THOMAS THE CONTENDER

 

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 with the bubbling spring which I have measured out.

And he took him and withdrew, and told him Three things (Woe to Jerusalem, Woe in the East, Woe in the North, Woe in the West). When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, What did Jesus say unto you?

Thomas said to them, If I tell one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me (see Deuteronomy 13:1-10), and when you do a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up...(The Gospel of Thomas 13).

The secret words that the Savior spoke to Judas Thomas which I, Mathaias, wrote down, while I was walking, listening to them speak with one another.

The Savior said, Brother Thomas, while you have time in the world listen to me, and I will reveal to you things that you have pondered in your mind.

Now since it has been said that you are my twin and true companion, examine yourself and learn who you are, in what way you exist, and how you will come to be. Since you will be called my brother it is not fitting that you be ignorant of yourself. And I know that you have understood, because you have already understood that I am the knowledge of the Truth. So while you accompany me, although you are uncomprehending, you have already come to know, and you will be called the one who knows himself. For he who has not known himself has known nothing, but he who has known himself has at the same time received knowledge about the depth of all. So, then, you, my brother Thomas, have beheld what is obscure to men, that is, what they ignorantly stumble against.

Now Thomas said to the Lord, Therefore I beg you to tell me what I ask of you before your ascension, and when I hear from you about the hidden things, then I can speak about them. And it is obvious to me that the truth is difficult to perform before men.

The Savior answered, saying, If the things that are visible to you are obscure to you, how can you hear about the things that are not visible? If the deeds of truth that are visible in the world are difficult for you to perform, how indeed shall you perform those that pertain to the exalted Height and to the Pleroma (the Fulness) which are not visible? And how shall you be called laborers? In this respect you are apprentices, and have not yet received the Height of Perfection.

Now Thomas answered, and said, Tell us about these things that you say are invisible, but are hidden from us?

The Savior said...visible bodies survive by devouring creatures similar to them with the result that the body changes. Now that which changes will decay and perish, and has no hope of life from then on, SINCE THAT BODY IS BESTIAL. So just as the body of THE BEAST perishes, so will all these formations (such as nations and empires) perish also.

And Thomas answered, Therefore I say unto you, Lord, that those who speak about things that are invisible and difficult to explain are like those who shoot their arrows at a target by night. To be sure they shoot their arrows as anyone would--since they shoot at the target--but it is not visible. Yet when the light comes forth and hides (puts aside) the darkness, then the work of each will appear. And you, Your Light, enlighten, O Lord.

Jesus said, It is in the Light (of reality itself) that light exists.

Thomas spoke, saying, Lord, why does this visible light (the Sun) that shines on behalf of men rise and set?

The Savior said, O blessed Thomas, of course this visible light shines on your behalf--not in order that you remain here, but rather that you might come forth--and whenever the elect abandons bestiality (not sexuality as some in the church would have it), then this light will withdraw up to its essence, and its essence will welcome it, since it is a Good Servant...(The Book of Thomas the Contender, the Nag Hammadi Library).

 

I saw a Beast rise up out of the Sea. Revelation 13; Acts 13:40,41; Habakkuk, chapter 1.

Thomas the Contender...My Servant Nebuchadnezzar. (Jeremiah 25:9)...Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils; ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and the table of devils. Do we provoke the Lord...are we stronger than He?...(1 Corinthians 10:21-22).

A PROFILE OF AN ANTICHRIST

"WOODROW WILSON was a great war leader and crusader for world peace who insisted that the United States must share responsibility for maintaining international stability. In his first term he brought to fruition a basic program of progressive reform the New Freedom. In his second term he mobilized the manpower and industrial might of the United States, which helped bring an Allied victory in the war to make the world "safe for democracy."

Wilson sought to implement that ideal through the League of Nations, but the Senate blocked the entrance of the United States into the league and frustrated his dream.

Perhaps because his earliest memories were of the Civil War, Wilson's most earnest hope was for permanent peace. He was born in Staunton, Virginia, in 1856, the son of a Presbyterian minister who during the Civil War had a church in Augusta, Georgia, and during Reconstruction taught theology in charred Columbia, South Carolina...

Wilson was raised in the traditions of the South; he was proud the Confederates had fought, but was glad the Union survived.

"A NOTICEABLE MAN" ENTERS POLITICS

After being graduated from Princeton...and attending the University of Virginia Law School, Wilson practiced law in Atlanta. But finding law practice uncongenial, he subsequently earned a Ph.D at the John Hopkins University and began an academic career. His hope, as he told his future wife, Ellen Louise Axson, was to move on to statesmanship." From a Popular Series on the American Presidents.

WOODROW WILSON AND THE NEW FREEDOM

"This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster not the forces of the party, but the forces of humanity...I summons all honest men, all patriotic, all forward looking men to my side. God helping me I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me." Inaugural Address, 1913.

Wilson was not only born a Southern Democrat, but he developed into a Democrat steeped in the ultra-liberal Jeffersonian tradition. Like Jefferson...he had a strong faith in the judgment of the masses, if they were properly informed. (Thus the words: And they worshipped the dragon--the collective lower consciousness of man--which gave its power unto the Beast...Rev.12).

The son of a Presbyterian minister, Wilson was reared in an atmosphere of extreme piety. He believed devoutly in the power of prayer and in the presence of a personal God. (See Daniel 4:34-37)...At heart a clergyman, he later used the presidential pulpit to preach his inspirational public sermons.

Wilson was not only a born reformer but an idealist who could radiate righteous indignation. Moved by a stern sense of duty when he saw wrongdoing, he would become "angry for the right." As an earnest Christian who habitually read his Bible and prayed in the bosom of his family, he hated war so much that he became at heart a pacifist. Such tendencies were reinforced by his boyhood years in Yankee-gutted Georgia.

THE WAR TO END WAR, 1917 - 1918

Idealism Enthroned

The man and the hour providentially met. The lover of peace, as fate would have it, emerged as a magnificent leader of war. Flourishing the sword of righteousness, he aroused, almost hypnotized, the nation with his inspirational ideals.

Wilson's burning idealism led him instinctively to the right course. Radiating the spiritual fervor of his Presbyterian forbears, he proclaimed the twin goals of "a war to end war," and a crusade "to make the world safe for democracy."

This war, unlike most of its predecessors, was fought with a high degree of unity and enthusiasm. At the outset there existed considerable confusion, and even downright opposition, especially among the German community of the Middle West. But Wilson, holding aloft the torch of idealism, mobilized public emotion into an almost frenzied outburst. "Force, force to the utmost" he cried, while the country responded less elegantly with "Hang the Kaiser."

The entire nation, catching the spirit of a religious revival, burst into song "Over there...send the word...that the Yanks are coming. The drums rum-tumming everywhere."

With flaming phrases Wilson declared for a just, permanent, open peace...And everywhere across the world candles burned before poster portraits of the revered American prophet. From an American History Textbook.

HURRAY FOR PEACE! HURRAY FOR WAR!

"The Baha'is, a religious sect founded by a Persian mystic, believed that Isaiah of the Bible was talking about President Woodrow Wilson when he prophesied: 'For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and his name shall be called...the Prince of Peace'... The war meant something almost as dramatic to many who took themselves to be ordinary Christians. This has been 'Christ's war,' commented the Los Angeles Times. 'Christ on one side, and all that stood opposed to Christ on the other side,'

At seven in the morning...factory whistles blew and church bells rang in every hamlet and city in the country. State officials sat expectantly at long tables ready to hand out green draft cards to anyone who lined up to register his name, address and age. This was the test day, the moment of truth for the government's war policy...By noon apprehension among the state officials turned to rejoicing. The young men of the country were indeed turning out...

There was little trouble anywhere, and it was easily put down wherever it occurred. The newspapers reported that in Racine, Wisconsin: John Robush, employed at the J.I. Case Tin Company was forced to kiss the American flag by 300 of his fellow employees after he declared that he would not register and would not fight for the United States. The man was made to crawl on his knees to the flag which had been spread upon the floor and after kissing it compelled to salute.

In Flagstaff, Arizona: Navaho Indians drove an Indian agent and other Federal officers off the government reservation...The Federal officers were afraid the Indians would go on the warpath if further attempts were made to register them.

At the same time Ute Indians of Colorado refused to register under the Selective Service Act and spent most of the day dancing war and 'bear' dances in native costumes.

In other parts of the country, scattered groups of conscientious objectors who refused to register for the draft were quietly put in jail...

At Wilson's urging, the United States...passed a law that threatened a 20-year jail sentence to anyone who 'shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States...Thousands of people were sent to jail for their antiwar speeches and writings, and thousands more were frightened into silence.

When the Reverend Clarance Waldron told his Vermont Bible class that 'a Christian can take no part in the war,' he was sentenced to 15 years in the Atlanta penitentiary.

The day before Wilson was expected to deliver his message to congress, the Reverend John Haynes Holmes, the pacifist minister of a church in New York, stood in the pulpit and told a stunned congregation: 'War is an open violation of Christianity. If war is right then Christianity is wrong, false, a lie. If Christianity is right then war is wrong, false, a lie...When or if the system of conscription is adopted, I shall have to decline to serve. If this means a fine, I will pay my fine. If this means persecution, I will carry my cross. No order of President, no law of nation or state, no loss of reputation, freedom or life, will persuade me or force me to this business of killing.'...

Such stories of true spiritual conviction, bravery and self-sacrifice go on and on, from the First World War to the present. They can and will fill volumes. Pacifists, religious and non-religious alike, stood side by side in a cause that was not only unpopular but dangerous to uphold. One young man named Ernest Meyer wrote from his prison cell:

'I wish that we war objectors were not the miserable handful that we are, but a clamoring host, so that word of our existence would travel on the wind to all corners, and men everywhere would spike their guns and refuse longer to serve the warrior-imperialists who have betrayed them. We are so few now. But late, in the next war--for more will come, be sure of it--our ranks may be formidable...our folded arms all powerful.'

For one fleeting moment, Ernest Meyer forgot about his loneliness and boredom as he contemplated a distant future when thousands of young idealists like himself would act as he believed real patriots should act and refuse to bear arms." Hooray For Peace, Hooray For War, by Steven Jantzen.

THOMAS WOODROW WILSON

A Psychological Study

by Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt

Three months after Wilson's inauguration as President of Princeton his father died. His entire life had been dominated by his relationship to his father. The loss of his father, therefore, necessitated a considerable rearrangement of the outlets of his libido.

In the customary manner, he replaced his lost father by himself and thenceforth in his unconscious he was more than ever the Reverend Joseph Ruggles Wilson. Thus he found a new outlet for his aggressive activity to his father...After his father's death his addiction to speech-making, which was already excessive, grew to fantastic proportions; his desire for a friend to love became an imperative need; and his interest in all forms of religious activity increased...

Moreover, after the loss of his father, he began to display increased inclination imperiously to rearrange the world and to hate with unreasonable intensity distinguished men who disagreed with him. The charge of libido in his passivity to his father was evidently too great for the outlets which remained in existence to carry its full flow. After his father's death Wilson had to repress a large portion of it. As we pointed out, the Ego invariably employs a reaction-formation to assist in the repression of a strong desire. The amount of passivity to his father which had to be repressed...was great and it required a large reaction-formation to assist in its repression. That reaction-formation found outlet through his attempts to rearrange the world and through hostile actions against father representatives.

The original source of all these character traits was, of course, little Tommy Wilson's passivity to his "incomparable father." The Reverend Joseph Ruggles Wilson, who incidentally is not to be recommended as a model for fathers, had made his son love him so deeply and submissively that the flood of passivity he had aroused could be satisfied by no other man or activity. To find outlet for it was not easy for a man whose Super-Ego demanded that he should be all masculinity: GOD HIMSELF. The Professor Extraordinary of Rhetoric, dead, continued to overwhelm his son.

Wilson, installed as President of Princeton, began at once to dominate the life of the university. He dismissed various professors, increased the severity of examinations, sharpened discipline, resisted an agitation for the abolition of compulsory daily attendance at chapel and reorganized the entire course of study... (pp.112,113).

1916...To do nothing (about the situation in Europe) was impossible. He asked House to prepare a stiff cable to Grey. House sent Grey various messages the gist of which was: either accept Wilson as dictator of the peace or look out for trouble. Wilson's hope emerged in his address of the following weeks. On May 20, 1916, he said: "I would like, therefore, to think the spirit of this occasion could be expressed if we imagined ourselves lifting some sacred emblem of counsel and of peace, of accommodation and righteous judgment before the nations of the world and reminding them of that passage in the Scripture: After the wind, after the earthquake, after the fire, the still small voice of humanity. On May 30, 1916, he said: AND THIS SPIRIT IS GOING OUT CONQUERING AND TO CONQUER (Rev.6:2) until, it may be, in the Providence of God, a new light is lifted up in America which shall throw the rays of liberty and justice far abroad upon every sea, and even upon the lands which now wallow in darkness and refuse to see the light." He was ready to lift up his light and let it shine even upon Germany. "Came he not into the world to save sinners?"

Wilson finally began to feel that the Allies, not Germany, stood between him and achievement of his desire to be the SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD and became extremely angry at them. He ceased to talk about the war as if all right were on the side of the Allies and all wrong on the side of the Germans. On July 23, 1916, he wrote to House: "I am, I must admit, about at the end of my patience with Great Britain and the Allies...I am seriously considering asking Congress to authorize me to prohibit loans and restrict exportations to the Allies. It is becoming clear to me that there lies latent in this policy the wish to prevent the merchants getting a foothold in markets which Great Britain has hitherto controlled and all but dominated....

From October 17, 1915, when he dispatched the letter which he believed would lead to his being called to make the peace, to March 26, 1916, when the torpedoing of the Sussex made it seem certain that he would be forced into the war without a previous agreement with the Allies that he should be allowed to dictate the peace, Wilson had been in a state of extreme happiness. He had a new wife and he had taken the world under his personal charge...As soon as the prospect of becoming the PRINCE OF PEACE began to fade he grew intensely nervous and unhappy, and indigestion and headaches began to harass him. He began to be irritated by all of his associates, bored by his Cabinet, bored by the presidency. On May 3, 1916, "He declared that he did not desire to be President any longer, and it would be a delightful relief if he could conscientiously retire." The only living being who completely pleased him was Mrs. Wilson.

On June 16, 1916, he was renominated unanimously by the Democrats and the slogan of his second campaign was..."He kept us out of war." Wilson, knowing that he had been doing his best the previous eight months to get the American people into the war on his own terms, had such a bad conscience that he avoided in his personal campaign speeches all reference to the fact that he had kept the country out of war and all promises to keep the country out of war in the future. Nevertheless, he knew that he could not be elected without the votes of the Western states, which were overwhelmingly against war. Therefore he sanctioned the use of the slogan, "He kept us out of war!" by his party; and from thousands of posters and thousands of throats the idea was driven into the American people: Wilson kept us out of the war and he will keep us out of the war. The vote for Wilson was a vote for peace. If the American people had known that he had been attempting to get them into the war, he would have been overwhelmingly defeated...

And make straight paths for your Feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.

Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:

Looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God; LEST ANY ROOT OF BITTERNESS SPRINGING UP TROUBLE YOU, AND THEREBY MANY BE DEFILED...(Hebrews 12:13-15; Daniel, chapter 4).

Throughout the presidential campaign, Wilson continued to be in a bad temper, and he loosed his nervous irritation impartially on his friends and enemies...

Wilson's mood had completely changed since the day in 1915 when he had described the Germans as "wild beasts." (Jeremiah 15:1-3). Because the Allies had refused to accept him as the SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD he had begun to feel that they were nearly as great enemies of God as the Germans. His wish to turn the war into a crusade which he might lead and his growing belief that the Allies might be as infidel as the Germans were remarkably juxtaposed in his speech of October 5, 1916, in which he said: "The singularity of the present war is that its origin and objects have never been disclosed...It will take a long inquiry of history to explain this war. (continued)...

And the Lord hath sent unto you all His servants the prophets, rising early and sending them; but ye have not hearkened, or inclined your ears to hear.

They said, Turn ye again now every one from his evil way, and from the evil of your doings, and dwell in the land (the state of mind) that the Lord hath given unto you and to your fathers for ever and ever.

And go not after other gods to serve them, and to worship them, and provoke me not to anger with the works of your hands; and I will do you no hurt.

Yet ye have not hearkened unto me, saith the Lord; that ye might provoke me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt.

Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts: Because ye have not heard my words,

Behold, I will send and take all the families of the North, saith the Lord, AND NEB-U-CHAD-REZ'ZAR THE KING OF BABYLON, MY SERVANT, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and an hissing, and perpetual desolations...

And this whole land shall be desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon Seventy years.

And it shall come to pass, when Seventy years are accomplished (see Psalm 90:10-12), that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the Lord for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations.

And I will bring upon that land all my words which I have pronounced against it, even all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah hath prophesied against the nations...(Jeremiah, chapter 25; chapters 50 and 51; Isaiah 13 and 14; Isa.47; Revelation 18, KJV).

And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

All these are the beginning of sorrows...(Matthew 24:3-8)...

...But Europe ought not to misunderstand us. We are holding off not because we do not feel concerned, but when we exert the force of this nation we want to know what we are exerting it for...When you are asked, 'Aren't you willing to fight?' reply, yes, you are waiting for something worth fighting for; you are not looking about for petty quarrels, but you are looking about for that sort of quarrel within whose intricacies are written all the texts of the rights of man, you are looking for some cause which will elevate your spirit, not depress it, some cause IN WHICH IT SEEMS A GLORY TO SHED HUMAN BLOOD, if it be necessary..." (pp.178-181).

"At the end of March, 1917 he had asked for a declaration of war. He could not ask about it except as a crusade for peace. The facts conflicted most terribly with his desire. And, in the manner which had become habitual to him, he escaped from his dilemma by ignoring the facts.

In his war message he expressed not his desire that the war should be a crusade but his belief that it was a crusade, and forgot the facts. But the facts were still vivid in his mind when Cobb talked to him, and to Cobb he expressed the facts. Thereafter he did his best to suppress the unpleasant facts, and in large measure he succeeded. The facts of war became to him not the actual facts but facts which he invented to express his wishes. From time to time the actual facts rose out of suppression and he drove them back by renewed assertions of the imaginary facts which expressed his own desires. He was persuaded by his own words. He began to believe utterly in his phrases. By his words he made many men in many lands believe that the war would end in a just peace, and he made all America 'drunk with the spirit of self-sacrifice;' but no man was more deceived or intoxicated by his words than he himself....

The divorce from reality which finally made him able to hail the Treaty of Versailles as 'ninety-nine percent insurance against war' had its roots to be sure in his childhood; but it began to flower freely in the night when he wrote his war message and could not face the facts. He announced that the war was a crusade, KNOWING WELL IN ONE LOCKED CHAMBER OF HIS MIND THAT THE CRUSADERS WOULD NEVER REACH THE HOLY LAND but believing in the rest of his mind, because he desired to believe, that by the words he had learned at his father's knee he would lead all the armies past selfishness at last TO THE HOLY SEPULCHER OF UNIVERSAL PEACE, WHERE THEY WOULD FIND--HIMSELF...

WILSON'S IDENTIFICATION OF HIMSELF WITH CHRIST was unquestionably the chief psychic force which made it so difficult for him to make his decision; but an additional cause seems to have contributed to his excessive uncertainty (about going to war). The scene in the Cabinet Room of the White House after Wilson had delivered his war message to Congress remained unexplained. Tumulty described it thus: 'For a while he sat in silence and pale in the Cabinet Room. At last he said: Think what it was they were applauding. My message today was a message of death for our young men. How strange it seems to applaud that.'" (pp.194,95)...

A double minded man is unstable in all of his ways...(James 1:8).

"At the end of his address he said, 'My fellow citizens, I believe in Divine providence. If I did not I would go crazy. If I thought the direction of the disordered affairs of this world depended on our finite intelligence I should not know how to reason my way to sanity, and I do not believe that there is a body of men however they concert their power of their influence, that can defeat this great enterprise, which is the enterprise of divine mercy and peace and good will." IT WAS GOD'S TREATY GIVEN TO MANKIND BY GOD'S SON WOODROW.

THUS BY SEPTEMBER 17 THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES HAD BECOME DIVINE, AND THE NEXT DAY THE AMERICAN ARMY BECAME A HEAVENLY HOST: 'That the glory that is going to attach to the memories of that great American Army, that it made a conquest of the armies of Germany not only, but made the conquest of peace for the world. Greater armies than sought the Holy Grail, greater armies than sought to redeem the Holy Sepulchre, greater armies than fought under that visionary and wonderful girl Joan of Arc, greater than the armies of the American Revolution that sought to redeem us from the unjust rule of Britain, greater even than the armies of our Civil War which saved the Union, will be this noble army of Americans who saved the world.'

In the following days poor Wilson drew closer and closer TO THE TABLE OF SACRIFICE, saying, for example at Los Angeles, on September 20, 1919: 'The hardest thing that I had to do...was to continue to wear civilian clothes during the war, not to don a uniform, not to risk something besides reputation--risk life and everything. WE KNEW THAT AN ALTAR HAD BEEN ERECTED UPON WHICH THAT SACRIFICE COULD BE MADE MORE GLORIOUSLY THAN UPON ANY ALTAR THAT HAD EVER BEEN LIFTED AMONG MANKIND, AND WE DESIRE TO OFFER OURSELVES AS A SACRIFICE FOR HUMANITY. AND THAT IS WHAT WE SHALL DO, MY FELLOW CITIZENS.' MANKIND WOULD AT LAST BE SAVED BY THE BLOOD OF WOODROW WILSON." (pp.288,89).

And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the Lord at the Door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation, and burn the fat for a sweet savour unto the Lord.

And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations...(Leviticus 17:6,7).

They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they Him to anger.

THEY SACRIFICED UNTO DEVILS, NOT TO GOD; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.

OF THE ROCK THAT BEGAT THEE THOU ART UNMINDFUL, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.

And when the Lord saw it, He abhorred them, because of the provoking of His sons, and of His daughters.

And He said, I will hide my Face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith...(Deuteronomy 32:16-20).

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 the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils; ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and of the table of devils.

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

PROPHECY IN OUR TIME

by Martin Ebon

AUTHOR'S NOTE..The subject of this book, prophecy in our time, is part of an area of long-standing interest to the author: the psychology of public affairs. BUT WHAT EXACTLY IS PROPHECY? How does its meaning compare to that of precognition, foreknowledge, forecasting, anticipation, and related concepts? Prophecy, a highly subjective experience, is too much in flux, too alive, for rigid catagorization...Taking advantage of this freedom, I have included prophetic efforts in modern economics...because forecasting techniques in this field are closer to traditional oracular methods than is commonly realized...

FREUD: OEDIPUS WITHOUT ORACLE

"The scientific study of prophetic claims has made halting but notable progress with the advancement of psychology, notably in psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud, who so greatly widened man's insight into his unconscious drives, was selective in his research and ideas; nowhere is this more striking than in his major concept of the Oedipus complex. Named after the legendary Greek King Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother, Freud's concept postulated that just about everyone falls in love, at least briefly, with the parent of the opposite sex.

Examination of Sophocles' playOedipus Rex shows that Freud accepted one key idea from this ageless tragedy but ignored the significance of another. He plucked the Oedipus complex from the plot and dialogue, but shunted aside Sophocles' classic acceptance of oracular prophecy...

If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God...(1 Peter 4:11).

And the king said unto them...I have a dreamed a dream and my spirit was troubled to know the dream...(Daniel 2:3)

Then was the secret revealed unto Daniel in a night vision. Then Daniel blessed the God of heaven.

Daniel answered and said, Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever: for wisdom and might are his:

And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding:

He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him...(Dan 2:19-22).

The king answered and said to Daniel...Art thou able to make known unto me the dream which I have seen, and the interpretation thereof?...(Dan.2:26-47).

Freud could have noted the universal validity of Oedipus' predestined fate, while recognizing the fundamental psychological implications that relate man's longing to know the future, as dramatized in the play. In his Interpretation of Dreams, Freud wrote that the play was 'known as a tragedy of destiny,' and that 'its tragic effect is said to lie in the contrast between the supreme will of the gods and the vain attempt of mankind to escape the evil that threatens them.' But to him the play's impact on a modern audience, as on the ancient Greek one, 'does not lie in the contrast between destiny and human will,' but in 'the particular nature of the material on which the contrast is exemplified.'

According to Freud, we are moved by the fate of Oedipus 'only because it might have been ours--because the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him.' And he adds: 'It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse toward our mother (the Church) and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father (God). Our dreams convince us that it is so.' Freud added that we outgrow these emotions unless we are psychoneuratic; for the mature audience watching Oedipus, 'these primal wishes of our childhood have been fulfilled, and we shrink back from him with the whole force of the repression by which those wishes have since that time been held down within us.'

In summarizing the Sophocles play, Freud plays down the element of predestination but emphasizes the love-of-mother and hatred-of-father themes. He does note that the Oracle warned Oedipus' father, Laius, that the stillborn child would murder him. In order to prevent the prophecy from coming true, the parents abandoned the newborn baby in the mountains, presumable to die. The child was found, of course, by a shepherd, who called him 'Oedipus' which means 'SWOLLEN FEET.'...

Freud picks up the story when the rescued child, a grown prince at an alien court, wondering about his origin, 'questioned the Oracle and was warned to avoid his home since he was destined to murder his father and take his mother in marriage.' Oedipus, believing the King and Queen of Corinth to be his parents, now flees to Thebes. On the way, he quarrels with an old man and kills him...

It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife...(1 Corinthians 5:1).

Because of the wide attention that Freud's concept of the 'Oedipus complex' has attracted in popular psychology, the implications of Sophocles' sequel to the play has been largely ignored...In it the aged Oedipus returns to Attica, accompanied by one of his daughters, at peace with himself but in rebellion against fate. AS HE HAD NEVER KNOWN THAT LAIUS AND JOCASTA WERE HIS NATURAL PARENTS, DESTINY HAD VIRTUALLY TRICKED HIM INTO HIS ACTIONS, and into the partial self-destruction he committed by blinding himself. Oedipus at the end of his life's journey, turns with contempt on those who took advantage of his misfortune. He acts out yet another oracular prophecy by going serenely to an all-forgiving death--a man purged of whatever curse he may have suffered, cleansed of the guilt that was never his. In the concluding scene of the play, Oedipus is freed of his 'complex' by following a predestined fate that is no longer tragic, but that of a man sure of his essential purity and worth...Oedipus comes to terms with his own fate in this soliloquy:

"...The bloody deaths, the incest, the calamities You speak so glibly of: I suffered them, by fate against my will! It was God's pleasure, and perhaps our race has angered him long ago. In me myself you could not find such evil as would have made me sin against my own.

And tell me this: if there were prophecies repeated by the oracles of the gods, that Father's death should come through his own son, how could you justly blame it on me? On me, who was yet unborn, yet unconceived, not yet existent for my father and mother?

If then I came into the world--as I did come--in wretchedness, AND MET MY FATHER IN FIGHT, AND KNOCKED HIM DOWN, NOT KNOWING THAT I KILLED HIM, NOR WHOM I KILLED--again how could you find guilt in that unmeditated act?"

And as I was considering, behold, AN HE GOAT CAME FROM THE WEST ON THE FACE OF THE WHOLE EARTH, and touched not the ground; and the Goat had a Notable Horn between his eyes.

And he came to the Ram that had Two horns, which I had seen standing before the river, and ran unto him in the fury of his power.

And I saw him come close unto the Ram, and he was moved with choler against him, and smote the Ram, and brake his Two horns: and there was no power in the Ram to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground, and stamped upon him: and there was none that could deliver the Ram out of his hand

Therefore the He-goat waxed very great...(Daniel 8:5-8).

__________

And the Rough Goat is the king of Grecia: AND THE GREAT HORN THAT IS BETWEEN HIS EYES IS THE FIRST KING.

Now that being broken, whereas Four stood up for it, Four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power...

(When we understand the Ram to represent all the powers of the East which God has reserved for Himself all these centuries against the day of battle and war, and when we understand this king of Grecia to be Alexander the Great, then the Four kingdoms that stood up out of his power, one after another, are: The realm of Alexander itself, Grecia, followed by the Roman empire, the Holy Roman empire, and at last the American empire. However, when we understand Thomas Woodrow Wilson to be the First king of modern Grecia (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Grecia, Rome, Holy Europe, and finally America...Revelation 17:8-14), we can understand the further meaning of the words in Daniel):

And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up.

And his power shall be mighty, but not by his power, and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and holy people.

And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; AND HE SHALL MAGNIFY HIMSELF IN HIS HEART, AND BY PEACE SHALL DESTROY (DECEIVE) MANY:he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes but he shall be broken without hand...(Daniel 23-25).

 

Preparing for death Oedipus settles in the groves of the Furies, at Colonus, about a mile northwest of Athens. Eagerly he awaits word from the Oracle of Apollo. He welcomes his daughter Ismene...and questions her to find out whether the gods are 'concerned with my deliverance.' Ismene assures him, 'I have, father, the latest sentence of the Oracle.' Oedipus asks, 'HOW ARE THEY WORDED? WHAT DO THEY PROPHESY?' She replies, 'That you shall be much solicited by our people. Before your death--and after--for their welfare.' And further: 'The oracles declare their strength's in you...For the gods who threw you down sustain you now...'

Clearly, these passages indicate a concern for the continuing theme or oracular power, the impact of destiny on man. Freud sought out and found the Oedipal tragedy in the work of Sophocles, but ignored its dramatization of the psychological dynamics underlying man's search of prophetic assurance, the desire to know, conquer, and possibly control a seemingly inevitable fate...The Oracle's roles in the Oedipus legend correspond to human concern with future destiny, strong in man's emotions, in his daily existence as well as in his apparent premonitory dreams. (Acts 2:16-21). At times, such dreams have a multiple impact: they not only picture events that seem to come true later on in defiance of orderly chronological concepts, but they may also reflect emotional states that bring about the events; the very strength of the dream experience may help to pave the way for these events. Freud never got around to studying closely, much less accepting, a number of psychological implications of Oedipus at Colonus, but some of those who build their own ideas on the foundation of Freudian concepts, have done daring and fascinating research in precognition as well as in telepathy...

With all this going on the last thing Freud needed was involvement with 'occult matters such as telepathy or, worse still, prophecy. But he was being pushed and pulled on these subjects as on so many others...Freud was being badgered IN VIENNA by his brilliant and eccentric disciple, Sandor Ferenczi, to acknowledge psychic phenomena. And Freud's 1912 split with C.G.Jung was partly over the issue of the 'occult,' for which Freud expressed extreme aversion, but which Jung regarded as a fitting subject for exploration in the development of his own 'open system' of analytical psychology...

The wish to know the future is alive in man today, as it has been since prehistoric times. It has a strong, basic emotional appeal. Certainly, an issue so old and fundamental cannot be cast aside by schools of psychology that seek to explore, understand, diagnose, heal, and guide modern man..." (pp.85-87).

"Jung regarded some premonitions as remnants of the child's world. In The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual, he stated in 1908 that as the mind matures, parental influences fade into the unconscious, but that out of this reservoir 'the infantile situation still sends up dim, premonitory feelings, feelings of being secretly guided by other-worldly influences,' just as 'the power which forces the bird to migrate is not produced by the bird itself, but derives from its ancestors.'...He says that there exists 'the possibility of a natural or absolute knowledge, when the unconscious psyche coincides with objective facts (with both natural and spiritual reality)...

Jung's investigations led him to the conclusion that beyond the world of the psyche, with its causal manifestations in time and space, there must lie a 'transpsychic reality' where time and space are no longer of absolute but relative validity; what the psyche experiences as past, present and future merges 'there into an unknowable unity of timelessness, and what appears to consciousness as near and far combines 'there' into a likewise unknowable spacelessness. And that, for the time being, is the most authoritive summary of Jung's search for the reality of prophecy in our lives--his and ours." (pp.94-102).

(See Chapter 1, part 2).

Measure the time diligently in itself, and when thou seest part of the signs past, which I told thee before.

Then thou shalt understand that it is the very same 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 understand, that the Most High spake of these things from the days that were before thee, even from the beginning.

For as like all that is made in the world hath a beginning and an end, and the end is manifest:

Even so the times of the Highest have plain beginnings in wonders and powerful works, and endings in effects and signs...(2 Esdras 9:1-6; Ezekiel 12:22-28 KJV).

Why, seeing times are not hidden from the Almighty, do they that know Him not see His days?...(Job 24:1).

In the latter days ye will consider it perfectly...(Jeremiah 23:20).

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.