled dictates. God's plan is different. It is climactic and apocalyptic. The apocalypse is unfolding as we read. Our lives will always be those of the pilgrim, of self-preparation for Life in the eternal realm-beyond. But unlike today our lives will become truly capable, transformed, and empowered to radiate God's righteousness and justice (be wise now you fundamentalists), and God's love into the world below. The next phase of human progress will come as the true Nation-church is born-again out of the events of this age. The true Messiahs will be manifest (an office that will subsequently, and throughout time, pass to every family and race of man on the face of the earth), and the Law will issue forth--not from Rome but from Zion. And Jerusalem will always represent the Doorway--the Two Leaved Gate--to the Universe beyond...a Doorway that will be opened to all who come:

One Gate Female, One Gate Male. Both Christ, Both Priest.

The paradox, as we have mentioned before, exists in the fact that the Father, the God of War (revealed in the sign of Aries--the Ram), will not reveal Himself to any but children of perfect Peace. (Hebrews 12:14). These children of Peace, however, are not those who merely pay lip-service to peace, and then condone or resort to war in the extreme, as the World-church and the nations do (see Isaiah, chapter 59), but they are those who wage war against Israel's, and thus the Church's complicity in war itself, and this to the extreme. Thus by the Pope's inability to instruct the Church in the ways of the Sovereign Nature of God, or in the hidden dimensions of the oracles, he leaves his church (after every magnificent and triumphant visit) in a state of total darkness, and without a commandment or the ability to separate itself from the affairs of these warring nations, thus from the unfolding judgments of God. The Pope's encyclical, "The Redeemer of Man," renders God "unterrible," thus "unglorified," and God's Anointed Ones "unheralded."

AS POPE EXITS, ISRAEL RESUMES USUAL DISCORD

By Deborah Sontag

JERUSALEM, March 27__And so Pope John Paul II flew away and took his positive glow with him. This is how the morning after looked in Israel: diminished prospects for peace with Syria, the opening of a politically explosive criminal investigation of a leading rabbi and five separate Parliament votes of no confidence in the government.

The pope's visit did produce a salutary ripple, though, buoying the Israeli government's image internationally, the Israeli public's state of mind and Prime Minister Ehud Barak's political stature, at least temporarily. That afforded something of a cushion when they fell back to earth from the pope-inspired contemplation of the heavens.

The first blow came on Sunday night, hours after the pope boarded an El Al plane to return to the Vatican. Despite high expectations, President Clinton failed to revive the Israeli-Syrian peace talks in a summit meeHting in Geneva with President Hafez al-Assad of Syria.

The reaction here today ranged from dire pessimism, which included anxieties about another flare-up in the war zone in southern Lebanon, to a kind of forced hopefulness that this was just another disappointment that could be overcome. The New York Times.

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It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the honour of a king to search it out.

Take away the wicked from before the king and his throne shall be established in righteousness.

Put not thyself forth in the presence of a king, and stand not in the place of great men (such as John the Baptist and Paul).

For better it is to be said unto thee, Come up hither, than thou shouldst be put lower in the presence of the prince whom thine eyes have seen...

He that boasteth himself of a false gift is like clouds and wind without rain...(Proverbs 25:2-7; 14).

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When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding (as the entire Church has since the time of Christ), sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable than thee be bidden of him.

And he say to thee, give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room.

But when thou art bidden, go sit down in the lowest room ; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may sat unto thee, friend go up higher: then thou shalt have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee.

FOR WHOSOEVER EXALTETH HIMSELF SHALL BE ABASED, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted...(Luke 14:8-11).

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"Innocent III is the pope in whose time the Papal Monarchy, that is to say the effective sovereignty of the pope over the whole public life of Christendom, is usually considered to have reached its zenith. The Church was now, at last, a world-State, not so much international but supra-national, organized as a State with its judiciary and its law, its centralized bureaucracy, its financial system and its armies, prepared to coerce by force of arms, by the threat and the reality of a holy war, any rebellion against the standard doctrines and belief and conduct against the papal policies...

(His) pontificate closed with the pope everywhere supreme, and at the Fourth General Council of the Lateran (1215) he presented Christendom with the most extensive examination of its spiritual and temporal state it had ever known and with an elaborate, detailed programme of further constructive reforms." A Popular History of the Catholic Church, by Phillip Hughes, p.122.

The following excerpts are from a work entitled Catholic Words and Actions, compiled by Raywood Frazier. These are the burdens of John Paul's office, which he can not lift in any way short of dissolving the office of the Papacy itself:

"The pope is as it were God on earth, sole sovereign of the faithful in Christ, chief king of kings, having plenitude of power, to whom has been entrusted by the omnipotent God direction, not only of the earthly but of the heavenly kingdom.

The pope is of so great authority that he himself can modify, explain, or interpret even divine laws. Whatever the Lord God Himself, and the Redeemer, is said to do, that His Vicar does." Extracts from Ferrari's Ecclesiastical Dictionary, Article on the Pope, published in Rome, 1899, at the Press of the Propaganda.

Vanity of vanities...The true Messiahs will relieve the papacy of all these burdens.

"The pope is immaculate, infallible, and irresponsible to any earthly tribunal or power. He is the judge of all, can be judged by no one, kings, priests, or people. He is free from all laws, and cannot incur any sentence or penalty for any crime...He is all in all, and above all, so that God and the pope, the Vicar of God, are but one...He hath all power on earth, purgatory, heaven, and hell, to bind, loose, command, permit, dispense, do, and undo. Therefore it is declared to stand upon necessity of salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff. All temporal power is his; the dominion, jurisdiction, and government of the whole earth is his by divine right." From the Decrees of the Council of Trent.

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"Thou art the shepherd, thou art the physician, thou art the director, thou art the husbandman; finally thou art another God on earth." An Address to the Pope at the Fourth session of the 5th Lateran Council, 1512.

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"Either sword is in the power of the (Catholic) Church; that is to say, the spiritual and the material. The former is to be used by the Church, but the latter for the Church: the one in the hand of the priest, the other in the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and the pleasure of the priest. It is right that the temporal sword and authority be subject to the spiritual power. Moreover, we declare, say, define, and pronounce, that every being should be subject to the Roman Pontiff, to be an article of necessary faith." Pope Boniface VIII in his Unam Sanctum.

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"The pope is Christ in office, Christ in jurisdiction and power...we bow down before thy voice, O Pius, as before the voice of Christ, the God of truth; in clinging to thee we cling to Christ." During the Vatican Council, Jan.9, 1870.

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"When the Triple Crown is put on the pope's head, the officiating cardinal says, 'Receive the Threefold crown of the tiara and know that thou art the Father of princes and kings, the Ruler of the round earth, and here below, the Viceroy of Jesus Christ, to whom be honour and glory forever.'"

"The Holy Father is not only the supreme head of the Catholic Church. He is also the head of a sovereign state." Cardinal Spellman, March, 1940.

POPES HOMETOWN MASS TRIUMPHANT

TELLS POLES TO KEEP IDENTITY (see Romans 12:1,2).

KRAKOW POLAND...Finally home in "my beloved city," Pope John Paul II slept in his former house, stopped in at his university and rejoiced in the cheers of more than 1 million of his compatriots yesterday. The crowd, the largest of his 11-day pilgrimage to Poland, began arriving shortly after dawn for Mass, nearly filling the vast 120-acre Blonia meadow in the heart of the city.

The Pope proclaimed Poland's 14th-century Queen Hedwig a saint, holding up her generosity and defense of the common good as examples of today's political leaders. His message was part of his efforts to keep Poles from losing their identity and values in the transition from a communist to a free-market economy. (continued)...

SETBACK ON ISABELLA..

"The effort to promote Queen Isabella of Spain as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church suffered a serious setback recently when a Vatican panel recommended against beatifying the Queen, best known for her sponsorship of the discovery of the New World. Beatification is the first step toward sainthood.

Aside from being the benefactor of Christopher Columbus, Queen Isabella subjected Jews and Muslims to torture, conversion, and expulsion during her reign, from 1474 to 1504. Opposition to her beatification had been building ever since it was announced in connection with next year's 500th anniversary of the spread of Christianity to the New World."

...(The large crowds) were in line with the massive crowds that showed up for the pope's weeklong visit in 1983, (above), when he kept the spirit of the Solidarity labor movement alive after it had been outlawed by the communist government.

Earlier yesterday the pope received Prime Minister Cimoszewicz. John Paul has publicly called on the government to step up efforts to ease the most painful side-effects of market reforms launched after the communists were toppled in 1989. "I expressed my gratitude to the pope for the fact that during his pilgrimage there reigns an atmosphere of peace and reconciliation," Cimoszewicz said. The Associated Press.

POPE GIVES A BLESSING TO POLAND

By Jane Perlez

WROCLAW, Poland, May 31...That will be one of the themes of (the) pilgrimage taking place as Poland awaits an expected invitation to join NATO...The Pope said his country was well qualified to become a full-fledged member of Europe...

"I'm convinced that Poles, with their huge potential, talent, spirit and intellect, can play a meaningful role in the family of European nations," the Pope said. "This is what I wish for my motherland from the bottom of my heart."

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

Wherefore remember, that ye being in times past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision...

That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from THE COMMONWEALTH OF ISRAEL, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world...

Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God...(Ephesians 2:10-22).

THESE ARE THE TEACHINGS ABOUT THE NATIONS THAT THE ROMAN CHURCH CONCEALS FROM ITS ADHERENTS:

For the indignation of the Lord is upon ALL nations, and his fury upon all their armies...(Isaiah 34:1,2).

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Take heed that thou be not snared by following them...(Deuteronomy 12:29-32).

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For the Day of the Lord is upon EVERY ONE that is proud and lofty, and upon everyone that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low...(Isaiah 2:12-22).

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And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men (and this includes all the religious and political celebrities of our time) is abomination in the sight of God...(Luke 16:15).

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The Lord's determination is against all the nations...(Zephaniah 3:8).

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An end is come upon the Four Corners of the land...(Ezekiel 7:1-3).

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He increaseth the nations and destroyeth them. He enlargeth the nations and straiteneth them again...(Job 12:23).

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Truly in vain is hope sought for among the nations...(Jeremiah 3:23).

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And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every freeman, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains (in the security of their own national beliefs and philosophies, and in the perceived safety of their own military might);

And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the Face of him that sitteth on the Throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand...(Revelation 6:15-17; Isaiah 2:19-21).

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Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye are passed over Jordan into the land of Canaan (see Luke 3:3-6).

Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, (remember?...the land means "your own state of mind," and "the empire of your own individual souls"), and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images (not literally, not as the iconoclasts who literally burned down churches and destroy sacred places, but out of your own minds and your own hearts...see Ezekiel 8:6-12), and quite pluck down all their high places...

(Again, we are not literalists. These ordinances do not mean that one should not visit the temples and the historical holy places of the earth, or possess an image of what one perceives Christ to be in their own life, such as a figure of the Buddha, or Francis, or a loved one. It does not mean that one may not have inspirational symbols and sacred pictures on one's wall. The children of Light walk circumspectly, and see every side to God's commandments, and every manifestation of God's Presence in the earth, and they understand the difference between accord and violation. It means that if we do possess or encounter an image, it must be with a very high and elevated, and focused, state of mind. Seeing how every sacred symbol points to the same reality--to the same Oneness of the One God who created all, and who permeates and dwells in all. And the One points to the Two, who together, in both Principle and Form, rule the Universe. Their Throne extends from the most distant galaxies to the soul of every tiniest creature on earth. Thus to contemplate a Sacred Tree is to contemplate the mysteries of theUniverse. To sit before an image of Buddha is to contemplate the principles that Buddha taught. To kneel before a Crucifix is to draw closer to the mystery of the Cross. To thank a flower for existing is to thank the Almighty. To embrace a child is to embrace God. To kneel before Nature in reverence is to kneel before the Creators themselves. Music, the arts, the architecture of our very own existence, brings us every step closer to the Mind of Creation itself).

And ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land (the lower thought-forms with higher thought-forms), and dwell therein: for I have given you the land (your own bodies) to possess it.

And ye shall divide the land by lot for an inheritance among your families (what a joy this will be, when it is done literally that is, on behalf of all the families on the earth), and to the more you shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer you shall give the lesser inheritance (see Matthew 13:11,12), according to the tribes of your fathers (according to the faculties of life, that is, and the seed of higher awareness that was sown into you at "birth."), ye shall inherit.

But if you will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, (the lower thought forms that govern us); then it shall come to pass (and it has), that those that you let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein you dwell.

Moreover it shall come to pass (and it already has), that I shall do unto you, as I thought to do unto them (because you have not distinguished yourselves from them)...(Numbers 33:51-56).

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I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have scattered thee, yet I will not make a full end of you...(Jeremiah 30:11).

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I will shake all nations, and (then) the desire of all nations shall come...(Haggai 2:6,7).

What is the sin of Catholicism? The Crusades. What is the sin of Catholicism? The Holy Roman Empire. What is the sin of Catholicism? The Inquisitions. What is the sin of Catholicism? The Reformation, the Thirty Years War and the rise of the Protestant Nation-states. What is the sin of Catholicism? The bloody conquest of the Americas. What is the sin of Protestantism? Prebyterianism, the Church of England, and the creation of the American empire. What is the result of these sins? The World Wars of the Twentieth century. What is the effect of this? Turn on the television, read the morning papers. What are the sins of Catholicism and Protestantism? Northern Ireland. What is the sin of Catholicism? Croatia. What is the sin of that other Catholic church hiding over there in the East, Eastern Orthodoxy? The Russian Revolution, and Serbia. What are the sins of Islam? The sins of Christianity, of which it is a mirror image. These are the sins of tribalism, and religious Nationalism. They are the sins of fundamentalism and literalism, of ignorance, of conquest and war, from which there is no escape short of judgment, other than the complete transformation and renewal of the heart and mind:

POPE PROPOSES PEACE TO ALL THE BELLIGERENTS

HOPE FOR WAR-WEARY WORLD SEEN IN VATICAN OFFER

ROME, August 14, 1917, RESTORATION IS THE KEYNOTE OF THE VATICAN'S SOLUTION...No Annexation and No Indemnities, Except in Case of Serbia and Belgium, Advised by Pontiff, Along With a Supreme Court of Arbitration...

Peace proposals made by Pope Benedict have been delivered to all belligerent governments.

The Pope's peace appeal proposes that there be no annexation and no indemnities, except in special cases such as Belgium, Serbia and Romania, the return to Germany of her colonies...freedom of the seas, disarmament, and the formation of a supreme court of arbitration for the settlements of future international disputes...Los Angeles Times (By Atlantic Cable).

Eighty years later...

This poor man does not understand. He hasn't a clue.

POPE PLEADS FOR WORLD PEACE

By Daniel J. Wakin

VATICAN CITY...Pope John Paul sent a message of peace on Easter Sunday to the world, targeting people in war-ravaged areas.

"To families torn apart by war, to the victims of hatred and violence...the Church does not hesitate to renew the paschal message of peace, reminding everyone of our common origin in the one God," he told more than 50,000 people gathered at St. Peter's Square in an icy drizzle." The Associated Press.

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They still say unto them that despise me, THE LORD HATH SAID YE SHALL HAVE PEACE; and they say unto every one that walketh in the imagination of their own heart, No evil shall come upon you.

For who hath stood in the counsel of the Lord, and hath perceived and heard his word? who hath marked his word and heard it?

Behold, a whirlwind of the Lord is gone forth in fury, even a grievous whirlwind: it shall fall grievously upon the head of the wicked.

The anger of the Lord shall not return, until he hath executed, and till he hath performed the thoughts of his heart. IN THE LATTER DAYS YE SHALL CONSIDER IT PERFECTLY...(Jeremiah 23:17-20).

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POPE IN PRAGUE, URGES NEW EVANGELIZATION..."The world today resembles "the epoch of the Roman Empire's decadence," and it will take all the strength of the Catholic Church to fight the crisis, Pope John Paul II said here today" Prague, April 26 (Agence France-Presse)

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IN SARAJEVO, POPE URGES RECONCILIATION...Bosnians welcomed Pope John Paul II's appeal for peace and forgiveness, but the key issue facing them--whether to find peace in unity or separation--remained unsettled after the visit.

SURROUNDED BY TIGHT SECURITY...Pope John Paul delivered a message of peace...to a city that holds a special place in his heart...Before returning to Rome on Sunday evening, he repeated his message, "NEVER AGAIN WAR."...

Serbs took little notice of Pope John Paul's visit...Tight security arrangements underscored the poisonous hatreds that remain from the war.

TANKS, SHARPSHOOTERS, AND THOUSANDS OF POLICE WERE DEPLOYED TO PROTECT THE POPE. NATO HELICOPTERS CLATTERED OVERHEAD, WHILE EGYPTIAN PEACEKEEPERS FOLLOWED BUSES OF PILGRIMS THROUGH THE CITY STREETS IN TANKS.

ITALIAN SOLDIERS PATROLLED THE POPE'S ROUTE OVERNIGHT, AND ITALIAN PARATROOPERS AND SHARPSHOOTERS, PART OF THE INTERNATIONAL PEACE FORCE, PROVIDED SECURITY AT THE STADIUM." Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovinia (AP).

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SYMBOL OF EUROPEAN CRISIS...Vatican City (VIS)...During his April 16 general audience, held in St. Peter's Square, Pope John Paul II spoke of his April 12-13 pastoral visit to Sarajevo, "symbol of European crisis," where he forcefully repeated the words: "NEVER AGAIN WAR."

"This spirit of unity, forgiveness and reconciliation in the light of the faith," he added, "especially characterized the meetings I was able to hold with the representatives of the Orthodox Church, the Muslim community, and the Jewish one. I awarded the 'John XXIII International Peace Prize'...to their humanitarian organizations."

"We give thanks for the peace that has finally been reached and ask that it will be lasting. Let us pray that never again will the dangerous temptation to resolve the important issues between men and between nations by means of armed conflict be surrendered to. May this be accomplished only through the path of dialogue and agreement." A Long Island Catholic Weekly.

While in that area of the world, besides his beatification of the Croatian nationalist, Cardinal Alojzije Stepanic, who, according to many Serbs, was a Nazi sympathizer and a war criminal, John-Paul was photographed at a huge outdoor Mass administering the sacraments to uniformed Croatian soldiers. So where is the problem here? Isn't it a priest's duty to administer the sacraments? (No, it is the priest's duty to become the sacrament).The problem is that he fed these poor soldiers pieces of Catholic bread, and nothing more, because at the end of the Mass he left them in the very same condition as he found them--in servitude to their religious, political, and military leaders, and still in mortal danger of both their lives and their souls. Communion with the Mystery of Christ should affect in the life of the communicant both a real change of heart, and a real change in direction. He should have counseled these soldiers to defect from their military duties, and to seek refuge in the Word of God. He should have told them that they cannot be soldiers for Christ and soldiers of the Croatian army at the same time, that they should choose, and choose right, as it is written: Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision; the Day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. (Joel 3:14). He should have told them that the sacrifice (of their own precious lives), the very same that the nation is asking them to make, is a sacrifice unto devils and not to God. He should have rehearsed the precepts of the Scriptures to them, as Paul himself said: I have not failed to declare unto you ALL the counsel of God. (Acts 20:27):

But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.

Ye cannot drink (this) cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils (at the same time); ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and the table of devils, (at the same time).

Do we provoke the Lord (the God of War) to jealousy? are we stronger than he?...(1 Corinthians 10:20-22).

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Jesus said, It is impossible for a man to mount two horses or to stretch two bows. And it is impossible for a servant to serve two masters; otherwise he will honour the one, and treat the other contemptuously...

Jesus said, If two make peace with each other in this one house (such as a Croate and a Serb, or a Jew and a Muslim, or a Christian and a Jew), they will say to this mountain, 'Move away,' and it will move away...(Gospel of Thomas 47, 48).

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THE VATICAN'S MANY APPEALS FOR PEACE. Vatican City...On the evening of March 24, shortly after the NATO bombing began, I expressed the Vatican's position on the war on Kosovo with the following declaration: "Recourse to the the use of force is always a defeat for humanity. One cannot help but think of the eventual victims and the feeling of hatred that will inevitably arise. It makes one think of Pius XII's words on August 24, 1939: Nothing is lost with peace. All is lost with war."...

The Vatican...has increased its efforts in many directions. On March 30 the Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, gathered all the NATO ambassadors to the Holy See and permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to examine "eventual solutions which may contribute to bring peace" in Yugoslavia...

The ways of peace they know not...(Isaiah 59).

These are just some of the initiatives that the Holy See has taken in favor of peace. The Holy See is not neutral or partisan nor anti-American. Instead John Paul II has done and is doing all that is possible so that dialogue based on the respect for law and history (WHAT LAW, WHAT HISTORY?) can begin once again and without delay. By Joaquin Navarro-Valls.

JOHN PAUL MAKING FIRST VISIT BY POPE TO ORTHODOX LAND.

He Arrives in Romania...Eastern Patriarch Greets Him Warmly but Deep Divisions in 2 Churches Remain.

By Alessandra Stanley

BUCHAREST, Romania, May 7...Fulfilling a dream long denied, John Paul II arrived in Romania today for the first visit by a Pope to a predominantly Orthodox Christian country.

Reveling in the symbolism, the Pope drove up to the Orthodox Cathedral here in his glass-encased white jeep with Patriarch Teocist of Romania at his side. Both of them in white vestments and smiling broadly...

"I kissed the ground (not the Earth, but the nation) with great emotion, grateful most of all to God who in his benevolence allowed me to see this desire realized," the Pope said at the airport where the Patriarch greeted him with a kiss... John Paul II is seeking to allay deep-seated mistrust among Orthodox Christians at a time when their faith in their fellow Christians is daily tested by the war in Yugoslavia.

Patriarch Teocist today proposed a joint effort to end that conflict, telling the Pope: "You fight against the spirit of secularization (Nationalism to the World-church is not secularization) and you work for the reconciliation of all peoples, and that is why we hope the presence of Your Holiness will be a good occasion to bring a common testimony to the drama of Yugoslavia--a territory in the middle of Christian Europe--by asking together for an immediate halt to the war." .

Do we get the sense yet that none of these leaders are listening to each other? That it is all a religious show? That no one is in submission to anyone else? That none of them have any idea of what is going on in the world? (And if this is true, and it is, why would any of us put ourselves in submission to them)? They are as blind men, as the scripture says, groping around for the wall in the brilliance of the noon day sun. They speak of peace. They plead for peace. And then they go to war. Or they condone it, or rationalize it, but they will not command those who are subject to them to refuse to participate in it:

(Because) None call for (true) justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.

They hatch cockatrice' eggs, and weave the spider's web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.

Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works, their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands.

Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood (These prelates do not shed the blood, the State does it for them. And even when the Conference of Catholic Bishops makes a statement critical of the state in its commission of war, it gives all the appropriate signals to the state that it does not, and actually will not stand by what it says): their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.

The ways of peace they know not, and there is no judgment in their goings: They have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.

Therefore judgment is far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.

We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noon day as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men...(Isaiah 59:4-10).

John said: Every Tree that bringeth not forth good fruit shall be cut down...and Paul, also looking into these days, said: For the kingdom of God is not in word (or in words after words after words, or in great shows of personality) but in POWER. (1 Corinthians 4:20).

POPE CROSSES HEAVENS ON HIS HISTORIC VOYAGE

FOR PEACE & HARMONY

By Charles W. Bell

Dublin__He started his 1,205-mile pilgrimage to Ireland at 7.28 a.m. when he stepped aboard an Italian military helicopter parked in the Vatican garden.

Twelve minutes later, Pope John Paul, and eight of the 25 aides traveling with him to Ireland and the United States, arrived at the Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport....

The 30 cardinals in Rome stood along a red carpet in a VIP section of the terminal to say goodbye. In his farewell remarks John Paul again emphasized why he was embarking.

"I hope with all my heart that my visit contributes to the easing of the atmosphere of tension, that has provoked pain and, above all, anguish and death, especially in recent days," he said.

And, he added, "the words that I will pronounce at the United Nations are an ideal continuation of the prophetic appeal that the great Pope, Paul VI, made for peace and harmony among all peoples." Pope Paul addressed the United Nations in 1968 during the only other papal visit to the United States...

Asked if there was any political significance in his trip to Ireland, he said: "My message in Ireland is only the great love I feel for the faithful people there, and no politics. The New York Daily News.

As the wave of historical events swept across the Western world, from the first centuries of this present age to our own, we see that a form of power did indeed bequeath itself to the institutions of the Roman church. And for all cosmic purposes this power has indeed been passed on to it by the God of History. But with every literary resource at our disposal, and with all the events of history so glaringly evident to us, and with all the contrasts between the teachings of Christ and the actual deeds of the church so plain to us, we can now also plainly see what kind of power the hierarchy of this church inherited (rooted as it is, not in the mysterium of Christ but in the magesterium). It is a form of power almost wholly political and bureaucratic in nature, which has always relied on outward appearances, in rituals and ecclesiastical trappings, but not in those qualities of the Spirit, or on that cyclical sense of history, necessary to the attainment of prophetic insight and vision. (The established church has produced many mystics but no prophets--none that could continue in its fold that is). Thus the power God granted to it is temporal, and clearly confined everywhere across the globe to the affairs of this present age--an age that is in its own death throes, and which is about to be brought to its own historic conclusion.

These are the secret saying which the living Jesus (He in them, and they in He) spoke and which Diymos Judas Thomas wrote down.

And he said, Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.

Jesus said, Let them who seek continue seeking until they find. When they find they will be troubled. When they become troubled they will be astonished, and will rule over the all...(Gospel of Thomas 1,2).

The power that the World-church was given, and which it in turn enforces and transmits, is not the liberating power that Christ speaks of (Galatians 5:1; John 8:31-36), which gives to those who exercise it power over themselves and their own natural ways (liberating them in the process from both themselves and the church's worldly and unskillful interpretation of the sacred Word). But it was the opposite kind, a kind that emanates from below, which seeks instead to exercise itself over the lives of others. The Irish singer, Sinead O'Conner, payed a price for trying in her own tortured way to express this disdain for the Roman hierarchy, for the ill effects of its dictates on the lives of so many of its subjects. Others over the centuries have payed more dearly. It is the kind of power that once it is invested cannot correct itself, and was therefore fated to appear at the end of the age in direct and unwitting violation of the words which say:

But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.

BUT IT SHALL NOT BE SO AMONG YOU: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;

And whoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many...(Matthew 20:25-28).

DISSENT IN CHURCH NOT TO BE ALLOWED

POPE TELLS BISHOPS

LOS ANGELES...In a blunt exchange, American bishops told Pope John Paul II yesterday that "an uncritical application" of old solutions is no longer good enough for U.S. Catholics. But the Pope called dissent from church law "a grave error" and incompatible with being a good Catholic...

"Dissent from Church doctrine remains what it is, dissent," the Pope said in remarks to 320 of the nations 400 bishops. "As such it may not be proposed or received on an equal footing with the church's authentic teaching."...

The meeting with the bishops began a day in which the Pope also visited a Catholic elementary school accompanied by first lady Nancy Reagan...

The bishops, meeting in private with the pope...treated him to an unusually frank discussion about what bothers American Catholics and has caused them to ignore many of the church's teachings.

"We recognize our grave obligation to teach courageously and bear witness to the whole, and not just part of the Gospel, even in the face of ridicule and opposition," said Archbishop John R. Quinn of San Francisco..."but..."

(The pope replied): "There is a tendency on the part of some Catholics to be selective in the church's moral teachings. It is sometimes claimed that dissent from the Magisterium (church law) is totally compatible with being a good Catholic" and poses no obstacle to the reception of the Sacraments.

"This is a grave error that challenges the teaching office of the bishops of the United States and elsewhere," he said. Associated Press.

God, of course, had to allow this form of autocracy--this one-way exercise in power over the spiritual lives of others--its day in the sun as it is, so that it could run the course of its own natural limits. It is all part of the even greater process of Revelation. It had to be seen for what it is, how it confounds and ties those subject to it to the greater transgressions of the autocrats themselves. At the same time, however, the attainment of spiritual maturity does require of each adept a full measure of submission--not to one, but to one another, to the elders, to the heart, but also to the fullest, or the most perfect interpretation of the Word itself. What we have learned in our time is that these interpretations do not flow from those in ecclesiastical authority:

Ye shall not respect persons in judgment, but ye shall hear the small as well as the great...(Deuteronomy 1:17).

(For) Many are in high places, and of renown, but mysteries are revealed to the meek...(Ecclesiasticus 3:22).

(Thus) Mind not high things but condescend to men of low estate...(Romans 12:16).

(And) With all lowliness and meekness with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love...And he gave some, apostles, and some prophets; and some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ...(Ephesians 4:1-12).

Therefore: "Those who know do not dictate. Those who dictate do not know."

As above, so below. This is the basic Gnostic teaching. And as God is both Father and Mother, so Christ is both Male and Female. Notice the figure sitting to the right of Christ in DaVinci's gnostic painting of the Last Supper. Regardless of what the scholars and prelates of Rome have to say on the matter, it is not the beloved apostle John, but the Female Christ--the Magdaline. (Please consider chapter 5, and Paul's words at 1 Corinthians 2:6-13, KJV).

FIRM "NO" ON WOMEN'S ORDINATION

VATICAN CITY (AP)__The Holy See presented its most comprehensive case yet on why it says the Catholic Church will never ordain women. The Church's top doctrinal experts announced the release of a book gathering together the major recent Church documents on the subject and a raft of scholarly essays bolstering their position.

The book is part of a series of books produced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It was not clear why the latest volume was devoted to the contentious issue of woman priests. But it follows a visit to the Vatican last month by the spiritual leader of the Anglican Church, which ordains women. Pope John Paul II has called the practice an "obstacle" to unity with the Catholic Church...

In summing up the Church's arguments, Bishop Scola said, "The Church does not have the power to modify the practice, uninterrupted for 2,000 years, of calling only men to the ministering priesthood, in that this was wanted directly by Jesus." He cites the arguments that Jesus decided to choose only men for the 12 apostles and that the priesthood is "objectively linked to the male sex of Jesus."

The Roman Catholic church has reached the stage of irrelevance. It is out of touch with spiritual reality and disconnected from fully half of all that God is, and that Christ is:

But we must see it all in the context of the larger, cosmic picture. We have come to the end of the age, and John Paul (along with his tired and aging doctrines of Catholic as well as Male supremacy) has been a major player on the stage of this great unfolding historical drama (one which will result in the manifestation of God's truly Anointed ones, and the reestablishment of the Throne of David in the center of the earth). Let us forgive them their dotage and return for the moment to the heady days of John Paul's investiture, to the years prior to the collapse of the Soviet Order, and to the words of Malachi Martin's The Keys of This Blood, The Struggle for World Dominion Between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Capitalist West:

THE SERVANT OF THE GRAND DESIGN

"Willing or not , ready or not, we are involved in an all-out, no-holds-barred, three-way global competition. Most of us are not competitors, however. We are the stakes. For the competition is about who will establish the first one-world system of government that has ever existed in the society of nations. It is about who will hold and wield the dual power of authority and control over each of us as individuals and over all of us together as a community...

No holds are barred because, once the competition has been decided, the world and all that's in it--our way of life as individuals and as citizens of the nations; our families and our jobs; our trade and commerce and money; our educational systems and our religions and our cultures; even the badges of our national identity, which most of us have always taken for granted--all will have been powerfully and radically altered forever. No one can be exempted from its effects. No sector of our lives will remain untouched...

The competition began and continues as a three-way affair because that is the number of rivals with sufficient resources to establish and maintain a new world order.

Nobody who is acquainted with the plans of these three rivals has any doubt but that only one of them can win. Each expects the other two to be overwhelmed and swallowed up in the coming maelstrom of change. That being the case, it would appear inescapable that their competition will end up as a confrontation.

As to the time factor involved, those of us who are under seventy will see at least the basic structure of the new world government installed. Those of us under forty will surely live under its legislative, executive and judiciary authority and control. Indeed, the three rivals themselves...speak about this new world order not as something around the distant corner of time, but as something that is imminent. As a system that will be introduced and installed in our midst by the end of this final decade of the second millennium.

What these competitors are talking about, then, is the most profound and widespread modification of international, national, and local life that the world has seen in a thousand years. And the competition they are engaged in can be described simply enough as THE MILLENNIUM END GAME...

It is not too much to say, in fact, that the chosen purpose of John Paul's pontificate--the engine that drives his papal grand policy and that determines his day-to-day, year-by-year strategies--is to be the victor in that competition, now well under way. For the fact is that the stakes John Paul has placed in the arena of geopolitical contention include everything--himself; his papal persona; the age-old Petrine Office he now embodies; and his entire Church Universal, both as an institutional organization unparalleled in the world and as a body of believers united by a bond of mystical communion.

The other two contenders in the arena of THIS"GREATEST HISTORICAL CONFRONTATION HUMANITY HAS GONE THROUGH" are no mean adversaries. Rather, they are the leaders of the two most deeply entrenched secular powers, who stand, in a collective sense, on their record as the authors and the primary actors in the period of history that has been so much the worst of times that the best face we can put on it is to say that we were not swallowed up in the Apocalypse of World War III--as if that were the best man could do for his fellowman.

The first of those two powers, the Soviet Union, is now led by John Paul's most interesting adversary and a fellow Slav. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was as unexpected and unpredicted a leader in the new world arena as Karol Wojtoyla himself...Gorbachev is now what he was groomed to be: Master of the Leninist-Marxist Party-State whose power and standing in the community of nations was built upon seventy years of physical and spiritual fratricide carried out in the name of a purely sociopolitical vision and a thoroughly this-worldly ideology.

The final contender in the competition for the new world order is not a single individual leader of a single institution or territory. IT IS A GROUP OF MEN WHO ARE UNITED AS ONE IN POWER, MIND, AND WILL FOR THE PURPOSE OF ACHIEVING A SINGLE COMMON GOAL: TO BE VICTORIOUS IN THE COMPETITION FOR THE NEW GLOBAL HEGEMONY.

While the acknowledged public leader and spokesman for this group is the current American president, the contenders who compose this assemblage of individuals are Americans and Europeans who, taken together, represent every nation of the Western democratic alliance.

Unremittingly globalist in their vision and activities, these individual operate from two principle bases of power. The first is the power base of finance, industry, and technology. Entrepreneurial in their occupations, the men in this phalanx qualify themselves, and are often referred to by others, as "Transnationalist" in their outlook. What they mean by the term "Transnationalist" is that they intend to, and increasingly do, exercise their entrepreneurship on a worldwide basis. Leaping over all the barriers of language, race, ideology, creed, color, and nationalism, they view the world with some justification as their oyster; and the twin pearls of great price that they seek are global development and the good life for all.

Members of the second phalanx of this group of global contenders--Internationalists, as they are frequently called--bring with them invaluable experience in government, in intergovernmental relationships, and in the rarefied art of international politics. Their bent is toward the development of new and ever wider interrelationships between the governments of the world. Their aim is to foster increasing cooperation on an international basis--and to do that by maintaining the peace, at the same time they accomplish what war has rarely achieved: the breakdown of the old natural and artificial barriers between nations.

In the current competition to establish and head a one-world government, Transnationalists and Internationalists can be said for all practical purposes to act as one; to constitute one main contender: The Genuine Globalists of the West. Both groups are products par excellence of the system of democratic capitalism. Both are so closely intertwined in their membership that individuals move easily and with great effect from an Internationalist to a Transnationalist role and back again. And not least important in the all-encompassing confrontation that is underway, both groups share the same philosophy about human life and its ultimate meaning--a philosophy that appears, in the surprised view of some observers, to be closer to Mikhail Gorbachev's than to John Paul's...Beneath the similarity of language, however, their lies a vast difference in meaning and intent; and greatly dissimilar track records of accomplishment.

The individual in Gorbachev's new world order will be someone whose needs and rights are determined by the monopolar government of Leninist-Marxism. Indeed, all individual rights and freedom and dignity are to be measured by the needs of the Party to remain supreme and permanent.

In the new world order of the Wise Men of the West--the most powerful of the Genuine Globalists--the rights and freedom of the individual would be based in positive law: that is, on laws passed by the majority of those who will be entitled to vote on the various levels of the new system of governmental administration and local organization. ULTIMATE RULE, HOWEVER, WILL BE FAR REMOVED FROM THE ORDINARY INDIVIDUAL.

The prime difficulty for Pope John Paul II in both of these models for the new world order is that neither of them is rooted in the moral laws of human behavior revealed by God through the teachings of Christ, as proposed by Christ's Church. He is adamant on one capital point: No system will ensure and guarantee the rights and freedoms of the individual if it is not based on those laws.This is the backbone principle of the new world envisaged by the Pontiff...

"There exists on this earth," (said the Pontiff's mentor, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski), "only three 'Internationales.'" The "Golden Internationale" was his shorthand term for the financial powers of the world--the Transnationalist and Internationalist globalist leaders of the West.

The "Red Internationale" was, of course, the Leninist-Marxist Party-State of the Soviet Union, with which he and Wojtyla and their compatriots had such long and painfully intimate experience.

The third geopolitical contender--the Roman Catholic Church; the "Black Internationale"--was destined in Wyszynski's view to be the ultimate victor in any contention with those rivals.

Surely such a thought seemed outlandish to much of the world--including much of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the Vatican and elsewhere. Nonetheless, it was the view that Karol Wojtyla not only shared. It was one that he helped to prove against the Soviets and that he now carried into the Papacy itself...

One commentator, however, writing in the German newspaper "Frankfurter Zeitung," not only read the papal achievement accurately but read the papal intent as well: "A new factor has been added to the presently accepted formula of international contention. It is a Slavic Pope. The imbalance in our thinking has been unobtrusively but decisively and, as it were, overnight corrected by the emergence of John Paul. For his persona has refocused international attention away from the two extremes, East and West, and on THE ACTUAL CENTER OF CHANGE, 'MITTELEUROPA,' the central bloc of Europe's nations."

Presciently as well as by planned design, the Pontiff's first step into the geopolitical arena was eastward into Poland, the underbelly of the Soviet Union. In John Paul's geopolitical analysis, Europe from the Baltic to the Adriatic Sea is the center of that power. THE HOLY FATHER'S BATTLE WAS TO CONTROL THAT CENTER..."

John Paul II, though feebled and weakened by time now, and by a reality that far exceeds his own comprehension of it, is still reading his lines:

A living metaphor...The old age is passing. It is trying to hold on but it is over.

POPE IN POLAND, REACHES ACROSS BORDERS TO PUSH A UNITED EUROPE. Warsaw, June 3...Pope John Paul II, who worked to undermine Communism in the 1970's and 80's, addressed six Central and Eastern European Presidents today in an unusual private meeting intended to show the importance he places on a united Europe...

The meeting after the Mass with the six Presidents (joined by German president, Roman Herzog), came as their countries are pressing in various degrees to join or align with Western European institutions.

The Pope did not specifically mention NATO, which Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are expected to be invited to join next month, or the European Union, which most of these countries aspire to join. But the message was clear... By Jane Perlez.

__________

..."In point of fact...John Paul's ambition went very far...Well before the world was treated to the spectacle of Mikhail Gorbachev as supreme public impresario of dazzling changes in the world's political landscape, well before the globalist trends now taken for granted were apparent to most of the world's leaders--this Slavic Pope had a certain leisure to scan the society of nations, with a new eye that is as old as the papacy itself. With an eye that was not merely international, but truly global. And with a purpose to lay his papal plans in concert with those few and very certain developments Cardinal Wyszynski had spoken of as "willed by the Lord of History." In concert with those trends that were already moving the whole society of mankind the way the stars move across the heavens--according to the awesome inevitability of the unbreakable will of God." Malachi Martin, The Keys of This Blood, The Struggle for World Dominion Between Pope John Paul II, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Capitalist West, pp.15-25.

I will overturn...(Ezekiel 21:27).

John Paul II is still appearing throughout the earth, and is still unwittingly, and by default, gathering the nations to the great Day of Lord. Yet it seems on the surface, despite all the religious theatrics and the continuing global fanfare, as if the aging pope would now settle for his present accomplishments, and be content to simply accompany his worldwide flock across the threshold of the next millennium. There has been quiet talk of possible successors. (Perhaps the God of History will be merciful to John Paul in this way...yet God also knows the intents of the heart of all men). The true global community of God, however (which includes Catholics everywhere, but which transcends Catholicism itself), has also been prepared by the Spirit for the next great wave of events...

Thus saith the Lord God; Remove the diadem, and take off the crown: this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high.

I will overturn, overturn...(Ezekiel 21:26,27).

It is the third set of contenders in the millennium endgame, the "Genuine Globalists of the West," who have moved into position, and who have the greatest present advantage to create the new world order in their own image...

"One need not be a conspiracy freak to be just a tiny bit scared of the Trilateral Commission, a global network of politicians and plutocrats whom allegedly form the core of an impending one world government. Beyond that, the group's agenda is largely unclear, and the secrecy surrounding the organization makes it all the more scarier. It could be that it's a completely altruistic group which can save humanity, it could also usher in the New World Order. They could even be the advanced team of the Antichrist! You decide." WWW.prop_newordr_trilateral.htm.

It is these, with a noted American President among their distinguished numbers, who are fully unmindful of the words of the Lord which say:

And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end,

Thus saith the Lord God; Remove the diadem, and take off the crown: this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high.

I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it to him...(Ezekiel 21:25-27).

__________

Thou sawest till A STONE was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his Feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.

Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the Summer threshing floor; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the Stone that smote the image became a Great Mountain, and filled the whole earth...(Daniel 2:34, 35).

John Paul does not realize how the Roman Church itself is part of the World-Image that shall be broken and scattered to the winds. He believes instead that this Stone (this symbol of the immovable Foundation upon which the structure of the whole World-mystery rests), is his own solid message to the nations of the world. He believes that he has at least made a way now for his message to carry forth; and that the Catholic church, which he has labored so hard to re-instruct and empower, will now take the message forward to the rest of the world. (John Paul's sense of his own mission to the "Church" can be likened to what many followers of the Lubivitcher Rebbe, Menachem Shneersohn, tried to make of the rebbe's relationship to the larger Jewish world around him--messianic. How is it written? For many shall come in my name):

POPE JOHN PAUL II's

MESSAGE for WORLD MISSION SUNDAY

In his World Mission Sunday Message, John Paul II Stresses the Obligation of All Catholics, Inherent in Their Baptism, to "Take Part in the Global Effort For Evangelization."

Emphasizing that the celebration of World Mission Sunday becomes increasingly important to the life of the Church as the year 2000 approaches, Pope John Paul II expressed the hope that "on the threshold of the new Millennium the whole Church will experience a new impulse of missionary commitment."

As I read our Holy Father's message for this year's celebration of World Mission Sunday, I thought about Bishop Dias and his story, and about how the Church--small and insignificant though it may appear in places--is so vitally important to the "whole of life," so urgently needed on the Andaman Islands and everywhere, even, "at the very ends of the earth."

In his message...the Pope said: "Jesus Christ...is the only Saviour of the world." (Read: "The Roman Catholic Church is the only Saviour of the world"). And, "since this salvation is for every person," he continued, "every man and woman on earth has the right to be told about it." Holy Father tells us that each of us, through Baptism, is called to take an active part in the Church's missionary work to bring the "Good News" to all. The Society For the Propagation of the Faith.

VATICAN CALLS FOR INTERFAITH DIALOGUE

PLANS 1999 MEETING FOR A BETTER WORLD

ROME...Saying interreligious dialogue "is demanded by the deep respect for all that is good, true, beautiful, and holy," the head of the Vatican's efforts in that area yesterday announced a worldwide meeting of religious leaders, to take place on the cusp of the new millennium.

Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria, president of the Vatican's Council for Interreligious Dialogue, said the four-day meeting being planned would take place in October 1999, for reflection on how religious leaders can effect change in the world.

"As we get set to step into the Third Millennium, the followers of the various religions have no choice but to come closer to one another, to try to listen to one another, to try to understand one another better and to strive to collaborate more for a better world," Arinze said at a conference here this week on the roles of religion and the news media in the next millennium...

Archbishop John Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said the meeting would take place just before the start of 2000, a year Pope John Paul II has declared a Jubilee year--a time of "special spiritual reflection, special spiritual practices and special spiritual graces and opportunities,"

The Jubilee will run from Christmas Eve, 1999, to Epiphany on January 6, 2001, and will include the opening of a special door at St. Peter's Basilica... By Stuart Vincent, Staff Correspondent.

The Gospel is Preached in the Power of the Holy Spirit

As soon as the Holy Spirit had come down upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, they,"began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts 2:4). Thus we can say that the Church, at the moment of her birth receives as a gift from the Spirit the ability to "tell of the mighty works of God" (Acts 2:11). This is the gift of evangelizing...

This connection between God's Spirit and the divine word can already be noted in the experience of the ancient prophets. Ezekiel's call is described as a "spirit" entering into his person: (The Lord) said to me: "Son of man stand upon thy Feet; and I heard Him speaking to me." (Ezek.2:1-2)...

According to the prophet Joel, the messianic age will be marked by a universal outpouring of the Spirit: "And it shall come to pass afterward, that I shall pour out my Spirit on all flesh" (Joel 2:28); as a result of this communication of the Spirit, "your sons and daughters shall prophecy."... America's Oldest National Catholic Weekly Newspaper, The Wanderer, August 6, 1996.

While we hear John Paul speaking of the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, we also realize what this has come to mean for both John Paul and his church, and it has nothing to do with the first outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, or the one that is coming:

The Holy Spirit in The Eighth Century

(WHAT HAS THIS TO DO WITH THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST)?

"By HIS coming, which never ceases, the Holy Spirit causes the world to enter into the 'last days' the time of the Church, the Kingdom already inherited though not yet consummated." (The Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 732).

"Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen for His own inheritance." (Psalm 33)...

"Do not live in fear little flock." (from the Gospel of St. Luke).

"On the last Christmas Day of the eighth century--Dec. 25th, 800--Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor.

Charles Martel had stopped the Mohammedans at Tours in 732. His son, Pepin the Short, was anointed by Pope Stephan as Patrician of the Romans. Charlemagne inherited his father's throne in 768; he was, like his father before him, anointed and considered himself "king and priest, leader and guide of all Christian people."

Fortunately there was no conflict between the great king Charles and the papacy. While he was sincerely determined to spread his religion, Charles also recognized the political merits of Christianity: The various tribes within his kingdom would be bound more closely by a common religion. (Do we understand this yet)? The Goths, Lombards, Romans, Franks, Slavs, and Saxons embraced Chistianity--sometimes, though infrequently, at the point of the sword...

(Do we understand this yet? The author of this article is comparing all of this to the work of the Holy Spirit, when in fact the teachings of Christ came into the earth to free and deliver us from these affairs).

...In addition to his military conquests, which territorially matched those of the Old Roman Empire, Charlemagne supported the work of the monasteries, the local presence of the Catholic parishes, and the necessity of schools--places of learning...

Father Edward Day describes Charlemagne's coronation at the hands of the Church:

On Christmas Day, 800, Charles prostrated himself before the tomb of St. Peter in the basilica. When he rose to get ready to hear Christmas Mass, Pope Leo approached him and placed a crown on his head. On cue, the crowds in the basilica chanted their praises and begged Christ's protection on Charles. Then they cried three times, 'Long life and victory to Charles, the pious Augustus, crowned by God, the great and peace-loving emperor of the Romans.'

The Catholic faith was the blood of the new Holy Roman Empire. The Church received a military protector; the people of the empire looked to one spiritual head--the Pope--and one temporal head--the emperor; and there was understanding that a higher authority than the king's existed--kingly power came from God!

For a time the light of the Spirit shone on a revival of learning and culture. Even a brief respite from the barbarian invasions and pagan practices let the Christian message go forth. When the Lord raised up a fearless and pious leader. Then and Now." The Wanderer, August 6, 1996.

Among the gifts of the Spirit that descended upon the Church at the Day of Pentecost was the discerning of spirits. (1 Corinthians 12:10). Endowed with it we may clearly discern the familiar spirit of worldliness, gross apostasy and the doctrines of devils in this article, and an attempt (in the spirit of the present papacy) to renew, or reinvigorate in the earth the same arrangements between church and state that carried Catholicism to the zenith of its power in the Middle Ages. And this just happens to be the direction in which John Paul wishes to point his church--not actually forward, despite all the appearances, but backwards in time, to the reigns of Leo and Charlemagne; again, in violation of the precept which states: Ye shall henceforth return no more that way... He cannot understand the reasons why so many have grown up (spiritually) to leave the church, or the ways in which the whole history of the Church itself has led directly to the terrible and ongoing judgments of the 20th century; and he would be willing to lead his flock that way again. Nor has he grasped the meaning of the mystery of the Mass--the precepts of the Evening Sacrifice--and its implications for the life of the Church at the end of the age:

LOVE-IN FOR 2 MILLION YOUTHS,

HEARTILY BLESSED BY POPE

By Alessandra Stanley

ROME, Aug. 20, 2000__In the largest youth gathering ever held in the West, more than two million young people prayed, sang, swayed and got sprayed with water hoses today at a Mass celebrated by John Paul II...

The youth Mass and an overnight vigil before it closed a Six-day World Youth festival timed to coincide with a Roman Catholic Holy Year, a gathering that the Italian press dubbed "The Catholic Woodstock"--a teeming love-in without the sex, drugs or rock 'n' roll, but with much of the same enthusiasm and abandon...

"It is like a rock concert in some ways, huge masses of people getting really excited, but really, it's about spirituality, not entertainment," said a student from Dallas.

But the festival, which drew hundreds of thousands to packed prayer services at churches throughout the city, mass confessions at Circus Maximus, and the Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum, was as much a Special Olympics of the soul--a huge, often grueling effort by young Catholics to show the world that not all of today's youths live in a secular morality-free zone. (There is, of course, nothing wrong here, not yet)...

"Our society desperately needs this sign, and young people need it even more so," the pope said in his homily today, "tempted as they often are by the illusion of an easy and comfortable life, by drugs and pleasure seeking, only to find themselves in a spiral of despair, meaninglessness and violence."...

Mostly, however, the event was a personal triumph for the pope, who prides himself on his rapport with young people and has long viewed the Holy Year of the new millennium as a cornerstone of his papacy...

(The danger lies herein: for along with this rapport comes the subtle papal messages concerning the individual's relationship to the present world order, and the duty of these young people to the political and military establishments of their prospective nations--all in the Face of the Lord of all Nations who is the very God of War Himself. Thus along with the rapport comes all of the effects of John Paul's inability to discern and interpret the signs of the times, and his resulting failure to warn these thousands of young souls in his care to prepare for the manifestaion of the Lord of Glory and the revelation of the Anointed Ones who shall appear in the Name of the Lord)...

This week so many young pilgrims wanted to pass through the Holy Door of St. Peter's, a Holy Year ritual, that the Vatican opened a second one for the first time in church history...500,000 people walked with candles to recreate the Stations of the Cross along the Via del Fori Imperiali, next to the ancient Forum...

Pilgrims, however, expressed no regrets. "Getting here was an incredible hike, and at times I have asked myself why did I make this trip," Linda Muraski, of Knoxville, Tenn. said..."But then you get into the middle of the most beautiful Mass," she added, "and there is the pope, with you, and it is so moving you forget all you went through to get there." The New York Times.

Little children, keep yourselves from idols, Amen...(1 John 5:21).

According to the proverb, "A eunuch cares not about the future, nor a bastard for the past," so it is written in the prophets:

And a bastard shall dwell in Ashdod, and I will cut off the pride of the Philistines.

And I will take away his blood out of his mouth, and his abominations from between his teeth: but he that remaineth, even he, shall be for our God, and he shall be as a governor in Judah, and in Ekron as a Jebusite...

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy (true) king cometh unto thee: (Unlike any of the Roman emperors, and unlike any of the leaders of our own times) he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass (the figure of one age) and upon a colt the foal of an ass ( the figure of the next)...(Zechariah 9:6-9; Luke 16:15).

And please notice how the Holy Spirit was referred to with the words "His Coming." This Catholic attitude toward the Feminine Principle, and the Feminine Presence of the Godhead is very cleverly characterized in one of the scenes in the stage production Riverdance, where three male figures dressed in black, representing the Roman Catholic doctrine of an all-male Trinity, appear on stage in an attempt to separate the people from their real devotion, and their distant memories of the truly Divine Mother. She--The Holy Spirit of God--is, of course, Feminine. She is Mother, sometimes virgin, often times lover, sometimes harlot, yet always Goddess--always the Divine Spirit of the Godhead...

"This is why sex is holy. The desire of union is the reflection in us of the love of the Holy Trinity. May we not say that the Holy Spirit is feminine? It is the eternal Wisdom, which in Hebrew, Greek and Latin is always feminine, the divine Sophia. The Holy Spirit is immanent in all creation. It is the love which draws the Father to create, to conceive the whole creation in his Son. In Hindu tradition the world came into being as a result of the union of Siva and Sakti, the divine consciousness uniting with the divine power. This is why the lingham and the yoni are sacred in India. They are symbols of Siva and Sakti, of Purusha and Prakriti; every human marriage reflects this divine marriage, is a symbol of the marriage of heaven and earth...." Father Bede Griffith, Return To Center, The Mystery of Love, pp.57-67.

The error, which Bede Griffith is attempting to address, is born in the common association interpreters have made over the centuries between the figure of the Comforter in the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit of God Herself. We do not want to confuse ourselves by getting into the business of splitting complex terms but it seems necessary to do so here. The term comforter derives from the Spirit's instructions to the prophet at Isaiah, chapter 40 (KJV), and defines the relationship that exists between the Angel of Divine Presence who hovers above the dimensions of the Tree of Life, and those (the saints and prophets), who actually appear in the name of the Lord to comfort the people themselves. Some of those who have appeared to comfort the people have been male, such as the spirit of Elijah that appeared in the person of John the Baptist, but many of these comforters over the centuries have also been female. Islam holds that the Comforter, or a figure of the Comforter, appeared in the person of the prophet Muhammad. All of them, nevertheless, have appeared in the Mystery of Christ at the direction of the Holy Spirit Herself, the Divine Feminine Principle, who, with God and as God, dwells above all things and in all things. (John 14:16, 26; Jn.15:26; Jn.16:7-10). So do not, as so many others, confuse the Comforter with the Holy Spirit of God who is our Divine Mother Herself...

SHEKINAH

Though the Comforter(s) will appear again at the end of the age in the Mystery of Christ (see Romans 1:10-12; Isaiah 40), the Holy Spirit of God both permeates and transcends the whole. She and the Father are ONE. The Angel of Divine Presence--theUniversal Christ...the Logos...in essence the Conscious Mind of Nature itself--is One with both of Them. For just as the letter Vau proceeds from the letters Heh and Yod in the Divine Name, so the Mystery of the Son of God proceeds from Them and in every cosmic sense is Them. If we can see the one we can see the other. Every one of us proceeds from Them.. We are the Universal Christ-in-us. Thus it is written that "God was in Christ--in us--reconciling the world unto Themselves." Don't stumble over the terminology. Atman is Brahman. Use common spiritual sense. It is all One.

For the same metaphorical reasons that the Christ-mystery was defined in male terminology (please see chapter 5), so the figure of the Comforter was defined in male terms. Both, however--the Angel of Divine Presence, and the comforter which proceeds from Him,--appear on the Tree of Life out of the Greater Presence of the Divine Parents (the Father Himself, and the Spirit Herself). They are ONE, and we are One with them.

PRAYER FOR VOCATIONS

(These Seven Men)

Dear Friends in Christ,

Our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, has proclaimed the Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 20, 1997, as a World Day of Prayer for Vocations. Heeding the words of Jesus in the Gospel to "beg the Harvest Master to send laborers," the Holy Father asks us all to pray for vocations in the church. We are encouraged most especially to pray that young men and women might explore the possibility of vocations to the priesthood and religious life to minister in the Church as priests, sisters, and brothers.

Pope John Paul II, on the occasion of his Golden Jubilee of Ordination to the Priesthood, offered his own reflections on vocations in his book, Mystery and Grace. The Pope shares with us the significant contributions of his own family, particularly his parents, and the encouragement he received from priests and religious as important elements of nurturing the vocation the Lord had given to him...

On June 14, 1997, we will gather in prayer at St. Agnes Cathedral TO CELEBRATE THE ORDINATION OF SEVEN MEN TO THE PRIESTHOOD. It will be a day of great joy for all in our diocese. What a great blessing that SEVEN Men will begin priestly ministry in our parishes this summer, it is a sure sign that the Lord continues to call our young people to vocations in the Church. THESE SEVEN MEN NEED OUR PRAYERS...May we be very generous in our response in our response to the Holy Father's invitation to join him in praying that the Harvest Master would send laborers into the harvest...John R. McGann, Bishop of Rockville Center.

__________

Speak unto Aaron, saying, whosoever he be of thy seed in their generation that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God...(Leviticus 21:17-24):

Among those prohibited from officiating as priests are...the blind (not those who are physically blind but those who are spiritually blind, and who cannot, or will not "see"); the lame (those who favor one limb on the Tree of Life more than the other--Christian above Jew, or Jew above Christian, or male above female, or female above male); or he that hath a flat nose (which is pushed to one side or the other, making one unable to understand or savor the prayers that are being offered from both sides of the Tree of Life--as one American evangelist put it: "God does not hear the prayers of a Jew."); or anything superfluous (an allusion to outside influences that attach themselves to the features of the Body of Christ, contrary to the law, such as any marriage between the priesthood of Israel and the great men of any other nation-state); or one who is broken footed (in the West); or broken handed (in the East)...

Or a crookback (lacking a straight path on the Oracle between their own minds and the Mind of God); or a dwarf (one who has not attained to the "fulness of the stature of Christ." Ephesians 4:13); or hath a blemish in his eye (Matthew 6:22,23); or be scurvied or scabbed (2 Peter 2:10-15); or hath his stones broken (so that one cannot procreate. There are Two stones because this act of procreation occurs from both sides of the Tree of Life, the male side and the female). John Paul cannot grasp this principle of the priesthood of Adam, as it is written: Male and Female created He them, AND CALLED THEIR NAME ADAM. (Genesis 5:1,2). He is Adam, she is Adam. He is Christ, she is Christ. He is priest, she is priest...

No MAN (whether male or female) that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offering of the Lord made by Fire (by Divine Wisdom): he hath a blemish: he shall not come nigh to offer the (Word) of his God...(Leviticus 21:17-24).

__________

He that is wounded in the stones (not physically, but spiritually), or hath his privy member cut off (so that he cannot reach the center, or the point of conception, in others), shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord.

A bastard (one who is not concerned with the realities of the past) shall not enter the congregation of the Lord; even to his TENTH generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord...(Deuteronomy 23:1,2).

Matthew, Chapter 23:

THEN SPAKE JESUS TO THE MULTITUDE, AND TO HIS DISCIPLES,

Saying the scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat:

All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do ye not after their works: for they say, and do not.

For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers...

And be clothed in humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace unto the humble...(1 Peter 5:3-5).

But all their works they do to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,

And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,

And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men Rabbi, Rabbi.

But be ye not called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and ye are all brethren.

And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.

But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and she that shall humble herself shall be exalted.

But woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

Jews? or Christians?

Woe unto you,scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

Woe unto ye, blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by (Divine Reality) it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by (the material manifestations and images of that Reality, then that one is a member of Christ's true church).

Ye fools and blind; for which is greater, (the outer trappings and images of that Reality--the church and her man made doctrines--or the Reality itself which sanctifies it all)?

And whosoever shall swear by (the Mystery of Christ within themselves) it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by (their Catholic vocations, or the exterior tithes and offerings that we are instructed to bring to the mystery--the gold and the silver, and other income to support idle and meddlesome lifestyles), he is guilty (thus redeemed).

Ye fools and blind; for which is greater (the rituals of belief, and the offices and material trappings of that belief, or the Inner substance of the Mystery itself which sanctifies that belief)?

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummins, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, faith: these ye ought to have done.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for (at the sacrifice of your Mass) ye make clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within you are full of extortion and excess.

Thou blind Pharisees, clean first that which is within the cup and the platter, then the outside of them shall be clean also.

Woe unto you priests and bureaucrats, hypocrites! for ye (as well as your places of worship) are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear to be beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness, (the flags of nations, and images of their great warriors, statesmen, and politicians).

Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Woe unto you, most excellent of all churchmen, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets (and churches in their honour), and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous,

And say, if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the death of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them that killed the prophets.

Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.

Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape (the judgments of this age)?

I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them ye shall scourge (vilify and denounce) in your congregations, and persecute from city to city...

These things have I spoken unto you, that ye be not offended,

They shall put you out of the synagogue (the churches): yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.

All these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me...(John 16:1-3).

That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel (in the garden of Eden) unto the blood of Zacharias son of Berachias whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. (Understand what this means).

I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation.

O JERUSALEM, JERUSALEM, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often I would have gathered thy children together even as a (mother) hen gathereth her chicks under her wings, and ye would not.

Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.

For I say unto you, Ye shall see me not henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord.

JOHN PAUL'S NICKNAME FINALLY BECOMED CLEAR

"MOST LUMINOUS"

NEW YORK__Pope John Paul II marked the start of the 25th year of his papacy, now figured to be the fourth longest in history, with a startling announcement in St. Peter's Square: He does not intend to resign but will let the boss decide when he should leave; and, by the way, he has decided to change the roasary, the daily devotion recited by Catholics for 900 years...

For 900 years there have been three series of mysteries: the Joyous (Christ enters the world), the Sorrowful (Christ is killed), and the Glorious (Christ and Heaven). What the Pope has done is add a new set of areas of contemplation--the Luminous mysteries, which encompass Christ's ministry, his teachings...

In the Pope's letter he used the words "luminous" or "light" 29 times. That reminded me of something. In the unofficial but ever interesting prophecies of St. Malachy, mystic of the Middle Ages, each coming Pope is named with a phrase that seems to denote his work. The nicknames seem uncannily accurate. John Paul the First was nicknamed by St. Malachi "Of the Half Moon"--he reigned for a month, from waning moon to waning moon. John Paul II is nicknamed "Of the Labor of the Sun." The brightest star, and the most luminous. I used to wonder about the meaning of that name and thought it a mystery, but not now. Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal.

__________

Of that Simon Magus of old...For if he were known he would not be believed, but now, not being known he is improperly believed; and though his deeds are those of a hater (of the truth) he is loved; and though an enemy (of the gospel) he is received as a friend; and though he be death he is desired as a saviour; and though fire he is esteemed as light; and though a deceiver he is believed as a speaker of the truth...(Clementine Homily II).

And so here he is, a living metaphor, the man (an Augustinian to the end), and his church, 1,700 years old, bent over, impotent, without power, unstable and irrelevant to all that is that is happening in the spiritual world. He sleeps in the congregation. He is without wisdom and understanding, yet full of words, pronouncements, encyclicals and other empty and misguided directions for the future of his church and the world...(Hebrews, chapter 5, KJV).

POPE'S TRIBUTE: HISTORY AND A PRAYER

By Frank Bruni

VATICAN CITY, October 16, 2003__With a twilight Mass that drew thousands of people to St. Peter's Square, Pope John Paul II celebrated his 25th anniversary at the head of the Roman Catholic Church...a milestone at once joyful and somber. Cardinals and worshippers from all over the world sang sweetly and clapped softly to show their appreciation for the 83-year old pope and his extraordinary papacy, the fourth longest in the history of Christianity's largest denomination.

But they also watched a proud leader, his strength sapped by illness and age, struggle to get his words out. His face contorted at times into what resembled a pained grimace...Addressing Jesus at one point, the pope said, "I offer the fruits of these 25 years of ministry." (A very unfruitful offering. The world is very much on the eve of destruction as when he took office).

"Forgive any bad done," he said in Italian, "and multiply the good." The event was yet another indelible moment in the career of one of the most visible, commanding figures of his time. Although John Paul's words and actions over several stormy decades drew both acclaim and protest, HE ALWAYS LOOMED LARGE, and he intersected time and again with important world events.

Some historians say he played an important role in the collapse of Communism in Europe by exhorting fellow Poles and others under the grip of the Soviet Union to reject an ideology that he deemed oppressive...

The pope seemed moved. When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, one of a handful of Vatican officials who still see the pope regularly, delivered a formal speech in praise of him, John Paul's head hung lower than usual and his eyes narrowed...The scale of pageantry matched the degree of emotion. JOHN PAUL SAT, IN REGAL GOLDEN ROBES AND A TALL JEWELED MITER, ON A SOFTLY LIT ALTAR THAT SHIMMERED EVER BRIGHTER AS THE SUN SET AND DARKNESS FELL ON THE STORIED SQUARE IN FRONT OF ONE OF THE WORLD'S MOST MAJESTIC CATHEDRALS. AROUND HIM WERE SCORES OF CARDINALS, IN RED CAPS AND PALE YELLOW ROBES...AT HIS FEET WERE THOUSANDS OF RAPT SPECTATORS

President Bush sent a written tribute, saluting John Paul's "worldwide efforts to develop a new culture of life that values and protects the lives of innocent children waiting to be born." It was a reference to the pope's opposition to abortion. "POPE JOHN PAUL II HAS SHOWN THE WORLD NOT ONLY THE SPLENDOR OF TRUTH," the president added, "BUT ALSO THE POWER OF TRUTH TO OVERCOME EVIL AND REDIRECT THE COURSE OF HISTORY" (continued)...

How many perished?

House Rejects Pope's Iraq Argument
Tue. Mar 4, 3:22 PM ET Add White House - AP

WASHINGTON - The White House rejected on Tuesday the Vatican's argument that there is no moral justification for a pre-emptive war in Iraq as President Bush prepared to meet with a special envoy sent by Pope John Paul II. The pope has said a war would be a "defeat for humanity" and maintains the conflict would be neither morally nor legally justified. He wants Iraq to be disarmed through methods short of military force.

Asked about that contention, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Tuesday: "Clearly, the fact that Saddam Hussein has violated the United Nations Security Council resolutions means he is not following the legal path that the world has set out to preserve peace."

"And the president thinks the most immoral act of all would be if Saddam Hussein would somehow transfer his weapons to terrorists who could use them against us," Fleischer said. "And so, the president does view the use of force as a matter of legality, as a matter of morality and as a matter of protecting the American people."

Fleischer added that Bush respects the opinions of those who disagree with him and said the president is eager to "find out what the message of the Pope is on this topic." Bush is to meet Wednesday with Cardinal Pio Laghi, a former papal nuncio to the United States, who said he will come bearing the pope's warning on war.

The meeting and Laghi's message pose a tough political problem for Bush, who has aggressively courted Roman Catholic voters after splitting the Catholic vote in 2000 with Democrat Al Gore . Catholics made up a quarter of the 2000 electorate.

...The pope also used his remarks to to revisit the night of his election and the awe that he felt. "How could I, humanly speaking, not tremble?" he said. "HOW COULD SUCH A HUGE RESPONSIBILITY NOT WEIGH ON ME?"

John Paul has won the hearts of many Catholics and alienated many others. HE WAS BOUNDLESSLY ENERGETIC AND VISIONARY IN HIS TRAVELS but staunchly traditional in his interpretation of many church teachings. HE RELISHED THE SPOTLIGHT AND FLOURISHED IN IT, at least until recently. The pope is now stooped and almost completely immobile, and he was transported into St. Peter's Square in a wheelchair. His physical deterioration lent an elegiac air to the event. BUT THROUGHOUT THE DAY, THE POPE CONTINUED TO PONDER THE FUTURE, BOTH HIS OWN AND THE CHURCH'S.

Before the ceremony, he released a 196-page document that offers instruction to Catholic bishops and draws attention to what he casts as an increasingly troubling gulf between developed nations and the developing world, the rich and poor. He frames that divide AS A CHALLENGE THAT CATHOLICS MUST CONFRONT...

"This pope has done so much for peace and dialogue, but also for the unity of the church," said Cardinal Claudio Hummes, the archbishop of Sao Paulo, Brazil. On that last point, many Catholics would disagree. John Paul repeatedly dashed the hopes of progressives who urged the ordination of women as priests and an end to the vow of celibacy for priests. He stood firm in opposition to artificial birth control and civil recognition for same-sex couples. But the focus on Thursday was on the pope's achievements.

Although he seems at long last to be slowing down, he vowed to press on, saying in his sermon that God, "while knowing my human frailty, encourages me to respond with faith...He invites me to assume the responsibilities that he himself has entrusted to me," the pope added. The New York Times.

Despite the fact that God--Heaven and Earth--the Divine Father and Mother Themselves--is not celibate (They are sexually, romantically, tantrically and cosmically in love with each other, and all of Life itself is the fruit of their union), and despite the fact that both John and Paul themselves have already been united with their own spiritual soul mates--the eternal love of their lives--the headlines still read:

POPE'S WISDOM FOR PASTORS: STAY CELIBATE

by Leonard Green and Adam Miller

In a stern message just days before he meets with U.S. cardinals to discuss the clergy sex-abuse scandal, Pope John Paul II yesterday said priests must keep celibate and avoid scandalous behavior..."The value of celibacy as a complete gift of self to the Lord and his church must be carefully safeguarded" the pope told the bishops in his most extensive remarks about the issue since the scandal in America erupted...

The summit will be in one of the more ornate wings of the Vatican, but the historic conclave will be filled with anything but pageantry. There will be a few stately moments--and certainly a few prayers--but after that it's straight to work, Vatican insiders said. "It's not going to a ceremonial thing where the pope reads a speech, and they kiss his ring and leave," said John Allen, author of "Conclave: The Politics, Personalities and Process of the Next Papal Election."...

The cardinals are expected to meet with Vatican officials as a group, but Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston and Edward Cardinal Egan of New York may have private meetings...

 

Please consider:

Chapter 16, The Remnant

The Catholic Mass

The Passion of Christ

 

 

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