THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST
Six Hundred Sixty and Six
666
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man: and his number is Six hundred threescore and six...(Revelation 13:18).
Thou shalt not plant thee a grove of any trees near unto the altar of the Lord thy God, which thou shalt make thee. Neither shalt thou set thee up any Image; which the Lord thy God hateth...(Deuteronomy 16:21,22; Job 4:12-21).
You shall know them by their fruits...(Matthew 7:15-27). (Daniel, chapter 4. KJV).
And he said, I see men as trees walking...And now I see every man clearly...(Mark 8:22-25).
How do we arrive at this calculation of the number Six hundred Sixty and Six? We do so step by step. We must first of all understand the implications of the number Six, and its relationship not only to this text in the book of Revelation but to the other sefiroth, or numbers, on the sacred Oracle. It is this access to the oracles in our time which allows us to arrive at our present conclusions. (Revelation 2:7):
The number Six is situated at the center of the great mandala of the Tree of Life. It represents everything that has been hidden there, and revealed there, since the idea of the Tree of Life itself began to impress itself upon the consciousness of man in the garden of Eden. It first of all represents the moment of Creation, the Navel of Reality. (Please see chapter 1, Part 2)....
It represents that first moment in time and space when a Four-dimensional (Ten-dimensional) universe exploded into existence as the God of Heaven and Earth (the God who is All and fills All), (E=mc2), literally transformed Themselves into all that exists, carrying with Them into the phenomenal world all of the patterns of Divine Thought that have been, and which are still yet informing the mind of Humanity. In the beginning the Torah says...(Genesis 1:1). "We couldn't get over the idea of Ten dimensions" modern physics says.
They (YHVH-Elohim--a Name which also reveals itself in the numerical and historical dimensions of the Tree of Life) descended from world to world (from the Kabbalistic world of Emanation through the descending worlds named Creation and Formation, to the lower world called Action--the world that is apparent to our physical senses). They descended, across eons of time, through all of the great stellar events that led to the eventual formation of this Solar system and its Nine major attending planets. (Look up on a star-filled night. One cannot behold the Heavens above, or any other aspect of the Natural world below, without beholding the Face of God). As the Oracle shapeshifts from form to form we see that the number Six now represents the (familiar astrological symbol of the) planet Earth. It represents the lower, natural world (and the Six cardinal directions that emanate from every central point on earth: North-South, East-West, Above and Below); and along with these every possible spiritual choice the soul may take in its own present journey through the realm of human consciousness, Left-Right, Forward-Backward, Up and Down.
The number Six represents the metaphysical dimensions of our own world, the world into which all Ten Sefiroth descended to create the primal human soul and eventually, in historical time, the mind of Man itself in Their own invisible image. (Genesis 1:26,27)...
In the beginning was the Word...(John 1:1).
The pattern of the Oracle governs and regulates the gates and passageways (the human senses) that lead both in and out between the outside world and the inside world of the individual soul. (Isaiah 61:3). The Oracle is a map of human consciousness.
Thus, just as the Universe was born at the Navel of its own existence so the number Six now also represents the natural earth-born conception of every human child. (1 Corinthians 15:46-49). And as every human child is born into the natural world of its own existence, into the world of its own lower propensities and natural inclinations, so the Scripture says:
I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts...(Ecclesiastes 3:18).
And...Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again...(John 3:7).
Being born again means transcending the natural realm. It ultimately means being able to see into, and through the structural illusions of the lower world, into the hidden dimensions of time and space (Ephesians 3:17-19), gaining access in the process to a glimpse of God's invisible Presence filling up the whole of Reality itself. (The poor and oppressed, those rich in faith, can already sense it. Unlike the intellectuals and worldlings of the religious world, they never ask, "Where is God?" God is as close as one's own thoughts. What ever one is sensing, feeling or seeing is God. The struggle that common people have--the confusion they experience--is with the written word itself, and the way it is being interpreted for us by the false shepherds, the intellectuals and the prophets of Ba'al in our time. Our perceptions are confounded by those (the preachers and the intellects), whose minds are not connected to the Mind of Creation and whose hearts are not connected to the Heart of the Universe). For in Reality nothing exists but God. (God has many Names and many forms. We are dealing here in this letter with Hebrew Names and Hebrew forms).
And then we must perceive the other things that God has been hiding all these thousands of years from those of the natural sort, from the great sons of Darkness (from the Nimrods of the earth and their religious cohorts), those who have been waging war in the earth in the name of God since the time of Adam. Contrary to the spirit of Abel who pursued righteousness and justice, and who put on the garments of complete pacifism after receiving the instructions of Adam (Abel was the original Lamb of God), the spirit of Cain (you know, the one who has the mark...Gen.4:8-16), continued in its fearful, warring ways. Cain did not believe when it was told him that there is only ONE God (this was a new understanding in the earth), and that that One God literally dwells in all things and in every living being. (Romans 13). To continue therefore in a warring state against any other tribe, any people, or any other nation, is to be waging war against the very presence of God itself. Cain was instructed to adjust to this sublime realization, to overcome his fears and to lay down his arms, and to trust God to do likewise. (For this Lord of Heaven and Earth was, and still is, a God of War and a Consuming Fire...Exodus 15:3; Deut.4:24; Heb.12:29)...
The spirit of Cain would not, or rather, could not. God had clouded his mind. (Please consider 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12, KJV). The wickedness of Cain had to come to perfection in the earth. History had to unfold as it has, otherwise we could not have come to the end of this age as we have, witnessing this Darkness in its most perfect and powerful form as we are. The words Let Us create Man in our image, were only just spoken and set in motion at the time. They are not complete yet. We are still be created. God also had to reveal Themselves to the world in the process, so that there would be no mistake afterwards as to how the world should be governed in the future, and in what ways the Lord of Heaven and Earth would rise up again to destroy it if it should ever return to the ways of this age. This Theophany is occurring in the earth at this very moment in time. God is risen up everywhere now, in the sum of every natural and human event, bringing Their own Creation to its just and righteous, and may we add, its terrible conclusion. (There was no other way for them to do it and still create us in Their own image). And besides, the number Seven, a number which transcends the number Six, was already a geometric, and therefore a creative concept in the Mind of God. The whole history of Adam has come to pass in accordance with its design:
The number Seven encompassing the number Six. The number Six still represents those things that have been concealed at the Center from the mind of the natural man.
120 Jubilees around the great Circle from the time of Adam to the present (from the ancient West back to the West again). A Jubilee is 49 years (Lev.25:8). (7 X 7 = 49). (120 X 49 = 5,880 years). There have been 40 Jubilees from the time of Adam to the time of Abraham (the Vedic age), 40 Jubilees from the time of Abraham to the time of Christ, and 40 Jubilees from the time of Christ to our own time.
Thus inside of this Circle of the Adamic age, and the history of Western man, God raised up Seven empires, each succeeding the other, and culminating as they did with the Holy Roman Empire in the center of Europe--again, situated (as we shall see) at the place numbered Six at the center of the Mystery of Christ on the Tree of Life. The world witnessed as the Lord Himself both descended and rose up in all of the events of the First World War and destroyed this empire. (Open the pages of Book of the Prophet Jeremiah on the morning of the 20th century).
"And here is the mind which hath wisdom...There are Seven kings: five are fallen (Egypt, Assyria, the Chaldeans, Persia and Greece), and one is (Rome), and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. (For reasons that are explained in Chapter 11, this "one that must come" is Napoleon who bestrode the Holy Roman Empire at the same time as the American Empire was forming itself across the Sea in the West. Thus the words)...
And the beast that was, and is not (yet), even he is an Eighth, and is of the Seven, and goeth into perdition...(Revelation 17:9-11).
Do not be confused. Do not let intellect get in the way, use it to perceive the Divine in all things. (It is simple Fourth-dimensional reality). We are approaching the center of the Western Mystery. Not only did the Angel of Divine Presence reveal Him and Herself to the world in the mystery of Christ on the Tree of Life (in the great Nonviolent Sacrifice of the Vedas, as the Lamb of God, thus in the image of Abel the true adept in the hidden science...Hebrews 12:13-15; 2 Peter 3:14), but continued at the same time to hide the meaning of all these things from the sons of Darkness in the earth (2 Cor.4:1-7). He is risen up everywhere in the world now exacting judgments against these sons of Darkness. This spirit of Darkness has not only filled the earth with itself since those ancient times, with its own confused and violent state of mind, but it has come to its ultimate state of power here in America, as it is written: Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him? (Revelation 13:4). We have come to the culmination of these historical events. This age is ending and a New Age is being born. (And God is known by the judgments He executes).
Though it was perceived in the Rg Veda and in the Torah, and by the sacred Shamans everywhere throughout the earth, we can now see what was being hidden from the eyes of the sons of Darkness all these centuries? Indeed, since the end of the Atlantean age when the waters (the wars) of Noah's time overflowed the Western world (Revelation 17:15; Dan.9:26; Mth.24:38,39): the countenance of the Great Dragon, Leviathan. It has been lying there at the center of human consciousness (in the center of the Tree of Life, at the place numbered Six) all this time. If Thomas Woodrow Wilson could have seen it in 1917, when he declared war on central Europe, he would have thought differently about leading the American people into that war. And if the American people could have seen it they would not have followed him, or any other of the antichrists of this age, into any of America's wars since that time. (Hebrews 12:13-15). They would have been able to perceive the Presence of God in all of these matters, and would have understood the full implications of the words which say: In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and He shall slay the Dragon that is in the sea. (Isaiah 27:1). With the advent of the world wars in the 20th century the end of the age was approaching. Many in the world sensed it, the great mass of humanity did not. (Matthew, chapter 24):
The Great Dragon, Leviathan. (Job 41; Psalm 74:12-14; Isaiah 27 to 29).
For, behold, the days come, and it shall be when the signs which I have foretold you come to pass, then shall the city which is invisible appear and the land which is concealed be seen, and whosoever is delivered from the predicted evils shall see my wonders....(4 Ezra 7:26,27).
Be ready (therefore) against the Third Day. (Exodus 19:11).
And he said unto me, measure thou the time diligently in itself, and when thou seest part of the signs past which I have told thee before.
Then shalt thou understand that it is the very time wherein the Highest shall 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, even from the beginning.
For like as all that is made in the world hath a beginning and an end, and the end is manifest,
Even so the times also of the Highest have plain beginnings in wonders and powerful works, and endings in effects and signs...(2 Esdras 9:1-6; Ezekiel 12:21-23).
The trumpet sounded at the beginning of the 20th century, and God began to exact this final and most terrible series of judgments against the Western world. (One would think that the most resistance to these things would come from the conservatives, the capitalists and nationalists in the Judeao-Christian world, seeing they are caught now, but we expect it from them. It is the Liberals and intellectuals, however, who hate to hear it. They, almost even more than their counterparts on the Right, want a world devoid of of God's Presence. They too have vested interests in the world as it is. They too like sitting on top of the social order. [Ezekiel 18]. But despite every opinion from the Right or the Left, spiritual reality is at it is, and as it has already come to pass, and as it is presently unfolding. It is for us to open our eyes to the sublime Reality of God's Presence. We ourselves, as sons and daughters of peace, children of unwavering nonviolence, stand ready with the poor and oppressed in the earth to inhabit a coming world--a world in which true freedom, true righteousness, true justice and true love will be the order of the day. (1 Samuel 2:1-10; Luke 1:46-55). In order for that world to appear this world must collapse. We are witnessing the collapse...Matthew 7:22-27).
These judgments began at the time of the First World War, as it is written: And these are the beginning of sorrows. (Matthew 24:8). They began at the very same time that God was also raising up the kingdom of modern Babylon in the West, as it was also written: ...For I will work a work in your days, which you will not believe, though it be told you. (Habakkuk 1:1-17; Acts 13:40,41). This, of course, is the United States of America in the 20th century--the final kingdom of the antichrists (2 Thessalonians 2, 1 John 2:15-20...KJV). In the almost complete absence of any reverence or fear for the Power of God the people blindly followed the leaders of America headlong into the World Wars of the 20th century. Come not up, the scriptures said. (Exodus 19:12). The people went up. The First war led almost immediately to the Second, and the words were fulfilled which said:
For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:
Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.
But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.
But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a Thousand years, and a Thousand years as one day...(2 Peter 3:5-8).
And likewise, all of the events of the Second World War have been leading directly to a Third, as it is written: And when the Thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison. And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the Four quarters of the earth...Revelation 20:7,8). (Please consider Chapter 3 in this work, as well as Revelation, chapter 18). The number One Thousand in the preceding text must not be understood literally, as it is also written: For a Thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:4). The number 1,000 itself represents the mind that is coming to spiritual perfection. It is the cube of the mystery of the Tree of Life (10 X 10 X 10). The number represents the mind that can perceive how the higher City of Jerusalem (the City Above, the Mother of us all...Galatians 4:26), hidden from the eyes of history all these Jubilees of years, is descending once again into the plain of human consciousness in the form of a Cube inside of a Square. (Revelation 21:16).
Revelation 21:1-16.
This is the City that was hidden in the center of the World Mystery, at the place named Beauty and numbered Six on the Sacred Oracle. It represents everything that Thomas Woodrow Wilson could not perceive, and could not understand, when he declared war on Central Europe in the name of Christ in 1917. The mystery of the whereabouts of this city was transferred to Tibet in the time of the early Church and concealed in the myths and legends of Shambalah. (For an understanding of these things please see the chapter entitled Kalachakra in the Addendum to this work). It also represents everything the mind of World Jewry could not understand when it entered into that pact with the nations of the earth--the Balfour Declaration--which allowed it to turn backwards away from the Light, imagining in the great social upheavals and judgments of those times that it was returning to the City of David, when in fact it was abandoning it, just as it did in the centuries leading up to the time of Christ. This was Ephraim Going Backwards. (Please open up the Book of Hosea, or see chapter 10 in this work):
Jesus: The Sun behind the sun...The number of the physical world is Six, the number of the spiritual world is Eight. 600 is the number of Cosmos, (The word K O S M O S in Greek adds up to the number 600), while 800 is the number of the Lord (K Y R I O S) of the Cosmos. Similarly the number of Jesus, 888, the Spiritual Sun, is contrasted with the number 666, that of the physical sun. (Please see the chapter on the Name of Jesus).
In geometry, it is the figure of the Cube which unites the number Six and Eight. That is because the Cube has six sides and eight corners. (Thus it is just a slight shift in consciousness between the mind of Antichrist and the mind of Christ).
God created the world in Six days and rested on the Seventh, which was a Saturday. Christ rose from the dead on a Sunday which, for the early Christians became the Eighth day, symbolizing the new, spiritual creation and the regeneration of time. (By now we should be able to immediately associate this number with the sefira named Majesty, or Hod, on the Tree of Life). The number 8, the ogdoad, symbolizes the new order, and Jesus, 888, was known as the Ogdoad to the early Christian gnostics.
In the illustration on the left (above) a Cube is shown in isometric projection. Six rays emanate from a Seventh, inner point...Viewed from another perspective on the right, we can see that there is more to the other arrangement than meets the eye. Here the Seventh hidden ray is revealed, as is the Eighth point, the hidden Spiritual Sun from which all things flow..
According to the gnostics, most people are asleep and do not realize that there exists a higher, spiritual reality; it is though they see the illustration on the Left, take it at face value, and assume there is nothing more. Through the faculty of gnosis, however, it is possible for the higher reason (logos) to discern the existence of a more inclusive reality--the Sun behind the sun.
The literal-minded, like the proponents of materialism, see the world through the one diagram and see no further; literalism reads the letter of the law but does not grasp its spirit; materialism holds matter to be the only reality, but does not see that it is merely the effects of a higher cause. Those with the spark of gnosis, however, catch an occasional glimpse of the higher pattern--the Universal Logos, the intelligent pattern of order and harmony which informs all existence. Jesus Christ, Sun of God, by David Fideler, p.270.
Deuteronomy 27 to 34. The only thing standing between the people and the knowledge of the Anointed ones in our time is the power and the mesmerizing influences of the American state of mind.
Thomas Woodrow Wilson, being a man of pure intellectual reason, a purely religious man without any conscious connection to the higher spiritual world, had no idea that when he declared war on Central Europe in 1917 (in violation of the teachings of his own professed Master), that he was not only declaring war against God (the very God who was beginning now to judge the world because of its warring ways, because of its ultimate refusal to hear the true prophets and the true saints that He had sent into the world all these centuries, warning them of this very day...please understand Jeremiah, chapter 25 in this light), but that he was also declaring war on the City of Jerusalem itself. He would not, of course, have declared war on that city made of stone below, in Palestine, the one he could see, but God deceived him, and caused him to declare war on the Higher City, the City Above, the one that was hidden completely from his natural mind.
This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst of the nations...(Ezekiel 5:5; Isaiah 29; Matthew 24...KJV).
Thomas said to him, Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like. Jesus said, I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out. (See Isaiah 5).
And he took him and withdrew and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, What did Jesus say to you? Thomas said to them, If I tell you one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me (see Deuteronomy 13:6-10); a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up...(Gospel of Thomas 13).
But Thomas said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of his nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe...(John 20:25; Zechariah 12:8-10; Ephesians 1:17-23).
Beware, Paul said, when this day comes. (Acts 13:38-41; Habakkuk, chapter 1). In the unseeing and unbelieving Thomas Woodrow Wilson God was setting up the Image of the Beast. It was in fulfillment of Nebuchednezzar, the king of Babylon's vision in Daniel, chapter 4. (KJV). In Wilson's time, however, the Image is only Sixty cubits high, as it is written:
Nebuchadnezzar the king made an image of gold, whose height was Sixty cubits, and the breadth Six cubits; he set it up in the Plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon...(Daniel 3:1).
The authors of the Book of Revelation had a deeply intuitive and prophetic sense of the number Sixty. Just as we in our time employ a base-ten mathematical system, the ancient Babylonians employed a base-sixty system. And because some of that system has carried into modern usage, particularly in the way we calculate time, our clocks are designed on the basis of Sixty seconds in a minute, and Sixty minutes in an hour. Thus the number Sixty represents the completion of a circle in time, and particularly the great circle of time that has transpired since the 6th century B.C. when God raised up the warrior kingdom of Babylon in the East, and the 20th century A.D. when God raised up the kingdom of Babylon again in the West.
The Tree grew, and was strong, and the height thereof reached unto heaven (into the East), and the sight thereof to the ends of the earth (the West)...(Daniel 4:11).
The number Sixty does not only project the Image of Nebuchadnezzar's dream from the ancient past into the future, but upwards from the time of Woodrow Wilson into our very own time. For remember, in addition to being a description of an entire world order (an entire geopolitical system of things--the American order of things to be exact), the number 660 and 6 is the number of a man, as it is written: Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his (own) stature? (Matthew 6:27). Sixty years after Woodrow Wilson, the 12th of these kings of Babylon, James Earl Carter, will come to power in the earth.
Therefore will I now beseech the Highest, that he will comfort me unto the end.
And I said, Lord that beareth rule, if I have found grace before thy sight...Comfort me then, and shew me thy servant the interpretation and plain difference of this fearful vision...
And he said unto me, This is the interpretation of the vision:
The Eagle, whom thou sawest come up from the sea, is the kingdom which was seen in the vision of thy brother Daniel. But it was not expounded unto him, therefore now I declare it unto thee.
Behold, the days will come, that there shall rise up a kingdom upon earth, and it shall be feared above all the kingdoms that were before it.
In the same shall Twelve kings reign, one after another...(2 Esdras 6-14) (KJV).
We have added 60 cubits to each of these administrations, for reasons that are clear to every child of Light. Each of these American leaders was under the same historical spell, taken with the same delusions--by the same extraordinary sense of themselves as was Wilson--and driven by the same will-to-force, despite the words which said: But it shall not be so among you. (Matthew 20:25,26).
And then, in light of the words at Daniel 3:1, where it says that Nebuchanezzar the king (Woodrow Wilson) set up the Image on The Plain of Dura in the province of Babylon, we read the following page from a book entitled Miss Lillian and Friends, written by the Carter family about the Carter family:
Set up upon the Plain of Dura in the province of Babylon, when the Image reaches the administration of Jimmy Carter it is 660 cubits high. It is still only Six cubits wide. (Six hundred Sixty and Six). It is the image of the power and majesty of the office of the President of the United States of America, the most powerful office that has ever existed in the history of Western man.
And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the earth...(Revelation 13:8).
In Carter's time the office seemed to suffer a loss of prestige. His seemingly Christian world-view appeared unequal to the conditions that God was creating in the world around him at the time. In a recent book entitled The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter, by Douglas Brinkley, the author said that Jimmy Carter, nevertheless, went on to use his loss of the White House as a stepping-stone to greater global achievement. The Scriptures say that he is a proud and ambitious man (Habakkuk 2:4-6), one who speaks peace with his mouth, while in his heart is not peace but a sword. (Please see the chapter entitled Jimmy Carter in the Addendum to this Commentary). Elected out of office in favor of Ronald Wilson Reagan and George H. W. Bush, both of whom came into office together, the world was prepared for the second phase of this revelation:
And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth (out of the West), and he had Two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.
And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them that dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. (One of the heads of the beast, John Kennedy, was killed, but the beast lived)...(Revelation 13:11,12).
The prophecy in 2 Esdras continues:
Whereof the second shall begin to reign, and shall have more time than any of the twelve...(2 Esdras 12:15).
Thomas Woodrow Wilson set up the Image of the Beast. Ronald Wilson Reagan set it up again.
Thou. O king, sawest, and behold a Great Image. This Great Image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible..
And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed... (Daniel, chapter 2).
__________.
And he deceiveth them that dwell in the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight off the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image of the beast (in their hearts and minds, Ezekiel 8), which had the wound by the sword and did live.
And he had power to give life unto the Image of the beast (the Image at Daniel 2:27-45), that the Image of the beast should both speak, and cause as many as would not worship the Image of the beast should be killed...(Revelation 13:14,15).
Needless to say, this is a prophetic description of American foreign policy in the earth up to, and since the Reagan and Bush administrations. It will soon become a description of America's domestic policy as all the remaining prophecies in the Book of Revelation unfold. In Woodrow Wilson's time the Soviet Union came to power (Rev.6:3,4). In Ronald Wilson Reagan's time the Soviet Union collapsed, releasing all of the conditions in the earth that have led to the world's present economic, political and military situations. There are no other antichrists coming. They are already here. There is no other temple to be built other than the one that God has already built. It is the only temple that God has ever dwelt in:
Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are...(1 Corinthians 3:16,17; Ephesians 2:19-22).
Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God...(2 Thessalonians 2:1-12).
How have these leaders been revealing themselves to be as God? By coming to power in the midst of the people, in the midst of God's temple, and by exercising the power of life and death over other human beings in the Name of Christ. Anyone who takes the life of another person in the name of Christ, no matter what the reason, is an antichrist. Anyone who raises himself up above a nation of antichrists is the antichrist. (Open the book of 1 John and understand its epic, historic, prophetic and present implications). Of the kings of Babylon it is written:
Four shall be kept until their end begin to approach: but Two shall be kept unto the end...(2 Esdras 12:21).
And whereas thou sawest Three heads...this is the interpretation:
In his last days shall the Most High raise up Three kingdoms, and renew many things therein, and they shall have dominion of the earth,
And of those that dwell therein, with much oppression, above all those that were before them: therefore are they called the heads of the Eagle. (continued)...
Jerusalem in the East (the present realm of Islam); Jerusalem in the West, (the realm of Christianity); and the ancient, hidden City of David between them...(Ezekiel 16).
For these are they that shall accomplish his wickedness, and that shall finish his last end.
And whereas thou sawest that the great head appeared no more, it signifieth that one of them (the Austro-Hungarian Empire of Europe) shall die upon his bed, and yet with pain.
For the two that remain (These are the powers of Islam in the East and America in the West) shall be slain with the sword. For the sword of one shall devour the other, but at last shall he fall through the sword himself.
And whereas thou sawest Two feathers under the wings passing over the head that is on the right side;
It signifieth that these are they (the last two kings), whom the Highest hath kept unto their end: this is the small kingdom and full of trouble, as thou sawest...(2 Esdras 12:22-30).
The prophecy in Esdras refers to the United States, over which William Jefferson Clinton and George W. Bush have been presiding. A small kingdom it says. It is a figure of speech, ironic sarcasm if you will, hyperbole, which is not intended to be taken literally. It refers to Zoar, the small place (the place of limited possibilities and an uncertain future), that Lot and his daughters first fled to escape the judgments of God. (Genesis 19:17-24...KJV). Lot eventually understood the prophetic implications of it and got himself out of that place. (Gen.19:30). The text also alludes to the fact that though the kingdom is great--the greatest that has ever existed in the history of humankind--the individuals who rule over it are small--in spiritual stature that is--and to the fact that...
In the time of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever...(Daniel 2:44).
__________
And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.
And I heard another voice from heaven saying, Come out of her my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.
For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
Reward her even as she has rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.
How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.
Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine, and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her...(Revelation 18).
THE NEOCONS AND WOODROW WILSON
By PHILIP GOLD
Sunday, May 11, 2003. I know from neocons. Midge Decter, the movement's grande dame, introduced me to journalism in 1981. She and neocon"godfather" Irving Kristol helped get me the grant for my first book. Throughout the '80s and much of the '90s, while living in Washington, D.C., I worked with neocons, wrote for them, attended their conferences, appeared with them on panels and occasionally drank their whiskey. I still read their stuff and, for the most part, I like them as people. But I also know that, in three critical ways, Joshua Muravchik's description elides some unflattering truths.First, neoconservatism is a multigenerational movement that has never really been conservative or fully accepted by the mainstream, let alone the fringes. At its best, it was a valuable aberration. Today, it's maligned. Second, although the younger neocons, the Boom X generation, are Republicans, THEY DRAW THEIR DEEPEST SPIRITUAL INSPIRATION FROM WOODROW WILSON. That's a dangerous liaison. And third, there's the matter of neocon "influence" -- an issue that, sadly, cannot be divorced from the tawdry subject of anti-Semitism and its present real and/or alleged reinvigoration.
NEOCONSERVATISM, as Muravchik notes, AROSE IN THE 70s AS A REACTION TO THE 60s. IT WAS AT FIRST A NEW YORK PHENOMENON AND MOSTLY, though far from entirely, JEWISH. It reflected the sensibilities of a unique generation of intellectuals, often starting out as the poor children of immigrants, who made the long march from Brooklyn and City College of New York and FDR for some and Trotsky for others, to that literary section of Manhattan where they take their politics and their cocktail parties -- and their book reviews -- very, very seriously. These were people of ideas, always articulate and often brilliant, who'd also known depression, war, discrimination and lives of unrelenting effort. They had struggled and succeeded. They were, in short, full dues-paying members of the Greatest Generation.
And neoconservatism was as much their personal journey, their midlife crisis, as a political movement. Irving Kristol, a founder of "The Public Interest," and Norman Podhoretz, former editor of "Commentary" and author of "Making It," have written movingly of this. THEIR BREAK WITH THE LEFT WAS PAINFUL AND COMPLEX, BOTH A FAREWELL TO THEIR OWN GENERATION AND A REPUDIATION OF THE 1960s NEW LEFT EXCESSES that their former friends' children had wrought. The children they chided for their tantrums and immaturity, the parents for their excessive tolerance and flaccidity in the face of barbarisms both foreign and domestic.
Midge Decter's "Liberal Parents, Radical Children" can still be read with profit here. Indeed, many saw liberalism's greatest failure AS A MATTER OF "WILL" AND "NERVE," two favorite neocon value-words, especially when dealing with communists and kids. AND WHEN THEY TOOK UP RONALD (WILSON) REAGAN, it was his steady anti-communism that they found most attractive. All in all, they were the right people at the right time. THEY HELPED FASHION THE "WILL" AND THE "NERVE" THAT BROUGHT THE SOVIETS DOWN.
Nor are their children lacking in will, certainly not in the chicken hawk sense -- an unfair epithet, but not entirely inapt, APPLIED TO THOSE WHO URGE WAR and pander to bellicosity BUT NEVER SERVED, OR WILL SERVE, THEMSELVES. What they are lacking is their parents' depth and life experiences. And perhaps it is not too much to suggest that the current leadership of the movement shows more than a trace of the arrogance imputed to Boomer and Generation X left radicals, and of the infatuation with their own theories that only those who've never been smacked upside the head by reality (poverty, unfriendly fire, hard bigotry) can indulge.
What theories? Today, the Boomer/Generation X neocons invoke icons of steadfastness such as Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, even Winston Churchill. But neocon writer and former Wall Street Journal editor Max Boot caught it best some months ago WHEN HE DESCRIBED THEIR PREFERRED FOREIGN POLICY AS "HARD WILSONIANISM"-- making the world safe for democracy, THIS TIME WITH THE WILL AND THE NERVE AND THE POWER TO MAKE IT STICK. Whatever else this may be, it is not conservatism, which holds these truths to be self-evident:
History does not begin anew with us. We cannot force people to be free. Evil is real and, therefore, best we take a modest, exceedingly modest, view of our ability to change human nature. And speaking of human nature, power corrupts. It corrupts those who wield it. And it corrupts those who seek to influence those who wield it. WHEN WOODROW WILSON SAILED FOR THE VERSAILLES PEACE CONFERENCE IN 1919, HE TOOK WITH HIM A TRAVELIING THINK TANK KNOWN AS "THE INQUIRY." He exhorted these young intellectuals, some of whom wrote for and most of whom read The New Republic: "TELL ME WHAT'S RIGHT AND I WILL FIGHT FOR IT!"
WE'RE STILL TRYING TO CLEAN UP THE MESS THOSE INTELLECTUALS MADE. And in some ways, from "The New Republic" then to "The Weekly Standard" now, not that much of a change.
Which brings us to the subject of influence. Muravchik is right. Some of President Bush's policies "resemble things advocated by neocons," but "Who knows how Bush decides?" (Does Bush always know?) And anyway, as Midge Decter wisely warned me, influence can never be claimed. It can only be bestowed by those who are influenced. What is bestowed can be taken away. Even the appearance of influence can lead to an unpleasant backlash.
And if you're Jewish, and high-visibility, and associated with controversial policies and perilous actions, if your name is Kristol (Irving or son Bill) or Podhoretz (Norman or son John) or Kagan or Perle or Wolfowitz or Frum, backlash can get ugly. Is this happening? It's hard to say. It's expected that the Arab press would run articles headlined, "PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF NEOCON." It's not surprising when neocons such as David Brooks complain in print about anti-Semitic e-mails and phone messages. It's business-as-usual when segments of the far right and the farther left find themselves accused of bigotry masquerading as anti-Zionism, or anti-neoconism. But it's something else entirely to hear, as I have, military officers speak openly and contemptuously of "the Likudniks in the E-Ring" (Likud being Ariel Sharon's party, the E-Ring the Pentagon corridor where the senior leadership hangs out).
And it's scary to realize that the United States has undertaken to remake the Islamic world in our own image and to our own satisfaction, by military conquest and occupation and the making of examples, in order to encourage the others. And harder still to know that the most prominent advocates of THIS NEW WILSONIAN IMPERIALISM are a small group of public intellectuals with no significant political or cultural base and scant knowledge of the nation beyond the Beltway or the world beyond their abstractions. And it would be tragic, were a movement that did some good once, to be remembered -- mostly for its part in marching the nation toward folly.
THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL...Malachi 4:
The Neo-Cons and the Protocols
The American Military Establishment (And the Church That Supports It)
