The Gnostic World

Matthew 24:15-22; Luke 21:20-24.

"There is no doubt that at first it was held to be a mountain top, and generally identified with Greece's highest mountain top, Mt. Olympus in Thessaly, in the northeast of Greece. But even in the earliest Greek poem, the Iliad,, this idea is beginning to give way to the idea of an Olympus in some mysterious region far above all the mountains of the earth. In one passage of the Iliad, Zeus talks to the gods from 'the topmost peak of many-ridged Olympus,' clearly a mountain. But only a little further on he says that if he willed he could hang Earth and Sea from the pinnacle of Olympus,' clearly no longer a mountain. Even so, it is not heaven. Homer makes Poseidon say that he rules the sea, Hades the dead, Zeus the heavens, but Olympus is common to all three.

Wherever it was, the entrance to it was a great gate of Clouds kept by the Seasons...It was an abode of perfect blessedness. No wind, Homer says, ever shakes the untroubled peace of Olympus, (see John 14:27); no rain ever falls there or snow, but the cloudless firmament stretches around it on all sides and the white glory of sunshine is diffused upon its walls." Mythology, by Edith Hamilton, p. 25.

If one strikes a line from Athens through Mt. Olympus in Thessaly they will arrive again at that place in the center of Europe, at the Navel of the Earth, and the place named Beauty on the Tree of Life. It is that place in the Mind of Reality itself which literally separates Jerusalem from Athens. Or to put it another way: the mind of the higher Israel from the mind of Egypt. (Exodus, chapter 19 is a prophetic description of the events that emanated into the world from this place in the center of Europe in the 20th century).

We are told that when the Romans came up into that place in the first century B.C. they found a temple on Fraunberg, the Woman's Mountain, in Austria, dedicated to Norea. The translator of the Gnostic text, The Reality of the Rulers, interprets her name Orea from the Greek "Horaia," meaning Beautiful, or Beauty, a varient form of Norea. (The Gnostic Scriptures, by Bentley Layton, p.73):

"Thy great name of thine is upon me, O self-begotten perfect One, who is not outside me. I see thee, O thou who art visible to everyone. For who will be able to comprehend thee in another tongue? Now that I have known thee, I have mixed myself with the immutable. I have armed myself with the armour of light. I have become light. Because the Mother was at that place because of the splendid Beauty of grace. Therefore I have stretched out my hands while they were folded. I was shaped in a circle of the riches of the light which is in my bosom...

This is the book which the great Seth wrote, and placed in high mountains on which the sun (the light of common reason) has not risen, nor is it possible. And since the days of the prophets, and the apostles, and the preachers, the name has not risen upon their hearts, nor is it possible. And the ear hath not heard it." The Gospel of the Egyptians 66-68.

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"It is Norea who cries out to them. They heard, and they received her into her place forever. They gave it to her in the name of the Father of Nous (Fire)...And she began to speak with words of Life, and she remained in the presence of the Exalted One, possesssing that which she received before the world came into being. She has the great mind of the Invisible One...

There will be days when she will behold the Pleroma (the All), and she will not be in deficiency, for she has the Four holy helpers who intercede on her behalf with the Father of all Adamas. He it is who is within all the Adams, possessing the thought of Norea who speaks concerning the Two Names (YHVH-Elohim) which create a Single name." The Thought of Norea, The Nag Hammadi Library.

We have learned of old Chronus's flight to Italy after the overthrow and collapse of the ancient Atlantean order. He was deposed by the newly emerging Olympian gods, who have also employed the aid of certain of the old Titans, or Giants (Genesis 6:4). Among these were the One-eyed Cyclops. (Can anyone recognize Old Kether here, the Ancient of Days)? The legend must have served to assure Rome that it was indeed the repository of the mysteries of ancient times--The true Eternal City. Others, however, said that Chronus, or Saturn, fled to the West. And this is true because when Aeneas and his band landed on the Western shore of the Italian peninsular they also thought that they had landed on the Western shores of the World-mystery itself--on the shores of Eden:

HESPERIA...The land of the Evening or the Western land; the name for Italy. The Aeneid, Book I.748.

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HESPIRIDES...nymphs, daughters of Hesperus, the Evening Star. They kept the garden in the West where the golden apples, guarded by the Dragon grew. From the Glossary to TheAeneid.

Saturn (Saturday) flees to the far-off I'tal-y...to the West

"There is a place the Greeks have named Hesperia--an ancient land with strong arms and fat soil. The men who lived there were Oenotrians: but now it is said that their descendants call the country Italy after their leader." The Aeneid, III.205-25.

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"Our prows were pointed there when suddenly, rising upon the surge, stormy Orion drove us against THE BLIND SHOALS; and insolent South winds then scattered us, undone by brine, across the crushing sea, and pathless rocks, a few of us have drifted to your shore." Book I.747-757.

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"Aeneas, goddess-born--since you must surely have crossed the seas beneath high auspices--so does the king of gods allot the fates, revolving every happening, this is the Circling order; few things out of many I shall unfold in words, that you may find the waters friendly and the crossing tranquil and reach the harbor of Ausonia.

The fates will not let Helenus know more; Saturnian Juno will not let me speak. But first, THE ITALY THAT YOU NOW THINK CLOSE--preparing, in your ignorance to rush into its nearby harbors--IS FAR OFF; a long and pathless way through spacious lands divides you from her. For your oars must bend beneath the waters of Trinarcia, your ships must cross Ausonia's salt sea, and you must pass the lakes below the earth, and then the island of Aeaean Circe (Circle) before you find safe ground to build your city.

I give you a sign: hold them fast in your mind. For when in your perplexity, you find beside THE WATERS OF THE SECRET STREAM, along the banks beneath the branching (Tree).... a huge White Sow...with a new-delivered litter of THIRTY suckling pigs...that place will be the site set for your now city." Book III.484-515.

What we have in the legend of Saturn's flight to Italy (the original I'tal-y in the West) is an account of the arrival of the adepts of the Adamic revelation in Central Europe toward the end of the Atlantean age. The Book of Genesis recalls the end of this age in the 1600 years that transpired between the times of Adam and Noah--the Ten Ancient Worthies (4000 - 2400 B.C.). The old, Atlantean age was sinking--not only into the myst of human recollection, but beneath successive waves of tribal warfare. (The tribes, of course, have grown over time into nations and empires...Daniel 9:26; Matthew 24:6-8)...

The next age was emerging--A Vedic age in the East and a Dynastic age of pyramid builders in Egypt. The archetypal structure and the design of the Tree of Life were beginning to inform and connect the various peoples and cultures of the earth. These adepts in the emerging Adamic religion made their alliances with all that was true, overcame all that was untrue, and in so doing began to supplant the old world views with a higher or more developed (monotheistic) sense of the mystery of God's Presence in the natural order. Time (Old Chronus) was not devouring all of his children. There was meaning to it all, and a divine plan was unfolding. Thus possessing now, for the first time in human history, a gift of prophecy, they began to commit to the treasuries of Time itself (away from the minds of the sons of Darkness) all that was to come to pass at the end of the age...

"O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are all children, and there is no such thing as an old Greek. 'What do you mean by that?' inquired Solon. 'You are all young in mind,' came the reply: 'you have no belief rooted in the old tradition, and no knowledge hoary with age. And the reason is this. There have been and will be many different calamities to destroy mankind, the greatest of them by fire and water, lesser ones by countless other means. Your own story of how Phaethon, child of the sun, harnessed his father's chariot, but was unable to guide it along his father's course and so burnt up things on the earth and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt, is a mythical version of the truth that there is at long intervals a variation in the course of heavenly and a consequent widespread destruction by fire of things on the earth…

Our records tell how your city checked a great power which arrogantly advanced from its base in the Atlantic ocean to attack the cities of Europe and Asia. For in those days the Atlantic was navigable. There was an island (a continent), opposite the strait which you call (so you say) the Pillars of Hercules, an island larger than Libya and Asia combined; from it travellers in those days could reach the other islands, and from them the whole opposite continent which surrounds what can truly be called the ocean. For the sea within the strait we are talking about is like a lake with a narrow entrance; the outer ocean is the real ocean and the land which entirely surrounds it is properly termed continent.

On this island of Atlantis had risen a powerful and remarkable dynasty of kings, who ruled the whole island, and many other islands as well and parts of the continent; in addition it controlled within the strait, Libya (Africa) up to the borders of Egypt and Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This dynasty, gathering its whole power together, attempted to enslave at a single stroke, your country and ours and all the territory within the strait… At a later time there was earthquakes and floods of extraordinary violence, and in a single dreadful day and night all your fighting men were swallowed up by the earth, and the island of Atlantis was similarly swallowed up by the sea and vanished; this is why the sea in that area is to this day impassable to navigation, which is hindered by mud just below the surface, the remains of a sunken island." (see Job 41:30). The Timaeus, Plato

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Also recall: there was no written law at this time, so every thing was fluid, and the prophecies (the myths as it were) were still taking shape. The Upanishads and Vedas were in their formative stages, and the School of Thought that would eventually provide the Hebrew stories and archetypes that we discover in the Torah was not fully established yet; and would not be until the Oracles returned to the Center of Europe in both the time of Abraham and Sara (Brahma and Sarasvati) and again after the time of Moses.

We know from history that Pythagorus, among his many travels, went up into Central Europe to study the mysteries. Thus Josephus says of him:

"Pythagorus lived in very ancient times, and was esteemed a person superior to all other philosophers in wisdom and piety toward God. Now it is plain that he did not only know our doctrines, but was in very great measure a follower and admirer of them." Against Apion I.22.

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"Fragment one reveals that Eupolemus wrote for men who were exposed to a fair amount of Hellenic education. There is little doubt that in calling Moses the first wise man Eupolemus expected his readers to have been aquainted with the Hellenic lore relating to the famous Seven Wise Men of Greece. The Seven Wise Men, according to popular accounts, antedated the philosophers; the term philosophia, supposedly invented by Pythagorus was intended to contrast with wisdom, since, 'No one is wise save God.' In oriental tradition the wise men evoked an image of a royal advisor...But the Seven Wise Men of Greece...were regarded as Pillars of Civilization. They were the philosophers before philosophy was discovered...Eupolemus's claim that Moses was the 'first wise man' must be understood in the Greek sense, making him older than the 'Seven Wise Men' who flourished in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C...Moses was the father of culture and civilization." The Hellenized Moses, Jewish and Pagan, by Ben Zion Wacholder.

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"Aristobulus taught a good many surprising things. Two hundred years before Philo, if we may accept with Schurer the traditional date, Jews had begun to transform their Jewish doctrines of Wisdom into the mystical doctrine of Sophia as the Light-Stream. They had turned to philosophy, especially to Plato and Pythagorean numerology, and justified themselves in retaining their Jewish loyalty by insisting that an allegorical reading of the Scriptures showed that Moses was the true source of all Greek philosophical lore. They had also turned to the mysteries and regarded salvation as an escape from the lower tendencies of the soul in a higher Gnosis through Logos." By Light Light, The Mystery in Non-Philonic Writings.

Pythagorus went down to Egypt as well, following the path, not only of all the spiritual adepts before him but the course of the Heavenly Nile that also anciently flowed down from the center of this Mystery-above (on its way from Eden in the West) into that land below. Herodotus, the Father of History, says of his own sojourn in Egypt:

YHShWH...()

"These were the real facts I learned at Memphis from the priests of Hephaestus...And I even went to Heliopolis (The city of the Sun) and Thebes. The Heliopolitans have the reputation of being the best skilled in history of all Egyptians. What they told me concerning their religion is not my intention to repeat, except the names of their deities, which I believe all men know equally. If I reveal anything else concerning those matters, it will only be when complled to do so by the course of my narrative...

And they told me that the first man who ruled over Egypt was Men, and that in his time all Egypt below Lake Moeris was below water...THIS IS A DISTANCE OF SEVEN DAYS SAIL FROM THE SEA UP RIVER.'" Book II.3,4.

"(In another) precinct of Athene at Sais, is the burial-place OF ONE WHOM I THINK IT NOT RIGHT TO MENTION IN SUCH A CONNECTION. It stands behind the Temple, against the back wall, which it entirely covers. There are also some large stone obelisks in the enclosure, and there is a lake near them, adorned with an edging of stone. In form it is circular, and in size, as it seemed to me, about equal to the lake at Delos called 'the Hoop.'

On this lake it is that the Egyptians by night (emulate) HIS SUFFERINGS WHOSE NAME I REFRAIN FROM MENTIONING, and this representation they call their Mysteries. (See the chapter on the Holy Name). I know well the whole course of the proceedings in these ceremonies, but they shall not pass my lips. So too with regard to the mysteries of Demeter, which the Greeks term 'the Thesmorphoria.' I know them, but I shall not mention them, except so far as may be done without impiety. The Daughters of Danaus (Dan, of Israel) brought these rites from Egypt, and taught them to the Pelasgic women of the Peloponnese." Book II.170, 71.

In his review of The Moses Mystery, The African Origins of the Jewish People, by Gary Greenberg, Eric J. Greenberg writes:

MOSES: THINK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN...When the Hebrews landed at Mount Sinai to receive the law from Moses, as celebrated this week during Shavuot, what they were really getting was a scaled-down version of Egyptian principles, written in Egyptian. And Moses was really the chief priest of the controversial pharaoh, Akhenaten, who believed in monotheism. So argues Gary Greenberg...

Greenberg, president of the Biblical Archaeology Society of New York, claims that the Genesis stories of the patriarchs are modified Egyptian myths altered by Moses, a member of the Egyptian royal line who was forced to flee the land after losing a power struggle to Ramses I. The real Exodus, Greenberg writes, comes when Moses and his allies are allowed to leave Egypt to avoid a civil war.

Calling himself an amateur detective, Greenberg also maintains that the 12 Tribes never existed, and that the story of Jacob and Esau are rewrites by Moses of the Egyptian myth about Horus and Set.

Lawrence Schiffman, a professor of Hebrew Studies at New York University, calls Greenberg's theories speculation that rehashes already discredited arguements made by Sigmund Freud 50 years ago...

"I fall in between the mainstream and the minimalists," says Greenberg, referring to a new controversial group of Bible scholars who deny the existence of Israel from Genesis through the monarchy period.

Greenberg, says he has had a lifelong interest in the relationship between history and mythology. He believes that Moses did give his followers a set of rules in the wilderness and that his most significant contribution is his "invention of political liberty," Greenberg says.

"It is the first time in history," he says, "you have a clear principle that the rights of the individual are superior to the state." Eric J. Greenberg.

We have here a classic instance in which we must learn, as Paul says, to rightly divide the word of God. That is, we must learn how to rightly separate history from myth in order to see how both are intricate to the Exodus story. It will be easier when the epic itself is complete, when the Exodus story comes to its historic fulfillment. And this can only occur at one place on earth, here in America. (Genesis 15:12-16). That these mysteries were brought out of Eden via Europe, to that place named Egypt in the East in ancient times, and then carried back to the West again in the Mystery of Christ can be gleened not only from the Circular structure of history itself, but from such written works in the Nag Hammadi Collection as the Gospel of the Egyptians, and the Books of the Great Seth, and in the histories of Josephus that compliment them:

"Now Adam, who was the first 'man,' and made out of the earth, was solicitous for posterity, and had a vehement desire for children, he being two hundred and thirty years old; after which time he lived another seven hundred, and then died. He indeed had many other children, but seth in particular...

Now this Seth, when he was brought up, and came to those years in which he could discern what was good, became a virtuous man...so did he leave chidren behind him which imitated his virtues. All these proved to be of good dispositions. They also inhabited the same country without dissentions...They were also the inventors of that peculiar sort of wisdom which is concerned with heavenly bodies, and their order...

Job 38:31-33; Psalm 147:4; Jeremiah 31:35,36.

And that their inventions might not be lost before they were sufficiently known, upon Adam's prediction that the world was to be destroyed at one time by the force of fire, and another time by the violence and quantity of water, they made Two Pillars, the one of brick, the other of stone: they inscribed their discoveries on them both, that in case the pillar of brick should be destroyed by the flood, the pillar of stone might remain, and exhibit those discoveries to mankind; and also inform them that there was another pillar of brick erected by them. Now this remains in the land of Siriad to this day." Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews, Book I.II.3.

William Whiston, an editor of The Complete Works of Josephus into English, again, takes Josephus to task--again, not realizing that Josephus is an initiate into the the world-mystery and that he is hiding as much in his narratives as he reveals, says:

"Of Josephus's mistake here, when he took Seth the son of Adam for Seth, or Sesostris, king of Egypt...Although the main of this relation might be true, and Adam might fortell a conflagration and a deluge, which all antiquity witnesses to be an ancient tradition; nay, Seth's posterity might engrave their inventions on two such pillars, yet it is in no way credible that they should have survived the deluge, which has buried all such pillars and edifaces far underground, in the sediments of its waters; especially since the like pillars of the Egyptian Seth or Sesostris were extant after the flood."

Whiston is among those who believe in a literal universal deluge, and cannot see with the prophets that the flood story speaks of the wars that overflowed Atlantean civilzation in those ancient times (see Revelation 17:15), as it is also written: But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the son of man be. (Matthew 24:37). Neither does Whiston know anything of the higher dimensions of Egypt, how they extend on the Tree of LIFE from their lower regions in the West to their upper regions in the East...From the rivers of Eden to the headwaters of the Nile, and back again.

Nile: The Celestial Stream

"'Egypt is the image of the skies,' writes Lucie Lamie, 'where the divine beings sail 'the waters on high,'' and so the Nile has a heavenly as well as earthly source…Its periodic rise and fall are associated with the myth of Osiris, divine principle of perpetual return, death and rebirth, as symbolized by the annual cycle of vegetation… In Roman times the Nile was itself called 'the Year.' As one scholar notes, 'This conception not only reflects the rather precise annual recurrence of the flood, but also sought to relate it to the magical powers of Time." Seeing that the Egyptians saw the Nile as "the exact counterpart of heaven" and "the year incarnate,' it is only appropriate that the Nile, spelled as it was in ancient Greek, totals 365, the number of days in the year…"

NILE = 365

"The heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog Star, was extremely important to the Egyptians. During one period in their history, the heliacal rising of Sirius occurred at the same time as the Summer solstice and, by coincidence, at the same time as the Nile inundation.

The time is late spring in ancient Egypt. Sirius has risen in the East, across the Nile from the pyramids; but the Sun is already up. Sirius, therefore, cannot be seen when it rises.

The motion of the Earth in its orbit (around the Sun) makes the Sun appear to move East with respect to the stars. A few weeks before the Summer solstice the Sun rises when Sirius rises, but the glare of the dawn is still too bright to allow Sirius to be seen.

Finally the sun has moved far enough to the East of Sirius to permit Sirius to be seen for the first time this year in the pre-dawn sky. By coincidence it is the Summer solstice. This heliacal rising of Sirius roughly coincides with the flooding of the Nile, and for the Egyptians this association of Star, River, and Summer solstice was of great importance." In Search of Ancient Astronomies, by E. C. Krupp, p.32-35.

Akhnaton Intones New Hymns to Aton, the One God.

Thou makest the Nile in the Nether World (the Lower realm of the West),

Thou bringest it as thou desirest,

To preserve alive the people of Egypt.

For thou hast made them for Thyself,

Thou Lord of them all, who weariest Thyself for them.

All the distant highland countries,

Thou makest also their life, Thou didst set the Nile in the sky.

When it falleth for them,

It maketh waves upon the mountains,

Like the great green sea,

Watering their fields in their towns.

 

How benevolent are Thy designs, O Lord of eternity!

There is a Nile in the sky for the strangers And for the antelopes of all the highlands that go about on their feet.

But the Nile, it cometh from the Nether World for Egypt.

 

Thou didst make the distant sky in order to rise therein,

In order to behold all that Thou hast made,

While Thou wast still alone

Shiining in Thy form, as living Aton,

Dawning and glittering, going afar and returning...

All eyes see Thee before them,

For Thou art Aton of the Day over the earth.

REVELATION TO THE KING

There is none other that knoweth Thee

Save Thy son Akhnaton.

Thou hast made him wise

In thy designs and in Thy might. Translated by James H. Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience.

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And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds...(Acts 7:20-22).

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"Dost thou speak of statues, Thrice Majestic? Yes, of statues, Asclepios…of what else shall I speak but of the statues, so full of life, of feeling, the prophetic statues which predict the future by bestowing dreams and bt all manner of other ways…Are thou not aware O Asclepios, THAT EGYPT IS THE IMAGE OF HEAVEN, OR RATHER THAT IT IS THE PROJECTION BELOW OF THE ORDER OF THINGS ABOVE?If the truth must be known, this land is indeed the Temple of the world.

Nevertheless, since sages ought to forsee all things, there is one thing thou must know: a time will come when it will seem that the Egyptians have adored the gods so piously in vain, and that all their holy invocations have been barren and unheeded. Divinity will quit the earth and return to heaven, forsaking Egypt, its ancient abode.

Then this earth, hallowed by so many shrines and temples, will be filled with sepulchres and with the dead. O Egypt! There will remain of thy religion only vague legends which posterity will refuse to believe…But yet sadder things will come to pass. Egypt will fall into apostasy, the worst of all evils. Egypt, once the holy land beloved of the gods and full of devotion will become an instrument of perversion, the school of impiety, the type of all violence. Then filled with disgust for everything, a man will no longer feel either admiration or love for the world. He will turn away from the beautiful work, the most perfect alike in the present, the past, and the future. Nor will the langour and weariness of souls permit anything to remain save the disdain for the whole universe, this immutable work of God, this glorious and perfect ediface, this manifold synthesis of forms and images, wherein the will of the Lord has united all things in a harmonious and single whole, worthy forever of veneration, of praise and love. Then darkness will be preferred before light, and death will be deemed better than life, nor will men lift up their eyes to heaven.

In those days religious men will be thought mad; the impious men will be hailed as sages; savage men will be deemed valient, and the evil-hearted will be applauded as the best of men…

And thus God is above the summit of heaven, yet everywhere present and beholding all things. For beyond the heavens is a sphere without stars, transcending all corporate things…And to those whom it will be given to dominate the earth shall be sent forth and established AT THE EXTREMITY OF EGYPT, IN A CITY BUILT TOWARD THE WEST, whither by sea and by land, shall flow all the race of mortals." The Hermetic Works, The Virgin of the World, translated by Dr. Anna Kingsford, pp.71-77.

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"The Western hills being especially appropriated to tombs in all places where pyramids were built will account for these monuments being on that side of the Nile. The abode of the Dead was supposed to be in the West, the land of Darkness where the Sun ended his course." (see Ezekiel 37). Book II of Herodotus, note 249, p.215.

Had Whiston access to the concepts of 20th century cosmology (which all of the ancient seers and prophets did), and learned how the entire universe appeared from a single event, or single point in time and space, he could have understood how the Mystery of God (the Revelation to Adam), also emanated into the world from a common center. He would have been able to see how this place at the center of the World Tree was likened in the mind of the adepts as the Summer Solstice over the land of Egypt; and that the great Pyramid is a reflection in stone of this higher mystery. He would have seen how just as every individual soul is conceived at the navel of its own existence and grows in two directions--downwards and upwards--so the ancient figure of Adam also descended across the Dark Atlantic to the West (towards those events that are told in the Book of Genesis, and characterized in the story of the 'fall" of man); and then ascended again into the East (toward the rising of the Sun). Thus Whiston would have been able to understand how this higher Egypt (which spans the earth from West to East and back again) was the base upon which God was constructing the entire Western mystery; and how if there was a king in ancient Egypt named Seth, or Sesostris, it was because there was a king (or the spirit of a king) in ancient America named Seth. This spirit of Seth will be found in all the children of the Universal Israel--as the prophecies are fulfilled, after those who are like Cain are finished killing those who are like Abel, as it is written: Then men began (again) to call upon the name of the Lord. (Genesis 4:25,26). This killing, as the entire world can now attest, has been going on since the time of Christ itself:

But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:

Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory...(1 Corinthians 2:5-8).

And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the Great City, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified...(Revelation 11:8).