+++ 100. Anatolian Dawn?
+++
The Egyptian Empire rose in power with the demise
of Poseidon’s realm.
Lengthy kingdoms never endure without reversals
of fortune and even occasional chaos, the dynasties of
Per Sacred Scripture, the people of
This is significant from Heaven’s
perspective.
For since the patrimony and family leadership of
a father normally passes to his oldest
son (although there can be exceptions, such as St. Joseph’s younger son,
Ephraim, taking precedence over his brother, Manasses,
by the prophecy of Joseph’s father, St. Jacob --- see Genesis 48), why
then did Nemrod usurp rule over all the
earth’s people when he came, via Chus, from St.
Noe’s youngest
son, Cham? Why didn’t he defer
to a (likely) still living patriarch, Noe, and why
didn’t his tribe or descendants then defer to Noe’s
eldest son, Sem [Shem], or to St. Sem’s eldest sons, passing global rule or
influence through the patrimonial lineage, when humanity scattered, and
Atlantis, desiring international prominence, made a bid to be the first head of
the ‘Sea Beast’?
If there must needs be some sort of international ‘order’
or ‘framework’ or ‘empire’ at this early date, so soon
on the heels of the Great Flood… why
not submit to, and very sincerely implore, the patrimonial tribal
descendants of Sem to take the lead, as the
eldest, in this gigantic global endeavor, according to good Catholicity?
Do you see?
This inverts
the right order.
Which makes sense, knowing Nemrod was proud & indomitable.
Which is why, too, presuming our interpretation
is correct, his ‘sea kingdom’ is the Oceanic Beast’s first
head, exhibiting the pride and rebellion of its animating spirit, the infernal
dragon, he who delights in arrogance, sedition & subversion of natural law.
This inversion continued with Egyptian dominance, being also from Noe’s youngest and most wicked son, the second
head of the haughty Oceanic Beast… but through Cham’s next and second son, Mesraim,
instead of his firstborn son, Chus. In both cases, arrogant rebels took power and lorded it over others without obeying God’s
commandments.
Our Creator allowed this injustice to punish us for
our sins.
(This is a common theme in human history,
particularly when viewed through the focused lens of Scripture &
Catholicity, God using the wicked
to punish the wicked.)
God permitted this pattern of the younger
usurping the older --- thereby humbling the former proud rebel --- with
the third head of the Oceanic
Beast. To wit, Cham’s first son, Chus,
initially inverts the right order by
ruling over others (Atlantis). Then Atlantis falls, the second son of
Cham, Mesraim, continuing the inversion by he ruling over others (
The Hittites.
Or, to be a bit more
accurate, the Hattian-Hurrian-Hittite Empire, so to
speak.
Until the last century or so, nobody remembered
anything about them apart from what we can find, briefly, mentioned in Sacred
Scripture. Archeology caught up a bit, though. Per them, the Hittites migrated
from the north of western Asia into what was called, by the Greeks, ‘
Not that Hittite relations
with nations around them rested solely on military prowess; historians credit
them with the fine art of making treaties, the first government we know of to
have practiced international diplomacy. (Other governments prior to the
Hittites probably practiced diplomacy… but the Hittites are, at least for
now, the first with historical certainty that we can say conducted this
difficult & exquisite art.)
The Hattians being
Chanaanites (like those of their tribal confederates in the land of Palestine,
each of them offspring of Cham’s fourth and cursed son, Chanaan [Canaaan], and thus,
seemingly, what Sacred Scripture originally meant in references to the
Hittites), they thus were inclined to follow the bad example of their tribal
patriarchs and embrace pagan religion much more quickly and more thoroughly
than the Japhetic or Semitic offspring of Noe. Given
that the Hurrians were Hamitic
also, this means the Hittites --- who descended from Sem
[Shem] --- then inverted the inversion, taking imperial power from Cham’s
descendants and asserted Semitic rule. Which, from the point of view of
Catholic patrimony, rights a wrong… but, having adopted paganism and
appropriated the gods of the Hattians, Hurrians and other nearby peoples, the Hittites then served
many, many false gods, including their unique versions of the widely revered
Mideast deities, Baal & Astarte (the former the god of the sky or storms,
the latter the goddess of the heavens or stars, very similar to Sumer’s Inanna or Babylon’s celestial queen, Ishtar).
Ergo, while the third head of the Oceanic Beast may
have changed ethnicities --- although this is debatable since the Chanaanite Hattians apparently intermingled with the stronger
Hittites, making a tribally hybridized race --- the nature of this head changed
hardly a tad from the formerly, and purely, Hamitic
first and second heads.
Dawns a black sun, pagan
darkness gnawing like acid on our bones.
+++ 101.
Yet, says the reader, what has this to do with
anything?
How is this an
‘Oceanic Beast’, and how is the Hittite Empire one of its heads?
I remind you, dear soul, of what I stated earlier
on. We are trying to view things from Heaven’s
perspective --- and not our own.
We are necessarily very limited (most of us) in our knowledge and (often) in
our many, many prejudices. Too, I stated
quite plainly that I’m not pretending to represent, or include, every
kingdom, tribe, federation, ethnicity, empire, or what-have-you, on earth for
the past five millennia.
That is NOT
my goal, and such a goal would be IRRELEVANT.
Yes, I know quite well that the Chinese have had
a spectacular series of dynasties and exercised powerful imperial influence on
their vast region of the globe for nearly 5000 years. Yes, I realize quite
plainly that the Inca, Maya, Aztecs, Toltecs and
their ancestors have wielded fabulous sway or control over their equally vast
region of the world for at least the past 3000 years. And, yes, I’m very
well-informed about the many dominant tribes or realms that have arisen in
I could go on, trying to
be ‘inclusive’, but the point is made.
I’m not ‘excluding’ any people,
power or ethnicity due to ignorance or bias.
To the contrary, whilst fully aware of these peoples, powers & ethnicities
and their amazing contributions or remarkable influence in human
history, I am trying to paint a picture that represents things from a celestial point of view…
of how GOD perceives us from ETERNITY,
and how Our Creator plots human destiny based
on this Divine Sight.
That’s the point.
For instance, has it ever occurred to you, dear
soul --- assuming you believe in an Almighty Creator and think Sacred Scripture
is more than ‘superstition’, ancient tribal ‘bigotry’
or just plain ‘nonsense’ --- that God had to have placed the Garden of Paradise somewhere on this massive sphere
of ours that we call the earth and home, and that the location of this earthly Paradise had to have been chosen for a reason and a purpose?
I.e., why
on earth would God place it somewhere on earth ‘randomly’?
The Being Who makes everything out of nothing, Who is utterly
Omniscient and foreknows the future just as if it were the past, Who is
absolutely and totally, and without any qualifications, completely &
wholly in Sovereign Control of all that exists… whilst preserving,
nevertheless, our truly free human will… why would this Great God,
and Ground of All Existence, put Paradise somewhere on earth out of random
chance?
As the saying goes, it doesn’t make any
sense.
Hence why I point out to you, my dear soul, that,
while earth is a globe and three dimensional, this doesn’t mean earth
doesn’t have a center. And I’m not talking about the center
at the heart of our earth --- I’m talking about a ‘center’ on
its spherical surface. Hard to fathom?
Doesn’t make sense to you? Think the idea is absurd?
Then your thinking is limited and you
haven’t thought it through thoroughly.
What’s more, there’s a perfectly
obvious place to begin. A place that’s practically screaming out its
uniqueness till this very day on our maps, its very name nigh well jumping up
and down in front of our faces, waving and yelling and capering for our
attention… if only we’d stop the oh-so-very-important everyday
things we’re doing for a moment, get just a little bit curious, ask the
right questions, and then ponder the answers we find with an intelligence that
is unbiased, passionate, and, maybe, a tad bit inspired.
And this place is?
The
For have you ever wondered, beloved reader, out
of curiosity, what the word ‘mediterranean’
means? After all, human beings don’t give names for no reason. Whether
out of whimsy, expediency or deep symbolism, the name they choose serves a
purpose.
So what’s the meaning and purpose of the name ‘mediterranean’?
It comes from the Latin term ‘mediterraneus’. This, in turn, is a combination word
that means, most literally, ‘middle earth’ or
‘middle
of the earth’. Shades of Tolkien anyone?
(Sometimes supposedly educated persons will try
to pass it off as ‘middle of the land’ or ‘middle
land’. This is technically correct yet bad scholarship. Any Latin student
knows very well how ‘terra’ means ‘earth’ in ancient
Roman speech, and, one cannot help suspecting, modern scholars mangle its
translation to hide or suppress a deeper truth.)
And why would the Romans do this?
Why on earth (no pun intended this time) would
they bestow upon this relatively small body of water (though actually large
compared to tiny human beings) the title ‘middle of the earth’?
Could it be --- and feel free to gasp if
the idea is too shocking --- Romans knew or remembered (if but vaguely)
something profound and basic about the earth?
Let us recollect Genesis regarding the
“…a spring rose out of the
earth, watering all the surface of the earth… And the Lord had
planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein he placed
man whom he had formed… And a
river went out of the place of pleasure [the Garden of Paradise] to water
paradise, which from thence [from there] is divided into four heads
[this one central river that watered the whole earth divided into the start
of four different rivers as it passed outside the boundaries of the Garden
of Paradise]. The name of the one [of
these four rivers] is Phison [this river no
longer exists, apparently effaced during the Great Flood and the consequent
reshaping of the earth’s land mass]… And the name of the second
river is Gehon [ditto the previous bracketed
statement, although we may logically speculate, based on scriptural evidence,
that, perhaps, the Nile River is a remnant of this more ancient river in
substantially altered form]… And the name of the third river is Tigris:
the same passeth [passes] along by the Assyrians
[it flows past a powerful and warlike kingdom at the northwest end of the
Did you get that, precious reader?
The earth was very different back then. There was
no rain, the Bible tells us elsewhere, our world watered instead by a global
spring that, spreading in distinct directions via four main subsidiary
rivers from an epicenter --- the
But we are not Darwinists… leastwise, I am
not.
Ergo, I’ve no need to bow at their altar or
worship their golden calf.
Too, I’m not afraid to take Sacred
Scripture seriously --- and draw conclusions. Such as?
Well, beloved soul, think about it logically. Where would
God put
Right --- smack dab in the Middle of the
Earth. To wit, the
Very often the valuable and imperative is put in
a central place.
Hence, if only vaguely, the Romans recalled an
ancient truth.
+++ 102. Navel & Nexus?
+++
A remarkable truth preserved till this day in a
Middle Eastern tradition.
In Syria --- the modern and tragically war-torn
nation of today but a part of the tremendously larger region meant by people of
old in the Mideast when talking about Syria, circa century one --- at least
some traditionally religious people still remember that the very, very, very
old Syrian city of Damascus was once an area associated with the Garden of
Paradise. And, were that not enough, linguists agree that the name ‘
Is it getting poignant, dear reader?
Put it all together.
This part of our world is known in ancient times
as ‘Middle Earth’.
The eastern part of this Middle Earth has a name
that means ‘whole heaven’.
And a very ancient city in eastern Middle Earth
translates as ‘a well-watered land’.
Does a bell ring in your mind when compared to
what Genesis tells us about the jawdroppingly wonderful
Garden of Paradise that Our Creator placed ‘in
terra’ as a heavenly home on earth for our first parents, Ss. Adam
& Eve, at the beginning? That is to say, ‘a well-watered
land’ (which makes it a Paradise) where the ‘whole heaven’
intersected with our earth (ditto about this making it Paradise) and is, as a
result, by God’s Choice, the Middle of Our Earth (because He
purposely deemed the celestial & well-watered Garden of Paradise to be the
very center of our world’s spherical surface).
Again, is a bell ringing in your mind? Are you
seeing things a wee bit differently?
If paying attention… and no kneejerk
skeptic… then yes… indeed yes.
It comes together like a puzzle with the pieces
fitting perfectly.
Too perfect to dismiss as chance; it merits our
consideration.
The point is, if you can accept this powerful
circumstantial evidence as indicating where
God placed Paradise at the beginning --- and, thus, that He deems the
Mediterranean as, truly, the very Middle
of Our Earth when talking about the spherical surface of this temporary
terrestrial place that we call home --- then you realize, too, how God must
measure and envision our world’s past & future history, from His
celestial perspective, in relation to where He put the center of it all. Viz., the
But on God’s terms,
not our own.
We must die as Catholics in the state of grace.
Anything less is blasphemy against the Holy
Ghost. (Matthew 12:31)
Those who blaspheme God and covet false religion,
dying as non-Catholics despite adequate intelligence; or who die feeble of
mind, unwashed from original sin; or who die as Catholics unforgiven of mortal
sin committed after receiving the water of baptism; all these wind up in the
Pool of Fire, unforgiven, where God ultimately places hell. (See Apocalypse
20:14-15 for evidence of the destiny of hell, death and the damned.)
+++ 103. Westward the Rebel?
+++
Leading us back to
For Sacred Scripture mentions the Tigris &
Euphrates Rivers as two of the four subsidiary rivers issuing forth from
the one global spring in
The import?
Ancient Babylonia
(the site of Nemrod’s
[Nimrod’s] early-on post-Deluge Rebellion against God, leading most of
humanity into building the gargantuan & occult Tower of Babel in order to
“reach to heaven”, as Genesis 11:1-4 DRC tells us) was either
fully or partially encompassed within
the boundaries of the Garden of Paradise. Or, at the very least, was just outside its boundaries,
to the east of Paradise and, perchance, a little toward the south, the giant
valley of Mesopotamia (a Greek-derived
moniker for Babylonia, meaning ‘between two rivers’, much of which
modern day Iraq controls) carrying the waters of these two venerable rivers
of the Tigris & Euphrates both before and after the Flood. Albeit, prior to
the Great Deluge, they likely flowed widely separate from each other beyond
what is today the
This is why it’s piercingly symbolic that Nemrod led his rebellion at
Hence, if indeed Nemrod
is the Neptune of the Romans and the Poseidon of the Greeks, and if indeed he
and his proto-tribe wandered into the west, establishing the mighty Empire of
Atlantis, then this western trek and western location --- in relation to the
Middle of the Earth, where on the eastern
side was the Garden of Paradise, and where he, Nemrod,
tried to invade heaven on his own luciferian terms --- is symbolic, also, of
this rebellious spirit, rejecting the east and the dawn and Our Maker, Who is the Light of the Whole World,
rejecting, too, His Resurrected Body, the Church, which, like a sunrise, spreads spiritual light everywhere,
banishing the ‘brightness’ of false religion.
Nemrod failed to conquer heaven and earth in his own
strength.
Yet
From the height of hubris they sank into a deep
abyss.
Make sense, my precious soul?
This is how God sees it, I must opine.
+++ 104. Southern Hospitality?
+++
The Atlantean Empire
was the first head of the Oceanic Beast. The second head, with the Egyptian
Empire, then moved the maelstrom of rebellion against God’s True Religion
from the west of the Middle of the Earth to the south of the
The import here?
In terms of the northern hemisphere, southward
near the equator is hot & humid. Or, in the case of
God, incidentally, hates the lukewarm of heart.
(See Apocalypse 3:14-20 for proof of this
statement. Jesus Christ Himself, sending a message to the Diocese of Laodicea
in Asia Minor and to Roman Catholics throughout history in Sacred Scripture via
His Beloved Disciple, St. John the Evangelist, advises them to do penance and
take no pride in their wealth, feigning a supreme love for Catholicity without
actually loving God above all else, too attached to this earth.)
Ergo, whereas great iniquity is appalling, it
disgusts God even more to lay claim to His Religion --- to hoist His Military
Standard, so to speak --- and not behave like an earnest soldier, trying
steadfastly to know, understand and carry out His spiritual commands. Which is
why great sinners, whether Catholic or not, are usually less offensive to
Almighty God than Catholics who stop trying earnestly to know and obey.
Atlantis, though, wasn’t merely cold toward
God. They were like ice.
Nemrod & Atlantis abandoned the True Religion
straight out, persisting in diabolic arrogance with hardly a pause or
hesitation.
This is why God permits
For a few centuries they professed the Roman
Catholic Faith whole & entire after the Incarnation of Christ. He Who escaped Herod’s murderous wrath by fleeing to
Or else why let them endure so long, fallen from
ultimate power?
+++ 105. A Cold Northern Light?
+++
And so we wend our way back to the Hittite
Empire.
For here we see the maelstrom of rebellion in
relation to the earth’s middle and our terrestrial paradise, after
incubating at the center and then riding off into the sunset in the West out in
the Atlantic under cover of the darkness that comes with night… afterward
moving to the South with a concordant heat of the sun and its withering rays
along the Nile … finally wander up North into more temperate Asia Minor
where the Moon can linger low on the horizon, beckoning like a snowy queen,
hovering over hill & tree.
What saith Selene?
At first nothing
particularly clear.
The Hamitic Hattians & Hurrians which
constitute the foundation of the third of the Oceanic Beast’s heads
(surmise I), later bore a Semitic Hittite edifice built on top of it, the two
apparent opposites seemingly merged together in a mélange of
intermarriage along with occasional conquest. The end result, however, was
pagan gods galore.
Nevertheless, as mentioned before, in their
acquisition of a veritable pantheon of multitudinous pagan deities, the Hittites
also adopted their own variation on the widely spread cults of Baal &
Astarte throughout the
Which makes it confusing as
various pagans evolve mythologies.
Notwithstanding, dominant themes tend to rise to
the top.
A premiere god of the heaven and starry queen
are two such motifs. Indeed, the latter, queen
of the starry empyrean, is again and again as the
centuries roll by prior to the time of Christ, associated more and more with a
goddess of the moon. I.e., ancient pagans
appear to increasingly identify, or conflate, their star queen with
the moon goddess.
Which, from a wise and
scholarly Catholic point of view, makes sense, too.
Because it’s not just
human beings who came up with these pagan fantasies, contrary to Darwinistic
and materialist assumptions. The devil and his demons are liars whilst linked
inextricably to humanity, their fate entwined with ours, and it is in
their utterly debased self interest to take what is true and good and besmirch
it with the filth of false religion and counterfeit teachings. The saints
inform us that Satan fell into pride & rebellion when God revealed to the
angels that He would make a creature so perfect and sinless, so very
extraordinary and immaculate and powerful, that they, angelic spirits though
they were, must bow before Her
Majesty, mere flesh though She be, venerating
Her Queenship.
Proud Lucifer would not comply; a third of the angels
agreed.
Hence, is it any surprise that hell instigated
worship of a regal ‘star goddess’ all throughout the ancient
pre-Christian world, mocking and defying the real Queen of Heaven to come, God
Himself having ordained Her existence and regal
authority? Heretics of a conservative and rabidly anti-Catholic Evangelic
Protestant nature, infuriated, like their spiritual father, the devil, by Her
God-Given Royalty, love to put the proverbial cart before the horse,
irrationally presuming, out of the thin air of very little logic and
poor reasoning, that Roman Catholics imitate the heathens, making a star
goddess out of poor little Mary. When, in reality, no real Catholic worships Mary as Almighty God. Rather, we
venerate and honor Her as the highest of all
God’s creatures, made so at His command & behest, preserved in Her
spotlessness by His Divine Graces. Consequently, it is pagans of old who foreshadowed
Roman Catholics, moved by their spiritual father, Lucifer, to twist and deform the real queen to come into the heathen goddess
of the moon & stars. Yet what is this connection of the stars to
the moon?
+++ 106. Ad Astra Per
Luna? +++
Ancient wisemen knew
the earth to be at the center of God’s Creation.
They knew as well how the heavens above the earth
are like ‘spheres’, as it were, arranged in concentric circles or
shells, so to speak, about the earth in ascending order, from lowest to
highest. The snowy lunar orb (from Latin ‘luna’
for ‘moon’) is the first and lowest heavenly sphere. Wise Catholics
fathom, at least in part, the profoundly Marian implications of St.
John’s Apocalypse, where he speaks of “…a great sign…
in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” (Apocalypse 12:1 DRC) There is no other
person except for the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God Incarnate, Jesus
Christ, who fits this description, to a tee, as the rest of Apocalypse 12 makes
stark.
The curious reader may refer to a half-written
book,
Mary Exalted
, for irrefutable evidence
and logic of this fact on The Epistemologic Works website. The Books &
Articles section to the left provides a link; it’s on the Home Page as
well when you scroll down far enough; and the alphabetical Quiklinks
to the right offers access, too. Go to Chapters 11 to 28 for the relevant
passage.
A wise person also knows the moon is
gravitationally bound to the
earth.
Some astronomers consider the earth and moon a
‘double planet’ system, due to the moon being so large in relation
to the earth, although it seems most prefer the ‘planet-satellite’
description. In any case, the earth having nearly a 4000 mile radius, the moon
being about 1/81 of the mass of the earth (the inverse of 3 to the 4th
power, by the way), then the gravitational ‘barycenter’
of this ‘system’ of the earth and moon is just over a thousand miles below the surface of our terrestrial
globe, and not at, or very nearly at, the absolute three dimensional center
of our globe, or, contrarily, far out into ‘space’, hundreds or
even thousands of miles above our surface. In a very real sense, it’s as
though the moon is earth’s tallest
mountain, with a 240,000 mile high summit.
Once more, the import?
The lunar orb is the first heaven high
above us. And yet it’s linked to our earth in an extremely literal
and real way. Mary stands upon this highest of terrestrial summits, in
this way demonstrating her divinely-ordained authority over all humanity
and our various kingdoms. Yet while She stands in regal dominion over the earth, Her head towers
into the highest heavens, as
the divinely-bestowed starry crown
that She wears proves.
The upshot?
The Anatolian Hittite Empire is in the north of
the Middle of the Earth and north of the ancient
The north is cold, the hearts of these children
of Sem [Shem], mingling with
the descendants of Cham [Ham], becoming similarly cold in a religious sense.
Abandoning the Catholicity of that long ago time to embrace a staggeringly huge
multiplicity of pagan gods, they furthered satanic oppression of the earth with
their third of seven bestial heads, supernaturally poisoning minds through the
baleful influence of a pagan Hittite Empire, whether directly & physically
or indirectly & spiritually via a globally symbolic rule. What’s
more, their former domain a while later became the center of lunar worship.
As we may learn from history and Sacred Scripture
itself, Anatolia --- the Asia Minor of ancient times and modern day
Gold the sun, silver the moon. Hot the former,
cool the latter.
Do you start to see the allegory?
In addition, the sun is often called
‘masculine’, the moon ‘feminine’.
Again, do you begin to grasp the allegorical
implications?
Sacred Tradition tells us the Blessed Virgin Mary
lived for a short time in Ephesus, looked after by Jesus’ Beloved
Disciple, John, to whom He entrusted Her care while upon the Cross, knowing, as
an only son and St. Joseph long dead, that someone should care for His Mother
after He was resurrected and ascended into Heaven. At least one saint informs
us that, while there, Her holy presence and efficacious prayers brought down
the mighty temple of Diana into ruin, just as this same saint tells us Her Son,
sojourning in Heliopolis (Greek for ‘sun city’, the center of
Egypt’s sun worship) together with the Holy Family, by His Holy Presence
devastated the solar temple. Incidentally, ancient
Jesus, being God, is spiritually like the sun, and His Mother,
being God’s greatest creature, is spiritually like the moon, reflecting the light of the sun and, thus, in
a very real sense, being “…clothed
with the sun…” (Apocalypse 12:1b DRC)
God the Creator and
‘masculine’, symbolized by the golden sun.
Mary the Created and ‘feminine’, like
an argent moon.
Are you seeing it from Heaven’s
perspective?
Atlantis went down in utter ruin, grasping for
God’s Throne.
Symbolism through &
through.
Satan means it for one thing, God another.
Lucifer loves to invert right order, appearing as
an angel of light.
In Babel & Atlantis, man deified, then dusk
in the west.
In
In
Lucifer wants humanity to grasp for the stars via
the first heavenly sphere. Except his way of doing it is through power and pride. God also wants
humanity to grasp for highest heaven, where dwell the stars, via the argentine
orb. Except His Sovereign & Religious Way of
accomplishing this is through the Queenship
and Humility of His Mother.
She who stands upon the moon, ruling over
earth from its highest summit, clothed in the reflected light of the
Son, and wearing a regal, celestial crown upon Her
noble head. Twelve stars like
+++ 107. Where Is the Fourth of Seven? +++
(A
And so we turn to the fourth of the Oceanic
Beast’s seven heads.
Having learned what we have regarding God’s
Point of View, of where He purposely
placed the navel or nexus of our world on the spherical surface of the earth
--- and thus starting to get a glimpse of how
it is that He might view things such as our ‘long’ history spanning
over seven millennia (recall the Roman Martyrology, which gives us key points
of reference, going back 5199 years prior to the Incarnation), and how He envisions the existence of
humanity from His Divine Perspective for all of eternity, foreseeing &
plotting our destiny according to His Perfect Plan --- where in the world might He envisage our fourth monstrous
‘head’ to be?
To where might the maelstrom of rebellion move
next?
The first monstrous head arose with Atlantis,
first at Babel less than two centuries after Noe’s
Flood, then out west into the Atlantic Ocean, till the seventh of earth’s
seven great continental ‘heads’ fell into the abyss amidst a day of
fire & water, as Plato puts it.
This occurred circa 2600 BC, only a few hundred
years after the Flood.
The second monstrous head arose with Egypt,
waxing strong (relatively speaking) around the same time, 2600 BC, until its pharaonic and pyramidal realm reached ascendancy c.1400 BC,
the moment God freed His Old Testament Church from their tyranny.
This Israelite exodus transpired right before
the man I guess to be the first post-exodus pharaoh, the much-despised Akhenaten, who briefly upended Egyptian paganism with the
introduction of a ‘quasi-monotheism’
centered on Aten (instead of their pagan sun god, Amun-re, albeit mysterious Aten
was somehow connected to the ‘sun disk’ of this sun deity), a new creator deity without a creation myth or the typical paganistic ‘family’ of supernaturally-linked
pagan gods. A change the majority of resolutely pagan Egyptians
vehemently rejected as a most hideous aberration, a disgusting blot upon what
was, till then, a practically spotless loyalty to their solar patron, Amun-re. Which caused them to remove Akhenaten from their long list of rulers, his unique &
personally selected name (‘Akhenaten’
meaning ‘effective for Aten’) stricken
from memory, they thenceforth referring to Akhenaten
only as ‘the enemy’ or ‘that criminal’ in Egyptian
archives.
Is it too much to hypothesize that the chastened Egyptian Empire, seeing the
flabbergastingly punishing and miraculous plagues of the Hebrew Deity upon
their nation… not least of which was the loss of all their firstborn
males, both human and animal… the very next pharaoh (not
the one who fought the Israelites and died chasing them across the Red
Sea with his army, see Exodus 14) then abandoned
their sun god? Having seen how weak Amun-re was
against the Hebrew’s Eternally Self-Existent & Omnipotent Creator
God, is it really any surprise that he, brought low in abject humiliation,
chose to move, however modestly, toward the True God?
Naturally.
Scholars quibble over when the Exodus of the
Israelites happened. Nor is their date (c.1350 BC) for the benighted Akhenaten a solid & indisputable fact. Ergo why I guess
From God’s timeless perspective,
Then comes night at the end of the day, n’est-ce pas?
The third monstrous head arrived with the
Hittites. Their Empire didn’t attain real ascendancy until about the same
time the Egyptians waned, c.1400 BC. Nor was their azimuth long. We cannot draw
hard and fast lines --- the rise and fall of nations is never cut-and-dried
with precise dates marking an instant and total loss or gain of power --- but,
it’s fair to say, the reign of the Hittites had passed their zenith by
c.1200 BC.
Not unlike the moon’s transitory appearance
in a dark evening sky. Two centuries may seem so very, very, very long to you
and I, dear reader. Why, 200 years ago, my country of birth & habitation
(the
And yet the
Two hundred years, however, is a mere blip during
7.2 millennia. (Again, following the Roman
Martyrology, which gives us 5199 years from the Creation of the World to the
Incarnation of Jesus Christ, and then adding over 2000 years since then until
now, as I write this part of the book, Helplessly
Ignorant.) Notwithstanding, a still significant amount of time, 200 being
1/36th of 7200 --- though in contradistinction to the much longer
1200 years of Egypt (1/6th of 7200) and the similar in duration, but
still longer, 360 years or so of the Babel & Atlantis amalgamation (1/20th
of 7200).
The next terrestrially central empire was also a
seeming blip. Lengthier too, yes, with roughly 400 years of
ascendancy (1/18th of 7200). But what is this imperial &
terrestrial centrality of humanity’s religious rebellion, the central
fourth of seven altogether, in relation to the original centrality of
earth’s ancient spiritual & physical paradise?
Just what is the fourth monstrous head?
+++ 108. Nautical Merchants?
+++
The Phoenician Empire.
Or, if you will, the
Phoenician Confederacy or Phoenician League.
This is another example of where things may look
complicated. We human beings, limited in mind and not quite grasping the
intricacy of creation, tend to oversimplify. Massive or fundamental patterns
built into existence itself are often astonishingly simple, but we, in
self-deceiving bids to ‘understand’, often get simplistic
(as opposed to simple!) and then make unwarranted (and unrecognized) assumptions
that turn out to be wrong.
One of these simplistic
assumptions is that empires are always very focused.
That is to say, that an empire --- in order to be
an empire --- must be an extremely controlled set up, with a government that is
ultimately centered in one big major capitol wherein grave decisions are made
in a highly visible or straightforward way.
This is not always the case. And even when an
empire might be highly centralized, the actual exercise of power in crucial
situations is not always occurring in the central capitol or highly visible and
straightforward. Frequently it’s the opposite!
What, then, constitutes an empire, kingdom or
government?
We don’t have time to indulge a treatise on
power (nor do I claim to be learned enough to explain human government
adequately). We merely note the indisputable… that power is sometimes
complex. Nonetheless, the wielder of this power can be very real while not
always obvious or ‘centralized’ and ‘highly
controlled’. Indeed, the most effective exercise of power or government
can be ‘hidden away’ or ‘decentralized’.
Not that I intend to sound conspiratorial.
And I’m not claiming the Phoenicians were a
‘conspiracy’. They were real, and knowledge of them is now
extensive, although not exhaustive. E.g., our alphabet, say scholars, derives
from the Phoenicians (and, per many in academia, in turn comes from the even
older hieroglyphic writing system of the Egyptians). Why them? Because their
alphabet was phonetic and much easier
to learn and use, as well as adaptable to lots of other languages since the
phonetic symbols could either be inducted wholesale or else, with a few new
phonetic symbols added here and there, make writing a language way simpler
than, say, laborious Egyptian hieroglyphs or innumerable Chinese logograms.
So... put that in your pipe and smoke it, my dearest soul. As I write, and you
read, the thing I’m writing and you’re reading is in phonetic symbols that come from the very
people we’re talking about --- ancient Phoenicians --- who, in turn, came
up with characters based on the hieroglyphs of a still older
Pretty amazing, eh?
But… who
were the Phoenicians?
After Atlantis, the greatest maritime people the
world had seen.
Again, the Phoenicians were not an empire
in the customary sense. Their government consisted of so-called ‘city
states’ (a city with a leader, or leaders, that dominates the area around
the city, without necessarily directly ruling a vast realm); albeit, in the
history of the Phoenicians, certain cities took dominant roles from time to
time (such as Byblos in what is modern day Lebanon in the north, or Tyre in today’s southern Lebanon).
What, then, was the basis of Phoenician power?
International trade and
sailing ships.
That’s right. Their power and influence was
a result of their wealth, gained by trading, and their ability to sail great
distances upon the seas. They came into contact with untold numbers of peoples
& countries via this lucrative trade, and their alphabet spread all over
the
Their pagan priests, too, employed the Phoenician
alphabet.
This, in conjunction with their wealth, extensive
knowledge, far flung travels and widespread colonies or city states, made them
the envy of the world for awhile, the denizens of earth ever eager to ape the
styles & customs of the rich & powerful, whilst, at the same time, griping
& complaining about the greed, arrogance, cruelty or indifference of these
prosperous & influential elite. But, of course, why not call upon the same
gods who ‘make’ them elite? If ‘strong enough’ to give
them wealth & power, then --- love them or hate them --- why not imitate the elite Phoenicians
and share in their riches?
As somebody once said (the fictional Gordon Gekko in the film Wall
Street… but, I wager, peddled many a time in various ways by lots of
people throughout history):
“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”
+++ 109. Chanaanite Conundrums? +++
(Act 1)
A curious thing about the Phoenicians is that, as
every scholar agrees, they were definitely Semitic.
That is (and even though contemporary scholars use the term without necessarily
believing in the biblical explanation of this term), they descended from Noe’s [Noah’s] oldest of three sons, Sem [Shem]. Which, from a
wise Roman Catholic academic point of view, continues to invert the inversion.
Remember this from Chapter 100?
Satan loves to invert right order.
God’s Order in a sinfully fallen world ---
which is the correct structure of any Roman Catholic people --- rests upon patrimony.
To wit, with some exceptions, the authority of man over woman
and older over younger. Ergo, St. Noe was both
the king & pope of the world right after the Great Flood… his corporeal and spiritual fatherhood made
him the civil and religious ruler of our ancient earth. This correct
order was quickly supplanted by the offspring of his youngest & rebellious
son, Cham [Ham], whose grandson, the remarkable Nemrod
[Nimrod], tyrannized the earth, instigating again false (read: non-Catholic or anti-Catholic)
religion after the cleansing of the earth and led humanity into building the
Tower of Babel. Via this supernaturally occultic ‘gate’ (either inside or right next to where Our
Creator placed the Garden of Paradise, the word ‘Babel’, you
recall, originally meaning ‘gate of God’), he daringly tried to
invade Heaven on his own terms by lying to human beings, getting
them to think, haughtily, that they were their own ‘Gods’ rather
than merely (yet incredibly!) reflecting the God Who made them.
Nemrod (who I surmise to be the ‘sea god’)
failed to storm Heaven.
Moreover, given that Nemrod
was indeed the Neptune of the Romans and the Poseidon of the Greeks, his Atlanteans also ultimately failed to rule the world,
plunging, instead, like fiery meteors into an oceanic abyss as hell’s
insatiable maw opened wide to droolingly receive them, dining greedily upon
succulent human souls.
The problem?
Just like the Hittites…
they were zealous pagans!
The Hattian foundation
of the Hittite Empire (the third of the oceanic beast’s seven heads) were
Chanaanites [Canaanites], descended from Cham’s
fourth son, as we’ve noted twice. And Cham’s offspring loved
paganism --- indeed, any form of non-Catholic,
and hence false, religion --- with unparalleled abandon. Thus, in
being the foundation of the Hittite Empire, they infected Sem’s descendants with the
same spiritual plague, the humanly Semitic superstructure of this Hittite
Empire happily lapping up the sweet poison of every false religion and
multiplying their demonic gods galore.
The Phoenicians continued Semitic pre-occupation
with pagan gods.
What’s more, they continued a tragic Chanaanite fixation.
Because Cham’s son, Chanaan (who some argue
was not the fourth of Cham’s sons, claiming the list in Genesis
10:6 is geographically based and not in order of descending age… but there is no ancient, traditional and sound basis for this
supposition, to my ken), suffered the terrible curse of St. Noe, as recorded in
Genesis 9:25-27, having shared in, per old Jewish memory, his father’s
brazen mockery of our
world’s first post-deluge monarch & pope, St. Noe,
when the latter (Noe) became shamefully drunk.
And what was the gist of this prophetic curse?
That Chanaanites would be a ‘slave
of slaves’ and serve Sem.
How was this sad prophecy
carried out and awful curse fulfilled in the end?
By the Chanaanites --- who settled mainly (although not the
only ones to do so) in the Levant (in ancient times consisting of Asia Minor,
Syria & Palestine, with the region around Egypt thrown in; in other words,
the eastern Mediterranean) --- adopting such depraved paganism & anti-Catholicity
that they cruelly & murderously sacrificed
their children to Moloch, practiced temple prostitution as if it were a religious
‘sacrament’ and their priestesses ‘holy’ for offering
up their bodies to any & every man’s carnal pleasure,
indulging divorce, immodesty, drunkenness, pederasty, homosexuality,
bestiality, incest, abortion and other
perversions or bloody violence too hideous for good Catholics to mention
without retching in abject horror, and shuddering in fear as they think of how
bad they themselves are also, bound to face a similar punishment after death in
judgment.
How long will God endure such willful crimes?
No man can order God around. No human being can
bind Him to their wishes. But we have saints, prophets, apostles and the Holy
Roman Catholic Church Herself assuring us, in Her Infallible Teachings,
that certain transgressions (sins) cry out to Heaven for vengeance, from
which God will not indefinitely refrain to punish decisively.
In short, that He must, and truly will,
punish sooner rather than later.
That is, even here on earth, physically, before
we die.
This awful fate is what threatens us right now,
too, during the Great Apostasy, and it’s what faced the Chanaanites way back then, thousands of years ago, in the
Sin so ugly, corrupt & unnatural that God must say “enough”.
The ancient Israelites ---the members of the Old
Testament Church --- were His Tool to punish the villainous Chanaanites
over three millennia ago when He sent the Hebrews into
This appalls modern people.
We think it ‘cruel’,
‘inhumane’ and ‘barbaric’.
But how is it any of these things when sin is real, sin is disgusting,
and these sins are appalling and murderous and perverted beyond belief, defying
everything Our Creator made us to be and purposefully designed us to do,
giving us both the Natural Law and an Infallible Religion so as
to have all we need to please Him and complete our destiny?
This is why
the Chanaanites were cursed, why they were destroyed… and why it is imperative to understand that
these same Chanaanites were the foundation
of the brief but wicked third head of
the ‘Sea Beast’, the Hittite
Empire, and, too, such a major influence
upon the fourth head of the Oceanic
Monster, the Phoenician Empire.
Yet how could this be, the Chanaanite
curse spreading like an infection?
How is it Cham’s offspring dragged down Sem’s progeny?
+++ 110. Chanaanite Conundrums? +++
(Act 2)
He wrote to the Catholics in the Diocese of
Colossae, a major city of ancient Phrygia, part of central Anatolia (Asia
Minor, modern day
“Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth
[care most about Heaven and the life to come, not this human life here on earth below]… Mortify [put
to death, i.e, metaphorically, to deny
one’s self the things for which you crave] therefore your members
[the various parts of your corrupt human body, conceived in sin] which are upon the earth; fornication,
uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence [wicked desire], and covetousness,
which is the service of idols.”
(Colossians 3:2, 5 DRC)
We repeat:
“…and covetousness, which is the service of idols.” (Colossians 3:5c DRC)
Now, it can be argued Paul says “the
service of idols” in reference to the whole list of sins, which human
beings can commit with their bodies upon this earth, that
he mentions in the earlier part of his sentence in Colossians 3:5 just after
the semicolon. To wit, “…fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil
concupiscence, and covetousness…” (Ibid.)
This is a valid point.
Note, though, how all of
these sins of the body can be summed up in the one unique word, and rather
old-fashioned nowadays since most people don’t use it in conversation
anymore, of “covetousness”. And what is “covetousness”?
Usually it’s equated with the terms of
‘greed’ or ‘avarice’.
That is, to desire something ardently, or with
envy.
And yet, not
just every and any desire can be sinful. After all, is
a Catholic sinning merely because he or she ardently desires to die in
the state of grace and envies those Roman Catholics who have already won
their difficult battles with their corrupt bodies on earth and now enjoy the
Undisturbed Bliss & Glory of Heaven Forevermore?
Of course not.
A Catholic is supposed
to desire Heaven, and no good
Catholic --- in envying those
Catholics who are already safe in Heaven --- wants these already safe Catholics
thrown out of Heaven while he
or she takes their place and gloats at
their demise.
No… a real & good Catholic simply wants
to be with them.
Hence, to covet --- rightly understood in a
religious sense --- means either 1) to want something that you should never want, or 2) to want
something more than you
should want it, or 3) to want something when
you should not be wanting it.
This is what covetousness is, and it’s what
greed or avarice amount to.
It also sums up the short list of sins, that
Are you starting to get it?
Good.
Now make the final connection in your mind.
If this is what “covetousness” is… then why does the
Apostle Paul bother linking avarice and greed to “the service of idols”? (Colossians 3:5c
DRC)
Remember, this is God Himself speaking to
us, the Holy Ghost inspiring
Sobering, my dear reader?
It had better be.
Or else you don’t care, or you’re not
paying attention.
+++ 111. Chanaanite Conundrums? +++
(Act 3)
The ancient Chanaanites
were well-known for their merchantry.
They loved to buy and sell, they loved to wheel
and deal, they loved to haggle in the marketplace, they loved to make money and
get rich and live sumptuously, lording it over others (since wealth always
equates to power on this earth), and, like most pagans in ancient times, they
viewed the poor as lepers, as if poverty were contagious.
They also liked to serve pagan gods in false
religion.
And they attributed their success in wealth and
possessions and power and conquests and security and fertility and earthly
happiness to the demon gods that they worshipped. This was their secret, they
thought, their means of getting what they wanted. If they became poor, or lost
a battle, or were barren, or afraid, or etc., etc., then --- obviously --- they
most assuredly had failed in some way to serve, please or placate their gods.
Ergo, just as surely, they must
‘right’ this ‘wrong’.
They must better serve, better please, and
placate their somewhat irascible god.
Those who are poor, downtrodden, powerless,
afraid, barren, unhappy and otherwise ‘unsuccessful’ in this
earthly life, are, clearly, sluggards
when it comes to this principle of earthly ‘success’, failing
to serve, please & placate the fickle god! Either that or else they serve
gods (or a god) who are weaker than the powerful gods you serve.
Clearly!
Who of a sound mind could deny it?
You’ll recall, beloved reader, how Nemrod convinced the human race, right after the Great
Flood, to build a “…city and a tower, the top whereof may REACH
TO HEAVEN…” (Genesis 11:4b-c DRC) We have spent much of the sixth of seven
devastating points against salvation heresy (the
fantasy that it doesn’t matter what religion you are in this life)
demonstrating that this was a long ago ‘great apostasy’ in
miniature, of humanity ‘self-deifying’ itself. These very ancient
humans were stronger & longer-lived, becoming the rather badly behaved
& irascible ‘gods’ of (for instance) Greek pagans a little
later on in history, as St. Augustine of Hippo informs us.
Humanity today again strives for the stars,
building a New World Order “…city and a tower, the top
whereof may reach to heaven…” We again puff out our chests,
revel in our tools (technology) and
deeds (acquiring wealth & amusements,
the conquering of our maladies or fears, and ascending into the lofty heights
of space), and boast of a self-deification to come (or already here!), when we shall crown ourselves as our own
‘maker’. We shall rule; we shall call into existence; and we shall
be our own ‘Gods’.
It is thus our own selves that we must serve, please &
placate.
Ergo, we must eradicate poverty, illness,
suffering, death & etc. There is no need
for these unpleasant things in the coming brave New World Order. To
think otherwise is to admit weakness… to fail to believe ourselves
the ‘Gods’ that we are, able to solve our own problems and make for
ourselves a paradise here on earth or in ‘space’ above.
And what kind of
gods would we be if we
allowed human beings to be poor, get sick, suffer in some way, or die (or at
least die a terrible, painful death, without the option to voluntarily finish
ourselves off --- euthanasia --- without all that pain!), or etc., etc., etc.?
Very poor gods indeed, not worthy of serving.
(You’ll recall as well, dear soul, that we
dealt with this phenomenon of ‘self-deification’ in the first
twelve chapters of Helplessly Ignorant,
which also constitute the first of seven devastating points against salvation
heresy… that is to say, the idea that we are too ‘ignorant’
to know which religion, if any, is true, and, anyhow, as our human thinking
progresses, it’s ‘obvious’ that none of them is true
and that, instead, we ourselves make
reality since it is only what is ‘perceived’ that is
‘real’ and, hence, we the ‘perceivers’ are therefore
the ‘creators’ of what we choose to perceive.)
Whichever --- the serving of ‘gods’
outside of one’s own self or the serving of one’s self as if you
are a god, or even the worship of all of humanity or all of nature as if both
we and it are a massive, evolving, pantheistic ‘god’ with ourselves
and countless other sentient & ‘evolved’ beings as the
‘mind’ or altitudinous ‘head’ of a universal,
collectively-conscious & monistic ‘God-Beast’
--- the end is ever the same:
The worship of that which is
not God, coveting whatever we may choose.
This is greed, this is avarice, and this is what it means to covet.
+++ 112. Chanaanite Conundrums? +++
(Act 4)
Beloved reader, do you start to understand why
the Holy Ghost, via
Do you see how this same plague afflicts us today?
The first
conundrum of the Chanaanites is that they
were cursed. Why? We have explained
this curse and how it was prophetic,
both due to Chanaan taking part in his father
Cham’s wicked mockery of Noe (see Genesis 9:20-27), our earth’s king &
pope, and due to Chanaan’s progeny descending
into the gravest of sins, rebellion &
paganism (see Leviticus 18:3, 24-25, for evidence that it’s for
horrible sins that the land of Chanaan was to be
given to the Israelites and how the land itself would “vomit out”
(Leviticus 18:25c DRC) the inhabitants thereof, that is to say, the descendants
of Cham’s son, Chanaan, the Chanaanites
--- peruse Leviticus 18 for full grasp of their many crimes).
Additional evidence of the Chanaanite
curse and their grotesque iniquities may be seen as early (historically
speaking) as the cities of Sodom & Gomorrha [
St. Ezechiel the
Prophet, in condemning Jerusalem (and hence the Israelites as a whole; or, to
be really specific, the two remaining tribes under Jerusalem’s rule at
this time, Benjamin & Judah,
the latter tribe from where the word Jew
derives), declares:
“As I live, saith
[says] the Lord God, thy [your] sister Sodom herself [Sodom is like a ‘sister city’
to you, Jerusalem, being close to one another’s locations and similar in
sins], and her daughters [all those
under Sodom’s sway or influence when Sodom still ruled & existed],
have not done as thou hast done, and thy daughters [they’ve not been as bad as you have been, including all
those under your sway or influence]. Behold
[You see] this was the iniquity [sin] of Sodom thy sister, pride, fulness
of bread [more than enough food to eat], and abundance [lots and lots of wealth], and the idleness of her, and of her
daughters [the realm of Sodom was so rich that everyone had way too much
time on their hands, frittering it away in useless or excessive amusements]: and they did not put forth their
hand to the needy, and to the poor [the very well-to-do
citizens of Sodom cared not a whit for people in poverty, starving,
cold, etc.]. And they were LIFTED
UP [became EXCEEDINGLY PROUD], and
committed ABOMINATIONS before me [did the
MOST HORRIBLE & UNNATURAL SINS despite knowing that I, the Creator, see
everything they do and will punish them]: and I took them away [destroyed
them all] as thou hast seen.” (Ezechiel
16:48-50 DRC)
Getting through to you, precious soul?
PRIDE
is the fountain of all sins, as any good Catholic knows.
This, combined with wealth & leisure,
along with little or no or only a ‘pretended’ concern for those
in need, makes for a situation where people forget the True Religion
--- or whatever remnants of God’s Singular Religion they have left ---
eventually spurning it, and offer themselves up entirely to the worst of
sins… even those sins that are most
unnatural and demand more immediate punishment upon this earth.
This is the first conundrum of the wicked Chanaanites explained.
The second
conundrum of the Chanaanites is that they
spiritually contaminated the Semites. That is to say, the inversion inverted,
with the descendants of Noe’s oldest &
holiest of sons, Sem, taking the position of a global
supremacy & centrality (which, one
might think, rights the wrong of Cham’s offspring subverting patrimony
via his son Chus in Nemrod
& the Atlanteans, then via Mesraim
in the Egyptians), this inverted inversion proceeds to fall flat on its
face with Sem’s progeny eagerly imbibing the
poison of paganism, innumerable false gods and anything opposed to God &
Catholicism!
And, though we’ve made much of Hittites
embracing Chanaanite paganism (you’ll recollect that the Hattians,
with whom the Hittites intermingled, were both Chanaanites
and massive fans of a seemingly endless parade of pagan gods), we don’t
pretend that the Semitic descendants of Noe only first
espoused paganism after the Deluge in the Hittite Empire. Because,
you’ll also remember, practically the whole human race followed
the indomitable Nemrod (Cham’s grandson) into rebellion against God &
Catholicism barely two centuries (if
that) after a catastrophic Flood, building a skyscraping tower. This must
include, as a matter of course (since Nemrod usurped rule of, essentially, all humanity),
the offspring of Sem, too (at least most of them, presumably).
Consequently, we merely conclude that, in the
wake of God’s division of humanity into various languages following the
We see, then, the Hattian
Chanaanites re-infest
a Semitic people by being the foundational base of the brief, yet globally
central, Hittite Empire.
How does this infection continue
with the Phoenicians?
The answer lies in the third conundrum.
+++ 113. Chanaanite Conundrums? +++
(Act 5)
The Chanaanites ---
overall, with every sub-branch or sub-tribe of the Chanaanites
included --- were the primary occupants of the
poetic-sounding-yet-increasingly-archaic name for the vast region known long
ago as the ‘
Granted, Mesraim’s
offspring (Cham’s second son), the Egyptians, dominated in northernmost
The Chanaanites
particularly filled up and dominated the aforementioned
The point?
This is where the Phoenicians settled.
Again, the Phoenicians were not an ‘empire’ in the customary sense. Rather,
they were a ‘confederacy’ or ‘league’, if you will, of
a growing number of Phoenician ‘city states’ that communicated
through their skills in writing, sailing & trade. Scholars argue over where
they originated. Ancient tradition insists they began on, or around, assorted
islands just off the eastern coast of
the middle of the Arabian Peninsula thousands of years ago, in a area
now under the rule of the small but rich Kingdom
of Bahrain.
Whether or not we want to believe this tradition
is beside the point.
What is the pertinent thing to realize?
Ancient sources also tell us the city of
Take a look at a map. Where is the lilliputian nation of
Connecting the dots? It’s not that hard.
The Phoenicians, as they gradually spread their
colonies and established city states, set up housekeeping --- as it were --- in
the middle of the pagan-god-loving Chanaanites.
Of course, the Phoenicians may have paganized
before entering the
No matter… because
ultimately they fell in love with Chanaanite
gods.
Remember, their
Not only that, but recall how pagans of old were localists.
That is, ancient pagans saw most of their gods as
being attached to some locale, a prominent city or river or mountain,
or to a specific ethnicity and tribe. Consequently, when other
ethnicities moved into an area, or took it over (and weren’t so proud that they presumed the gods of the
conquered to be unworthy of their worship), it was natural, so to speak,
for the new arrivals to adopt the deities
of the pagans there before them.
It may not make much sense to us; but it made a
lot of sense to them.
You can even see this described in Sacred
Scripture after the brutal & pagan Assyrians took over the Northern
Kingdom, the Kingdom of Israel (so called after ten of the twelve tribes split
from Solomon’s son, leaving him a mere two tribes to rule). For we read:
“And the king of the Assyrians brought
people [non-Jews]… and placed
them in the cities of Samaria [the former
realm of the Northern Kingdom] instead of the children of Israel [the ten tribes who had made up that Northern
Kingdom split from the two tribes of the Southern Kingdom]: and they
possessed Samaria and dwelt in the cities thereof. And when they began to dwell
there, they feared not the Lord [the
One True God of the Old Testament Israelite and all real Catholics]: and the Lord sent lions among them,
which killed them… And the king of the Assyrians commanded,
saying, ‘Carry thither [to there]
one of the priests whom you brought from thence [there] captive, and let him go, and… teach them the ordinances of the God of the land. [One must
understand that this priest was already schismatic & heretical due to the
Samaritans --- the
So, even if the Phoenicians were paganized before colonizing present day
Lebanon in the ancient Levant (and there’s evidence in Sacred Scripture
that they weren’t
paganized, leastwise, not fully),
they eventually gladly adopted the
gods of the Chanaanites.
+++ 114.
(Part 1)
Understanding this so far?
Now here’s the link to the third conundrum:
This is right where the GARDEN OF PARADISE
used to be.
Do you remember what we discussed before about
the Middle of the Earth, and the so-called ‘nexus’ or
‘navel’ of the world? To wit --- the ‘
We discussed this in Chapters 101 & 102 of
this book, Helplessly Ignorant.
Diaspora Jewish rabbis, following tradition, said
And do you recollect how we learned that at least
some traditionally religious people in
It almost certainly included what we call the city of
How so?
Ancient Old Testament era knowledge is a huge red
flag, saying, “Look here! Pay close attention… this place right
here, this unique city, is in a very extraordinary spot. God did not promise
the
Clearly, I’m being sardonic.
The All-Knowing Creator does not leave
such things to ‘chance’.
That is neither
how He works nor is it
conceivable for Him to operate in such ways. If you are both omnipotent
and omniscient then you will have a
purpose and a plan for absolutely everything, especially that which is most central & important.
End of sentences.
This is not truly debatable for the honest,
intelligent & wise Catholic. Once these facts are made plain, and once such
a person thinks to ask the right questions, seeking with all curiosity &
earnestness, it cannot be doubted that Almighty God chose
For instance, dear reader, if you call yourself
Roman Catholic (and really are!), do
you realize the Eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ, was crucified at the Place of Calvary?
We find evidence for this in Matthew 27:33, Mark
15:22 & Luke 23:33.
This spot called ‘Calvary’ was just
outside the walls of old
I mean, where else would Earth’s Navel
be from God’s Perspective?
King St. David is a Messianic Prophet, right?
And David is even an ancestor of the Messias, correct?
Well, then, is it sheer chance David
selected little ‘Salem’ [Jerusalem,
where his patriarch, St. Abraham met, honored & worshipped with a
mysterious ‘Melchisedech’ (the ‘Melchizedek’
of Protestant bibles), see Genesis 14:18-20] out of countless other
cities of the Land of Chanaan --- having to first defeat the Jebusite Chanaanites (hence not
Semites!) who still ruled the city since earlier Israelites hadn’t
been able to conquer them before David did so --- to be the City of God, the place God
placed His Name & His Temple
and gave us His Divine Son, and which, renamed, bears till this day a moniker meaning ‘City of Peace’,
testifying to God’s Rectifying Sacrifice?
Again… where else would Earth’s
Center be from God’s Point of View?
+++ 115.
(Part 2)
An industrious reader, by the way, may confirm
the account of King St. David & Jerusalem, as well as this city being where
God placed His Name & Temple, in Sacred Scripture in 2 Kings [2 Samuel]
5:4-10, 6:12, 3 Kings [1 Kings] 5:2-5, 1 Paralipomenon
[1 Chronicles] 29:1-5 & 2 Paralipomenon [2
Chronicles] 1:1-4. David, as the Messianic king, prophetically knew that God
intended him --- the human ancestor of the Messias, Christ Jesus --- to prepare
everything for the Temple in Jerusalem, and that his very peaceable son,
Solomon [‘solomon’ means
‘peaceful’ in ancient Hebrew], would construct it in this City of
Peace (a.k.a., ‘City of David’, ‘david’
being ‘beloved’).
The point is, God foreknew & planned this
Likewise His Son, Jesus --- Whose Body is the
So why wouldn’t He consider this the
center of our world’s surface?
And, if central, wouldn’t it be crucial
to
The kicker is this, though:
Matthew, Mark & Luke, in their gospels, refer
to Jesus crucified in the place called ‘
Both ‘Calvary’ and ‘
Protestant translations of the Bible into English
frequently make this meaning stark (although I must urge the unwary reader to
avoid Protestant renderings since they often twist a passage to suit their bias
against Catholicism). The one trustworthy version in English thus far for
Catholics, the Douay Rheims Challoner (DRC), comes
via
A simple question then arises. Is there a skull where Jesus died?
And if so… WHOSE?
The answer is easy:
Adam’s.
You read correctly.
It’s the SKULL of our first father, ADAM,
in the
Think about it. Unless you’re gaga over
‘macroevolution’, the so-called neo-Darwinian ‘modern
synthesis’, ‘evolutionary developmental biology’ (known also
by the easier and cuter ‘evo-devo’
nickname) or what-have-you (as long as, thinks the modernist, you don’t
dare to claim a Creator really did create anything on purpose,
originally forming life & cosmos into intricate patterns that
are --- *gasp* --- meant for a reason!),
then what is your problem? What is your hang up? What is so
‘impossible’ to believe?
It’s our
modern problem; not traditional
ancestors of old.
They remembered and believed… we doubt and
reactionarily refuse to believe in anything we deem
‘traditional’, ‘religious’, and hence (supposedly)
‘invisible’ and ‘unbelievable’. Adequate documentation still exists from ancient
times, showing that members of the Old Testament Church, before
Jesus, remembered Adam’s Skull
was buried at Calvary (‘a
skull’) where Jesus Died
and atoned for obedient followers.
Many early Church fathers and ancient religious
Jews confirm this memory.
So is it really that hard to fathom? Is it truly
difficult or insurmountable?
Whether Catholic or not, don’t most human beings
usually want to know where the remains of their departed are, and, if not
cremated and spread somewhere, that these remains are undisturbed &
respected? Isn’t this pretty natural for most human beings?
Then why
should it be any different for our ancestors way back
when?
Why wouldn’t Adam & Eve’s
children care about their parents?
Why wouldn’t they in ancient times
venerate their relics?
Why wouldn’t anyone keep them safe and intact?
Why is it ‘impossible’ to REMEMBER?
That’s all tradition is --- remembering.
And we don’t
remember because we don’t
want to know.
+++ 116.
(Part 3)
God is saying to the whole world, “Guess
Who?” We bury our heads (no pun intended, you must believe me…) in
the proverbial pillow and pretend He isn’t there, or scream our bloody
brains out and throw a human toddler tantrum, trying to make Him go away. Yet Our
Maker is not going to leave; He cannot not
exist; and we can’t ‘make’
Him.
So let’s say you think it through and
respond logically, as well as honestly.
To the shock of modern people, it’s not ipso facto ‘impossible’ that
Adam existed. He is indeed our very first father. God did indeed form him and
did indeed place him, with his wife, Eve, in the
“What about the Flood?” you might
say. “What happened then?”
Again, not that hard. Ancient tradition and documentation come to our
aid. The knowledge is there for those who have ears to listen. When the world
went into total rebellion --- much like
today, when nobody believes in Catholicism whole & entire, when nearly all
of humanity rejected the Law of Natural Reason and gave themselves over to sin
and pleasure and violence and bloodshed and perversion, etc., just as Jesus in
the Gospels assures us about the time right before the Great Deluge and Noe’s Ark --- Adam’s Relics were taken
onto the Ark for safekeeping. The Flood over with, Our Creator sent angels
to St. Noe in order to make certain the relics of St.
Adam were conveyed back to the Middle of the Earth in a vastly altered world.
Lofty Ararat in
It can be done.
So what’s so special about
Well, aside from Abraham perfectly obeying God by
being willing to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, there, on Mt. Moriah (the Temple Mount); and Abraham’s bones being
buried there, too, eventually; it’s
also special because the
Garden of Paradise was in Middle
Earth, and the center, or
most important part, of this Garden, was Jerusalem.
To wit:
It’s where we sinned with the TREE OF KNOWLEDGE OF
GOOD & EVIL.
And it’s where the TREE OF LIFE
stood, where Jesus gave us His Life.
What is this extremely deadly Tree of
Knowledge of Good & Evil?
The Angel of ‘Light’, LUCIFER the ‘Bearer
of Light’.
And what is the remedially vivifying Tree of
Life?
The Mother of God, MARY IMMACULATE, bearing God’s Fruit of Life.
Jesus Her Son --- God Incarnate --- is the Second
Adam, the Fruit of the Tree of Life, undoing the First Adam’s
Original Sin. (See 1 Corinthians 15:20-23, 45-47, for logical proof of Christ
being the ‘Second Adam’.) The Blessed Virgin Mary, His Mother, is
the Second
Eve, Eve being “mother of all
the living” (Genesis 3:20 DRC),
this Woman via Her Divine Son crushing the luciferian serpent’s head and
undoing the sin of the First Eve, Mary being the
Tree of Life and, hence, Mother of All Who Are Redeemed.
The spiritual import of
these physical... and thus manifest… yet forgotten facts?
God, with the seafaring and far-trading fourth
of the Oceanic Beast’s seven heads, returns patrimonial rule to a more
rightful inheritor, an offspring of Noe’s
eldest son, Sem (you’ll
recall Phoenicians were Semitic). As well, He brings global headship
back, for some 400 years, to where it began in the heart of Middle Earth,
in Paradise, which is smack dab in-between the third head of the Sea
Monster (the Hittites in the north)
and the second head of this Oceanic Beast (the Egyptians in the south), geographically speaking.
Phoenicians therefore settled in the midst of innumerable Chanaanites before
they took the headship, right where our first parents sinned and where God
had warned the Dragon it would be She, the
Woman, crushing his noxious head. (Genesis 3:15 DRC. By the way, I’m quite aware modern
scholars mock this reading, preferring solely a Catholic-denying
‘he’ for the pronoun. There is hard evidence for at least several ancient manuscripts of
Genesis reading ‘she’. Lucifer’s children don’t wish to admit the
privileges Christ bestows on Mary, His Mother, God choosing to crush His Serpentine Foe via a creature of
mere flesh, vaunting mere humility & femininity, in the flesh She gave Jesus in Her Womb.
Please see the aforementioned Mary Exalted
, Chapter 1, to see the evidence for ‘she’.)
At this crucial juncture of a Phoenician fourth
head, God also allows an idolatrous, mercantile & avaricious Chanaan to infect a more Godly & Catholic-tending Sem.
For while we see the Phoenicians in Sacred Scripture, at least at first and in
part, befriending the Godly David and then Solomon, David’s son, helped
by the King of Tyre, Hiram (the center of Phoenician power as they rose to supremacy) ---
whose folk were Phoenician but also called ‘Sidonians’
in their region --- to build the Old Testament Temple (see 3 Kings 5), we see,
too, after the mid-point of their ascendancy (c. 1200 BC to 800 BC), Phoenicians becoming as bad as their
fellow Semites, the Israelites, who adopted Chanaanite
gods after Solomon. I.e., some of the Phoenicians wanted to embrace
the True Religion by befriending God’s friends, the Israelites
& His Chosen People. Then the Chanaanite curse
& plague infected both, spreading via covetousness, avarice & greed.
This is “the service of IDOLS”, the worship of pagan
DEMON gods.
Satan traffics in terrestrial wealth, the things
of this earth. This is what the seafaring Phoenicians excelled in, trafficking
in wealth via trade, conveying the riches of this earth from the Chanaanites around them, to all the various tribes,
ethnicities & nations of the world with whom they interacted, keeping
careful records, spreading their phonetic alphabet. Mind you, I’m NOT
saying trade & merchants are ‘intrinsically’ evil. I’m
simply repeating what Christ Himself warned
His disciples in Matthew 19:24b DRC:
That it’s EASIER for a camel to go through the
“eye of a needle” than for RICH PEOPLE to enter the
Because coveting destroys
souls, making buying & selling dangerous.
Now, God traffics in celestial wealth, the
things of Heaven.
That is to say, Lucifer
trades in pride & greed;
God in humility & charity.
The Devil exports earthly passions; God
imports heavenly graces. The two are each global in their vast reach. Both fare throughout the world. Like the Phoenicians, who sailed
the seven seas and probed earth more than anyone since the fantastic Atlanteans, further than almost anyone today
realizes, wheeling, dealing & trading, venturing & getting wealthy. The
world their pleasant plaything… what would they choose?
Will the Sidonian Merchants select
Invisible Heaven or Visible Earth?
+++ 117. If a Pebble Falls Into the Ocean +++
and No One Is Around to See It… Does It Make a Sight?
So… seven seas.
Why this peculiar tradition?
Why seven, and why a parallel seven
continents, seven heads of earth &
stone & soil pressing forth from this lower world, scraping against the
heavens? Why the oceans between, each an abyss filled with water &
salt, equal in number to these terrestrial mountains? Why does the Apocalypse,
cryptic message of the Beloved & Davidic Disciple, tell of a Sea Monster
with seven skulls --- so to
speak --- and, starting with the Dragon near the beginning of Chapter 12 and
continuing with the Dragon through the middle of Chapter 13, link this fell & fiery behemoth with
the Oceanic Beast?
Is anyone looking, is anyone paying attention?
You’re going to have to --- whether you
want to or not, to begin with. Reality takes no vacations. What was cryptic and
‘bizarre-looking’, way back when, will
eventually come into perfect focus and, forced to look, demand that we see
clearly in the end.
As Jesus cautioned His Disciples in the Sermon on
the Mount:
“Not every one that saith [says] to
me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but [rather
only] he that doth [does]
the will of my Father who is in heaven [he or she who obeys whatever God commands], he shall enter
into the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to me in that day [the day when I, Jesus, Who am God, return
to the earth, or the day when someone dies upon earth and faces judgment before
me in the afterlife]: ‘Lord, Lord, have not we prophesied in
thy [your] name, and cast out
devils [demons] in thy name, and done
many miracles in thy name?’ And
then I will profess unto them [tell them
plainly and honestly], ‘I never knew you: depart from
me, you that work iniquity [I
absolutely do not claim you as mine, so get out of My Sight and leave
My Presence].’ Every one therefore that heareth these my words, and doth them, shall be likened to a
wise man that built his house upon a rock [whoever seeks for
and discovers what my commandments are, and obeys them, is like a person on solid ground, religiously
unshakeable], and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds
blew, and they beat upon that house, and
it fell not [it did not collapse into ruin despite the terrible assault of religious
falsehoods & cruel persecution], for
it was founded on a rock [built
solidly upon the unshakeable ground of infallible religious truth].
And every one that heareth
these my words, and doth them not,
shall be like a foolish man that built his house upon the sand [whoever fails to seek my commandments, or ignores and rejects them even when unable to avoid the fact
they exist, and thus --- in either case --- willfully disobeys them, is like a person standing in a
religious bog, doomed to sink to his or her death], and the rain fell,
and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell [it collapsed into utter ruin under God’s terrible wrath], and great was the fall thereof [the
ruin shocks & appalls everyone everywhere].” (Matthew
7:21-28 DRC)
The point?
Sand is shifting and unstable, whereas rock is
solid and firm. The meaning is overwhelmingly stark to a real Roman Catholic
with wisdom. For what nickname did Jesus bestow upon Simon, son of Jona, and
upon him alone out of the
Twelve Apostles? As the gospel also records Christ as saying in response to
this disciple of His, Simon, not too long after the mountain homily where Jesus
speaks of solid rock & shifting sand:
“And Jesus came… saying, ‘Whom do men say that the Son of man
is?[Who do people believe I, the Son of Man,
am?]’ …Simon…
answered and said: ‘Thou art [You
are] Christ [the Anointed, the Messias], the Son of the living God.’ And Jesus said to him
[Simon]: ‘Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona [How fortunate you
are, Simon son of your earthly father, Jona]: because flesh and blood hath [has] not
revealed it to thee [you], but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee: that thou art Peter
[you are Rock, the literal meaning of the Aramaic word ‘kepha’ that Jesus used here in reference to
Simon and later became the name ‘peter’ in our contemporary
English via ancient Greek & Latin, see John 1:42 for proof of the
specific Aramaic word Jesus gave to Simon as an utterly unique nickname
apart from all His other disciples or apostles]; and upon this rock [based on the visible authority &
infallible teaching I give you and each man who receives your rock-like office
and duties as leader of My Body] I will build my church, and the gates of hell
[the supernatural power of hell & Satan’s religious lies] shall
not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:13a, c, 16-18 DRC)
Again, rock is solid while sand is shifting.
Have you stood with your bare feet on the beach
as a sea wave rolls in around you and then recedes, dear soul? Assuming the
wave is not so huge as to drench you totally, then drag you out into the deep
with a vicious undertow… what happens? Correct. The sand flows around
your feet and out from beneath them, slowly yet surely submerging you further
and further into the beach as wave after wave comes in. And --- were we to
endure long enough, for days, maybe, or even months --- a powerful storm would
eventually carry us off completely despite our gradual burial in the beach.
This is part of the symbolism in Sacred Scripture
where it says:
“And the DRAGON… stood upon the SAND OF THE SEA.” (Apocalypse [Revelation] 12:17a, 18 DRC)
We’ve already noted how the waters of the
ocean represent the countless multitude of human beings
upon the earth, as do the innumerable grains of sand, too. Thus, the Dragon
standing upon the sand next to the ocean symbolizes his spiritual authority
over us --- unless, of course, we have broken this diabolic power via Baptism
into Catholicism.
Yet what is water…
aside from being the sacramental matter
of Holy Baptism?
A liquid, unable to support anything solid upon
it unless this solid thing floats
(like, for instance, something made out of wood… like an ark or a cross).
This is the symbolism of ‘no Salvation outside the Church’, as
driven home by the fact that solely
Noah and his three sons, plus their wives (eight in all), survived the Deluge
in an Ark of wood, and driven
home, also, by the fact that Jesus died upon a Cross of wood, thereby enabling anyone who enters the Ark of His
Roman Catholic Body to survive
the Flood of God’s Wrath, clinging to the redemption He wrought through His Blood on a wooden cross, sacrificing the human flesh &
life that His Mother bequeathed Him in Her Womb.
And what is sand…
which, vastly aggregated next to the sea,
makes a beach?
A solid thing, but broken into tiny fragments
called ‘grains’ (and, more often than not, what scientists call
‘silicon dioxide’, this being the most common constituent of the
thing we know as ‘sand’). In other words, sand is rock broken into
tiny pieces. It’s solid, yes --- but can its fragmented solidity bear up
under the pressure a whole rock can endure?
No… which is why Jesus
counsels us to build upon solid
rock, not sinking sand.
Ergo why sand in conjunction
with water is treacherous. Fun to play on when the weather is nice, true; nevertheless, not
the kind of place you’d choose to build a house or want to be when the
weather is tempestuous and dangerous. Which is part of the
symbolism, as well, of the Dragon standing on the sand next to the sea.
Fallen and corrupt humanity can be tempestuous
& dangerous, driven --- and tossed about --- by the storms of our passions
& prejudices. What solidity we have is too often granular and shifting, the
tide of human desire or fear moving us about and
leveling us into flats, marshes, sandbars or dunes… even submerging us
completely. So while the Devil may spiritually rule over us (apart from good Catholics), his own
stead in our world is tenuous. He is powerful, yes. Nonetheless, like the
global seas, God sets boundaries beyond which Satan cannot pass, and the
sinuous, undulating serpent is stymied --- or assisted --- by what free-willed
human beings (bearing the image of his
foe, God!) choose to do and where we obstinately refuse to cooperate.
In short, he plays a perilous game trying to rule over us and waylay us.
His strategy is the tactic of all clever
manipulators. Use what is to your advantage --- unruly carnal desires and fears. Moreover, increase your advantage
by keeping most of those under your rule in ignorance of the true or full
situation. Dissemble, if you must… yet keep the falsehoods grounded
in truth, twisting the shards of
trueness to some goal which the truths were never meant to support, or
else exalting something good whilst suppressing or even denying goals
that are more important, or which, compared to a purported goal, render this
openly proclaimed objective either wrong or worthless.
Humankind’s individual brevity is a marvelous assistance. Most of us will
never remember much of what happened a generation or two ago, not to
mention deeds, incidents or words that took place centuries & millennia
in the far distant past. The serpent counts
on our lazy and smug ignorance regarding the True Religion and our distant past
to ensure that his bold gamble
for our immortal souls pays off in the end.
Yet is the unseen or unknown thus unreal? Does
ignorance obliterate reality?
If a pebble falls into the ocean with no one around to see it,
or no one left to remember, does it make a sight? That is to say,
if we don’t like the truth
about what happened long ago, far away or invisibly, are we then right to adopt any theory or belief we
wish about the long ago, far away or invisible, and call this fantasy ‘true’…
pretending it’s ‘real’?
+++ 118. Out of Sight, Out of
Mind? +++
(Why We Purposely Forget Some Ancient
History)
This is how most people approach religion &
philosophy nowadays.
This is why almost no one believes in the Roman
Catholic Faith anymore.
After all, why believe in something that took
place long ago, far away and hence ‘invisibly’? And which, when you
get right down to it, almost nobody today likes since Catholicism is so full of
‘unpleasant’ stuff about sin, guilt, punishment & hell?
Who in feel-good modern times wants to believe in
something like that?
This is the status of tragic Atlantis, to boot.
People saw it long ago, so long ago the highly
educated and our present leaders are perfectly content calling it a
‘fantasy’ since, truth be told, it makes us feel uncomfortable
thinking they were as tremendously clever and powerful as we are today --- perhaps even greater than us! --- and yet died, annihilated. This makes us feel less special.
It makes us feel very vulnerable, too.
Because if they… clever and powerful as
they were… could go down into appalling destruction --- well, couldn’t the same horrible fate
occur to us as well, clever and powerful though we are, with our amazing
civilization later lost & forgotten?
Why should our fate be any different from their
fate?
Then, just to top it off, it’s clear the Atlanteans were exceedingly proud & wicked.
Furthermore, that the supernatural world --- the One True God of the Catholic
Religion or (if you ‘must’ be pagan) the pantheon of pagan gods who
oversee our visible world --- punished
them for their hubris & iniquity. This punishment makes us queasy.
I mean, aren’t we just as bad as
they were… perchance worse?
Meanwhile, the Phoenicians are in-between.
Yes, their civilization passed long ago, and most
of us don’t remember.
Nevertheless, the highly educated and our present
day leaders admit that they once existed. And, since nothing terribly
catastrophic or suddenly annihilative occurred to them at the height of their
ascendancy (they merely waned in wealth
& power until they subsided into the haziness of ancient history, their
territory taken over by others), then it doesn’t threaten our
arrogance nearly as much as the thought of extraordinary Atlantis falling into
ruin. And, anyhow, we’re more amazing than the Phoenicians, think
we. Unfortunately, this haughty assumption is at least partly wrong. The
Phoenicians may never have had all of the incredible knowledge or
‘technology’ that we have today; but they were, in many ways,
practically as extraordinary as Atlantis, peregrinating all over the world and
across the seven seas. Ergo why we must doubt their
maritime prowess.
Again… we’re the greatest ever.
We moderns are the pinnacle of human
achievement. It’s unthinkable that anyone rivaled us in the past.
The notion is insulting, laughable and rather infuriating. Although, to be
totally honest, a few daring scholars or
other contrarian thinkers have punctured our delusions of grandeur with
the facts of hard research and actual experimentation.
+++ 119. Out of Sight, Out of
Mind? +++
(Proof That Our Historical Skepticism Is
Absurd)
Such as?
Well, my own personal favorite example is the
legendary Mr. Thor Heyerdahl. Somehow he --- despite acting in defiance of
contemporary academic ‘dogma’ and deeply held bias against ancient
peoples having knowledge of, or access to, the earth as a whole --- not only
survived in academia with his reputation mostly intact, but also managed to
dent prejudices, held by his scholarly peers, noticeably in the mid-twentieth
century.
How so?
For one thing, he was insatiably curious. So
curious that he wasn’t satisfied with contemporary academic
‘dogma’, as if what he was taught in books and colleges of our
times was the final word, impossible to doubt. He therefore dallied with
‘unthinkable’ ideas, taking them seriously. He also investigated
the traditions of local peoples of ancient or indigenous lineage with an open
mind. That is to say, he didn’t disdain traditions of ancient, indigenous
people as not worth his time, or, hearing of them, dismiss these traditions
with a wave of his scholarly & modern hand as the ‘silly
superstitions’ they’re supposed to be, assuming out of thin air
that they’re false.
You see, Mr. Heyerdahl was a Norwegian man born
in 1914 and who died, not so very long ago, in 2002. He studied zoology and
geography at the
It probably helped, though, that he was a liberal
modernist.
I.e., with his fame (he wrote books or made films that were popular and well known amongst
the general public), he constantly crusaded for the United Nations and
every form of modern internationalism, chided the wealthiest of nations for
their pollution and harm to the environment, and, for good measure, spoke up in
defense of the poorer nations and peoples of this world that are oppressed or
marginalized.
On top of that, he was an atheist.
This, then, is most likely how he survived the
disapproval of his colleagues.
Yet this is not a book about Thor Heyerdahl. So
why have I mentioned him? And what has this brilliant atheist to do with
Atlantis or the Phoenicians? I haven’t the space or time to discuss his
contributions completely. We therefore focus on two critical things.
First, he took at face value the ancient
traditions of the Incans (who, along with the Aztecs or other ancient peoples
of Central & South America, recalled similar things) that white-skinned
men with beards had visited their part of the world centuries before the arrival of the
Spaniards or other Europeans during the past 500 or so years. Then, realizing
these traditions indicated at least some of these mysterious people left the
Americas to travel west across the Pacific Ocean, in the late 1940s he built a
small, simple and ingenious raft
that would be like what, at a minimum, ancient people of the Americas could
have constructed, and, with five other brave men, sailed on this tiny craft for 101
days and nearly 5000 miles,
thereby PROVING such ancient people could
have navigated the huge Pacific and settled, traded, or otherwise
interacted with each other despite
the distance & obstacles, or ‘rudimentary technology’
they had available.
Fascinating, eh?
Not content with this demonstration, though, Mr.
Heyerdahl later in his life built an Egyptian
reed boat --- as accurately as possible, based on ancient drawings or
models and skills or memories of certain indigenous peoples --- and, with six
other brave men on this small ship of ancient design, proceeded to sail from Morocco
in Africa with the Canary Current for some
4000 miles all the way to the Caribbean island of Barbados in
the Americas in 57 days,
barely over eight weeks. (Incidentally, his first attempt, in
1969, almost succeeded in going all the way, but failed, heartbreakingly,
within a hundred miles of the
+++ 120. Out of Sight, Out of
Mind? +++
(Thus Phoenicians May Have Sailed Globally)
Consequently, without going into excruciating
detail or exhaustive documentation about the oceanic sailing abilities of the
renowned Phoenicians, you have, my dear reader, more than enough rational
reason to take seriously what I’m about to point out. If you are
reactionary & skeptical, then be industrious, stop the snide (and ignorant)
comments or thoughts, get up off your hind quarters, and do some fair &
evenhanded investigation. (That is, don’t just examine sources
that confirm what you already want to believe. Be smart & honest and
examine the other side fully & carefully, too, the side that doesn’t
simply ‘prove’ what you already want to believe.) What I am
about to say is neither impossible nor implausible. It’s merely not the popular party line of
contemporary academia & scientists; it merely contradicts their present dominant opinion.
And that is?
Well, while scholars since the 1960s have been
forced to admit the Vikings reached North America (at the northern tip of
Newfoundland) by the turn of the 2nd millennium under Leif Erikson,
some 500 years prior to Christopher Columbus’ four famous voyages
to the Americas in the area of the Caribbean islands (Leif, by the way, was both Catholic and converted many to the One True
Religion, including his mother) and so may have influenced Mr.
Columbus with Viking tales of land to the far west over the Atlantic, they
still adamantly refuse to consider the likelihood of peoples --- at least more
than a few persons --- in the Mediterranean region during ancient times (say, from one to five thousand years ago)
knowing quite well the Americas existed, or that our earth is a globe, or about
our world’s many continents, isles, seas, mountains, lakes or other
significant terrestrial features and their locations in relation to one
another.
They are determined to presume --- out of thin
air --- that almost everyone then was completely ignorant of earth’s true
shape, scope and geography. Mediterranean peoples could not possibly have known
anything geographically beyond much of Eurasia, part of
In the meantime, plenty of things contradict this
assumption of most of today’s scholars. Yet do they care? Or are they
even aware? An ancient map of the earth, for instance, not only showing the
continent of Antarctica in correct relation to other continents, but, too,
revealing this southern continent to be composed of two giant sections mostly
separated by sea (a thing not known to us
until circa 1958, with ice-penetrating radar showing the shape of Antarctica
beneath all of the accumulated snow!) leaves them unmoved. It is either
something they’ve never heard of (because
it’s usually not part of university instruction) or else presumed to
be, without careful investigation, a ‘forgery’ or
‘misinterpretation on our parts’ or ‘lucky guess way back
then’, or etc., etc.
The upshot?
Sometimes trusting the ancient Greek historian,
Herodotus, contemporary scholars may be willing to admit that one particular
Phoenician foray circumnavigated the continent of Africa via the
Meanwhile, there’s
plenty of hints the Phoenicians did just this.
To wit, there is some evidence to suggest that at
least some of them circumnavigated the earth eventually, and, mayhap ---
however shocking the idea --- that a few of them might have regularly and
routinely explored, mined, traded, settled, colonized, or otherwise interacted
with lands and peoples far across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans.
For example, in Sacred Scripture, we read that
the fabulous King Solomon was, like David his father, good friends with the
Phoenician leader, Hiram, who was a ‘Sidonian’
and king of the city-state of Tyre (located in
present day southern Lebanon, you’ll recall). This Hiram apparently
believed in the One True God of the Old Testament Church. The Bible cites him
as saying, in a letter to Solomon, when the latter requested this king’s
assistance in building the permanent
“Because the Lord hath [has] loved his
people, therefore he hath made thee [you] king over them… Blessed be the Lord the God of
Israel, who made heaven and earth, who hath given to king David a wise
and knowing son, endued with understanding and prudence, to build a house to
the Lord [the Temple in Jerusalem]…” (2 Paralipomenon [2 Chronicles] 2:11b-c, 12b-d DRC)
Doesn’t sound like King Hiram of the Sidonian Phoenicians was antagonistic toward Israelite
religion, does it? Indeed, Hiram recognizes their One True God as He “…who
made heaven and earth…” Why would a pagan acknowledge
this infallible truth if he or she didn’t believe it? True, one could speculate
that Hiram was syncretistic --- admitting the existence of Our Creator whilst
still believing in, and worshipping, local or ethnic
pagan deities --- but it’s merely that, speculation. And not very
convincing since he happily supplies Solomon with everything he needs, without
any profit demanded, agreeing only that the Hebrews should supply his many Sidonian workers, skilled lumbermen felling the cedar, fir
& pine trees of Libanus for constructing
God’s Temple, with more than enough food as they take months & years
to complete this gigantic work. In other words, it sounds like the Phoenician, Hiram,
wanted to please the One True God of the Old Testament Catholic Church, helping to build
His Temple on earth in order to worship Him along with his fellow Semites, the Hebrews
(since both Israelites and Phoenicians come from Noe’s
eldest son, Sem).
All the same, whether or not the dear reader
wishes to concede this implication, elsewhere in Sacred Scripture we find that
King Hiram’s relations with King Solomon went further. E.g., we read the
following in the Old Testament:
“And king Solomon
made a fleet in Asiongaber, which is by Ailath on the shore of the Red Sea [an inlet from the
Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea via the Gulf of Aden, between northeast Africa and
the Arabian Peninsula, i.e.,
+++ 121. Out of Sight, Out of
Mind? +++
(A Tantalizing Global Phoenician
Possibility)
Now… where is the fabled place of Ophir?
This has perplexed biblical scholars --- and others
--- for centuries.
Guesses range from places in
Asia (often involving
Starting to make sense, beloved reader?
When you’re curious & open-minded, then
that which the majority of people (or,
leastwise, those people who are influential, powerful or so-called
‘experts’ that are supposed to be ‘never’ wrong)
presume to be ‘unlikely’ or ‘impossible’ is in no way the ‘final
word’ or ‘conclusive’ for an impartial, inquisitive &
logical human mind.
Because something is begging
to be explained here. Namely:
What was Ophir? Forsooth,
where was Ophir?
And how is it that it had so much gold?
Whatever the answers, mysterious Ophir helped
make King Solomon fabulously rich… and the Phoenicians under their Sidonian King of
For we read:
“For the king’s navy, once in three years, went
with the navy of Hiram by sea to Tharsis, and brought from thence [from there] gold, and
silver, and elephants’ teeth, and apes, and peacocks.” (3 Kings [1 Kings] 10:22 DRC)
As well:
“For the king’s ships [Solomon’s fleet of vessels] went to Tharsis
with the servants of Hiram, once in three years: and they brought thence [brought back] gold and silver, and ivory, and apes, and peacocks.”
(2 Paralipomenon [2 Chronicles] 9:21 DRC)
Which then raises another question… where
is Tharsis?
More often transliterated
lately as ‘Tarshish’ (that is, both the
words ‘Tharsis’ and ‘Tarshish’ are referring to the same location),
biblical scholars and other academics are once again perplexed. They have proffered many, many different sites
as possibilities. Recent research has indicated that the “silver”
referenced in the above two passages might come from Sardinia (a large
Mediterranean Sea island west of Italy), isotopic analysis of ‘hacksilver hoards’ (which are thought to be
representative of the silver gotten by Solomon & Hiram’s ships) seems
to back this up. Notwithstanding, this is still merely speculation. The truth is, no one appears to know for certain
where Tharsis is. Some opine that it is ancient Tartessos in
The outcome?
Wherever Tharsis might
be --- and I’m personally inclined to suspect it was indeed ancient Tartessos --- the fact the Phoenicians & Israelites made
this journey together every three years may be interpreted in two distinct
ways, broadly speaking. Either, one, this was a relatively short journey
undertaken every 36 months and returning in a year or so, or in an amount of
time that was well less than 3 years. Or else, two, it was a pretty long
journey undertaken every 36 months because both the distance travelled and
difficult labor along the way to get these valuable or curious things was not
easy.
Yet if the former (short
& easy), then why only every three
years?
Why not go way more often and profit all the
more?
Think about it.
Christopher Columbus’ first of four voyages
to the ‘New World’ of the
At a latitude with
easterly winds, it was less than 3600 miles.
Now divide 3600 by 40. What do you get?
An average of 90 miles
travelled by ship per day.
While not exact --- and we’re trying to
make the calculations simpler for the average reader --- this dovetails nicely
with the 36 days it actually took (counting
exclusively, not inclusively) Mr. Columbus to go from the Canaries to the
Bahamas (the precise island is uncertain,
and today’s San Salvador in the Bahamas is not necessarily the Bahaman
island that his crew originally spotted and he called San Salvador) on his
first voyage. That is to say, sailing at an average 90 miles per day (about 3.75 miles per hour all day long, since
sailing ships don’t get tired and travel as long as there’s a wind
or current at any point in time around the clock) gets you some 3600 miles
in about 40 days. Hence, you’ve only got to carry enough food & water
for less than one and a half months.
In reality, since
So what does this mean for the ancient
Phoenicians & Israelites?
+++ 122. Out of Sight, Out of
Mind? +++
(And This Possibility Driven Home)
Carrying enough food & water, on large enough
ships or with small enough crews, it would never
be ‘impossible’ for them to reach lands that were 30 to 40 days
away, sailing constantly through the day and night at an average speed that is
nearly four miles per hour. All they needed to do --- given the courage to
accomplish it and the tenacity to see it through --- was have provisions for at
least four to six weeks and be lucky enough to avoid disastrous storms or other
dangers at sea. Given this courage, tenacity & luck, nobody in the Mediterranean area of the world 2000 to 5000
years ago would be completely unable to find these parts of the earth and then
sail there regularly.
Not only that, but… for instance… Mr.
Thor Heyerdahl in the 20th century proved you could go across the gigantic Pacific Ocean for
over 100 days and nearly 5000 miles on a tiny steerable raft, and then proved again that you could
traverse the whole
So what’s so impossible about ancient people doing the same
thing?
There’s far more that we could go on about,
but this book has to be manageable, and we’ve gone into greater depth and
at greater length than most people today are able to handle, or have the
curiosity to plumb. E.g., the so-called Antikythera
Mechanism found in 1901 just off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera and, in the past 50 years via X-ray and gamma
ray images of the highly corroded remnants, etc., now revealed to be an ancient
version of an astronomical analogue computer. Scholars admit it dates from the
first century BC, some of them even arguing for an age all the way back to the
100s BC. Mind you, we are not claiming that this device had anything
directly to do with sailing across the world’s seas, or even that it was
perfect by our standards.
Nevertheless, think about it carefully.
No scholar in our part of the world during modern
times --- until this discovery --- thought ancient Mediterranean peoples
capable of this kind of ‘technology’. And, while it may or may not
be ‘perfect’ by our standards, it is astonishingly clever and
subtle, predicting eclipses, the positions of various celestial bodies, and so
forth.
Ergo, why couldn’t such clever people long
ago also navigate earth’s seas?
Why would it be ‘impossible’ for them
to find their way around?
Astronomical bodies permit latitudinal
measurement. You don’t even need telescopes, sextants or other fancy
equipment to dead-reckon reasonably enough to know your bearings. Longitude is
trickier, but not a showstopper; you simply need a rough knowledge of how fast
you’re going and how far you’ll need to go.
Beyond this you’re either exploring or
retracing your steps.
To wit, you discover new lands or islands and
learn enough landmarks that, at least roughly knowing your latitude --- and the
approximate distance to the land or island you want to return to, or, at a
minimum, enough landmarks that you can find your way from place to place ---
you can travel to these locations again and again. Of course, out in the open
ocean, with vast distances to cover, then you’re going to have greater
uncertainty regarding your longitude, or distance traveled, the less idea you
have of your velocity. But, again, this is not a showstopper. And it’s
not a huge problem unless you’re purposely aiming for a very tiny island,
one that’s far, far from other lands.
You savvy?
I don’t mean to downplay the obstacles to
successful sailing. I’m also not claiming to be a professional mariner.
Nonetheless, I do have a grasp of the basic principles, and, being an astronomy
buff (as well as navigating my way across entire continents on a bicycle and
finding my way through large, trackless forests), I
can tell you this is doable.
The Norwegian ethnographer, Mr. Heyerdahl, proved
it in the mid-20th century.
And, if Catholic (or, leastwise, claiming to
respect the Bible highly), we must grapple with what we’re told about
King Solomon in Sacred Scripture. Viz., God appeared to Solomon in a dream and
told him, “Because thou hast [you have]… not asked for
thyself [yourself] long life or riches, nor the lives of your enemies, but hast asked for thyself wisdom to
discern judgment [to lead his kingdom rightly], behold [you see] I have
done for thee [you] according to thy words [I, God, am giving you exactly what
you’ve asked for], and have given
thee a wise and understanding heart, insomuch that there hath [has] been
no one like thee before thee [no one who existed before your
existence has ever had the wisdom I’m going to give you], nor shall arise after thee [nor
will any man ever again be equal to your wisdom].” (3
Kings [1 Kings 3:11b-12 DRC)
In addition:
“And God gave to Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much
[beyond measure]… And the wisdom
of Solomon surpassed the wisdom of the Orientals [all the
incredibly learned persons of the East, such as the Babylonians & Persians,
etc.] and of the Egyptians, AND HE WAS WISER THAN ALL MEN…
And he treated [taught extensively] about trees from the cedar that is in Libanus, unto the hyssop that cometh [comes] out of the
wall [he knew everything you could know of the subject of botany]: and he
discoursed of beasts [lectured academically about mammals], and of fowls [and
about birds], and of creeping things [and about insect-like creatures or
reptiles], and of fishes [creatures of the sea, lakes or rivers]. And they came from all nations to
hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth, who
heard of his wisdom [hearing how wise Solomon was, leaders came from far away
and learned all they could from him].” (3 Kings [1 Kings] 4:29a,
30-31a, 33-34 DRC)
Now I ask you:
If several of the ancient
Greeks knew the earth was a globe (for
instance, the famous Pythagoras during the 6th century BC) and
even modern scholars admit the truth that the Phoenicians, hired by the
Egyptian Pharaoh, Necho, circumnavigated Africa near
the turn of the same 6th century BC, observing the sun in the north
of the sky when south of the equator (something
the Greek historian, Herodotus, found hard to believe, despite his great
learning otherwise), then how is it that King Solomon --- who Sacred
Scripture, inspired by God, calls the
wisest man ever --- didn’t
know these things and more?
Are you getting it, my dear soul?
It doesn’t make sense.
+++ 123. Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen, +++
Yet Have Believed?
Solomon was certainly smart enough to know that the earth is shaped
like a sphere. What’s more, we have ancient maps indicating that people
of old knew far more about the
extent of the earth, and its geography, than we suspect, not to mention that
growing genetic and cultural evidence indicates, too, the movement and mixing of ethnicities beyond what a hidebound
modern academia has been willing to concede. There is excellent justification for believing many ancient people
knew our world’s scope. Wherever, precisely, Ophir was, it’s plausible thinking it may have
been in the
Not that I’m arguing the Phoenicians were a
worldwide empire.
I’m not.
They were more like a league or federation. Yet
they were fantastic mariners and merchants, and they traded over vast
distances. This trade, this wealth, their knowledge and their alphabet, had an
impact that was global. As a famous French historian of the twentieth century
observed, Fernand Braudel,
the Phoenicians were an example of a ‘world economy’ surrounded by
various peoples, nations, kingdoms and tribes. Not unlike the
They were, too, from Heaven’s perspective,
spiritually central. The central fourth of the Oceanic Beast’s seven
heads, their Semitic rule and influence was pivotal. Nearly drawn into the True
Religion of the Old Testament via the good example of King St. David and (at
first) King Solomon, they then meandered into Chanaanite
paganism, perhaps imitating Solomon’s bad example later in life, he
placating his pagan wives.
Likewise our terrible and monumental choice, in
the past five hundred years, as Europeans, who ascended to the top in power
& influence, abandoning Catholicity and working instead to build a New
World Order and a Self-Deifying Neo-Paganism. And, like the Phoenicians, who may
have purposely hidden what they knew about lands far west across the
Atlantic (you must realize that, in the
aftermath of Atlantis’ destruction, the Atlantic became impassible for a
time, the waters filled with murk and debris, but that, finding this ocean
again navigable, it might have been in the Phoenicians’ self-interest to
continue the belief that it wasn’t safe to sail it or possible to cross
it), so, too, do our New World Order leaders --- at least the ones behind
the scenes, so to speak --- seemingly hide knowledge about the world
around us that isn’t advantageous to acknowledge or reveal. Why
would they do this? What does it matter to them?
Because the Truth That Saves, given to us by the
God Who Is An Uncreated Creator, is NOT
going to convince mostly honest and adequately intelligent people that
it’s in their self-interest to oppose this Truth and this
God. Therefore, anything in a visible world that smacks of Catholicity
and upholds what an
That’s the point of the Remort
[Renaissance], the Rebellion [Protestant Reformation], the Heliocentric
Revolution, the Endarkenment [Enlightenment],
Freemasonry, the French & American Revolutions, Darwinism [Evolutionary
Theory], and Communism (or any communistic aspects often found in the various
strains of Socialism).
These successive waves of human thought, behavior
& organization have systematically censored and destroyed anything
remaining of the Old World Order, of the Law of Natural Reason written upon
human hearts, calling good evil and evil good, thus opposing all that is of
Heaven and Our Salvation, the Roman Catholic Church.
And it has been accomplished not so much
at the point of a sword --- although war, bloodshed and violence have been
employed in the service of their luciferian lord --- but by the powerful force
of covetousness in human souls, of wanting what we ought not to want at certain times…
then wanting what we ought not to
want so very much as we frequently do… and finally wanting what we ought not ever dare to want,
period. It’s money that makes the world go
around, and it’s coveting that motivates human hearts.
For good, or for bad. But usually bad in a fallen,
wicked & corrupt world.
This is the awful Chanaanite
Curse made global.
As God through
“For the DESIRE OF MONEY is the ROOT OF ALL EVILS;
which some COVETING have ERRED FROM THE FAITH [Catholic
Religion], and have ENTANGLED THEMSELVES in many SORROWS.” (1 Timothy 6:10 DRC)
Interesting… is it not? … that the term ‘Chanaanite’
became, before the Old Testament period was over, synonymous with the word
‘merchant’. For God’s Prophet says:
“And every caldron in Jerusalem and Juda shall be sanctified
to the Lord of hosts [the One True God of the Roman Catholic Church]: and all
that sacrifice [worship Him]
shall come, and take of them, and shall seethe in them [be cooked to
perfection, as it were, in God’s One True Religion]: and the merchant shall be no more in the house of the
Lord [His Holy Temple, which is Jesus’ Body, the Roman
Catholic Church, will be free of everyone who lives his or her
life to make a profit and get rich or live comfortably] of hosts in that
day.” (Zacharias [Zechariah] 14:21 DRC)
The word “merchant” above is
literally ‘Chanaanite’ in ancient Hebrew.
Starting to get it? Grasping what the Chanaanite Curse is?
“No servant can serve two masters: for either
he will hate the one, and love the other,
or he will hold to the one, and
despise the other. You CANNOT serve God and mammon.” (Luke 16:13 DRC)
This is Jesus Christ speaking, and the odd word
He uses (to our contemporary ears), “mammon”, comes, via Latin
& Greek, from Aramaic (the Hebrew of Jesus’ time), and means, quite
bluntly, ‘riches’ or ‘wealth’. Money is an invisible,
intellectual concept made visible when printed as currency or used to buy
things. And the things of this world, its riches, wealth, comforts &
pleasures, are definitely quite visible to us.
This is why
we believe in them and why we
want them.
Unfortunately, most of us, most of the time,
can’t see God, or Heaven, or Hell, or Judgment, or Angels, or Demons, or
even our Human Souls. But we can still
know that they exist --- and rationally so, not blindly or stupidly.
We can see the existence of the visible and infer, logically, the
existence of the invisible. Ergo why
invisibility is not
automatically equivalent to, “Well, then, it must not exist. After
all, I can’t see it!”
We know this. If we have intelligent
minds, then we have no excuse not to.
And we CANNOT
COVET God & Mammon at the same time. Like the wealthy Phoenicians, WE MUST MAKE A CHOICE. We must
rationally believe the invisible is MORE
IMPORTANT than the visible. As Jesus gently chided a doubting disciple:
“Because thou hast [you have] seen me, Thomas, thou
hast believed: blessed are they that
have NOT SEEN, and HAVE BELIEVED.” (John 20:29b-e DRC)
+++ 124. Mesopotamian
Machinations? +++
Seeing
is not necessary to believe; a
rational faith is not the same
as blind faith. We must simply take
what we can see for ourselves,
and, reasoning meticulously
(carefully & correctly), draw logical conclusions about
what we can’t see for
ourselves.
This is why I say that rational faith is NOT
the same as blind faith.
Our perception is also not the thing that ‘creates’ reality.
Reality is reality apart
from our perception.
This is because God makes things real.
Our Creator perceives reality and what He speaks
into being --- out of nothing --- is what is real, and hence perceivable by
those of His creatures who are intelligent enough to fathom His creation.
Humanity, formed in His Image, has this intelligence & ability.
Our arrogance & our covetousness is what gets in the way of us seeing correctly.
That is to say, formed in God’s Image and
fallen into the corruption of Original Sin, we then imagine ourselves to be
more powerful and more independent than we truly are, consequently
daring… as we become more and more wicked… to think ourselves
powerful enough and independent enough to believe & do whatever we want.
The catch is, what we want can be sinful. And the more wicked &
arrogant we are, the more sinful our desires become, and the more daring we become in committing
sin without fear of consequences, pretending punishment will never occur.
We have seen from the evidence, along with
logical reasoning, how this is what happened with Noe’s
son, Cham, and how it all came to a climax with Cham’s son, Chanaan, culminating in the fulfillment of the Chanaanite Curse that St. Noe
pronounced.
This curse doomed most of Chanaan’s
wicked offspring.
(Chanaan, by the way, was the son of
Noe’s son, Cham, Cham also the grandfather
of the rebel, Nemrod.
Starting to see the link? Do you see where
evil began on earth after the Flood, and how it spread out from there,
infecting everybody else in the world, too?)
Yet it didn’t end there.
The first and second heads of the Oceanic Beast
--- Atlantis & Egypt --- were descendants of Cham, the former falling into
ruin completely, the second suffering terrible humiliation at the hands of God
Almighty as He freed His Old Testament Church, composed primarily of the descendants
of Sem via Abraham, Isaac
& Jacob (
The Chanaanite Curse
infecting Sem’s
progeny, the Hittites faded like a waning moon.
The fourth head of the Oceanic Beast --- the
Phoenicians --- almost remained, or became, good Catholics of the Old Covenant,
seemingly influenced --- or at least encouraged --- by the saintly King David
& his people, the Hebrews, but, like David’s wise yet ultimately
foolish son, Solomon, mingled with pagans and copied their sin.
Living right where Paradise used to be, the relic
of Adam’s Skull residing at their back door, so to speak, they nearly
regained the hope of
The curse of Chanaan in
this way solidified its baneful hold on the Semites.
Whence spread the curse from there, after the
Phoenicians passed their ascendancy around 800 BC? What was the fifth
head of the Sea Monster of the Apocalypse (Revelation, the last book of the Bible,
you’ll recollect), and what is their story? Historical memory is faint
for most human beings, nevertheless, is their enough testimony remaining from
these long gone times to identity the
fifth bestial head?
Indeed there is. And we must wander into
Between two rivers, the Tigris & Euphrates,
we follow the scent.
In the
+++ 125. Towers & Floods?
+++
Remember, dear soul, that the human race, soon
after the Great Flood and St. Noe’s Ark lodging
high upon the peak of Mt. Ararat in Armenia (not
popular to believe amongst our scholars in recent times, but both ancient
traditions and later testimony of eyewitnesses attests to the fact that the Ark
is there to this day, although apparently split in half), spread from
there, in central Eurasia, to all over the world. Nevertheless, before
the global diaspora transpired, Nemrod
[Nimrod] kept almost everyone in
The ancient land of Sennaar
[Shinar], as attested in, for instance, Genesis 10:10, is synonymous to
Mesopotamia (Greek for ‘between two
rivers’, to wit, the Tigris and Euphrates) and Babylonia (another Greek term derived from the old
Semitic name for the place where Nemrod had humanity
construct the Tower of Babel, which moniker, you’ll recall, means in
Hebrew or Aramaic ‘confusion’ due to the division of languages at
this time amongst human beings, but which, literally and originally, meant
‘gate of God’). Settled in Sennaar / Shinar
/ Mesopotamia / Babylonia --- just a hop, skip and a jump from Ararat in
Armenia, relatively speaking, being mostly due south of there --- our ancestors
enjoyed a mild climate (the earth’s
global climate was bitterly cold for some time after the Flood, being in what
our modern scientists call an ‘ice age’ for awhile) with plenty
of water provided by the two huge rivers, Tigris & Euphrates, as well as
fertile soil and thus food aplenty for everyone, with leisure time to spare.
Hence why it was obvious for
them to migrate there.
Today’s Mesopotamia is controlled --- at
least in part --- by the nations of
You’ll remember, too, beloved one, that
Babylonia was either within, or very near to,
Quite a fabled history, eh?
Yet true.
Any real Catholic who wisely studies Sacred
Scripture and takes ancient accounts seriously --- or anyone who claims to
respect the Bible and will take the accounts of old seriously --- can believe
what we are saying as both factual & logical.
Again, tradition is merely remembering.
We forget because modernized people don’t
want to remember.
It’s unpleasant remembering what happened
back then, and we’re very proud, desperately wanting to believe that
we’re the greatest ever, and that there is no God of the Roman Catholic
Church Who will demand from us a rendering for our sins.
However, my dear soul, if willing to believe what
Sacred Scripture and ancient accounts tell us, then you’ll also realize this
fabled Sennaar / Shinar / Mesopotamia / Babylonia, in
addition to the Hebrews (who originated
with St. Abraham via St. Isaac via St. Jacob, the patriarchal Abraham
himself an inhabitant of the ancient city of Ur, and therefore what
we’d call, truly, a Babylonian), recollected a horrible Flood,
and that Nemrod played on their understandable fear
of another awful Deluge occurring (and despite
God assuring us, through Noe as he came out of the
Ark, that He would never again send a global deluge, the beautiful
rainbow being the sign of His Promise in this matter, peruse Genesis
9:8-17 for proof of that Divine Promise), thereby motivating them to
disobey Our Creator by not dispersing throughout all the earth like He had
ordered them, they instead building the occultic ‘Gate of God’, a Tower
to reach His Throne in Heaven.
This, then, is the Land of Towers & Floods, so to speak.
Humanity constructed a mammoth tower there early
on, in defiance of God and as
protection from another Deluge (so Nemrod persuaded
them, per Josephus), the land later dotted with so-called ‘ziggurats’,
massive terraced structures associated with the worship of later pagans and, seemingly, copying
the bad example of Nemrod’s earlier tower. The
memory of the Great Flood certainly persisted
in Babylon, modern scholars using their Gilgamesh Epic to presume…
putting the cart before the
horse and not wishing to take Sacred Scripture seriously… that the Hebrews got their remembrance of Noe’s Deluge from this Epic, when, in fact, the Epic
of Gilgamesh is simply a somewhat
true, somewhat made up, memory
of the Flood. Which, my dear soul, means what?
That I can assure you, as a real Roman Catholic and depending upon the infallible testimony of
God’s One True Religion, that Sacred Scripture has the accurate account. The Epic of
Gilgamesh is merely what paganized
Babylonians remembered, mixing falsehoods
with factual truths in their more careless
transmission of this history.
And that I can intelligently propose to you, as a
Catholic scholar taking both Sacred Scripture and our ancient history
seriously, how the fifth head of the Oceanic Beast arose in this Land of
Towers & Floods, being the Assyro-Chaldeo-Persian Empire.
+++ 126. A Tale of Two
Brothers? +++
Why the complex hyphenated name?
Because history gets ‘complex’ when
one tries to be precise.
And here, once more, is an example of what might
look like separate peoples & principalities… but which, when examined
closely and thought through assiduously, one realizes, as a careful &
honest scholar, is really just siblings fighting over control and what’s
right, whilst appearing --- superficially --- as if truly separate kingdoms
rule.
To wit, first came the
ascendancy of the ‘Neo-Assyrian’ Empire.
Then came the ascendancy
of the ‘Neo-Babylonian’ Empire (or ‘Chaldeans’).
Then came the ascendancy of the ‘Medo-Persian’ Empire (the Medes fought with the
Persians while the Persians eventually triumphed, the two afterward together
ruling, regardless of the Persians having beat the
Medes to gain the upper hand).
In reality, howsobeit, each of the three merge
one into another inextricably.
We are, after all, talking about one large but
local region,
They have a long, long, traditional memory.
To them, they may be connected in ways not
obvious to us.
This is what I’m talking about when it
comes to the Assyro-Chaldeo-Persians.
Beginning around 800 BC, the Semitic Assyrians
took the lead. Then their fellow Semitic & Japhetic siblings, resenting
their cruelty, took control about two hundred years later, the Chaldeans
gaining the lead. Hardly a hundred years afterward, the Persians seized
authority, not only keeping the capitol in Babylon itself (a bit different from when Chaldeans got control from Assyria, they
moving the headship to Babylon from the Assyrian capitol of Nineveh in the
northern part of Mesopotamia), but, as well, said it was only right that
the capitol remain in Babylon, since the first of the Persian emperors, Cyrus
the Great, claimed to be the legitimate successor of the ancient Babylonian
kings, and, moreover, that he was the vengeance of their pagan storm god, Bel-Marduk, who, Cyrus said, was angry at an earlier
Chaldean leader for moving his image to Babylon.
Remember… ancient pagans tended to be localists.
It wasn’t right to move a pagan god’s
image from its geographical or ethnic locale without the permission or
authorization of this god --- meaning the
priests who represent the god and have the pagan deity’s say-so to speak
for him or her.
The upshot?
Persian rule then lasted till the fourth century
BC, when Alexander the Great came out of nowhere, conquering left and right
with nary a battle lost, expanding a Macedonian Greek kingdom into a brand new world-class
empire.
Ergo, the Assyro-Chaldeo-Persian
Empire endured for roughly 450 years.
This is 1/16th of the some 7200 year
history of our human race.
Not tremendously long, but no fly-by-night,
either.
Persians, however, were not Semitic.
They are instead Japhetic.
I.e., the Semitic peoples descend from St. Noe’s oldest son, Sem [Shem]. Whereas Japhetic
peoples descend from Noe’s second oldest son,
Japheth. (Noe’s third and last son was
Cham [Ham].) The reader therefore can see why I might say the Assyrians &
Chaldeans (both Semitic) constitute one ‘brother’ (in the
patriarchal & tribal sense) taking over from the other ‘brother’
(in this case, Chaldeans taking over from the Assyrians, who, like many siblings,
liked to bully). Yet how so the Persians?
Well, beloved soul, understand that Japheth is
still a brother to Sem.
Consequently, a Japhetic people
taking over from a Semitic people is, in the final analysis, one
‘brother’ taking over from another ‘brother’. Which then means that this chapter’s title is a play on words
twice. First for the fact that one Semitic people took over from another
Semitic people (the Chaldeans took power from the Assyrians). Second for the
fact that a Japhetic people took over from a Semitic people while doggedly
insisting they had the right (the Persians took rule from the Chaldeans).
Curiously, this means, too, the inverted inversion got inverted again (the
younger Japheth, second in line, took centrality from Noe’s
patrimonial eldest son, Sem).
Although, all things considered, the inverted
inversion inverted is less inversive (please forgive the whimsy, but it’s
irresistible when you love words…) than the initial inversion of the
youngest Cham over the oldest Sem. Leastwise here we have the middle son’s offspring
subverting the eldest. Which, from a patrimonial point of
view, is less offensive, in the end, than the youngest ruling the roost.
Not to mention, as well, that Sem & Japheth treated their father, Noe, with respect. In spite of his drunkenness ---
and ‘nakedness’ uncovered (review Genesis 9:20-27) --- they
respectfully, without gazing on his immodesty or mocking him, covered
his nakedness. The youngest, Cham, with his son Chanaan,
it would seem, despised Noe.
Complicated?
Kind of.
Yet this is the sort of thing you’ve got to
grapple with if you’re going to get a handle on human history, and on how
God sees it from His Perspective, both foreknowing and foreplanning
how humanity will proceed, especially from the place of centrality.
In other words, however big humanity gets,
we’re all still family.
And, like most families, we love and we fight.
Sometimes siblings hate each other.
Sometimes we get over it.
But blood is blood.
+++ 127. Caught in the Middle? +++
(Act 1)
So how did it start?
How did the fifth Assyro-Chaldeo-Persian
head of the Beast arise?
If you read Old Testament Sacred Scripture and
study ancient history (meaning writers
from way back when, and not just the standard textbooks composed in the
past 50 to 100 years that purport to give us a ‘true’
version of what happened then, well before any of these contemporary
textbook writers existed to see this ancient history for themselves, and, far
more often than not, refusing to take these ancient accounts at face
value), you find that the Israelites were going bad. That is to say, they
were God’s
“And king Solomon loved many strange
[foreign & pagan] women besides the daughter of Pharao
[in addition to the daughter of the ruler of Egypt that he’d married
early on in order to establish a political accord], and women of Moab, and of Ammon, and of Edom, and of Sidon [presumably meaning the
pagan Chanaanites who lived there prior to the
arrival of the Sidonian Phoenicians], and of the Hethites [apparently the Hittites, about whom we’ve
talked as the third bestial head, and who seemed to mingle Semitic blood with Hamitic blood, adopting rampant Chanaanite
paganism in any case]: of the nations concerning which the Lord said to the
children of Israel [God’s Old Testament Church]: ‘You shall not
go in unto them, neither
shall any of them come in to yours [you shall not marry the daughters of pagans, nor allow pagans to marry your daughters]: for they will most certainly turn away
your heart to follow their gods.’ [Exodus 34:15-16] And to
these [pagan wives] was Solomon joined with a most ardent love. And he
had seven hundred wives as queens, and three hundred concubines [a kind of wife
without all the legal privileges, hence why they were not ‘queens’
like the others]: and the women
turned away his heart. And when he was now old, his heart was turned away by women to follow strange [false]
gods: and his heart was NOT perfect with the Lord his God [he did NOT love
God above all things, instead worshipping & loving false pagan gods as much
as, or even more than, the One True God Himself], as was the heart of David his
father. But Solomon worshipped Astarthe [the star
goddess, or goddess of the heavens] of the Sidonians
[again, presumably Chanaanite Sidonians,
as opposed to Sidonian Phoenicians who came later,
settling in the same locale of
Because of Solomon’s faithlessness, God
ripped ten tribes from his kingdom.
“The Lord therefore said to Solomon: ‘Because thou hast [you have] done this, and hast not kept my covenant
[solemn religious agreement], and my
precepts [all the commandments I’ve given you regarding dogma,
ritual, morality, etc.], which I have
commanded thee [you], I will divide and rend thy [your]
kingdom, and will give it to thy servant [to someone who now serves under
your authority but who will later on have his own authority in opposition to
your kingdom]. Nevertheless in thy days I will not do it, for
David thy father's sake: but I will rend it out of the hand of thy son. Neither
will I take away the whole kingdom, but I will give one tribe to thy son for the sake of David my servant, and
Jerusalem which I have chosen [I will give
your son and his regal heirs two of the full twelve tribes to rule; all
ten of the other tribes will go to a separate kingdom of the Israelites].”
(3 Kings [1 Kings] 11:11-13 DRC)
So, for the sake of his Faithful father, St.
David, God spared Solomon this horrible punishment during his life. The
disaster, though --- a prosperous and powerful kingdom split in two, with
Unfortunately, the man to whom God entrusted rule
of the ten separated tribes (an “ingenious
and industrious” man as Solomon found him to be, before Solomon’s
death and the Israelites divided, see 3 Kings [1 Kings] 11:28b DRC) as
their first king, turned out to be fearful & envious. Instead of undoing
Solomon’s hideous rebellion of tolerating and promoting paganism amongst
his peoples, this remarkable man, Jeroboam, in his new ‘Northern
Kingdom’ built pagan temples, golden calf idols, and, in essence,
doggedly spread the very paganism that a foolish Solomon in his older
age had poisoned his own subjects with, Jeroboam (first king of the newly founded Northern Kingdom) mortally afraid that
the citizens of his newly established kingdom, insomuch as they remained good Catholics by still going to
Jerusalem and the Temple three times yearly for the sacrifice and ritual
God commanded them to do, would then wind up changing their loyalty from
the Northern Kingdom to Southern Kingdom monarchs still ruling in Jerusalem over
the tribes of Juda & Benjamin as Solomon’s
rightful descendants.
This self-inflicted paganism, with a few intervals
here & there for the better, went on for two centuries, from the late 10th
to the late 8th century BC. Wickedness increased wildly in the
meantime, in addition to their first & worst sin of embracing false
religion (read: non-Catholic religion). This is when the Assyrians
ascended again in power, reaching their pinnacle, around the time the
Phoenicians fell from ascendancy, circa 800 BC, leaving a now Godless Northern
Kingdom of the Israelites caught in the middle.
Per modern historians, Assyrians have existed as
a distinct Semitic tribe since at least the mid-3rd millennium BC.
Their tale is complex, per these scholars, but includes being under the domination
of an Akkadian (and, like them, Semitic) kingdom for
many centuries, as well as an ‘Early’ Assyrian kingdom they say
existed for a very short period prior to the end of the third millennium. By
the turn of the second millennium BC an ‘Old Assyrian’ kingdom
arose, separate & independent from any other rule. This ‘Old’
realm lasted until the 1400s BC. A ‘Middle’ kingdom began and,
apparently, grew greater in power, declining by the 11th century BC.
A hundred years later came the ‘New’ or a
‘Neo-Assyrian’ Empire, which is when this Semitic people reached
ascendancy, as powerful, fearsome & arrogant as they would ever be. One of
the Neo-Assyrian rulers (Tiglath-Pileser III) even
had himself crowned as ‘king of Babylon’ after he conquered Chaldea,
which is one of the primary ways Neo-Assyria is linked inextricably to the
later (and almost seamless) rule of the region by Chaldea & Persia. Incidentally,
the Assyrians originally reigned from the aforementioned Assur
(please see Chapter 102 of this book, Helplessly
Ignorant), then Kalhu (with a brief interlude at Dur-Sharrukin), and finally Nineveh (granted, Haran became
an Assyrian capitol in 612 BC, yet this is after the Assyrians’ fall
from imperial primacy with a union of former vassal peoples sacking
Nineveh during the aforesaid 612 BC, with what is, mostly, a final fall
in 605 BC).
+++ 128. Caught in the Middle? +++
(Act 2)
It is the Neo-Assyrian (or ‘New’)
Empire upon which we focus for a moment.
They were incredibly proud & brutal. How do
we know? We read:
“And Rabsaces [Rabshakeh] answered them [the official representatives of
the king of the more virtuous --- in the long run --- Southern Kingdom of the
Israelites, centered in the mountainous capitol of Jerusalem], saying:
‘Has my master [the Neo-Assyrian ruler] sent me to thy master and to thee
[to your ruler and his select representatives alone out of all of the Jewish
people], to speak these words, and not
rather to the men that sit upon the wall [the protective wall around Jerusalem,
hearing everything], that they may eat their own dung [fecal matter],
and drink their urine with you? [The
reader must understand that Rabsaces, general of this
mammoth Assyrian army, was besieging the City of Jerusalem as the lone holdouts
amongst all the many different peoples and kingdoms that he had been going
around, crushing into submission on behalf of his leader, the Neo-Assyrian
monarch, Sennacherib.] …Hearken not [don’t dare listen]
to Ezechias [Hezekiah, one of the best Catholic
monarchs of the Southern Kingdom after his ancestor, King St. David], who deceiveth [deceives] you, saying: “The Lord will deliver us [save us
from destruction].” Have any
of the gods of the nations delivered their land from the hand of the king
of
As well:
“In the thirteenth year of the reign of Nabuchodonosor [this name
is often confused with two Chaldean leaders of the same moniker, but,
from a wise & scholarly Catholic point of view, is almost certainly the Assyrian
ruler known today as Ashurbanipal]… the word was given out of
the house of Nabuchodonosor king of the Assyrians [the Assyrian king’s command was sent
out from his palace to underling Assyrian leaders everywhere], that he
would revenge himself [against
surrounding peoples who had refused to kowtow to his imperious demand they
immediately give themselves up to his rule and taxation]… And he [Nabuchodonosor]
said that his thoughts were to bring all the earth under his empire…
And he [Nabuchodonosor] said to him [Holofernes, his head general], ‘Go out against all
the kingdoms of the west [west,
generally, in relation to where the heart of Assyrian power was in northern
Yet if our tender reader cannot bring him or
herself to believe Sacred Scripture, or its implications regarding Assyrian
pride & cruelty, let us quote the words of some Assyrian emperors
themselves, inscribed upon ancient monuments, obelisks, stelae,
tablets, prisms and cylinders of stone, clay & alabaster in cuneiform from
that time, found by modern archeologists, describing how they treated those they
fought & conquered:
“I flayed as many nobles as had
rebelled against me [and] draped their
skins over the pile [of corpses]; some I spread out within the pile,
some I erected on stakes upon the
pile… I flayed many right through my land [and] draped their skins over the walls… I felled 50
of their fighting men with the sword, burnt 200 captives from them,
[and] defeated in a battle on the plain 332 troops… With their blood I
dyed the mountain red like red wool… I
cut off the heads of their fighters [and] built [therewith] a tower
before their city. I burnt their
adolescent boys [and] girls… In strife and conflict I
besieged [and] conquered the city. I felled 3,000 of their fighting men with
the sword… I captured many troops alive:
I cut off so some their arms
[and] hands; I cut off of others their noses, ears, [and]
extremities. I gouged out the eyes of many troops. I made one
pile of the living [and] one of heads. I hung their heads on trees
around the city… I cut their throats like lambs. I cut off their
precious lives (as one cuts) a string. Like the many waters of a storm, I made (the contents of) their gullets
and entrails run down upon the wide earth… The wheels of my war
chariot, which brings low the wicked and the evil, were bespattered with
blood and filth. With the bodies of their warriors I filled the plain, like
grass. (Their) testicles I cut off,
and tore out their privates like the seeds of cucumbers… Like
a fish I caught him up out of the sea and cut off his head… Their blood,
like a broken dam, I caused to flow down the mountain gullies… I hung the heads of Sanduarri [king of the cities of Kundi
and Sizu] and Abdi-milkutti
[king of
Assyrian brutality was unpleasantly real.
You did not
want them to beat you.
Peoples conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire ---
or threatened with being smashed into smithereens --- were between a rock and a
hard place, desperately caught in the middle.
+++ 129. Caught in the Middle? +++
(Act 3)
The properly shocked reader might wonder why the
Triune Catholic God would allow such a cruel and merciless people to seize wide
power and oppress so many other human beings. Is the Creator
not loving? Does He not have compassion upon us?
We give the same answer as before.
To wit, God is
loving & compassionate. Nevertheless, the
highest love of all is owed to Him. This is done, at a bare minimum, by not worshipping false &
pagan gods, whilst, at the most (as is now
required of every human being after the Day of Pentecost in AD 34
and the start of God’s New Testament & Roman Catholic Church),
is done by being actually in
His Singular Catholic Church, espousing
Catholicism whole & entire.
Period.
Ergo, in failing
to love God above all by being
truly Roman Catholic (or, at the
very least during pre-New-Testament times, by not worshipping false & pagan gods), or in failing to love one’s neighbor,
second of all, by being good
Roman Catholics (or, at bare minimum
during pre-New-Testament times, by being just
human beings via the Natural Law on our hearts), one eventually exhausts His Mercy &
Patience.
It is not
a failure on His Part; it is a failure upon our
parts.
This is WHY
God permitted the cruel Assyrians to harshly oppress others for some two
centuries --- because these peoples, whether of Semitic, Japhetic or Hamitic descent, had so offended Him for so long (centuries and centuries!) in failing to
love Him above all other things (by
stubbornly worshipping false & pagan gods) and failing to love one’s
neighbor as one’s self (by not being
just & treat others compassionately), that, definitively, He could NOT refrain any longer from PUNISHING them.
End of sentence.
The thoroughly modern person doesn’t
want to believe this.
He or she wants to think it doesn’t matter what religion you are or who you
worship. Such persons want to think… if indeed he or she admits Our
Creator exists or that sin is real… this Maker doesn’t ever punish anyone for being in the wrong
religion, worshipping the wrong god, mistreating others or mistreating
one’s self.
Such people don’t have a clue.
Because God does exist regardless of
whether or not you want to believe in His existence, or whether or not you want
to believe He is the Triune God of the Catholic Church alone, and God does
write the Law of Natural Reason upon intelligent human beings’ hearts, and,
hence, we really are required to be Roman Catholic and behave rightly.
Again --- period.
Neo-Assyrian cruelty, therefore, was one of
God’s primary tools --- during this period of time and in this region of
the earth --- to punish these various peoples for their terrible wickedness.
Once more, God will often use the
wicked to punish the wicked.
The irony?
As we remarked, this is essentially the Middle of
the Earth.
The east side of the Mediterranean, in and around
Here in the Middle, or just to the east of the
Middle, humans went bad.
Whether Hamitic, Japhetic
or Semitic, we chose to disobey.
Neo-Assyria was one way God punished this
rebellion.
And if this isn’t being ‘caught in
the middle’… then I don’t know what is.
+++ 130. Caught in the Middle? +++
(Act 4)
A league of several different tribes &
kingdoms ultimately prevailed over the Neo-Assyrians, gaining their revenge
after approximately two centuries of an unrestrained arrogance and brutality on
the part of the Assyrians.
Interestingly, the Neo-Assyrian Empire --- like
all realms that endure for very long --- experienced serious internal troubles
during the first part of the 8th century BC. Generals appear to have
dominated various sections of the Empire without regard toward imperial
authority (either not mentioning an
emperor in the records we have, or else impudently shunning the emperor
altogether). In any case, the plague swept through the area and a solar
eclipse occurred on 15 June 763, followed by another wave of plague. All of
this transpired during the reign of Emperor Ashur-dan
III, civil war erupting into the open during the same year of the eclipse, 763
BC. The second wave of plague, mentioned above, apparently put an end to this
civil war in 759. Emperor Ashur-nirari V then
obtained the throne in 755, his troubled reign ending with the brilliant
general (and claimant to the throne via
descent from a former emperor, Adad-nirari III,
albeit academia today often doubts his familial legitimacy), Tiglath-Pileser III, gaining complete control, organizing
the Empire far more efficiently and, amongst other significant accomplishments,
crushed the apostate Israelites’ Northern Kingdom.
The import?
A careful Catholic scholar realizes it is nigh
well an utter certainty that the so-called ‘minor prophet’ (minor not in importance, but because
the twelve minor prophets in the Bible are shorter than the writings in
Sacred Scripture of the four ‘major prophets’), Jonas [Jonah],
visited Ninive [Nineveh], during the troubled ten-year
reign of the emperor, Ashur-nirari V, probably nearer
to 755 BC (the start of Ashur-nirari V’s imperial rule) than 745 BC (when the audacious Tiglath-Pileser
usurped him). This prophet, Jonas, is best known for having tried to escape
the mission God commanded him to carry out and, in fleeing, wound up swallowed
by a “great [huge] fish” somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea. (Jonas
2:1a DRC) Protestants and others familiar with Jonas’ story usually call
this “great fish” a ‘whale’, yet the Bible
doesn’t say for sure.
Jonas’ mission is a fascinating thing.
Here we have, seven and a half centuries before Christ --- and about
seven centuries after Moses
and the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt --- Our Creator plainly taking
concern for a non-Israelite
people, the Assyrians, and sending one of His Old Testament Church’s
prophets to them, in order to warn them of impending punishment for sin, and, the chastened Assyrians actually
taking Jonas’ warning seriously, converting!
Yes, you read the paragraph above correctly.
Even then, during the Old Testament, God clearly had compassion for human beings, in
addition to His Chosen People, the Hebrews, and, as St. Moses states (see Exodus 12:48, for instance, or the amazing example
of the former prostitute, the Chanaanitess,
Rahab, who aided & joined the Israelites
religiously, see Josue [Joshua] 2:1, 8-14, 17-19,
6:17, 22-25), He not only granting for a
possibility of non-Hebrew
ethnicities converting to His True Religion of the Old Covenant, but even sending an Old Testament Church prophet to admonish a non-Hebrew
people to do penance for their
sins!
Yet, really, this ought not to be so astonishing.
All human beings are formed in God’s Image. He is not willing that any
should perish everlastingly (see 2 Peter 3:9 for scriptural proof of Our
Creator’s concern for the eternal welfare of everyone). Howsoever, He is
also not then saying we can
believe whatever we want.
His means of mercy is CONVERSION to His One True Religion.
This True Religion is Roman Catholicism, and
none other.
Notwithstanding, during the Old Testament… before
the coming of His Promised One, the Christ, Jesus
of Nazareth, God Incarnate… He did not require visible membership in His Singular Church. To whom much is given, much is required.
(Luke 12:48) To whom less is
given --- which is, by definition, the religious condition of humanity prior to Christ’s First
Advent --- much less is
required. Ergo, why
God didn’t command all humanity to be visibly Catholic prior to the Incarnation of
Christ.
What did He require?
That we follow the Law of Natural Reason upon our hearts.
Doing so, any intelligent human being,
even before the Advent of Jesus Christ, could recognize that a false god is false and a false
religion is false. He or she could also recognize the moral
commandments, such as no murder, adultery or theft.
The curious thing?
The Assyrians, being descendants of St. Noe’s son, Sem [Shem], were
tribal brothers, as it were, to the
Israelites, just as they were tribal
brothers, too, in relation to the Chaldeans (the Babylonians). And, like
the Semitic Phoenicians, who were the central fourth of seven heads of the
Oceanic Beast, and who, for a short while, looked like they were going to be
and remain members of the Old
Testament Church (recall King Hiram’s
friendship with King St. David, and the incredible assistance he
offered to the wise Solomon in constructing the first Temple of the Old
Covenant in Jerusalem, see in Chapter 120 of this very book for proof of
the Phoenicians’ brief Godly religiosity), Assyrians as well looked,
for a very brief moment, like they would be good Old Testament Catholics, doing penance for
their sins of paganism, pride & murder.
Sacred Scripture is inerrant. God’s
Infallible Catholic Church assures us of this fact. Understood correctly,
according to the infallible teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and the
astute wisdom & learning of the early Church Fathers, the Bible cannot
be wrong. As a result, we can be sure that St. Jonas did indeed --- after being
chastised --- preach penance to the Assyrians in Nineveh, and that they
listened, taking him seriously, and were sorry for their sins, the worst
of which was their being such eager pagans.
Sacred Scripture in the Book of Jonas [Jonah]
states this clearly.
From where did the Assyrians derive their
paganism, though?
Primarily from the ancient Sumerians. And
who were they?
An astute Catholic scholar has to conclude that
they were either the Hamitic
tribe of Nemrod [Nimrod] before his rule in
the
To wit, earth’s people gathered together in
Mesopotamia shortly after the Great Flood, refusing to disperse throughout the
world as God had commanded them, preferring instead the relative warmth,
fertility and luxury of Sennaar /
So, in sending the prophet, St. Jonas, to the
Assyrians in Nineveh, God was reminding these descendants
of St. Sem of His One True Religion, and giving them
a last chance to reject Nemrod’s
Rebellion and his Hamitic people’s paganism,
and --- doing penance for their paganism, pride, murder and other sins ---
obtain Our Maker’s forgiveness.
Right in the middle of where the first
post-Deluge Rebellion caught fire.
+++ 131. Caught in the Middle? +++
(Act 5)
One of the funniest things in Sacred Scripture is
Jonas’ reaction to God’s Mercy.
Escaping out of the belly of the huge fish ---
and finally obeying God’s Command to go to the Assyrians in
And yet, Sacred Scripture tells us, the
Assyrians did penance after but one day!
“And Jonas began to enter into the city one
day’s journey: and he cried [yelled out loudly, so everyone could hear
him], and said: ‘Yet forty days [in just another
forty days], and Ninive [
Why so quick to repent?
Remember from the first half of Chapter 130 above
in this book, Helplessly Ignorant,
how the Neo-Assyrian Empire went through a period of civil war, plague and fear
for some two or three decades. A solar eclipse in 763 BC magnified this
anxiety. Even today a solar eclipse is a flabbergasting sight, and, in
ancient times in that part of the world --- even though some of them, at least,
had the ability to foretell solar eclipses --- the sky above and its celestial
events were seen as portents of the future to come, unlike the adherents
of our present day Religion of Modernism, where
the heavens are merely ‘space’, and celestial objects merely
randomly evolving material things, existing purposelessly, and having little
or no connection to events on earth.
The point?
The Assyrians were perfectly poised, at this
crucial moment, to repent.
Going through all the things they had suffered so
recently, being afraid of the future to come, they were as ready as they could
be to remember the True Religion of old and believe in the True God of their
forefathers. It was only a fleeting moment in long retrospect… yet, like
the Phoenicians, they briefly returned to Catholicism.
This is why we surmised that Jonas had to have
preached to them during the reign of their troubled emperor, Ashur-nirari V, somewhere in the decade of 755 to 745 BC.
But most likely nearer to 755 than the latter point of 745, when the arrogant
pagan Neo-Assyrian general, Tiglath-Pileser III,
usurped power, and the Assyrians wandered right back into false religion. Yet
because of their penance, God did not destroy them in 40 days.
Indeed --- and this is the funny part --- Jonas
is incensed at God’s
Mercy!
“And Jonas was exceedingly troubled
[very, very, very upset], and was angry:
and he prayed to the Lord, and said, ‘I beseech thee, O Lord [I beg You,
dear God], is not this what I said, when
I was yet in my own country [didn’t I tell You this before I tried to flee from this prophetic
mission that You gave me]? Therefore I went before to flee [I fled from Your task in the opposite direction] into Tharsis [Tarshish]; for I know that thou art [You are] a gracious
and merciful God, patient, and of much compassion, and easy to forgive evil. And
now, O Lord, I beseech thee [to] take my life from me [just please let me die now]:
for it is better for me to die than to live.’” (Jonas 4:1-3 DRC)
Catholic scholars of recent times, at least, have
tried to spin this reaction of Jonas in a more favorable light. Say they, he
was simply upset that the Assyrians would indeed do penance and that, because
God would be merciful and not destroy them, then he would look like a
‘false’ prophet, or the True Religion despised since the
destruction didn’t actually occur like he had warned. Now, maybe
they’re correct. I don’t want to be haughty here and pretend that I
know for sure what Jonas’ motive was.
I will say this, though:
It’s also quite possible Jonas prophetically knew the Assyrians would
repent, and, knowing this to be the case, was
upset and angry that God would send him to an evil, pagan populace that
threatened his own people’s existence & welfare, a gargantuan
empire that, personally, he might wish
God would destroy or let waste away. In other words, maybe Jonas didn’t feel as gracious,
merciful, patient & compassionate toward the Assyrians as he knew Our
Creator could be, and perhaps he hated
the thought of being the instrument of their
salvation, with God using him to
warn them to have tremendous sorrow for their sins, lest destruction come upon
them very soon!
This is, as far as I can tell, not popular amongst
Catholics of late.
But, why couldn’t it be true?
Sacred Scripture is astonishingly frank about the
sins of various saintly Catholics of ancient times --- think of the adultery
& murder of St. David, or the denial of St. Peter of Our Lord
and his later dissimulation as he kowtowed to certain bad Catholics of
Jewish descent in the Diocese of Antioch of Syria when it came to eating with
non-Jewish members (and thus uncircumcised,
and hence ceremonially unclean according to Old Testament standards that
had been superseded by God’s New Testament Law) at meals.
Given these shocking examples, why is it ‘unthinkable’ that St.
Jonas may have been, humanly speaking, angry
that God would have mercy on the cruel Assyrians?
It’s really not ‘unthinkable’. Unless Holy Mother Church
assures us with absolutely solemn and precise declarations upping the
‘preferred’ interpretation amongst Catholic scholars of late ---
and as long as we treat St. Jonas with veneration & respect, just like a
good Catholic treats Ss. David or Peter, despite their grievous sins when still
alive upon this earth --- then it’s neither
‘unthinkable’ nor
‘disrespectful’ toward St. Jonas. It’s merely what happens,
sometimes, when Catholics are bad… and later repent.
In any case, it’s indubitably humorous!
I don’t mean that disrespectfully --- I
simply state the obvious. A man running from God’s command to go to a
cruel & brutal pagan empire, falling deeply asleep during a
life-threatening storm in the Mediterranean Sea, then woke up to have to
convince the captain and the sailors that they must throw him overboard in
order to save their lives… because he’s running from the True
God’s command to preach to the Assyrians… beloved soul, that’s
hilariously edifying to a real Catholic with piety!
And, of course, the Roman Catholic Lord &
Savior, Jesus Christ, uses St. Jonas’ punishment in the belly of a gargantuan fish for three days as a messianic
prophecy of His Own Sacrifice upon the Cross, the Son of Man (i.e., Jesus)
going to the heart of our
earth for three days after His
Death, preaching to the souls in purgatory and those in the limbo of the
fathers, prior to resurrecting bodily, with Divine Glory, from the Tomb.
The symbolism is consummate. (E.g., see Matthew
12:40 & 16:4, or Luke 11:29-30.)
The God-Man Who makes St. Peter and the other
Twelve Apostles His first fishermen for human souls, employing the
metaphor of Jonas in the heart of the sea, inside the belly of a gigantic fish, after three days
spat out upon the shore (remember
the allegory of Satan as the Dragon standing upon the sands of the
sea!)… and then, becoming God’s Divine
Mercy, preaching the True Religion to great sinners so they might be able to
repent.
And so find God’s Forgiveness in His One
& Only Roman Catholic Body.
Any true Roman Catholic who dares to think the
Bible can’t be humorous has not actually read Sacred Scripture
or pondered fruitfully upon its contents. Our Creator made us able to often see
the humor in things and, provided we don’t abuse this sense of humor (much like not indulging too much
food or food of the wrong kind or at the wrong time), then,
rightly speaking, it should not surprise us the Bible can be poignantly funny.
Long after the cruel Neo-Assyrians have passed
from power, can we not see --- now without prejudice --- the perfect compassion
God has on all human beings? And how we must, in order to imitate Him, as good Roman
Catholics also have this great compassion? I say this to my own shame…
for I am not yet as compassionate as Our Creator. Too, oppressed like all
Catholics still on earth today, however few we are in the midst of global
rebellion & apostasy, tyrannized by the cruel moderns, I try to balance
between begging God to remember our plight and punish this wicked earth…
and begging Him to have mercy on these same wicked people, bringing them to
Catholic penance and thus sparing them as He pours out undeserved graces upon
whomever He so chooses.
This is the sorrow & humor, and plight, of
poor St. Jonas and the Assyrians.
It’s a big fish story, yet totally true.
It’s the ultimate sea tale, for real.
And about two siblings,
fellow Semites & human beings.
Both of them caught in the middle, indeed.
+++ 132. Caught in the Middle? +++
(Act 6)
The Neo-Assyrians got their just desserts in the
latter seventh century BC.
The Mesopotamian region’s other peoples had
had enough of Assyrian cruelty and murderous sadism. They banded together,
finally, sacking
Yes, they did stop the Assyrians from lording it
over them.
Nonetheless, the Chaldeans (the Babylonians of
that time) then took headship --- and,
not only that, but recollect how one of the most powerful of the
Neo-Assyrian emperors, Tiglath-Pileser III, in
sacking Babylon, the fabled city, didn’t just make his fellow Semites, the Chaldeans,
vassals to the Assyrians, but proclaimed himself and his successors the kings of Babylon, too
--- asserting power over all Mesopotamia. Sumerian
heritage spurred this and their shared Semitic blood sealed it.
We in the most modernized and de-tribalized areas of the earth may not think this important,
but, believe me, it was important to people way back then who were
shaped along the lines of tribal descent far more clearly. That is to
say, they may have been pagans, yet their memory of ancient times (in relation to them back then, naturally)
encompassed far more than we of modern times remember (and oddly so, in that we, considering ourselves
so scholarly, learned & ‘scientific’ nowadays, think ourselves
far ‘better’ informed, historically, than people in ancient,
so-much-closer-to-the-really-old-times, of that long ago position in
human chronology), we rejecting and forgetting so much that was known and
taken-for-granted by ancient tribal peoples back then.
The upshot?
Chaldean (Babylonian) lordship did not alter leadership of the
Mesopotamian region --- and surrounding areas, since this Assyro-Chaldeo-Persian
Empire asserted its power over an even greater part of the earth than merely
the Mesopotamian Valley, howsoever huge that was all by itself --- in an underlyingly noteworthy way. It’s kind of like, in
the
Nah, no well-informed & intelligent person in
Well, unless he or she is a diehard political
partisan.
Nevertheless, barring diehard partisanship,
nobody who is smart thinks the two major political parties
makes a gigantic difference in leadership. (Which
is why, by the way, the election of Pr. Trump made such an impact --- his goals
as leader really are a kind of ‘seismic shift’ in the Republican
Party, making one wonder if, in the long run, his presidency will seem as
distant from Republicans of old as Republicans of the 1920s seemed in
comparison to the Republicans of the 1860s, when Abraham Lincoln was
president.) The point is, in comparison to the two major political parties
of the
The Chaldean headship was also, in the end,
fairly short.
Not quite a century, to be exact.
Which seems long to a person of little historic
outlook. Yet in the bigger picture? In
the long run? Nope, pretty quick. But still long enough to do some big
things for awhile.
Technically, the Chaldeans were not,
strictly speaking, the precise same tribe (or ‘sub-tribe’,
to be really exact), as Babylonians of old --- viz., the Akkadians from the third and second
millennia BC, who ruled over the Assyrians of old before Assyrians established
their own independent kingdom --- all the same, they were Semitic,
and, hence, from Noe’s son, Sem,
like every Semitic people in the world. The Chaldeans properly speaking,
though, apparently migrated east from the Levant around the turn of the first
millennium BC and took up residence in the vast fluvial deposits of the Tigris
and
Around the turn of the first millennium BC, these
Chaldeans began to form an independent identity & kingdom that was, nevertheless,
built on a Sumero-Akkadian-Assyrian
foundation. That is to say, whilst gaining a kind of
‘independence’, they still saw themselves as inheriting the
religion & realm of the very ancient Sumerians, as well as the
language, customs and traditions of the Akkadians
& Assyrians. A wise Catholic scholar has to conclude that the Sumerians
were Hamitic and, indeed, part of the folk ruled
by Nemrod shortly after the Flood, perchance his own proto-Atlantean tribe. Resultantly, the Chaldeans saw
themselves as continuing ancient Babylonia, as the manifest
‘heirs’ of both the Hamitic Sumerian gods
and the Semitic Akkadian & Assyrian language,
customs & culture (not to mention
that these Akkadians and Assyrians themselves, as
pagans, had appropriated the Sumerian gods & religion, making the parallelism
complete). In their minds, they were the rightful fulfillers of ancient
Got it? Good. Again, history can be complex for
those who aren’t patient & studious. Things can look ‘complex’
for those who aren’t willing to dive in deep, taking the time and effort
to sort things out, arranging them in correct relation to each other, thereby
deciphering what was going on ‘behind the scenes’, so to speak. But
not necessarily meant in a ‘conspiratorial’ sense. Contrarily, only
meant in the sense that what looks ‘complex’ is simpler when you
get down to basics, uncovering key facts. It looks ‘complex’, too,
since the older Babylonians mingled with the newer Chaldeans.
So how did Chaldea catch power in the middle of
As the Neo-Assyrians lost their grip, a Chaldean
known as Nabopolassar took the throne of Babylonia
from the Neo-Assyrian leader who had represented the Assyrian emperors as
‘kings’ of Babylon (recall
that this connection started with the audacious Tiglath-Pileser
III back in the late 8th century BC, who subjugated Babylon and
proclaimed himself King of Babylon as a way to consolidate his
reputation as rightful ‘heir’ to ancient Sumeria
and the pagan Babylon of old). It is this Nabopolassar,
who began what’s known as the ‘eleventh dynasty’ of Babylon,
who eventually made an alliance with the Medes, Persians, Scythians &
Cimmerians to attack Assyria with a united force, sacking the Neo-Assyrian
capitol of Nineveh in 612 BC, and decisively breaking the back of cruel Assyria
by around 605 BC. In the latter accomplishment, the Neo-Babylonians not only
took much of
Nabopolassar’s son, Nebuchadnezzar II (known to scripturally studious Catholics as ‘Nabuchodonosor’
due to vagaries of transliteration into English via the Latin Vulgate and the
influence of the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament so prevalent and
popular amongst the early Church Fathers of the first millennium AD), consolidated
Chaldean authority, made the City of Babylon beautiful and glorious,
expanded his Empire even further, including being God’s Scourge against
the halfway apostate & wicked Israelite Southern Kingdom in 586 BC centered
in Jerusalem (though some say 587 or 597,
etc.), just as the Neo-Assyrians had been God’s Scourge in punishing
the utterly apostate & wicked Israelite Northern Kingdom around 720 BC.
From both a remnant was exiled. Yet
the northern tribes waned;
the southern remnant endured.
+++ 133. Caught in the Middle? +++
(Act 7)
Which brings us to another
amazing tale.
For just as the Semitic Neo-Assyrians were
granted a chance from Our Creator to repudiate
their iniquities --- especially paganism,
worshipping their versions of the false demon gods of the very ancient Sumerians
(Sumer being the kingdom that Nemrod began so
soon after the Great Flood, getting humanity to build the Tower of Babel
in this Land of Towers & Floods, and which modern scholars mock as
‘superstition’ while their smug out-of-thin-air suppositions and
‘dating methods’ are a theoretical array founded upon many
shaky assumptions, like a house of cards able to be toppled with a single strong
breath) --- so, too, did Our Creator give the Semitic Neo-Babylonians
an opportunity to stop sinning
and abandon their version of Sumerian
Paganism.
The aforementioned Nebuchadnezzar II (known to
Catholics as ‘Nabuchodonosor II’) brought
the remnant of the Israelite Southern Kingdom to
Are you getting it?
Whether fully conscious of his aim or not,
Nebuchadnezzar II was nonetheless attempting, on a smaller yet still very
impressive scale, to resurrect Nemrod’s Babel.
This bold goal is critical for a wise Catholic to understand, unlocking, for
instance, the symbolism of the ‘Whore
of Babylon’ in Chapter 17 of the Apocalypse [Revelation]. Etemenanki, the giant ziggurat ‘House of the Frontier Between Heaven & Earth’
demonstrates this in spades, Nebuchadnezzar trying like the mighty rebel, Nemrod, to “reach
to heaven” in the very same place where Nemrod
attempted the same thing, and right next door to where Our Maker had placed a Gate Between Heaven & Earth
--- indeed, heaven on earth --- in the Garden
of Paradise. (Genesis 11:4c DRC)
Now are you getting it?
The major prophet, St. Daniel, and his three
saintly young comrades, Ananias, Misael & Azarias --- to whom
the Babylonians gave Chaldean names, Baltassar (to
Daniel), Sidrach, Misach
& Abdenago (to the other three), although these
Chaldean names regularly transliterate via Protestant influence as the better
known Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Mishael
& Abednego --- confronted this ancient Sumerian-derived Neo-Babylonian
paganism full on. For we read in Sacred Scripture of the most terrible
religious trial that Daniel’s three comrades & friends encountered in
“King Nabuchodonosor
[Emperor Nebuchadnezzar II] made a statue
of gold, of sixty cubits high [roughly
90 feet tall, or 100 feet at the most], and six cubits broad [about 9 to 10
feet wide], and he set it up in the plain of Dura of the province of
Babylon [a highly visible position and
able to accommodate huge crowds of people]. Then Nabuchodonosor
the king sent to call together the nobles, the magistrates, and the
judges, the captains, the rulers and governors [which is why Daniel’s three comrades faced this challenge
since Daniel, in gaining Nebuchadnezzar’s high esteem, had convinced
him these three should be appointed as directors over projects in the province
of Babylon], and all the chief men of the provinces, to come to the dedication
of the statue… Then a herald cried with a strong voice: ‘To you it is commanded, O nations, tribes, and languages [recollect that this is a massive empire
with many different tribes now under its control]: that in the hour [at the moment] you shall hear the sound
of the trumpet… [Many instruments
are listed.] …ye [all of you] fall down and adore [worship as if it were a god] the golden
statue… But if any man shall not fall down and adore, he shall the same hour be cast into a
furnace of burning fire.” (Daniel 3:1-2, 4-5a, h, 6 DRC)
Quite a quandary, eh?
Yet the FIRST
of God’s Ten Commandments clearly tells us ‘no false gods or false religions’. Both Old
& New Testament Catholics have ALWAYS
upheld this simple teaching, with NO ‘exceptions’ permitted,
period, for any intelligent human
being.
Daniel’s three comrades knew this, bravely
& politely withstood the imperious Nebuchadnezzar, were thrown into the furnace, and, in a miracle of supernatural power, came out
unscathed to the astonishment of onlookers and the emperor himself. (Please see
all of Daniel 3 for this account, and how Emperor Nebuchadnezzar then lauded
the True God of the Old Testament Israelites as the “most high God”
(Daniel 3:99a DRC), though we know from later verses in Daniel the emperor was religiously
syncretistic, acknowledging the real
God whilst simultaneously clinging to his pagan deities.) St.
Daniel, too, faced this ultimate test. In Daniel 6 we read of jealous pagan
leaders craftily getting the emperor of that time to throw Daniel into a
‘den of lions’ for his loyalty to God, St. Daniel praying publicly three
times daily, defying the temporary decree that these rulers purposely cooked
up, with naïve imperial approval, so as to ensnare him.
But before Daniel’s
stupendous trial, Nebuchadnezzar himself, when still religiously syncretistic,
was shown mercy by God in the most extraordinary way. Given a dream to warn him --- a dream once again
only able to be interpreted correctly by the redoubtable Daniel, his most
admired and trusted counselor --- Nebuchadnezzar stubbornly stuck with his
Sumerian-derived pagan deities, regardless. Given an opportunity, as Daniel
advised him, to “…redeem thou thy sins [do penance
for your sins] with alms [acts of charity], and thy iniquities [your
sins] with works of mercy to the poor: perhaps he [Almighty God] will forgive thy offences [your
sins]…” (Daniel 4:24b-d DRC), the emperor persisted in paganism
& iniquity, priding himself for all of his accomplishments. Our Creator
then stripped him of his intelligence, leaving him to eat grass like an animal,
his fingernails and hair grown long & unkempt, a sort of vegetarian
‘werewolf’, driven out of his capitol like a leper. For seven years
he lived as an irrational beast, solitary in the wild. Then, just as suddenly,
God was merciful, returning his rationality. Nebuchadnezzar was also fortunate,
in that Chaldean law required his authority be returned to him when his mind
was restored --- he was again Emperor
of Babylon, greatest power on earth six centuries before Christ, but now as a chastened & truly
Catholic man.
And, in a frightening coda to this imperial
conversion, we find Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson, Baltasar
[Belshazzar], some sixty or so years later, feasting drunkenly with his nobles,
wives and concubines in his emperor’s palace at
“O king, the most high God [the True Creator, not Marduk
or Zeus, etc.] gave to Nebuchadnezzar thy father [your grandfather, Mideastern people being
much more extended & metaphorical when it comes to family] a kingdom,
and greatness, and glory, and honour… But when
his heart was lifted up, and his spirit hardened unto pride, he
was put down from the throne of his kingdom… And he was driven
out… and his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling [home] was with the wild asses [donkeys], and he did eat grass like an
ox… till he knew that the most
High RULED in the kingdom of men [Nebuchadnezzar finally realized the True
God ultimately rules here on earth, in spite of us not normally seeing Him or
how He does so], and that he [God]
will set over it [make someone an
authority] whomsoever it shall please him. Thou [You] also his son [grandson], O Baltasar,
hast [have] not humbled thy heart,
whereas thou KNEWEST all these things [you, Baltasar, are quite AWARE of what
occurred to your grandfather when God humbled him]: but thou hast lifted
thyself [yourself] up AGAINST
the Lord of heaven: and the vessels of his house [His Temple in Jerusalem] have been brought before thee [you]… and thou hast PRAISED the gods of silver, and of gold…
that neither see, nor hear, nor feel: but
the God who hast thy breath in his hand [He Who can take your life at any instant], and all thy ways
[He decides your ultimate fate], thou
hast NOT glorified [you have REFUSED
to learn from your grandfather’s example and be CATHOLIC, instead
worshipping false gods and behaving arrogantly & immorally].”
(Daniel 5:18, 20a-c, 21a-d, f-23b, d-g DRC)
Then Daniel interpreted the message for Belshazzar,
giving God’s Sentence.
“And this is the writing that is written
[by the supernatural hand on your palace wall]: MANE, THECEL, PHARES… MANE: God hath numbered thy kingdom [has measured
your empire], and hath finished it [ended it]. THECEL: thou art [you are] weighed
in the balance, and art found wanting [lacking]. PHARES: thy kingdom is divided
[split up temporarily], and is given to the Medes and the Persians.”
(Daniel 5:25, 26b-28 DRC)
How’s that for a sobering assessment? By
the way, that very night Belshazzar was murdered. Caught in the middle of
God’s crosshairs, he paid the ultimate price.
Modern scholars predictably mock these stories as
‘superstitions’, but they’re not. They’re a real
warning to everyone everywhere from then on, particularly when the
Catholic Religion of the New Covenant has gone all over the world prior to our Great Apostasy, to
worship the True God alone in
His Singular Faith of the Roman Catholic
Church. You can see in Daniel 4 how
God religiously caught an emperor in the middle. Once again God gave
Sem’s children a
chance to come to their senses. Similarly, the Creator has given all humanity
today a final chance for us to come to our senses.
When I was only 8 or 9, a very small child
growing up in a rural area upon my grandfather’s farm, I had a strange
dream. I saw a huge trench plowed through the earth, straight from where I
lived, right through the tiny country public school that I attended --- with a
robed arm pointing toward it and beyond --- where, unfathomably distant, I saw
the pyramids & ziggurats of ancient Egypt & Babylonia. A voice then
spoke, saying:
“There lies Babylon the Great.”
Why would a small child, a country boy, have a dream
like this?
Because it’s the Great Apostasy, and, like Nemrod
& the Sumerians earlier, then Nebuchadnezzar & the Chaldeans later, we
are all now religiously caught in the middle. Unfortunately,
despite Nebuchadnezzar’s restored mind and a consequently rational conversion
to Our Maker’s Religion, the Chaldeans didn’t see fit to return to
their senses. They persisted in their Sumerian-derived paganism of Nemrod’s Rebellion, their lovely and splendid
capitol, the City of Babylon, passing into the hands of yet another tribe’s
rule altogether. A people neither Semitic nor Hamitic; rather, Japhetic.
+++ 134. Caught in the Middle? +++
(Act 8, or, We
To
wit, the Persians (and, alright, the
Medes, too… kind of, for a little bit).
Coming mostly from what we
today call ‘
Their genius is in how well
organized, efficient & just they made the Empire. Their pluck is in how
hard they struggled with, or against, other local ethnicities and faraway
threats to ascend to the top… and then, in their genius, treated these
same entities --- relatively speaking and overall --- with fairness &
equanimity. Their luck is in how, well… they simply
didn’t fade into obscurity, powerlessness, loss of identity, & etc. One
way or another, as Persians --- and, for instance, like Egyptians, Greeks, Jews
or the Chinese, with God’s aid --- these people endure, distinctly
Persian, for centuries upon centuries.
Academics refer to them as
the Achaemenid Empire. With due respect both to
scholars and Persians (while living in the
world metropolis of Los Angeles, I had the privilege of talking intellectually for
hours on end with an Iranian scholar, he having fled his land after the
revolution in 1979), the reason I group Persian dominance of this Empire
with the Semitic Assyrians & Chaldeans is because Japhetic Persians were
still --- and in spite of a growing
Zoroastrian influence --- staunchly
pagan. This, plus a claim on
Scholars tend to interpret
the Persian claim as politics & diplomacy. Not that they denigrate them for
it. It’s simply seen in polite yet cynical terms. The first illustrious
Persian, say they, having won several critical military battles, then catered
to popular disgust with the previous rulers, permitting them to return to their
homelands or worship their gods, and played on the great respect it won him for
declaring himself pious avenger of Bel-Marduk, the
Neo-Babylonian Sun God. And maybe they’re right. Maybe the new conqueror
was this savvy & shrewd. He was certainly very smart. On the other hand, I
doubt the modern scholar’s ability to evaluate ancient pagans very
adroitly. There may have been shrewd diplomacy… but there may have
been a nice dollop of real pagan indignation toward earlier rulers, they
daring to move pagan idols ‘improperly’.
Whichever, both locals and
other citizens of the Assyro-Chaldeo-Persian Empire
honestly believed his claim --- or, at least, thought the new ruler way better than
the earlier rulers. The first full-fledged Persian emperor cemented his
authority in Babylon by proclaiming himself ‘King of Babylon’
(as had the Neo-Assyrians some two
centuries before), as well as ‘King of Sumer’ and
‘King of Akkad’ (ditto
previous parenthesis) Indeed, as ‘King
of the Four Corners of the World’, as he put it upon a famous
‘cylinder’ typical of that time & place. Then, depositing it in
Babylon’s central & ancient Esagila
Temple dedicated to their Babylonian head god, Marduk,
he truly did look like a legitimate successor of the Babylonian
monarchs of old, despite his
non-Hamitic and non-Semitic descent. Moreover, he
even stayed in
(Granted, his successor
built a new capitol in
Yet who was this dashing Japhetic emperor from
Ah, but before we dive into Cyrus’ big role,
we must grapple with an earlier conundrum. For Sacred Scripture --- which a Roman Catholic knows is inerrant
--- shows a Japhetic ruler prior to Cyrus exercising some sort of authority
in
The outcome?
The Book of Daniel makes it plain that Darius the
Mede then believed in the God
of Daniel, decreeing throughout his realm that
all citizens should do the same. An act that contemporary scholars don’t want to admit, just
as modern scholars of the last two or three centuries plainly don’t want to admit, ever,
that the Bible could be accurate or reliable. Meanwhile, regularly discovered archeological evidence routinely vindicates Sacred
Scripture again and again over the past century or so. Yet does this ever
have significant impact on these scholars? Do they ever back down and admit
that Sacred Scripture is reliable, and worth taking seriously before
corroborating evidence from archeology? Pretty much never.
Their bias is stark; it is a kneejerk
skepticism.
Which brings us back to
Cyrus the Great.
He beat the Medes and united them under his
This chance manifested most starkly in the pagan
persecution of the prophet, Daniel, mentioned above and recorded in the sixth
chapter of the Book of Daniel in the Bible. Nonetheless, it also manifested
itself (though, mayhap, a little fainter)
in the next few decades of Persian dominance of the Assyro-Chaldeo-Persian
Empire. Per many of the historians, Cyrus the Great was not, strictly speaking,
Persian (or, in more old-fashioned
parlance, ‘Aryan’ --- until the misadventures of the rather strange
Adolf Hitler & Nazis, in conjunction with liberal modernist
‘political correctness’, made this old academic term, ‘aryan’ into a ‘verboten’ word), He
was instead, partly, in ancient terminology, ‘Elamite’…
which, whilst probably ‘Aryan’, was not quite, in the strict sense,
‘Persian’. All of them (Elamites, Persians & Medes were Japhetic, but,
tribally, also somewhat distinct) were deeply connected in a patriarchal
sense (so alien and ‘strange’
to us nowadays, confusingly & tribally intermixed from a
‘national’ view), while separate enough in a ‘sub-tribal’
sense as to wind up fighting at times, bickering with one another in regard to
more ‘minor’ things… in contrast to fighting over more
‘major’ stuff. Yes, perishing in war is ‘major’…
yet wasn’t so major to them. What to conclude, then?
Quite simple. Whether ‘Aryan’ or not in the narrowest
sense, tribally speaking, Cyrus was Persian in the broader sense (and also, like them, Japhetic,
having descended from Noe’s second son, Japheth).
Hence, when he took over, he not only took over the other ‘Aryan’
tribes (like the Medes, and the Persians
in a narrower sense), he controlled a huge Assyro-Chaldeo-Persian Empire
and extended its dominion to an
unprecedented magnitude. Per
scholars today, no bigger empire had yet existed (including a realm such as the Chinese already ruled, or, say,
the Toltecs later came to rule --- and the
Mayans or Aztecs even further on a thousand or so years afterward in
Asia or the Americas). Put bluntly, the Persian era of the Assyro-Chaldeo-Persian
Empire was beyond anything post-Deluge
earth had seen (apart from a vast &
potent Sumero-Atlantean Empire, of
course, which, for the sake of avoiding distractions, we’ll place to the
side for the moment, concentrating only on what contemporary scholars presently
accept.)
God via Sacred Scripture even foretold
Cyrus’ rule a century earlier:
“Who [i.e., I, the Singular Creator] say to Cyrus:
‘Thou art [You are] my
shepherd, and thou shalt [shall] perform all my pleasure [everything that I, God, wish you to do]. Who say to
Contemporary scholars, naturally, don’t
want to believe in this prophecy. Per them, since God is not real --- or, at
least, there is no God Who is
all-knowing and deigns to give us prophecy with precision a century or more before
the thing prophesied happens, to the point of telling us the name of a
person who, at the time of prophecy, doesn’t yet exist ---
then this passage of the Bible must
have been written after
Cyrus’ existence & rule. I mean, come on, how else could Isaias [Isaiah] have
gotten it right? Per them, recent scholars, this Isaias wasn’t even necessarily an actual person.
And, if he was, certainly someone long after
the prophecy ‘came true’ wrote down the prophecy, pretending it came true because,
at the time it was ‘really’ written down… it’d already occurred!
In other words, per them, an imaginary God
in the Bible tells us a big fat lie.
But we’re Catholics, my beloved
reader… or else you are traditionally religious and willing to take the
Bible seriously… or, at a bare minimum, dear soul, able
to suspend disbelief and say “What if?” long enough to
consider the implications logically. Ergo, take Scripture at face value; God foresaw Cyrus and ordained
his purpose.
“Whosoever escaped the sword [when the Chaldeans swooped in and
slaughtered the rebellious Southern Kingdom of the Israelites, God punishing
their sins by having most of them die, with a remnant take away by
Nebuchadnezzar to the Province of Babylon], was led into Babylon, and there
served the king [Neo-Babylonian emperor]
and his sons, till the reign of the king of Persia [first full-fledged Persian emperor of the Assyro-Chaldeo-Persian
Empire]… But in the first year of CYRUS king of the Persians, to fulfill the word of the Lord [meaning here mainly the prophecy of Jeremias (Jeremiah), yet also referring obliquely to
the prophecy of Isaias (Isaiah) we’ve
read above]… the Lord stirred
up the heart of Cyrus king of the Persians: who commanded it to be
proclaimed through all his kingdom [the Assyro-Chaldeo-Persian Empire, the largest in the world at
the time], and by writing also, saying, ‘Thus saith
Cyrus king of the Persians [this
is what I, Cyrus the Persian, solemnly say to my empire]: All the kingdoms of the earth hath [has] the
Lord the God of heaven given to me, and he hath charged me [commanded me] to build him a
house [God’s Singular Old
Testament Temple] in Jerusalem, which is in Judea [Palestine, in the mountains where Jerusalem
is located]: who is there among you of all his people [which of you Hebrews are willing to go back
to Jerusalem to do this]? The Lord his God be with him, and let him go up [I order everybody not to prevent the rebuilding of this
Pretty impressive, eh? The words of Emperor Cyrus are stirring &
emphatic.
Again, the contemporary scholar disdains this.
They dismiss Sacred Scripture with a wave of their modernist hands, pretending
to know what they don’t really know (since they didn’t live back then in ancient times, seeing
it with their own eyes), and they dare to preach, as it were (and ironically so…) with an odd kind
of ‘infallible’ religious certainty which they have no true
certainty of, only a modernist bias & prejudice that it couldn’t
possibly be true that Our Creator exists --- or, if existing, that He has no
concern for humanity’s welfare or His followers’ fate, or no
power to foresee the future and determine beforehand what will come
to be.
Yet who needs to listen to them? Why should their opinion
matter to us?
You can respect
scholarship for what it’s worth --- surely it’s obvious I have massive esteem for good, solid,
logical, factual & fair-minded academia. But you don’t have to worship at their academic altar, as if they are
‘infallible popes’ who can never
be wrong, or never have an ax
to grind with prejudice & bias,
mindlessly hating eternal truth.
Per Josephus, our ancient & learned
Jewish historian from the first century AD, Cyrus became a great
friend to the Jews in the Assyro-Chaldeo-Persian
Empire, profoundly impressed upon seeing
for himself the words of Isaias’ Prophecy (Isaias [Isaiah] 44:28-45:1 DRC), where the Hebrew God foretold
him by name some 100 years BEFORE HE WAS BORN, assuring them that Emperor Cyrus would protect the Israelites, both
commanding & assisting these Hebrews in Babylonian Captivity to return
to the divinely-chosen City of Jerusalem, rebuild God’s Temple,
and thereby resume the liturgy and sacrifices of His Old Testament Church,
just as He ordained.
This, then, led Cyrus (whose name
translates as, according to ancient historians, ‘the sun’ or
‘like the sun’, albeit contemporary scholars tend to
denigrate this idea, probably wrongly, per my research) to worship,
revere & adore the True Deity of the Israelites and Divine Light of
This World (the Uncreated,
Self-Subsisting & Self-Eternal Triune Being of the Roman Catholic Religion,
inasmuch as He had revealed Himself before the era of the New Testament
and the Sacrifice of His Promised One, the God-Man, Jesus Christ),
as well as highly esteem the members of God’s Old Covenant Church,
these very same Hebrew people (what we today
call ethnically ‘Jews’, a word derived from the name Juda [Judah], the Israelite tribe who, along with the tiny
tribe of Benjamin, were the Southern Kingdom and fell long after the
Israelite’s Northern Kingdom, the remnant Southern tribes taken into
Babylonian Captivity together with some Levites & priestly descendants of
St. Moses’ brother, Aaron, the high priest or pope of the Old Testament
Church at that time). Viz., in the Bible, Cyrus appears to have become truly Catholic.
Now, granted, I can’t pretend to have
figured this out as a moral certainty. Mayhap our dear Cyrus was religiously
syncretistic, similar to the Neo-Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar, who, after
the miraculous survival of the three young Hebrews within the furnace he had
thrown them into for refusing to worship his gargantuan golden idol as a god,
but before
he had his rational mind stripped from him for seven years and then returned to
him just as miraculously, and mercifully allowed to lead the Assyro-Chaldean-Persian Empire again. Perchance Cyrus honored
the True God whilst clinging to his pagan idols, too.
But I doubt it.
Sacred Scripture is pretty plain --- if not whole
or exhaustive in its description of Emperor Cyrus --- and Cyrus the Great had to have known about his
predecessor’s amazing experience (Darius the Mede, see Daniel 6) of
finding the brave St. Daniel unharmed
in the lion’s den all night long despite their ravenous appetite
(pagans were cleverly cruel, making sure the predators, to whom a hapless
captive was exposed, were very hungry, having gone without food for some three
days or so… hence the startling
miracle when these famished beasts were as tame as pussy cats toward such Catholics instead of
ripping into these tasty martyrs without any polite & civilized delay). Our
Persian hero, the great and intelligent Cyrus, could also have easily inquired
into extensive and meticulous imperial
records, discovering the conversion of his Neo-Babylonian predecessor,
Nebuchadnezzar II, at the (figurative) hands of the Jews’ Almighty & Merciful Deity, as
well as this same God’s sobering
punishment of Nebuchadnezzar’s equally proud, even more wicked
& less fortunate grandson, Belshazzar, who used God’s Temple’s
sacred vessels to praise his pagan
idols.
Contemporary scholars, par for the course, mock
all such propositions.
They’re caught in the middle of their
modernist fantasies.
Fantasies that don’t
let them believe in Catholicism.
Cyrus
the Great, though, found freedom in the Middle of the Earth. Far from being
‘caught’, he was found
--- by Divine Mercy & Divine Power.
He may have started out pagan; he came full circle to the Supernatural Seven.
Like an octave. From C to D to E to F to G to A to B to C. It began in
+
+ +
Part One of Helplessly Ignorant (Chapters 1-20)
Part Two of Helplessly Ignorant (Chapters 21-48)
Part Three of Helplessly Ignorant (Chapters 49-69)
Part Four of Helplessly Ignorant (Chapters 70-99)
Part Six of Helplessly Ignorant (Chapters 135-180)
Coda of Helplessly Ignorant
(the Dénouement)
+
+ +
Pilate’s
query met:
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