Based on the evidence presented in Part One of this post, it should be clear to anyone who is prepared to analyse the data that the earth’s climate is changing. And it is not just changing in some parts of the world, but in ALL parts of the world. And not just on land, but in the sea as well.
Not only are extreme weather events being reported from all over the planet, but they are happening more and more often, and in more and more extreme forms. Statistical weather reports continue to break new historical records year after year.
So the inevitable question that follows is – what on earth is happening? What is the cause of all these extreme weather events? And why do they seem to be getting worse with every passing year? To pursue the answers to these questions, we need to go back to beginning of the 21st century.
The year 2000 witnessed the closest presidential election in United States history. The Republican candidate for president was George W. Bush, governor of Texas and the eldest son of the 41st President George H.W. Bush. The Democratic candidate was Al Gore.
Al Gore had served as Vice-President under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001. At the end of Clinton’s second term in office, Gore was chosen as the Democratic nominee for the 2000 presidential election. It was a moment that was to define the rest of his life.
For instead of being elected as America’s 43rd president, Al Gore lost the election by a mere 537 votes, even though he polled more votes overall that George Bush. In fact it took a highly controversial 5 to 4 decision by the Supreme Court Justices to decide the presidency in Bush’s favour.
Although he could easily have been devastated by this narrow loss and chosen to leave public life altogether, Gore decided to throw his energies into something that had occupied his attention for the previous quarter of a century.
During his time in political office, Al Gore had always been interested in environmental affairs. In 1994, he launched GLOBE (the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment Program), which became a world-wide science and education program focusing on the environment.
He also strongly supported and help to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol. This was an international treaty that was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997, and which entered into force on 16 February, 2005. This became the forerunner to the current Paris Accord on climate change.
So when Al Gore left office in 2001, he decided to devote his time to making people aware of how the decisions that they made were affecting the world’s climate. He did this by means of an illustrated slide show aimed at alerting the public to the “planetary emergency” due to global warming.
The Movie that Changed the World
It so happened that one of the people who happened to see this slide show was the American environmental activist Laurie David. Laurie was so impressed with Gore’s presentation, that she helped to persuade documentary film director Davis Guggenheim to adapt it into a film.
The film was made and released under the title An Inconvenient Truth.
It opened in New York City and Los Angeles on May 24, 2006, and proved to be an immediate success, winning Oscars in 2006 for Best Documentary Feature as well as Best Original Song for Melissa Etheridge’s song “I Need to Wake Up“. It has so far grossed over $50 million in the U.S. and abroad.
Throughout the film, Gore discussed the views of various scientists about the causes of global warming. He also emphasized his view that the real challenge facing humanity was not so much the phenomenon itself, as it was a moral issue confronting every individual on the planet.
In fact he concluded the film with the following words:
“Each one of us is a cause of global warming, but each one of us can make choices to change that with the things we buy, the electricity we use, the cars we drive; we can make choices to bring our individual carbon emissions to zero.
“The solutions are in our hands, we just have to have the determination to make it happen. We have everything that we need to reduce carbon emissions, everything but political will. But in America, the will to act is a renewable resource”.
But although individual decisions could make a difference in the outcome, Gore claimed that unless people across the globe recognized the nature of the problem and changed their behaviour, the impact of global warming on the planet could be catastrophic.
The film included a variety of segments that graphically illustrated both the extent of the problems that existed, as well as the likely consequences if timely action was not taken. For example, it discussed the possibility of the collapse of a major ice sheet in Greenland or West Antarctica.
Not only would such a collapse raise global sea levels by up to twenty feet, but this would also inevitably flood low-lying coastal areas around the world, which could lead to political upheavals as millions of people were driven out of their homes by the rising sea water.
The critical issue facing the earth, Gore explained, was the amount of human-generated greenhouse gases. To emphasize this fact, he pointed to the fact that ice-cores drawn from the Antarctic showed Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels were higher than at any time in the past 650,000 years.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the film An Inconvenient Truth focused the attention of the public on the problem of global warming to an extent that had never been done before. It also galvanized nations around the world to redouble their efforts to counter this problem.
In that sense, Al Gore may be said to have had as signal an influence on the environmental movement as the American marine biologist Rachel Carson in the early 1960’s with the publication of her book Silent Spring. For his contribution Gore was selected as joint-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.
But perhaps his biggest contribution has been his insistence that because it is our own behaviour that is to blame for global warming, it will not get better until we change the way we live our lives. And this is the position that has increasingly been adopted by the scientific community.
Types of Greenhouse Gases
In 2013, an Assessment Report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded by saying:
“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century”, and that “the largest human influence has been emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide”.
The greenhouse gases that the scientists refer to above fall into four major categories. They are:
1) Water Vapour (H2O)
2) Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
3) Methane (CH4)
4) Ozone (O3)
Water Vapour
It is worth noting here that although the public perception is that it is the burning of fossil fuels that is the major cause of global warming, in actual fact water vapour accounts for as much as two-thirds of the greenhouse gases present in the earth’s atmosphere.
However, water vapour is considered to be the major contributor to the greenhouse effect because, although it has a short atmospheric lifetime, it is the presence of water vapour in the atmosphere that determines the amount of evaporation and precipitation.
What this means in practice is that the warmer the temperature, the more water vapour can be stored in the clouds. And the more water vapour there is in the clouds, the greater amount of precipitation subsequently falls to the earth.
Carbon Dioxide
As pointed out above, although Carbon Dioxide emissions are considered to be the primary cause of global warming, they only make up about a quarter of the greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere at any one time.
It should be noted here that Carbon Dioxide is part of the natural cycle of life. After all, we breathe in Oxygen and we breathe out Carbon Dioxide. Fortunately this is reversed with plant life, which breathe in Carbon Dioxide and breathe out Oxygen.
However, human beings also do things like manufacture products, drive cars, fly planes and so on. And in providing the energy to do these things, they burn fossil fuels such as coal (43% of total emissions), oil (34%) and gas (18%).
Scientists now report that atmospheric concentrations of Carbon Dioxide have increased by more than 40% since pre-industrial times. What this means is that levels have gone from 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv) in the 18th century, to over 400 ppmv today.
Methane
The amount of Methane in the earth’s atmosphere ranges from 4% to 9%. It is formed by both human and natural activities. For example, natural wetlands, agricultural activities, and the extraction of fossil fuels from the ground all emit Methane.
Scientists have noted that the amount of Methane in the earth’s atmosphere is greater now than at any time in the past 800,000 years, and that these concentrations have increased sharply during the course of the 20th century.
Ozone
The amount of Ozone in the earth’s atmosphere ranges from 3% to 7%. Although Ozone only has a short atmospheric lifetime, it is considered to be a potent greenhouse gas. This is because in addition to trapping heat, it is a pollutant that can cause health problems in people and damage to crops.
The Causes of Climate Change
As climatologists have pointed out, the temperature on the surface of the earth depends on a balance between the amount of energy entering the earth’s atmospheric system, and the amount of energy that is reflected back into space.
When incoming energy from the sun is absorbed by the earth, it warms up. When the sun’s energy is reflected back into space, it cools down. However it is important to note here the crucial role played by the atmospheric envelope that surrounds the earth.
If our atmosphere didn’t exist, we would experience a range of temperatures like a desert or the surface of the moon. The days would burn with heat, while the nights would freeze with cold. Without our atmosphere to protect us, the average temperature on the earth would be well below freezing.
The fact that life exists at all upon the earth depends upon a variety of factors that up until now have been successful in maintaining a balance from being too cold or too hot. But the geological history of the earth shows us that this balance is delicate, and can easily be disturbed.
So for example, we know from the fossil record that there have been times in earth’s history when changes in climate, such as during past ice-ages, led to the demise of many different species, and that climate change can dramatically reduce the chances of survival of those species that cannot adapt.
There are many factors, both natural and human, that can cause changes in the earth’s energy balance. The most significant of these are:
• Variations in the amount of energy emitted by the sun
• Changes in the reflectivity (Albedo) of the earth’s atmosphere and surface
• Changes in the amount of heat trapped in the earth’s atmosphere
Once it became apparent that the world was steadily getting hotter, scientists looked for something that would account for this phenomenon. And not surprisingly, they first suspected that this might be due to an increase in energy emanating from the sun.
Unfortunately, this turned out to be a blind alley. For although scientists have a variety of satellites which can accurately measure changes in the energy output of the sun, they have not found a correlation between the sun’s output and the increasing temperatures upon the earth.
In fact they have now completely ruled out the sun as being the major cause of climate change. That is because the amount of energy the earth receives from the sun has not increased over the last seven decades or so. If anything, records show that there has been a slight downward trend.
So they turned their attention to the earth’s Albedo. The Albedo (the Latin word for “whiteness”) of the earth is a measure of the amount of solar energy that is reflected off the earth’s surface back into space. The higher the Albedo, the more sunlight that is bounced off the earth back into space.
Reflectivity can be illustrated by the different ways people who live in hot places use to keep themselves cool. Buildings that are painted white reflect heat, while those that are black retain heat. Lightly coloured clothing helps keep people cool in summer, while dark colours make them feel hotter.
But here again the scientists were confounded. That is because while there have been definite changes in the reflectivity index for certain areas of the earth, such as the melting ice-caps at the poles, this change in Albedo is not great enough to account for the rising temperatures of the earth.
So scientists were forced to look elsewhere for an explanation. They have now done so, and the theory that they have come up with is one that has now been accepted by most of the countries of the world. It is the theory known as the “Greenhouse Effect”.
The Greenhouse Theory
Most people are familiar with the concept of a greenhouse. Usually made of glass or some other transparent material, a greenhouse is an enclosed structure that allows sunlight in, but does not allow the infrared rays to escape, thus causing the temperature inside the interior space to rise.
In a similar fashion, say the scientists, greenhouse gases generated on or inside the earth rise up in the atmosphere where they become trapped, thus creating a sort of umbrella-like effect which causes the temperature underneath this umbrella to rise, just like it does inside a greenhouse.
So according to this theory, the “Greenhouse Effect” is the process by which the absorption and emission of infrared radiation by gases in a planet’s atmosphere, causes the temperature on the surface of the planet to increase, as shown in the following diagram.
 Credit Wikipedia Since the time of the Industrial Revolution, which began around the year 1760, human activity has increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Based on data taken from ice cores, the concentrations of Methane have increased by 36%, and Carbon Dioxide by 148%.
It has been estimated that burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) has accounted for three-quarters of the increase in Carbon Dioxide over the last twenty years, with the other quarter being the result of changes in land use, particularly deforestation.
And as reported by the WMO (World Meteorological Association) in 2016, monthly global concentrations of Carbon Dioxide recorded by NASA have now exceeded 400 ppm (parts per million) for the first time in millions of years, and fully half of this is trapped in the atmosphere.
In December 2015, all of this led representatives of 195 countries to conclude an agreement within the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, to set targets for controlling the emissions of greenhouse gases. Because this was signed in Paris, it has become known as the Paris Accord.
The Paris Accord
In terms of this agreement, each country that was a signatory was required to set a “Nationally Determined Contribution” towards reaching the goal of reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions around the world. This agreement went into effect on 4 November, 2016.
Unfortunately, there was one glaring exception. One country in particular has so far failed to ratify this agreement. That country is the United States, which is by far the greatest contributor to the problem, and accounts for a full quarter of all the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.
One of the biggest sceptics that greenhouse gases are the cause of climate change is Donald Trump. During his campaign for the presidency, he called climate change a hoax invented by the Chinese, and vowed that if he was elected President he would undo Obama’s climate action plan.
Since that time, Trump has said that he will definitely pull out of the Paris Accord, or that he might do this, or that he is still thinking about it, or that he might go along with some parts of it. But if his words have been confusing, his actions have left little doubt about what he really thinks.
In his Earth Day statement in April, Donald Trump failed to make any mention of the threat of climate change. In fact he issued an Executive Order seeking to suspend, rescind or review various Obama-era rules in an effort to boost domestic energy production in the form of fossil fuels.
Not only has Trump promised to bring back jobs in the coal industry, but he has recently approved oil drilling in the Arctic, despite the hazards which this would pose for the environment. Even his choice for head of the Environmental Protection Agency seemed to make no sense.
For in choosing Scott Pruitt to head the EPA, he picked a man who had sued that very agency 14 times while he was attorney general of the state of Oklahoma, arguing that it should be left to the industries themselves to decide what actions should best serve the needs of the environment.
The Inconvenient Truth
There are two things that should be obvious to everyone living on the planet today. The first is that the climate of the earth is changing, and the second is that more and more extreme weather events are happening around the world, and that they seem to be happening more and more often.
There is also almost unanimous agreement among those countries that have ratified the Paris Accord, that climate change and global warming are twin effects of a common cause, and that this cause is the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases as a result of humans burning fossil fuels.
But although scientists are undoubtedly correct in their belief that greenhouse gases produced by humanity are indeed polluting the atmosphere and contributing to the greenhouse effect, they may also be victims of an inconvenient truth.
The suspicion is beginning to grow, even amongst those who were formerly staunch supporters of the greenhouse theory, that the generally accepted explanation of global warming provided by scientists may be nothing more than a cover story designed to disguise a deeper and darker truth.
They base their suspicions on evidence indicating that the U.S. military has been actively engaged in a clandestine campaign for more than a quarter of a century, in which they have released into the atmosphere toxins that are far more dangerous than any greenhouse gases.
And because they have continued to deny both the existence of such a campaign, as well as their involvement in it, this suggests that they are hiding the truth from us, and that the earth may well be facing a threat far greater than anything that we have previously been told.
For as we shall see from the following instalment, it is beginning to look as if the dangers facing humanity at this time are not so much the result of what we are doing ON the earth, but rather what is happening TO the earth, emanating from sources beyond the solar system.
Allan, An Inconvenient Truth, May 6, 2017, 12:40 pm
Some seven years ago I referred to the words of the renowned Kenyan paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey, a man who has devoted his life to the study of ancient fossils. Leakey had this to say about the environmental crisis facing the world at that time:
“If you look at the fossil record, the thing that strikes you is that extinction is the most common phenomena. Extinction is always driven by environmental change, and environmental change is always driven by climate change.”
He said that the key challenge of our times was not whether the cheetah or the elephant would survive, but whether the human race itself would survive. He based his remarks on a report issued in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
This report indicated that the previous year (2006) had seen the warmest spring in the United States since record keeping began in 1895. It went on to warn that our planet was approaching a critical tipping point because of climate change and other factors.
The report noted that the average U.S. temperature between March and May of 2006 was 5.2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the long term average for the whole of the twentieth century.
What this meant, the report added, was that if these trends continued, then by the year 2070, the average temperature on the earth would be higher than it had been at any time since the human species evolved.
Now that seven years have elapsed since that report was published, it is important to know whether these trends have in fact continued. A detailed report issued recently by the World Meteorological Organization provides us with an answer.
The WMO (World Meteorological Organization) is the official voice of the United Nations on matters relating to Weather, Climate and Water, and its annual report highlights topics like temperatures, oceans, ice and snow cover, as well as what it calls “high-impact” events.
The WMO provisional report, published on November 14, 2016, begins with the following stark assessment:
“It is very likely that 2016 will be the hottest year on record, with global temperatures even higher than the record-breaking temperatures in 2015. Preliminary data shows that 2016’s global temperatures are approximately 1.2° Celsius above pre-industrial levels…”
As the report goes on to explain:
“Global temperatures for January to September 2016 have been about 0.88° Celsius (1.58°F) above the average (14°C) for the 1961-1990 reference period, which is used by WMO as a baseline.
“Temperatures spiked in the early months of the year because of the powerful El Niño event of 2015-16. Preliminary data for October indicate that they are at a sufficiently high level for 2016 to remain on track for the title of hottest year on record. This would mean that 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have been this century (1998 was the other one)”.
The key changes in climate can be summarised as follows:
• 2016 was the warmest year on record – 1.1 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial period
• Average global surface temperatures of the sea reached record heights in 2016
• Average global sea levels rose to new heights in 2016
• Average global sea ice shrunk more than four million square kilometres below average in 2016
• Average global ocean heat was the second highest on record leading to extensive coral bleaching in tropical waters
• Average annual global carbon dioxide concentrations reached 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time
Commenting on this report, Secretary-General of the WMO Petteri Taalas warned that the above changes were leading to significant increases in events like “once in generation” heat-waves and floods, as well as more damaging storm surges associated with tropical cyclones.
In particular, the report highlighted the following “high-impact” weather-related events that occurred during 2016:
• The most significant of these, in terms of casualties, was Hurricane “Matthew”, which struck the island of Haiti in October, 2016. In addition, it went on to cause significant damage in Cuba and the Bahamas, as well as major flooding in South Carolina.
• Typhoon “Lionrock” caused destructive flooding and heavy casualties in North Korea.
• Of the 78 tropical cyclones that occurred in 2016, cyclone “Winston” proved to be the most severe ever to hit the island of Fiji.
• Summer floods in the Yangtze basin in China killed 310 people and caused damage in excess of US$14 billion.
• Flooding and landslides in Sri Lanka left over 200 people dead or missing, and displaced several hundred thousand more.
• Above average seasonal rainfall in the Sahel region of Africa led to significant flooding in the Niger river basin.
The report went on to highlight numerous areas around the planet that experienced major heat-waves during 2016. In particular, it mentioned:
• The year began with an extreme heat-wave in Southern Africa, which added to the ongoing drought in the region. Many stations set all-time records, including 42.7ºC at Pretoria and 38.9ºC at Johannesburg.
• Other areas that set all-time records in 2016 were 44.6ºC in Thailand, 51.0ºC in India, 54.0ºC in Kuwait, 53.9ºC in Basra in Iraq, and 53.0ºC at Delhoran in Iran.
The most damaging wildfire in Canadian history occurred in May 2016, in the city of Fort McMurray in Alberta. The fire ultimately burned an area of about 590,000 hectares. It led to the mandatory evacuation of over 100,000 residents of the city and surrounding areas.
This fire also destroyed 2,400 buildings valued at US$3 billion in insured losses, as well as several billion more in associated losses, making it the third-largest recorded environmental disaster requiring evacuation.
It is clear from the foregoing that the fear expressed by Richard Leakey about the danger to humanity posed by climate change has increased over the past seven years, and that the world is now stumbling towards a disaster that threatens to decimate the population of the planet.
Already, the global population has reached seven and a half billion people. These are people who need to be fed, housed, educated and employed if peaceful progress is to continue, and our thin veneer of civilisation is to be maintained. But all of this is dependent on the weather.
Yet the world continues to get hotter year by year. And more and more countries are being assailed by more and more extreme climatic events, as can be seen from a brief summary of what has already occurred in the first four months of 2017.
The intense phenomenon in the central Pacific Ocean known as El Niño, that led to the five-year drought that ravaged the entire state of California, has dissipated, only to be replaced by a series of onshore storms that have flooded coastal communities throughout North and South America.
And the fire in Fort McMurray in May 2016 that led to the mandatory evacuation of 100,000 citizens, proved to be a mere forerunner to the calamitous events in February 2017, which led to the overnight evacuation of almost 200,000 people in northern California.
These events centred around Oroville Dam, located 75 miles north of the state capital of Sacramento. This dam is the tallest dam in the United States, rising 770 feet high. Prior to the onslaught of winter storms in 2017, the dam had been reduced to a trickle of water that could no longer supply the needs of the surrounding areas.
What happened was that over a period of several weeks, a series of winter storms caused the Oroville Dam to overflow for the first time in its fifty year history. In fact, on February 12, 2017, the reservoir was calculated to be at 151 percent capacity.
Fearful that that the dam’s emergency spillway could fail, and cause an onrush of water that would engulf entire communities situated below the dam, Governor Jerry Brown ordered the immediate evacuation of 188,000 residents in all of the nearby towns.
The fear was that the 30-foot-high concrete barrier at the top of the spillway would collapse, causing billions of gallons of water to swamp the Feather River below, flooding dozens of towns between Oroville and Sacramento and causing unparalleled property damage.
Mercifully, the torrential rains eased and the concrete barrier held, allowing residents to return to their homes that they had been forced to abandon in haste forty-eight hours earlier. The great California drought was finally broken, but at the risk of an even greater environmental disaster.
Meanwhile, wave after wave of storms have continued to lash the entire west coast of North America as far north as Alaska. While in Vancouver, Canada, the city had fifty-one days of rain during one two-month period, and spring flowers only blossomed in the middle of April, the latest in recent history.
And in Washington State, the city of Seattle received more rain in four months than their average precipitation for an entire year. And still the rain keeps coming, and shows little sign of stopping, as a seemingly never ending series of cold fronts continue to drench the region.
Further south, the precipitation at higher elevations has come in the form of record levels of snow. The Sierra Nevada mountains in California have experienced more snow over the last winter that in the four previous years combined, and snowdrifts have been found to exceed 22 feet in depth.
And although this might seem to offer a welcome relief from previous years of scorching drought, if the summer should happen to bring with it a sudden thaw, then vast areas might be devastated by the ensuing floods. But these conditions have not been limited to North America alone.
In South America, similar falls of torrential rain have led to widespread flooding and damage due to landslides, as entire hillsides have collapsed under the weight of the moisture, threatening the lives of those citizens living in low-lying areas.
For example in Peru in early March, overflowing rivers driven by relentless El Niño rains drowned 67 people, damaged 115,000 homes, collapsed 117 bridges and paralyzed countless roadways, to say nothing of the thousands more who were displaced from their inundated homes.
Even in the capital city of Lima, located in a desert region where it almost never rains, Police had to rescue hundreds of residents from flooded areas of the city, while in nearby Huachipa more than 65,000 people were unable to go to work or return to their homes.
In the neighbouring country of Columbia, an avalanche of mud and water from three overflowing rivers swept through the town of Mocoa while people slept, killing more than 190 residents and injuring many hundreds of others.
Extreme flooding continues to occur in other parts of the eastern United States and Canada, as well as parts of Europe, Israel, Africa, India, Australia and New Zealand. And then there is the phenomenon of global warming, which continues to gather pace with every succeeding year.
In April 2017, scientists conducting an aircraft survey of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia returned with sobering news. They reported that warm waters had severely bleached large swathes of coral reefs for the second year in a row.
In 2016, two-thirds of the coral in the northern sector of the reef died as a result of unusually warm waters. As Terry Hughes, Director of the ARC Centre at James Cook University in Queensland reported at the time: “I showed the results of aerial surveys to my students, and then we wept”.
 Coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef It now appears that about 1,500 kilometres of the reef have experienced severe bleaching over the last two years. In fact temperatures in the waters surrounding the reef have been so abnormally high, that if they continue scientists fear that the survival of the entire reef may be threatened.
Then on the other side of the world, scientists have discovered two more examples of changes that can be directly linked to climate change. The first was discovered in the Petermann Glacier in Northwest Greenland, and the second in the massive Kaskawulsh Glacier in the Yukon in Canada.
In the course of a series of low level flights over Greenland as part of a research campaign conducted by NASA, scientists were disturbed to find a newly-formed crack in the Petermann Glacier. This new crack indicated the potential for a large iceberg to break off the glacier.
And although large icebergs had broken off this glacier previously in 2010 and again in 2012, researcher Joe MacGregor said that another rift occurring so soon after two other major calving events “would be extremely unusual if not unprecedented”.
Another discovery that happened by chance, occurred when a group of scientists returned to the Slims river region in the Kluane National Park in the Yukon, to study changes in the flow of the river. What they found turned out to be unparalleled in the history of glacier research.
As Dan Shugar, a geoscientist at the University of Washington in Tacoma, reported in a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience: “This was the first event we could find where river piracy occurred right under our noses and due to contemporary climate change.”
What Shugar and his colleagues found was that a river that they had observed during their previous visit to the region, had mysteriously gone missing. As Jim Best, professor of geology and geography at the University of Illinois reported:
“Where there had been blue, shimmering shallow water, it was now exposed sediment, and it had dried out. The afternoon wind in that area was picking up that sediment and dust and was creating a huge dust storm.”
To their amazement the group discovered that the melt-water of a glacier that had previously flowed into the Slims river, had now carved a new 30-metre canyon through the glacier towards a lower elevation. And in the process of doing this, it had completely changed the flow of the river.
So whereas the melt-water from the glacier had previously flowed north into the Slims river and then the Bering Sea, a series of collapsed ice blocks had changed its path so that it now flowed south down the Kaskawulsh Valley toward the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean.
Although this phenomenon of stream capture, or “river piracy”, is usually caused by a dramatic tectonic event such as an earthquake, landslide or glacial dam collapse, in this case it was clearly seen to be the result of climate change. As Dan Shugar concluded:
“Climate change is happening, is affecting us and it’s not just about far-off islands in the South Pacific. It’s not just about sea-level rise for them. The effects can be very rapid and can be somewhat unanticipated. Climate change may bring new changes that we’re not even really thinking about”.
Shugar is just one of an international body of scientists warning us that it is not just our way of life that is being threatened by global warming and its effects upon our climate, but our very existence itself.
In short, as Richard Leakey observed in his quotation at the beginning of this post, if the fossil record of past ages of the earth is any guide, the earth may soon be facing an extinction level event.
Allan, An Inconvenient Truth, April 23, 2017, 12:16 pm
This selected entry was originally published here on July 16, 2017
So where has this search for the truth about global warming and climate change led us? What started off as an investigation into the science of what was going on in the upper atmosphere of our planet, has taken us on a circuitous journey to secret bases deep below the surface of the earth.
And what began as an innocent enough enquiry into a phenomenon that has captured the attention of all the countries around the globe, has led us into a dark world of government secrecy and classified information that is shrouded in deception, disease and death.
This quest for understanding has taken us from international forums where the subject is widely discussed and openly debated, to hidden chambers where evidence is officially denied as a conspiratorial hoax, and whistleblowers who speak out do so at the risk of their lives.
Yet beneath all this talk of conspiracy and denial, one truth remains self evident. The facts speak for themselves, no matter how much political spin is applied. The threat is real, and the threat is now. The evidence is undeniable, and it keeps on mounting month by month.
Our climate is changing, and changing at a pace that is beyond the control of any government, whether national or international. Extreme weather events are occurring all around the planet, threatening the existence of every species, from fish and birds to human beings themselves.
The Apparent Truth
Faced with this threat, the scientists of the world have come together to try to speak with a single voice on this matter. According to the official NASA website on Global Climate Change there is a consensus among studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
According to NASA, the conclusion of 97% of climate scientists who have actively published reports on this subject is that climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely to have been the result of human activity, which is what activists like Al Gore have been preaching for years.
The human activities they refer to are the burning of coal and gas to generate power, as well and the use of carbon-based products to fuel our cars and machinery. It is the burning of these products that create the greenhouse gases that form the atmospheric barrier that traps heat.
And because global warming is believed to be a problem that we ourselves have caused, there has been a growing movement within the international community that has culminated in the Paris Accord on climate change, in which 195 countries have agreed to reduce their use of carbon products.
But behind this apparent unanimity among scientists and nations that human beings are the cause of climate change, and are therefore directly responsible for solving the problem, there has been another sinister and secret campaign that is based on a totally different premise.
The Real Truth
That premise, which is also supported by scientific study, holds that changes in the climate of our planet, as well as the increasing heat on land and in the ocean, are the direct result of energies that are impacting the earth from sources beyond the solar system.
And based on this premise, secret agencies around the world have joined together to embark on a two-fold campaign. One part is designed to create an atmospheric shield around the planet to protect it from incoming radiation, and the other is to build underground and undersea shelters to save a select few from destruction.
The rationale behind the extreme secrecy surrounding this campaign is simple. If the truth about global warming is that the lives of all the people on the planet are at risk, then that truth can never be made public. As the whistleblower known as “Deep Shield” explained:
“Due to the severity of the situation it is mandatory to maintain public calm for as long as possible. The Earth is dying. Humanity is on the road to extinction – without the Shield mankind will die off within 20 to 50 years.
“Most people alive today could live to see this extinction take place. This means that an announcement of the situation we face boils down to telling every man, woman and child on earth that they have no future, they are going to be killed.
“People would panic. There would be economic collapse, the production and movement of goods would collapse. Millions would die in all cities on earth, riots and violence would reduce civilian centers to rubble within days.
“Half of the population in dense metropolitan areas would try to leave the cities seeking ‘safety’ in the rural areas thinking that they would be safe.
“Those left behind in the cities would be at war with their neighbors, fighting for the remaining supplies. We would be telling the world that the world is coming to an end, and even with the Shield the chances of survival are small”. (View Source)
Increasing Cosmic Radiation
So what is the real cause of this threat? The honest answer is that we still do not know. All we can say is that the earth, as well as the entire solar system, is being subjected to significantly increasing amounts of cosmic radiation, as can be seen in the following graph taken from Spaceweather.com
As the above graph clearly indicates, in the short space of two years from March 2015 to May 2017, the amount of cosmic radiation registered by high altitude balloons in the upper atmosphere above California has increased by 13%. The website goes on to say:
“Why are cosmic rays intensifying? The main reason is the sun. Solar storm clouds such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) sweep aside cosmic rays when they pass by Earth. During Solar Maximum, CMEs are abundant and cosmic rays are held at bay.
“Now, however, the solar cycle is swinging toward Solar Minimum, allowing cosmic rays to return. Another reason could be the weakening of the Earth’s magnetic field, which helps protect us from deep-space radiation”.
As pointed out above, the main reason that cosmic rays are intensifying is the sun. This was also pointed out by Swiss and German scientists as far back as July 2004, according to a report that was published in the British newspaper The Telegraph.
This study was based on research led by Dr. Sami Solanki, director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany. The conclusion of their study was that the earth was getting hotter because the sun was brighter than at any time in the last 1,000 years.
Although Dr. Solanki indicated that he did not know what was causing the sun to burn brighter, or how long this cycle would last, he did say that he believed that the impact of this intense sunlight on the ozone layer could be affecting the climate more than the sunlight itself.
Ozone Layer
Dr. Solanki’s comment about the effect of this intense sunlight upon the ozone layer goes to the very heart of the problem that is affecting the earth at this time. The reason is because of the nature of the ozone layer, and the function it fulfills in our atmosphere.
The atmosphere of the earth is divided into several layers. The lowest layer, called the troposphere, extends from the surface of the earth to about six miles (10 kms) in altitude. The next layer, called the stratosphere, extends from there up to about thirty miles (50 kms) above the earth.
The ozone layer consists of ozone molecules that are suspended in the upper reaches of the stratosphere. Stratospheric ozone is a naturally occurring gas that helps to filter out ultraviolet (UV) radiation emanating from the sun. It has been called the earth’s sunscreen.
So if the ozone layer is diminished for any reason, as it is now, it allows more UV radiation to reach the earth’s surface. And it is this increased UV radiation that leads to skin cancer, cataracts and other health problems. It also disrupts marine life and reduces crop yields.
But ordinary people do not need scientific studies to tell them that something is seriously wrong with our sun. They can see and sense this as they go about their daily duties. They already know that sunlight feels hotter and that it is easier to get sunburned than before.
One of the easiest ways to find out what ordinary citizens think about the sun, is to scan the comments that can be seen below YouTube videos dealing with the subject of climate change. The following is a selection of what people around the world have been saying recently.
What YouTube Viewers Have to Say
“The Sun burns like the arc from a welder machine. Prickly hot on the skin. When you go outside it’s like living in an overexposed photograph is the only way I can explain it.
“We live in Camp Verde AZ – every year up to this year we have had an increasing number of fire ants in our yard. This year we have not seen even ONE ANT anywhere in the whole yard. Looking for them, we can’t find any. How can ants just not be there anymore? Are they all hiding under ground because of the deadly UV spikes? Are they all dead?
“All I know is that the UV intensity and whiteness of the sun is relatively new, and the climate, the weather, the air quality and other things were completely different when I was a kid, and I’ve lived in the same part of the country for more than sixty years. The changes are undeniable and I do not think it has all been caused by burning fossil fuels.
“I am 48 and I can say for a FACT!! I remember the sun being softer gold with yellow tones. You could look at it for a second. This bright white sun you can’t even glimpse at is not the sun I remember as a kid.
“I’m 43. You are right on about the Sun being white. It’s been like that a few years now. I been photographing the Sun for awhile now. Pictures show a white Sun.
“I’ve been telling my friends & family for at least 5-8 years now – our sunlight seems different. It feels different on my skin. I try to explain to them that it’s subtle, but it’s certainly different.
“When I’m out in the sun, the light hurts my skin in a different way than it ever has in my entire life — I’m now 45. I explain it as though it “feels hotter” — which is a poor description, I know. But it stings in a way that it never has before — a bit more intense, I suppose. It’s so very difficult to articulate… It just feels like the sunlight is more “intense”.
“What makes me say that is the effect that it has on my sensory nerves under my skin. Of course, most people say that I’m nuttier than usual, but I certainly can & I stand by my own claims that the sunlight is different than it’s been during the first 35-38 years of my life.
“I’m from Warren county in SW Ohio. I currently live in Dayton. For the past few years I have definitely felt the sun burning my skin faster than my entire life and it seems to only be getting worse. Crazy weather we’ve been having here in Ohio.
“Something must be up. I just got mild sunburn after 30 minutes outdoors yesterday. This is Winter (Tasmania, Australia). A passer by commented to me that the Sun was too bright, too hot, and much bigger for Winter…and it was not as low on the horizon.
“Notice how the sun doesn’t have a yellow hue any more, bright white!!
“No offense sincerely, but I remember a yellow hued sun growing up. I loved to watch clouds and the sun felt warm – not burning little water blisters on my forearms. Something has affected our star.
“94º today in PA. Something definitely has been going on with the sun for years now. It doesn’t seem so hot out until you get into sunlight. Then it feels like you are being micro-waved. Strange.
“I’m sensitive to the sun. It’s definitely hotter and more intense. I can’t even go out for a minute now without getting really red.
“My dear grandson got a terrible burn today here in Maryland, even though he was covered in sun-block.
“Yes, for we who knew the benign golden Sun, it’s really sad. I can hardly see to drive when the road glares so much under this light. Maybe I need welder’s goggles, it seems to burn and leave after images. You see everybody squinting some days.
“The sun was yellow and sky blue. It was called the golden sun. Remember the children’s song: Mister sun, Mister sun, Mister golden sun, please shine down on me. The sky was also much bluer then.
“Another older guy to testify that the sun used to be yellow. It was possible to look directly at the sun for up to about ten seconds and this was intense but felt purifying. Now the sun’s so bright you’d go blind.
“Adding to an old post. Yes, I’m 57. The sun used to be yellow. As a young (and dumb) kid I used to stare into the sun to see how long I could look at it. It was yellow. The sun used to rise and set in yellow, orange, & red with the red being the color when it was closest to the horizon. Today, it is simply white and almost unbearable to the eyes.
“I think what happened is the ozone just left us, I remember it being yellow. We as kids during the 80s colored in a “Yellow sun” I noticed this shift in 2002 / 2004. Suddenly it was just this crazy white and it gets whiter every year.
The above comments made by ordinary people may seem rambling and mundane, but they go to the essence of the changes that are taking place on the sun. In fact they have unwittingly realised the true cause of global warming and the effect this is having upon the surface of the earth.
The key to understanding global warming is simply this. The earth is getting hotter because the sun is getting hotter. And the hotter the sun gets, the whiter it gets.
The changes that these viewers have described have so far eluded all those climatologists who subscribe to the greenhouse gases explanation of global warming. The truth is that climate change is not the result of people burning fossil fuels. It is because the sun itself has changed.
The Conventional Theory of the Sun
Conventional climatologists suffer from one basic defect which prevents them from understanding the true causes of the changes that are taking place on this planet, and that is their understanding (or should I say “misunderstanding”) of the nature and function of our sun.
All the leading colleges and universities around the world teach a single theory about the origin and nature of the sun, and any student who hopes to graduate and go on to enjoy a career in science is obliged to accept this theory as proven fact.
The conventional view of science is that our sun is a circular star which lies at the centre of our solar system. This star is considered to be roughly 865,000 miles (1,393,000 kilometres) in diameter, with a mass of about 330,000 times the mass of the earth.
As a result of spectrographic analysis, three-quarters of this mass has been found to consist of hydrogen, while the rest of it is made up mostly of helium. Small amounts of heavier elements such as oxygen, carbon, neon and iron have also been found.
Our sun is thought to have formed about four and a half billion years ago, and is considered to have been the result of the gravitational collapse of a large molecular cloud, and it is this cloud that ultimately became the sun with its orbiting planets.
Being at the centre of this gravitational collapse, our sun became increasingly hot and dense until it reached a point when thermonuclear fusion spontaneously occurred. It is this process of nuclear fusion, by converting hydrogen nuclei into helium, that produces its heat and light.
Charles Bruce
All remained well in this neatly organized world of accepted theory until a Scottish astrophysicist by the name of Charles Bruce arrived on the scene. In 1944, Bruce, who was an electrical researcher, astronomer, and expert on the effects of lightning, made an unusual discovery.
He found that the surface of the sun had the same appearance, temperature and spectral analysis as an electric arc. He then went on to make a bold proposition. The sun looked like an electric arc, he said, and had the same characteristics as an electrical arc, because it was an electric arc.
So what Charles Bruce theorised was that the sun was not a nuclear furnace after all. It was in fact an electrical body made up of a large number of arcs in parallel with one another. He explained that our sun, as well as every other star, was actually a sophisticated, though complex, electric light bulb.
Bruce’s idea that the source of the sun’s heat and light was the result of electromagnetic rather than thermonuclear interactions, was laughed at by all the scientific authorities of his time, just as it continues to be rejected to this day.
There was, however, one small problem, and that was that the old theory was devised by scientists before the advent of the space age. And once it became possible to send scientific probes into space to study the properties of the sun, it was clear that the accepted theory of the sun was in trouble.
The problem was that this elegant mathematical theory that had been held so fervently by so many people for so many years, was just not supported by the facts. The evidence proved that every aspect of the existing theory was wrong. In fact, it was so obvious that even a child could see it.
Ralph Juergens
The deficiencies of the traditional theory were exposed some years later when an American civil engineer named Ralph Juergens wrote an article in which he demolished the long accepted theory of the sun. In an unequivocal assessment of the situation, Juergens wrote:
“I can find no way to state this diplomatically, so let me be blunt. The modern astrophysical concept that ascribes the Sun’s energy to thermonuclear reactions deep in the solar interior is contradicted by nearly every observable aspect of the Sun.”
What incensed Juergens at the time was not only that the accepted theory of the sun as a thermonuclear reactor was unable to explain the observed features of the sun, but that the scientists who held so firmly to this theory blithely ignored these features.
The fundamental problem with the existing theory was this. If the sun truly was a nuclear reactor, converting hydrogen atoms into helium through a process of thermonuclear fusion, then there should be a simple temperature gradient between the inner and outer heat of the sun.
In other words, the sun should be hottest at its centre. And the further away one went from the surface of the sun, the cooler it should become. The problem was that the actual temperature readings on which all astrophysicists agreed showed the exact opposite.
The temperature at the surface of the sun is roughly 4,400 degrees Kelvin (7,460ºF). But about four times further away, it rises steadily to about 20,000ºK (35,540ºF) . From there the temperature jumps abruptly to two million degrees Kelvin (3,554,000ºF) in the Corona.
Based on this new data provided by space probes which was the opposite of what the traditional theory predicted, Juergens not only exposed the shortcomings of existing theory, but he went on to propose an entirely new theory of the sun that was founded on electromagnetism.
According to Juergens, the source of the energy that powers the sun comes from space beyond the sun, and this energy is electrical in nature. The sun is therefore the focus of a “coronal glow discharge” that is fed by electric currents coursing throughout the galaxy.
As he wrote in 1972, some years before his death in 1979, in an article entitled Reconciling Celestial Mechanics and Velikovskian Catastrophism:
“The known characteristics of the interplanetary medium suggest not only that the sun and the planets are electrically charged, but that the sun itself is the focus of a cosmic electric discharge – the probable source of all its radiant energy“. (See Electric Sun)
As he went on to clarify, “The sun is electrically powered – the source of the sun’s energy is coming from electric currents in galactic space.” (See Electric Comet)
Today, Juergen’s ideas have been amplified and refined by a growing body of scientists who have aligned themselves with the Thunderbolts Group. They believe that we live in an “Electric Universe”, and that electromagnetism is the fundamental source of all created life.
The Electric Sun
What ordinary people have now come to realise is that our sun has changed. It has become hotter and it has become “whiter”. And as the evidence quoted earlier shows, the earth is being impacted by ever increasing amounts of harmful UV radiation emanating from the sun.
Nevertheless, the key contribution that Juergens has made to this discussion is the idea that the sun is electrically powered, that the brightness of the sun is dependent upon its “coronal glow discharge”, and that this in turn is fed by electric currents coursing throughout the galaxy.
So the reason why the sun now appears hotter and “whiter” is because the area through which the solar system is now travelling is being exposed to more intense radiation, which has changed the sun’s electromagnetic field, and therefore its “coronal glow discharge”.
And as Charles Bruce noted earlier, just like an arc welder’s torch changes colour with the intensity of the current and glows “whiter” as it gets hotter, so changes to the “coronal glow discharge” of the sun are causing it to feel hotter and look “whiter” when we experience it on the earth.
So what common people everywhere are reporting is evidence that these changes to the sun are having devastating effects upon the earth, as evidence mounts of more and more species being harmed by the increasing levels of lethal UVB and UVC radiation.
The “inconvenient” truth about climate change is that the earth is dying. It is losing its ability to support life. Insects are dying. Trees and plants are dying. Birds and animals are dying. How long before our agriculture and crop yields are seriously affected? How much time do we ourselves have left?
This truth is inescapable. It is no longer something that we can merely shrug off as inconsequential. Not only is it a truth that none of us can avoid, but it is one that every one of us must come to terms with as we make the day-to-day decisions about the future conduct of our lives.
Unfortunately, the reality is that very few people today are equipped to handle the devastating truth that the world as we know it is coming to an end. They simply cannot bring themselves to believe that the entire human species could be threatened with extinction.
Yet the evidence is there for all to see. And it is growing more and more evident with every passing year. We are reminded of the movie A Few Good Men, in which the actor Jack Nicholson uttered that memorable line, “You can’t handle the truth!”.
The ultimate question is: Can you?
Allan, Selections, February 15, 2017, 10:58 am
Peace, goodness, happiness and virtue are not objectives that can be achieved by the action of desire. While we may certainly desire happiness and peace, such blessings can never be won by motivated action. They blossom of their own accord when the conditions are appropriate.
These conditions have always been non-interference and non-resistance. As Maharaj has said, “They manifest spontaneously and effortlessly, when things are left to themselves, and are not interfered with, not shunned or wanted or conceptualised, but just experienced in full awareness.” 35
It is not by seeking the objectives of peace and harmony through outward action that these can be won, but by the transformation of the inner being, which is the source from which the entire manifested world projects.
The images and events of this world are projections upon our screen of consciousness. If we do not like the pictures that we see projected in consciousness, the answer is to change the contents of the mind that is doing the projecting.
When we look at cinematic images, we may be outraged at the violence and horror that we see portrayed upon the screen. Yet we recognise that these projections are simply part of the film itself. If we do not like these projections, the solution is to change the film, and not to attack the screen on which these images are projected.
It is the person who renounces the desire to help the world who does the most to improve it. He or she is the truly charitable person.
“Find yourself first,” says the Maharshi, “and endless blessings will follow. Nothing profits the world as much as the abandoning of profits. A man who no longer thinks in terms of loss or gain is the truly non-violent man, for he is beyond all conflict.” 36
“Be free first of suffering yourself and then only hope of helping others. You do not even need to hope – your very existence will be the greatest help a man can give his fellowmen.” 37
We imagine that results can only follow from direct action, and that cruelties, violence and war must be attacked by resolute action if peace and harmony are to be achieved. Likewise, we strive for goodness by helping others. We fail to see that we are linked individually to the entire universe.
Every action on our part has its counterpart in the universe we see around us. When we reform ourselves, the world itself becomes reformed, whether we are conscious of it or not. This is the true process of reform.
“There are people in the world”, notes Maharaj, “who do more good than all the statesmen and philanthropists put together. They radiate light and peace with no intention or knowledge. When others tell them about the miracles they worked, they also are wonderstruck. Yet taking nothing as their own, they are neither proud nor do they crave for reputation. They are just unable to desire anything for themselves, not even the joy of helping others. They know that God is good and are at peace.” 38
The presence of enlightened souls transforms the lives of all those with whom they come in contact, not because of any inherent desire to do so, but through the resplendent nature of their Being. Just as shadows are banished by the light of the sun, so do the stains of the mind vanish in the presence of this Transcendent Reality.
When Confucius expressed the wish to live among some degenerate tribes, his followers remonstrated with him. “What about their crudeness?” they exclaimed. The Chinese Sage replied: “If Great Man were living among them, how could they be crude? His very presence would alter all that.” 39
The true message of reform has been passed from generation to generation. Those who would achieve social reform must first submit to self-reform. And in every generation this advice is spurned. For self-reform is a painful process. The soul is torn upon the rack of suffering before it can win its crown of peace and experience the soaring joy of redemption.
Far better say we, and quicker too, to strive for temporal power, and then use that power to compel others to reform. Throughout long centuries of travail, men and women have selected this path of folly. The banner of ignorance flies today from all the standards of the world.
Despite the evidence of sorrow and despair which these attempts have wrought in every age, we remain locked in the conviction that we can succeed where others have failed. We tie the noose ever more tightly around our necks and cry out in anguish when it strangles us.
Will the world be saved or will it slide into oblivion? The choice does not rest with governments or Kings. It remains where it has always been, with us as individuals. We do not need to hold high office to initiate change. When Confucius was asked why he didn’t work in the government, he responded:
“It is said in The Writings of Old, ‘Filial duty! Just let there be filial duty. Then there will be kindness toward brothers, and this in turn will spread to the administration.’ This too is to be working in the government. Why must one actually hold office in order to work in the government?” 40
It is the individual actions of our daily lives that combine to make up the conditions of the universe. If we truly wish to work for benevolent change, we need to deal with those images that we alone are responsible for creating. When our hearts are changed, they will spread their healing to the farthest reaches of the cosmos, whether we intend this or not. For as Maharaj has remarked:
“When more people come to know their real nature, their influence, however subtle, will prevail, and the world’s emotional atmosphere will sweeten up. People follow their leaders and when among the leaders appear some, great in heart and mind and absolutely free from self-seeking, their impact will be enough to make the crudities of the present age impossible.” 41
We believe that we are powerless to influence the vast arena of this world. The world’s problems appear so numerous and oppressive, that we wonder what we, as mere individuals, can do to overcome them. Yet we fail to reckon with the power of a transformed heart.
The people who actively transform this world for the better do not sit in Parliaments, Congresses or on thrones. They are the unheralded individuals in every land who have devoted their lives to rediscovering the True Source of their own beings. It is in the triumph of their inner revelation that the world will be renewed again, as it has been in ages past.
These new leaders of reformation are not daunted by the problems that now confront us. They are not deterred by statistics. If the light of one small candle can hold back the night, then the radiance of a single transformed soul can serve to banish the encroaching gloom.
On the outskirts of the Mexican City of Juarez, a large site was set aside where garbage collected from the city could be dumped. It was to this mountain of refuse that groups of impoverished peasants were drawn, in the hope of finding sufficient food and materials with which they might be able to sustain themselves.
In due course a large community became established at the edges of the dump. These destitute people built shacks of cardboard and odd pieces of metal that they found at the dump. They fed themselves and their families from the scraps of rotting food that had been taken from the dump.
As a way of earning a living, the men of this community gathered at the dump in order to sift through the daily piles of incoming garbage. By retrieving odd bottles, cans and cardboard boxes from the dump, and selling them back to the local Co-op, they were able to buy a few provisions to supplement their pitiful existence.
These labourers worked from daybreak to dusk to garner their meagre spoil. Day followed day in grinding weariness, without respite from the appalling filth. There was no running water. Disease stalked the entire community. Those few who could afford to do so, lived out their days in a blur of alcohol.
Deprived of adequate nutrition, the young suffered extensive brain damage, growing up painfully to face hopeless lives. The dump site outside the city of Juarez was a spectre of Dante’s inferno, home to some of the most horrifying and intractable problems of this planet.
It was to this miserable place that Father Rick Thomas, a Jesuit priest from the neighbouring city of El Paso, Texas, came with a few of his parishioners on Christmas morning, 1972, to share a frugal meal. That meal (as detailed in an earlier chapter), became the occasion for a miraculous regeneration of food, allowing all who were present that day to eat in abundance.
Father Thomas, along with a Daughter of Charity, Sister Mary Virginia, were drawn to the plight of these dump people. Together with a few Catholic parishioners from the communities of El Paso and Juarez, they arranged to visit the dump on a regular basis, talking to the men and women, and sharing with them the gospel message of hope in the midst of hopelessness.
In order to assist these “poorest of the poor”, parishioners sold various items of their household possessions, so that they could raise money and buy a few provisions to take with them to the dump. As Father Thomas remarked, “It is no good telling them of the good news if you are the bad news!”
At first the stench of rotting food, the ever-present flies and the sordid conditions seemed overwhelming. Yet as they persisted, the parishioners found that they were able to transcend these outward conditions, until they were hardly conscious of the surrounding squalor.
Father Thomas met with the men and women of the community and taught them how to pray. Seeing the chronic condition of the ill-nourished children, he prayed with the mothers that their children might be cured of their various physical deficiencies.
Another miraculous event took place shortly afterwards, in which the children were to be seen drawing pictures in the dust. It was a clear sign to Father Thomas that they had been healed of their former brain damage.
Not long after Father Thomas and his parishioners had begun to minister to this community, the local Tax Collector from the city of Juarez, Sergio Conde, got wind of the fact that people were buying and selling provisions at the dump without paying tax. Together with two of his agents, he travelled to the dump one day to crush this incipient commerce.
His intention was to seize the goods and to arrest those who were in violation of the law. During a brief discussion with some of these afflicted people, however, Conde experienced a sudden change of heart. Not only did he overlook the question of the unpaid taxes, but he also returned the goods which his agents had confiscated.
Conde was deeply moved by what he saw that day and underwent a dramatic transformation in character. Inspired by this change of heart, he thereafter chose to spend every Saturday with the people of the dump, and soon assumed control of the operation of the community store.
Describing his amazing conversion, Conde confessed: “God moved my heart to compassion. If it had been any other way, I would not have changed. He changed all my values. He changed my thinking, my interest in money and power. And now I’ve felt a great change in me, a great joy in me, that has been with me for many years now.”
Through the operation of what was called The Lord’s Food Bank, Father Thomas was able to oversee the distribution of food twice a week to about eight hundred and fifty families. Following morning Mass he arranged for able-bodied men and women to move through the community doing whatever useful work they could.
Having performed this voluntary service they would then line up to receive their rations of food. Although there were numerous occasions on which the supplies of food brought by Father Thomas and his helpers were insufficient for the number of families that were present, the food mysteriously multiplied, as it had done on that Christmas morning, so that none were turned away empty-handed.
As Father Thomas remarked, “The Lord is the true underwriter of His Food Bank.” In addition to the Food Bank and the community store, Father Thomas arranged for general storehouses to be built, on land that was donated for this purpose by the Mexican government. These storehouses held provisions for the entire community and were operated by selected families from the dump.
A local Co-operative was also formed, so that the people could become responsible for their own needs. Members of the dump were organized into various self-help groups who worked to assist others in the community. An Employment Agency was started to help people of the dump find work in the city of Juarez, and a Credit Union was formed to safeguard their financial interests.
In due course, a five-hundred-acre ranch was donated to the Church in the state of New Mexico. Christened “The Lord’s Ranch”, this farm not only produced a variety of foodstuffs, but it also served as a recreation and training centre for the young people who operated it.
The entire production of this ranch was distributed free to the poor people of Juarez. Under the guidance of Sister Mary Virginia, dairy products were produced which provided crucial protein for the pregnant mothers of the dump.
By 1980, the dump people of the city of Juarez had become a revitalised community. Not only were they healthier as a result of their regular and improved nutrition, but they possessed a dynamic sense of control and involvement in their own destiny. They enjoyed a spirit of communal sharing which enriched them all.
Underlying these material benefits was an abiding sense of faith and spiritual strength, generating hope and confidence in place of their former hopelessness. They had now become vigorous, enthusiastic and productive, whereas their lives had formerly languished in misery.
They had seen the sick and the deformed miraculously healed, the hungry fed, and broken lives rebuilt by faith. The rejuvenation of the dump people of Juarez was an example of true reformation of body, mind and soul.
This amazing transformation, from conditions that were as daunting as any which exist on earth today, was not achieved by means of any United Nations project or any government plan. No grants-in-aid were set aside, no battery of experts assigned to take care of their abundant needs.
Had the social plight of the dump people of Juarez been tackled in the usual manner of well-meaning reformers, representations would no doubt have been made to the Mexican authorities, pointing out the abhorrent and inhuman conditions that existed within their boundaries.
Petitions would have been drafted, speeches made, marches held, under the full glare of television. Various public demonstrations would have been held in many parts of the world. Boycotts would have been organised against Mexican products, as a means of demonstrating affirmative action and solidarity with the oppressed people of Juarez.
Documentaries would have been made to satisfy the public thirst for horror. Funds would have been solicited, committees struck, bureaucrats involved. Had such a path been followed, there is little doubt that the people of the Juarez dump would still be languishing in extreme poverty today, with the majority of funds collected siphoned off though corruption and intrigue.
The tragic plight of these peasants would even have increased, as they became targets of publicity and made to see their utter dependence on the handouts of others. The well-meaning actions of thousands would have consigned these people to an invidious fate.
In place of this concatenation of disasters, there were no petitions, speeches, marches, boycotts or vindictive campaigns on behalf of the people of the dump. Instead, two inconspicuous people, Father Rick Thomas and Sister Mary Virginia, chose to join these people in their misery, and convey to them a message of hope and love with which they could control and transform their own lives.
They were two dedicated people. Yet unlike the thousands of similar people who labour ineffectively in parishes around the world, they were not dedicated to helping the people of Juarez. They were dedicated instead to the teachings of the Christ. They did not enter Juarez in a fit of exuberant enthusiasm, anxious to put misery to the sword.
Unlike hordes of well-intentioned philanthropists who parade under the guise of helpers, Father Thomas and Sister Mary Virginia did not set out to try and help the people of Juarez. Their motive was simply to utilise an opportunity to grow in love, leaving the results to the natural outcome of that love.
The force of this love, that same force which animated Mahatma Gandhi, then proceeded to transform the lives of those with whom it came in contact, by the effulgent power of its radiance. Father Thomas and Sister Mary Virginia did not try to change the dump-people. They did not attempt to resist the evil they saw around them.
They merely responded to each challenge by drawing upon that reservoir of love within their own beings. In their humble dedication to the words of Jesus, and through their total dedication to His will, they were able to infuse the lives of those around them with energy, joy and peace.
Father Rick Thomas and Sister Mary Virginia are the true peacemakers of this world. If the Nobel Prize for peace is ever again to be awarded to the true bearers of the olive, then it would gain more honour in their names than a score of statesmen and philanthropists.
They are among the few on earth who are tackling the problems of exploitation, disease and want at their root. They are heralds of lasting regeneration, and the true reformers of mankind.
Father Thomas and Sister Mary Virginia achieved their success through the prism of Christianity. Many would claim in this the natural superiority of Christianity and the exclusivity of its hold on Truth. Sadly, in every triumph of faith there always seem to be those who wish to turn this into an opportunity to divide humanity.
The true source of love that nourishes Christianity flows equally through all the religions of this world. Yet it is not confined to them. The fruits of regeneration are available freely to any man or woman who approaches the centre of their being by whatever method they care to adopt.
Throughout history the Sages have borne testimony to the common experience of Transcendental Awareness that lies at the heart of life. While this source is inexpressible in its nature, it can nevertheless be approached by a thousand different paths. Just as the spokes of a wheel all focus on the centre, and meet in the emptiness of a common hub, so all the religious paths which mankind have adopted, lead inevitably to a single source.
That source is the Supreme Reality that underlies and animates all forms. As Lord Krishna taught his disciple Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: “However men approach me, in that same way do I show them my favour; my path men follow in all ways, 0 son of Pritha.” (Chapter 4:11) 42
This same truth is conveyed by Nisargadatta Maharaj. “Christianity is one way of putting words together and Hinduism is another. The real is, behind and beyond words, incommunicable, directly experienced, explosive in its effect on the mind.” 43
The source of the power that is capable of re-forming the world lies ever present in each one of us. It is freely available to all who seek it. Any person who has discovered the way to tap its bountiful spring will acquire the power, as Paramahansa Yogananda has pointed out, “to reform thousands.”
The price of this attainment is personal self-sacrifice. It is a price that the comfortable philanthropists and politicians of this world do not care to pay. Yet those who choose to submit find it a small burden for the extravagant blessings it confers. They draw on the power of its Resplendent Silence, which is able to transform all dreams.
Being without motive and acting without personal desire or the hope for any reward, they simply work for the welfare of all life. In so doing, they prove that they are the true reformers of this world.
References:
35 “I Am That”, Conversations with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, translated by Maurice Frydman, Book I, Chetana, Bombay, 1973, p. 16.
36 Ibid, Book I, pp. 167-168.
37 Ibid, Book II, p. 22.
38 Ibid, Book II, p. 142.
39 “The Sayings of Confucius”, op.cit., p. 62.
40 Ibid, p. 28.
41 “I Am That”, Book II, op.cit., p. 21.
42 “The Bhagavad Gita”, translated by W. D. P. Hill, Oxford University Press, London, 1928, p. 104.
43 “I Am That”, Book II, op.cit., p. 285.
Allan, The Noose Around Our Necks, February 13, 2017, 1:07 pm
The reason why resistance to evil fails to overcome evil, but merely entrenches it, is because it seeks to impose change from without. People cannot be compelled to change their nature. They can, however, be impelled to do so, when they have come to see the error of their ways.
The idea that the world would somehow be a safer place without nuclear weapons remains a fallacy as long as people harbour destructive thoughts within their minds. To attack individuals, nations, and governments for the weapons they possess, is to set in train a process which inevitably leads to the utilisation of those weapons.
Peace can never be won by force. Peace is not simply the absence of war, or a state of suspended hostilities. It is a condition of active harmony resident in the human heart. The way to achieve outer peace is to cultivate inner harmony, by removing those thoughts and desires that are the true source of discord.
Those who truly wish to work for peace serve it best by attending to the pacification of their unruly hearts and minds.
Yet modern humanity has little appetite for these lofty admonitions. When the full horror and extent of evil, depravity and violence assault us daily we feel it is futile to talk of individual minds. For what is one individual able to accomplish in the face of so much evil?
The knowledge that outer salvation is the result of inner transformation may be welcome news, but we have no patience with such strategy. We invariably look for massive solutions to counter massive problems. Instinctively, we look to governments and powerful leaders to impose solutions.
We fail to recognise that solutions imposed can never resolve human problems. The overall global condition is the outward manifestation of the inner state of all of its individuals. If there is ever to be a return to peaceful co-existence, it can only be the result of inner harmony within the hearts of every individual. There is no other way.
As Maharaj advises, “First of all you must attend to the way you feel, think and live. Unless there is order in yourself there can be no order in the world.” 15
He goes on to add, “Everybody makes the same mistake, refusing the means, but wanting the ends. You want peace and harmony in the world but refuse to have them in yourself.” 16
The Sages speak unanimously to this need. We simply cannot reform our world until we are prepared to reform ourselves. For until we do so we merely broadcast our iniquities and launch them upon the universe. We are like the violinist who complains of a discordant orchestra, but who refuses to tune his own violin which is contributing to the noise.
Yet the power of a transformed mind is enormous. It inevitably brings social reform in its train. As Ramana Maharshi has remarked, “Self-reform automatically brings about social reform. Confine yourself to self-reform. Social reform will take care of itself.” 17
According to Paramahansa Yogananda, “Utopia must spring in the private bosom before it can flower in civic virtue, inner reforms leading naturally to outer ones. A man who has reformed himself will reform thousands.” 18
Until a person has achieved this inner reformation, however, any outward effort must inevitably add to the world’s burden of sorrow.
Our difficulty lies in the fact that we have become conditioned into thinking that we live in an objective world as revealed by our senses, and that the outward circumstances of the universe bear no relation to such ephemeral things as thoughts and emotions.
Because we fail to find a link between the one and the other, we believe that the execution of outward change must necessarily rest upon the foundation of temporal power.
Almost without exception, those people who are striving to improve the world today do so from a platform of political or military power. Inevitably, great competition exists to obtain power, and having acquired it, to hold on to it. It remains our fervent belief that it is only through the exercise of power that we will be able to influence circumstances for the better.
Those who exercise power consistently fail in their endeavours. Having failed to reform themselves first, they are doomed in their efforts to reform the world, however noble their aspirations. Peace, happiness and harmony can never be the result of a political system, however exalted its principles, if it is practised by those who would impose their ideas on others or use the power of their office to do so.
We continue to be lured by the glamour of reform. We remain convinced that everything can be changed for the better in life, if those who are responsible for the problems of the world can only be persuaded to change their behaviour in ways which conform to our own ideas. Unfortunately, our efforts merely conspire to make things worse.
We might use as an example the question of abortion. There are many millions of people in the world today who are convinced that the practice of abortion is wrong, and that the presence of this practice in society is an evil that contributes to the sorry condition of our planet.
Many base their views on the conviction that abortion is a crime of violence against the unborn child, and that as such it is a direct contravention of the divine commandment not to kill. Buttressed by their beliefs, these advocates of the right to life feel compelled to do whatever they can to rid the world of this sin.
Unfortunately, these self-appointed apostles of righteousness find themselves confronted by an equally militant group of people who hold an opposing point of view. To these people, the denial of their basic right to govern their lives according to the dictates of their conscience, is regarded as a flagrant attack on their inherent freedom.
This is something that they insist needs to be resisted with the utmost vehemence if the very tenets of democracy are to be sustained. Here we see the classic confrontation that is such a pervading feature of the modern world.
The sad fact is that neither party serves the cause of justice, peace or truth. Both groups merely contribute to a heightened state of conflict by actively resisting the actions of the other. By seeking to compel their adversaries to submit, they march resolutely along the road of violence that leads only to the valley of desolation.
The very nature of their conflict is bound to spawn violence and subject society to greater tribulation. The unfortunate fact is that there can be no moral virtue in either point of view. It matters not whether we claim to speak from the Throne of God. The moment we seek to impose our views on others, we ourselves become the perpetrators of evil.
The truth is that the sins that we see manifest in the behaviour of others, are the sins that we ourselves have projected upon them. It is our own racism, prejudice and ignorance that we see reflected in the behaviour of others.
The pro-life crusaders march with slogans written in human blood. Their reforming zeal is a direct reflection of those stains that exist in their own minds. It is not the behaviour of others that is a threat to society or to peace, but the ugliness and ignorance of our own minds.
“You cannot change the image,” says Maharaj, “without changing the face. First realize that your world is but a reflection of yourself and stop finding fault with the reflection. Attend to yourself, set yourself right – mentally and emotionally. The physical will follow automatically. You talk so much of reforms: economic, social, political. Leave alone the reforms and mind the reformer. What kind of world can a man create who is stupid, greedy, heartless?” 19
The world is full of “righteous” people who claim to see clearly the faults of others, and who devote their earnest efforts towards pressurizing them to change. For these people, borne aloft on a fever of enthusiasm, any tactics or strategies are considered to be justified so long as their primary motives are held to be pure.
When the very methods adopted serve to promote conflict, there is no motive that can be called pure. Their efforts must inevitably reap a harvest of violence, suffering and sorrow. This is particularly evident today among those who claim to fight discrimination, whether it be by race or creed or sex.
In their desire both to signify their revulsion for this evil, and to punish those who practise discrimination, they join marches, sign petitions, organise boycotts and contribute money and other resources, in order to bring this discrimination to an end. They sincerely believe their motives to be laudable and their efforts to be justified by their call of conscience.
They remain mired in ignorance and their efforts do nothing for the cause of human liberation. By bringing more pressure to bear on those who practise discrimination, they themselves merely exercise another form of discrimination. They are no better than those they attack.
The reason why these people become so aggressive when confronted by oppression, and why they are driven to attack it so vehemently, is because the seeds of discrimination reside within their own consciousnesses. Rather than acknowledge and overcome this discrimination at its source, within themselves, they choose instead to rail against the evils that they see reflected in the actions of others.
They are the true hypocrites rejected by the Christ. Jesus warned his followers:
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: And with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (Matthew 7:1-3)
The danger of superimposing subjective shortcomings on others was also echoed by the Buddha.
“If a man sees the sins of others and forever thinks of their faults, his own sins increase for ever and far off is he from the end of his faults.” 20
The world has reached a sorry state when the lieutenants of the Church stand in the vanguard of those who judge others, and who call for the retribution of society on those they condemn. While they claim to fight under the banner of Christ, they clearly feel little need to be bound by his words.
When Jesus walked the dusty plains of Galilee and Judea, the Jews were dominated by a foreign state that wielded absolute power and was absolutely ruthless in its suppression of all those who challenged it. The Jews had no “human rights” that were recognised by the Romans. They had no democratic vote through which to express their feelings.
Those who had the courage to defy the rule of imperial Rome were subjected to barbaric forms of torture and execution. Yet despite these harrowing social circumstances, Jesus did not lead marches, promote insurrection or defy temporal authority. Instead, he chose to attack the source of evil in the heart of man, rather than its outer manifestation of visible oppression.
In fact, on the one occasion recorded in the gospels when Jesus was confronted with the problem of state oppression, he used the opportunity to stress the need for personal reform, rather than indulge in the folly of social resistance.
“There were present at that season some that told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And Jesus answering said unto them, ‘Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above all Galileans, because they suffered these things? I tell you, nay; but unless ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:2-3)
A large section of the Christian Church today honours Jesus in the breach, preferring instead to attack the outward appearances of evil. Thus, we see the growth of militant Christianity, supporting political movements that claim to be inspired by true Christian sentiments.
These advocates of “freedom” and “justice” are themselves the instigators of oppression. They are the false prophets whom Jesus warned about, “who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.” (Matthew 7:15)
The pulpits of the church resonate with calls for social action, insisting that the practice of Christianity has no virtue unless it champions the rights of all those who are afflicted, and strives for the creation of a just society on earth.
But when Jesus was brought before Pilate to account for his teachings, he replied, “My Kingdom is not of this world. If My Kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews.” (John 18:36)
As the American naturalist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote:
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil, to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.” 21
The world stands tortured today by those who wish it well and do it ill. Thoreau saw very clearly the evil that lurks behind the mask of those who are inspired by the urge to do good to others.
“There is no odor”, he wrote in his epic essay Walden, “so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life”. 22
Nisargadatta Maharaj agrees. “When you deceive yourself that you work for the good of all, it makes matters worse, for you should not be guided by your own ideas of what is good for others. A man who knows what is good for others is dangerous.” 23
The problem of “doing good” is that it presupposes that one knows what is good for others. All too often this simply means compelling people to do what we think is best. But the problems we seek to alleviate are the evils of our own minds that are superimposed upon society.
Whatever action we take merely contributes to the problem. It does nothing to alter the underlying stain. “When you go to them with your desires and fears,” Maharaj points out, “you merely add to their sorrows. Be free first of suffering yourself and then only hope of helping others.” 24
Not only have we fallen into the trap of believing that peace can be imposed upon the world, rather than springing forth naturally from the hearts of peaceful people, but we have become obsessed today with the idea of combating evil. We see evidence of evil on every side and we imagine that to overcome it we must automatically resist.
The fact that our well-meant efforts to assuage evil have led to an unparalleled explosion of evil across the face of this planet does not deter us. We believe that it is simply necessary to redouble our efforts. Guided by the gospel of Edmund Burke, we remain utterly convinced that if good men do nothing, evil will be certain to triumph. We feel compelled to act.
But the irony is that Burke’s axiom is entirely misrepresented. The “good men” who go to war in defence of peace are simply “evil men” masquerading in sheep’s clothing. The cause of peace and justice is not advanced by the actions of well-intentioned men and women who are ignorant of their own inner violence.
In truth, if these “good” men and women could only be persuaded to do nothing, it would not be evil that would triumph, but peace, harmony, goodness and virtue. The world cries out today for people to stop “doing good”.
The paradoxical truth that has been taught through the centuries by enlightened seers is that peace and justice are the fruits of “inaction”, not of action. The way to overcome evil is not by resisting it, but by not resisting it. We may liken evil to the roiling waters of a stormy lake.
When the waters of the lake are rough with turbulence, our efforts to suppress evil are like the legendary attempts of King Canute, who tried to beat the waves into submission. Every act of striking the water merely adds to its turbulence. We can never restore calm by beating the waves. However, if we do nothing, the waves will subside of their own accord.
As Lao Tse states in the Tao Te Ching, “Who is there who can make the muddy water clear? But if allowed to remain still, it will gradually become clear of itself.” 25
“It is the way of Heaven not to strive, and yet it knows how to overcome,” 26
“Perfect virtue is inactive, having no need to act.” 27
In counselling others, he entreated: “Practise inaction, occupy yourself with doing nothing. Practise inaction, and there is nothing that cannot be done. Leave all things to take their natural course, and do not interfere.” 28
Lao Tse‘s compatriot Confucius also spoke of the virtues of inaction. “The wise take delight in water; Manhood-at-its-best delights in mountains. The wise are active; Manhood-at-its-best is quiet.” 29
The “wise” man of today assesses a problem by means of intellect, and initiates actions that are designed to counteract the problem. The underlying difficulty, however, is that it is the mind of the “wise” man that is itself the problem, and therefore any course of action simply contaminates that situation.
The Sage, by contrast, does not initiate action as a result of deliberate thought. The Sage, being at one with all of creation, serves the deepest needs of creation by the mere resonance of Being, as we see from the following conversation.
Question: “How does the gnani (enlightened being) proceed when he needs something to be done? Does he make plans, decide about details and execute them?
Maharaj: “A gnani understands a situation fully and knows at once what needs to be done. That is all. The rest happens by itself, and to a large extent unconsciously. The gnani’s identity with all that is so complete, that as he responds to the universe, so does the universe respond to him. He is supremely confident that once a situation has been cognized, events will move in adequate response.
The ordinary man is personally concerned. He counts his risks and chances, while the gnani remains aloof, sure that all will happen as it must; and it does not matter much what happens, for ultimately the return to balance and harmony is inevitable. The heart of things is at peace.” 30
Being rooted in Transcendent Peace the Sage’s actions automatically serve to restore this peace, even though there is no conscious effort to do so. The “inaction” spoken of by the Sage must not be thought of as idleness, nor is it the “absence of action”.
“Inaction”, as it is referred to in the Hindu classics, is action without motive. The Sage acts without the express intention of influencing affairs for the better. As we read in the Ashtavakra Gita:
“The mind of the freed Sage is unmarred by trouble or pleasure; it is inactive, static and desireless and also free from doubts. The mind of the Sage is free from effort whether meditating or acting. His actions and meditations are not prompted by personal motives.” 31
As Krishnamurti was fond of saying, the mind of a liberated Sage is characterised by “effortless and choiceless awareness.”
The Sage does not seek to impose his will. In a world dominated by purpose and motivated by action, it may seem impossible to imagine action without a motive. Motiveless action, or inaction, is however the inevitable fruit of self-sacrifice. It was that sacrifice which allowed the Christ to say, “not my will be done, but thine be done.” (Luke 22: 42)
A person who has sacrificed his or her personal self becomes transformed within. It is a transformation that is charged with power. This inner transformation leads mysteriously, but naturally, to outer transformation, without the least effort or motivation to do so.
Whatever effort is consciously expended to induce peace or happiness in the world is bound to fail. Peace is not the reward of effort. It is the perfume that radiates from the mere presence of the flower of inaction. It is through “not acting” that this inner transformation occurs, and which leads inevitably to outer reform. As Maharaj advises:
“Let go your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable.” 32
Ramana Maharshi warned that it was the discrimination between right and wrong that was the true origin of sin. “One’s own sin is reflected outside and the individual in ignorance superimposes it upon another. The best course for one is to reach the state in which such discrimination does not arise. Moreover, however much you may advise them, your hearers may not rectify themselves. Be in the right yourself and remain silent. Your silence will have more effect than your words or deeds.” 33
Again, when asked the best way in which to work for world peace, the Maharshi replied:
“What is the world? What is peace and who is the worker? Peace is the absence of disturbance. The disturbance is due to the arising of thoughts in the individual, who is only the ego arising up from Pure Consciousness. To bring about peace means to be free from thoughts and to abide as Pure Consciousness. If one remains at peace oneself, there is peace all about.” 34
Continued in Part Three
References:
15 “I Am That”, Conversations with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, translated by Maurice Frydman, Book I, Chetana, Bombay, 1973, p. 267.
16 Ibid, Book I, p. 282.
17 “Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi”, Recorded by Swami Saraswathi, Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai, 1968, p. 241.
18 Paramahansa Yogananda, “Autobiography of a Yogi”, Self Realization Fellowship, Los Angeles, 1977, pp. 560-561.
19 “I Am That”, Book I, op.cit., p. 148.
20 “The Dhammapada”, op.cit., pp. 71-72.
21 Henry Thoreau, “Essays, Journals and Poems”, edited by Dean Flower, Fawcett, Greenwich, 1975, p. 233.
22 Ibid, p. 231.
23 “I Am That”, Book I, op.cit., p. 104.
24 Ibid, Book II, p. 22.
25“The Sayings of Lao Tzu”, op.cit., p. 33.
26 Ibid, pp. 24-25.
27 Ibid, p. 27.
28 Ibid, p. 35.
29 “The Sayings of Confucius”, translated by James Ware, Mentor, New York, 1955, pp. 47-48.
30 “I Am That”, Book II, op.cit., pp. 301-302.
31 “Ashtavakra Gita”, translated by H.P. Shastri, Shanti Sadan, London, 1961, p. 44.
32 “I Am That”, Book I, op.cit., pp. 3-4.
33“Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi”, op.cit., p. 429.
34 Ibid, p. 428.
Allan, The Noose Around Our Necks, February 11, 2017, 1:23 pm
We are all victims of mistaken identity.
We know that we exist. And we all share a sense of identity which manifests inside of us as a feeling of “I am”. We believe that this “I am” sensation originates within our physical bodies, and that our minds are the products of our brains, and that as a result of this we are limited by both our bodies and our minds.
The teachings of the Sages throughout history tell us that we could not be more wrong. They claim that each one of us is an unlimited expression of a Source that has the power to influence the entire universe, if only we could rid ourselves of the false belief that we are trapped inside our physical bodies.
What these Sages tell us is that everything we see around us is nothing but a stream of images that are projected from within upon our screen of consciousness. And our sense of individuality is derived from the underlying nature of the “I am”, which has its source in the sublime Reality of Transcendental Awareness.
As we become conscious of the vast universe which surrounds us, and which our minds have projected, we are naturally overwhelmed by its majesty and size. Believing ourselves to be captured within the confines of our bodies, we imagine ourselves to be inconsequential specks, lost in an ocean of uncaring space.
We believe that we are victims of alien forces operating in a hostile world which confronts us with dangers on every side. We do not see that we have created this world, and that the dangers which apparently lie in wait for us are nothing more than the phantoms of our own fearful thoughts. The Sage has learned to laugh at the universe and to resist its galaxy of fears.
We are afraid of the universe because we do not understand its nature. We do not grasp how it responds to those thoughts, desires and fears from which it has been built. At the dawn of our experience, we are simply witnessing a parade of images. In time, we learn to objectify these images, believing them to be separate forms physically located in space, and subject to a process called time.
As we grow, we learn to classify these forms. At first, we divide them into those that are living and those that are inert. Living forms are regarded as other creatures while the inert forms become part of our environment. We learn to classify other creatures according to their physical attributes and habits.
This system of classification is most complex in our dealings with those creatures we call human, like ourselves. We learn to regiment these people according to various characteristics and patterns of behaviour, thus classifying people according to such observable differences as sex, colour of skin and other physical features.
We also categorise them according to their habits, dividing them into groups defined by their language, dress, religion, education, abilities, beliefs and inclinations. As we grow in experience, so we learn to separate our experiences into two broad categories.
One of these categories covers those experiences which bring us pleasure, while the other embraces those experiences which bring us pain.
To a very large degree, we strive to order our lives in a way which provides the greatest number of pleasurable experiences, and which limits, as far as possible, those incidents which are painful. The general pattern of this process is determined by our culture, those conditional responses upon which we have learned to organise our lives.
In arranging our lives in ways which are most satisfying, we are inevitably confronted by the problem of good and evil. Our classification of experience into these two opposing groups is determined by our sensory perceptions as well as by the dictates of the society in which we live.
For the most part, those things which bring us pleasure are regarded as good, while those things that bring us pain are thought to be bad. The problem that faces each one of us in in dealing with these twin polarities of good and evil, is that they generally manifest themselves through the direct actions of other people.
Those incidents in life which bring us pain, but which are not ascribed to human agency, such as natural disasters, are regarded as accidents of fortune. They are not considered to be evil in themselves. We are encouraged to deal with these reverses with stoic fortitude.
It is only when pleasure and pain involve other people that the question of good or evil arises. The determination of good or evil is always a subjective judgement, based on direct experience, and moulded by the thinking of society. Different societies have different codes of good and evil.
The fundamental challenge which we face in life is dealing with people who do things which cause us pain.
It is a natural response in life to link other people with the subjective sensations which they invoke in us. If another person acts in a way which causes us pain, the pain that we feel becomes identified with that person. If that action has been defined by our culture as evil, then by extension, we associate this evil with the person involved. Being identified as the agent of this evil, that person becomes, by extension, an “evil” person.
Likewise, if a person does something which causes us pleasure in a culturally acceptable fashion, then that person is regarded as “good”. We transfer our personal feelings onto those people whom we consider to be responsible for them. Depending on the subjective sensations which we feel, we brand others as good or evil.
These judgements are seldom permanent, however, for someone who is classified as good may later come to be regarded as evil, and vice versa. In the process of living our daily lives, we are all faced with the problem of dealing with people who do things which we call evil.
Our natural response against those who do us harm is to retaliate. We wish to repay them for the harm which they have done to us. We therefore transfer our subjective feelings of pain to those persons who are the instigators of these feelings. In like fashion we also come to bear the brunt of that pain which we have caused in others.
This cycle of violence enacted upon the violent is one of humanity’s most ancient and intractable problems. It stems from the enduring desire by people to reward pain with pain.
As we live our lives within our world community, we remorselessly pursue a policy of vengeance, seeking out the perpetrators of evil, and subjecting them to various forms of punishment. But repaying violence with violence can never solve the problem of violence. The cycle of violence simply escalates, involving ever greater degrees of violence, which ultimately embroil more and more people.
This continuing desire to meet pain with pain, violence with violence, and death with death, has created a spiral of conflict which has led, in the course of the last century, to two global wars, and now threatens to undermine the continued existence of all life on this planet. It is a circle which Scottish psychiatrist Ronald Laing likens to a noose around our necks.
“Millions of people have died in this (20th) century and millions more are going to, including, we have reason to expect, many of us and our children, because we cannot break this knot. It seems a comparatively simple knot, but it is tied very, very tight – round the throat, as it were, of the whole human species.” 3
What makes this spiral so difficult to break, and why this knot is tied so tightly around the neck of humanity, is that we all instinctively feel that rewarding pain with pain is the proper response to the harm that is done to us. Yet this emotional reaction defies all reasoned thinking.
The founders of religions and enlightened Sages have tirelessly pointed out the folly of our ways. This continuing cycle of violence meted out in response to violence can never bring violence to an end. In his sermon on the mount, the Prince of Peace told the gathered throng:
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” (Matthew 5:43-44) 4
Five hundred years earlier, the compassionate Buddha had taught: “For hate is not conquered by hate; hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal.” 5 In like fashion, the Chinese Sage Lao Tse urged: “To the good I would be good; to the not-good I would also be good, in order to make them good. Requite injury with kindness.” 6
Yet we invariably allow our emotions to dominate this reasoned response. Every day brings home to us the iniquity of evil, the harm which violence brings in its train, and the sorrow and suffering which it entails. We see everywhere the consequences of evil and we resolve firmly to fight against them.
On every side today we are counselled “to take up arms against a sea of troubles”, so that, by opposing, we may effectively end them. This need to oppose evil is clearly expressed in the oft-quoted words of Edmund Burke: “All that is needed for evil to triumph in this world is for good men to do nothing.” And what should good men do when confronted by evil? Why, resist it, naturally.
Yet it is precisely by resisting evil that evil is strengthened and perpetuated. Speaking of evil, Jesus told the assembled multitude, “But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Matthew 5:39) 4
These words of Jesus are seldom taken seriously today. They are not considered to be vital indicators of practical value in dealing with the problem of evil. Nisargadatta Maharaj has reiterated this advice. “It is exactly as Christ said, ‘Resist not evil.’ By resisting evil you merely strengthen it.” 7
The folly of confronting evil with stern opposition is also stressed by Jiddu Krishnamurti: “Resistance to evil strengthens evil. The moment I resist, evil must be on one side and the good on the other and there is a relationship between the two. When there is no resistance, there is no relationship between the two.” 8
The reason why this Gordian knot of doom is tied so tightly around the neck of humanity, and the reason why it is so difficult to loosen, is because of our prevailing obsession with resisting evil. We are all intent on seeking out evil wherever it lurks, and in whatever form it exists, in the hope of banishing it by active intervention.
The problem which the Sages have continually pointed out, is that it is our very action to overcome evil that perpetuates evil. It is the act of resisting evil which creates the adversarial relationship that intensifies the original force of evil. When evil is met with resistance in the form of violence and revenge, the original force of evil is simply strengthened.
The evidence of this spiral of violence confronts us today on every side. No matter how emotionally satisfying and self-justifying it may seem to intervene actively against evil, it can do nothing but add to evil. It does so because we have chosen, in our enthusiasm yet ignorance, to fight fire with fire.
Hatred begets more hatred and vengeful violence generates yet more violence. This is so self-evident that it hardly seems necessary to point it out.
But the noose that is remorselessly strangling humanity is not about to be loosed by simple logic. There are intense feelings involved. When we suffer deeply, it seems instinctive to unleash our feelings of anguish and sorrow back at their originating source. Even though we may acknowledge intellectually the folly of our ways, we do not know how better to respond.
It was Mohandas Gandhi, later to be called the Mahatma or Great Soul, who demonstrated in his life the correct response to evil. Gandhi did not simply accept evil and surrender to its inevitability. Whenever he met oppression and cruelty, he actively resisted it.
Yet his resistance was unlike any other form of resistance which had been followed up to that time. It carried within it the healing balm of love, which acted to remove the causes of evil, rather than simply to proliferate the effects of its expression.
Gandhi called his scheme of active resistance to British rule in India Satyagraha. It was a term selected to denote positive action, but which became weakly translated in the West as “passive resistance”. Gandhi never failed to express his repugnance at this translation, for there was nothing passive about the action that he proposed.
The term Satyagraha was derived from the Sanskrit words Satya meaning “Truth” and Agraha meaning “to hold firm”. As Gandhi himself described it: “Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (Agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian Movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or Non-Violence.” 9
The force which Gandhi proposed to unleash in his battle for the independence of India was not a form of aggressive violence against the people to whom it was directed. Those who have misunderstood his teachings have portrayed them as a form of obstructionist non-cooperation, designed to impede the ability of the British to govern effectively.
It was the very opposite of this. Gandhi’s “Truth Force” required extraordinary discipline and dispassion. His followers were required to divorce their actions from any heightened emotional condition. Satyagraha demanded absolute renunciation of physical force. It required enormous self-sacrifice, and the ability to bear suffering bravely.
His followers were obliged to risk the horrors of military confrontation, but without resorting to violence themselves, or even the desire to hurt those who were responsible. What Gandhi proposed to do, and was ultimately successful in achieving, was to demonstrate the iniquities of oppression, by voluntarily and willingly submitting himself, and his followers, to the suffering which this oppression caused.
Wherever violence was entrenched, he willingly offered himself as a victim of that violence. He did this, not in a spirit of retaliation or vindictiveness, but in a spirit of love. As he explained, “I have found that mere appeal to reason does not answer where prejudices are age long and based on supposed religious authority. Reason has to be strengthened by suffering and suffering opens the eyes of understanding.” 10
Satyagraha was thus the complete opposite of compulsion. Its purpose was not merely to change the actions of those to whom it was directed, but to transform their very lives. Its aim was, as Gandhi pointed out, “Conversion – not coercion.” 11
Gandhi’s inspired programme of action was not designed to force the British to submit, or to cause them any harm, but to reveal to them in human terms the consequences of their actions, in a way which would transform their hearts.
The challenge of how to impel people to change from within, rather than to compel them to change from without, lies at the root of the effective response to evil. For Gandhi, this meant divorcing the object of his action, the evil that he attacked, from those people who were the instruments of its manifestation.
His campaign was to attack British rule, not British people. Gandhi recognised in each one of his opponents a divine spark which could be encouraged to flame forth in inspired and benevolent action. It is this separation between the operator and the action that liberates evil from its perpetuating cycle of violence and destruction.
Attack the deed but love the person responsible. As Laing points out, “Love and violence, properly speaking, are polar opposites. Love lets the other be, but with affection and concern. Violence attempts to constrain the other’s freedom, to force him to act in the way we desire, but with ultimate lack of concern, with indifference to the other’s own existence of destiny.” 12
Whenever we attempt to coerce others into complying with our desires, for whatever reason, violence begins. This coercion may be as subtle as wanting family and friends to do as we wish. All coercion generates resistance, and it is this resistance which ultimately manifests in the form of outward violence.
It matters not what our motives are, whether noble or altruistic. The moment we choose to impose our will on others, we have adopted the path of violence. This violence escalates, infecting and affecting all those with whom we come in contact.
In our desire to gain our own ends we are the instigators of violence, no matter how much we may justify our actions. Violence always begins at the level of the individual. Individuals coerce other individuals, leading societies to seek to compel other societies, until a state of outward hostility arises. The source of this aggression rests ultimately with every individual – you and me.
We impose this violence upon our society by the exercise of our personal and selfish wills. In the words of Maharaj, “Selfishness is always destructive. Desire and fear, both are self-centred states. Between desire and fear anger arises, with anger hatred, with hatred passion for destruction. War is hatred in action, organised and equipped with all the instruments of death.” 13
We have been lulled into believing that wars between nations are the responsibility of the governments of those nations, and that warfare is simply the result of hostile actions between governments. Warfare is never just the coincidental result of decisions taken by people in high office. It is always the culmination of a long history of violence perpetrated within society and against other societies.
The root of all violence in society rests with those individuals who comprise that society. A nation of individuals committed to peaceful thoughts will never be defeated by war. This will not be the fortuitous result of divine intervention that will safeguard them from hostilities. Peace will be the inevitable outcome of their thoughts.
In the decade of the “flower children” of the nineteen-sixties, it was common to ask how best to avoid war and contain violence. The question was whether this could be done better by a generation that loved peace, or one that hated war? To many this seemed a tautological question – a case of splitting philosophical hairs.
Yet from the point of view of enlightened philosophy, the two cases are diametrically opposed to one another. A generation that loves peace will be comprised of individuals who focus their thoughts on peace and harmony. A generation that hates war will consist of individuals filled with thoughts of hatred.
These hostile thoughts would ultimately rebound against their thinkers to produce that very state of war which they least desired, but which they had actively courted. Thoughts inexorably reflect themselves in outward circumstances, not only for individuals, but also for nations. As Maharaj once replied to a visitor who pointed out the horrors of war:
“As long as people are bent on dividing and separating, as long as they are selfish and aggressive, such things will happen. If you want peace and harmony in the world, you must have peace and harmony in your hearts and minds. Such things cannot be imposed; it must come from within. Those who abhor war must get war out of their system. Without peaceful people how can you have peace in the world?” 14
Continued in Part Two
References:
3 Ronald Laing, “The Politics of the Family”, CBC Enterprises, Toronto, 1969, p. 49.
4 King James version of the Bible.
5 “The Dhammapada”, translated by Juan Mascaro, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1973, p. 35.
6 “The Sayings of Lao Tzu”, translated by Lionel Giles, John Murray, London, 1905, p. 56.
7 “I Am That”, Conversations with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, translated by Maurice Frydman, Book II, Chetana, Bombay, 1973, p. 100.
8 Jiddu Krishnamurti, “Tradition and Revolution“, Orient Longman, Bombay, 1974, pp. 16-17.
9 Glyn Richards, “The Philosophy of Gandhi”, Curzon, London, 1982, p. 48.
10 Ibid, p. 51.
11 Ibid, p. 50.
12 Ronald Laing, “The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise”, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1967, p. 50.
13 “I Am That”, Book II, op. cit., p. 21.
14 Ibid, Book II, p. 257.
Allan, The Noose Around Our Necks, February 10, 2017, 10:51 am
This is Mark Stevens, welcome back to the Podcast. I am talking today with Allan Colston. He is the author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac“.
Mark: So to continue our discussion Allan, what sort of changes do you think Trump will make when he becomes President?
Well Mark, we certainly won’t have to wait long to find out. All indications are that as soon as the inauguration ceremony is over Trump will dash back to the Oval Office where a series of bills will be waiting for him to sign. First among them will be the repeal of all of Obama’s previous executive orders.
In fact the guiding principle throughout his time in office will be to obliterate Obama’s legacy. So whatever Obama was in favour of, Trump will be against – everything from the repeal of Obamacare, the revival of the coal industry, drilling for oil in the Arctic and withdrawing from the Paris Accord on climate change.
One of the first obvious signs of change under the new administration will be his dealings with the Press.
It was evident from his campaign that Trump has no interest in developing a relationship with the Press, and certainly not a Press that is likely to challenge his opinions or question the validity of his actions. He is not about to subject himself to penetrating interrogations.
Also, for the past fifty years or more, the President has always been accompanied by a covey of press men and women who have witnessed everything that has happened around him, and then used their positions of proximity as platforms from which to broadcast their opinions to the world.
Expect all that to change under President Trump. For starters, there will be no more news conferences by Trump in the West Wing of the White House, nor will a phalanx of press personnel accompany him on his journeys aboard Air Force One, either on his local or his foreign trips.
When Donald Trump wishes to communicate with the American people, he will use his favoured form of communication which is Twitter, as well as staged announcements uploaded to YouTube. The only TV interviews he is likely to grant will be with the sycophantic cable network Fox News.
And whenever he feels the need for a captive audience to boost his morale and convey his self-congratulatory messages, he will arrange public rallies in staunchly Republican states where he can be surrounded by adoring audiences.
Now Mark, these changes may not seem like a big deal to many, but they go to the very heart of the American democratic system. For without the free flow of information between the public and the White House, there can be no check on the activities and intentions of the President. But it gets worse.
Mark: What do you mean by that Allan?
Well Mark, during the election campaign Donald Trump not only stopped giving press conferences, but he actually banned certain newsmen and women from attending his rallies. And the main targets of his wrath naturally, were his most vocal critics.
Two newspapers in particular were the focus of his scorn. They were The New York Times and The Washington Post. This is hardly surprising, since people in these two cities simply do not like the man. Only 10% of New Yorkers voted for Trump, and only 6% of voters in Washington D.C.
But Trump has made it clear via various threats throughout his campaign that if he were to be elected President, that he would change the laws regarding libel so that people like himself who did not like what they read in print could sue these organizations in court.
This would be nothing less than a frontal attack on the first Amendment of the United States Constitution, which was adopted in 1791, and which reads as follows:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.
And Trump has indicated that he also plans to challenge another fundamental right that is guaranteed by the first Amendment, and that is the “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”.
On the day of his inauguration, Trump is likely to face one of the greatest peacetime demonstrations in American history, as opponents from every part of the country gather in front of the Capitol Building to voice their disapproval of his new administration.
But as Trump explained in an interview to The New York Times in May of last year, “I am not running to be everyone’s favourite President”. In that interview he said that while he might face “significant and incessant protests”, they would not deter him from his goal of making “big changes“.
It is clear that those who wish to challenge Trump, either through the Media or through the Courts, will face a daunting task to preserve their constitutional rights. And once these pillars of democracy begin to crack, then the entire edifice will begin to crumble. America will be on the path to tyranny.
Mark: So what do you think Trump will do with protestors?
Well this really is the key to the conundrum as to what sort of leader Trump will turn out to be. Will he be responsive to the opinions of his critics and tailor his policies accordingly, or will he ride roughshod over all those who are opposed to them?
As was made plain in the First Amendment I just quoted, the Founding Fathers realised that a free press was not only vital to the functioning of a healthy democracy, but that the right of freedom of speech was a necessary safety valve to express the will of the people.
Again, we need to emphasize the fact that Trump was not elected by a majority of voters. Although he ended up with some 66 million votes, 177 million registered voters either voted against him or chose not to vote at all. That means that three-quarters of the American people do not approve of him or his policies.
My guess is that he is not about to be intimidated by protestors no matter how many there are. And it is obvious from the people he has chosen to form his new cabinet that these are strongmen who will follow orders, and use whatever powers of government that are available to them to get their way.
During his campaign Trump insisted that he would be the champion of law and order, and his followers clearly understood the message that he intended to convey. He would be the one to lay down the law, and order all those who disagreed with him to obey or face the consequences.
So recent movements like the “Black Lives Matter” campaign to protest Police violence directed against the Black community will find little sympathy from the new administration. They will likely find that Black lives no longer matter, along with those of Native Indians, Mexicans, Migrants and Muslims.
As an example of this Trump will likely override the recent decision by President Obama to reroute the Dakota Access pipeline as a result of protests by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, if for no other reason that because Obama was for it, then he will be against it.
Remember the leopard and his spots. And then there is the matter of the Supreme Court.
Mark: How do you think will that enter into the equation?
Well Mark, as you know, the Supreme Court has a vacancy on the bench as a result of the death of Justice Scalia almost a year ago. But the Republican-controlled Senate refused to hold confirmation hearings for his replacement, claiming that this was a matter for the incoming President to decide.
At the time that Scalia was on the bench, the nine members were generally split five to four in favour of the Republicans. But if Obama had chosen a Democratic-leaning justice to replace him, as he was constitutionally entitled to do, then this would have swayed the balance in favour of the Democrats.
But now that Trump gets to decide who the replacement will be, you can bet that he will nominate someone who can be counted on to uphold Republican principles, on everything from abortion to planned parenthood, gay marriage and others. Even the landmark case of Roe versus Wade will be subject to review.
All that would be necessary to start this process would be for a Republican state to pass a law opposing the current law. An appeal would necessarily follow, and it would then be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether this new law should stand, or be overridden by the existing law.
So the protections afforded by the Roe versus Wade decision, in granting abortions nation-wide up to the third trimester, will almost certainly be challenged by states dominated by the so-called Christian Right. And it will be up to the new Supreme Court to adjudicate on these challenges.
And the same goes for all the gay rights that have been approved under President Obama. Same-sex marriages that are now legal under Federal law could well be reversed as a result of similar challenges. And the result may be that these revert to a state by state basis.
So gay people who are now legally married under the law may then find that in certain states their marriage certificates are annulled, and that if they want to retain their marital status they will have to be remarried in a state where same-sex marriages are still permitted.
The same thing could occur with all the other LGBT rights that are currently protected by the law, especially if the Supreme Court should happen to rule against them under appeal. So there could be tough times ahead for the gay community throughout the nation.
In fact there seems every likelihood that Donald Trump will prove to be the most divisive President in American history. The entire country could easily become polarised into opposing factions that openly despise one another, pitting Republican and Democratic states into conflict with one another.
So heavily Democratic states like California and New York could then be in the forefront of resistance to Trump’s policies, particularly in the areas of health, environment and immigration, leading to a situation where they will simply refuse to co-operate with the Federal government on certain issues.
Mark: Well Allan, if that is your assessment of the situation inside America, then what do you think is going to happen outside of America, especially in its dealings with other countries?
Well Mark, that is something that I will be focusing on a lot over the coming months, because the encroaching darkness that I spoke about at the beginning of this Podcast is steadily stealing across Europe and the Middle East, just as much as it is in America.
But to answer your question, in the interview that I referred to earlier between Donald Trump and Patrick Healy of The New York Times in May of last year, Trump had already made up his mind on what he would do first if he was elected President. This is what Healy reported at that time:
“On his first day in office, he said, he would meet with Homeland Security officials, generals, and others — he did not mention diplomats — to take steps to seal the southern border and assign more security agents along it.”
And there is little doubt that his first priority will be sealing the border so that no undesirables can enter the country. Of course his first target will be Mexico, especially since he has promised to build a wall separating the two countries. But I don’t think it will stop there.
I think that the Department of Homeland Security will be tasked with setting up a system for screening all people entering the United States. This will entail some sort of vetting system in advance, which for Mexicans, Muslims and other targeted groups will, in Trump’s own words, require “extreme vetting”.
But this won’t just be limited to people crossing into the United States from Mexico. One of the biggest shocks to the part of the world where I live is that it will apply equally to Canadians as well. In fact I foresee massive disruptions at all border crossings when these restrictions are put into place.
And of course, if Trump can put the boot into anything that Obama has achieved, then that will be fine as well. So expect the recent entente established between Cuba and the United States to come to an end, with possible new punitive measures to be adopted against them.
Mark: Donald Trump has spent a lot of his time talking about trade. What do you think he is going to do about that?
Well there is no doubt that trade is going to be the number one issue involving the new administration, especially as Trump has devoted so much time to this topic during his campaign. And to understand why, it is worth noting how he thinks about world trade.
Being a businessman, he is of course aware of two things. One is that businesses need to buy things. And the second is that many of the things that businesses buy are not made in the United States. They come from other countries.
Of course, economically speaking, there is a sound reason why they do this. Countries trade with one another because it allows them to buy things from those countries who make what they need cheaper than they can. That way they can pass on these savings to their own citizens.
But the catch, from Donald’s point of view, is that large international companies that make things have been allowed to move their factories to other countries where the cost of labour is the cheapest. And since wages generally form the greatest part of the cost of any product, it is profitable for them to do so.
But in the process of transferring their factories away from those cities in which they were initially established, these companies have left their former employees without jobs, and this has led to a serious decline in many industries, as well as leaving many cities in financial crisis.
So as he toured the country, particularly in the so-called “rust belt” states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Pennsylvania, he was confronted by hundreds of thousands of unhappy people who had become unemployed as a result of factories that had closed and moved to other countries.
So it is easy to see why the solution proposed by Trump appealed to so many voters, when he said that he would impose severe sanctions on those offending companies and countries, and especially since he went on to promise that he would bring these jobs back to the United States.
Of course that may have sounded wonderful during the campaign. The problem was that Donald Trump had never really studied the complexities of modern international trade, and what was worse, was ignorant of the consequences of the type of actions that he was proposing.
Mark: So what sort of consequences are we talking about?
Students of international economic history, just like physics, learn one thing Mark, and they learn it well. And that is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So countries that impose sanctions on imports from other countries, inevitably invite counter-measures by those countries.
And these counter-measures don’t just damage the countries directly involved. They also affect the climate under which international trade is conducted, especially in the interconnected world in which we live today. So actions can easily lead to dangerous and unwanted consequences.
Look before you leap.
So for example, Trump has indicated that he intends to impose excise tariffs on products imported into the United States from those countries which he considers responsible for the problem of unemployment. And the countries he has targeted are China, Mexico and Canada.
The rationale behind his plan is simple. By making the products imported from these countries more expensive, he hopes that Americans will decide to buy less of them and spend their money on products made in the United States instead. But this could easily backfire on America.
For if Trump does decide to go ahead with the strategy that he has outlined in his campaign, America could well find itself embroiled in a trade war with three different countries by the end of January. And if that happens, then there is no telling what the final outcome might be.
As I said earlier, countries that find themselves subject to trade barriers inevitably set up counter-measures of their own. And it was precisely because of such protectionist policies by countries in the 1930’s that led to the Great Depression. But Trump is clearly undeterred by the lessons of history.
Besides, what characterizes Trump as Trump is his trademark obsession with “winning”. In any situation where he feels that his own, or by extension American interests are threatened, he will not rest until he has established his own superiority. Or in other words, until his opponent learns to “respect him”.
And this is no doubt how he intends to conduct all future trade negotiations. He will not be concerned about finding a Win-Win solution that works for both parties, but rather an outcome in which he (or America) is clearly recognized to be the winner, while the other country is seen to be the loser.
But because he is not a student of history, he is content to blithely dismiss the lessons of the past and say, as he did recently to reporters, “the economy will do just fine”. I can almost hear the Founding Fathers looking down on him from above and saying:
“Nice going Donald. You start a trade war with your neighbours and a country that is a source of stability and is not a military threat, and you choose to align yourself with someone who is your enemy and who poses a direct threat to your entire way of life”.
Mark: I guess that you are referring here to Trump’s fascination with Russia.
Right on Mark. There is something very strange about the whole romance that has been going on between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. And the latest revelations about how the Kremlin has interfered in the recent U.S. election have merely added to this mystery.
Putin clearly wanted Trump to win, and we can now see why. But because Trump has so far refused to release his income tax returns, we have no idea what his business interests in Russia may be, or to what extent, if at all, his business may be indebted to any Russian banks.
In any event, we are unlikely to find answers to these questions once he becomes President. But the key point about all this Mark, is that right from the beginning of his campaign Trump was saying things like “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were friends with Russia”?
What made this such a weird statement was that, as Trump should have been aware, America WAS friends with Russia not that long ago. In fact Russia was part of the G8 group of leading industrial nations up until two years ago, when Russia’s membership was suspended.
And the reason why was because Russia broke international law by invading Crimea and annexing it as part of Russia. And as a consequence of this illegal act, the other members threw them out of the G8, and imposed a series of economic sanctions which are still in place today.
So the idea that America should somehow feel the need to “make friends” with Russia defies all international opinion. But Trump has continued to extol the virtues of Vladimir Putin, and says he looks forward to “doing a deal” with him once he takes office.
The very idea of Trump being in cahoots with Putin should fill every American with alarm, for Putin has shown by his actions in the Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere that he is certainly no friend of the West. In fact he is doing everything he can to create chaos wherever he can.
Furthermore, the evidence of Russian tampering in the last U.S. election should make it clear that Putin’s underlying goal is to foment distrust in democratic institutions around the world, and to destabilize the West in any way that he can.
But clearly that doesn’t seem to bother Trump, since he continues to reject any idea that Russia is to blame for any of the revelations of interference that have emerged over the last few months. And the reason he does so seems to rest on a bizarre strategy that Trump appears to be pursuing.
Having already decided in his mind that China is the biggest threat that America faces, both economically and militarily, he seems to feel that if he can curry favour with Putin, that that will be able to drive a wedge between the alliance of Russia and China.
But the price that he might end up paying for such a risky strategy could be devastating, because Putin might end up by convincing Trump to allow him to retake control of the rest of the Ukraine, as well as the Russian-speaking Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
And what would Trump ask for in return? Probably the assurance that Russia would take care of the ISIS problem for him. That would then allow Russia to gain control of the whole of the Middle East, in collaboration with their client states of Turkey and Iran, which is exactly what the Bible predicted would happen.
Mark: Very interesting Allan. And that brings us back to what we discussed at the beginning of this Podcast, which is how do you think that the Trump presidency fits in with Bible prophecy?
Well Mark, based on my own interpretation of end-time events, I think that Donald Trump is very likely to be the last President of the United States, and that his actions will be the direct cause of the destruction of America and the beginning of the period which the Bible calls the Great Tribulation.
The test will be whether Trump follows through with his promise to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from its present location in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And although Congress passed a bill permitting such a move in 1995, subsequent administrations have chosen not to do this for fear of antagonizing Arabic and Muslim opinion.
If he does so, I have no doubt that this would lead to a firestorm of opposition throughout the Arab and Islamic world that would be directed at Israel and America. And that could in turn lead to a unified movement determined to wipe out the nation of Israel once and for all.
And although Donald Trump has assured the Israeli people that he would be their “staunchest ally ever”, if their country ever did find itself faced by a coalition of armies as the prophet Ezekiel predicted, Trump might decide that it would be in America’s interest to abandon them in their hour of need, and leave Israel to its fate.
So what this means Mark, is that we could very well be living in the days leading up to the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord, and the final seven years that will mark the end of this cycle of civilization – the age that the Bible predicts will end with the battle of Armageddon.
The Middle East is the place to watch Mark. As I have written in my book, the Middle East is the place that will provide the spark that will light the fires of tribulation. So now we wait. We wait for the signs in the heavens and the arrival of the red star of the Hopi Indians – the star they call the “destroyer”.
Well Allan this has certainly been a revealing look at what is happening in the world today, and especially in America. And as you say, I guess all we can do now is wait and see how it all turns out.
You have been listening to Allan Colston, author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac”. Do join us for our next Podcast, which will be another in the series titled “Signs of the Times”.
Allan, AUDIO, Signs of the Times, January 6, 2017, 2:09 pm
My name is Mark Stevens, standing in today for Scott who is on vacation. I am talking with Allan Colston. He is the author of the book The Last Days of Tolemac.
Welcome Allan to this Podcast. As this is the first time we have spoken together, perhaps you could start off by telling me a little bit about your book.
Certainly Mark, it is a pleasure to chat with you. The Last Days of Tolemac is a book about prophecy. It deals with events that are happening in the world today and shows how they fulfill prophecies that were made many centuries ago. The book is set out in a series of questions and answers, and explains in detail:
• What is about to happen to our planet
• Why these events are happening at this time
• What places on earth will be affected
• What the new world will be like
• What we can do to prepare
Mark: So tell me Allan, what do you think is about to happen to our planet?
Well Mark, as the book explains, our world is about to be transformed. We are about to experience “a new heaven and a new earth” as described in the Book of Revelation, in which there will be no more suffering and no more pain.
However, as The Bible points out, this transformation will be preceded by a series of events that will plunge the world into chaos and destruction. And as a result of these coming calamities, each one of us is faced with a critical choice.
We have to decide whether we want to be a part of the new world that is coming, by embracing the spiritual challenges that lie ahead, or whether we are content to ignore the signs and join the majority of the population that will fall victim to the catastrophes that will herald its arrival?
So the purpose of my Podcasts with Scott up until this time Mark, has been to bring listeners up to date with those events that are happening in the world today which, in my view, suggest that we are now living the “End Times” as described by Jesus and other Biblical prophets.
Mark: So Allan, what sort of events are you referring to?
Well Mark, in my last Podcast with Scott that was titled “The Age of Tyrants”, I talked about the fact that the world has experienced more tyrannical rulers over the last hundred years, than at any other period in the history of the earth. I also went on to say:
“We seem to be living in an age of tyrants, where an encroaching darkness is stealing across the planet, slowly swallowing up all the countries of the world, and enslaving good men and women everywhere as it does so”.
As I mentioned, democracies around the world are in peril, as we see more and more countries falling under the sway of authoritarian rulers. Now when we talk about tyrants, we need to recognise that there is a key difference between authoritarian rulers and tyrants.
Authoritarian rulers dominate the affairs of a nation by controlling what their citizens are allowed to say and do. But what turns these rulers into tyrants, is not the fact that they are authoritarian in their style of government, but how they treat those people who are opposed to them.
Tyrants are not constrained by laws. They use their power cruelly and unjustly. In short, they kill their enemies, as we can see in countries like Russia, Iran and North Korea. And just lately we have two more countries to add to that list. They are Turkey and the Philippines.
And in fact, I ended my last Podcast with the following words.
“And this brings us to the United States, where the coming election is probably one of the most important in their history. Voters are faced with a choice between two starkly contrasting candidates. On the one hand there is Hillary Clinton, who is regarded as a threat and distrusted by many.
And then there is the phenomenon of Donald Trump, who claims to represent the best interests of all Americans, but then goes on to brand Mexicans, Muslims and migrants as the enemy, and who appears to display all the qualities that are the hallmark of a classic despot.
So the world waits to see what they will decide. Will voters preserve the principles that have made the United States the bastion of democracy for the last two hundred years or more, or will they vote for their fears and allow their country to descend into tyranny, just as Plato so long ago predicted?”
Mark: Well Allan, as we all know by now, the Americans voted for Donald Trump.
Well not exactly Mark. Although he will be the new President, in terms of the number of votes cast, Trump actually ended up in third place. One of the most significant factors in the outcome of the election was that about 45% of the electorate, or 108 million people, chose not to vote at all.
And of those who did decide to vote, roughly three million more people voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for Donald Trump. Hence his third place finish. In any other country where democratic elections are held, Clinton would have been declared an easy winner.
But America is not like any other country. Its electoral system is unique. In fact America is not even a democracy. It is a Republic bound by a Constitution, which is why every new President is required to pledge upon the Bible that he or she will uphold the Constitution.
Under this Constitution, voters don’t vote for the candidate of their choice. Instead, they vote for members of the Electoral College. There are a total of 538 Electoral College members who are allocated on a state by state basis according to the population of that state.
And this is where the Founding Fathers of Confederation proved to be undone by their own cunning. For, as Donald Trump emphasized again and again throughout his campaign, the American electoral system was rigged. Yet the irony of it all was that the outcome turned out to be rigged in his favour.
Mark: Why do you say that Allan?
Well Mark, the fundamental inequity of the American voting system is that the candidate who wins the majority of votes in any one state, is allocated ALL the Electoral College votes for that state, no matter how close the final margin between the candidates may happen to be.
So what actually happened in this election was that Donald Trump managed to beat Hillary Clinton by a tiny margin in four key states. These were the states of Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania. As a result, he was allocated ALL 64 of the Electoral College votes in those states.
So what that all boiled down to in practice, was that 525,000 votes in those four states accounted for 64 out of the 270 Electoral College votes that Trump needed to win the Presidency. So 12% of his final Electoral College tally came from just 0.04% of the people who turned out to vote.
And if that isn’t rigging the system Mark, then I don’t know what is. And because of this we have to ask, was this just luck, or was it perhaps a matter of fate? And could this result play a part in determining the future destiny of America, and the fulfillment of Bible prophecy?
Anyway, since the election, political pundits of every persuasion have had a field day trying to explain what went wrong, and why and how Clinton managed to lose an election in which she had seemed to be heading for a landslide victory just two weeks before.
But what almost all of these commentators have failed to point out, is that Hillary lost the election because of a monumental lack of judgment on her part. And it was this error in judgement that ultimately cost her the election. So she had no one to blame but herself.
Mark: So what sort of error in judgment did she make?
Well Mark, it all began in 1996 when Hillary employed a 19 year old Muslim lady fresh out of George Washington University named Huma Abedin. Over the years Huma assumed a number of different positions, ranging from senior advisor to deputy chief of staff when Hillary was Secretary of State.
Hillary even introduced Huma to her future husband, and in 2010 ex-President Bill Clinton officiated at their wedding. The unfortunate part for Hillary was that Huma’s husband, a Congressman from New York by the name of Anthony Wiener, turned out to be a sleazy character who fell afoul of the law.
Wiener resigned from Congress in 2011 as a result of a sexting scandal in which he admitted sending sexually explicit photographs of himself to a series of women via his Twitter account. And although Huma Abedin separated from her husband, she never actually divorced him.
As you can imagine, the salacious details of this case, involving a nine-time Congressman, were splashed across the nation causing considerable embarrassment to the Clinton campaign, especially when the New York Post reported just before the election that Wiener had sexted another woman while lying in bed with his young son.
So when Director James Comey announced that the FBI had found a laptop belonging to Wiener that contained a trove of emails between Hillary and Huma, the impact that it had on the country was electric. In fact I well remember my own reaction at the time. “Oh Hillary, how could you have been so dumb!”
After all, you could perhaps forgive her for using a private server to conduct Government business, especially since the FBI could find no evidence of an actual crime. But it is another thing entirely to share emails involving matters of state with a defrocked politician who had admitted to deviant sexual behaviour.
From that moment on Hillary began hemorrhaging support and her campaign was doomed. And interestingly enough, the segment of the voting public that deserted her in those final days were white college-educated women – the very ones who were most horrified by what had transpired.
In retrospect it may have been fortunate for the country that Clinton lost, for had she won, she would have had to deal with a hostile Republican Congress that would have blocked everything that she tried to do, and would most likely have led to four more years of complete gridlock in Washington.
Mark: So what do you think will happen now under President Trump?
Well Mark, the first thing that everyone will discover is that Donald Trump is not Barack Obama. That may seem like a trite thing to say, but what people in America and all around the world need to realise is that everything that they have become used to over the last eight years will change from January 20th onwards.
Donald Trump is not only different from Barack Obama, but he is totally opposed to everything that Obama has achieved in his eight years in the White House. And Trump will devote his efforts to ensuring that nothing of Obama’s legacy remains intact at the end of his time in office.
So whereas Obama is a globalist, an environmentalist, a supporter of free trade, a protector of civil rights, the rights of women and the rights of the LGBTQ community, as well as being a staunch defender of the poor, Donald Trump is none of these things. And it all began in his early childhood.
Young Donald was a problem child. At least he proved to be more than his parents could handle in his early years. He had a short attention span coupled with a violent temper and an over abundance of energy. So they despatched him off to the New York Military Academy in the hope that they would be able to channel his energy in a positive direction.
I suppose that that should be a lesson to parents everywhere about the dangers of sending children off to military school. Anyway, the young Trump learned two things while he was there. The first was that “might is right”, and the second was that it was the job of the military to “By God get things done”.
So it is no surprise that when it came time for him to set about choosing the key people to fill his Cabinet, he would turn to the military to fill his most important positions. Only this time he would be the one giving the orders, and it would be their job to do whatever it takes to “get things done”.
And then there’s another thing that the public need to know about Donald Trump Mark, and that is that a leopard never changes its spots.
Mark: OK Allan you’ve got me there. What do you mean by that?
Well Mark, one of the things that has confounded the American public during the election campaign, was that Trump was notorious for saying one thing one day and then reversing himself a few days later. So you never knew what he really stood for, or whether he had any basic principles at all.
But there is one way that you can see into the true character of a person that does not rely on speech and that cannot be disguised. And that is a person’s handwriting. And although most people have never seen Donald Trump’s writing, we do have a record of his signature.
Back in May of last year The Telegraph newspaper in England ran an article about the signatures of famous people, and what they indicated about their characters. One of the people whose signatures they analysed was Donald Trump.
Here’s what Elaine Quigley, a noted British graphology expert and handwriting analyst, had to say about it.
“Trump’s signature is, of course, his face to the world, so he wants to be dominant, hard, aggressive and to keep people at arm’s length, so he can do everything his way. I have always said that his signature is like barbed wire with blood on it. It is aggressive, it is bloodthirsty and there is absolutely no sense of inspiration in it.
She went on to add: “Trump’s signature betrays his lack of creativity, and even though he is not uneducated, we can see that he is self-absorbed. Look at the angles, look how sharp it is. Anyone who gets near Trump will get hurt.”
Now Mark, I can’t show you what she was referring to, but it is sufficiently revealing to make it worth inserting in my Blog summary of this Podcast. And what makes this especially disturbing, is that this is her assessment of the man who is about to become the leader of the Free World.
And there is another thing that can shine a light onto his personality and his dealings with other people. It is the story told by Sir Richard Branson, the billionaire English businessman who founded the Virgin Group which controls more than 400 companies. Did you ever hear about it?
Mark: No Allan, I can’t say that I did.
Well according to the story which appears on his website, during one of his business visits to the United States, he was invited by Donald Trump to a one-on-one lunch meeting with him at his apartment in Manhattan. Here’s what Branson had to say about that meeting:
“Some years ago, Mr Trump invited me to lunch for a one-to-one meeting at his apartment in Manhattan. We had not met before and I accepted. Even before the starters arrived he began telling me about how he had asked a number of people for help after his latest bankruptcy and how five of them were unwilling to help. He told me he was going to spend the rest of his life destroying these five people.
“He didn’t speak about anything else and I found it very bizarre. I told him I didn’t think it was the best way of spending his life. I said it was going to eat him up, and do more damage to him than them. There must be more constructive ways to spend the rest of your life. (Hopefully my advice didn’t lead to him running for President!)”
And what this story tells us Mark is that Donald Trump is a person who not only holds a grudge, but is prepared to wreak vengeance on those who displease him “even if he has to spend the rest of his life doing so”. I mention this because there is the small matter of Hillary Clinton.
During one of the election debates, Trump interrupted Clinton to say that if he succeeded in becoming President, he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate her crimes. And of course we all recall the enduring chants of his supporters to “lock her up, lock her up”.
Since the election, Trump has said little about whether he is prepared to follow through with his threat, leading many to surmise that his comments were merely campaign rhetoric. But I am not so sure. In fact I think he may be just biding his time until he becomes President.
In fact it would not surprise me if Trump is waiting to see if President Obama is going to be far-sighted enough to issue an official pardon to Hillary Clinton for any crimes that she may have committed during her time in office, before he steps down.
And if he does not, then my hunch is that Trump will find some pretext to revisit his earlier threat. And this would be very easy to arrange. All he would need to do is to arrange one of his victory stops in a Republican state and then ask the crowd “What do you think I should do about Hillary?”
And then when the crowd responds with their usual cry of “Lock her up”, it would be easy for him to say, “You know that I am a very forgiving person. I don’t hold grudges. But when you say you want me to lock her up, what can I do? My hands are tied. I have no choice but let the law take its course.”
And if he did go ahead and appoint a special prosecutor, I have no doubt that the person he chose would be able to come up with sufficient incriminating evidence to convict her of a crime. And if found guilty, that she would end up behind bars.
The leopard never changes its spots.
Mark: So are you saying that Donald Trump may turn out to be a tyrant?
Well Mark we don’t know yet. We will have to wait and see. But we do know that he sees nothing wrong with torturing anyone that he deems to be an enemy of the state, for he has already gone on record to say that he approves of “water-boarding or worse” as a means of extracting information.
But what we can say is that he will prove to be an authoritarian leader who will be prepared to do whatever it takes to get his own way, especially as there appears to be no countervailing power in Congress that is likely to prevent him from doing exactly as he wishes.
And it seems clear to me that because there has never been anyone quite like Trump in the history of the United States, it would not be a stretch to suggest that what will happen under his leadership is likely to be totally different from anything that has happened in the past.
America has elected a former reality TV personality known as “the Donald” to be their new leader. And based on his actions up to this point, it seems more and more likely that he intends to rule the country like another Don – Don Corleone of the Godfather. In other words, he intends to be “The Boss”.
After all, his entire career has been built upon his projected image of being a tough guy who wins by getting what he wants. And those are the very qualities that characterise people that he claims to admire the most – people like Putin and Saddam Hussein, and even Kim Jong-un.
One of the boasts that Trump likes to make is that he has never actually finished reading a book in his life. If this is true, then I think it is a pity, because if he had he would have found out that most books finish with the words “The End”.
And for a man who will shortly have the keys to the nuclear codes and the power to destroy the world, I would have thought that that would have been enough to give him, as well as the American people and the rest of the world, cause for pause.
Some people have asked me if I think that Donald Trump will turn out to be the long-awaited Anti-Christ. I tell them no I don’t. But I do think that he will serve up a very good first course.
Mark: Thanks Allan. We need to take a break. When we come back we will continue our discussion with Allan Colston, author of the book The Last Days of Tolemac.
To be continued in Part Two
Allan, AUDIO, Signs of the Times, December 29, 2016, 10:48 pm
The Bible records the occasion when Nicodemus, who was described as being both a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus by night saying that he knew that he was a teacher sent by God, because no one could perform the miracles that he did unless God was inside him. Jesus replied:
“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God”. Nicodemus responded in amazement: “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born”? (John 3: 4-5)
It was obvious from his answer that although Nicodemus was well versed in all aspects of the Jewish religion, he clearly had no idea what Jesus was talking about when he said that a man needed to be born again in order to see the Kingdom of God.
And in the two thousand years that have passed since Jesus died upon the cross, Christians are still mired in ignorance. To this day there is hardly a Christian believer alive who understands what it means to be born again, or how to attain the Kingdom of God while still retaining a human body.
The Kingdom of God
The idea that one needed to die in order to gain admission to the Kingdom of God was central to the message that Jesus preached throughout his ministry. It was also a theme that he returned to again and again, as we can see from the following quotations:
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it”. (Luke 9: 23-24)
“And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.” (Mark 8: 34-35)
“He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
“He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it”. (Matthew 10: 37-39)
It is important to note here that Jesus spoke these words to his followers and disciples long before his own death upon the cross. And it gives new meaning to the reason for his death, which was to show that it is necessary to sacrifice one’s life in this world in order to gain eternal life.
But what did Jesus mean when he said that we have to be born again? And what was he referring to when he said that a man must be prepared to “deny himself and take up his cross daily”? After all, it is one thing to take up your cross, but quite another to “do it every day”!
René Descartes
In a strange way, we may gain an insight into this mystery by studying the words of the 17th century French philosopher René Descartes.
Descartes has been called the father of modern western philosophy, largely because of his most famous work titled Principles of Philosophy, which was published in Latin in the year 1644. It was in this work that he wrote the words for which he is best remembered to this day.
The words were “Cogito ergo sum”, meaning “I think, therefore I am”. Now Descartes was not using the words “I am” in the way that Jesus used them. In fact they referred to the very thing that Jesus said needed to die before a man could gain access to the Kingdom of God.
As explained in Part One, Jesus not only referred to himself as the I AM, but he taught that this I AM sensation that we all experience inside of ourselves was not only the pathway to God, it WAS GOD. For, as he explained to his disciple Thomas:
“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the father but by me”. (John 14: 6)
So what Jesus was saying to Thomas was that the I AM was the way, the I AM was the truth, and the I AM was the life. And since Jesus referred to himself as the I AM, it followed that no one could reach the Kingdom of God “but by me”, or in other words through the I AM.
But to return to René Descartes, the “I am” that he was referring to was the idea that his independent existence as a man was attributed primarily to his ability to think. And this ability to think also enabled him to interact with the world around him by means of his senses.
Now all of us think, and like Descartes, we use this faculty both to confirm our existence as an individual, and to function in the world. And it is this ability to think that enables us to organize our lives, as well as deal with the problems of the present and make plans for the future.
And then there are our emotions and our desires. Our lives are motivated by a host of different desires. And whenever we are successful in attaining our desires, or are thwarted in these endeavours, we respond by means of a variety of emotions that further impact upon our lives.
But the people that surround us in our lives are not real. They are illusions. In fact they are nothing more than a series of images appearing in consciousness, just like movie actors on a screen. And we have become trapped inside our personalities, just like the prisoners inside Plato’s Cave.
The fundamental problem of all human life is that we have become imprisoned by our individual personalities, because we have chosen to identify that sense of being inside of ourselves with our bodies and the events that are going on in the world around us.
And the secret to escaping from the prison that we have built around us, lies in a re-evaluation of the word “identify”. For it is this act of “identifying” with what we see and sense around us that binds us to these things, and traps us in those “identities” that we imagine ourselves to be.
In other words, it is because I identify myself with my physical body that I become trapped in this three-dimensional world of space and time, where I have to experience the opposites of pain and sorrow, happiness and joy, success and failure, and ultimately old age and death.
And the way to escape this world of opposites is simple. I just need to swop the old idea of René Descartes (I think, therefore I am), with a new idea: “I don’t think, therefore I AM”. In other words, if thinking leads to the creation of the individual personality, then not thinking leads to the Divine.
Taken at face value, such mundane advice seems ridiculous. After all, if I stopped thinking, then how could I possibly live my life? How could I perform my job, feed my family, or do anything worthwhile in the world? And the answer that Jesus gives us is: “If you surrender to God, He will provide every need”.
As we have seen above, the basic message of Jesus is that it is only by dying that we can enter the Kingdom of God. We don’t have to acquire anything new. We simply have to give up the false idea that we exist as a person. That is what he meant by “losing your life” in order to find it.
Escaping the Cave
So if we want to escape from Plato’s Cave, we have to unshackle ourselves from the chains that have bound us up until now, and make our way out of the cave. If we want to escape from our illusory body which was born and is doomed to die, then we have to give up our identification with it.
So Jesus calls on each one of us to make a choice. We have to decide whether we want to live an ordinary life, by doing all those things that people normally do, or voluntarily decide to “take up our cross” and turn away from life in the world. There is no middle way.
And this is where those who call themselves Christians fail. Not only do they not realise that the death of the personality is the pathway to eternal life, but they cling to their precious individuality with every sinew of their being. The very idea of “taking up their cross daily” fills them with horror.
For we are now living in an age of the glorification of the individual, in which people everywhere try to express their personalities in ever more exotic ways, and all the while striving to be the best. But this was not the message of the Saviour, and those who follow this path are doomed to die.
You cannot try to lead a successful life in the world and at the same time pursue the path of Truth, just as you cannot remain in the cave and try to leave it at the same time. For as Jesus explained to all those gathered around him on the occasion of his famous sermon on the mount:
“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon”. (Matthew 6: 24)
Furthermore, anyone who strives to attain the Kingdom of God has to sever his links with his family and friends. Obviously, if your goal is to “deny yourself”, you can no longer retain those relationships that bind you to the personality that is destined to “die upon the cross”. For as Jesus said:
“He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”. (Matthew 10: 37)
And when Jesus was told on one occasion that his mother and brothers had arrived and wished to speak to him, he replied:
“Who is my mother? And who are my brethren?” (Matthew 12: 48)
In other words, if your intention is to rid yourself of your chains and leave the cave, then you can no longer hold on to those things that draw you back into the cave. And for those people who shrink from making such a sacrifice, Jesus beckons to them with a message from the beyond.
“Fear not, O ye children of little faith, for I lead you forth into a new world of experience that is more glorious than anything that you can imagine, where you are no longer bound by the limitations of your human body, and are freed forever from the pangs of suffering and death.”
The lilies of the field
So to return to the question that we posed earlier. If we are prepared to give up everything in order to follow Christ, then how can we fulfil our duties in this world, and how can we provide for those who depend on us for food and shelter? And for all those in doubt, Jesus has a reassuring answer.
“Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
“Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
“And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
“Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
“Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
” But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” (Matthew 6: 25-34)
Jesus urges us to seek the Kingdom of God “first”, before we attend to any other duty or responsibility in life. So the crucial challenge then becomes: how do we go about doing this? How do we go about “taking up our cross daily and denying ourselves”?
All the ancient Mystery Schools, as well as all the major religions of the world, agree that there are only two ways that one can do this. Either one has to surrender to God and let Him take charge of their life, or one has to investigate the source of the I AM that lives inside each one of us.
Jesus offered his followers both of these options to follow him. They could choose either to “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind”, or they could follow the advice of the 46th Psalm and “Be still and know that I AM God”.
Since it is the “mind” that is the primary barrier that stands between normal human consciousness and the Kingdom of God, the sole object of these two methods is to overcome the mind. And it is the process of doing this that steadily dissolves the human personality until only God remains.
The path of surrender
On the face of it, the path of surrender is supremely easy. All one has to do is to let go – and let God. The human mind merely has to step aside and allow the Divine spirit within to take over and make all the decisions that we, as individual personalities, would normally make. As Jesus says:
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light”. (Matthew 11: 28-30)
By surrendering to God, we release the burden of our lives, as well as the responsibility for fulfilling our duties to our families and all those around us. We already have the assurance from Jesus in the previous quotation that all of our worldly needs like food, clothing and shelter will be met.
In addition, we no longer need to concern ourselves about whether our lives have meaning, and whether our efforts will be crowned with success. Once we have made the decision to surrender our lives to God, the results of what we do or do not do in life need no longer concern us.
We can simply live our lives according to a new maxim, “Let what comes come, and let what goes go”. For if we have truly handed over the control of our lives to God, then everything that happens in our lives can only come from God. But of course, the difficulty is in trying to do this every day.
It is the challenge of beating back the doubts and fears generated by our minds that requires us to “deny ourselves and take up our cross daily”. But in meeting this challenge, we are fortified by faith, and the conviction that we will, in time, be united with God.
We also need to remind ourselves of the words that Jesus spoke in his hour of need: “Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done”. (Luke 22: 42) But if there is anything that needs to be done at any moment of our life, we need to do it to the best of our ability, and to dedicate our actions to God.
The path of enquiry
The path of enquiry is equally simple in theory, but is perhaps even harder to achieve in practice than the path of surrender described above. All one has to do is to follow the guidance of the 10th verse of Psalm 46 in the Bible. “Be still, and know that I am God”.
Again, this is one of those aphorisms that slides easily off the tongue, but can seem impossibly difficult to do once we decide to put it into practice. That is because the process of “knowing God” involves overcoming the mind, which as we have seen, is the main barrier between God and man.
The requirement of “being still” is common to all the mystical traditions of the world. It involves meditation, contemplation and single-pointedness of mind. And this is only achieved after endless hours of practice, requiring limitless patience and extraordinary determination.
The process goes like this. First of all, you have to be still. You have to calm the mind, much like the ripples on the lake that break up the image of the sun in the example quoted earlier. Then you have to focus on the source of the I AM feeling that exists inside of you.
With practice, this source will be found to emanate from a point inside the chest just to the right of the breast-bone. It is the place we instinctively point to when we refer to ourselves. This is why the Bible says: “A wise man’s heart is at his right hand; but a fool’s heart at his left”. (Ecclesiastes 10: 2)
If you continue to focus the mind on this source of the I AM, you will find that over time you will be drawn deeper and deeper into this source. And as you do this, you will begin to experience an inner peace that will transfuse your entire being. And the more you do it, the more you will WANT to do it.
The reason why it is so difficult to achieve is that one cannot use the mind to go beyond the mind. The goal cannot be reached by mental effort, because it is our very striving that stands as a barrier to further progress. One simply has to let go and JUST BE.
That means letting go of the business of living, and letting each day unfold as it will. The moment you act like a person and desire an outcome you have inserted the ego. As the Sages point out, you have to be sufficiently mature spiritually to let go of everything and LET GOD DO EVERYTHING.
The soul will ripen of its own accord in its own time just like the fruit on a tree. Finally, there comes that moment when the fruit falls from the tree and the I AM reveals itself in all its glory, resplendent as the Divine Creator and sustainer of all things.
That will be the moment you will realise that you are not only aware of God, but that you are united with God.
So the process of enquiry unfolds in the following way. Be still. Be still and focus your attention on the source of the I AM sense within you. Be still until you come to realise that this I AM sense IS God. What you previously thought of as your personal identity has been replaced by the eternal I AM – which is God. The human journey is complete.
In the ancient Hindu Vedas, the I AM is said to emerge from the heart-centre on the right side of the chest at a point that they call the Sphurana. This is described as being a “knot-hole”, which in normal human consciousness always remains tightly shut.
This “knot-hole” can be likened to the shutter of a camera which normally remains tightly closed. It is only when it is opened that the darkness disappears as light floods into the camera, revealing the glory of what had previously been hidden.
And this is what happens after prolonged meditation. This knot-hole or shutter begins to open, at first momentarily, but then for longer periods. It is only when it opens permanently that full enlightenment is gained. When that happens, the person becomes free, even though they still retain a human body.
The peak experience
These precursors of enlightenment can also sometimes happen unexpectedly, and many people have reported having experienced them. The American psychologist Abraham Maslow even coined a term for these experiences. He called them “peak experiences”.
In describing these experiences, Maslow wrote that they were “rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experimenter.”
Some of the best descriptions of these peak experiences have come from poets, particularly English poets belonging to what became known as the Romantic Movement that began at the end of in the 18th century. The following lines from Percy Shelley’s Ode to Liberty are an example:
“Within a cavern of man’s trackless spirit
Is throned an Image, so intensely fair
That the adventurous thoughts that wander near it
Worship, and as they kneel, tremble and wear
The splendour of its presence, and the light
Penetrates their dreamlike frame
Till they become charged with the strength of flame”.
My own peak experience happened when I was 31 years old. I was living in India at the time, and was visiting a friend in the town of Varkala in Kerala, not far from the southern tip of India. As I sat down one morning, idly gazing into the water of a small pond that was part of his estate, IT happened.
Although the experience itself only lasted for perhaps a few seconds, its effect on the mind was electric! But because the I AM exists beyond the mind, the mind itself is incapable of describing it. Nevertheless, the experience left a residue that has been imprinted on my mind ever since.
I was left with a sense of sheer exhilaration. I knew without a shadow of doubt that I had experienced a state of freedom that lay beyond the mind. It was a state of bliss that defied description. I was not only free from the limits of space and time, but I understood at that moment exactly how the entire universe worked.
I understood also what the ancient Sages of India had said about life. They described it by the Sanskrit term Lila, which represented a form of cosmic dance, in which every part of the created universe had meaning, and that meaning was to reflect the joy of the creator.
The best description that I have heard of that state is the one that has been recorded in the Vedas. They called it Sat-Chit-Ananda, which can be translated as Being-Consciousness-Bliss. And that was my experience. I was not only aware, but I was conscious of being aware, and I was immersed in total Bliss.
So the ultimate goal of all life is not to save the world, or live a more fulfilling life, or gain more wealth, or explore space, or overcome adversity or physical disability. The highest goal that you can achieve in life is to stop dreaming and WAKE UP from the dream you call your day-to-day reality.
Only then will you escape the confines of Plato’s Cave.
Only then will you be freed from this illusory world of shape and form.
Only then will you find the peace that passes all understanding.
Only then will you feel the bliss that can never be described in words.
Only then will you know the Truth that has been hidden from you up until that moment…….
That you not only ARE free, but that you have ALWAYS BEEN FREE.
Allan, Plato's Cave, November 6, 2016, 1:55 pm
In the Biblical gospel of St. John, the disciple describes how a band of priests and Pharisees brought Jesus before Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, accusing him of claiming to be a king. When Pilate asked him if this was true, Jesus replied:
“To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice”. (John 18: 37)
It was at this point that Pilate uttered the immortal lines: “What is truth? “ Pilate’s question went to the heart of a conundrum that has plagued humanity ever since, especially since Jesus himself added to this mystery when he told his disciples:
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”. (John 8: 32)
Of all the words in the English language, the word “truth” has so many different connotations that it has almost ceased to have any definitive meaning. What, after all, does truth really mean? And what sort of truth was Jesus talking about when he said that it had the power to “make you free“?
The obvious inference to be drawn from the above statement by Jesus is that mankind is living in a state of captivity, and that the “truth” that he came to bear witness to was able to liberate all those who embraced it. If so, then what sort of captivity could Jesus have been referring to?
Most commentators of the Bible have concluded that Jesus was referring to the fact that we are all sinners, and that he was the only one who had the power to liberate us from sin. And because he himself was able to defeat death, he was the only one who could guarantee eternal life.
But while this might seem on the surface to be a plausible interpretation, it still does not explain the underlying premise that Jesus was talking about, which was that there existed some form of “truth” that could save us from our sins, if only we could learn how to “know” or understand it.
Plato’s cave
But there was another man in history who claimed to know exactly what Jesus was talking about, even though he lived some four hundred years before the Christian era. This was the classical Greek philosopher whom we have come to know as Plato.
Plato was the founder of the Academy of Athens, which was the first institute of higher learning in the Western world. But what most modern scholars do not realise is that he was also an initiate of the Greek Mystery School, which drew on the wisdom of ancient Egypt, and of Atlantis before that.
In Book VII of his literary masterpiece entitled The Republic, Plato used an allegory to describe the human condition. It was an allegory that has come to be known as Plato’s Cave. Plato proposed a situation in which people had been imprisoned since early childhood inside a cave.
These people were chained together in such a way as to prevent them from looking around the cave, and to force them to look directly at a wall that was placed in front of them. So if there were any other people inside the cave, these chained prisoners would be unable to see them.
Plato then proposed that a large fire was burning behind these prisoners. The effect of this fire within the cave was to reflect the movements of other people inside the cave as shadows on the wall in front of them. And these shadows would then be the only things that the captives could see.
While the scenario posed by Plato may seem hopelessly contrived by modern standards, it served to illustrate his purpose. The key point that he wanted to make was that to the captive audience inside the cave, these shadows on the wall would in time come to be accepted as reality.
Plato then went on to suggest that if by some quirk of fate, one of the chained people was able to escape from the cave and emerge into the world outside, he would realise that what he had previously taken to be real would in fact be an illusion. It would not be the truth.
And if that person then returned to the cave and tried to explain to the remaining prisoners inside that the shadows on the wall that they had all previously agreed upon were real, were actually an illusion, that person would inevitably be rejected and most likely be laughed to scorn.
Of course, if Plato were alive today, he would be able to draw on a far better analogy. Suppose that, instead of a cave, a group of people were chained to their seats inside a modern movie theatre in such a way that they could see nothing else but the screen in front of them.
Then over time, these people would inevitably come to believe that the characters in the movies they were looking at were real, simply because the images they saw on the screen would be all that they would know, and they would have nothing else to compare them with.
And unless they somehow managed to find a way out of the movie theatre and gain access to the outside world, they would never realise that what they had previously believed to be reality was in fact nothing more than a series of flickering images upon a screen.
So the meaning of the allegory of Plato’s Cave is this. The world in which we live and move and have our being is not real. It is actually an illusion. It only appears to be real because we have convinced ourselves that the images reflected upon our screen of consciousness are real.
But we are not condemned to spend our lives imprisoned within the confines of this illusory world of shape and form. Not only are we free to escape from the cave at any time into the wider world of reality beyond, but it was the purpose of the Greek Mystery Schools to show how this could be done.
The highest good
This ultimate goal of all human life was described by Aristotle, who was Plato’s most famous pupil, as “the highest good”. This was in turn referred to by the Romans as the Summum Bonum of life, or highest truth to which any human being could aspire.
And this is where the words of Plato and those of Jesus begin to coalesce into a common theme. For if the world in which we live is not real but is actually an illusion, then how would we know? Only by escaping from this illusory world and discovering a new world of Reality (Truth) beyond.
And if we were able to discover this world of Reality for ourselves, we would then know that what we used to think of as the real world was not real at all. In other words, we would then wake up and know the “Truth”, and this “Truth” would set us free from the limitations of our old dream world.
And this, in a nutshell, was the same message that was delivered by Jesus, and was the reason why he came into the world. He came to bear witness to the living “Truth” that existed within himself, and to point out that this same “Truth” also existed inside each one of us.
Modern Christian preachers would have us believe that we are all sinners, and that Jesus died upon the cross to save us from our sins. Sadly, they have allowed their own ignorance to blind themselves from the Truth. Jesus did not come to the earth to die. He came to teach us how to live.
“I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly”. (John 10: 10)
The idea that there exists another level of Reality that is our true self was not confined to Plato or to Jesus. It has in fact been the fundamental truth attested to by the founders of every major religion in the history of the earth. And every religion has a special name for this underlying Reality.
In the fifth century B.C., the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu founded the philosophy of Taoism. It was centred on the principle of Tao. Tao was the foundation of all creation. Heaven and earth were its garments, yet it remained immutable amid all the changing fortunes of life.
No words could describe its real nature, for it was beyond the capacity of the human mind to express. Referring to this Tao Lao Tsu confessed: “The Tao which can be expressed in words is not the eternal Tao; the name which can be uttered is not its eternal name”. (Tao Te Ching)
According to wisdom of the Vedas, which became the foundation of Hinduism, there existed one single, eternal, immanent Reality which was called Brahman. This unchanging Reality was the source of the manifested world, but was unaffected by the ebb and flow of creation.
In Zen Buddhism, this underlying Reality was simply referred to as Sunyata (the void or emptiness) or Tathata (suchness), because it was beyond description. No thought, word or quality could serve to clothe its mysterious being.
For the Sufi masters who practised the mystical teachings of Islam, this goal of perfection was called Ihsan, or union with Allah, and their ascetic practices were devoted towards the purification of the outer self in order to achieve unison with this ultimate Reality within.
Union with the Divine
All of the world religions have been driven by this common theme that a true world of Reality exists, and that it exists within the heart of every man and woman. And because it exists inside of ourselves, every one of us can escape from this illusory world of tears and achieve union with the Divine.
The Buddha called this union with the Divine Nirvana, which literally means “blown out”, like a candle in the wind. It is the extinguishing of the individual personality and the awakening of the universal spirit within. In the words of the Buddha: “The dewdrop slips into the shining sea”.
The Hindus referred to it by the Sanskrit term Mukti or Moksha, meaning liberation or enlightenment. This was not something new to be gained, but merely an awakening to our real nature. We simply become freed from the mistaken idea that we are bound by our limited personality.
Jesus called this inner state of supreme Reality the “Kingdom of God”. It is important to note here that the “Kingdom of God” should not be confused with the “Kingdom of Heaven”, as so many Biblical scholars tend to do today. They are two completely different things.
When Jesus talked about the “Kingdom of Heaven”, he was talking about a heavenly realm beyond this world that was populated by angels and archangels who acted as his servants and guardians. For as he explained to Pontius Pilate at the time of his trial:
“My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews”. (John 18: 36)
Instead, when he spoke about this “Kingdom of God”, he explained that it was a state of being that existed inside the heart of every man and woman, rather than a heavenly world that was inhabited by other angelic beings. For, as he explained to his disciples:
“The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or lo there! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you”. (Luke 17: 20-21)
This “Kingdom of God” described by Jesus is not remote from us. It is in fact the life force that animates our sense of identity. And although we may think that it is part of our limited physical body, this state of immortality actually exists beyond the boundaries of space as well as of time itself.
The great I AM
According to St. John, when Jesus was preaching to the Jews in the temple at Jerusalem, he told them that Abraham himself, the founding patriarch of Judaism, “rejoiced to see his day”. And when the Jews asked him how this was possible since he was “not yet fifty years old”, Jesus replied:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am”. (John 8: 58)
In fact he went further, by announcing that “I and my Father are one”. (John 10: 30) The Jews were so enraged that “they took up stones to cast at him”, because he not only claimed to be the son of God, but because he also used the same words that God did when speaking to Moses:
“And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you”. (Exodus 3: 14)
But when the crowd picked up stones to kill him for blasphemy, and for daring to equate himself with God, Jesus responded: “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods”. (John 10: 34) In other words, Jesus was not only saying that he was divine, but that all of us are as well.
Sadly, this message of mankind’s fundamental divinity was rejected by the Jewish leaders of that time, just as it is rejected today by those lieutenants of the Church who pontificate on matters of Church doctrine. They obviously prefer that we remain chained within Plato’s Cave.
And we in turn have simply allowed ourselves to be fooled into believing that we are imprisoned within our limited bodies, and are doomed to end our lives in suffering and in death. But this is not the truth. Our fears are nothing more that the phantasms of misguided minds.
The Truth within
So what exactly is this I AM that Jesus was referring to? And the answer could not be more simple. The I AM is a state of being. It is that sense of identity that resides inside each one of us, and is the foundation of our very personalities. It is the inner feeling that we exist as individual beings.
The I AM that Jesus identified with is the same I AM that each one of us experiences at every moment of our lives. We think that this I AM feeling is somehow produced inside of us, and is dependent on the health of our physical bodies. We also think that it dies when the body dies.
But this I AM is ageless. It never grows old. It is the same now as it was when we were born. It is the same now as it will be when we are old. This sense of I AM does not fade when we get sick, or get diminished if we should happen to lose an arm or a leg. Our sense of being is unchanged.
What Jesus came to teach us is that this I AM sensation is REAL. In fact it is the ONLY thing that is real. The riddle of life is that while the I AM somehow attaches itself to a whole range of different states of mind, only the I AM is real, and all these other states are unreal.
So when we dream at night, our sense of the I AM is real, but the dream is not. And if we should happen to be in a hallucinogenic state, the I AM is real but the drugged state isn’t. In the same way, visions are unreal, as are hypnotic states. And so is our waking world.
It is the experience of every person that our waking world mysteriously appears when we wake up in the morning, and then disappears every night when we fall asleep. This alone should be enough to convince us that our waking world is evanescent, and is little more than a series of fleeting images upon the screen of consciousness.
So to carry this analogy further, every person who is alive today lives in a dream world that is inhabited by other dream beings. Even our personalities are unreal. They are merely the clothes that we have chosen to wear to cover up the I AM sensation inside of ourselves.
So if I say that I AM happy or sad, it is the I AM that is real, while the idea that I am happy or sad is not. And so it is for every other idea that we might have as an individual. And what binds us to this world of illusion are our thoughts and our desires, and the actions of the mind.
The I AM may be likened to the Sun. In fact in some Mystery Schools it is portrayed as an Inner Sun. And the actions of the mind can be likened to the ripples on the water of a lake, or the clouds that blot the appearance of the Sun in the sky.
When the surface of a lake is completely calm, it reflects the perfect image of the Sun. But when the surface is disturbed, say by the actions of the wind, then ripples occur which spread across the lake. The single image of the Sun now disappears, and is replaced by thousands of tiny suns reflected upon the waves.
Or suppose that there is a perfectly clear sky in which there is nothing to obscure the image of the Sun. But if the sky should become filled with dark clouds, then the image of the Sun disappears, even though it has not changed and continues to shine as brightly as before.
Thoughts and desires represent the ripples on the water or the clouds in the sky. And all that is needed to restore the image of the Sun in all its glory, is to get rid of the clouds that have gathered in the sky, or calm the waters of the lake. You don’t need to do anything to the Sun.
So in order to escape from the illusory world in which we have become imprisoned, we simply have to hold on to the feeling of I AM above all else, and then disregard all those other thoughts and desires that occupy our minds. This is all we have to do to become united with the eternal I AM.
By simply focusing our minds upon the sense of I AM as we go about our daily business, it will draw us in. This inner I AM will then steadily expand within us until we become one with the entire universe, and we reach that moment of recognition when we realise that the I AM inside of us IS GOD.
There is nothing new to be attained. No higher state of consciousness needs to be acquired. There is no intervention by a higher power, nor is any remission of sin required to achieve this union with the Divine. The sense of the I AM that you feel at this very moment is THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
THIS is the Truth that makes us free.
To be concluded in Part Two.
Allan, Plato's Cave, October 24, 2016, 11:36 am
Scott: My name is Scott Paton. I am talking today with Allan Colston. He is the author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac”. This is a book about prophecy.
For those listeners who may be new to this topic, this is another in the series “Signs of the Times”. Welcome Allan to this Podcast. It has been quite a while since we last chatted. How have you been keeping?
I’m fine Scott. Thanks for asking. Glad to be with you once again.
Scott: Since we last spoke, the world seems to have become a much more dangerous and unstable place. What are your thoughts about it all?
I must say that I tend to agree with you. In fact I have been giving quite a lot of thought lately to the works of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. As a matter of interest Scott, have you ever read any of his works?
Scott: No. I have to admit that I haven’t.
Well I’m not surprised. Very few people have. In fact, outside of those university scholars who are required to study his work, there are probably no more than a dozen or so people in any given year who take the trouble to read his books.
Anyway, even though Plato’s ideas were formulated well over two thousand years ago, they seem as relevant today as when they were first recorded. And they seem particularly appropriate in light of the sort of things that have been happening around the planet recently.
In Book VIII of his most famous work entitled The Republic, Plato discusses various forms of government, starting with the ideal state and then descending through various other stages until they reach the lowest state of all, which is the enslavement of the people.
In Plato’s view, the ideal state of mankind is what he called Aristocracy, where people are ruled by a philosopher king, who is not only schooled in the art of government, but who devotes his life to the welfare of his people and promotes wisdom, justice and equality for all before the law.
He then went on to argue that no system of government, however perfect, could endure forever. In time, even as good a system as Aristocracy would inevitably degenerate into other less desirable systems, dragged down by the weight of human frailty.
Plato then listed various other forms of government, and referred to them in descending order, starting with Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy and then Tyranny. For example, a Timocratic government would be comprised of a ruling class of military generals or warrior kings.
But over time these Timocratic rulers would begin to be seduced by the lure of material wealth, and their rule would give way to Oligarchy, in which the rich would become the ruling class, and an increasing divide would grow between those who had wealth and those who did not.
This Oligarchic form of government would give way in turn to Democracy, in which each citizen participated in the choice of the ruler, and power was distributed equally among the people. In short, it would be a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Scott: So surely then Allan, according to Plato, democracy would seem to be a very desirable form of government.
You might think so Scott, but you would be wrong. In fact Plato had nothing good to say about democracy. And this is why his words have resonated so much with me recently. For in his book Plato went on to describe how democracy would inevitably lead to tyranny.
Although a truly democratic form of government might appear on the surface to be desirable, in the end all democracies fail – and for the same reason. They all carry within them the seeds of their own demise, embedded within what appears to be their greatest virtue.
A government of the people is elected by the people. Not some of the people, but all of the people. Or at least all those who turn up on election day and register their votes. Under this form of government, every vote carries the same value, regardless of the individual involved.
And here lies the rub. As an Indian friend of mine remarked many years ago, democracy is Sudrocracy. At the time I was struck by just how apt that analogy was. For according to their ancient traditions, Hindu society was divided up into four classes or castes.
The highest level of society was represented by the Brahmin or priestly class. Then came the Kshatriyas the warrior or merchant class, followed by the Vaishyas who were mainly farmers. Last of all came the Sudras, which included what we would today call manual labourers.
So in the words of my friend, a Sudrocracy would be a democracy that would be dominated by its lowest common denominator. It would be an electorate determined by a popular vote that would be drawn from the lowest classes of society, as well as the least educated and the least informed.
In order to thrive, every democracy needs an informed electorate, consisting of a majority of the voting public who understand the critical issues that confront that society, and then have the insight to select the right people to deal with these challenges.
But as Plato pointed out, in a complex society, as more and more problems arose in the course of the day-to-day management of human affairs, so those who were elected to solve these problems would find it increasingly difficult to achieve results that satisfied all sectors of society.
These differences would then lead to conflicting views as to how best to proceed, which would split people into opposing parties that would become more and more hostile towards one another. Finally, when matters descended into gridlock, the people would cry out for a saviour.
So the critical flaw with democracy, according to Plato, is that this system of government would inevitably splinter into opposing groups, with each faction operating in a more and more undisciplined and unrestrained way, which would leave them vulnerable to any clever demagogue who came along.
This populous leader could then easily stoke the fears of the public by targeting some group or other who he claimed were responsible for all their problems, and then announce that he alone had the power to save them from this enemy, if only he was granted the power to do so.
Then according to Plato, once that leader had gained power, he would use his power to remove the best social elements and individuals who might challenge his authority, while rewarding those who exhibited the worst qualities. In this way that society would descend into tyranny.
Now you can probably guess where I am going with all this Scott, and you would be right. But then again you would also be wrong, if you will allow me to explain.
Scott: You speak in riddles my friend. Anyway, carry on, the floor is yours.
First of all, we need to remember that Plato’s Republic was a philosophical work, and his thoughts on various forms of government were never intended to be a prescriptive diagnosis on the rise and fall of governments, but rather a shrewd analysis of human failings when it came to the abuse of power.
After all, it was the 19th century British politician Lord Acton who echoed Plato’s argument when he said: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. And then he went on to say something even more telling: “Great men are almost always bad men”.
Furthermore, we hardly need to be reminded that over the course of roughly two and a half thousand years since Plato was alive, there has never been a single instance of a historical leader who fulfilled all the requirements of his “Aristocracy” or philosopher king.
Nor is there likely to be one until the return of the Saviour and the long awaited thousand years of peace.
Instead the history of the world has been replete with reprehensible leaders who, once they have tasted power, have turned into autocratic monsters who have preyed upon and enslaved their people. And what is more alarming is that this process has been getting significantly worse over time.
Within the last hundred years there have been more dictators than at any previous time in our recorded history. And as a result of their actions hundreds of millions of innocent souls have lost their lives simply because they had the misfortune of being born during their reigns of terror.
In fact there have so many Scott, that I would hazard a guess that most people today would be hard pressed to remember more than a few of them.
Scott: Well of course we all know about Hitler and Stalin.
Naturally, because they were the ones who caused the greatest number of victims. But there have been so many others who have been equally ruthless in their pursuit of power. And they keep on coming. In fact you could say that we are now living in an age of tyrants.
Of course we all remember Hitler because of his crusade to create a superior Aryan race that led to the liquidation of six million Jews in the gas chambers, as well as for his lust for world domination that led to the second world war that almost wiped out an entire generation of young men.
And although Stalin was notorious for setting up gulags, or concentration camps that were responsible for the death of millions of Russians, we shouldn’t forget that Lenin was equally ruthless. He even arranged for the assassination of his rival Leon Trotsky in Mexico City by means of an ice-pick.
Lenin was also the source of various quotations that have been embraced by dictators ever since, such as: “If you tell a lie often enough, people will come to accept it as the truth”, and “Give us a child for eight years and he will be a revolutionary forever”.
But in addition to those three there have also been tyrants like Benito Mussolini in Italy, General Francisco Franco of Spain, Josip Broz Tito in what was then Yugoslavia, as well as his countryman Slobodan Miloševic, who became known as the butcher of the Balkans.
In Asia there have been leaders like Chairman Mao of China, who murdered millions of his own citizens in the 1960’s under the banner of what became known as the “Cultural Revolution”. His brutal campaign was matched by that of Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge uprising in Cambodia in the 1970’s.
In North Korea, the country has been ruled by three generations of ruthless dictators, starting with Kim-il Sung, then Kim Jong-il, and now Kim Jong-un. And in North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh presided over a one-party state that killed tens of thousands during the land reforms of the 1950’s.
In the Middle East, Hafez al Assad, the father of the present brutal leader in Syria, gained control of the country through a coup that led to the death of tens of thousands of Syrians. But even he paled into insignificance when compared to Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran.
And in Africa, where the tribal system has traditionally been built around a central chief, dictatorship has become the preferred form of government, that has produced sadistic leaders like Gaddafi of Libya, Idi Amin of Uganda, Sese Seko Mobutu of the Congo and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
And I’m just getting started. In fact a search of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia under the title of dictators, reveals a list of over one hundred and eighty names in various parts of the world since the beginning of the 20th century, and most of them during the last fifty years.
Anyway Scott, I hardly need to belabour the fact that the world has witnessed a multitude of unscrupulous leaders who have gained power, only to use that power to enslave their own people and kill those who have had the courage to oppose them.
However, there is perhaps one other salient point that deserves to be mentioned, and that is that all of the dictators mentioned here have been men, which I suppose is a persuasive argument for electing women as leaders, rather than men. What do you think Scott?
Scott: You’ve got a good point there Allan. But how does that square with Plato’s view that democracies carry within them the seeds of their own demise?
That’s a good question Scott. And in answer allow me to present you with a perfect example of what Plato was writing about. Consider the modern country of Turkey, and in particular its current leader and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan was born in Istanbul in 1954, so he is now 64 years old. After spending his early childhood in the town of Rize on the Black Sea, his family moved back to Istanbul when he was thirteen. And after finishing high school, he went on to study business administration.
But it was on the soccer field that the young Erdogan first came to the attention of the public, when he became a semi-professional footballer for a local club in Istanbul. It is probably not a surprise to discover that the stadium where he once played is now named after him.
His political career first blossomed in 1994, when he was elected as the Mayor of Istanbul. In spite of fears that he might impose Islamic law, he proved to be a pragmatic administrator who achieved spectacular success by solving problems like traffic gridlock, water shortages and pollution.
In fact you can say Scott, that Erdogan’s track record as an administrator was a model for aspiring politicians everywhere. But despite this early success, he was imprisoned in 1998 for reciting a poem in public that was deemed to be an incitement to violence and racial hatred.
Scott: So Allan, was he forced to give up his position as mayor?
Yes Scott, he was. He was also banned from all political activity. But the authorities could not keep him inactive for long. In 2001, Erdogan established a new political party known as the Justice and Development party, also known as the AKP.
In the following year, the AKP won a landslide election victory, winning nearly two-thirds of the seats. However, these results were cancelled in December 2002. New elections were held, and this time Erdogan was not only elected to parliament, but was chosen as Prime Minister as well.
Under his guidance, the Turkish economy made a spectacular recovery, and for the better part of the next decade was the envy of Muslim countries everywhere. In addition, Erdogan opted for a policy of good relations with all of the surrounding states which ensured nation-wide stability.
During this period Erdogan enjoyed unparalleled success, and won three consecutive elections, all with an increased margin of popular support. Under his leadership Turkey reached the pinnacle of an ideal democratic society. Yet it all began to unravel from within inside of a few short months.
Scott: So what caused things to change so quickly?
Well Scott, it all began in May 2013 when a handful of protestors gathered to complain about the government’s decision to convert Istanbul’s Gezi park into an urban development project. When the police used tear gas to break up this demonstration, more and more protestors began to arrive.
Faced with the largest mass protest in more than a decade, Erdogan responded in heavy-handed fashion by arresting sixteen protestors, including the sons of three of his government ministers, and charged them with corruption, setting off a storm of protests across the country.
It was at this time that five audio recordings appeared on YouTube in which Erdogan appeared to be telling his son to hide very large sums of money. Although Erdogan acknowledged that the voice was his, he claimed that the recordings had been tampered with to include false information.
It was in the aftermath of this uproar, that the ruling party announced that Erdogan would resign as Prime Minister and stand for the office of President in the upcoming elections. And in August 2014 he was elected with a majority of 52% of the popular vote.
Erdogan had already begun to reveal strong authoritarian tendencies before he was elected President, but it was his response to the attempted coup just a few months ago that completed his transformation from pragmatic politician to yet another ruthless dictator.
Scott: Perhaps you could just recap what happened at the time.
Certainly Scott. On 15th July 2016, while President Erdogan was on holiday at Marmaris, a tourist resort on the shoreline of the Turkish Riviera, a group of military officers launched an attempted coup. Fortunately, Erdogan was able to fly back to Istanbul in time to quell this rebellion.
No sooner had this insurrection been suppressed, when Erdogan blamed an exiled cleric by the name of Fethullah Gulen for organising the attempted coup. What made this surprising to many was that Gulen was living in Pennsylvania at the time, and had been there since 1999.
Gulen was a former Imam, or Muslim preacher, who had once been an ally of Erdogan. He had founded what became known as the Gulen movement. It was a movement that promoted a tolerant form of Islam based on altruism, education and hard work. It also supported multi-party democracy.
The former alliance between Erdogan and Gulen turned sour in 2013, when Erdogan accused Gulen of being behind the accusations of corruption that were levelled against him and his son that I mentioned earlier, and of the millions of dollars that were secretly stashed away.
Erdogan immediately turned his wrath on all those who he claimed were followers of the Gulen movement in Turkey. In addition, he denounced Gulen as a terrorist, and demanded that he be extradited by the United States back to Turkey. As of now, we still do not know how they will respond.
But what justifies Erdogan’s inclusion in the list of dictators who have oppressed their own people, was his ruthless response to the attempted coup. He immediately declared a state of emergency for three months, giving himself sweeping powers to do whatever he wished.
And over the period of the last two months or so, more than 81,000 people have either lost their jobs or been arrested, including two provincial mayors, 24 district mayors, 9,000 military and security forces, as well as judges, school teachers, police, journalists and others.
In fact, President Erdogan even ordered the release of 38,000 prisoners from their cells in order to make room for all the new arrivals. But there’s an ironic twist to all this Scott. None of these reprisals would have happened if it had not been for one man’s thumb.
Scott: What exactly do you mean Allan?
Well Scott, as I explained earlier, when the attempted coup in Turkey began, President Erdogan was relaxing at the Marmaris resort on the coast of the Mediterranean sea, when he received a telephone call from a military commander in Istanbul saying that his life was in danger.
He was told that three Blackhawk helicopters loaded with special forces had been despatched to his resort with orders to capture or kill him, and that he only had minutes in which to escape. In a panic, Erdogan was whisked away under armed guard to his private jet waiting at a nearby airfield.
As it turned out, the helicopters arrived a few minutes later and armed troops stormed into the resort in search of the president. But what they did not know at the time was that Erdogan was not staying at the hotel itself, but at a private villa next door that had been loaned to him by a friend.
So, as it turned out, that warning phone call was undoubtedly responsible for saving Erdogan’s life. But the threat did not end there, because in addition to the helicopters loaded with special forces, two F-16 fighter jets were searching the area for any signs of the presidential plane.
But when the pilots of Erdogan’s twin-engined Gulfstream jet realised that they were being targeted by the approaching F-16’s, they altered the electronic signal emitted by their transponder to THY 8456, to make it seem as if they were a routine civilian Turkish Airline flight.
And this is where the thumb comes in. For at the very moment when the F-16 fighter jets approached the president’s plane, one of the pilots had his thumb on the missile release button. If he had just pressed that button, he would undoubtedly have changed the future course of history.
On such tiny things do the fates of entire countries sometimes depend. But in an equally strange way, what happened that night in the skies over Turkey also contributed to the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy about the events that are predicted to happen in the Middle East during the end times.
Scott: Why do you say that, Allan?
As I have pointed out many times on my Blog Scott, the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel predicted that there would come a time, during what he called the “Latter Days”, when a coalition of armies would gather on the borders of Israel.
These armies would come from the “north parts”, which Biblical scholars believe is a reference to Russia, as well as from places like “Meshech, Tubal, Gomer and Togarmah”, which are ancient names for parts of what is now modern Turkey. Ezekiel also refers specifically to Persia, which is now Iran.
It is also undoubtedly significant that one of the first things President Erdogan did after he had suppressed the abortive coup, was to travel to Moscow to meet with Putin, to restore economic relations that had been damaged after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane the previous year.
So now we have three dictators that have joined into an alliance together, Putin, Erdogan and the Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran. I don’t think this is a coincidence Scott. In fact I believe that it brings us ever closer to the dire events predicted by St. John in his book of Revelation.
In fact, as the increasing numbers of dictators all around the world show, democracy is in trouble all over the planet. It is assailed by fear. As history has demonstrated, tyranny is born out of fear. It is sustained by fear. It is ruled by fear, and it is ultimately destroyed by forces generated by fear.
And so Scott, I guess I could sum this all up in the following words. We seem to be living in an age of tyrants, where an encroaching darkness is stealing across the planet, slowly swallowing up all the countries of the world, and enslaving good men and women everywhere as it does so.
And this brings us to the United States, where the coming election is probably one of the most important in their history. Voters are faced with a choice between two starkly contrasting candidates. On the one hand there is Hillary Clinton, who is regarded as a threat and distrusted by many.
And then there is the phenomenon of Donald Trump, who claims to represent the best interests of all Americans, but then goes on to brand Mexicans, Muslims and migrants as the enemy, and who appears to display all the qualities that are the hallmark of a classic despot.
So the world waits to see what they will decide. Will voters preserve the principles that have made the United States the bastion of democracy for the last two hundred years or more, or will they vote for their fears and allow their country to descend into tyranny, just as Plato so long ago predicted?
Scott: Thanks Allan. Once again you have given us a lot to think about. I hope that we can get together soon and continue this discussion.
Meanwhile, you have been listening to Allan Colston, author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac“. Do join us again for our next Podcast in the series titled “Signs of the Times”.
Allan, AUDIO, Signs of the Times, September 11, 2016, 1:04 pm
In previous instalments we have explored in detail the event which the Old Testament prophets called “The Great and Terrible Day of the Lord”. We have seen WHAT will happen, WHY it will happen, WHERE it will happen and WHEN it will happen. Just one question remains.
That question is, if earth is facing a cosmic catastrophe in the near future as a result of “fire and brimstone” falling from the sky, then what can or should we do about it?
In answer, the following extract is taken from the conclusion of The Last Days of Tolemac, where the Oracle of Tolemac responds to questions relating to the events that are predicted to unfold in the last days of this current epoch of humanity.
Modern man prides himself on his great intelligence. Of all the species that have ever lived upon the earth he believes he is the most intelligent. He also believes that modern civilization is the highest form of culture that has ever existed on the planet.
In terms of understanding the world and the heavens of which it is a part, he believes that modern scientific knowledge is more advanced than anything that has been known in any other age. He believes that the technological marvels of today are better than those developed by any other culture in the past.
Yet for all his vast knowledge of science and his ability to create technical wonders, modern man remains a mystery to himself. He does not know who he really is or what he can become. He remains but a child in the Great School of Life. He does not yet know the true purpose of his life or the glorious future that awaits him.
Q: What is the purpose of life?
A: Man is born on the earth to learn his true identity. All the varied experiences of life are designed so that man may finally come to know who he really is. Over the entrance to the ancient Greek Temple of Apollo in Delphi, two words were inscribed in letters of gold. These words were “Know Thyself”.
What is the purpose of this schoolroom of life? What is the meaning of all the loves, the joys, the sorrows, misery and death? The lesson to be learned in life is that the soul should come to experience itself as it really is. It should finally come to know the true nature of the “I Am” that lives in the heart of every soul.
Modern man believes that he is a frail creature confined to a physical body that is limited in time and space. He does not know that his basic nature is divine, and that within his apparent limited body lie powers beyond his imagination. Within the nature of man lie all the mysteries of the universe. And those who come to know themselves discover the secrets to these mysteries and the power to control the universe.
In the evolutionary path of life, the soul of every person progresses through many forms over many lifetimes. This evolutionary path is the Path of Returning. It is the path of progress towards Everlasting Light. It is the path that every person must travel. It is the destiny of every person now living on the earth that they will one day reach the glory of this Everlasting Light.
This personal journey of discovery is a journey which had its beginning in the hoary mists of ages past. It is a journey that will not end for many ages to come. But along this Path of Returning there are certain times when a great evolutionary opportunity occurs. The present time on earth is one of these opportunities.
Q: What is this opportunity?
A: It is the opportunity to grow in consciousness to a new level of being. Just as a caterpillar emerges from its chrysalis in the form of a butterfly, and is able to soar to heights undreamed of when it was a caterpillar, so humanity today has the opportunity to inherit a new body that will free them from the limitations of the past.
But although this same opportunity is offered to every person now living on the earth, not every person is ready to graduate to this new level of being. Not everybody has reached the same point in their evolutionary growth. Progress in life is similar to the different grades that characterize your schools on earth.
In your graduated system of teaching pupils begin their schooling in the lowest grade. These children progress by learning the lessons associated with each grade. Once they have mastered the lessons of their existing grade they are allowed to move on to the next grade. Finally there comes a day when their schooling ends. They graduate and are free to enter into the great world beyond. As it is in school so it is in life.
The earth is approaching its day of graduation. The day is dawning when every person on the earth will be tested in the Great School of Life. They will undergo the Great Initiation. Those who pass these tests of initiation will experience a new beginning and a new life that will be more glorious than anything they can imagine. It will be a life of freedom and unrestricted joy.
But not everyone is ready to accept this opportunity to move into a higher dimension. There are many with little experience of life who are still in the lower grades. They still have much to learn. Others are content with the level they are at. But because everyone is free to choose the pace at which they wish to grow, nobody is forced to progress to these higher levels of life. Yet those who miss out on this chance to graduate now will pay a heavy price.
Q: What price will they have to pay?
A: Those who fail this initiation will have to start again. They will have to go back to the beginning. Their soul progression will be set back by millions of years in time. Once again they will have to go back to the stage of living in caves. It will take many thousands of lifetimes before they once again reach the end of another Grand Cycle of life.
But although this may seem like retrogression from a physical point of view, it will provide the soul with more time to grow and learn the lessons of life. From the point of view of spiritual evolution the soul will continue to progress until it will once again have the chance to accept the new. If it fails again, it will once again have to go back to the beginning.
If only modern man understood the opportunity that now confronts him. If he only knew how great a chance this is in the development of his soul. If he only knew how long he would be detained if he fails. If he only knew how much suffering he would have to endure to reach this point again, he would immediately change his ways and all of earth’s problems would be solved. But modern man is stubborn in his ways. He is not yet willing to change.
Q: Why is he unwilling to change?
A: He does not want to change because he is satisfied with his present way of life. He would rather pursue comfort and pleasure than face the challenge of transformation. By ignoring all the signs that point to the coming changes on the earth, he hopes that they can be avoided. But he fails to see that it his present way of life that is leading to disaster.
It has always been this way at the end of every Grand Cycle of time.This was the way it was in the days of Noah before the great flood. This was the way it was in the last days of Tolemac. This is the way that Jesus predicted it would be in the days leading up to his return.
“But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” (Matthew 24: 37-39)
There will be many who will not listen to the warnings of Jesus and of the prophets. They will be the ones who will take the broad way of life that leads to destruction. But there will be others who will listen. It is for them that these words are written.
Q: Why is it necessary to undergo all these disasters?
A: It is not necessary to undergo all these disasters. If your societies had followed the teachings of the wise men and women of the past your world would not be in the state it is today and the earth would not have to undergo these catastrophic changes.
If that had happened then the changes that would take place as the earth moved into the higher energies of the Age of Aquarius would have been harmonious and beautiful. There would have been no need for these disasters. It is man’s own thinking that is the cause of the consequences that must now unfold on your planet.
It is his selfishness, his greed and his callous disregard for the welfare of those who share the world with him that are the causes of these catastrophes. For century after century humanity has suffered because of man’s inhumanity to man. But this will at last come to an end.
The chaos and disaster that will soon occur on the earth is tragic. But it would be worse if this suffering were to be allowed to continue. The catastrophes that are to come are not the result of divine revenge for the evils that have taken place on earth. They are the consequences of past actions and the present way of life.
Catastrophe comes so that man may experience the consequences of his thoughts and his actions. They come so that he might learn from these experiences. If these consequences seem harsh it is because the actions that are the causes of these catastrophes have been equally harsh. But out of this harshness will come great beauty and good.
For out of these catastrophes humanity will emerge chastened and purified. The humanity that will inherit the new heaven and the new earth will arise in glory from the ashes of the past. The new earth will be free at last to fulfill its divine potential and its people will be supreme examples of that purpose.
Q: What other changes will take place on earth?
A: The entire surface of the earth will be changed. The shapes of the continents themselves will change. Some land masses will sink below the seas. Others will rise from the deep. The earth will be totally transformed when the seas rage and the mountains again “skip like young lambs” .
Q: Why must these changes take place?
A: To understand why these changes must take place and why certain lands will be affected more than others, it is necessary to remember what “karmic cleansing” means and why it happens.
When thoughts of negativity lead to acts of violence and death, these negative vibrations become linked with those places where these violent acts occurred. In the higher dimensions of life this negativity becomes imprinted on these places, and these negative influences remain for long periods of time. Unless they are removed, they continue to harm the people who live there.
People who are psychically gifted will know from personal experience how certain places like ancient battlefields still harbour powerful negative influences. The purpose of karmic cleansing is to purify these places so that the negative influences associated with them are permanently erased.
When these negative vibrations grow to the point where they affect large parts of the earth, they can only be removed by means of global transformation. Only by means of global cleansing can those people who inherit the “new earth” live free from the negative influences of the past.
Nature has many ways to cleanse the earth. In past ages it has used the forces of fire, wind and water to purify the earth. But the most common way is by water. When parts of the land become contaminated by the negativity caused by centuries of violence, hatred and oppression, these lands are cleansed by sinking beneath the waves. It is the action of water over many thousands of years of time that gradually washes away the mental stains of the past.
Sometimes this cleansing process can be achieved by burying the land under ice for long periods of time, or by means of hurricanes or through the purifying effects of fire. In the coming cleansing that is about to take place on earth, all of these forces will be used.
Q: What can people do to prepare for these disasters?
A: There is little that needs to be done outwardly to prepare for these disasters. For just as it is man’s thinking that is the cause of the chaos that is to come, so it is in man’s thinking that healing needs to take place. Those who wish to avoid these disasters need to prepare within themselves.
As you go about your daily duties try to focus on the higher truth. Try to remember that every person that you meet is a divine being no matter what their behaviour or their outer appearance. Try to treat them as you would like them to treat you. This is the test given by Jesus for those who will qualify for the golden age.
“Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was hungry, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
“Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, and fed thee? Or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? Or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?”
“And the King shall answer and say unto them, verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
“Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was hungry, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.”
“Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee hungry, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”
“And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.” (Matthew 25: 34-46)
The test for those who will be saved will be the same as for those who will be condemned. It will not depend on how much wealth they have, or what position they have achieved in life, or how much education they have. It will depend on how they have treated those who have crossed their path in life.
Q: Are there any places of safety to escape from these disasters?
A: When these natural disasters begin to take place on earth, people everywhere will be desperate to find places where they can be safe. If there is no security to be found on the surface of the earth to escape the fiery hail falling from the sky, many will try to hide under the ground.
Many governments of the world have built large underground shelters that are designed to be used in such cases of emergency. Many of these shelters are linked together by means of tunnels. Yet even these refuges will not be spared from these disasters. No bomb-proof shelter will be safe.
No cavern will be deep enough to escape these disasters. The tunnels will be flooded by inrushing water while the shelters will be crushed by collapsing rocks.Those who are not karmically involved in these disasters do not need to worry about their safety.
They will be saved in many different ways. Some of them will seem to be miraculous. For even if they should find themselves caught in the middle of these catastrophes these people will come to no harm. But those who are the cause of these events will find no place to hide.
Q: Should we warn other people about these disasters?
A: Jesus said that at the time of the end people would be divided into two groups. There would be those who would listen to the warnings of the prophets and the omens occurring in the world and act on them. And there would be others who would ignore these predictions and carry on living as before. They would be in the vast majority.
Jesus said that those who listened to these warnings and acted upon them would be saved. Those who ignored them would not.
“Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.”
“And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7: 24-27)
Those who are wise will listen to these warnings. They will prepare for the days that are to come. The foolish will ignore these warnings and scorn those who would try to persuade them to change their ways. The wise will understand what is about to happen on the earth. The foolish will not understand.
“Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.” (Daniel 12: 10)
Most of the people living in the world today are too busy with their personal affairs to worry about prophecies about the times of the end. They are too concerned with their immediate goals in life to care about warnings of disasters to come. Besides, they will claim that those who talk about such things are focused on the negative side of life and are themselves to blame if anything disastrous should occur.
These people expect to live long productive lives just like their parents and their grandparents before them. And since they have no understanding of the true history of the past they will dismiss the very idea that a comet could strike the earth. They will also claim to have history on their side. So many predictions of disasters that were made in the past have not come true that they will reject these prophecies as well.
The doubters are convinced that life will somehow carry on as it always has. They will argue that there have always been troubles in life but these have always been overcome by human ingenuity. They will reject the idea that the universe is based on spiritual principles and that there must come a time when karmic debts will have to be paid.
We urge you to talk to people about the events that are to come and tell them about the warnings of the Bible and other holy books. Tell them about the prophecies of Jesus and of the signs that now appear on earth as omens of the latter days. Tell them that there will be catastrophes. Prepare them for what is prophesied to come. But tell them that out of these disasters will come the most glorious time in the history of the earth.
Tell them that there will be no more sorrow. There will be no more death. All suffering will end. The earthquakes, floods and winds will literally wash away the old and make way for the new. The horrors of war, misery and death will soon be banished from the world. And all of these disasters can be endured if people know that eternal life awaits them at the end.
Tell them also that they are loved. Tell them that there is still time to join those who will be saved. Tell them that guidance will be given to them if they ask. They will be guided from within. This guidance will cover every need. The only requirement is that they must be truly sincere in their desire to be saved.
Let those who will not listen go their way. Let them continue to think and act as they have done in the past. Let them continue to ignore the signs that are approaching. They will find out soon enough that these predictions will be fulfilled. As John wrote in his Book of Revelation:
“He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.” (Revelation 22: 11-12)
Q: What advice do you have for us in the days ahead?
A: Let those who would be saved follow the words of Jesus. He said that the Son of man would come like a thief in the night. He said that the time of the end would happen at a time when no one was expecting it. Many would be unprepared. Many would be caught unawares. He urged his followers to watch and pray that they would be spared the plagues of the Great Tribulation.
“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. And he spake to them a parable; behold the fig tree, and all the trees; when they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.”
“So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.”
“For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” (Luke 21: 28-36)
Let those who would be saved continue to watch and pray. For no matter how advanced a person may seem to be upon the Path of Returning to Everlasting Light, they do not know if they will be able to withstand the fire of the Great Initiation. Pray that you will be spared the trials of tribulation. Pray that you will be given guidance in the days that are to come.
Watch as world events unfold around you. Watch what happens in the land of Israel. Israel will be the spark that will light the fires of tribulation. Israel will be the key to the coming of terror upon the earth. Watch the enemies of Israel. Watch for the time when they take up arms and march with their armies against the land of Israel.
This time is rapidly approaching. Even now the enemies of Israel make plans for their destruction. Even now they assemble weapons and build up their armies. Even now a spirit of hostility is growing in the lands that surround Israel. Words of peace are being replaced with talk of war. It will not be long before action follows words.
For when the land of Israel is surrounded by the armies of its enemies that will be the time when the comet will appear. That will be the time when the asteroid will hit the earth. That will be the time when the seven year period of tribulation will begin. That will be the time when the Anti-Christ will appear. That will be the time when the Great Redeemer of mankind will soon return to earth to begin his thousand year reign of peace.
Watch and pray.
Children of the earth rejoice! As you go about the duties of your day realize that the long awaited time of your salvation has finally arrived. Realize that you are not alone. You are surrounded by the heavenly hosts. We who are the remnant of the last days of Tolemac will be with you also. We will witness with you the salvation of the earth. We will share with you the glory that is to come.
Someday soon there will be a day of singing such as has never before been heard upon the earth. It will be the sound of a single voice. This single voice will swell with a great multitude of heavenly voices. Choirs of angelic voices will be heard in unison together singing “Come home Earth, Come home, Come home”.
Then will be heard in response a chorus of all the souls upon the earth. It will be a mingling of the voices of people and of birds and of animals. There will be a harmony of sound and colour and beauty that is beyond imagining. All the souls of earth will join together in worship of the Everlasting Light. This is the Light that shines within the heart of every soul. It is the Light of the eternal “I Am”.
This is the testament of Tolemac.
This is the time of your Great Initiation.
This is the time for which you have been born.
This is the time for which you have died countless times.
This is the time of your graduation in the Great School of Life.
Allan, The Day of the Lord, July 25, 2016, 12:18 pm
Ever since St. John wrote his book of Revelation, Christians have been speculating about when the wrath of God would begin, when the elect would be “raptured” off the earth to a place of safety, and when Jesus would return to the earth in the flesh to begin his reign of a thousand years.
This speculation began almost as soon as the book was written in the first century A.D. Even St. Paul, who was the founder of the Christian church in Asia minor, was amongst those who believed that Jesus would return to the earth sooner rather than later.
But as the years passed without any sign of his return, Christian scholars began to question whether the dire events predicted by St. John might perhaps be more symbolic than real, and whether the events described in Revelation might be open to different interpretations.
According to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, most Christians today interpret the book of Revelation in any one of five different ways.
1. Historicist – that it refers to a broad view of actual history
2. Preterist – that it refers mostly to events that have already happened in the early days of the Christian era
3. Amillennialist – that the millennium described by John has already begun
4. Futurist – that the events described in Revelation are still to come
5. Idealist – that the events described by John are not real, but symbolic of the spiritual path and the battle between good and evil (View source)
But if Church scholars were uncertain about whether the events portrayed in Revelation were real or symbolic, there have always been individuals who not only indicated that these were real events that would happen in the future, but insisted that they knew when that future time would be.
In the 16th Century, a German Anabaptist prophet by the name of Melchior Hoffman announced to his followers that the Lord would return to the earth in 1533, and that the French town of Strasbourg would be the location of the New Jerusalem.
Then, some three centuries later, an American Baptist preacher called William Miller wrote:
“My principles in brief, are, that Jesus Christ will come again to this earth, cleanse, purify, and take possession of the same, with all the saints, sometime between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844″.
When March 21, 1844 came and went without the appearance of the Christ, Miller decided that his calculations had been incorrect. He therefore adopted a new date based on the “Karaite” version of the Jewish calendar, in place of the “Rabbinic” version he had used before.
This new date, Miller announced, would be April 18, 1844. When this new date again passed without Christ’s return, he responded publicly, writing: “I confess my error, and acknowledge my disappointment; yet I still believe that the day of the Lord is near, even at the door.”
Yet Miller’s error clearly had little deterrent effect on others who followed in his footsteps. Even the renowned 18th century mathematician and physicist Sir Isaac Newton could not resist this temptation, when he predicted that the Apocalypse would occur in the year 2060.
Newton was a devout Christian who believed that the Bible was a revelation from God. He also believed that biblical prophecy predicted the divinely-ordained events of the future, and that the interpretation of biblical prophecy was “a duty of the greatest moment”.
As he recorded in his alchemical papers “the holy Prophecies” of the Scripture are nothing less than “histories of things to come” (Yahuda MS 1.1, folio 16 recto). However, in the 44 years left before the year 2060, it is unlikely that even his most ardent followers are holding their breath.
One of the most famous, or perhaps notorious “date-setters” of the 21st century, depending on one’s point of view, was a retired civil engineer living in California by the name of Harold Camping, who had built a multi-million-dollar non-profit ministry known as Family Radio.
In 1992 he had published a book titled “1994?”, proclaiming that Christ’s return might be on September 6, 1994. In that book he also mentioned that 2011 could be the end of the world. Camping’s predictions used 1988 as a significant year in the events preceding the apocalypse.
In two later books, “We are Almost There!” and “To God be The Glory“, Camping said that he had found new Biblical evidence which, in his opinion and that of others mentioned by him, indicated that he was wrong about his earlier dates for the Rapture as well as for the end of the world.
Then, on the basis of this new information, Camping issued an apocalyptic warning that God’s Day of Judgement would now happen on May 21, 2011, starting with a worldwide earthquake, and that on this day Jesus Christ would return to the earth to save all true Christian believers.
When his predicted Day of Judgement arrived, millions of people around the world waited expectantly. However, once it became clear that they had not been rescued by Jesus and that the predicted earthquakes had failed to materialise, Camping had to confess that his predictions were false.
Skeptical critics took delight in lampooning Camping for his apocalyptic warnings, by pointing out that not only had he failed once before, but that he was merely the latest in a long line of “date-setters” who had all been unsuccessful in their efforts to predict the time of future Biblical events.
Other Christian preachers and scholars went even further. They used scriptural evidence to show that these apocalyptic events could never be predicted in advance, and that any attempt to do so was doomed to failure. In support of their position, they quoted from the gospel of St. Mark:
“But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father”. (Mark 13:32)
Even such an accomplished seer as Nostradamus was not immune from the temptation of “date-setting”, nor from suffering the same predictable result. In a letter which was addressed to “Henry, Second King of France”, Nostradamus wrote:
“These predictions made with the aid of astronomy and other methods, and even by the Holy Scriptures, cannot not happen.
“Had I wished I could have put a calculation of time into each quatrain; but that would not have pleased everyone, and my interpretations still less, unless your Majesty grants me enough protection to do this, so as not to give slanderers pretext for attacking me.”
Yet in spite of these cautionary words, seven quatrains out of 942 contained actual dates of reference. They were Century 1 verse 49, Century 2 verse 51, Century 3 verse 77, Century 6 verse 2, Century 8 verse 71, Century 10 verse 72, and Century 10 verse 91.
Because all of the dates listed in the above quatrains have now passed, we can say with a fair degree of accuracy that, while six out of the seven can be considered to be accurate, one of them failed spectacularly. That was the 72nd quatrain of Century 10, quoted below:
“In the year 1999, and seven months, from the sky will come the great King of Terror. He will bring back to life the great king of the Mongols. Before and after War reigns happily.”
This is one of Nostradamus’ most intriguing quatrains, because it seems to indicate that the earth will be terrorized by an object coming from the sky. But nothing of the kind happened in 1999, so from the point of view of the date quoted by Nostradamus, this quatrain must stand as a failure.
As has already been noted, Nostradamus indicated in his letter to Henry that his predictions were made “with the aid of astronomy and other methods, and even by the Holy Scriptures”. So despite his confidence that he “could have put a calculation of time into each quatrain”, it is clear that Nostradamus was as fallible as all the rest.
This did not necessarily mean that his prophecies were incorrect, but rather that the methods used to date his predictions were prone to error.
There is, however, one supreme irony in this centuries-old quest to unravel the riddle of WHEN the “Great and Terrible Day of the Lord” would occur. And that is that the vital clue to understanding the timing of this event has been staring scholars and evangelists in the face for over 2,500 years.
To understand the origin of this clue, we need to travel back in time to the early history of the Jews. In fact we need to go back to the year 587 B.C. when the Israelites were living in exile by the waters of Babylon, and to the time of the prophet Ezekiel.
In Chapter 37 of his book of prophecy recorded in the Old Testament, Ezekiel predicted that a series of events would occur during the “Latter Days”, which was a term used by Ezekiel as well as other prophets to denote the times leading up to the return of the saviour.
Ezekiel predicted that a time would come when the scattered tribes of Israel would return to the land of their fore-fathers, and that they would become a nation once more. As he wrote:
“And say unto them, thus saith the Lord God: behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them up on every side, and bring them into their own land: And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel.” (Ezekiel 37: 21-22)
This prophecy by Ezekiel became reality on May 14, 1948, when the state of Israel was officially established, following the adoption of a resolution to this effect by the United Nations General Assembly.
Ezekiel then went on to predict that soon after this time, the land of Israel would be threatened by many nations, and that the armies of these nations would surround Israel on every side. These armies would come from “the north parts”, and from countries like “Persia, Libya and Ethiopia”.
“Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say unto Gog, thus saith the Lord God; in that day when my people of Israel dwelleth safely, shalt thou not know it? And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou, and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army.”
“And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes.” (Ezekiel 38: 14-16)
According to Ezekiel, this vast mechanized army would assemble on the borders of Israel. Their goal would be to wipe out the Jewish nation once and for all, and take over their land. The Jews would be powerless to stop the mighty forces that would be arrayed against them on every side.
But just when all hope seemed to be lost and the entire Jewish nation appeared to be doomed, the Lord God would intervene and cause earthquakes to shake the land of Israel, and at the same time cause “hailstones, fire and brimstone” to rain down upon their enemies.
“And it shall come to pass at the same time when Gog shall come against the land of Israel, saith the Lord God, that my fury shall come up in my face. For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken. Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel.” (Ezekiel 38: 18-19)
“And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire and brimstone.” (Ezekiel 38: 22)
And this is where the quest to interpret the events of the “Latter Days” becomes truly remarkable, because for the last two thousand years it never seems to have occurred to Biblical scholars to link the above prediction of Ezekiel with the following passage taken from the book of Revelation.
“And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all the green grass burnt up”. (Revelation 8: 6-7)
Despite the fact that both of these quotations explicitly refer to “hail and fire mingled with blood”, Bible scholars have been blind to the obvious fact that has been staring them in the face for centuries, and that is that both of these passages refer to the same astronomical event.
The key word in both of these passages is the word “blood”. Now most scholars have jumped to the conclusion that this is a reference to human blood. But what they don’t realise is that the prophets were actually describing hail that looked like blood. In other words, the hail was blood-red in colour.
And as has previously been explained, the hail that accompanied the fire and brimstone would be coloured red as a result of the red dust particles in the tail of the comet. And it is these fiery red particles that would look like “fiery hail” when they hit the surface of the earth.
And in case anyone thinks this is just wild speculation, it is worth recalling that this would not be the first time that the Jews had been saved by “fiery hail”, or from dust that turned the waters into the colour of blood. As we read in the book of Exodus:
“And Moses and Aaron did so, as the LORD commanded; and he lifted up the rod, and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants; and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood”. (Exodus 7: 20)
“And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven: and the LORD sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground; and the LORD rained hail upon the land of Egypt”. (Exodus 9: 23)
So what this all means is that the comet “Wormwood” described in the book of Revelation is the same agent that is responsible for the destruction of the Islamic armies gathered on the borders of Israel as predicted by Ezekiel. These are not two unrelated events.
We also have additional clues that confirm this is the case. The first is that the devastation described by St. John, especially with the destruction of “Mystery Babylon” outlined in Part Four, is clearly global in extent, and is not confined to the country of Israel alone.
This is confirmed by Ezekiel in the same passage where he talks about the destruction of Gog and his armies when he states:
“Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel; So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.” (Ezekiel: 19-20)
While there does exist a significant fault line running through the Dead Sea, Israel itself is not particularly prone to earthquakes, and certainly nothing of a kind that would cause severe shaking over the entire country. In fact there have been no large earthquakes in Israel since it became a nation.
So anything that would cause “a great shaking in the land of Israel” would have to have its source elsewhere. And that would undoubtedly be the impact of the giant rock cast into the ocean that was witnessed in a dream by Efrain Rodriguez (see Part Six), and described by the prophet Nahum:
“He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth. The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein.” (Nahum 1: 4-5)
So based on the words of the prophets of the Old Testament alone, without even referring to the predictions of St. John in his book of Revelation, it is obvious that the shaking referred to in the land of Israel will be experienced everywhere on the planet.
Now some commentators have suggested that the “fire and brimstone” described by Ezekiel was merely symbolic language for modern weaponry, and that the destruction of the Islamic armies would be the result of tactical nuclear weapons, rather than something coming from outer space.
But again, this would not account for the destruction in all the other parts of the world. And it would be an improbable stretch to suggest that there would be two separate astronomical events occurring independently of one another within the short time-frame of the “Latter Days”.
And this inevitably leads to the question that has challenged Christian commentators for centuries, and that is if the world is soon to be afflicted by a world-wide catastrophe as predicted by St. John, will anyone be spared from the great tribulation that will follow?
When Jesus was asked by his disciples about the events that would occur on earth in the days leading up to his return, he replied:
“And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.
” Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man”. (Luke 21: 34-36)
It is clear from the above words of Jesus that there will be some who will be “accounted worthy”, and who will escape these disasters and be spared from the trauma that is to come. In fact Jesus went on to explain what would occur, and how this miraculous event would come about.
“Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Watch ye therefore; for ye know not what hour the Lord doth come”. (Matthew 24: 40-42)
It was this enigmatic remark by Jesus that has become the basis for the Christian belief in the “Rapture”. Although the word itself does not appear in the New Testament, the rapture is derived from the Latin word rapiemur, meaning “to catch up” or “to take away”.
Among the Evangelical Christian churches of the West, particularly in the United States, there is a prevailing belief that when the rapture does occur, it will include the entire body of the church, rather than selected individuals taken from different parts of the world.
Those tele-evangelists and pastors who announce with smug confidence that they will be among those who will be taken away to be with Jesus before the great and terrible day of the Lord, have clearly never bothered to read the book of Revelation, or if they have, have failed to understand it.
When St. John came to relate his vision of the end times, he began with a series of letters which most commentators have tended to ignore. Yet they are amongst the most important passages in the entire book of Revelation. These letters are addressed to seven different churches. As John wrote:
“Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein; for the time is at hand. John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; from the seven Spirits which are before his throne.” (Revelation 1: 3-4)
John then devoted chapters two and three to the content of these letters, which were addressed to the churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea. While outwardly these letters may seem unrelated to prophecy, they actually carry a hidden meaning.
One of the best interpreters of this hidden meaning is the American engineer, businessman, author and now Christian evangelist Dr. Charles Missler. Missler was the founder of the Koinonia House ministry, which is now based in the town of Reporoa in New Zealand.
Missler has pointed out that the seven letters addressed to the churches in Asia are actually a prophetic profile of the history of the Christian church, dating from the time of the death of Jesus and continuing up to the time of his return at the end of the current age.
According to Dr. Missler, this prophetic profile covers a period of the last two thousand years, with each designated church in Asia referring to a particular period of church history. These seven periods of history may be summarised as follows:
• The church of Ephesus – the Apostolic Church
• The church of Smyrna – the Persecuted Church
• The church of Pergamos – the Married Church
• The church of Thyatira – the Medieval Church
• The church of Sardis – the Denominational Church
• The church of Philadelphia – the Missionary Church
• The church of Laodicea – the Eschatological (End Time) Church
As Dr. Missler explains in the following video (beginning at 17:15 minutes), we are now living at the time of the last period of church history. And the letter addressed to the church of Laodicea is actually directed at all those Christians who are alive today.
This letter should make it crystal clear to all those who entertain warm and fuzzy feelings about joining Jesus in heaven at the time of the rapture, that they may well be among the millions of the “faithful” who will be left behind to suffer through the tribulation, as we can see from the following lines:
“And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
“So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.
“I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and annoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten, be zealous therefore and repent.
“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne”. (Revelation 3: 14-21)
Ultimately, it will be the actions that each person has taken in the course of their lives that will decide their fate. The Bible says that those who will be chosen will be judged by the fruits of their actions, rather than by pious words. As Jesus warned his followers:
“Not every one that saith unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my father which is in heaven.
“Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out devils? And in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me ye that work iniquity.” (Matthew 7: 20-23)
On that day of decision many so-called Christians will discover that they are not among the chosen few, but have been left behind to face the horrors of the tribulation. It will be a day of great sorrow and despair. “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth”. (Matthew 24: 51)
There are millions of Christians alive today who are convinced that they will be among those who will be saved, and that they will be taken away to be with Jesus when the time of tribulation comes.
The shock that they will feel when they find out that they have been left behind will be great indeed. They will be among the many who will fail to heed the warning given by Jesus himself.
When Jesus told his disciples about the kingdom that awaited those who chose to follow him, he warned: “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many will be called, but few chosen”. (Matthew 20: 16)
Of the many Christians who are called, truly only a few will be chosen. Those that believe that they stand at the forefront of the church will be placed last, for the greatest barrier to an understanding of the light within is spiritual pride.
Those who are convinced of their own virtue will fall victim to their own folly. Of the billions of people now living on the earth, only a small portion will be chosen to take up a new body of living light. The opportunities are many but the pitfalls are great.
“Enter ye in at the straight gate, for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” (Matthew 7: 13-14)
Those people who confidently expect to be saved from the great tribulation, will be the ones who will be most likely to reject their faith once they discover that they have been left behind. They will be those of whom Jesus spoke when he said that the love of many would grow cold.
It is safe to say that most people who call themselves Christians do not realize that self-sacrifice is the price of eternal life. Jesus warned his followers that many false prophets would arise in the last days before his return to the earth to try to mislead them.
The leaders of the many denominations of the Christian church today would do well to warn their flock that they may be called upon to sacrifice their lives for their faith, just as the earliest followers of Jesus were called upon to do some two thousand years ago.
These Christians will still have a path to salvation. But first they will have to endure the fires of adversity to prove that they can overcome, even as Jesus also overcame. Only in this way can they be purified and become gold tried in the fire, and be fit to be clothed in white raiment.
Allan, The Day of the Lord, July 11, 2016, 1:42 pm
There is one persistent theme that runs through all of Bible prophecy, beginning with the Jewish prophets of the Old Testament, then continuing with the warnings of Jesus, and finally ending with the events described in the book of Revelation written by St. John.
That theme is that at the end of this current age of humanity, at a time that the Old Testament prophets called the “Last Days”, there would come a world-wide calamity in which the earth would be bombarded by “fire and brimstone” descending from the skies.
The ancient prophets referred to this day of reckoning as “The Great and Terrible Day of the Lord”. What exactly would happen at that time was only hinted at by the early prophets. Even Jesus limited himself to warnings that there would be signs in the heavens and distress among nations.
It was St. John who graphically described what would happen on this great and terrible day, when he predicted that “a great star would fall from heaven, burning as a lamp”, and that “a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea”.
What St. John did NOT say, perhaps because this was never revealed to him in his visions, was exactly WHERE this “great millstone” would be cast into the sea. But even if HE did not know, the Bible makes it clear that this would be revealed to others closer to the time of this event.
In verses 16-19 of the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we read:
“But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:
“And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit, and they shall prophesy: And I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke”. (Referring to Joel 2: 28-30)
So it should come as no surprise to discover that as we draw nearer to the events prophesied in the Bible, more and more people are beginning to experience dreams and visions portraying what is to come. One of these people is the Puerto Rican prophet Efrain Rodriguez.
Efrain began to have prophetic dreams in 1974 when he was just 16 years old. At first he kept the content of these dreams to himself and did not tell anyone about them. But as the years passed and the dreams continued, he felt called upon to publicise them.
So on June 8, 2010, he published the following comments on his website:
“Let us begin. In a dream, I was standing outside of my parents’ house in the neighborhood Piedras Blancas in San Sebastian. I stood at a place from where you can see the valley of San Sebastian, a high place where you can see the municipalities of Moca, Las Marias , Maricao and Aguadilla. (Note: These are places on the island of Puerto Rico)
“As I looked at all those places, I looked towards the distance, where you could no longer see the land, as it was almost night; then I saw a black wall at the bottom where the land ends from Aguadilla to Las Marias. I looked carefully at it and did not understand what I saw.
“I looked back towards the top of the wall and I saw white spot areas coming off its height, as if it were alive; and that’s when I realized that it was a giant tsunami, over a thousand feet high, something which human eyes have never seen in the world.
“Then, at the same time, the Lord showed me an earthquake, which made the whole Western area of the island tremble, and the earth seemed to sway like a hammock.
“After watching these two phenomena, I saw dark clouds circulating throughout the valley, like tornadoes within an undefined storm, understanding that dark clouds are a symbol of death or loss of life throughout the island.
“Then I asked the LORD, “What is this I’m seeing? You’re going to destroy our land with these three phenomena ?” and I heard a voice say: “Rebuke them” and so I did, and they disappeared.”
Since that time, and with the hindsight of education and understanding, Efrain has expanded on what he saw. In fact he has summarised this on his website in the following words:
“The impact of the asteroid will occur at 2:00 in the morning at sea, in the area west of Puerto Rico. Calculate the equivalent time in your country. The impact will stop the rotation of the Earth for three days. The time in your country at the time of the impact, in Puerto Rico, will be the time in which your country will remain for those 3 days, be it night or day.
The order of events is:
1 – The fall of the asteroid
2 – The rotation of the Earth will stop due to the impact. It will be three days of darkness in places that are not under the light of the Sun at that time.
3 – A 12 point earthquake, nearly simultaneous. It is the Presence of the Lord on Earth. It will be felt around the whole world.
4 – Impact Shock wave that will travel the world. It will come quickly because it moves at an incredible speed. It will bring winds of 300 miles per hour
5 – Tsunami/Tidal wave. It may take from seconds to hours to arrive in your country. (Depending on the distance of your country from the place of impact). All rivers will overflow due to coastal flooding.
6 – Plague/Pestilence – result of the bodies decomposed in the waters and land, not buried because of the 3 days of darkness, and due to the flooding of rivers and seas. It will be very difficult to get rid of the bodies.
7 – Scarcity. Shortages of water, food, medications and resources for at least 15 months. Martial Law will be established throughout the whole world to deal with the shortages and unrest in the population. All these events will claim millions of lives, especially the plague.
According to Efrain, the exact impact point of this asteroid will be in the Atlantic ocean near Isla de Mona, a tiny uninhabited island located just west of Puerto Rico. And if that location should prove to be correct, it will emulate another asteroid which virtually wiped out all life on earth.
In 1978, two geophysicists were exploring the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico, when they discovered the remnants of one of the largest impact craters ever to have been found on the surface of the earth. It measured 110 miles (180 kilometres) in diameter and 12 miles (20 kilometres) in depth.
 Chicxulub asteroid strike This crater, now known as the Chicxulub crater, was the site of the famous asteroid collision which destroyed the dinosaurs. But what makes this impact crater significant, is that it is located at almost the same latitude as the one foreseen by Efrain Rodriguez, just slightly further to the west.
Could this simply be a coincidence, or could nature be following a similar pattern to the events of the distant past? The relatively close proximity of the Chicxulub crater to the impact point of the asteroid revealed to Efrain Rodriguez, can be seen in the accompanying diagrams.
 Location of future asteroid strike? Now Rodriguez is not the only person to have predicted a future asteroid strike in the ocean just off the coast of Puerto Rico. Since the turn of the century many others have done so as well. In fact I was already aware of this location myself, through an unusual series of paranormal events.
Some twenty years ago, I had a psychic friend who had a series of remarkable revelatory experiences that were undoubtedly linked to end time events. On three different occasions she had a vision in which she saw a comet appearing in the sky.
She also had a visionary experience showing the destruction of my home city of Vancouver, Canada, firstly by earthquake, and then by a series of gigantic tsunamis. Some of the details were so graphic that she even saw bodies falling out of skyscrapers in the downtown area.
But by far her most intriguing psychic experience was a vision in which she could see the outline of Florida and the South American coastline imprinted on the palm of her hand. What attracted her attention was a glowing red dot that was moving across her hand.
This red dot came to a halt to the south-east of Florida, roughly in the position where Puerto Rico is today. When she later described this experience to me, I intuitively recognised the significance of what she had seen, and knew that this was the area where the asteroid would strike.
While Efrain Rodriguez is undoubtedly correct in his determination of the location of the coming asteroid strike, it is likely that he is wrong in his prediction that it will cause the earth to stop its rotation for three days, leaving half of the world in darkness and the other half in sunshine.
That is because the asteroid is the product of a close encounter between the earth and a comet, and it is the comet, or rather the dusty tail of the comet, that causes the entire earth to be shrouded in darkness, as the Bible clearly indicates.
“That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers.” (Zephaniah 1: 14-16)
There may also be some doubt about his prediction of a 12 point earthquake, especially since the largest earthquake ever recorded registered 9.5. However, that was a subduction zone event off the coast of Chile, and not the result of something as catastrophic as an asteroid strike.
But apart from this, there is every likelihood that the order of events quoted by Rodriguez above will prove to be correct, especially in the effect that this asteroid strike would have upon the coastlines of countries located all around the Atlantic ocean, and the millions of casualties involved.
Here, for example, is what scientist John Lewis had to say about the cataclysmic effects of an asteroid strike in the ocean:
“The water displaced from the explosion cavity is partly ejected in a broad, open cone at many times the speed of sound. The seabed is cracked by the blast wave, melted and scoured by the one-hundred-thousand-degree fireball. Hundreds of cubic kilometers of water are vaporized, blasting an immense column of steam back out to space. . . .
“When the surface of the fireball coasts to a stop in the water, the ocean surface collapses back into the cavity . . . from all sides, converging on the center of the crater. As the wave crest approaches the center of the crater, fast-moving waves converging from all directions pile into each other, rushing headlong into a monstrous surge that shoots up a towering pillar of water higher than the highest mountains on Earth.
“The sea sloshes back and forth in the blast region, pumping the surrounding ocean and generating circular wave fronts which, like the ripples from a pebble tossed into a puddle, spread out in all directions”. (View source)
When the undersea mega-thrust earthquake occurred off the west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra in 2004, it generated a series of devastating tsunamis that struck most of the landmasses in the Indian ocean, killing 230,000 people in fourteen countries.
We can imagine how much greater the destruction would be from an asteroid impact in the Atlantic. A succession of gigantic tsunamis travelling at over 500 miles (800 kilometres) per hour across the open ocean would spread out in all directions, causing immense loss of life.
Low lying coastal areas in the United States, South America, Africa and the Caribbean, as well as countries like Belgium and the Netherlands in western Europe would be completely submerged in a matter of minutes, thus recalling the words of Edgar Cayce when he said:
“The earth will be broken up in the western portion of America. The greater portion of Japan must go into the sea. The upper portion of Europe will be changed as in the twinkling of an eye”. (Reading 3976-15)
While the damage to shipping and property along the shores of these coastal regions will be beyond calculation, it will be nothing compared to the number of human casualties, which will rise to many hundreds of millions of people all around the world in that first day alone.
But of course it does not end there, because in the immediate aftermath of this catastrophic event, all those hundreds of millions of corpses will lie rotting in lakes and rivers and on what is left of the land, contaminating the water and leading to outbreaks of disease.
And here again Efrain Rodriguez is correct when he points out that those who survive will have to try to deal with all these problems at a time when the entire planet is engulfed in darkness. This will truly be the start of the great tribulation that the prophets of old predicted.
For those unfortunate souls who survive this initial disaster, this will seem like the end of all life on earth. But rather than being the end of the world, this will merely be the latest in a long line of catastrophes that have occurred at regular intervals in the history of the earth.
This will not be the end. It will not even be the beginning of the end. It will, however, be the end or our current cycle of civilization. This is how Jean-Charles de Fontbrune, one of the great interpreters of the prophecies of Nostradamus in the 20th century, summed up the present state of the world:
“We are living through the end of a world, not the end of the world, as some exploiters of the morbid are claiming. The death of one civilization among so many others will herald the birth of a new civilization freed from the aberrations of its predecessor.”
There have been many different types of cataclysms that have destroyed entire civilizations in ages past, yet the Bible only records one of them. In chapter six of the book of Genesis it states:
“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repenteth the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
“And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.”
And as the book of Genesis goes on to describe, it began to “rain upon the earth for forty days and forty nights”, causing a gigantic flood that covered the earth and destroyed all living creatures with the exception of Noah, his family, and the animals that were saved with him in the ark.
But the Bible is not the only source of ancient history, and different cultures have other records of what transpired in earlier epochs on the earth. As the Greek philosopher Plato wrote in his essay Timaeus, the renowned Athenian statesman Solon visited Egypt in the 6th century before Christ.
While he was there he was confronted by an elderly priest who said to him:
“Oh Solon, Solon, you Greeks are all children, and there is no such thing as an old Greek. You are all young in mind. You have no belief rooted in old tradition and no knowledge hoary with age. And the reason is this.
“There have been and will be many different calamities to destroy mankind, the greatest of them by fire and water, lesser ones by countless other means.
“Your own story of how Phaeton, child of the sun, harnessed his father’s chariot, but was unable to guide it along his father’s course and so burnt up things on earth and was himself destroyed by a thunderbolt, is a mythical version of the truth that there is at long intervals a variation in the course of the heavenly bodies and a consequent widespread destruction by fire of things on the earth.”
Another famous Greek, Herodotus (484-425 BC), who has been called the “Father of History” because he was the first Greek historian to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy, and then reduce them to a written narrative, also had an opportunity to visit Egypt.
In his Second Book of History, Herodotus referred to his own meeting with various Egyptian priests, and recorded his conversation with them. As he wrote:
“The priests asserted that within historical ages and since Egypt became a kingdom, four times in this period (so they told me) the sun rose contrary to his wont; twice he rose where he now sets, and twice he set where he now rises.”
Obviously, such events would cause catastrophic effects throughout the earth. Commenting on this Plato wrote in his book Politicus: “There is at that time great destruction of animals in general, and only a small part of the human race survives”.
The idea that the earth has undergone a succession of cataclysmic upheavals associated with cosmic encounters exists throughout the ancient world. Legends, myths and stories of these devastating events can still be found in the written works of these cultures.
They tell of times when dwellings were destroyed and the earth was convulsed by natural disasters which had their source in space. While these stories vary in the number of ages that have come and gone, they all agree that there have been, at periodic intervals, various disasters that have assailed the earth causing widespread destruction.
The agents of this destruction have been earthquake, fire, wind and flood. But these stories go further. They claim that as a result of these encounters, our world has repeatedly changed its axis, as well as its orbit around the sun.
The astonishing truth that has escaped historians up until now, is that less than 3,000 years ago the solar year was 360 days, and not the 365 and a quarter days that we are accustomed to today. What that means is that within our recorded history the earth has changed its orbit around the sun!
Now this may seem to be an outrageous claim, and one that the astronomers of today would simply reject outright. But what they do not realize is that the recorded works of societies that lived on earth at that time still exist, and they tell a very different story from what we believe today.
The confusion between the modern length of the solar year and that recorded by ancient cultures has been neatly summarised by the Russian-born American scholar Immanuel Velikovsky.
“All over the world we find that there was at some time the same calendar of 360 days, and at some later date, about the seventh century before the present era, five days were added at the end of the year, as ‘days over the year’ or ‘days of nothing’.
“Scholars who investigated the calendars of the Incas of Peru and the Mayas of Yucatan wondered at the calendar of 360 days; so did the scholars who studied the calendars of the Egyptian, Persians, Hindus, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Hebrews, Chinese, Greeks, or Romans.
“Most of them, while debating the problem in their own field did not suspect that the same problem turned up in the calendar of every nation of antiquity.”
He then went on to quote the exact day this change of orbit took place.
“The rabbinical sources state in a definite manner that the disturbance in the movement of the sun happened on the evening of the destruction of Sennacherib’s army by a devouring blast.” (Worlds in Collision)
“And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred four-score and five thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.” (II Kings 19:35)
Velikovsky referred to the work of French scholar Edouard Biot who wrote:
“The year 687 BC, in the summer, in the fourth moon, in the day sin mao (23rd of March) during the night, the fixed stars did not appear, though the night was clear (cloudless). In the middle of the night stars fell like a rain.”
If the recorded history of the earth is any guide, indicating that catastrophic changes have happened to our planet in the past, then Biblical predictions of similar events occurring in our future suggest that mankind is on the brink of yet another cataclysm. And the clock is ticking….
Allan, The Day of the Lord, June 26, 2016, 12:32 pm
As shown in previous instalments, the Old Testament of the Bible was filled with references to events that were predicted to occur during the “Latter Days”, which was a term used by ancient prophets to describe the period leading up to the return of the long awaited Messiah.
In particular, these prophets warned about something which they called “the Great and Terrible Day of the Lord”. This would be a day of fire and brimstone descending from the heavens, when God’s wrath would be visited upon all those who had failed to keep his commandments.
Then in the New Testament, we find further references to this theme of blood, hailstones, brimstone and fire raining down upon the earth from the skies. For when the disciples asked Jesus about the signs that would precede his return to the earth, he replied:
“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken”. (Luke 21:25-26)
The signs spoken of by Jesus were further clarified by St. John, who devoted his entire book of Revelation to the events that would herald both the end of the present era of humanity, and the beginning of a new golden age that would last for a thousand years.
Now many Christians may be surprised to learn that John was not the only Christian saint who had visions of things that would happen in the future. More than a thousand years after his death, another person had similar visions, and was later recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church.
That person was the Christian mystic St. Hildegard of Bingen, a town on the river Rhine located not far from the modern city of Frankfurt in Germany. Hildegard was born at the end of 11th century, and from an early age began to experience visions of events that would occur in the future. As she wrote:
“Up to my fifteenth year I saw much, and related some of the things seen to others, who would inquire with astonishment, whence such things might come. … Frequently, in my conversations, I would relate future things which I saw as if present, but, noting the amazement of my listeners, I became more reticent.”
Perhaps because her early visions, Hildegard was drawn towards a life in the Church. She joined a Benedictine monastery where she rose to the position of Abbess. She proved to be a remarkable woman blessed with many talents, and was even consulted by bishops, popes and kings.
At a time when few women became accomplished writers, Hildegard produced major works of theology, as well as botanical and medicinal texts. Then in the year 1141 A.D., Hildegard had a vision of God in which she was instructed to “write down that which you see and hear“.
She subsequently published her first theological text under the title of “Scivias” (“Know the Ways of the Lord”). In this work, which dealt with things that would occur during the days leading up to the return of the Christ, she wrote about a comet and its impact on “the great nation”.
“Before the Comet comes, many nations, the good excepted, will be scoured with want and famine. The great nation in the ocean that is inhabited by people of different tribes and descent by an earthquake, storm and tidal waves will be devastated. It will be divided, and in great part submerged.”
As she went on to record:
“The Comet by its tremendous pressure, will force much out of the ocean and flood many countries, causing much want and many plagues. [After the] great Comet, the great nation will be devastated by earthquakes, storms, and great waves of water, causing much want and plagues.
“The ocean will also flood many other countries, so that all coastal cities will live in fear, with many destroyed. All sea coast cities will be fearful and many of them will be destroyed by tidal waves, and most living creatures will be killed and even those who escape will die from a horrible disease”. (View Source)
So here we have evidence, written almost a thousand years ago, of a close encounter between the earth and a comet, that described how a “great nation” would be “divided” (split into two parts), and devastated by “earthquakes, storms, and great waves of water”, and “in great part submerged”.
What has made St. Hildegard’s words so significant, is how closely what she saw in her visions matched with the information relayed by the American seer Edgar Cayce in the course of various readings that he gave in the early years of the 20th century.
From time to time Cayce was asked questions about the future of America, and especially about events that were predicted in the Bible to occur during the days leading up to the return of the Christ. For example, in January 1934, when asked about physical changes to the earth, Cayce replied:
“The earth will be broken up in the western portion of America. The greater portion of Japan must go into the sea. The upper portion of Europe will be changed as in the twinkling of an eye. Land will appear off the east coast of America.
“There will be the upheavals in the Arctic and in the Antarctic that will make for the eruption of volcanoes in the Torrid areas, and there will be shifting then of the poles – so that where there has been those of a frigid or the semi-tropical will become the more tropical, and moss and fern will grow.” (Reading 3976-15)
It is clear from this reply that the continent of North America would be the “great nation” that would undergo dramatic geological changes at the time of the end. This was confirmed in another famous reading in which he was asked: What is the shape of the world to come? Part of his reply is quoted below:
“And what is the coast line now of many a land will be the bed of the ocean. Even many of the battle fields of the present will be ocean, will be seas, the bays, the lands over which the new order will carry on their trade as one with another.
“Portions of the now east coast of New York, or New York City itself, will in the main disappear. This will be another generation, though, here, while the southern portions of Carolina, Georgia – these will disappear. This will be much sooner.
“The waters of the lakes will empty into the Gulf, rather than the waterway over which such discussions have been recently made. It would be well if the waterway were prepared, but not for that purpose for which it is at present being considered.
“Then the area where the entity is now located (Virginia Beach) will be among the safety lands, as will the portions of what is now Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and much of the southern portion of Canada and the eastern portion of Canada; while the western land – much of that is to be disturbed – in this land – as, of course, much in other lands.” (Reading 1152-11)
And this is where a second American possessing unusual talents enters the scene. His name is Gordon-Michael Scallion. And just as in the case of Edgar Cayce, Scallion’s unusual ability manifested itself unexpectedly in his life as a result of a health crisis affecting his throat.
In 1979, while he was is the middle of delivering a public lecture, he suddenly lost his voice completely “in a split second”. He was taken to hospital where doctors conducted a series of comprehensive tests on his vocal chords, larynx and throat. Because they were unable to find anything wrong, they dismissed his symptoms as psychosomatic.
Yet within a few hours of being discharged from the hospital, Scallion found that his physical vision had changed. He now began to see colours and lights around animals, plants, trees and people. He had no idea what these colours represented, and concluded that it was his vision that was to blame.
It was only later that he realised that what he was seeing were the “auras” of people, plants and animals. And like Cayce before him, he discovered that he had the ability to look into people and see what was wrong with their physical, mental or spiritual bodies.
Then in 1991, Scallion found that he was able to sense what was wrong with the earth itself. He began to experience nightmares in which it appeared as if the earth was a sentient being, just like a human, and that it was in great pain.
He also began to get visions of changes that would take place to the existing continents of the earth in future times and, in particular, changes that would take place on the North American continent. As he later wrote:
“Since 1979 I have had ongoing visions concerning the Earth, sometimes as many as ten or more in a day, lasting from a few seconds to minutes. In 1982, I began to sketch a map based on the visions, and I updated it through the years as new information was presented to me.”
In the June 1996 Issue of “The Earth Changes Report”, Scallion described for the reader a series of dramatic visions that had occurred to him at that time that appeared to show changes to the earth as a result of a collision between the earth and an asteroid.
“..I am now shown the Earth, and as a result of the shockwave, the Earth shudders everywhere. There are winds. I am watching large landmasses that appear to be the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate. They are moving, perhaps half the plate structure of the Earth, shift as if in a single movement.
“They do not go up or down, but rather they slip. The movement from my perspective doesn’t seem far, but it might be something akin to twenty-five or thirty degrees of slippage. I watch certain land masses that were warm become instantly cold.
“I see animals, grazing animals that look like herds of cattle, frozen in their paths. I watch other areas that are mile-high with snow, melting. I realize that it is the Antarctic. As I am watching there is a time lapse which I would assume would be weeks or months.
“I watch Greenland; the ice is melting so fast that water levels are rising. The water is moving in so fast that new seaways are made.
“I can see inland seas in the United States. I can see a river running from the Great Lakes to Phoenix. I can see that the St. Lawrence Seaway has become a large inland sea. The Mississippi divides the United States in two.
“Europe has become a series of larger islands and most of Northern Europe is under water.
“At the same time I am seeing other land masses thrust up from the ocean bottom as a result of the shift. I see huge land masses in the Atlantic and the Pacific thrust up, even though the melting has raised the water level. Are there still twelve tectonic plates? I move round to see how many there are. After counting I find there are twenty-four.”
Based on the visions which Scallion experienced at that time, he created a revised map of the world that illustrated all the changes that he had witnessed in his visions. These changes in sea level in all the different regions of the world can briefly be summarised as follows:
What will happen in North America
The damage caused by the comet will completely change the outline of the entire North American continent. After these changes have taken place the United States will be totally different from the way it looks today. While some of these changes will occur when the comet passes close to the earth, others will happen over the following months.
Not only will the coastlines on both the east and west coasts of America be devastated by enormous tidal waves, but these coastal states will themselves be swallowed up by the ocean. More than half the existing population of the United States will be lost in these catastrophes.
In addition, the waters of the Great Lakes will no longer drain through the St Lawrence Seaway into the Atlantic Ocean, but will instead empty into the Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi River will be greatly expanded as the ground sinks as a result of earthquake activity in the region.
It will no longer be possible to travel by land across the country because of the water that will flood the central states of America.
When the asteroid hits the ocean, the tidal waves generated by this impact will swamp the cities along both the east and west coasts of North America. These will be followed by enormous movements in the crust of the earth that will cause large sections of the western United States to sink below the sea.
This submergence of the land will extend far inland and only the highest peaks of the mountains will remain as isolated islands. Almost all of the western states of America will disappear beneath the waves. The new coastline of the west will be moved inland as far as Wyoming, Colorado and Arizona.
Similar changes will take place on the east coast and most of the coastal areas will sink beneath the sea. The sea will inundate the land all the way from Maine down to Florida. The same will apply to the coastal states along the Gulf of Mexico.
The coastal areas of Mexico will also be covered by the sea, especially around the Yucatan, while the Baja Peninsula will be submerged. The low lying lands of Central America will also sink beneath the sea, leaving the higher areas as separate islands.
All the major lands of the Caribbean will disappear beneath the waves, including the islands of Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. The Panama Canal will no longer be needed as a new waterway will open up linking the Gulf of Mexico with the Pacific.
In Canada, the Hudson Bay will expand to form a large inland sea. Other parts of the north will be inundated as well as the islands of the eastern seaboard. The St Lawrence River will expand to flood parts of Quebec and the Maritime Provinces.
In the west there will be widespread damage on the coast and on Vancouver Island, which will bear the full force of the incoming waves. Severe earthquake activity will also cause parts of south eastern British Columbia to sink beneath the sea.
The central regions of Canada from the Alberta border to the western portion of Quebec, will be spared from most of the destruction that will be taking place elsewhere in North America. They will become places of refuge for people displaced from other regions.
What will happen in South America
South America will be greatly changed as a result of the undersea changes taking place in the region. Parts of the Amazon Basin will be reclaimed by the sea, as will low lying areas of Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil.
On the west coast, earthquakes and volcanic activity will transform the land. Some parts of the west coast will sink below the waves, while others will find themselves lifted to higher elevations.
What will happen in Europe
Because Europe has long been the centre of western civilization, and because it has also been the focus of some of the worst wars fought in the history of humanity, much of Europe will sink beneath the waves, so that the negativity that has accumulated over many thousands of years can be washed away.
Due to the sudden change in the axis of the earth, Europe will go through some of the most severe changes that will be taking place on earth at this time. Most of Northern Europe will be completely submerged. All that will be left of Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden will be isolated islands that once were lofty mountains.
Much of France will be claimed by the waves, as will most of Germany and Poland, especially those areas involved in the major battles of the two world wars. The sea will also inundate the lowlands of Holland and Belgium.
The higher regions of Spain and Portugal will be spared and will be sought out as refuges from the floods. Switzerland and Austria will be surrounded by the waters of an inland sea.
In Eastern Europe, most of the Balkan countries will be submerged as will Bulgaria, Romania, and parts of western Turkey. Amongst the Mediterranean countries, the coastal areas of Greece and Italy will be most affected, and earthquakes in the region will also claim many lives.
Most of the United Kingdom will once again disappear beneath the waves as other land masses arise in the Atlantic Ocean. Only a few small islands will remain, including areas around London and the Midlands. In Ireland many places will be deluged and only the higher elevations will be spared.
What will happen in Africa
The continent of Africa will be split into three different parts. The valley of the Nile will widen and a rift will form that will extend through the middle of the continent all the way down to southern Africa. Another inland sea will form in northern Africa that will extend from Algeria through Mali and Nigeria down to the Congo.
On the east coast the Red Sea will widen and engulf the coastal areas of Egypt and Sudan. The Great Rift Valley of eastern Africa will fill with water and Lake Victoria will merge with Lake Nyasa and drain into the Indian Ocean.
What will happen in Australia and New Zealand
Australia will shrink in size as most of the coastal areas are engulfed by the surrounding sea. In the south the sea will intrude upon the land and an inland sea will push its way north into the Murray Darling valley.
In contrast with most of the other places in the world, New Zealand will actually grow many times in size as changes in the earth take place in the coming age.
New land will emerge from the sea causing the existing land to grow until it is larger than Australia, and its new coastline will stretch for many thousands of miles. It will also be joined to Australia by a narrow strip of land.
What will happen in Asia
When the meteor plunges into the Atlantic Ocean, the same tidal waves that will devastate the coasts of North America, Africa and Europe will destroy the coastal regions of Asia. The coast of China will be inundated by water which will surge inland in many places.
The islands of the Philippines and Taiwan will be severely damaged by floods and earthquakes. The islands of Japan will be completely swamped by water and will sink beneath the waves.
The lands of Asia will suffer from earthquake, fire and drought. Apart from the Red Sea which will expand to submerge the coastal regions of Arabia, there will also be floods in many inland regions that are affected by the breaking up of the land.
New lands will rise up out of the sea
Just as many lands now inhabited by people will be engulfed by the sea, so new land masses will rise to take their place. These new lands will become major population centers in the coming age.
As Edgar Cayce has predicted, new lands will rise out of the ocean as other countries around the world sink below the waves. Cayce spoke of new land appearing in the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.
The sunken lands of Atlantis and Lemuria will rise up out of the ocean, cleansed and ready for life in the new age that will unfold on the earth. Atlantis will reappear just where Plato said it once existed, across from the Pillars of Hercules, or the Straits of Gibraltar.
Atlantis will be an enormous island, the size of Western Europe today. Lemuria will rise up out of the southern Pacific Ocean. It will be a new continent more than twice the size of Australia.
Other lands will rise out of the ocean in different parts of the world. New islands will emerge off the east and west coasts of America. One of these will be west of what is now Oregon, while another large island will appear in the region of the Bahamas.
The island of Tasmania to the south of Australia will grow to many times the size it is today. New lands will also emerge off the coast of Chile in South America, and off the west coast of Southern Africa.
Because these new lands will be cleansed from the destructive thought patterns of the past, many people will choose to move to Atlantis, Lemuria and Antarctica, or Lumania as it was once called.
Of the existing countries in the world there will be three in particular that will achieve great accomplishments in the coming age. Canada will become a vast commercial, cultural and scientific center in the new age. Because of its mild semi-tropical climate it will attract new settlers from all over the earth.
Australia and New Zealand will also become important spiritual centers in the coming years. The sandy deserts that exist in Australia today will be transformed into fertile lands.
Finally, for those readers who would like to get a closer look at those land masses that will be most affected, as well as what those regions in which they live today will look like in the coming age, a link is provided here with different segments of Scallion’s new world map.
There is, however, one cautionary reminder that all readers should bear in mind, and that is that although the future world map that Scallion has outlined here represents the final outcome of future world changes that appeared to him in visions, the actual timing of these changes will vary.
Although many of these changes will undoubtedly happen on the “Day of the Lord” when the asteroid plunges in the ocean, others will only occur later as a result of subsequent shifts in the tectonic plates in different parts of the world.
And, as always when dealing with matters of a spiritual nature, no one should move from their present location unless they feel compelled to do so by a strong inner impulse, for the Lord knows how to protect all those who are his true followers.
Allan, The Day of the Lord, June 13, 2016, 12:56 pm
In the eighth chapter of his book of Revelation, St. John wrote about a dramatic vision which occurred to him while he was in exile on the island of Patmos. In this vision he saw a series of events that would occur on the earth shortly before the return of the Christ.
He ascribed these events to the actions of seven angels, each of whom was given a trumpet. And when each angel sounded his trumpet, a particular disaster would befall the earth. The disasters attributed to these angels were as follows:
• First angel – Hail and fire mingled with blood was cast upon the earth
• Second angel – A great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea
• Third angel – A great star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp
• Fourth angel – Darkness descended upon the sun, the moon and the stars
Now if John had just limited his account to these four angels, then Bible scholars would have had an easier time interpreting his words. But he didn’t end there, and that is why eschatological or “End Time” prophecy has become so much harder to understand.
For example, the three remaining angels then sounded their trumpets, bringing about yet more woe upon the earth. And then these seven angels were given seven other “bowls”, with each bowl representing a different type of plague that was poured out upon the wicked.
But even prior to these seven angels with their trumpets and bowls of wrath, John wrote about a book that was “sealed with seven seals”. So the challenge that faced these scholars was how to combine these seven seals, trumpets and bowls into a single coherent explanation.
Although some scholars have suggested that the various seals, trumpets and bowls refer to different events that would happen at different times in the future, careful analysis of St. John’s words show that this is not the case, as the same event sometimes appears in two separate categories.
An example of this occurs in the case of the river Euphrates, which flows through the modern countries of Turkey, Syria and Iraq. In chapter nine of his book of Revelation, when St. John is referring to the seven angels with their seven trumpets, he writes:
“Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates”. (Revelation 9:14)
Then, five chapters later, when he is referring to the angels with the seven bowls, he writes:
“And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.” (Revelation 16:12)
It is only when we realise that these seals, bowls and trumpets are all related to the same astronomical event, that we can make sense out of what St. John wrote. And because he did not understand the meaning of the things he saw, he had to use symbols and images to describe them.
As explained in previous instalments, it should now be clear that what St. John saw in his vision was a close encounter between the earth and a comet. And the reason why he devoted so many chapters to this event, was because it was associated with so many different effects upon the earth.
First of all there were the atmospheric effects associated with the red dust falling upon the earth and making it look like blood. But this dust did not just colour the seas, lakes and rivers, but contaminated them as well, giving them a bitter taste and poisoning anyone who drank from them.
Then there were the incandescent particles in the tail of the comet that fell to the earth like fiery hail, together with electrical discharges between the nucleus of the comet and the earth that would appear as spectacular lightning bolts hurled down from the sky.
Then as the core of the comet drew closer to the earth, it began to shroud the entire planet in inky black dust that obscured portions of the sun, the moon and the stars and made it difficult to breathe, before blotting out all light upon the earth for a period of three days.
Although it is theoretically possible for a comet to collide with the earth and crash into the sea, it is much more likely that the nucleus would disintegrate into smaller fragments as it entered the atmosphere of the earth, as a result of electrical charge differentials between the two bodies.
This would account for the asteroid or “great mountain burning with fire” that St. John said would be cast into the sea, which would of course lead to catastrophic consequences all around the earth, and might even alter its axis as well as its orbit around the sun.
So it is little wonder that someone like St. John, with no knowledge of the inner workings of the solar system or of the electrical nature and properties of comets, should have been left floundering when trying to describe what he saw in his vision. In fact it is remarkable that he did as well as he did.
But the book of Revelation did not only concern itself with WHAT would happen on earth during the “Latter Days” spoken of by the Old Testament prophets. It also explained WHY these events would happen, and why the wrath of the Lord would be directed at the people of earth at that time.
According to St. John, the comet would come at a time when the entire world worshipped the same religion. But this shared religion would not be one of the established religions of the world. It would be something much more subtle. It would be a religion based on desire.
This religion of desire would appeal to men and women of every age and of every culture on the earth. It would not only attract individual people, it would also attract entire countries. It would entice Kings, Presidents and rulers just as much as it would lure the poor, the weak and the needy.
Although this religion would appeal to all the people of the earth, it would have no leader. It would have no churches, nor would it have any rituals or ceremonies. Yet it would qualify as a religion in the proper sense because the hearts of men and women everywhere would be committed to it.
When Jesus gave his famous Sermon on the Mount, he warned his followers not to spend their time gathering up the treasures of this world, because these could be lost, stolen or destroyed. Instead he urged them to pursue the treasures of heaven.
“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Matthew 6: 19-21)
During the end times, St. John wrote that the majority of the people in the world would worship this religion. He called this religion “Babylon”. Now Babylon was not just the name of a city. It was also a symbol of everything for which the original city of Babylon was once famous.
At the height of its glory Babylon was the envy of the world. It was a place of great wealth and luxury. Its hanging gardens were among the wonders of the ancient world. In his vision, St. John described seeing a woman wearing royal clothes adorned with fine jewellery.
“And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:”
“And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” (Revelation 17: 4-5)
The woman of mystery that John saw in his vision was called the “Mother of Harlots” because she had seduced all the nations of the world. Her cup of gold symbolized the excesses of those who had worshipped her, and from which all the nations of the world had drunk.
“For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.” (Revelation 18: 3)
The religion symbolized by the woman called “Babylon” is the religion of materialism. It is the desire for material wealth ahead of all other values in life. “Babylon” is a very old religion, and it has seduced people ever since the earliest days of civilization.
It continues to seduce people to this day. It is now the dominant religion on the planet. All nations and cultures have fallen prey to its seductive lure. This mystery religion called “Babylon” lies at the heart of all the sorrows of this world.
Those who lust after money, wealth and power may appear to be successful according to the accepted standards of the world. But this outward success is pursued by inward sorrow. For in striving for material gain, they are inevitably stalked by spiritual loss.
“For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” ( I Timothy 6: 10)
It is the love of money and the single-minded pursuit of wealth, luxury and pleasure, without regard for the spiritual values of life, that has brought people and nations to the crisis that now confronts them, and which has caused so much sorrow upon the earth.
This quest for material gain has become the established way of life for people and societies in all parts of the world today. Those who possess material wealth are universally admired. They are considered to be among the successful people of this world.
Those people who lack wealth yearn for it, and are willing to resort to almost any form of enterprise, legal or illegal, in order to get it. But this blind search for material wealth by nations, corporations and people has been the source of endless human anguish.
Down the centuries it has been the cause of countless wars. It has led to the destruction of nations and the death of millions. The religion of “Babylon” can no longer be resisted because it has become so pervasive. It can no longer be defeated because the laws of every land support it.
The mighty creation that “Babylon” has become today, with its modern world of investment, commerce, finance and trade, has become corrupted from within. It will be destroyed because it has replaced the spiritual values of life with the pursuit of material wealth.
The religion of “Babylon” has lost its soul.
Jesus warned his followers not to be deceived by the lure of material wealth. He said that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven. Those who try to be both rich and righteous will fail.
“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” (Matthew 6: 24)
Yet modern man has ignored the words of Jesus. Rather than build up treasures in the world of spirit within, most men and women alive today prefer to strive for material wealth, and to enjoy the pleasures which this wealth allows them to acquire.
In fact most of their waking hours are devoted to this quest. All of humanity is governed today by an economic system that is based on money. All human enterprise is based on a system that is required to generate money in order to survive.
Yet, as so many people have discovered since the beginning of this century, our economic system has become corrupted to the point where the lust for money on the part of the few, has placed the livelihood of millions of people around the world in jeopardy.
Not only is this desire for material wealth now the dominant economic motivator around the planet, but it has assumed the character of a religion. This world-wide religion of materialism has captured the minds and hearts of humanity just as much as if it were a traditional faith.
Yet far from enhancing the planet and ennobling the minds of men and women everywhere, it has become an avaricious monster that has come instead to debase our hearts.
There is little doubt that our modern economic system comprising commerce, finance, investment and trade now fits the description of the mystery woman described by St. John. For it has not only seduced nations and kings, but has enriched merchants in every nation with its “abundance of delicacies”.
But what makes this “Babylon” such an obvious threat to the true welfare of humanity, is that our entire economic system has now become irretrievably corrupt.
Not only has our modern economic system been subverted from within by greed and the lust for wealth, but it has been exploited by powerful interests whose main purpose has been to entrench themselves in positions of power, so that they might insulate themselves from accountability.
This system has become so convoluted and complex that no single nation or institution has the power to reform it. And as has happened in the past, when the institutions of humanity become corrupted from within, they become ripe for destruction.
The destruction predicted by St. John will be terrible indeed. For just as our economic system has tentacles that reach out to the farthest corners of the globe, so the destruction that will be inflicted upon “Babylon” will also be universal in scope.
As the angel explained to St. John, this destruction would come at a time when the merchants of this world “glorified themselves and lived deliciously”. They would be convinced that the pleasures gained by their worldly wealth would continue indefinitely.
But according to St. John, our entire system of finance and investment, relying as it does on a worldwide electronic web of communications, together with its interlocking system of transportation and trade, will be utterly destroyed.
St. John graphically describes the reactions of merchants and financiers around the globe after seeing the sudden destruction of everything they had laboured for so long and so hard to achieve. Their possessions lost, their livelihoods wrecked, and their hopes and dreams destroyed.
“And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning. Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:
“The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.” (Revelation 18:9-13)
It is clear from the extensive list of commodities quoted by St. John above, that the “great city Babylon” he was referring to, represented every type of luxury item that was bought and sold in markets of that time.
And if St. John had been able to write from the point of view of the modern era, he would no doubt have included such “delicacies” as stocks, bonds, debentures, investment funds, credit default swops and the like!
It is also clear that this disaster would catch everyone unawares, and that this sudden calamity would destroy the entire economic system that represented this “Mystery Woman Babylon”. And if that were not devastating enough, it would do so in a single hour.
“The merchants of these things, which were made rich by these things, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, and saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls!
“For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every ship-master, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many trade by sea , stood afar off, and cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, what city is like unto this great city!
“And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! For in one hour is she made desolate.” (Revelation 18:15-19)
The lamentations so vividly described by St. John above clearly refer to a global disaster that not only devastates the land, but also affects the oceans as well, leading to an immense loss of cargo and shipping. They would all be devastated by the “great millstone” that would be cast into the sea.
“Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her. And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.” (Revelation 18:20-21)
It is clear from St. John’s description of the damage inflicted upon the earth as a result of the impact of this asteroid plunging into the ocean, that this divine wrath would be wreaked upon all the nations of the world, and that none would escape.
“And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.”
“And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” (Revelation 18: 1-2)
The “millstone” or great mountain that will be cast into the sea will be the cause of giant earthquakes all around the world. These earthquakes will be followed almost immediately by a series of tsunamis that will devastate coastal cities everywhere.
The convulsions caused by undersea quakes and tumultuous waves will be compounded by the “fiery hail” of meteorites that will set fire to the earth. The scale of death and destruction caused by this catastrophic event will be without parallel in the history of the earth.
The curse of Babylon the Great is that our voracious quest for material wealth has robbed us of our spiritual birthright and condemned us to a life of increasing strife, until we are destroyed by the very forces that we ourselves have unleashed.
This is what the American writer Henry Miller sensed, when he wrote in 1945:
“A new world is being born, a new kind of man is springing up today. The great mass of mankind, destined in our time to suffer more cruelly than ever before, ends by being paralysed with fear, becoming introspective, shaken to the very core, and does not hear, see or feel anything more than everyday physical needs.
“It is thus that worlds die. First and foremost, the flesh dies. But although few clearly recognize it, the flesh would not have died if the spirit had not been killed already.”
Allan, The Day of the Lord, May 30, 2016, 3:17 pm
As explained in Part One, the early history of the Jews as revealed in the Old Testament of the Bible, was characterised by a succession of devout men imbued with the spirit of God who came to be known as prophets. They were called prophets because they predicted future events.
But the events they predicted were not confined to their own times. They also wrote about things that would not happen for thousands of years. In fact, they would not occur until the end of the current age of humanity – a time that they called the “Latter Days” or the “End of Days”.
According to these prophets, there would come a time when all of humanity would be afflicted by a series of disasters that would descend on the earth from the skies. It would be a time of terror on the earth caused by torment in the heavens.
This time of terror would begin with an event so terrible that it was called “The Great and Terrible Day of the Lord”, when the sun would be turned into darkness and the moon into blood. For as we find recorded in the book of the prophet Joel:
“And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come”. (Joel 2:30-31)
This theme of terror and destruction at the end of the age was repeated by Jesus, when he told his disciples:
“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken”. (St. Luke 21:25-26)
But other than referring to these “Latter Days” as the time of the “Wrath of the Lord”, the Old Testament prophets gave no hint as to what the agent of this devastation on earth might happen to be. It was left to St. John to provide additional clues that would help us to understand.
In his book of Revelation, St. John devoted chapter after chapter to the events that would transpire during this time of devastation and destruction. In the 8th chapter, John described seven angels with seven trumpets, each of which signified a particular scourge or disaster.
“And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all the green grass burnt up.
“And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.
“And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; and the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.
“And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.” (Revelation 8: 6-12)
So according to the above verses written by St. John, the “star” that he called “Wormwood” would be characterised by the following features:
• It would generate “hail and fire mingled with blood”
• It would burn up “the third part of the trees”
• It would burn up “all the green grass”
• “A great mountain burning with fire” would be cast into the sea
• “The third part of the sea would become blood”
• One third of all the creatures living in the sea would die
• One third of all the ships in the sea would be destroyed
• A “great star from heaven” would fall upon one third of the rivers
• This “great star” would appear in the sky “burning like a lamp”
• One third of the waters would become “wormwood” (bitter)
• Many people would die from drinking these bitter waters
• “A third part of the sun and moon” would be smitten
• “A third part of the stars would be darkened”
• The sun would not shine for three days (a third part of it)
• The night sky would also be dark for three nights
So the question that faces all interpreters of this passage in the book of Revelation is this. Can we identify what “Wormwood” is, based on the above features described by St. John? One man who believed that he could was the French seer Michele de Nostredame, also known as Nostradamus.
In 1555, Nostradamus published a series of prophecies in a book entitled Les Propheties. This book contained references to events that he predicted would occur in the future, and that would culminate in the ending of the Piscean Age.
Nostradamus used the word “century” to describe these prophecies. This term had nothing to do with time or the passing of the years. Instead, it was simply the term he gave to his collection of prophecies, because each “century” contained 100 verses.
Each verse of prophecy, called a quatrain, consisted of four lines with alternate rhymes. So the word at the end of line one rhymed with the word at the end of line three, and the word at the end of line two rhymed with that at the end of line four.
The verses of “The Prophecies” – all 4772 lines of them – were written in old Provincial French. This was a language that was still very close to its Greek and Latin roots, but was quite different from the French language that is spoken today.
This is one of the reasons why so many commentators over the years have struggled to interpret his verses. In addition, they were also filled with anagrams, confusing names and other linguistic riddles, that were designed to confound those looking for simple solutions.
Nostradamus would conceal the names of towns destined to become famous, by using small neighboring towns instead. He would also disguise them by means of popular names or nicknames, or spell them without capital letters.
Nostradamus used these stratagems deliberately in order to hide their meaning, and to ensure that they would only be understood after careful analysis and investigation. Yet despite the fact that many of his prophecies still remain obscure, some are so clear that they cannot possibly be misunderstood.
There was one event in particular that captured his attention, and that was a series of disasters that would befall the earth as a result of “fire from the sky”. Because this formed such a critical part of earth’s future, he devoted nearly sixty verses to this one event, as can be seen from the following:
Century One – Verse 46
Very near Auch, Lectoure and Mirande, a great fire will fall from the sky for three nights. The cause will appear stupefying and marvellous: Shortly afterward the ground will tremble.
Century One – Verse 67
The great famine which I sense approaching will often turn (in various areas) then become world-wide. It will be so vast and long lasting that (they) will grab roots from the trees and children from the breast.
Century Two – Verse 15
Shortly before the monarch is assassinated, Castor and Pollux in the ship, a bearded star: The public treasure devastated by land and sea, Pisa, Asti, Ferrara, Turin under threat.
Century Two – Verse 18
New, unexpected and sudden rain will suddenly halt two armies: From the skies, fire, and a sea of stones, The death of seven suddenly by land and sea.
Century Two – Verse 41
The great star will burn for seven days, the cloud will cause two suns to appear: The large mastiff will howl all night when the great pontiff changes his residence.
Century Two – Verse 43
During the appearance of the bearded star, the three great princes will become enemies: Struck from the sky, peaceful earth quaking, Po, Tiber overflowing, a serpent placed upon the shore.
Century Two – Verse 46
After great misery for humanity, a greater one comes when the great cycle of the centuries is renewed. It will rain blood, milk, famine, war and plague, Fire will be seen in the sky, dragging a trail of sparks.
Century Two – Verse 62
Mabus will soon die, then will come a terrible destruction of people and animals: Sudden vengeance will be seen, A hundred hands, thirst, famine, when the comet will pass.
Century Two – Verse 70
The dart from heaven will make its journey, speaking with death; a great execution. The stone in the tree, the proud nation brought down, A human monster, cleansing, the penalty paid.
Century Two – Verse 81
The city is almost destroyed by fire from the sky: The Deucalion flood threatens again: Sardinia is vexed by the Punic fleet, after Phaeton has left Libra.
Century Two – Verse 91
A great fire will be seen at sunrise, noise and light extending towards the north: Death within the earth, one will hear cries, Death awaits them through war, fire and famine.
Century Two -Verse 92
Golden fire will be seen in the sky on earth: Struck from on high, a marvellous accomplishment: Great slaughter for humanity: The nephew of the great one taken, spectacular death, the proud one escapes.
Century Two – Verse 96
A flaming torch will be seen in the sky at night near the end and the source of the Rhone: Famine, war: relief comes too late, Persia turns to invade Macedonia.
Century Three – Verse 19
In Lucca it will rain blood and milk, shortly before a change of leader: Great plague and war, famine and drought will be seen, far from where the prince and ruler dies.
Century Three – Verse 42
A child born with two teeth in his mouth, stones will fall like rain in Tuscany: A few years after no wheat or barley, to satisfy those who faint from hunger.
Century Four – Verse 67
When Saturn and Mars are equally fiery, the air is parched by a long meteor: From hidden fires a great place blazes with burning heat, Little rain, hot winds, wars, invasions.
Century Five – Verse 62
Blood will rain down on the rocks, the Sun in the East, Saturn in the West: War near Orgon, a great evil seen near Rome, ships sunk to the bottom taken by Poseidon.
Century Five – Verse 90
In the Cyclades, Perinthus and Larissa, in Sparta and the entire Pelopennesus: A very great famine, plague through false dust, lasting nine months throughout the whole peninsula.
Century Five – Verse 98
At the forty-eighth degree latitude, at the end of Cancer a very great drought: Fish boiled in the seas, rivers and lakes, Béarn and Bigorre in distress from fire in the sky.
Century Six – Verse 5
A very great famine caused by pestilence, will extend its length to the arctic pole: Samarobrin one hundred leagues from the hemisphere, They will live without law, free from government.
Century Six – Verse 6
He will appear towards the North, not far from the bearded star in Cancer: Susa, Siena, Boetia, Eretria, The great Roman will die, the night is dispersed.
Century Six – Verse 38
The enemies of peace, the profligate ones, after having conquered Italy: The bloodthirsty king, red will be revealed, Fire, bloodshed, water coloured with blood.
Century Eight – Verse 2
I see Condom, Auch and Mirande, encompassed by fire from the sky. The Sun and Mars joined in Leo, then at Marmande, lightning, great hail, A wall falls into the Garonne.
Century Eight – Verse 10
A great stench will come from Lausanne, but they will not know its source, It will displace people in distant places, Fire in the sky, a foreign nation defeated.
Century Eight – Verse 77
The antichrist swiftly annihilates the three, Twenty-seven years his war will last. The heretics will be dead, captive, exiled; Blood, human bodies, water and red hail covering the earth.
Century Nine – Verse 83
The Sun in twenty degrees of Taurus, a very great earthquake, The great crowded theater will be ruined: Darkness will trouble the sky and the earth, even the faithless will call on God and the saints.
Century Ten – Verse 60
I weep for Nice, Monaco, Pisa, Genoa, Savona, Siena, Capua, Modena and Malta: Blood from on high and the sword for a gift, Fire, earthquake, water, an ill-timed alliance.
Century Ten – Verse 67
A mighty trembling in the month of May, Saturn in Capricorn, Jupiter and Mercury in Taurus: Venus also in Cancer, Mars in Virgo, Then hail will fall larger than an egg.
From the verses quoted above, Nostradamus makes it clear that the agent responsible for the coming global destruction would come from the skies. And he also specifically indicated that the source of this “fire from the sky” would be a comet. (See Century Two Verse 62 above)
it is worth noting that when Nostradamus wrote about the comet, he referred to it in a variety of ways. Among his descriptions were “bearded star”, “great star”, “fire from the sky”, trail of sparks”, “burning torch”, “flaming torch”, “long meteor”, and “dart from heaven”.
He also made frequent references to other phenomena associated with the arrival of this comet, such as “false dust”, “raining blood, milk and stones”, “water coloured by blood”, “great hail”, “red hail” and “hail larger than an egg”.
Most commentators on Nostradamus have failed to understand the significance of his references to such things as “blood” and “false dust”, and why such phenomena can only be produced by comets, and not alternatives like planetary bodies or brown dwarfs.
Comets consist of a solid core, or nucleus, surrounded by a charged field of luminous particles called a Coma. Although comets have two tails, one of ionised gas and one of dust, the main tail of the comet consists of a stream of dust particles that stretch for millions of miles behind the comet.
However, as explained earlier, once the comet passes around the sun and heads back into space, the tail of dust particles that previously was behind the comet now travels ahead of the nucleus, blown by the pressure exerted by the solar wind. So comet tails always point away from the sun.
So in the scenario described by Nostradamus in his quatrains, the earth would first be exposed to the fine dust particles in the tail of the comet. And here it is significant that Nostradamus specifically mentions “false dust”, so as to differentiate this dust from the sky with normal dust.
However, if this dust contained particles of iron ore, they would be coloured red. And when they fell to earth they would cause the sea as well as lakes and other bodies of water to look like blood. Furthermore, these red dust particles would contaminate the water, and cause it to become bitter to the taste.
Then, as the comet drew closer to the earth, it would begin to shower the earth with larger particles, that fell to the earth as fiery hail that Nostradamus described as “great hail”, “red hail”, and “hail larger than an egg”. These blazing missiles would set large swathes of the forests of the world alight.
Finally, as the comet drew closer still, the entire earth would be enveloped in thick, choking dust that would blacken the skies and lead to days and nights of complete darkness. Truly, this would be a darkness that could be felt, just as was described in Egypt during the plagues of Moses.
“And the Lord said unto Moses, stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven: and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days.” (Exodus 10:20-22)
The picture painted by Nostradamus of the appearance of the comet and its aftermath on the earth is bleak indeed. Earthquakes that devastate the land; fiery meteorites that bombard the earth setting fire to forests and vegetation; red dust that poisons the drinking water and causes disease.
An asteroid that plunges into the sea causing tidal waves that swamp coastal cities and kill marine life. Humanity afflicted by famine, war, pestilence and plague. Those spared the destruction of these disasters desperately trying to survive amidst “little rain, hot winds, wars, invasions”.
Although the Coma surrounding the nucleus of the comet will be many times larger than the earth, the asteroid that will strike the earth will be small by comparison. Yet it will still be large enough to cause immense destruction across the surface of the earth.
In his book of Revelation, John refers to this asteroid as a “great mountain”. “And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea.” (Revelation 8: 8)
By an interesting coincidence, in writing about a future asteroid that would one day strike the earth, Nostradamus uses the same words that appear in the Bible. While St. John calls it a “great mountain”, Nostradamus refers to it as “la grand montaigne“.
“The great mountain, seven stadia round, After peace, war, famine, flood. It will spread far, drowning great countries, Even those of great age and mighty foundations.” (Century One Verse 69)
Nostradamus gives the size of this “great mountain” as “seven stadia round”. Although the “stadium” was a unit of measurement used initially by the Greeks and Romans, it was still in use in the 16th century, and “seven stadia round” would make this asteroid nearly a mile (7/10ths) wide.
An asteroid of this size traveling at a speed of several hundred thousand miles an hour would cause global devastation, especially if it were to crash into the sea. It would set off a series of megathrust earthquakes in subduction zones around the planet.
These ruptures of undersea tectonic plates would generate colossal tidal waves that would travel around the world, “drowning great countries, even those of great age and mighty foundations”. And, as we shall later discover, they could even alter the shapes of entire continents.
Allan, The Day of the Lord, May 17, 2016, 3:21 pm
 While St. John was in exile on the Greek island of Patmos, he had a series of visions which he described in his book of Revelation. These visions portrayed events which were predicted to occur during the end times leading up to the return of Jesus. As John wrote:
“And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
“And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.” (Revelation 8: 10-11)
Over the centuries these verses have been the source of numerous conflicting interpretations. And part of the reason for this is due to the controversy surrounding the true identity of the writer of this last book of the Bible.
Although the founders of the early Christian Church considered John of Patmos to be the same person as St. John the Divine, the beloved disciple of Jesus and author of St. John’s Gospel, a number of modern theologians have questioned this.
They point out that this was the last book to be accepted into the Christian Biblical Canon (those books accepted by orthodox Christians as being divinely inspired), and that John’s book of Revelation has never been accepted by the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Even during the period of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, it was regarded with suspicion. It was the only book in the New Testament for which the French reformer John Calvin did not write a commentary, while Martin Luther rejected it outright, as being “neither apostolic nor prophetic”.
So the dramatic predictions contained in the book of Revelation have been ignored by those who question its authenticity. Yet, whoever the actual author really was, his prophetic words should concern all those who seek answers to events that are now unfolding in the world.
For them, the key question remains. What exactly was this “great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp” that John called “Wormwood”? And this is where “the plot thickens”, so to speak, for there have been no shortage of suggested answers.
One could say that much of the confusion that has arisen over just what John was referring to when he wrote about “Wormwood”, began in 1968 when the manager of a local hotel in Davos, Switzerland, published a book with a provocative title, and an even more provocative thesis.
 Erich von Daniken The title of the book was Chariots of the Gods, and the Swiss hotelier was Erich von Däniken. In this book von Däniken posed the idea that extraterrestrial beings had visited the earth in the ancient past, and had been worshipped as “Gods” by the cultures of those times.
He went on to attribute all sorts of ancient monuments and artifacts to the work of these alien beings, whom he referred to as “ancients astronauts”. For example, he suggested that structures such as Stonehenge, the Moai of Easter Island and the pyramids of Egypt were built by these ET visitors.
He also offered an entirely new interpretation of ancient artwork taken from various parts of the world, by referring to them as attempts by local artists to record extraterrestrial spacecraft and their technology, using examples like Mayan glyphs found in places like Mexico, Guatemala and Belize.
He challenged the traditional view of religious texts, by explaining them as stories describing human contact with alien beings, and offered new interpretations of parts of the Old Testament of the Bible, such as the Ark of the Covenant and the “wheel” witnessed by Ezekiel.
These evocative tales of human/alien contact in ancient times found a ready market among people stirred by the burgeoning developments in the space race between the Americans and Russians, and his book quickly became a bestseller, leading to many more on the same theme in subsequent years.
Now just where these particular extraterrestrial beings came from, and where they went, von Däniken did not know. But then along came a man who claimed that he did know. He was the Russian-born author Zecharia Sitchin, who wrote a series of books that also became bestsellers.
 Zecharia Sitchin But if Erich von Däniken’s books contained theories that were provocative, Zecharia Sitchin proceeded to take his readers on a journey of the mind that beggared description. He concocted a scenario of human/alien interaction that far exceeded the imaginary works of the French novelist Jules Verne.
Like von Däniken, Sitchin was not a trained scholar. He was born in what was then the Soviet Union, and was raised in Palestine. He received a degree in economics from the University of London, and was an editor and journalist in Israel, before moving to New York in 1952.
It was while he was working as an executive for a shipping company that he had the chance to visit various archaeological sites in southern Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq. It was there that he became fascinated by the ancient Sumerian culture and their inscribed clay tablets.
Once he had satisfied himself that he understood the cuneiform inscriptions on these tablets, Sitchin began to write a series of books about the Sumerians and their times. His first book was published in 1976. It was called The 12th Planet, and it proved to be an immediate success.
According to his analysis of the iconography and symbolism of these clay tablets, Sitchin claimed that there is an undiscovered planet beyond the planet Neptune that follows a long, elliptical orbit that completes its closest approach to the sun roughly every 3,600 years.
Sitchin said that the Sumerians called this planet Nibiru. He referred to it as the 12th planet because, according to Sumerian cosmology, our solar system is comprised of the sun and moon, as well as the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Nibiru.
If what Sitchin has written is correct, one would have to question why the Sumerians should consider Earth’s moon to be a “planet”. After all, there are four moons in our solar system that are significantly bigger than our moon. Three of them orbit around Jupiter, and one around Saturn.
And it is no answer to suggest that these distant moons would not have been visible to the ancient Sumerians, as only five planets are visible in the night sky at the best of times, and Neptune and Pluto can barely be seen even with the aid of a powerful telescope.
Anyway, undaunted by this, Sitchin went on to explain in his book that the planet Nibiru was the home of a technologically advanced human-like extraterrestrial race whom the Sumerians called the Annunaki, and the Bible referred to as the Nephilim.
He further explained that, based on his interpretation of the ancient cuneiform tablets, the Annunaki had arrived on earth from Nibiru around 450,000 years ago. He said that they were looking for minerals, especially gold, which they were able to find and mine in Africa.
So according to Sitchin, the Gods of antiquity were actually the rank-and-file workers of a colonial expedition that had been sent to earth from the planet Nibiru. But because they were dissatisfied with their working conditions here on earth, they rebelled.
According to Sitchin, the Annunaki therefore decided to create a race of primitive workers to do their mining for them. They did this by means of genetic engineering, and by cross-breeding extra-terrestrial genes with those of primitive man.
It was this cross-breed, Sitchin claimed, that was the origin of the human species that scientists today call Homo Sapiens. So according to Sitchin, modern humans are the descendants of slaves who were created for the express purpose of serving their colonial masters from the planet Nibiru.
It is hardly surprising that this bizarre scenario was greeted by scholars and the scientific community alike with a mixture of disbelief and scorn. So great was their contempt for Sitchin’s work that very few could be found who were prepared to even challenge his ideas in print.
Unfortunately, this has led the great majority of his readers to believe that scholars and scientists have no answer for his claims, and that there exists a great conspiracy of silence by Governments everywhere to hide the truth about the existence of Niburu, and the threat it poses to earth.
One person who has been prepared to go on the record, however, is the established authority on ancient Sumerian cuneiform writing, Michael Heiser. Heiser has been highly critical of Sitchin because of his flagrant errors in translating cuneiform script.
He has even gone so far as to create his own website, which he calls www.SitchinIsWrong.com. On this website Heiser analyses each of Sitchin’s interpretations of the script on Sumerian tablets, and then demolishes them one by one.
Not content with his own research, Heiser invites visitors to his website to find out the facts for themselves, by showing them exactly how and where to do this. He also challenges Sitchin, or any of his followers, to produce a single line of cuneiform text that supports his ideas about the Anunnaki. As he says:
“I just want to see one line of one text that says things like the Anunnaki inhabit a planet called Nibiru, or that the term Anunnaki means ‘people of the fiery rockets’, that sort of thing.” So far nobody has.
Another vocal critic of Sitchin’s work is the American cultural critic William Thompson, who complains that what Sitchin claims to see in the clay tablets is exactly what he needs to support his theory. He writes:
“Sitchin has constructed what appears to be a convincing argument, but when he gets close to single images on ancient tablets, he falls back into the literalism of ‘Here is an image of the gods in rockets’. Ancient Sumer is made to look like a movie set.
“The gods can cross galactic distances, but by the time they get to earth they need launching pads for their rocket ships. This literalization of the imagination doesn’t make any sense, but every time it doesn’t, you hear Sitchin say ‘There can be no doubt, but…”
But if scholars were critical of his faulty translations, astronomers were absolutely scathing in their rejection of Sitchin’s theory about the existence of a 12th planet on an elliptical orbit around the sun, and for his unorthodox ideas about the early days of our solar system and the origin of the Earth.
 According to Sitchin, the planet Nibiru collided catastrophically with another planet which the Sumerians called Tiamat. He explained that Tiamat was located between Mars and Jupiter, and that Tiamat was struck by one of Nibiru’s moons, causing the planet to split into two parts.
Sitchin wrote that in its next orbit around the sun, one of the moons of Nibiru struck one of the two halves that remained of Tiamat, and that this collision created the asteroid belt that exists between Mars and Jupiter today. But then he went on to propose something even more preposterous.
This collision also supposedly created the Oort cloud that is believed the source of so many comets throughout our recorded history. And finally, for good measure, Sitchin stated that the other part of the original planet Tiamat was pushed into a new orbit, where it became today’s planet Earth.
This picture painted by Sitchin of rogue planets rampaging through the solar system, creating and destroying other planets as they did so, may have been swallowed by gullible readers at the time his books were written, but from the standpoint of modern science, such theories are laughable.
In fact the very idea of planets colliding with one another is a myth. Prior to the latest discoveries of space sciences like astrophysics, Sitchin might have been able to get away with such ideas. But not any more. In fact we now know that the solar system operates in such a way as to ensure that planets do not collide with one another.
As recent space probes have now proved, planets are not simply lumps of inert rock careening around the sun. They are electrically charged bodies that are surrounded by magnetic sheaths called magnetospheres. And it these positively charged fields around planets that naturally repel any intruders that happen to venture too close.
So even if the orbit of one planet should somehow be disturbed in such a way as to threaten another, these two planets would not collide. The most likely thing that would happen is that they would exchange plasma discharges (cosmic thunderbolts) as a result of the proximity of their magnetospheres, before being repelled away from one another.
But Sitchin’s theories don’t even stand up to simple logic. One of the most prolific critics of his work has been Leroy Ellenberger. Ellenberger points out that the idea of an ancient civilization developing on a planet that spends over 99% of its time in deep space beyond Pluto is patently absurd.
And the explanation proposed by Sitchin, that the planet Nibiru could be heated from within through a process of radioactive decay is equally ridiculous, and doesn’t even begin to address the obvious problem of trying to survive in total darkness in the icy wastes of space.
But the aspect of Sitchin’s work that attracts the most criticism from astronomers, is his contention that the planet Nibiru still continues to orbit around our sun, and that it follows an elliptical path that takes 3,600 years to complete a single orbit.
For starters, astronomers say that no planet with such an irregular orbit could maintain that orbit for very long. It would either be flung out of the solar system altogether, or become an inner planet.
“The scenario outlined by Sitchin”, says Ellenberger, “with Nibiru returning to the inner solar system regularly every 3,600 years, implies an orbit extending twelve times farther beyond the sun than Pluto.
“Elementary perturbation theory indicates that, under the most favorable circumstances of avoiding close encounters with other planets, no body with such an eccentric orbit would keep the same period for two consecutive passages.
“Within twelve orbits the object would be either ejected or converted to a short period object. Thus, the failed search for a trans-Plutonian planet by Tom Van Flandern of the U.S. Naval Observatory, which Sitchin uses to bolster his thesis, is no support at all.”
Despite the contumely heaped upon Zechariah Sitchin and his work by modern science, he continues to retain a loyal body of followers who remain steadfastly convinced about the existence of Nibiru, and who expectantly await its next return to the skies of Earth.
 The Return of Nibiru or Planet X ? It is followers like these who fill the Internet with extravagant interpretations of Sitchin’s work, and who make bold claims that Nibiru, or Planet X as it is also called in some quarters, is in fact the “great star from heaven” described by John in his book of Revelation.
Yet however confident they may be that Nibiru exists, and that it may one day return and threaten the Earth, Sitchin himself scotched any idea that this would occur within our own lifetimes. As he wrote in his last book titled The End of Days, published shortly before his death in 2010:
“If that is what happened, it would explain the ‘early’ arrival of Niburu in 556 BC – and suggest that its next arrival will be AD 2,900”. And for anyone who might still be in doubt he added: “For those who associate the prophesied cataclysmic events with the return of Niburu- (Planet X to some)- the time is not at hand.”
Because it is clear that scientific evidence confirming the existence of a 12th planet, Nibiru, Planet X or whatever else it may be called, simply does not exist, some of his disenchanted readers have turned to other more exotic explanations for the meaning of “Wormwood” in the book of Revelation.
One of these is that St. John’s “great star from heaven” might not be a planet after all, but a “brown dwarf” instead. Now brown dwarfs are considered by astronomers to be substellar objects that are too small to sustain hydrogen fusion reactions within their cores.
Supporters of this idea suggest that the star from heaven witnessed by St. John in his vision might have been a brown dwarf, because this would better explain other effects described in the book of Revelation, such as the ability to push the Earth into a diferent orbit around the sun.
But this interpretation clearly conflicts with St. John’s words that the star he saw in his vision was “burning as it were a lamp”. And brown dwarfs by their very definition are dark objects. In other words, they don’t glow. This appears to be just another dead end, and so the conundrum continues.
In fact the challenge that faces anyone who tries to understand the book of Revelation is to wed together all the different segments (variously described as seven bowls, seven trumpets and seven seals) into a single coherent theory that can be validated by science and common sense.
But if modern interpreters of Revelation have difficulty explaining St. John’s vision, this did not seem to hamper medieval seers, who wrote in simple language about what they themselves had seen, and the effects this would have upon the Earth, as will be seen in the following instalment.
Allan, The Day of the Lord, May 2, 2016, 1:42 pm
Throughout history certain men and women have acquired fame, or notoriety, by claiming to be able to predict future events. This has especially been true within religious faiths, where certain individuals have been regarded as divinely inspired, and their predictions have been accepted as the ordained will of God.
And throughout the ages, men and women of every generation have sought to know the future in the hope that, by so doing, they might gain some temporal advantage over others. As it was in the past, so is this true of the times in which we live today.
But does prophecy matter? Is it wise, or even possible, to know the path of future events? There are those who believe that life unfolds according to forces which can never be understood, and that any attempt to do so is sheer folly. They are content to take each day as it comes.
But prophecy is not simple prediction, and those who claim to be moved by prophetic impulse do not do so merely to inform. All true prophecy stands as a warning. And those who study and learn from these warnings may not only become guardians of wisdom – they may in time become beacons for the transformation of society.
Perhaps nowhere has this prophetic impulse been more evident than in Judaism. Of all the major religions of the world, the unique feature of the Jewish religion has been the extraordinary sequence of prophets that have illuminated the early history of the Jews.
This sequence can be considered to have begun with the prophet Elijah (also called Elias), who lived during the reign of Ahab in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, in the 9th century before the birth of Christ.
It continued in the Northern Kingdom with such prophets as Elisha, Amos and Jonah, and ended with the prophet Hosea who lived during the reign of Jereboam II, who ruled the ancient kingdom of Israel from 793 BC to 753 BC.
In the Southern Kingdom of Judah, this lineage began with the prophets Obadiah, Joel and Isaiah in the 9th century BC, and continued with Micah, Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Huldah, Nahum and Habakkuk in the 8th century BC.
Following their conquest by Nebuchadnezzar and subsequent exile in Babylon during the 6th century BC, the prophet Ezekiel rose to prominence, as well as Daniel, who lives on through the Biblical story of his imprisonment in a den of lions.
Even after the decree by Cyrus the Great in 538 BC that allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, this sequence of prophetic figures continued through men like Haggai and Zechariah, before culminating with Malachi, who prophesied around the year 420 BC.
The role of these prophets within Judaism was to act as guardians of the Jewish faith, and monitors of the Torah, or the laws of God as revealed to Moses, and recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures.
However, they also became famous for their ability to interpret omens and dreams, and to predict future events. And it is in this area of prediction that the Old Testament prophets have assumed such prominence in the modern world, because what they predicted directly affects every person alive today.
One of the most striking features of the prophecies recorded in the Old Testament, is their repeated references to events that were predicted to occur at the end of the present age. They referred to these times as the “Latter Days” or “End of Days”, leading up to the return of the Messiah.
In referring to these “Latter Days”, these prophets wrote about one event in particular. They called this event “The Day of the Lord”, or even “The Great and Terrible Day of the Lord”. And this became a recurring theme of prophecy down the centuries, as we can see from the following examples:
In the Book of Joel:
“The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.” (Joel 2:10)
“And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come.” (Joel 2: 30-31)
In the Book of Amos:
“Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth. Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth.” (Amos 5: 7-8)
In the Book of Nahum:
“He rebuketh the sea, and maketh it dry, and drieth up all the rivers: Bashan languisheth, and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth. The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein.”
“Who can stand before his indignation? And who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him.” (Nahum 1: 4-6)
In the Book of Habakkuk:
“And the Lord answered me, and said, write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.” (Habakkuk 2: 2-3)
“Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals went forth at his feet. He stood, and measured the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow: his ways are everlasting.” (Habakkuk 3: 5-6)
In the Book of Ezekiel:
“Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel; So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that creep upon the earth, and all the men that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.”
“And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord God: every man’s sword shall be against his brother. And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.” (Ezekiel 38: 19-22)
In the Book of Haggai:
“For thus saith the Lord of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come.” (Haggai 2: 6-7)
In the book of Malachi:
“For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.” (Malachi 4: 1)
This theme of blood, hailstones, brimstone and fire raining down upon the earth from the skies can be found in the New Testament as well. When the disciples asked Jesus about the signs that would precede his return to earth, Jesus said:
“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” (Luke 21:25-26)
It is clear that this “Day of the Lord” will be a day unlike any that those who are alive today will ever have experienced. While hundreds of millions of people have been afflicted by local or regional disasters, none of us have ever had to deal with a global catastrophe of the kind described by Jesus and the prophets.
The obvious question that arises from these Biblical passages is what sort of event would cause the heavens to shake, as well as the earth, the sea and the dry land? And what type of event would cause men’s hearts to fail them with fear?
In his Book of Revelation, St. John described a series of visions which appeared to him while he was in exile on the island of Patmos. And these visions portrayed events which would definitely be guaranteed to make even the sturdiest heart quake. As he wrote:
“And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.” (Revelation 8:2)
John went on to describe what would happen when the first angel sounded his trumpet.
“The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all the green grass was burnt up.” (Revelation 8:7)
Let us suppose, for example, that a large comet was to emerge from deep space and enter our solar system. It would then be drawn toward the sun by the force of gravity. As it did so, it would develop a trail of dust particles that would travel behind the nucleus of the comet.
However, once it had reached its perihelion or closest approach to the sun, the tail of the comet would now travel in front of the nucleus of the comet, due to the pressure of the solar wind generated by the sun. As any astronomer will confirm, comet tails always point away from the sun.
And if by chance, as it passed around the sun and began its journey back into space, the path of this comet should happen to cross the orbit of the earth, then the earth would first be exposed to the dust particles in the tail of the comet.
And if this comet happened to have a nucleus composed of significant amounts of iron, then the dust particles in the tail of the comet would be coloured red. And then as this comet drew closer, it would shower the surface of the earth with enormous quantities of red dust.
If these red dust particles should happen to fall upon bodies of water, such as lakes or seas, they would become discoloured, causing the water to look like blood. This contaminated water would not only become thick and muddy, but would prove toxic to anyone who tried to drink it.
As the comet drew closer to the earth, the fine dust particles in its tail would give way to larger particles. When these gravel-sized particles reached the outer atmosphere of the earth, they would become white hot with friction, and become fiery meteorites that would look like “hail and fire mingled with blood”.
This fiery hail would devastate the entire surface of the planet. It would not only set fire to the grassy plains, but would burn up entire forests as well. The damage caused by this shower of incandescent meteorites could easily cause “a third part of them to be burnt up”.
Then, according to St. John, the second trumpet of the Book of Revelation will sound.
“And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.” (Revelation: 8:8-9)
If a large rock emanating from the tail of the comet entered the atmosphere of the earth and plunged into the sea, the destruction caused by this impact would be catastrophic.
The impact of this collision would not only vaporize the asteroid itself, it would also penetrate the ocean floor causing huge amounts of superheated water, molten rock and other matter to rise high into the upper atmosphere.
This superheated material would then fall back down to earth in the form of blazing missiles that would set fire to buildings, forests and crops around the entire planet.
Volcanoes would suddenly roar back to life, spewing vast clouds of debris into the atmosphere, adding to the hellish conditions. Forest fires would also create enormous noxious fumes that would stain the sky and cause the moon to appear “blood-red” in colour.
In addition to setting off a series of gigantic earthquakes around the world, the impact of this asteroid would also cause a rupture of undersea fault lines that would generate colossal tidal waves that would travel around the world, causing immense destruction to coastal cities everywhere.
The death toll caused by a disaster of this magnitude would be beyond count, as would the damage to cities, ships and cargo. This devastation could easily kill “a third part of the creatures in the sea”, as well as destroy “a third part” of all the ships in the sea.
Then, according to St. John, the third angel would sound his trumpet.
“And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
“And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.” (Revelation 8: 10-11)
St. John describes this comet as a “star” that appears in the skies of earth “burning as it were a lamp”. And because of its bitter nature and poisonous contamination of rivers, lakes and reservoirs, just like the wormwood plant, he refers to the asteroid as “Wormwood”.
“And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.” (Revelation 8: 12)
As the nucleus or head of the comet makes its closest approach to the earth the enormous dust cloud that surrounds it will blot out the sun, the moon and the stars for a period of three days and three nights. There is an interesting parallel here with the plagues at the time of Moses and the three days of darkness that descended upon Egypt.
“And the Lord said unto Moses, stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven: and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days.” (Exodus 10:20-22)
If the visions described by St. John should happen to come to pass, then the cataclysmic events that would occur when this comet appears in the skies of earth will truly cause men’s hearts to quake with fear.
The continents themselves would be changed, as new lands rose out of the ocean, while others were swallowed up by the sea. New mountain ranges would be created. It would be like the time of Moses when “the sea fled”, “the mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs”.
“When Israel went out of Egypt,
The house of Jacob from a people of strange language;
Judah was his sanctuary, and Israel his dominion.
The sea saw it and fled: Jordan was driven back.
The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like lambs.”
(Psalm 114: 1-4)
In short, the day this comet makes its closest approach to the earth will be “The Great and Terrible Day of the Lord” predicted by the prophet Joel, and described by Zephaniah in the 7th century BC in following words:
“The great day of the Lord is near, it is near, and hasteth greatly, even the voice of the day of the Lord: the mighty man shall cry there bitterly.
“That day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high towers.” (Zephaniah 1: 14-16)
Allan, The Day of the Lord, April 18, 2016, 1:07 pm
 In his book titled A Search in Secret Egypt, published in 1936 under the pen name Paul Brunton, the British spiritualist Raphael Hurst described how he had spent an entire night engaged in meditation in front of the giant Sphinx carved out of the Giza plateau.
With the insight gained from the visionary experiences that were described in the previous instalment, Hurst then turned his attention to the adjoining pyramid. As he commented in his book, he was motivated by an unusual feature of ancient Egyptian architecture.
“That the Sphinx conceals some architectural secret and hides some mystery cut in stone is equally suggested by a curious fact. In every other part of Egypt small copies of the Sphinx were set up before their respective temples, as guardians and protectors of the threshold, or else lions were figured protectively at the gates of the temples.
“Where, then, is the real temple of the Sphinx?
“I raised my head a little and looked behind the statue. And I saw, from the angle where I was sitting, looming up in the early morning light, lifting its truncated apex to the sky, the world’s largest building, the world’s insoluble stone riddle, the world’s first wonder to the Greeks as to us, that enigma of the ancients which continues to puzzle the moderns, the fit friend of the Sphinx.
“The Great Pyramid!
“Both, built in Atlantean times, stand as distinctive marks of the mysterious continent, and remain as mute legacies from a race of people who have departed as mysteriously as their own land. Both remind the successors of the Atlanteans of the glories of that lost civilization.”
It was then that Hurst conceived an even more ambitious plan. He decided that he would try and persuade the Egyptian authorities to allow him to spend an entire night locked up alone inside the Great Pyramid. Hardly surprisingly, his initial overtures were immediately rebuffed. As he wrote:
“I had discovered that, although the public could always approach it, the Great Pyramid was not public property. It belonged to the Government of Egypt. One could no more walk into it and spend an unconventional night inside any of its rooms than one could walk into any strange man’s house and spend a night inside his best bedroom.
“Had I asked for permission to fly to the moon, the face of the official who listened to me could not have betrayed more utter stupefaction.
“I have never had such a request before. I do not think it is within my power to grant it. He sent me to another and higher official of the same Department. “Impossible!” declared the second official kindly but firmly, thinking he had before him a tame lunatic.
“The thing is unheard of. I regret… his voice trailed off, the while he shrugged his shoulders. He rose from his chair to bow me out of the room.
“It was then that my journalistic and editorial training, lulled for several years but not dead, rose rebelliously into action. I began to argue with him, persisted in repeating my request in other ways, and refused to budge from the room.
“He got rid of me, finally, by saying that the matter did not come within the jurisdiction of the Antiquities Department. Within whose jurisdiction did it come, then, I enquired. He was not quite sure but thought I had better apply to the Police. At Police Headquarters I discovered a Permit Section.
“For the third time I begged to be allowed to spend one night inside the Pyramid. The official did not know what to do with me so he sent me to his chief. The latter wanted a little time to consider the matter. When I returned next day he referred me to the Department of Antiquities!
“I went home in momentary despair of ever achieving my objective. My next move was to secure an interview with the genial Commandant of the Cairo City Police. I walked out of his office with a written authority, which requested the police chief of the area in which the Pyramid was situated to give me all the assistance necessary to achieve my purpose.
“A station constable was detailed to accompany me as far as the Pyramid, and to give instructions to the armed policeman who is placed outside the building to guard it at night.”
Once the Police constable had locked the iron grille securely behind him, Raphael Hurst made his way carefully down what he described as “a long, low, steep, narrow and slippery corridor“, armed with a strong flashlight to penetrate the darkness that enveloped him.
Although his stated purpose was to spend the night inside the King’s Chamber, he began his sojourn with an examination of the underground region of the Pyramid. Following this, he crawled back up the steep passage until he reached the level corridor that led to the Queen’s Chamber.
Once inside this Chamber, he examined the two ventilating shafts which slanted upwards on either side. Modern Egyptologists groomed in the conventional theory that the Pyramid was built to contain the funerary remains of Pharaoh Khafre, naturally dispute the idea that these shafts are air vents. But as Hurst explains:
“Here was clear proof that the room had never been a tomb, but was intended to be used. Many have been puzzled by the circumstance of the discovery of these shafts, in 1872, when it was found that they stopped five inches short of the Chamber itself and apparently were not originally cut right through the walls.
“In their discovered state, therefore, they could not admit air; so it is thought that they had some other and unknown use. But the best explanation is that the time came when they had served their purpose and, like the rest of the upper passages of the Pyramid, were completely sealed at their orifices by new stone blocks”.
Hurst then rested for awhile before continuing on up the Grand Gallery which led to the King’s Chamber. As he wrote:
“A few paces forward through the Antechamber, a forced stoop under the granite block which hangs down from grooved side-walls, and which bars the exit of this horizontal corridor, and I had reached the most important room in the Pyramid, the famous King’s Chamber”.
Once inside, he found a dislodged block of stone that served as a suitable place to sit down, and proceeded to settle in for the long night that lay ahead. Alongside, he placed various items that he had brought with him, including “a thermos flask with hot tea, a couple of bottles of iced water, a notebook and my Parker pen“.
 As he looked around, he noticed that the King’s Chamber also contained a pair of air vents about nine inches square. Then, satisfied that all was in order, he took one last look at the empty marble sarcophagus alongside of him, and switched off his flashlight. He later described what followed.
“The effects of the three-day fast which I had undertaken in order to increase my sensitivity, now showed themselves in growing chilliness. Cold air was creeping into the King’s Chamber through the narrow ventilation shafts, and then creeping past the thin barrier of my light garment.
“My chilled flesh began to shiver under its thin shirt. I got up and dressed myself in the jacket which I had put off only a few hours before on account of the intense heat. Such is Eastern life at certain times of the year – tropical heat by day and a heavy fall of temperature by night.
“To this day no one has discovered the mouths of these air channels on the outside of the Pyramid, although the approximate area of their positions is known. Some Egyptologists have even doubted whether the channels were ever carried right through to the outside, but the complete chilling of the air during my experience finally settles the point.
“The minutes slowly dragged themselves along, the while I slowly “sensed” that the King’s Chamber possessed a very strong atmosphere of its own, an atmosphere which I can only call “psychic”.
“For I had deliberately made myself receptive in mind, passive in feeling and negative in attitude, so that I might become a perfect register of whatever super-physical event might transpire.
“I do not know how long a period elapsed before I became conscious of a new presence in the chamber, of someone friendly and benevolent who stood at the entrance and looked down upon me with kindly eyes.
“With his arrival the atmosphere changed completely – and changed for the better. Something clean and sane had come with him. A new element began to play upon my overwrought sensitive being, soothing and calming it.
“He approached my stony seat, and I saw that he was followed by another figure. Both halted at my side and regarded me with grave looks, pregnant with prophetic meaning. I felt that some momentous hour of my life was at hand.
“They stood motionless as statues, regarding me, their hands crossed upon their breasts, remaining absolutely silent. Was I functioning in some fourth dimension, aware and awake in some far-off epoch of the past? Had my sense of time regressed to the early days of Egypt?
“No; that could not be, for I perceived quickly that these two could see me and even now were about to address me. Their tall figures bent forward; the lips of one spirit seemed to move, his face close to mine, his eyes flashing spiritual fire, and his voice sounding in my ear.
“Know, my son, that in this Ancient fane lies the lost record of the early races of man and or the Covenant which they made with their Creator through the first of His great prophets. Know, too, that chosen men were brought here of old to be shown this Covenant that they might return to their fellows and keep the great secret alive.
“Take back with thee the warning that when men forsake their Creator and look on their fellows with hate, as with the princes of Atlantis in whose time this Pyramid was built, they are destroyed by the weight of their own iniquity, even as the people of Atlantis were destroyed.
“It was not the Creator who sank Atlantis, but the selfishness, the cruelty, the spiritual blindness of the people who dwelt on those doomed islands. The Creator loves all; but the lives of men are governed by invisible laws which He has set over them. Take back this warning, then.
 Interior of the King’s Chamber showing the empty Sarcophagus “There surged up in me a great desire to see this mysterious Covenant and the spirit must have read my thought, for he quickly said:”To all things there is an hour. Not yet, my son, not yet.” I was disappointed.
“He looked at me for a few seconds.”No man of thy people hath yet been permitted to behold such a thing, but because thou art a man versed in these things, and hast come among us bearing goodwill and understanding in thy heart, some satisfaction thou shalt have. Come with me!
“And then a strange thing happened. I seemed to fall into a kind of semi-coma, my consciousness was momentarily blotted out, and the next thing I knew was that I had been transported to another place.
“I found myself in a long passage which was softly lit, although no lamp or window was visible: I fancied that the illuminant was none other than the halo-like emanation around my companion combined with the radiation from the luminous vibrant cord of ether which extended behind me, yet I realized that these would not sufficiently explain it.
“The walls were built up with a glowing pinkish terra-cotta coloured stone, slabbed with the thinnest of joints. The floor sloped downwards at precisely the same angle as the Pyramid entrance itself descends.
“The masonry was well finished. The passage was square and fairly low, but not uncomfortably so. I could not find the source of its mysterious illuminant, yet the interior was bright as though a lamp were playing on it.
“The High Priest bade me follow him a little way down the passage. “Look not backwards” he warned me, “nor turn thy head.”
“We passed some distance down the incline and I saw a large temple-like chamber opening out of the farther end. I knew perfectly well that I was inside or below the Pyramid, but I had never seen such a passage or chamber before. Evidently they were secret and had defied discovery until this day.
“I could not help feeling tremendously excited about this startling find, and an equally tremendous curiosity seized me as to where and what the entrance was.
“Finally, I had to turn my head and take a swift look backwards at what I hoped was the secret door. I had entered the place by no visible entrance, but at the farther end I saw that what should have been an opening was closed with square blocks and apparently cemented.
“I found myself gazing at a blank wall; then, as swiftly, whirled away by some irresistible force until the whole scene was blotted out and I had floated off into space again.
“I heard the words: “Not yet, not yet” repeated as in an echo and a few moments later saw my inert unconscious body lying on the stone.
“My son” came a murmur from the High Priest, “it matters not whether thou discoverest the door or not. Find but the secret passage within the mind that will lead thee to the hidden chamber within thine own soul, and thou shalt have found something worthy indeed.
“The mystery of the Great Pyramid is the mystery of thine own self. The secret chambers and ancient records are all contained in thine own nature.
“The lesson of the Pyramid is that man must turn inward, must venture to the unknown centre of his being to find his soul, even as he must venture to the unknown depths of this fane to find its profoundest secret. Farewell!”
Raphael Hurst’s experiences during his sojourn inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, speak to an entirely new interpretation of the meaning and purpose of the Pyramid and the Sphinx, than that currently held by modern scholars and Egyptologists.
Lacking any physical proof that would validate such esoteric accounts as those described by Hurst, they prefer to cling to their conventional belief that both the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid were built during the reign of the Pharaoh Khafre.
Yet there are other sources which point to the accuracy of the explanation given by Hurst, such as the American mystic Edgar Cayce, popularly known as the “sleeping prophet”. Cayce gave several readings in which he referred to an ancient “Hall of Records” that lay buried beneath the Sphinx.
When asked during one of his trance readings in 1933 what this secret chamber contained, Cayce replied :
“A record of Atlantis from the beginning of those periods when the Spirit took form, or began the encasements in that land; and the developments of the peoples throughout their sojourn; together with the record of the first destruction, and the changes that took place in the land;
“With the record of the sojournings of the peoples and their varied activities in other lands, and a record of the meetings of all the nations or lands, for the activities in the destruction of Atlantis; and the building of the pyramid of initiation, together with whom, what, and where the opening of the records would come, that are as copies from the sunken Atlantis.
“For with the change, it [Atlantis] must rise again. In position, this lies – as the sun rises from the waters – as the line of the shadows (or light) falls between the paws of the Sphinx; that was set later as the sentinel or guard and which may not be entered from the connecting chambers from the Sphinx’s right paw until the time has been fulfilled when the changes must be active in this sphere of man’s experience. Then [it lies] between the Sphinx and the river.” [378-16; Oct 29, 1933]
This was not the only occasion on which Cayce talked about the legendary continent of Atlantis, as well as the “Hall of Records” that lay buried beneath the Sphinx. The following extracts are taken from other readings which he gave in later years.
“It would be well if this entity were to seek either of the three phases of the ways and means in which those records of the activities of individuals were preserved – the one in the Atlantean land, that sank, which will rise and is rising again; another in the place of the records that leadeth from the Sphinx to the hall of records, in the Egyptian land; and another in the Aryan or Yucatan land, where the temple there is overshadowing same.” [2012-1; Sep 25, 1939]
“… the entity joined with those who were active in putting the records in forms that were partially of the old characters of the ancient or early Egyptian, and part in the newer form of the Atlanteans. These may be found, especially when the house or tomb of records is opened, in a few years from now”. [2537-1; Jul 17, 1941]
“… the entity was among the first to set the records that are yet to be discovered or yet to be had of those activities in the Atlantean land, and for the preservation of data that is yet to be found from the chambers of the way between the Sphinx and the pyramid of records”. [3575-2; Jan 20, 1944. Excerpts from Cayce, Edgar. On Atlantis. New York: Warner Books, 1968.]
It may be significant that Cayce predicted that this “Hall of Records” may not be entered from the connecting chambers from the Sphinx’s right paw until the time has been fulfilled. Certainly there has been no shortage of people who have tried to find this hidden chamber over the years.
Yet for one reason or another, whether the result of equipment failure or obstructions due to bureaucratic red tape, all efforts to do so have thus far proved fruitless. It does seem as if the time is not yet ripe, and that we will have to wait until this time of destiny is fulfilled.
It is perhaps appropriate to end here with the words of the Oracle of Tolemac, who said that similar world-wide catastrophes that caused this ancient wisdom to be hidden in the distant past, would return to permit these buried records to be rediscovered at the dawn of the new Golden Age.
“Various seers and prophets have predicted that the ancient records of Atlantis would be found in Egypt. The American seer Edgar Cayce predicted that a “Hall of Records” would be found beneath the Sphinx. Inside this hall of records would be found tablets, artifacts and gold related to the lost civilization of Atlantis”.
He predicted that these records would also include a detailed history of human life on earth.
“Knowledge and wisdom will make great advances in the coming age. The true history of your planet will be revealed at last. Those same disasters that once caused your earlier libraries and treasures to be hidden will now cause them to be revealed. The lost records of Atlantis and Lemuria will be rediscovered.” (The Last Days of Tolemac)
Allan, Secrets of the Sphinx, April 4, 2016, 10:12 am
Some fourteen hundred years before the birth of Christ, a young Egyptian prince embarked on a hunting expedition on the west bank of the river Nile. Stopping to rest from his exertions, he soon fell asleep in the shadow of a giant stone head that was buried up to its neck in sand.
While he was asleep, he had an unusual dream. He dreamed that the stone head began to speak to him, saying that it was choking from the sand that surrounded it. It went on to say that if the young prince was able to clear away the sand, he would become the next Pharaoh.
This young prince went on to become Thutmose IV, the 8th Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, and ruler of the Kingdoms of both Upper and Lower Egypt. But his most celebrated accomplishment, for which he is remembered to this day, was the excavation and restoration of the Sphinx at Giza.
 The Dream Stela erected by Thutmose IV between the two front paws of the Sphinx In fact he went further. He placed a carved granite tablet between the two front paws of the Sphinx, on which was inscribed the story of his dream. This tablet, or Stela, which came to be known as the Dream Stela, can still be seen in front of the Sphinx today.
Despite the fact that for most of its existence the Sphinx has been almost completely buried in sand, it has still suffered greatly from the ravages of time. In fact, the nature and extent of its eroded flanks has sparked heated debate among scholars over the true age and history of the Sphinx.
Although early Egyptologists were unable to find conclusive evidence of the origin and purpose of the Sphinx, the consensus view among modern scholars is that it was built around 4,500 years ago by the Pharaoh Khafre, who is also believed to have built the second of the three great pyramids at Giza.
They base this view on the fact that the surrounding temples and funerary complex at Giza display the same architectural style as that attributed to Khafre, and the fact that a small Diorite statue of Khafre was discovered in the debris found at the Valley Temple nearby.
However, as the Egyptian scholar Selim Hassan, who spent much of his career supervising the excavation of many ancient Egyptian tombs during the early part of the 20th century, noted in his book The Sphinx: Its History in the Light of Recent Excavations, published in 1949:
“Taking all things into consideration, it seems that we must give the credit of erecting this, the world’s most wonderful statue, to Khafre, but always with this reservation:
“That there is not one single contemporary inscription which connects the Sphinx with Khafre; so, sound as it may appear, we must treat the evidence as circumstantial, until such time as a lucky turn of the spade of the excavator will reveal to the world a definite reference to the erection of the Sphinx”.
Even the Dream Stela erected by Thutmose IV has not clarified the matter. For when the Stela was first discovered, much of the lower portion of the stone tablet had eroded away completely. Of those lines that could still be read, there was an incomplete line that made reference to the word Khaf.
It was this line that led Egyptologist Thomas Young to speculate that the word Khaf was incomplete, and that it was originally meant to refer to the Pharaoh Khafre. Unfortunately, when the Dream Stela was re-excavated in 1925, even this line of text had flaked away from the stone tablet.
It is hardly surprising therefore, that later researchers have come to different conclusions regarding the origin and purpose of the Sphinx. One of these was the American author John Anthony West, who together with Boston geologist Dr. Robert Schoch, came up with a provocative new thesis.
They argued that the Sphinx was significantly older than Egyptologists had previously thought, perhaps dating back as far as 9,000 BC, and that possibly some kind of catastrophe was responsible for wiping out evidence of a far older civilization that pre-dated the Egyptian Pharaohs.
They also claimed that the main type of weathering evident on the Great Sphinx and its surrounding walls could only have been caused by prolonged exposure to water, rather than wind and sand, and that the climate around Giza must have been very different at the time that the Sphinx was built.
As Dr. Schoch explains on his website:
“In 1990 I first traveled to Egypt, with the sole purpose of examining the Great Sphinx from a geological perspective. I assumed that the Egyptologists were correct in their dating, but soon I discovered that the geological evidence was not compatible with what the Egyptologists were saying.
 Contrast between water and wind erosion “On the body of the Sphinx, and on the walls of the Sphinx Enclosure (the pit or hollow remaining after the Sphinx’s body was carved from the bedrock), I found heavy erosional features (seen in the accompanying photographs) that I concluded could only have been caused by rainfall and water runoff.
“The thing is, the Sphinx sits on the edge of the Sahara Desert and the region has been quite arid for the last 5000 years. Furthermore, various structures securely dated to the Old Kingdom show only erosion that was caused by wind and sand (very distinct from the water erosion).
“To make a long story short, I came to the conclusion that the oldest portions of the Great Sphinx, what I refer to as the core-body, must date back to an earlier period (at least 5000 B.C., and maybe as early as 7000 or 9000 B.C.), a time when the climate was very different and included more rain.”
But archaeology and geology are not the only disciplines available to humanity for investigating the riddles of the past. There are occult methods as well. One of the people who recognised this was the British Theosophist and spiritualist Raphael Hurst.
 Raphael Hurst Hurst was born in London in 1898. Although originally trained as a journalist, he subsequently devoted his life to the investigation of Oriental Mysticism, and achieved a world-wide following due to a series of books he published under the pen name Paul Brunton.
One of his early works was titled A Search in Secret Egypt. In this book Hurst described his visit to Egypt in which he experienced visionary insights into the origin and purpose of the Sphinx, as well as the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Being an accomplished practitioner in esoteric mysticism, Hurst undertook an unusual experiment. He chose to spend an entire night meditating in front of the Sphinx. It was during the course of this meditation that he had a visionary experience that he later described in his book.
“And I rested a while in the serene languor which comes when thought is suspended. How long I remained thus I do not know, but a moment arrived when the colours disappeared from my vision and a great open landscape took their place. It was weirdly lit up with a silvery light, as a landscape might be lit up under a full moon.
“And all around me there moved throngs of dark figures, hastening to and fro, some carrying loads in baskets set upon their heads and others climbing up and down frail poled scaffoldings fixed against a huge rock.
” Overseers there were among them, issuing orders to the labourers or carefully watching the efforts of men who worked with hammer and chisel upon the rock, the while they chipped into pre-designed pattern. The air rang with the sounds of their repeated blows.
“The faces of all these men were long and hard, the skins tinted reddish brown, or greyish yellow, and the upper lips, also, were noticeably long. And when their work was done, lo! the outcropping rocky escarpment had turned into a gigantic human head set upon a huge lion body, the whole figure resting in a great artificial hollow cut out of the plateau.
“A broad and deep magnificent stairway led down to the hollow. And upon the top of the figure’s curious headdress, whose wide folds stood out behind the ears, there was set a disk of solid gold.
“The Sphinx!
“And the people disappeared and the landscape became as quiet as a deserted grave. Then I noticed a vast sea which stretched its waters over the whole country on my left, its shore-line being less than a league away.
“There was an ominous quality in the silence which I could not understand until a deep rumbling sound came from the very heart of the ocean, the earth shook and trembled underneath me, and with a deafening roar an immense wall of water rose into the air and dashed headlong towards us, towards the Sphinx and me, and overwhelmed us both.
“The Deluge!
“There was a pause, whether of one minute or of one thousand years I know not; and once again I sat at the feet of the great statue. I looked around and saw a sea no longer.
“Instead a vast expanse of half-dried marsh, with here and there large patches of white salty grains drying in the sun, could alone be seen. And the sun shone fiercely over the land until the patches increased in size and number.
“And still the sun threw its merciless fire upon everything, hunting the last drop of moisture from the marsh and turning all into soft dry land, which was burnt to the colour of pale yellow.
“The Desert!
“Still the Sphinx gazed out at the landscape; its thick, strong, unmutilated lips shaped as though they were about to break into a smile, itself apparently content with its solitary existence. How perfectly this lonely figure fitted in with its lonely surroundings!
“In this calm Colossus the very spirit of solitude seemed to have found a worthy incarnation. And so it waited until one day a small fleet of drifting boats stopped at the riverside and disembarked a group of men who came slowly forward and then prostrated themselves with glad prayers before it.
“From that day the spell of silence was broken and henceforward habitations were built on the lowland not far off, and kings came with their priests to pay court to one who was himself the courtless king of the desert.
“And with their coming my vision went out, as the flame goes out of a wick when there is no more fuel.”
After describing this meditative vision in his book, Hurst went on to interpret it in the following words:
“Had I turned a leaf in Egypt’s pre-history which had rarely been turned before? Who dares to measure the age of the Sphinx? Once its Atlantean origin was accepted, who could affix a date to it ?
And I saw no reason why such an origin, pictured so briefly in my vision under the stars, should not be accepted. Atlantis was no longer a fiction of Greek philosophers, Egyptian priests and American Indian tribes:
“Individual scientists had collected a hundred proofs of its existence, and more. I saw, too, that when the Sphinx was first carved out of the rock, the surrounding lowlands could not have been covered with sand; for then the rocky escarpment itself, which stands at the foot of a hill whose summit is topped by the Pyramids, would also have been under the sand – a position full of obstacles which would render the work hardly possible.
“No, it was much more likely that the statue had been cut ere the sands had made their appearance, and when the Sahara was a gigantic sea, beyond which lay the great and tragic island of Atlantis.
“The men who had inhabited prehistoric Egypt, who had carved the Sphinx and founded the world’s oldest civilization, were men who had made their exodus from Atlantis to settle on this strip of land that bordered the Nile.
“And they had left before their ill-fated continent sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, a catastrophe which had drained the Sahara and turned it into a desert. The shells which to-day litter the surface of the Sahara in places, as well as the fossil fish which are found among its sands, prove that it was once covered by the waters of a vast ocean.
“It was a tremendous and astonishing thought that the Sphinx provided a solid, visible and enduring link between the people of today and the people of a lost world, the unknown Atlanteans.
“This great symbol has lost its meaning for the modern world, for whom it is now but an object of local curiosity.”
So here we have a description of the origin of the Sphinx provided by Raphael Hurst that bears a striking similarity to the theory advanced by Dr. Schoch and John Anthony West, and which can be summarised as follows:
Many thousands of years ago, an ancient civilisation existed on an island in the Atlantic Ocean, that was known as Atlantis. When it became known that their civilisation was doomed, some of those who were forewarned left their ill-fated island and travelled to what is now Egypt.
There they set to work to create the Sphinx, together with its accompanying temple, the Great Pyramid. These two monuments were constructed on a rocky plateau that flanked the vast ocean that stretched out towards the western horizon.
Hurst described the workers as “dark figures”, but then went on to elaborate that “the faces of all these men were long and hard, the skins tinted reddish brown, or greyish yellow, and the upper lips, also, were noticeably long”.
It is perhaps worth noting in passing here that one of the striking features of the carved heads on Easter Island, is their stern mien combined with wide, thin lips. Could these mysterious stone statues perhaps be linked in some way with the lost civilisation of Atlantis?
Hurst then went on to describe how he heard a deep rumbling sound that seemed to emanate from the very depths of the ocean, followed by an “immense wall of water” that completely submerged the Sphinx. He referred to this as “the deluge”, which others might call the flood of Noah.
After a period of time which Hurst suggested could have been “one minute or one thousand years”, the sea drained away leaving in its place “a vast expanse of half-dried marsh”. This in turn was dried up by the Sun to form the desert that surrounds the Sphinx to this day.
So here we have a visionary tale about the origin of the Sphinx that would account for the variety of geological features reported by Dr. Schoch, together with weathering patterns in the rock attributed to long periods of exposure to water and to wind.
The night that Raphael Hurst spent in solitary meditation generated visionary insights into the origin and history of the Sphinx that were without parallel at the time he wrote A Search in Secret Egypt. Yet not content with that, he then undertook an even more stupendous challenge.
He decided to attempt something that was unlikely to have been done before, and almost certainly has never been done since. He decided to try and persuade the Egyptian authorities to grant him permission to spend an entire night locked up alone inside the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Allan, Secrets of the Sphinx, March 20, 2016, 10:51 am
The New Scientific Messiah
Thomas Kuhn has pointed out that “almost all the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.” 1
Isaac Newton was in his early twenties when he first expounded his revolutionary theories at Cambridge. Albert Einstein was twenty-six when he published the three papers that revolutionized the science of physics. However, despite the early age at which they made their initial scientific contributions, it was only many decades later that the full impact of their revolutionary ideas was officially recognized.
As amazing as it may seem, there is every sign that the new scientific messiah has arrived, and has laid down the mathematical foundation for the new paradigm. This revolutionary genius, however, has thus far been barely recognised by the scientific community.
The name of this latter day Einstein was Burkhard Heim. Like Einstein, Heim was of German descent, and like all the great scientific innovators of the past, he formulated his revolutionary ideas while he was in his early twenties.
It was in 1949, when he was just 24 years old, that the young Heim began to speculate on the theoretical nature of matter, and the possibility of realising the Einsteinian dream of unifying the known forces of the universe into a single mathematical theory.
Energy and Mass
Heim began by considering the correlation between energy and mass, and was immediately struck by the similarities that existed in the equations describing gravity and centrifugal force. In both of these inertial forces, their mathematical expression required mass (m) to be divided by distance (r).
It was evident to Heim that the total mass of any object in nature must therefore consist of two distinct parts. The major part of an object’s mass was the sum of the actual constituents of matter that made up that object.
Yet, since every object in nature generated a gravitational field of energy around it, and since Einstein had proved via his famous formula (E=mc2) that energy was simply another form of matter, Heim realised that the energy of the gravitational field excited by any object could be reduced to mass as well.
Because the amount of energy contained in any gravitational field varied according to the size of an object, as well as to the distance from the centre of that object, it was obvious that the mass of any object was inextricably linked with distance.
Heim thus concluded that the true mass of any object in the universe was the actual mass of the visible object, plus a smaller field mass, which was the equivalent mass of its gravitational field.
Gravity and Electromagnetism
Heim then turned his attention to the forces of electromagnetism and gravitation. It had long been known that electricity and magnetism were separate but related parts of a unified force called electromagnetism.
Because of this, every moving electrical field generated a magnetic field that manifested at right angles to the electrical field. Similarly, any change in a magnetic field generated an electrical field at right angles to it. It was this ability of a moving magnetic field to produce an electromotive force that was the basic principle of the electric generator.
Just as in the theory of electromagnetism, that provided for twin fields which manifested at right angles to each other, so Heim derived from first principles a mathematical theory that linked gravity to a unique field of its own, that existed at right angles to the gravitational field.
Heim called this new field a “mesofield”. The mesofield was to gravity therefore, what the magnetic field was to electricity. It was that field of energy that would be created by a moving gravitational field, and which then manifested at right angles to the gravitational field.
It was a theoretical consequence of Heim’s mathematical theory, that by manipulating the mesofield, it would be possible to create a gravitational field at right angles to it. Heim’s theory thus provided for the first time in history, a scientific basis for the creation and manipulation of a gravitational field of energy.
The corollary also applied, and that was by manipulation of the mesofield generated by any physical object, it would be possible to suspend the gravitational force surrounding that object, thereby rendering it weightless within our space-time continuum.
A New View of Reality
Starting with this as an initial hypothesis, Heim then began to evaluate the nature of matter in mathematical terms. He used for this purpose a mathematical device called a tensor.
By means of a tensor, various terms can be reduced to a mathematical relationship that remains constant under specific conditions. These terms may then relate equally to any subject matter without affecting the mathematical validity of the tensor.
Heim succeeded in deriving an energy-density-tensor that was able to define the true nature of matter and energy. Using this tensor, Heim discovered that it would take thirty-six mathematical terms to define completely the nature of physical reality. Since thirty-six terms formed a matrix of six multiplied by six, this suggested to Heim that physical reality consisted of six dimensions.
In the development of this energy-density-tensor, Heim found that it was necessary for three dimensions to be “real” or space-like, and three dimensions to be “imaginary” or time-like. This did not mean that the imaginary dimensions did not exist, but that they existed independently of the “real” dimensions.
In deriving his six-dimensional energy-density-tensor, Heim was able to combine all the known forces of physics into a single unified theory.
Heim found that when he excluded the gravitational terms from his energy-density-tensor, he was left with the Faraday tensor of electromagnetic equations, and when he extracted the electrical and magnetic terms, he was left with Einstein’s gravitational tensor of relativity.
What he had succeeded in achieving was the enduring goal of physical science. He had combined the field theories of gravitation and electromagnetism into a single theory. Heim’s unified field theory was not only the dream of science fulfilled, but it formed the mathematical basis for an entirely new view of reality.
This revolutionary theory promises to transform the whole of science. Heim’s theory is, in fact, the scientific breakthrough that links the realm of matter with that of mind in a revolutionary mathematical embrace. It holds out the promise of becoming the foundation of a new scientific paradigm.
A World of Six Dimensions
Although Heim had succeeded in deriving a mathematical formula that described the structure of physical matter, he was obliged to speculate as to what these six dimensions might actually represent in the world of common experience.
Heim’s dimensions were divided, as has been noted, into three “real” dimensions that were physical, and three “imaginary” dimensions that were non-physical.
The three “real” dimensions were material and could be perceived directly by the human senses. These were the three physical dimensions of length, breadth and height. The three “imaginary” dimensions, on the other hand, could not be discerned by the senses.
This meant that although matter and life were subject to these three imaginary dimensions, humanity had no means of sensing them directly. They could only be inferred from sensory information. The first of these imaginary dimensions was the dimension of time itself.
In seeking to find an interpretation of the second imaginary dimension, Heim was attracted to an ancient idea drawn from Aristotelian philosophy. Aristotle taught that every creature and every object in the universe possessed a quality of “entelechy”, based on the Greek word Telos, meaning a goal or perfection.
According to Aristotle, entelechy was that vital force that acted within every organism directing its life and growth, and which aimed constantly towards perfection. Entelechy, therefore, referred to the actualisation of potential. It was the evolutionary drive that animated all of nature, and which might also be called the Cosmic Life Force, or, for those who preferred, the God Force.
It was this creative force of life, striving for perfection, that Heim defined as the second non-material dimension. Under the influence of this force, Heim predicted that molecules of matter would organise, wherever possible, into living systems of successively higher orders of complexity.
Entropy and Negative Entropy
The third imaginary dimension, according to Heim, served to control the direction and extent of this organising force.
Heim determined that this force would manifest in one of two ways. Its influence would either direct the flow of energy from chaos into order, or else it would reverse itself, in which case the flow of energy would change from order into chaos.
Now the process of change from order to disorder is a well-established principle in physics, where it is referred to as “entropy”. Heim predicted, however, that it was essentially this same force that was at work in the generation of organic life, by creating order out of disorder. Heim referred to this creative process, which was the opposite process of entropy, as “negative entropy”.
We can easily see the process of entropy at work if we heat water to a high temperature. If we now stop this heating process, the heat in the water will slowly dissipate into the surrounding air until a uniform temperature of water and air is attained. This loss of energy, or the process from order to disorder, is what scientists call the action of entropy.
When we look at the field of biology, however, we find that this process is reversed. Here, the organism acts in such a way as to achieve order out of disorder. We can see this organizing process at work when a seed is planted in the ground.
As the seed germinates, it sends out tiny root hairs into the surrounding soil. Through these root hairs, the seed acquires molecules from the soil. Using the DNA molecule as its blueprint, it makes replicas of its cells from these molecules obtained from the soil, and assembles them in greater and greater quantities. In this way the seed grows into a plant by taking random sources of energy from the soil and ordering them according to a particular pattern of expression.
This process of creating order out of random energy, said Heim, was simply the reverse process of entropy. In the manifestation of the universe, therefore, these twin aspects of entropy and negative entropy were constantly acting in unison together.
The life principle functioned by generating order out of chaos, and by manifesting in energy as a particular pattern of expression. When the co-coordinating force of negative entropy subsided, it was replaced by that of entropy, in which case the organism decomposed into random constituents of energy.
In terms of Heim’s theory, therefore, a clear distinction can now be drawn between the processes of “life” and “death”. Life represents that manifestation of the Cosmic Life Force operating in its creative expression (negative entropy). Death represents this same force operating in its destructive phase (entropy).
Under this theory, the exact moment of birth or death can be precisely established. Birth is that moment when the creative phase begins, or when the process of entropy ends, and death is that moment when this process reverses itself.
To summarise, therefore, Heim defined the three non-material or negative dimensions in the following way. The first of these dimensions was time. The second was “entelechy”, the evolutionary force that was constantly striving for perfection. The third of these non-spatial dimensions governed the direction in which this force operated.
In its creative expression, it created order out of disorder (negative entropy), and in its destructive phase (entropy), the energy that had previously been held together in a particular pattern of expression, now resolved itself once more into its primal source.
The Role of the Quantum
It should be noted that the interpretation of Heim’s energy-density-tensor needs to be treated quite independently from the mathematics involved, which rests upon legitimate, although complex, mathematical equations involving all six dimensions.
Heim’s Unified Field Theory of Matter and Gravitation is a theory that is rooted in quantum theory. However, it carries the principle of the quantum farther than any physicist had hitherto suspected.
It was Max Planck who discovered that the energy of heat was not radiated in an unbroken linear fashion, but was emitted in the form of tiny, individual lumps of action. Planck called each separate lump of action a quantum. Einstein extended Planck’s discovery further, by declaring that all forms of energy were propagated or absorbed in the form of these discrete particles or quanta.
Heim’s quantum field theory carries the influence of the quantum to its ultimate extent, for his energy-density-tensor demands that all six dimensions must be quantised. It is therefore necessary to quantise not only the three physical dimensions of space, but the three “imaginary” dimensions as well.
Heim’s theory requires that space itself be composed of a multitude of tiny quanta of area. Heim has christened each individual quantum of area a “metron”. Similarly, time is quantised, and can only take place in multiples of individual quanta of time called “chronons”.
Finally, the two remaining imaginary dimensions are considered by Heim to function in multiples of discrete particles known as “gravitons”. Heim did not assume that gravitons travelled at a speed similar to that of electromagnetic particles, but left open the possibility that gravitons could in fact be super-luminal particles, that is, particles travelling faster than the speed of light.
Because his mathematics had to cater for each basic quantum of nature, it was necessary for Heim to invent a totally new mathematical calculus, before formulating his unified quantum field theory. In this respect, Heim has had to do what Isaac Newton himself had done in formulating his own revolutionary ideas some three centuries earlier.
From Theory to Practice
Having deduced his comprehensive theory, Heim’s next task was to see whether his theory was actually representative of the physical universe.
He found that the substitution of a few quantum integers into his mathematical equations did, in fact, lead to valid physical results. By substituting these integers into his formulae for the masses of elementary particles, Heim found that he was able to predict the masses of all known elementary particles to an accuracy of eight decimal places.
In addition, he was able to explain the internal structure of elementary particles, including such aspects as their quantum numbers and spin, as well as their average lifetimes. Heim’s revolutionary theory went far beyond the micro-world of sub-nuclear particles, however, for it provided dramatic new insights into the macro-world of astronomy as well.
For example, it explained the sizes of galactic clusters. It also gave new meaning to the “red-shift” effect, whereby the frequencies of light observed by astronomers from distant stars and galaxies were shifted towards the red side of the visible spectrum of light.
According to Heim’s theory, the gravitational field exerted by any astronomical body would reach its limit at a certain point in space. At that limit, Heim’s mathematics indicated that the force of gravity would reverse itself, and repel instead of attract.
This explained why galactic clusters did not interact gravitationally to form higher orders of matter, but remained separate in space. Light approaching a gravitational field from outside would be repelled. In overcoming this repulsion, the light would give up a certain amount of its energy.
This loss of energy would require the frequency of the light from the distant source to decrease, and this would appear to observers as if its frequency had shifted to the red end of the spectrum – the well-known phenomenon of the “red-shift.”
As we have seen, astronomers have interpreted this shift to the red end of the light spectrum as a Doppler effect, and it is this interpretation that is the basis of the theory of the Big Bang.
If Heim is correct in this new explanation of the red-shift of light, it would add yet another nail in the coffin of the long-accepted theory of the Big Bang. Clearly, astronomers educated in the ways of the existing scientific paradigm, will resist this challenge to their accepted ideas to the death.
In addition to the foregoing, Heim’s theory went on to provide an understanding of the elementary processes of life, the after-death state, and accounted for such things as psychological and paranormal phenomena.
According to his theory, the non-physical dimensions are the realms of what we have come to call Psi phenomena. Heim predicts that once it is possible to create a mesofield within the laboratory, the emergence of this field will be accompanied by spontaneous paranormal phenomena.
In terms of theory, therefore, it is now possible to talk of creating Psi phenomena in the laboratory under rigidly controlled conditions, in a way that can be validated by mathematical analysis.
In a further extension of his theory, Heim indicates that the actual manifestation of physical matter in the universe is ordered by an underlying non-physical pattern, that exists in the non-material dimensions. It is this non-material pattern that controls the form that any particular manifestation will take.
Based on this new view of life, every organic creature grows by means of the underlying pattern relative to that species. It is this underlying pattern (that Harold Burr has called the L-field) that governs the physical characteristics of every creature.
Before a physical body can be formed, there must first be created its non-physical counterpart. Under the direction of this blueprint, and driven by the Cosmic Life Force, the body is then formed through the acquisition of energy through the process of negative entropy, and by building new cells according to the presiding pattern of the field.
This underlying pattern in all created life also holds out new possibilities for the healing arts. The process of healing, therefore, may well resolve itself into a matter of applying suitable amounts of energy to this underlying pattern, in order to restore the creature to its former “healthy” state.
The governing blueprint of the non-physical pattern will then apply that energy to restore the organism to its fully functioning form. Heim’s theory thus not only justifies paranormal (psychic) healing, but opens up miraculous new possibilities of healing.
It is hardly possible at this time to speculate about the potential applications of Heim’s revolutionary Field Theory. It is safe to say, however, that it will not only change our understanding of the world and of ourselves, but it will also allow us to manipulate matter in ways that now seem to be impossible.
If it succeeds in becoming the new scientific paradigm, it will herald an age of technological marvels that beggar description. The magic of this new description of reality will be truly dazzling. In that era scientists will discover that they possess the power to transform space and time itself.
Heim’s Remarkable Life
 The fact that a scientific theory capable of offering such a rich cornucopia of worldly wonder actually exists today will seem unbelievable to many, especially as scientists have long believed that this crowning intellectual achievement could occur only through the combined efforts of entire armies of scientists, operating in unison together.
Yet it is no less incredible than the character of the man himself. Burkhard Heim was not only a man of unique talents, but he was the beneficiary (or victim – depending on how one chooses to look at it) of an amazing twist of fate.
He was born on February 9, 1925, in the city of Potsdam near Berlin. As a boy his early interest lay in the field of chemistry, and it was in this discipline that he first excelled. At the age of sixteen he invented a device that led to his being seconded to the Chemical-Technological State Establishment in Berlin.
It was there, in May1944, while conducting a laboratory experiment, that the teenaged Heim was involved in an accidental explosion that almost cost him his life. He was severely injured in the blast, and as a legacy of this explosion, lost both his hands. In addition, he was blinded in one eye, and left with only partial hearing.
Incredibly, Heim was undaunted by this devastating setback, and continued to pursue his studies in chemistry. After several years, however, he developed an interest in theoretical physics, and in 1954 was awarded his Master’s degree (diploma) in physics at the University of Gottingen in Lower Saxony.
Even before he was granted this degree, Heim had begun to develop his revolutionary ideas. His first major opportunity to present them to the scientific community came at the Second International Aeronautical Congress at Innsbruck, Austria, in 1952.
While most of those attending this conference confined their papers to the problems of post-war aeronautics, Heim stunned the assembled gathering by presenting a theoretical paper in which he advanced the idea that it was possible to travel in space by harnessing the power of the mesofield.
This was of course a time when even the idea of space flight seemed an improbable dream. The very thought that people might actually be able to travel to other planets and stars, and might do so by means of a force that was then still unknown, and unfounded, seemed so absurd that the ideas of the handicapped physicist were rejected with disbelief and scorn.
It proved to be a salutary experience. Having been rebuffed on this occasion, Heim vowed that he would only present his ideas before his colleagues when he had conducted a complete review of the mathematical proofs that his new theory demanded.
Heim’s Mathematical Proofs
This was a process that was to take him a quarter of a century to complete. It was not until 1979 that the first volume of his work entitled Elementarstrukturen der Materie (Elementary Structures of Matter) was published. It was followed five years later by a second volume. 2, 3
These two volumes were devoted primarily to the revision of the mathematical proofs required by his revolutionary theory. Because for Heim all aspects of nature needed to be quantised, it was necessary to rework all the existing mathematical theorems by replacing the old continuous functions by new functions which depended on finite steps. Apart from this major work, Heim was content to confine himself to occasional articles and reports. 4, 5, 6
It is amazing that a man burdened by such physical handicaps was able to overcome these incredible difficulties, and to persist to the point where he was successful in formulating his revolutionary theory. Yet the daunting turn of destiny seems in retrospect to have been the deciding factor in his ultimate success.
For just as Beethoven was able to compose his greatest symphonies by withdrawing to an inner world of isolation imposed by his deafness, so Heim’s devastating injuries that so severely hampered his physical expression, nevertheless allowed him the opportunity to absorb himself in an inner world of thought, divorced from outer distractions.
In this he was assisted by the dedicated services of his wife, who was able to transcribe the ideas that Heim dictated to her, and which became the foundation of his published works.
Heim’s Unified Quantum Field Theory of Matter and Gravitation
Heim’s Unified Quantum Field Theory of Matter and Gravitation stands today as a supreme intellectual achievement, perhaps without parallel in the entire history of science.
In the past, many decades were to elapse before the theories of other solitary geniuses of science were recognised by their colleagues. The mathematical genius of Isaac Newton was not recognised in his own lifetime.
It was a fate that was equally true of Heim, for he died on January 14, 2001, without seeing his new theory vindicated by his peers. One wonders how long we may have to wait before the world of science is ready to consider Heim’s revolutionary ideas.
Although Heim has provided the indispensable framework for the new scientific paradigm, by laboriously charting those mathematical theorems that are necessary for its validation, the idea of a six-dimensional universe itself was not unique to Heim. Other scientists, such as the British physicist Weston Wells, have expounded similar ideas.
It was the result of a series of personal discussions with Wells that led Sir Victor Goddard, a senior commander in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, to make the following prediction in his book Flight to Reality, which was published in 1975.
“Materialists employing mathematics see no merit, yet, in any six-dimensional continuum of normal consciousness, embodying three exclusive measurements of space, and three of time. Someday, I prophesy, they will.” 7
References
1 Thomas Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970, p. 90.
2 Burkhard Heim, “Elementarstrukturen der Materie”, (Elementary Structures of Matter) Vol I, Resch Verlag, Innsbruck, 1979.(Revised edition published in 1989).
3 Burkhard Heim, “Elementarstrukturen der Materie”, Vol II, Resch Verlag, Innsbruck, 1984.
4 Burkhard Heim, “Der Kosmische Erlebnisraum des Menschen”, (The Cosmic Experience-Space of Man) in Imago Mundi, Vol IV, 1975, Resch Verlag, Innsbruck.
5 Burkhard Heim, “Der Elementar-prozess des Lebens”, (The Elementary Process of Life) in Imago Mundi, Vol VI, 1977, Resch Verlag, Innsbruck.
6 Droscher, W., and Heim, B., “Strukturen der physikalischen Welt und ihrer nichtmateriellen Seite”, (Structures of the Physical World and its Non-Material Aspect) Resch Verlag, Innsbruck, 1996.
7 Victor Goddard, “Flight Towards Reality”, Turnstone, London, 1975, p. 135.
Allan, The Crumbling Paradigm, March 5, 2016, 1:42 pm
The Importance of Humidity
Another factor that deserves close attention in any experiment involving Psi is the level of humidity – the presence or absence of water vapour in the air. It is clear from numerous instances that the level of humidity can significantly influence the results of Psi experiments.
When American reporters Henry Gris and William Dick visited what was then the Soviet Union in 1975 to investigate Russian achievements in the field of parapsychology, they were introduced to Dr. Genady Sergeyev, who claimed to have invented a device that he called a “time machine”.
The machine was simple enough and seemed unlikely to the Americans to be the product of any esoteric technology. Dr. Sergeyev alleged that his machine was able to record electrical impulses generated by human thought. As he explained to Gris and Dick:
“By using very exact analytical methods, we have determined that a man can change the electrical conductivity of the air around him. An important part in this is played by the water vapor in the air. In laboratory experiments we have shown that the electrical field of the human brain can affect the contents of this vapor.”
Sergeyev went on to say, “Since thought is energy, the human body can transmit electrical impulses to this medium, the vapor. What happens then is that our thoughts change the structure of the molecules in the vapor, which then becomes a bank or repository of human thoughts.”
He added, “We have proven in tests that a room where there is a reasonable amount of humidity will retain human thought for up to four days in such vapor ‘banks’. A person who has been thinking intensely even for a very short time, will leave these thoughts in the vapor banks”. 1
The energy that Dr. Sergeyev attributes to thought is referred to elsewhere in Russia as “bioenergy”, which is energy that is derived in some fashion from Bios, the Greek word for life. American Thomas Bearden commented on the significance of water as a medium for bioenergy as follows:
“Water is a substance that changes its state and form in a fantastic complex and is therefore one of the very best collectors for bioenergy or tulpoidal energy. That is, in fact, why water is so universally associated with living biosystems, for biosystems need a good collective medium in which to establish tuning. So it is not accidental that water is necessary to life as we know it, or that our bodies are largely made up of water.” 2
Wilhelm Reich, the Austrian psychologist who served as an assistant to Sigmund Freud in Vienna between 1922 and 1928, coined the term “orgone” for this bioenergetic force. He noted in his writings that water had a special affinity for orgone, drawing it to itself. He was careful to monitor levels of humidity in any experiments which he conducted involving orgone energy.
The American mentalist Kreskin also mentions in passing the link between humidity and telepathy in his autobiography. “As with any human interaction, no performance is the same because no audience is the same, no mood or night the same. Rainy nights are always good, for reasons beyond my comprehension”. 3
Dr. Owen has also commented on this significance in relation to the psychokinetist Jan Merta.
“I saw him do very impressive demonstrations in conditions very adverse to working with electric charges. This was at the dowsers’ convention at Danville in early October 1970. The Vermont maple trees were in their full autumn splendor but the shine was rather taken off things by the persistent fall of heavy rain.
“The atmosphere in the room was as damp as could be and most inimical to any formation of electrical charges. However, the feather responded most decisively to Jan’s commands, which at the end of the demonstration he was giving from about thirty feet away”. 4
As in the case of Kreskin, it is likely that the presence of such a high level of water vapour in the air contributed considerably to the efficacy of Merta’s abilities.
It is worth recalling that the noted psychic healer Olga Worrall was on one occasion able to produce a moving wave pattern inside a cloud chamber. She did this by placing her hands around it as if it were a patient. She was later able to reproduce this effect at a distance of six hundred miles (965 kilometres). 5
A cloud chamber, as its name implies, is a device for creating air saturated with water vapour. The success of this unusual experiment may well have been due largely to the fortuitous choice of the cloud chamber, and to the presence of water vapour.
The Importance of Emotion
Yet another factor which parapsychological investigators should closely monitor is the level of emotion of those involved in their experiments. Commenting on the importance of emotion, Dr. Sergeyev told his American reporters:
“A person under tremendous stress, facing a crisis or suffering great fear, can increase his electrical output ten thousand times. In this way, a man can over a very brief period record the information of his entire life on a nearby object.
“By brief, I mean in a split second. If you have an object that a man has had for a long time – a favourite book, for instance – you will find that it has already been affected by his electrical impulses. It will contain the thoughts and emotional imprints of the man.” 6
Similarly, it was found that in experiments conducted by Semyon Kirlian and his wife Valentina, the corona discharge recorded via Kirlian photography on rabbits varied greatly, especially when the rabbits were frightened.
“The intensity of the emotion increased two-or-threefold at the moment of shock but there was a return to the corona’s ordinary size after several minutes. By introducing a sensor into the rabbit’s brain, an intensity of radiation ten times greater than that observed on the skin and muscles was noted.” 7
When Carl Jung visited Freud in Vienna in 1909, he happened to ask him what he thought about parapsychology in general, and precognition in particular. Freud, as we have seen, entertained only the darkest thoughts of the occult, which he referred to as a “black tide”.
He naturally dismissed Jung’s question as “nonsensical”, but did so in such an offhand manner that Jung had difficulty in checking his annoyance. Shortly thereafter, as Freud was leaving, Jung felt a curious inner sensation.
“It was as if my diaphragm were made of iron and were becoming red-hot – a glowing vault. And at that moment there was such a loud report from the bookcase which stood right next to us, that we both started up in alarm, fearing that the thing was going to topple over on us.
“I said to Freud: ‘There, that is an example of a so-called catalytic exteriorization phenomenon.’ ‘Oh come,’ he exclaimed, ‘that is sheer bosh.’ ‘It is not,’ I replied. ‘You are mistaken, Herr Professor. And to prove my point I now predict that in a moment there will be another such loud report!’ Sure enough, no sooner had I said the words than the same detonation went off in the bookcase.” 8
Psychiatrist Berthold Schwarz has also recorded cases where the presence of an intense emotion has resulted in extraordinary paranormal effects. In one example, he quoted the case of a man who had been trying to repair his fireplace prior to the arrival of an approaching blizzard. While he was engaged in this task his cantankerous elderly father insisted that he stop work there and then, and prepare his lunch instead.
“Although under pressure, the husband immediately discontinued his work, swallowed his anger, and dutifully prepared some soup, and while it was being poured from the can into a Pyrex bowl on the (unlit gas) stove, it blew up.
“I cleaned up the mess and opened another can of soup and as I was about to turn on the gas, the bowl exploded. (Minutes later) while walking with an (empty) glass coffee cup for myself, it exploded. I quit with three things in a row.”
Two weeks later, the same man was involved in another unusual incident.
“The husband, in the presence of his daughter and two adult friends, was again upset by his elderly father. The husband said: ‘I was all wound up – wild with energy and in a hurry. I reached for the (empty glass) coffee pot and before I could make coffee it disintegrated into pieces – the size of confetti.”
The wife of this man described her husband to Dr. Schwarz by saying: “He has an explosive temper and is trying not to lose it. You can feel the tension in the air.” 9
Schwarz also quoted the case of another lady named Selma who was noted for her sudden flashes of intense rage. A friend of hers related an incident that occurred when she and Selma were out driving together.
“One time we were all driving to the city and some hoodlums in a car cut in front of us. Selma said, ‘By God, they should burn.’ The next thing I knew, the guys got out of the car, covered in blue flames. The car caught fire as they leaped out.” 10
Dr. Scott Rogo recorded a case involving a Mrs. Ruth Pritchard of Denver, Colorado. Mrs. Pritchard’s son had died on October 12, 1957. On February 1, 1958, on the occasion of Ruth’s first birthday anniversary since the loss of her son, she was understandably miserable.
“As I sat there choking back the tears, I longed to see him and thought that I would give all I have just to hear him call me ‘Mom’ today.” As she and her husband were eating breakfast a short while later, the telephone rang. “I lifted the receiver and said ‘Hello?’ A young man’s voice said ‘Mom’. I stood there shaking, unable to say a word. In the silence I heard the receiver at the other end of the line click. I walked back to the table crying.” 11
A similar incident was recorded by Shirley Jonas, whose mother passed away in Alaska on Christmas Eve 1984, and who subsequently saw frosted pictures of her mother’s favourite flowers in the casement windows. Strong emotional ties are frequent denominators of paranormal occurrences.
The ingredient of emotion also turned out to be a crucial factor in an experiment conducted by members of the Toronto Society for Psychical Research. Although they were initially unsuccessful in their efforts to create a ghost by means of calm, concentrated meditation, they achieved success when they changed their method of approach.
At the suggestion of a fellow investigator, they began instead to create an atmosphere of jollity and relaxation, telling jokes and singing ribald songs. It was not long thereafter that they began to hear “raps” on the table, a phenomenon which then led to the merry saga of Philip, the passionate ghost. 12
Poltergeists
Probably the most common link between emotional states and paranormal phenomena occurs during outbreaks of what has come to be known as poltergeistery. The word “poltergeist” is derived from two terms of High German origin, poltern meaning to make noises, and geist meaning spirit or ghost.
The noises attributable to these ghostly sources vary from raps, bangs and scratches, to whistles and even imitations of a human voice. Poltergeistery is not limited to sounds, but may include a whole festival of paranormal events. Household objects may appear to move of their own volition.
These objects have also been known to vanish from their original locations under mysterious circumstances, only to reappear equally mysteriously in other places. Objects may be flung about a room, or may be directed at certain targets. Fires may break out without explanation.
These outbreaks of poltergeistery are usually temporary affairs, and although the name suggests that some discarnate agency is at work, these paranormal effects are invariably linked to people between the ages of ten and twenty who are undergoing severe emotional stress.
As parapsychologist A.R.G. Owen remarks, “In a large proportion of cases there is evidence to suggest that the poltergeist person is in a situation which prior to the poltergeist outbreak has put her in a state of emotional tension involving masked anger, fear or resentment.” 13
Although Dr. Owen refers in this statement to “her”, poltergeistery phenomena may equally well emanate from a male.
Psychiatrist Berthold Schwarz concurs with this explanation, noting that “When the usual methods of expressing feelings are acutely blocked and there is a build-up of intra and inter-psychic tension without any relief, the telekinetic pathway becomes the symbolic, goal-directed, mind-matter, final common pathway with a meaningful discharge of tensions.” 14
While poltergeistery is thus explained by the psychiatrist as the product of repressed emotional tension, this explanation carries profound implications for the physicist. For whether the manifestation of poltergeistery is attributed to the influence of an incarnate or discarnate mind, we are confronted here with irrefutable evidence of the mind’s ability to influence matter.
It can teleport objects, materialise and dematerialise them, create noises, start fires, and generally interact with matter in ways that are totally at variance with the laws of classical physics. The evidence for paranormal phenomena is, in fact, incontrovertible.
The phenomena of Psi are observables that are as legitimate as any other basic data of classical science. Although these observables are valid facts in themselves, they continue to be ignored by conventional scientists because they cannot be incorporated into a coherent scientific theory.
The verification of Psi is not simply a matter of determining whether a certain event did or did not take place. In order for a paranormal event to be accepted as a scientific fact, it has to be explained. It is this explanation, or rather the lack of it, that lies at the heart of the changing paradigm.
The Explanatory Challenge
Despite the fact that the odd events that have come to be included in the category of Psi have steadily been accumulating over the course of the last century, they continue to be rejected, because they cannot be explained within the current scientific paradigm.
Even the most ardent parapsychologist has so far been unable to explain why these events occur, and why they take the form they do. Although paranormal events have increasingly been brought within the scope of scientific methods of measurement and analysis, these observables have yet to be satisfactorily explained within the confines of a particular theory.
In other words, the observables of Psi have not yet been transformed from an undisciplined mob into an organised army. The facts of Psi still have to be explained, and until they are, there is a very large body of scientific opinion that simply refuses to acknowledge the existence or validity of any Psi observables.
The problem of explaining Psi, as Margenau and LeShan have clearly shown, lies in the very nature of the word explanation. In order for anything to be “explained”, it has to be made clear within the realm of what is already known and understood. The unknown must be revealed in terms of the known.
But if Psi phenomena could be explained within the terms of conventional science, it would not be called “paranormal”. These observables bear the stigma of the paranormal for the precise reason that they do not fit into the accepted mould of current scientific thinking.
The demand, therefore, that parapsychologists should “explain” the nature of Psi occurrences before they can be taken seriously, is thus completely without logic. For as Margenau and LeShan point out:
“If a system of reality-ordering forbids certain events from occurring you cannot explain that event within the system. Parapsychologists have tried and tried to get from here to there on the solid-appearing roads of our ordinary theory about reality, the theory of the sensory realm. It can’t be done. You cannot explain events forbidden by a system within that system.” 15
Since the classical scientific paradigm expressly forbids the sorts of things that parapsychologists have been observing, because it has separated experience into two strict categories – one of mind and the other of matter – it serves little purpose to keep on trying to validate this data within the limits of an outdated paradigm. It cannot be done.
Experience, as parapsychology now shows, is far too rich for existing scientific theory. For Psi to be effectively explained, the existing scientific paradigm must itself change. The history of science demonstrates, as Kuhn has shown, that new paradigms replace old paradigms because they are more successful in solving those problems which scientists have come to recognise as being acute.
But the new paradigm is never just an extension of existing knowledge. As Kuhn remarks, “That is why a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom or never an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction and the re-evaluation of prior fact.” 16
It is this assimilation of prior fact into a completely new mould of thinking that marks the chief characteristic of each new scientific revolution. The true “explanation” of Psi, therefore, will not just be an extension of existing knowledge. Like all revolutions, the new paradigm will dramatically destroy old constructs, and rebuild them in a form that is completely new.
Einstein’s explanation of gravity, for example, was not simply an extension of Newton’s theory of gravitation. It totally revolutionised it, by explaining gravity, not as a force that manifested itself between material objects, but as a necessary consequence of the geometry of space-time.
Objects did not attract one another because of some inherent romance between them, they did so, argued Einstein, because the space-time continuum of which they were an integral part was curved. It was this curvature of space-time itself which made that movement necessary.
Newton’s idea of force had to be replaced by the notion of geometry. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Einstein’s peers initially found it so difficult to absorb his revolutionary ideas.
The Coming Paradigm
The coming shift in paradigm demanded by Psi phenomena will lead to a scientific convulsion equally as great as that precipitated by Einstein. It will likewise be misunderstood and resisted by those who are committed to the old ideas. Struggle is inevitable before the new age dawns.
This new paradigm will require a bridge to be built between mind and matter, to restore the heart and soul of science that was lost in the Cartesian split. At the same time it will need to be built upon the foundations of existing science. Successful scientific paradigms do not succeed by ignoring past data. What they do is to incorporate it into a novel form, and illuminate it in a new light.
Twenty-first century physics is now inextricably bound up with the science of quantum mechanics, the study of the motions of sub-nuclear particles. The new physics, as we have seen, has already made profound discoveries that have transformed our traditional view of “reality”.
So in order to be successful, this new scientific paradigm will not only have to remain firmly rooted in the world of matter, as presently described by the science of quantum mechanics, but it will also need to embrace an entirely new realm of mind, as represented by all the known categories of Psi phenomena.
That is to say, Psi phenomena will only be successfully explained when a scientist of the stature of Einstein emerges, who can reveal Psi in the light of what has gone before. And what has gone before in physical science is essentially Einstein’s relativity theory combined with that of quantum mechanics.
No matter how brilliant a psychologist or parapsychologist may happen to be, and no matter how great his or her intuitive insight is, he or she will never be able to explain Psi to the satisfaction of scientists, unless he or she is also trained in quantum theory.
The “true” explanation of Psi will have to be revealed by a person who is grounded in quantum physics. Since the language of quantum physics is mathematics, this new explanation of Psi will have to be a mathematical explanation.
It is only when physicists are convinced of the “proof” of the relevant mathematics, that they will be willing to concede the “reality” of paranormal phenomena. So the world waits for a new Einstein who can penetrate the gloom of the paranormal with the analytical insight of the intuitive mathematician.
Concluded in Part Five
References
1 Henry Gris and William Dick, “The New Soviet Psychic Discoveries”, Warner, New York, 1979, pp. 414-415.
2 Thomas Bearden, “Excalibur Briefing”, Strawberry Hill Press, San Francisco, 1980, p. 50.
3 Kreskin, “The Amazing World of Kreskin”, Avon, New York, 1974, p. 28.
4 A. R. G. Owen, “Psychic Mysteries of the North”, Harper & Row, New York, 1975, pp. 157-158.
5 Robert Miller, “Methods of Detecting and Measuring Healing Energies”, in “Future Science”, edited by John White and Stanley Krippner, Anchor, New York, 1977, p. 432.
6 Henry Gris and William Dick, op.cit., p. 416.
7 Viktor Inyushin, “Bioplasma ” The fifth state of matter?” in “Future Science”, op.cit., p. 117.
8 Carl Jung, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”, recorded and edited by A. Jaffe, Pantheron Books, New York, 1961, p. 155.
9 Berthold Schwarz, “UFO Dynamics”, Rainbow, Moore Haven, 1983, pp. 494-495.
10 Ibid, p. 492.
11 Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless, “Phone Calls from the Dead”, Berkley, New York, 1980, pp. 65-66.
12 Iris Owen and Margaret Sparrow, “Conjuring up Philip”, Paperjacks, Markham, 1977.
13 A. R. G. Owen, “Psychic Mysteries of the North”, op. cit., p. 29.
14 Berthold Schwarz, “UFO Dynamics”, op.cit., p. 518.
15 Henry Margenau and Lawrence LeShan, “Einstein’s Space and Van Goch’s Sky”, Macmillan, New York, 1982, p. 214.
16 Thomas Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970, p. 7.
Allan, The Crumbling Paradigm, February 22, 2016, 2:44 pm
The Significance of Belief
The victory of the new scientific paradigm will only be achieved when it succeeds in overcoming the old materialistic cast of thought, and moulding people’s minds into a new and consistent pattern of belief, for it is belief which lies at the heart of all empirical data.
In his research into the manifestation of paranormal powers, the American psychologist Lawrence LeShan found that it was this factor of belief that was of paramount importance in the successful outcome of his experiments. As he explained:
“It became clear during this several year search that at the moment the paranormal information was acquired (when “telepathy” or “clairvoyance” or “precognition” was happening) they were reacting to the world as if it were constructed and “worked” on different grounds than those grounds on which we normally believe it to be constructed. At these moments they used a different metaphysical structure of the world than our ordinary, everyday metaphysical structure.” (Original emphasis) 1
We are reminded here of Gary Zukav’s summary of the nature of personal “reality”.
“Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look for depends upon what we think. The central focus of this process, initially at any rate is ‘what we think’.” 2
LeShan found that the people with whom he worked were able to display paranormal abilities when they acted as if these abilities actually were a normal part of their everyday world.
In short, they did these things because they believed they could. In so doing, they also confirmed the teachings of the mystics. It is belief in the possibility of achieving Psi abilities that makes their attainment possible.
Conversely, those who do not believe in the existence of Psi, exert an obstructive mental influence that prevents these abilities from being experienced. There is also the vital ingredient of desire. As Uri Geller stressed when he was asked to explain how he was able to bend objects:
“You must want it to happen. Just take the knife or fork, stroke it gently, and will it to bend.” (Original emphasis) 3
Paranormal Abilities can be Learned
Paranormal abilities can, in fact, be acquired just like any other capabilities. This requires practice, as well as confidence in the expectation of positive results. The American mentalist Kreskin, for example, taught himself telepathy by constant practice with his younger brother Joe, by having him select objects in a room, and then attempting to “read” his thoughts. As he related in his autobiography:
“With the blessing of childhood, I didn’t know the rules – what could be done, what couldn’t. I tried it with my parents and had no success, naturally. They lost interest. But then I persuaded Joe to try it. I literally forced him to practice it with me for about four months.
“By the end of that time I could find almost any object in our small cluttered room without him saying “hot” or “cold”. I had no idea what I was doing, nor how much I was reading his facial expressions (a lot, probably) as I neared the object, but now I realize I was blindly beginning to train myself in sensitivity as ESP.” 4
Kreskin simply acted “as if the world were constructed and worked on different grounds” – grounds where telepathy was not only possible, but could intuitively be learnt.
Those sceptics who doubt the reality of telepathy may be interested to know that it forms an integral part of every stage performance that Kreskin gives. He literally “puts his money where his mouth is”.
As a stimulus to his sponsors, he challenges them to hide his cheque in any place they wish inside the auditorium. If he is unable to discover it by means of his telepathic power, then the sponsors are not obliged to pay him for his performance. Thus far, Kreskin has only once failed to find his cheque, when he accidentally suffered a severe blow to the head shortly before he was due to give a performance.
His sponsors have certainly not been guilty of a lack of imagination, for Kreskin has succeeded in recovering his cheque from such exotic hiding places as the inside of a turkey, underneath a man’s denture, inside the empty bullet chamber of a pistol, and inside a lady’s brassiere. 5
In remarking on the source of his unusual ability, Kreskin adamantly maintains that “conviction is the key.” 6 It is the unquestioning belief that something can be done that makes it possible, and that ensures success.
So the essential feature in the outcome of any experiment involving Psi is the prevailing attitude of mind.
Limiting Factors
This is not just limited to the experimenter and the subject, but to all those who are involved in the experiment in any way. It is primarily because it is so difficult to exercise control over this mental component, that scientists today experience so much difficulty in reconciling their results.
When Dr. John Hasted and his colleagues were working with Uri Geller at the University of London, they found that there were certain factors that were a prerequisite to success. They found that in attempting to produce psychokinetic phenomena in the laboratory, the attitude of all the participating scientists was a crucial factor.
Relaxation was also vital, as any tension, fear or hostility effectively reduced the chances of success. They also found that the probability of success was highest when all those present actively wanted things to work out well, and displayed a general confidence in the successful outcome of the experiment.
Critics of such tactics immediately point to this intellectual and emotional bias as an irreparable flaw in their scientific “objectivity”. The true scientist, they insist, is one who remains mentally unbiased without any prior thought of success or failure.
What these critics fail to realise, however, is that they themselves display a mental bias that is a product of their own scientific education and conditioning, and which exerts a powerful limiting effect on the outcome of any scientific experiment that is contrary to that bias.
The idea of scientific “objectivity” is, as Gary Zukav has pointed out, a myth.
All scientific experiments are subject to bias. It is a necessary consequence of all human interaction with nature. The fact that this bias is exhibited consciously, as in the case of Psi researchers, does not invalidate the results of their experiments, any more than the unconscious bias does when involved in experiments undertaken in the classical scientific tradition.
In his investigations into the phenomenon of dowsing, the Soviet researcher Alexander Pluzhnikov noted that “cold winds, illness, bad moods, and negative or idiotic remarks or questions from casual observers detrimentally affect a dowser’s ability”. 7
It is in fact a common experience that paranormally gifted people find themselves unable to demonstrate their abilities when confronted by a hostile, tense or critical audience.
Kreskin himself noted that he was “completely dependent on the moods and personalities of the subjects, their willingness to open their imaginations and ‘receive’.” He concluded, “I am helpless if they refuse”. 8
It is hardly surprising that when Kreskin was subjected to laboratory tests, he found that within minutes he felt a sharp decrease in his telepathic powers. It is this extreme sensitivity to mental influence that makes the successful replication of Psi experiments so difficult, and that poses extraordinary challenges to investigators trained in the classical scientific tradition.
The Problem with the Scientific Method of Investigation
It is not that the scientific method of investigation is unsuited to the validation of Psi phenomena, but rather that Psi experiments demand a rigorous mental control. It is this subtle point that needs to be grasped by all investigators of Psi.
Unfortunately, it is a point that opponents of Psi invariably fail to recognise or to concede. It is easy today to conduct “normal” scientific experiments and get consistent results, because the mental attitudes of the scientists conducting these experiments have long been conditioned to produce this uniformity, by virtue of their education and training within the classical scientific paradigm.
Scientists trained to think in terms of classical physics obtain results which reflect the bias of their classical education. This mental mould deals successfully and uniformly with such phenomena as heat, pressure and electricity, which are integral features of the current scientific paradigm.
It does not deal successfully or consistently with phenomena which by their very nature (why else would they be called paranormal?) lie outside of the present paradigm.
Only when a new scientific paradigm has become established in which Psi phenomena form an integral part of the theory of “normal science”, and which is reinforced by education in all schools of learning, will it be possible to overlook the mental influences of the experimenters in establishing the protocols of scientific procedure.
By then, all “normal” scientific investigators will have been conditioned into a new mould of thinking, which will produce consistent results in Psi, just as it now guarantees uniform results in traditional physics. But until such time as a new paradigm is successfully enthroned, the rigorous control of mental attitudes must remain a vital constituent of every experiment involving Psi.
Paranormal Abilities are a Product of Faith
The evidence for Psi is, in a strange way, a product of faith.
Let us suppose, for example, that I sincerely believe that such a thing as precognition actually exists. I therefore set up an experiment to see if I can verify my belief. Although I may not be successful at first, if I continue to undertake my experiments holding a positive mental outlook, I am bound to find an occasional corroborating result.
Since these sporadic results seem to bear out my hypothesis, I am bolstered by this success to continue my experiments. As these positive results continue to occur, so I gain more confidence that my hypothesis is correct. As my confidence grows, so my results tend more and more to reflect my mental expectations.
Finally, there comes a time when I am able to reproduce evidence at will. By this time I am utterly convinced that precognition is a proven fact of nature.
A skeptic on the other hand, proceeds with the opposite hypothesis. He or she assumes that there is no such thing as precognition, and does not expect to find any evidence to support it. It comes as no surprise to learn that his or her expectations are fulfilled. Even those isolated results which are indicative of the existence of such a faculty are rejected because they are inconsistent.
As the number of experimental failures begins to mount, so the skeptic becomes increasingly convinced that the original hypothesis is correct, and that there is no such thing in nature as precognition. The doubter thus arrives at the opposite conclusion, but in a curious fashion by an identical process of mind.
To the skeptic, the fact that I am able to obtain satisfactory evidence while he or she cannot, seems clear evidence of my gullibility. I got my successful results because I wanted them to happen. What I have done seems to be the very antithesis of the scientific method, which is to operate in a neutral and objective way with a completely open mind.
The skeptic dismisses my evidence because it clearly seems to be the result of my suggestibility. My faith generated results which now justify my faith.
Scientific Laws are also Products of Faith
But this process is in fact exactly how the entire edifice of science has been constructed in the first place. Every scientific law that now exists began initially as a tenuous hypothesis. Each hypothesis began in a similar way to yield positive results, infrequently at first, but enough to warrant further investigation.
As more confirmatory evidence came to hand, so the original hypothesis came to be upgraded to a valid scientific theory. As the amount of proven evidence accumulated, so more and more scientists came to be convinced that this was the way that nature actually operated.
In due course, when this evidence had reached overwhelming proportions, the theory was enshrined as scientific “law”. But each “law” of science is ultimately the product of belief, and only continues to be valid for as long as faith in the underlying belief continues to be held.
Experience feeds on belief in science just as it does in the realm of magic. Science is merely one way of describing reality, while magic is another. The one is not superior to the other, for both are merely different ways in which reality can be experienced and defined.
To the hardened realist, convinced that nature functions in one way and one way only, the foregoing example is taken to be an absurdity. If precognition did not exist in nature as an actual fact, it would be impossible for me to acquire evidence of its existence, no matter how much faith I happened to profess.
Likewise, the realist believes that the evidence that sustains scientific law could only be obtained if nature actually did operate in this way. The idea that the universe might be able to re-arrange itself to suit any underlying cast of mind seems so ridiculous as to be outrageous.
Yet this is precisely what the Sages say does occur. The reason for this apparent absurdity is that, according to the mystics, the sceptical realist has become deluded by the apparent reality of the universe.
Our Illusory World
The scientific realist remains entrenched in the belief that the universe is a conglomeration of physical objects that exist in space completely independently of the individual.
To the mystic, however, the universe is revealed to be a subjective phenomenon appearing inwardly in consciousness, and it is this image in consciousness that is then projected outwardly by every individual mind.
Once the universe is seen to be a subjective phenomenon, it is easy to see why the character that the universe comes to exhibit in consciousness, must be determined by the mental content of that consciousness. This is confirmed in the following passage taken from the ancient Hindu classic Tripura Rahasya:
“One starts by imagining something then contemplates it; and by continuous or repeated association resolves that it is true unless contradicted. In that way, the world appears real in the manner one is used to it.” 9
Furthermore, this realisation is now beginning to be glimpsed by perceptive scientists as well. For as Henry Margenau and Lawrence LeShan point out:
“This comprehension is one of the most staggering and least understood insights of modern science. We no longer search for what reality is, but rather for ways of usefully construing it; for ways to define it that will help us to achieve our goal.” (Original emphasis) 10
Parapsychologists who strive to validate Psi phenomena according to the protocols of accepted scientific thinking, need to be wary on a variety of counts. We have already seen the crucial importance of the mental outlook of all those who participate in the experiment, and how this influences the outcome of results.
Since negative beliefs inevitably decrease the likelihood of positive results, proponents of Psi would do well to confine their experiments to young children, or to those people who, for one reason or another have escaped the traditional scientific cast of mind.
It is a common feature of experience that positive Psi results are best obtained by young children, as demonstrated by the “Geller effect”. A good example of this is the incident recounted by Lyall Watson, of the child who was able to bend a key after watching a video of Uri Geller doing so.
The reason is obvious. As Kreskin noted in his experiments in telepathy: “I didn’t know the rules – what could be done, what couldn’t.” 4
The young child has not yet become “one of us.” By contrast, skeptics and opponents of Psi should concentrate their experiments on adults, preferably those who do not believe in the possibility of Psi. In this way, negative results will continue to be achieved, which will then continue to justify the traditional skepticism of science.
Because of the number of people alive today who hold opposing beliefs, it is likely that these conflicting results in Psi will continue to be produced for a considerable time to come.
It is also clear from numerous anecdotal cases, that it is possible for the mind to interact with mechanical, electrical and electronic equipment in deleterious ways. Those who design experiments to investigate Psi should therefore be extremely cautious in their utilisation of such equipment.
Tape recorders, cameras, computers and the like are notoriously unreliable in cases of Psi, and if they manage to function at all, often do so in ways that defy explanation. They are also inconsistent, functioning well on some occasions, and not at all at other times.
Yet it is precisely in this area of “objective, technological verification” that science has traditionally placed its trust. “The camera never lies” is a common scientific adage that represents the classical point of view. This axiom is held to be valid, however, only until some ghostly image appears in a photograph, or some other effect that was not anticipated or visible at the time.
When this occurs, the camera or the film is invariably presumed to be faulty, and the evidence obtained is held to be “unscientific”. The rules conveniently change according to the paradigm. When the camera, computer, tape recorder, etc., provides evidence that is permissible under the current paradigm, this is welcomed as “objective proof” of the validity of the paradigm.
But if a discarnate voice should happen to be heard on a tape recorder, this is taken to be evidence of the unreliability of technical equipment, rather than as evidence that the existing scientific paradigm is flawed.
Critics of Psi, on the other hand, should find in this strange contrariness of equipment a rich vein of doubt to exploit, for it is easy to reject evidence on these grounds, rather than believe that physical matter might actually be subject to the prevailing influence of mind.
Continued in Part Four
References
1 Lawrence LeShan, “The Medium, The Mystic and The Physicist”, Ballantine, New York, 1975, pp.xiii-xiv.
2 Gary Zukav, “The Dancing Wu Li Masters”, Bantam, New York, 1980, p.313.
3 “The Geller Papers”, edited by Charles Panati, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1976, p. 255.
4 Kreskin, “The Amazing World of Kreskin”, Avon, New York, 1974, pp. 33-34.
5 Ibid, pp. 89-90.
6 Ibid, p. 122.
7 Christopher Bird, “Applications of Dowsing: An Ancient Biophysical Art”, in “Future Science“, op.cit., p. 356.
8 Kreskin, op.cit., p. 18.
9 “Tripura Rahasya”, translated by Swami Saraswathi, Sri Ramanasramam, Tiruvannamalai, 1962, p. 100.
10 Henry Margenau and Lawrence LeShan, “Einstein’s Space and Van Goch’s Sky”, Macmillan, New York, 1975, pp. 213-214.
Allan, The Crumbling Paradigm, February 8, 2016, 3:21 pm
 Israeli psychic Uri Geller Probably the most famous, or notorious person, depending on your point of view, to influence matter by some agency of mind, has been the Israeli psychic Uri Geller. Although best known for his ability to bend spoons and startle defunct watches and clocks into renewed activity, Geller has nevertheless conducted a variety of experiments that have confounded attending scientists.
In one experiment that took place at the White Oak laboratory of the Naval Weapons Center at Silver Spring, Maryland, Geller was invited by Eldon Byrd to see if he could deform three pieces of nitinol wire. The particular characteristic which prompted Byrd to choose nitinol wire was that although it could be twisted into any number of shapes, it always reverted to its original shape when heated.
Geller was challenged to see whether he could induce any permanent changes in the nitinol wire. As Geller proceeded to rub these wires with his fingers, each one of them began to curl into unusual shapes. Subsequent heating was unable to restore them to their original shape.
Byrd concluded that only intense heat or mechanical stress could have accounted for the permanent deformations which Geller had been able to induce in the nitinol wires. 1
On another occasion, while in the presence of Dr. Wilbur Franklin of Kent State University, Ohio, Geller fractured a platinum ring. Franklin presumed that he had caused a “fatigue fracture” in the ring, a rupture caused by excess wear and tear in the metal.
Yet when the ring was examined under an electron microscope, it was found that the fracture actually consisted of two separate and distinct cracks in the platinum. What was so remarkable about this discovery was that although the two cracks were extremely close to one another, each crack seemed to have been made by entirely different forces.
One fracture resembled that which typically occurred at a temperature of -195 degrees Celsius, while the other was characteristic of a crack caused by a temperature of 1773 degrees Celsius. Dr. Franklin later wrote: “It would be extremely difficult, even under the best laboratory conditions, to produce two so totally different fractures at sites so close to one another”. 1
While on a visit to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories in California in 1974, Geller was asked by Ronald Hawke whether he could erase, or in any way alter, the programmes that had been magnetically stored on four computer cards.
These cards were coated with a layer of plastic to prevent any direct contact with the cards themselves. Again, Geller merely rubbed his fingers gently across the surfaces of the cards. When Hawke then fed these cards into the computer, they were immediately rejected.
Hawke found that the magnetic programmes had in some way been altered in a manner which now rendered them “ambiguous.” He later commented that “subsequent inspection with a magnetic viewer after the meeting with Geller revealed that the magnetic patterns had been altered.” 1
Once more, “normal” science was perplexed. Not only had Geller been able to do what the fundamental laws of physics indicated could not be done, but he had done so in a manner that defied all explanation.
The Will to Believe
 William James (1842 – 1910) These cases have become yet more embarrassing anomalies that do not fit into the current scientific paradigm. The existence of these anomalies is not just a recent problem. They have in fact been reported as far back as 1897. In his book The Will to Believe, the American psychologist and philosopher William James wrote:
“The phenomena are there lying broadcast over the surface of history. No matter where you open its pages, you find things recorded under the name of divinations, inspirations, demoniacal possessions, apparitions, trances, ecstasies, miraculous healings and productions of disease, and occult powers possessed by peculiar individuals over persons and things in their neighbourhood.
“Look behind the pages of official history, in personal memoirs, legal documents and popular narratives and books of anecdote, and you will find that there never was a time when these things were not reported just as abundantly as now.” 2
That tiny trickle of anomalous events has swelled today into a mighty flood, yet they seldom find their way into the published journals of science. Since they contradict the official rules of science, they are condemned to lie in “personal memoirs, legal documents, and popular narratives and books of anecdote”.
And because they are not reported in the official instruments of science, “normal” scientists who are wedded to the current materialistic paradigm continue happily to ignore them.
So great has been this profusion of unexplained phenomena over recent years that they have now come to be consolidated into a category of their own. This vast body of evidence is now referred to under the name of Psi, derived from the first letter of the Greek word psukhe (psyche), meaning soul or spirit.
Psi embraces a wide variety of unusual powers which appear to be manifestations of the human mind. Psi phenomena include:
The ability to see, hear, smell, taste or touch, without the use of corresponding sense organs (extra-sensory perception – Esp)
The ability to see things that are remote from the observer (clairvoyance)
The ability to hear things that are remote from the hearer (clairaudience)
The ability to acquire information directly from the mind of another person (telepathy)
The ability to know things that will take place in the future (precognition)
The ability to know things that have taken place in the past (retrocognition)
The ability to influence matter by non-sensory means (psychokinesis)
The ability to transport matter over distance, or to dematerialise it and rematerialise it elsewhere (telekinesis.)
The ability to heal (faith healing)
These abilities, which appear to lie beyond the range of normal human expression, are generally referred to as “paranormal” abilities, and the study of those people who possess these abilities, as “parapsychology”.
The use in each case of the prefix “para” – meaning beyond, above or outside – is a clear indication of the fact that they are considered to fall outside of the “normal” realm of experience. It is because science and psychology have thus far been unable to explain these phenomena within the current scientific paradigm that they have come to be regarded as paranormal, or something beyond the range of normal behaviour.
It is an inevitable and unfortunate corollary of this definition, that those people who demonstrate these abilities are themselves regarded as abnormal, and in some way strange, odd or queer. In earlier centuries such people were considered to be in league with Satan, and were condemned to a painful death for practising witchcraft and the occult arts.
The stigma that has clung to these phenomena in the past has by no means been overcome today, even though parapsychology has become an acknowledged branch of psychology, and today claims the attention of many leading scientific minds.
The Limits of the Paradigm
 Thomas Kuhn (1922 – 1996) However, the process that Thomas Kuhn elucidated continues to be plainly evident today. As Kuhn revealed, scientific paradigms serve as frameworks which bind the investigators of “normal” science within certain prescribed boundaries of belief.
In the course of time, evidence accrues which cannot be explained within the framework of the existing paradigm. At first these exceptions, or anomalies, are simply ignored by official science. As time passes, however, these exceptions increase in number to the point where a state of considerable tension arises.
This internal stress ultimately leads to a scientific crisis, out of which a new scientific paradigm is born. Like every form of revolution, this shifting paradigm is a traumatic affair, and only succeeds in overcoming the old ideas after a protracted battle with the guardians of outdated beliefs.
The evidential data that collectively has come to be known as Psi, has not emerged overnight. It is not some swift malaise that has come to afflict a portion of humanity. It has steadily been accumulating over the centuries.
In the past it was the power of the Church that effectively suppressed this data. It is now Science itself that has come to wield the rod of oppression. To official science, these anomalous events are unwanted, for they serve only to muddy the clear waters of accepted thinking.
Despite this religious and scientific crusade, the sheer abundance of Psi evidence has built up a groundswell of discontent, such that the redoubts of conventional science are now under siege.
According to the Cartesian dualism of classical science, the universe is divided into two opposing spheres – one of matter and the other of mind. The evidence of Psi threatens this divide. Yet ironically, this evidence offers a bridge across the gulf that would heal the centuries old chasm that has artificially divided the universe into two opposing parts.
Generations to come may wonder why it was that the opportunity presented by Psi was not seized upon enthusiastically by those who now man the bulwarks of traditional science. But that has not been the way of change in the past, and it is unlikely to reflect the transformation of the future.
The proponents of Psi will undoubtedly have to face a stern test of their resolve in the face of an unflinching foe, before the buttresses of the classical castle of science will be ready to crumble.
Those scientists who have established their careers and their reputations in the practice of conventional science, are naturally the ones who have the most to lose by a change in paradigm, and it is they, the leading scientists of their day, who have traditionally been in the vanguard of those who have resisted the onslaught of the new.
Parapsychology will have to fight a fierce battle before it takes its rightful place in the new scientific paradigm. It is assailed on many sides, particularly by those who now hold positions of authority, and who have come to be regarded as the foremost experts in their field.
The battle against all forms of Psi, the challenge of the encroaching powers of mind, has led to highly charged confrontations in the past, and continues to do so to this day. It inspires in many a profound dread of the unknown.
Sigmund Freud, who was one of the pioneers of the adventure of psychiatry, and who more than most should have been alert to the awesome potential of the human mind, was so appalled at the prospect of the occult, that he called it “the black tide of the unknown”. In reflecting this visceral response, he succumbed to mankind’s horror of all things hidden and unknown.
Freud spoke not only for the majority of his peers, but also for the major body of scientists today, who consider anything that cannot be explained in conventional scientific terms as inherently unhealthy. The Church in turn has rigorously opposed all forms of the paranormal, believing them to be evidence of collusion between man and Satan.
Their centuries long Jihad has been directed at anyone who practised divination, or who demonstrated any unusual talent. The paranormal practitioners of yesteryear did not become the millionaires of their times, as Uri Geller has become today. Instead, they faced lives of victimisation and terror, that all too often ended upon a fiery stake.
Society has always feared the unknown.
The Threat of Psi
Today, many leading scientists see in the phenomena of the paranormal threats to the orderly process of living, and a likely reversion to that state of barbarism, witchcraft and superstition, out of which science so laboriously dragged itself four centuries ago.
For them the threat of Psi is very clear. It is the choice between the pure light of logic and reason on the one hand, and the gloom of magic-mongery and blind faith on the other. To pander to the inclinations of the paranormal then, is to court the collapse of all civilised virtue.
They paint the threat of Psi in bold opposing colours. These scientists not only consider themselves to be defenders of scientific truth, but crusaders for the very tenets of civilisation. They stoutly profess that it is only their valiant defence of conventional science that prevents humanity from sliding inexorably into a new age of darkness.
 Lawrence LeShan Lawrence LeShan speaks eloquently for their fears:
“Psi phenomena seems to threaten the basic concepts of the universe – the weltenshauung, the lebensgefuhl of modern individuals. We live in a perceived world of law and order, of sequential cause and effect – a world in which space and time are limiting factors.
“It is on this view that we have built our own personality structure, our action and reaction patterns, and our sense of security. We may not find it an ideal world and may even resent its limitations, but it is the world of the 20th century and our own homeland.
“What then if these basic laws of the universe are threatened? What if we are faced with apparent evidence that they may be illusions – that space and time can sometimes be discounted or ignored; that sequences of events can occur which are irrelevant to the logic of cause and effect?” 3
In answer to his question, LeShan himself replies:
“It brings us to the ‘catastrophic anxiety’ the psychiatrist Kurt Goldstein has described as the most severe of all anxieties. Goldstein has demonstrated how we in our development, build our ego to support, and be supported by, that view of reality which our culture believes to be the only correct one.
“If this model is no longer supported by the culture around us, or if we are faced with data that contradict it, we feel as if we are in great danger, the danger that our unsupported ego will crumble and come apart. We feel that we can no longer remain whole.” 4
The resistance to Psi will continue to be fierce, not simply because it challenges the conventional view of science, but because it threatens the very integrity of the personalities of its opponents.
For such scientists, the onslaught of Psi will be resisted as if their very lives depended on it, which in a sense they do. Conceding to the validity of Psi will call for a new description of the universe, and by extension, a new definition of ourselves.
The battle lines over Psi are now clearly drawn. The bastions of official science are guarded by its protectors who have entrenched themselves in their defensive positions. In this conflict, we find ourselves caught today in the rip-tides of a changing paradigm of science.
The old paradigm of classical physics, based upon fixed laws of nature, the rigorous march of time and the strict equation of cause and effect, seems to be giving way inexorably to a revolutionary new era whose potential we can only dimly see.
For those who are threatened by this change, and they include all those who have been conditioned by, and have committed themselves to, the old paradigm, this new revolution is fearsome in the extreme.
Others, mostly the young, see in the outcome of this conflict the potential for new beginnings, and a new age of extraordinary freedom. The laws of nature, which have for so long bound us in their iron clasp, are now being seen to be illusory. The “cogs in the machine”, as Gary Zukav has remarked, appear ready at last to become “creators of the universe.”
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The shift to the new paradigm appears remorseless, and those who stand today in the forefront of the resistance, seem destined to become historical footnotes as those who stood in the path of progress, just as the Church once resisted the ideas of Copernicus and Galileo. As Henry Margenau and Lawrence LeShan explain:
“We can see the problem clearly when we think about the colleagues of Galileo who refused to look through the telescope. They refused because it was unnecessary to look; they had confused their theory about reality with facts.
“As far as they were concerned, they knew the facts, and there was simply no point in observing a contradictory fact; the telescope’s view was necessarily false because it contradicted known facts. At this distance we can see their reasoning and confusion.
“It is, however, harder to see when many modern scientists, not looking at the facts of parapsychology, simply dismiss them as necessarily false and therefore unnecessary to examine since – for them – they contradict a known fact. They are as confused as were Galileo’s contemporaries, but this is a lot harder to see close up.” 5
The Problem of Explanation
Parapsychologists today are deeply engrossed in collating the observables of Psi and cataloguing these new “facts of nature”. Their basic problem, however, is that they are unable to explain these new facts. For it is one thing to record a fact, but quite another to explain the principle that accounts for it.
The main difficulty of parapsychology today is that parapsychologists are simply unable to say why the strange events that they record happen as they do. But if the underlying reasons have been difficult to grasp, the amount of evidence that has thus far been accumulated is truly immense.
Much of it remains necessarily in anecdotal form, simply because these illegitimate “facts” are not welcome in the official journals of science. As unwelcome as this may be to “normal” science, however, its sheer volume has now become so persuasive, that an increasing number of physicists have come to recognize that it can no longer be ignored.
Men like David Bohm, John Hasted, Brian Josephson, Henry Margenau, Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ have all made signal contributions to the reality and significance of Psi.
The essential difficulty that these researchers face, as with any shift in paradigm, is simply that nature has not yet been “beaten into line”. The basic problem of the investigation of Psi from a scientific point of view, is that results obtained by one person under certain circumstances may not match the results achieved by another person under similar outward circumstances.
This conflicting evidence flies in the face of the scientific tradition, which requires that individual scientists must be able to replicate the results of other experiments conducted under identical conditions. In the field of Psi, this seldom seems to occur.
The reason it does not occur, is because scientists who are conditioned to the paradigm of classical physics have overlooked a vital ingredient in the determination of their results. They have become accustomed to denoting the significant factors that affect the outcome of any experiment in purely physical terms.
They do not realise that the success of classical physics was not achieved in this way. It took many years of conflicting results before nature was successfully beaten into the classical mould of expression.
It is only now becoming recognised, if only dimly, that it is the mental attitude involved in any experiment relative to Psi, that is the true determinant of the experimental result, and that this needs to be controlled just as carefully as temperature, pressure and the rest.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, when John Dalton developed his atomic theory of chemical reaction, he was faced with a disconcerting problem. Although his ideas were clothed in theoretical elegance, the “facts” of nature did not always support his point of view.
The French chemists Berthollet and Proust were initially unable to obtain verifying data, and it took “almost another generation” before chemists everywhere were able to achieve consistently uniform results that were in line with Daltonian theory.
The problem of making nature fit the paradigm was not so much a question of achieving consistent empirical methods, as it was a matter of co-coordinating people’s minds. It was only when chemists began to think alike and to expect consistent chemical results, that nature herself obliged by functioning in a manner consistent with these expectations.
Until this consensus of mental conformity was attained, we may well imagine the extent of the controversy that raged throughout the world of science at that time. Those chemists whose empirical results supported Dalton would have spoken out strongly in favour of the whole number hypothesis, while those chemists who had obtained conflicting data would have resisted fiercely the encroachment of the new ideas, and staunchly defended their methods and results.
This variability in results is an inevitable feature of any changing paradigm. Each period of transformation is marked by conflicting “facts”, simply because there is no uniformity in the underlying pattern of belief.
It is only when everyone has become conditioned to the new ideas, that the physical “facts” then achieve uniform consistency. With the benefit of hindsight we are able to see how this uniformity has come about, although we still fall into the trap of interpreting this as evidence of a given law of nature.
If we examine the events that are occurring today, we can see that a similar process is at work. Results of Psi experiments continue to be inconclusive, with no real indication as to which point of view is “correct”.
Experimental results are inconsistent, not only between different experimenters, but even with the same people involved in identical experiments, but done at different times. This inconsistency is meat and drink to the skeptic, who triumphantly presents it as proof of the illusory nature of the phenomenon of Psi.
There remains also the problem of proof. What constitutes proof to one scientist does not necessarily convince another. Inevitably, this comes to depend upon the underlying cast of mind.
Those who are open to the possibility of new events are relatively easily persuaded. For those whose minds are utterly closed, even to the possibility of such new events, no amount of proof will suffice. One may recall the heroic efforts of Dr. J. B. Rhine, who strove for over forty years at Duke University, to assemble sufficient evidence that would convince his peers of the existence of telepathy and precognition.
To open-minded observers, Rhine’s results were sufficient to prove their existence and efficacy beyond all reasonable doubt. In fact, most of Rhine’s volunteers were soon bored to distraction by the endless repetition of experiments. Yet for the majority of scientists, it was as if Rhine had never conducted a single valid experiment.
The skeptics remained totally closed to the idea that there might actually be a faculty of telepathy, and no amount of evidence was able to persuade them otherwise. In the final analysis, no man or woman is able to be convinced unless he or she chooses to be convinced.
Even Christ could not convert the Pharisees.
Continued in Part Three
References
1 “The Geller Papers”, edited by Charles Panati, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1976, pp. 6-10.
2 William James, “The Will to Believe”, Lecture given in 1896.
3 Lawrence LeShan, “The Medium, The Mystic and the Physicist”, Ballantine, New York, 1975, p. 199.
4 Henry Margenau and Lawrence LeShan, “Einstein’s Space and Van Goch’s Sky”, Macmillan, New York, 1982, p. 20.
5 Ibid, p.212.
Allan, The Crumbling Paradigm, January 25, 2016, 2:32 pm
 Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) In 1898, two events occurred in the life of Carl Jung which had a profound effect upon the choice of his future career. Although relatively modest in themselves, they were nonetheless sufficiently bewildering to prompt the youthful Jung towards an investigation of the properties of the mind.
When he came to record the story of his life some sixty years later, these two events were still indelibly marked on his memory.
The first event occurred when he was twenty-three years old, and took place during the course of his summer holidays. Jung was sitting in his room studying his textbooks while his mother was in the dining room, knitting. The door to the dining room, which led off from the room in which Jung was studying, stood ajar.
“Suddenly there sounded a report like a pistol shot. I jumped up and rushed into the room from which the noise of the explosion had come. My mother was sitting flabbergasted in her armchair, the knitting fallen from her hands. She stammered out. “W-w-what’s happened? It was right beside me!” and stared at the table. Following her eyes, I saw what had happened.
“The tabletop had split from the rim to beyond the center, and not along any joint; the split ran right through the solid wood. I was thunderstruck. How could such a thing happen? A table of solid walnut that had dried out for seventy years – how could it split on a summer day in the relatively high degree of humidity characteristic of our climate?
“If it had stood next to a heated stove on a cold, dry winter day, then it might have been conceivable. What in the world could have caused such an explosion?” 1
Jung’s astonishment was further compounded by another strange event which happened two weeks later. He arrived home on this occasion at six o’clock in the evening to find his mother, his fourteen year-old sister, and their maid, in a great state of consternation.
About an hour earlier there had again been a deafening explosion emanating from the dining room. This time however, it did not come from the previously damaged walnut table. Instead it had come from the direction of the heavy, wooden sideboard. Although the ladies had checked the sideboard closely, they had been unable to find any sign of a split in the wood. Jung then proceeded to take a closer look.
“I immediately began examining the sideboard and the entire surrounding area, but just as fruitlessly. Then I began on the interior of the sideboard. In the cupboard containing the bread basket I found a loaf of bread, and, beside it, the bread knife. The greater part of the blade had snapped off in several pieces.
“The handle lay in one corner of the rectangular basket, and in each of the other corners lay a piece of the blade. The knife had been used shortly before, at four o’clock tea, and afterward put away. Since then no one had gone to the sideboard.” 1
On the following day, Jung took the pieces of the shattered knife into town, where they were examined by the city’s leading cutler. This man was unable to find any flaw in the steel to account for the broken pieces.
He suggested that in order to have incurred so much damage, the knife would either have had to have been dropped onto stone from a considerable height, or else to have been inserted into a crevice and twisted, breaking off one piece at a time. When told of the circumstances under which the damage had been sustained the cutler laughed and said, “But good steel can’t explode. Someone has been pulling your leg.” 1
Paranormal Anomalies
The perplexity which Jung experienced in trying to discover some rational explanation for these two events was understandable in the light of the scientific theory of his day. At the end of the nineteenth century, physics was still dominated by the idea of the universe as a Giant Machine, in which objects could only be damaged by the impact of forces applied directly to them.
Yet despite the dramatic developments which have since taken place in science, and the insights into the nature of physical matter which the discoveries of quantum mechanics have provided, the conundrum which faced Jung then still challenges us to this day.
For although the New Physics has led to a profound re-evaluation of the physical world, mainstream science has continued to be bound by the old ideas. The majority of scientists today continue to be guided by the signals of their senses, and to regard the world in a totally material and objective way.
Because of this, the mysterious explosions which troubled Jung still continue to defy scientific explanation. They remain anomalies – events which lie outside the boundaries of the current scientific paradigm – and which are therefore overlooked by “normal” scientists.
However, these anomalies have begun to proliferate until they now embrace such a wealth of extraordinary material, that this anomalous data can no longer be ignored. Science has become forced to take note of these anomalies, and leading physicists have recognised the need to incorporate them within the overall scientific scheme.
On March 10, 1965, the American psychiatrist Berthold Schwarz interviewed a thirty year-old housewife who described to him an unusual event that had taken place during the previous week. The woman told Schwarz that she had had her kitchen renovated some two years earlier, in which certain decorative tiles had been placed by the sink and stove.
These tiles were coloured pink and each contained a fruit motif which was baked into the tiles themselves. On the previous Saturday evening, the housewife recalled that she had entered the kitchen and was amazed to see that, in place of the pictures of the peaches which had previously been incorporated in four of the decorative tiles, there now appeared pictures of a baby superimposed on the tiles.
Each of these four tiles contained the same face of a child with a birthmark on its head. This birthmark happened to coincide with a similar mark which her son Roderick had been born with. Thinking that she might be experiencing a hallucination, she called her husband to see this strange phenomenon. He confirmed what she had seen.
Subsequently, every member of the family together with friends, neighbours and colleagues, examined these tiles. All confirmed the presence of the faces, although none had ever noticed anything resembling a face in any of these tiles before. These faces were not painted on the tiles, and they subsequently resisted all efforts to remove them through abrasion or washing. 2
As in the case of Jung’s shattered knife and dining room table, several physical objects had undergone a transformation which defied conventional scientific explanation. Short of fraud, for which Dr. Schwarz could find no evidence, the appearance of the faces that were now superimposed upon the tiles could not be explained by any of the known laws of physics.
This incident was, and still remains, an anomaly to be added to the burgeoning collection of what Charles Fort once called “the dammed” – those incidents that defy common explanation.
When Paul Brunton visited India in the early years of the twentieth century in search of the mysterious and bizarre, he happened to meet a rather unsavoury character, a former clergyman, who had been expelled from the church.
Brunton discovered that this man possessed a strong hypnotic power which he was abusing, by exploiting credulous people and obtaining money from them by unscrupulous means. He discussed this situation with an Indian friend who was versed in the occult arts. The Indian agreed that the defrocked priest should be prevented from exploiting gullible people any further, and resolved to place a curse on the man.
When Brunton went to look for the clergyman a short time later, he was directed to a hall where the man was giving a demonstration of his powers. When Brunton entered the hall he was confronted by a scene of wild confusion. He later described the cause of this confusion.
“They had all been sitting peacefully upon their chairs listening to their leader’s lecture when all the electrical lamps had suddenly exploded with the force of bombs, shattering glass in every direction. The hall had instantly become dark and amidst the resulting gloom and chaos they had heard their leader fall heavily to the platform floor, uttering loud cries of fright.” 3
The plan apparently worked, for the defrocked priest was later persuaded to curtail his activities and leave town. Now while this event may easily be dismissed as mere coincidence, for power failures are not uncommon in India, they do not usually cause electric bulbs to explode “with the force of bombs”.
Clearly some extraordinary surge of power seemed to have been responsible. Yet what struck Brunton so forcibly on this occasion, and which qualified this event for inclusion in the growing body of anomalous behaviour, was the timing of this incident.
“And now for the curious point of the story. The hall had been plunged in darkness at the very moment when my Indian friend’s rite of cursing reached its culminating point!” 3
Phone Calls from the Dead
 In 1975, California parapsychologist Scott Rogo was lying comfortably on his living room couch. It was four o’clock on a Thursday afternoon. Although he knew that he had to place a telephone call to the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute at that time, because he was listening to the radio and dozing, he felt it was too much trouble to get up and make the call.
Two hours later, however, while he was still lying on the couch, his reverie was disturbed by the insistent ringing of his telephone. Reluctantly, Rogo roused himself and answered it.
“When I picked up the phone, I was surprised to hear the voice of a young research assistant who worked at the Neuropsychiatric lnstitute.
‘I’m answering your message’ he said.
‘What message’? I asked, a bit puzzled.
‘The call you made to us at four’, he continued, equally bewildered.
‘What do you mean? I didn’t call you’, I added a bit nastily.
‘Oh? I just got in and found a message on my desk saying that you called at four and wanted us to return the call’.
To say the least, I was thunderstruck. Indeed, I had wanted to phone UCLA at 4.00 that day and I had actually wanted to speak to this assistant’s boss. But I most assuredly had never made the call.” 4
This spontaneous communication involving a real, physical telephone system so astounded Rogo at the time, that he began an investigation to see whether similar events had ever occurred to other people.
His enquiries led him to uncover even more extraordinary cases. He found, for example, that not only were there recorded instances of strange messages that had been intercepted from living people, but also some from those who were already dead.
In 1959, a Swede by the name of Friedrich Jurgenson claimed to have discovered strange voices on his tape recorder while he was out taping bird calls, and again while recording various radio broadcasts. Another European, this time a German named Konstantin Raudive, later announced that he too had been successful in recording on tape strange voices which allegedly belonged to people who were deceased.
In another series of experiments conducted in America, both Attila von Szalay and Raymond Bayless succeeded in obtaining recordings of strange, discarnate voices. 5 Berthold Schwarz also reported a case where a friend of his happened, on a sudden impulse, to record a message on his tape recorder. The message was as follows:
“Please, Spirit, help us. Please guide me. Dear Spirit, soon help me. Dear Helpful Spirits, dear Guiding Spirit, spirits of the so-called dead, please help me. Please guide me. Please speak up that I may hear you clearly on this tape.”
When this man replayed his recorded message, he was shocked to hear the voice of his late father, whose voice could be heard over the original message, saying, “Please help me please guide me. Help.” 6
When Rogo pursued these investigations, he found that not only were certain individuals successful in obtaining recordings of discarnate voices on tape recorders, but that they were also able to receive messages via an astonishing range of other electrical equipment as well.
He found that ever since radio telegraphy had been invented, there had been enigmatic reports of odd messages that had unexpectedly been received. Unusual voices and messages had also been reported from radios, gramophones and telephones. These messages ranged from simple letters, to signals in Morse Code, to actual voices.
These voices were frequently clearly heard, and in many cases were recognisable to those receiving the messages. Rogo found that these unusual messages were not only received through accepted modes of communication, but via odd conglomerations of equipment as well. These homemade contraptions seemed equally adept at attracting the attention of the denizens of the dead.
In one instance which Rogo uncovered, a London solicitor by the name of David Wilson elicited strange messages in 1915 from a device which he had personally concocted. It consisted of a battery hooked to an electrical detector, which in turn was attached to a galvanometer.
In 1921, another innovative investigator, F.R. Melton of Nottingham, designed a device which he called a “psychic telephone”. It consisted of some telephone apparatus hooked to an amplifier and placed in a small box. Rogo described another device which again succeeded in attracting mysterious responses. This mechanism was invented by a man named Henri Vandermeulen, and was actually granted a patent by the Belgian Government.
“The apparatus consisted of two glass prisms coated with resin; an electric bell; and a dry cell. All these components were connected by various wires. A light metal triangle was balanced between the prisms, next to one of the connecting wires. The bell would activate when the metal triangle was pushed (physically that is) into contact with the positive connecting wire, thus closing a circuit between the component parts.” 7
In yet another instance, a Mrs. L. N. Geldert received messages over a wireless set that was not plugged in at the time, which she claimed originated from her son Bob who had been killed in action during the First World War. Geldert personally described this saga in a book entitled Thy Son Liveth. 8
Matter and Mind
The large body of evidence that Rogo has accumulated is data which continues to remain anomalous. It is completely at odds with the laws of conventional physics. Mainstream scientists still continue to cling tenaciously to the Cartesian divide, in which all the phenomena of life are neatly separated into two distinct categories of matter and of mind.
They do not welcome therefore, data which suggest that in some perplexing manner, the sphere of mind is able to intrude into the realm of matter. Conventional scientists continue to function today in the firm conviction that these two spheres are inviolable, and that the subjective properties of the mind are entirely divorced from matter, and are in no way able to influence it.
It remains a fundamental article of faith among conventional physicists, rooted in the classical tradition, that matter can never be influenced by such ephemeral things as emotions or thoughts. The problem for such physicists, is that the body of anomalous data that conflicts with this view continues to increase.
As it does so, the natural response is to repress this unwelcome evidence with even greater force. The drawback in adopting this defensive strategy is that the existing scientific paradigm necessarily becomes even more rigid, and thus becomes even more vulnerable to revolutionary change.
There is growing evidence to suggest that the minds of certain people not only do influence the sphere of matter in ways which are highly unconventional, but that they do so in ways which are often distinctly hostile.
It remains a commonly reported phenomenon that certain people relate badly to their wrist-watches, which never seem to function properly while they are being worn. Yet when these same wrist-watches are later examined, they are found to be in excellent working order.
Other people manage to exert inexplicable effects on the operation of machinery, particularly in the field of electronics and computers. These people have come to be categorized as “machine unfriendly”. But if some people exert an influence on matter that is less than benign, other have an effect that is downright lethal.
In a Vancouver news report, a twenty-five year-old housewife by the name of Jackie Priestman, who was then living in Stockport, Cheshire, had put out of action sixteen vacuum cleaners, plus an assortment of hairdryers, lawnmowers, light bulbs, kettles, clocks, heaters and washing machines over a four year period.
The report noted that whenever she approached a radio or television set, its reception was adversely affected. Her husband Paul, who was himself a qualified electrician, was quite unable to account for these extraordinary events. “It’s got beyond a joke,” he complained, “an electric iron caught fire in Jackie’s hand the other day, and the central heating went crazy. We’re both mystified.” 9
In another case that came to my attention, a personal friend had an episode in which household appliances, electrical and mechanical devices, simply self-destructed around her. During one twenty-four hour period, her telephone refused to ring for incoming calls and crackled noisily with static whenever she tried to make an outside call.
Her television set suddenly malfunctioned, as did her stereo, laser disc-player and tape recorder. The charge in her car battery drained completely, preventing the car from starting. When she tried to get out of the car, the car doors mysteriously jammed.
Later, upon entering an elevator, she found that it ascended and descended completely four times without stopping. When it finally did come to a halt, the elevator doors refused to open.
The ability to manipulate objects by means of mental concentration is now a widely reported phenomenon. Former President of the Cambridge University Society for Psychical Research, Dr. A. R. G. Owen, described experiments which he conducted personally with a subject named Jan Merta in Toronto in 1971.
For these experiments, two chicken feathers were joined together by their quills, and then hung by a nylon thread inside a glass jar, which was two feet (60 centimetres) high and one foot (30 centimetres) square. The thread was then taped to a glass plate which covered the opening at the top of the jar.
Air was prevented from entering the jar by greasing the contact between the plate and the rim of the jar. Although some random motion still persisted after the jar was sealed, this gradually ceased after a short period.
Owen described how Merta stood about six feet away from the jar, and alternately raised his right and left hand. When he raised his right hand, the feathers swung to the right, and vice-versa. In each case the feathers were allowed to come to a complete halt before Merta initiated any subsequent movements. Dr. Owen commented on what took place.
“Throughout, Jan was not only remote from the apparatus, but also physically quite passive. In one series of demonstrations he did not move head, body or hands, and did not himself announce the expected direction of movement. The feather moved to the right or left according to the requests of the observers, which they made to Jan.
“On some occasions when the feather had just completed the movement which it had made according to the instructions, Jan was asked to continue swinging it in the same direction and it picked up speed again. On other occasions Jan was asked to stop and reverse the motion just after it had started, and this he successfully did.
“In a final series, Jan sat, completely passive, about twenty-five feet away from the jar with his hands clasped behind his head. The responses of the feather were no less definite than the others at closer range.” 10
Continued in Part Two
References
1 Carl Jung, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections“, recorded and edited by A.Jaffe, Pantheon Books, New York, 1961, pp. 105-106.
2 Berthold Schwarz, “Psychic-Nexus”, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1980, pp. 146-147.
3 Paul Brunton, “A Search in Secret Egypt”, Dutton, New York, 1936, p. 89.
4 Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless, “Phone Calls from the Dead”, Berkley, New York, 1980, pp. 113-114.
5 Scott Rogo, “Paranormal Tape-Recorded Voices: A Paraphysical Breakthrough”, in “Future Science”, edited by John White and Stanley Krippner, Anchor, New York,1977, pp. 451-464.
6 Berthold Schwarz, “UFO Dynamics”, Rainbow, Moore Haven, 1983, p. 264.
7 Scott Rogo, “Phone Calls from the Dead”, op.cit., p. 167.
8 Ibid, p. 146.
9 Quoted from “Vancouver Province”, Vancouver, British Columbia, January 18, 1983.
10 A.R.G. Owen, “Psychic Mysteries of the North”, Harper & Row, New York, 1975, pp. 155-6.
Allan, The Crumbling Paradigm, January 10, 2016, 2:39 pm
Scott: My name is Scott Paton. I am speaking today with Allan Colston. He is the author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac”. This is a book dealing with prophecy.
For those listeners who may be new to this topic, this Podcast is another in the series “Signs of the Times”. Hello Allan and welcome to the Podcast.
Hello Scott, it’s great to be with you again.
Scott: In our last Podcast you spoke about the early history of the Jews, and said that you would follow this up with a summary of what is predicted to happen to them in the future.
You’re quite right Scott. As I recall, I said that now that the Jews had returned at last to their ancestral land, I hoped that they would enjoy a better future than they had endured in the past. Unfortunately, the Bible predicts that even worse things lie in store for them.
Scott: That doesn’t sound good. What sort of things does it predict?
Well Scott, at the end of our Podcast entitled “The ISIS Crisis“, I mentioned that the prophet Ezekiel predicted that there would come a time when a coalition of Islamic forces, together with their armies, would assemble on the borders of Israel, to the South, the East and the North.
Their purpose in doing so would be to attack Israel from all points at once, with the intention of overrunning the country and slaughtering all the Jews, thus ridding the land at last of the hated Zionists, and leaving it free to become the centre of the new Islamic State.
But just when they were poised for success, and the population of Israel realised that no foreign country would be coming to their aid and that all hope was lost, Ezekiel predicted that there would be a miraculous intervention by God. As he wrote in Chapter 38 verse 22:
“And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire and brimstone.”
And this is where it gets really interesting Scott. For this would not be the first time that God had interceded on behalf of the Jews by means of thunder, fire and hail. In the 23rd verse of chapter 9 of the Book of Exodus, we read:
“And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven: and the LORD sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground; and the LORD rained hail upon the land of Egypt”.
But as I mentioned in our previous Podcast, the plagues attributed to the LORD during the time of Moses were not miraculous at all. As explained by Velikovsky in his book Worlds in Collision, they were actually the natural outcome of a close encounter between the earth and a comet.
And just as a comet came to the aid of the Israelites at the time of Moses, so I believe that another comet will save them from the forces of the Islamic Alliance. And it would not surprise me Scott, that when that time comes, followers of Zacharia Sitchin will claim that it is the return of Planet X.
Scott: I gather you don’t believe that.
No Scott I don’t. But when destruction rains down upon the earth from the skies, it probably doesn’t matter too much who is right anyway. The end result will be the same. The assembled armies of Islam will be caught out in the open and be destroyed, while the land of Israel will be saved. As we read in the 39th chapter of the Book of Ezekiel, verses 3 and 4:
“And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north parts, and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel:
“And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand. Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands, and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured.”
The Islamic armies that had gathered on the borders of Israel would be exposed “on the mountains of Israel”. Their guns, rockets, tanks and artillery would prove no match for the fury of the meteorites and the “fiery hail” that would descend on them from the skies.
After the comet had passed, the countryside would be littered with the wreckage of the Islamic armaments and the bodies of their dead. So many people would die on the land to the East of the Dead Sea that the stench of rotting flesh would fill the air. As Ezekiel wrote:
“And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog a place there of graves in Israel, the valley of the passengers on the east of the sea: and shall stop the noses of the passengers: and there shall they bury Gog and all his multitude: and they shall call it the valley of Hamongog”.
Ezekiel wrote that it would take the Jews seven months to bury the dead and dispose of their carcases. “And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land”. (Ezekiel 39:11-12) He even penned four verses inviting animals and birds to feast on their flesh.
What makes this prediction by Ezekiel so important Scott, is that it marks the beginning of the seven years of tribulation described in the Book of Revelation. For the day on which this aerial assault begins will be “The Great and Terrible Day of the Lord“, long predicted by the prophets of old.
This will be a day of triumph unlike any other in the history of the Jews. It will be a day when the prophecies of the Old Testament will be vindicated, and the heathen armies will no longer threaten the land of the Covenant. As Ezekiel wrote in chapter 39 verses 7-8:
“So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One in Israel. Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord God; this is the day whereof I have spoken.”
Scott: But Allan, if these prophecies come true in the way that you say, surely this will be wonderful news for the Jews.
Of course you are right Scott. At least for awhile. For when the people of Israel see that their enemies have been destroyed, and that they have been spared from annihilation by means of divine intervention, the entire nation will rejoice, and even sceptics will be converted into fervent believers.
In fact, while the rest of the world is dealing with the devastation caused by the comet, the Jews will finally accept that their nation truly is a nation of destiny, and that they have a special Covenant with God. As Ezekiel writes in chapter 39 verses 21 and 22:
“And I will set my glory among the heathen, and all the heathen shall see my judgment that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid upon them. So the house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God from that day and forward.”
Scott: So what effect will this have on the nation of Israel?
Well Scott, the nation of Israel will be completely transformed. Whereas at the present time the population is divided by fierce political rivalries, the Jews will now come together with a renewed sense of unity and purpose. They will rebuild their nation according to the teachings of Moses.
They will be assisted in this by another seemingly miraculous event. Because their enemies will have been utterly routed by the disasters caused by the comet, the Jews will be free at last to build a new Temple of Solomon on its original site on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem.
Scott: What will happen to the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa
Mosque?
That’s a great question Scott. And we can get a clue as to their fate in the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, verse 19, when he writes: “For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken. Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel”.
The Muslim shrines that now stand on the Temple Mount in the old city of Jerusalem will collapse. The earthquakes and the meteorites will leave both of these sacred places in ruins, allowing the Jews to build a third Temple, to replace the one that was destroyed by the Romans.
When this Temple is rebuilt according to the original plans, the Jews will once again restore their practice of sacrificial worship in the Tabernacle of the Temple. The Sanctuary will once more be a place of ritual purity, and will become the new focal point of the Jewish religion.
This won’t be as difficult as you might imagine Scott, for there is an organisation in Israel known as the Temple Institute , that is already preparing for just such an opportunity. In fact, I have discussed this on my Blog, in a piece entitled “Rebuilding the Temple of Solomon“. As they point out on their website:
“The major focus of the Institute is its efforts towards the beginning of the actual rebuilding of the Holy Temple. Towards this end, the Institute has begun to restore and construct the sacred vessels for the service of the Holy Temple. These vessels, which G-d commanded Israel to create, can be seen today at our headquarters in Jerusalem.
“They are made according to the exact specifications of the Bible, and have been constructed from the original source materials, such as gold, copper, silver and wood. These are authentic, accurate vessels, not merely replicas or models.
“All of these items are fit and ready for use in the service of the Holy Temple. Among the many items featured in the exhibition are musical instruments played by the Levitical choir, the golden crown of the High Priest, and gold and silver vessels used in the incense and sacrificial services.”
Scott: So Allan, how do we know that the Temple of Solomon will actually be rebuilt?
Well Scott, the short answer is that we know this from the words of Daniel in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament. Both refer to the fact that the Anti-Christ that is to come will go to Jerusalem to be crowned in the new Temple of Solomon. But we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves here.
In the dark days that follow the global destruction caused by the comet, the governments of the world will no longer be able to command authority, leaving a power vacuum in their place. But out of this chaos will come a man who will draw to him the leaderless masses in what is left of Western Europe.
He will be a man of charismatic charm who will attract the masses with his powers of oratory. But what will make him seem divine to those who are drawn to him is the fact that he will be able to perform similar miracles to those that were attributed to Jesus.
Together with these divine qualities he will also bring a message of hope to all those who are suffering. He will preach a message of brotherhood and peace. He will heal the sick and feed the hungry. Everywhere he goes, he will be greeted as the long awaited saviour of mankind.
This man will negotiate a treaty with Israel, promising to protect the Jews, while at the same time allowing them to pursue their ancient religious practices. However, midway through the seven year period of the apocalypse Scott, a dramatic change will occur.
Scott: What sort of a change will take place?
According to the Bible Scott, this man will suffer a “grievous head wound”. Although this will appear to be fatal and cause his followers to despair, he will miraculously recover. But his recovery will be accompanied by a complete change in personality.
In place of the man who had previously taught peace and kindness towards others, there will emerge a new person who will manifest demonic qualities. In other words, the man who was previously hailed as the new Christ, will now begin to act like the long predicted Anti-Christ.
This will be the time when the vision of St. John will be fulfilled, when the world will come to recognise this man for the demon that he truly is. As we find recorded in chapter 13, verses 3-7 of the Book of Revelation:
“And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded unto death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power to the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?
“And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.
“And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.”
The next forty-two months after his miraculous recovery will be the darkest time in the history of the earth. It will be the time when the Anti-Christ will go forth in an orgy of blood, killing all those who resist him. And it will culminate in his decision to go to Jerusalem to be crowned as a living God.
Scott: Why would the Anti-Christ go to Jerusalem to be crowned?
Because Jerusalem will be the focal point of the Jewish religion. But that in itself would probably not be enough to induce the Anti-Christ to travel to Jerusalem to be crowned. But it does raise a tantalising possibility Scott.
For if by chance the Jews should happen to rediscover the lost Ark of the Covenant, and restore it to its former location inside the Holy of Holies in the new temple of Solomon, then the prospect of getting his hands on the Ark would undoubtedly draw the Antichrist to Jerusalem like a magnet.
And according to Bible prophecy, when the Anti-Christ travels to Jerusalem, he will no longer come as a man of peace. This time he will come with his conquering armies. They will lay waste to the countryside and devastate the cities of Israel.
When the Anti-Christ enters the Holy of Holies of the Great Temple to be crowned as a living God, he will not only defile the temple, but this act will be the “abomination of desolation” described in verse 27 of the 9th chapter of the Book of Daniel:
“And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.”
When Jesus was asked about the events that would occur in the last days, he said that there would be an “abomination of desolation”, as predicted by Daniel. This would be the time when the city of Jerusalem would be attacked and the time when the inhabitants would be forced to flee for their lives.
This is how it was described in verses 15 to 21 of the 24th chapter of the Gospel according to St. Matthew:
“When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)
“Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains: Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take anything out of his house: Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.
“And woe unto them that are with child, and unto them that give suck in those days! But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day: For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.”
St. Luke puts it this way in verses 20 to 24 of chapter 21 of his Gospel:
“And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto.
“For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days, for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people.
“And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”
So here we go again Scott. As if the Jews have not suffered enough already. Now they will have to face the wrath of the Beast, as St. John calls him. And if they think that the holocaust was bad, when millions of Jews died in the gas chambers, what follows will dwarf all the horrors of their bloody past.
Scott: What sort of things are you referring to?
Those who live in Israel at that time will be forced to flee into the mountains in order to escape the wrath of the Anti-Christ and his armies. But this campaign of death will not only be directed at the Jews. It will also be unleashed on anyone who does not worship him as the living God.
According to the prophet Zechariah, when the Anti-Christ enters Jerusalem and begins his reign of terror, two thirds of all the Jews alive at that time will be killed. The remaining third of the population will be tried in the fires of the tribulation that will follow.
“Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.
“And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.”
“And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, it is my people: and they shall say, the Lord is my God.” (Zechariah 13: 7-9)
Those who can survive the trials that will take place over the next forty-two months will be purified. They will be rewarded with eternal salvation when the Great Redeemer returns to the earth to judge the wicked.
Scott: What sort of trials will they have to endure?
They will have to face trials of persecution, torture, starvation and death. But these will probably seem easy compared to the physical hardship of trying to survive in the mountains, or in subterranean caverns, as well as the challenge of finding food and water in a desert land.
But it will not just be the Jews who will have to cope with these calamities. They will affect all the people on the earth at that time. This period of tribulation will be the time when the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse will ride, bringing with them the plagues of famine, war, disease and death.
The death toll from these plagues will be enormous. As St. John wrote in his Book of Revelation, one quarter of the entire population left on the earth will fall victim to these plagues.
“And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.” (Revelation 6: 2)
“And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.” (Revelation 6: 4)
“And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.” (Revelation 6: 8)
During this time the earth will be afflicted by periods of extreme heat. This heat will cause streams and river beds to dry up and people will be desperate to find water to drink. Due to the unrelenting droughts, crops will fail, and famine will spread throughout the world.
Lack of sanitary conditions will lead to the outbreaks of many different kinds of disease. For many people who are caught up in these hellish conditions, the pain of living will cause them to yearn for death as a way of escape from these ghastly plagues.
Yet the Bible says that death will elude those who look for a way out. They will be forced to suffer. “And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.” (Revelation 9: 6)
But in spite of these cruel conditions, the drums of war will continue to beat, as the armies of the Anti-Christ march remorselessly onward in their campaign for world domination. They will only be stopped when they reach the valley of Jezreel, and their appointed battle of Armageddon.
But, as I have said before Scott, that is a story for another time.
Scott: Well Allan, these last few Podcasts have certainly given our listeners plenty to think about. I know that I will look at the events that are unfolding in the Middle-East now in an entirely new light.
You have been listening to Allan Colston, author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac”. Do join us for our next Podcast, which will be another in the series titled “Signs of the Times.”
Allan, AUDIO, Land of the Covenant, December 16, 2015, 2:34 pm
Scott: My name is Scott Paton. I am speaking today with Allan Colston. He is the author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac”. This is a book dealing with prophecy.
For those listeners who may be new to this topic, this Podcast is another in the series “Signs of the Times”. Hello Allan and welcome to the Podcast.
Hello Scott, how are things with you?
Scott: Great, thank you. As you will no doubt recall Allan, at the end of our last Podcast about ISIS, I asked you what would happen to the Jews. You said that that was a topic for another time, so I was hoping that you could perhaps elaborate on that today.
Certainly Scott. My pleasure. But before I do that I would just like to say that I remain convinced that the Biblical description of the origin of Judaism is one of the most bizarre accounts in the history of civilization.
Much of what has happened to the Jews over the millennia simply defies rational understanding. So before I talk about the future of Israel, I think it would help to go back and review some of the extraordinary things that have happened in the past.
The Old Testament of the Bible is full of improbable stories that prompt more questions than they provide answers. For example, according to the eleventh chapter of the Book of Genesis, after the time of the Biblical flood, it says that “the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech“.
At that time the descendants of Noah said to themselves: “Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth“. Then in verses 5 to 8 we read:
“And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. And the LORD said, behold the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
“Go to, let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city“.
Now Scott, this is one of the most intriguing stories in the entire Bible, and it raises a whole series of questions for which we simply have no answers.
• What exactly were these descendants of Noah trying to do, and why was this so offensive to the LORD?.
• Who was this LORD the Bible was referring to anyway?
• Who were the “us” who proceeded to scatter the descendants of Noah upon the face of the earth, and then cause them to speak in a host of different languages?
• And how exactly did they accomplish such a stupendous feat?
Let’s just think about that for a moment Scott. How do you manage to scatter an entire people all over the earth, and in the process cause them to forget their mother tongue and replace it with a language that is completely different? It just boggles the mind. At least it boggles mine.
Scott: So who do you suppose these people were?
I really have no idea Scott. But there is another strange story in the Book of Genesis that may give us a clue. In chapter six we read the following:
“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
“And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown“.
One of the things I find particularly interesting is that in the King James version of the Bible, the word LORD here is spelled in capital letters, just like it was in the story of the tower of Babel. Could this possibly refer to his rank, and could this LORD possibly be the leader of the “sons of God”?
And could these “sons of God” be the same beings who were so outraged when the descendants of Noah began to build their great tower? And were these “sons of God” giants, and if so where did they come from and where did they go?
Notice Scott that in the above quotation the LORD said that his spirit would not always strive with man, because “he also is flesh”. This certainly suggests that the LORD was not some supreme deity, but was made up of flesh and blood himself. This is a point I will return to later.
So do you see where I am going with this Scott? There is something decidedly other-wordly about many of these stories. You might even say that they are “out of this world”.
And this brings me to something that I have studiously avoided in all the years that I have been writing my Blog, not only because it has long been the butt of ridicule, but also because there is now so much disinformation surrounding the whole subject that most people assume it is all a hoax.
Scott: So what exactly are you referring to Allan?
The subject I am referring to Scott is UFO’s. Now before you and other listeners think that I have finally lost my marbles, let me emphasize that I am being perfectly serious about this, and I have a special reason for introducing this topic into our discussion.
Obviously the subject of UFO’s has been debated endlessly over the last fifty years or more, and is a topic that invariably generates far more heat than light. I just want to cut to the chase and mention the name of someone you have probably never heard of before Scott. His name is Clifford Stone.
Scott: You’re right there Allan. So what does he have to do with the history of the Jews?
Well Scott, Clifford Stone is one of those people that I could talk about for hours. But since we don’t have the time I’ll try to be brief. However, for the sake of those people who follow these Podcasts on my Blog, I’ll put a link there so that they can read more about him if they wish.
Clifford Stone is an American who was born in Ohio. At an early age he had memories of being contacted by ET’s. At the age of eight he was befriended by an Air Force captain, and this was the beginning of his association with the military. During the Vietnam war he tried to enlist in the US Air Force.
When Clifford was turned down by the Air Force as a result of a skin condition, his friend suggested that he try to join the Army instead. He did so and was selected for the job of clerical typist. But to his surprise, he hardly got to type a single letter.
Instead, a few weeks after joining the Army he was picked up in a staff car and taken to the Pentagon. From there he was moved by means of an underground shuttle to a location where he was told that he had been specially chosen for a secret assignment.
His assignment was to interact and communicate with extraterrestrial beings who were housed at this secret location. During the 22 years that Clifford spent with the Army, he also formed part of an elite group whose task was to recover crashed UFO’s and their occupants.
Since his retirement, Clifford has conducted numerous interviews describing his experiences with alien beings. In these discussions he has indicated that he personally knew of 57 different types of alien beings that had been in contact with the earth.
So if Clifford Stone is to be believed, alien beings are real and they are visiting our planet at this time. Obviously we can only speculate as to what their motives are for doing so. But the reason why I believe that his stories are true is because I have seen UFO’s myself on three different occasions.
So the point I want to make here Scott is this. If many different types of alien species are visiting the earth today, then they could well have visited earth in the past. And if they are communicating with us now, they could just as easily have communicated with those people who were alive then.
And so we need to examine many of the Bible stories to see if they can shed any light on possible human and alien interactions. And this brings me to what is undoubtedly the strangest story of them all, and that is the saga of Moses.
Scott: Why do you say that Allan?
Well Scott, I think most people are familiar with the story of Moses, and how he was called upon by God to rescue the children of Israel from bondage in the land of Egypt, and then lead them to a promised land flowing with milk and honey.
What most people seldom stop to consider is that the LORD who commanded Moses to carry out this mission, begins to look more and more like an extraterrestrial being, rather than the everlasting Deity. He also seems to be someone who clearly had an agenda of his own.
One of the most striking features of the Bible is the difference between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New. While the God of the New Testament is portrayed as an all-loving God, the God of the Old Testament seems more like a choleric martinet.
The LORD God of the Old Testament insists on obedience. He is jealous of any other rivals and is quickly roused to anger. He is also ready to seek vengeance on anyone who disobeys him. Certainly he comes across as an entity to be feared, rather than a God who is all-loving.
While the God of Jesus loves all of humanity to the point that he is even prepared to sacrifice his own Son upon the cross, the LORD of the Old Testament orders Abraham to offer up his own son Isaac as a human sacrifice, no doubt as a test of his faith, or should that perhaps be his ability to follow orders?
And whereas the God of Jesus embraces not only the Jews but also the Gentiles, or those people born outside of the Jewish faith, the LORD makes a covenant or pact with one specific tribe of people, and then announces that they are his chosen ones above all others.
As recorded in the 14th verse of the 4th chapter of the Book of Exodus, when Moses argues with the LORD saying that he doesn’t have the eloquence needed for the job of convincing Pharaoh to set the Jews free, we read that the anger of the LORD was kindled against Moses. I mean relax… calm down!
But things get even stranger, for in verse 24 of the same chapter we read that: “It came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him (referring to Moses), and sought to kill him“. Now I don’t know about you Scott, but I always get a tad edgy when I read about Gods who try to kill people.
Scott: So Allan, are you saying that the God who spoke to Moses wasn’t divine?
Well here’s the rub Scott. The stories about the behaviour of the LORD of the Old Testament are not the sort of thing that I would expect from an eternal God or heavenly father, as has been described by Jesus in the New Testament. At least not by today’s standards of morality.
In the passage about Moses that I just described, we see the same reference to the LORD, again spelled in capital letters. While I am prepared to concede that Jehovah or Yahweh might well represent Deity, I am troubled by these questionable actions that are ascribed to the LORD.
Then again, the above passage says explicitly that the LORD met Moses on the road to the inn. Does that mean that the LORD was actually a flesh and blood person? And if so, does this relate to the passage I discussed earlier, where the “sons of God” said that they were flesh and blood like us?
All of these stories make me wonder whether a race of alien beings might have arrived on the earth in the distant past posing as divine beings, and then used their advanced intelligence and technological knowhow to impress and manipulate the local population into obeying their commands.
Anyway, to get back to the story of Moses, when he returns to Egypt and orders Pharaoh to let the Jews go, he refuses. As the LORD explains to Moses, this is because he (the LORD) has hardened Pharaoh’s heart. So he decides to bring about a series of plagues upon Egypt as punishment.
Now most people who read the Bible are left with the impression that the plagues that assailed Egypt at that time were a series of miracles ordered by the LORD, in order to change Pharaoh’s mind. Several millennia later, it was left to another Jew to explain what was really going on at the time.
In his book Worlds in Collision, written by the Jewish research scientist Immanuel Velikovsky, he explains that the plagues of Egypt were not miracles at all. They were actually the natural consequences of a close encounter between the earth and a large comet. I talk about all this in our Podcast # 11.
And then Scott, there is the mystery of the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night.
Scott: So what can you tell us about that?
When Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, the land was shrouded in darkness. As Velikovsky explains in his book, the reason why the earth was in darkness was because it was immersed in the gaseous tail of the comet which enveloped the earth in a veil of gloom.
Yet despite this hardship, it seems that the LORD was able to provide some timely help to Moses and his wandering band of Israelites. Verses 21 and 22 of Chapter 14 of the Book of Exodus explain this in the following way:
“And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light to go by day and night. He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people“.
So I ask you again Scott, what on earth do you think was going on here?
Now maybe I have too wild an imagination, but I have come across something that looks remarkably similar to what is described in this passage in photographs of the so-called cigar-shaped UFO’s that were common in the 1950’s.
They were able to disguise themselves in atmospheric clouds during the day, but at night they were illuminated by the glow of the energy fields of the craft. In fact almost all UFO’s glow brightly at night, and this is the reason why these sightings are referred to as LITS – Lights in the Sky.
There is an even more telling passage taken from the Book of Exodus in Chapter 33 verses 9 to 11.
“And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and the Lord talked with Moses.
“And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door: and all the people rose up and worshipped, every man in his tent door. And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend”
So Scott, the above passage alone should make it obvious that the cloudy pillar was actually a vehicle of some sort, and that the LORD used it as a means of conveyance. And the kicker here is that all the Israelites saw the LORD speaking to Moses face to face, like a man speaking to a friend.
So here we have a passage that provides compelling evidence that the LORD of the events described in the Book of Exodus appeared as a physical being, or someone who had the power to look like one, and who travelled in a craft of some sort. But of course Scott, there is more.
Scott: Carry on my friend. This is certainly far out.
Well Scott, this LORD was not content to act merely as a guide to the wandering Israelites. He also assumed the role of teacher and technological Guru, as we can see from the detailed instructions that he gave to Moses on how to build an Ark.
Unless the Ark is recovered one day from wherever it was hidden in antiquity, we will probably never know exactly what it was or what it was used for. However, we do know from Biblical accounts that it could be used as a weapon, such as the time when it was used to bring down the walls of Jericho.
It is clear that it generated some type of force field, which was the reason why Moses was warned never to allow others to approach it too closely. Finally, when the great temple was built by Solomon in Jerusalem, a special room was set aside in the Holy of Holies in order to house the Ark.
Another aspect about the Ark that I find intriguing is the fact that two Arks are mentioned in the Bible. One was the Ark built by Noah and the other was the Ark built by Moses. The Ark that Noah built was used as a means of salvation, while the Ark of the Covenant was used as a means of destruction.
Which brings us to the pinnacle of the LORD’s agenda in his dealings with Moses and the children of Israel, and that was to act as their Teacher and Lawgiver.
Scott: Let me guess Allan. Are you referring here to the Ten Commandments?
Absolutely Scott. If there is one thing we can say about the LORD who spoke to Moses, it is that he liked giving orders. The second is that he was a micro-manager, for we have chapter after chapter devoted to the minutiae of how the Israelites were commanded to live every aspect of their lives.
And the laws that the LORD proclaimed to Moses did not only apply to the men and women, but to their sons and daughters, their man-servants and maid-servants, as well as any strangers who might happen to be living with them. These laws even applied to their cattle.
The LORD was at his best itemising every tiny detail about how the Israelites should conduct various ceremonies, sacraments and ritual sacrifices. And naturally, everything that the LORD told Moses was dutifully passed on to his followers. You can find them all set out in the first five books of the Bible.
Of course what we remember most about the encounters between the LORD and Moses are the Ten Commandments. After the children of Israel had been wandering in the desert for some months, they arrived at Mount Sinai. The Bible records how Moses climbed the mountain to commune with the LORD.
As we read in the Book of Exodus, Chapter 24, verse 12: “And the LORD said unto Moses, come up to me into the mount and be there, and I will give thee tables of stone and a law, and commandments which I have written, that thou mayest teach them“.
And we all know what happened next Scott. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. Now we have to remember that he was already over eighty years old at the time, so it is no surprise that when he didn’t reappear for over a month, his followers gave him up for dead.
So naturally, they then did exactly what anyone could have predicted. Believing they would never see Moses or the LORD in the flesh again, they resorted to their old habits when they were in Egypt. They created a calf out of gold earrings to be the focus of their worship and prayers.
When Moses did finally return, carrying with him the tablets of stone on which were inscribed the Ten Commandments, he was outraged to find his followers engaged in revelry. He hurled the two stone tablets to the ground, where they were smashed into tiny pieces.
This could have been highly embarrassing for Moses, but fortunately the LORD came to his rescue with two more stone tablets to replace them. I would sure love to know Scott, just what might have been said between the LORD and whoever it was who had to carve these laws all over again.
Scott: I have to admit it must have been an interesting situation.
The laws that Moses received on the stone tablets were a series of basic rules that the Israelite were commanded to live by. There were ten of them. Based on what we have already learned about the LORD so far, it is no surprise to find that the first three rules related to the LORD God himself.
The LORD proclaimed on these stone tablets that he was a jealous God who would tolerate no competition from any other God or graven images, nor could anyone take his name in vain. Also not surprisingly, seven out of the ten commandments began with the words “Thou shalt not…”.
On the positive side, the Israelites were commanded to honour their parents and keep holy the Sabbath day. Now I am the first person to enjoy a day off now and then Scott, but the LORD of Moses insisted that the Israelites obey this commandment to an extreme degree.
The LORD set out a litany of things that the Israelites were expressly prohibited from doing on a Sabbath, using as his reason the fact that God took six days to create the heavens and the earth, and that on the seventh day he rested. And this commandment applied to everyone, even the cattle.
It is interesting to compare the commandments of the LORD of Moses with those of Jesus. Whereas most of the commandments consisted of things the Israelites were forbidden to do, Jesus simply demanded that people love God with all their heart, soul and mind, and love their neighbours as themselves.
Obviously Scott, this is not the place to compare Christianity and Judaism. However, there is one point on which both Christians and Jews do agree, and that is the commandment not to kill. Yet the fact is that no sooner had Moses descended from Mount Sinai, than he gave the order to kill.
As we read in the Book of Exodus, Chapter 32, verses 26 to 28:
“Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, who is on the LORD’s side? Let him come to me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.
“And he said unto them, thus saith the LORD God of Israel, put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his neighbor.
“And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.”
The Bible doesn’t say what the LORD’s reaction was to this massacre. Presumably he approved since he went on to prescribe a host of other laws which included: “And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” (Exodus Chapter 21: 23,24)
People today express their revulsion at what they consider to be the barbarism of modern Sharia law, where thieves have their hands chopped off and adulterers are stoned to death. But under the law of Moses, Jews were doing the very same thing two thousand years before.
Anyway Scott, my purpose here is not to denigrate the Jewish religion. I merely want to point out some of the mysterious anomalies associated with their early history, as well as some of the unusual behaviour displayed by the LORD in his dealings with Moses.
Of course, as far as their past is concerned, the Jews have had to endure more hardships than perhaps any other people. Although they have always been assured that that they are the chosen ones of the LORD, it might be more accurate to say that they have been the victims of the LORD.
Scott: Why do you say that Allan?
Well Scott, the LORD promised Moses that he would lead the Israelites to a land flowing with milk and honey. But let’s face it, the place he led them to has turned out to be the most fought over piece of real estate on the planet. And then there are the incredible hardships that the Jews have had to face.
Their people have been led into captivity, not just once but twice. Their great temple in Jerusalem, hailed as one of the great places of worship of their time, was utterly destroyed – firstly by Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and then again in the year 70 A.D. by the Romans.
Their people have been driven out of their own land to every corner of the world where they have had to endure abuse, hostility and oppression. Even Shakespeare used the moneylender Shylock in his play The Merchant of Venice as an example of corruption and personal avarice.
What prompted Hitler to target the Jews and wipe out six million of them in the holocaust? The Jews have their faults like any other people, but they never did anything to warrant such extreme slaughter. And now there is Iran. What did the Jews ever do to incur the wrath of the Ayatollahs?
No Scott, there is something sinister happening here, and it has been going on for thousands of years. I would like to think that now that the Jews have at last returned to their ancestral land, that they face a better future. Unfortunately, the prophets of old suggest that even worse lies in store for them.
Well Scott, I’m sorry to have taken up so much of our time talking about the past, but in our next conversation I will focus on what Biblical prophecy has to say about the future of Israel.
Scott: Well Allan, I think I can honestly say that this has been the most extraordinary Podcast we have ever done together. You have truly blown my mind. In fact I hardly know what to expect in our next discussion.
You have been listening to Allan Colston, author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac”. Do join us for our next Podcast, which will be another in the series titled “Signs of the Times.”
Allan, AUDIO, Land of the Covenant, December 5, 2015, 1:16 pm
Scott: My name is Scott Paton. I am speaking today with Allan Colston. He is the author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac”. This is a book dealing with prophecy.
For those listeners who may be new to this topic, this Podcast is another in the series “Signs of the Times”. Hello Allan and welcome to the Podcast.
Hello Scott, it’s good to have the chance to talk to you again.
Scott: So tell me Allan, what’s new in the world of prophecy?
Well of course Scott, nothing is ever new in the world of prophecy. When the prophets of the Bible spoke about the “latter days” and the time of the “great tribulation”, they set out a road map of events that would occur during a seven year period at the end of the current age.
So from that point of view, I don’t have to spend time figuring out what is going to happen. That has already been set out in the prophecies recorded in the Bible. What I try to do is to compare what is predicted to happen with what is actually happening in the world today.
Now within the context of Judaism and Christianity, we need to remember that Israel is central to an understanding of the “End Times”, not only because it was the land where Jesus lived and taught, but also because Israel was the place where the prophets predicted that the events of this seven year period would begin and end.
We also need to remember that the Mount of Olives, located just outside the ancient city of Jerusalem, was the place where Jesus ascended into heaven, and that it was also the place where angels told the disciples who looked on in wonder, that Jesus would return in triumph at the time of the end.
The Old Testament prophets said that this seven year period of tribulation would begin with an event that would involve the land of Israel. They referred to this event as, and I quote, the “Great and Terrible Day of the Lord“.
They also predicted that this seven year period would end with the battle of Armageddon, that would take place in the valley of Jezreel in Israel. This would be followed by the return to earth of the long-awaited Saviour, who would lead the world into a new Golden Age of peace, that was predicted to last for a thousand years.
Now Scott, we need to realise that Judaism and Christianity are not the only religions that look forward to the arrival of a world saviour. There are others as well.
Scott: What other religions are you referring to?
I’m not just talking about some religions Scott. I mean all religions, because every religion has its own tradition of a saviour who will return to earth at the end of this current cycle of time. This saviour will come to punish the wicked, and restore peace and prosperity to the faithful who remain.
To those of the Christian faith, this saviour will be Jesus, the Son of man and the living Christ. To the Jews he will be the long awaited Messiah. To the Hindus he will be Kalki, the tenth incarnation of Vishnu. To the Buddhists he will be the Maitreya, the Buddha that is to come. And to the Muslims he will be the Mahdi, the expected one.
The Zoroastrians of ancient Persia called this saviour Saoshyant. Even today followers of this religion believe that at the end of the present age, Zoroaster himself will return to the earth to renew the world and bring blessings to those who have been faithful to his teachings.
But belief in this future saviour is not limited to followers of the major religions. The ancient cultures of the world await their own version of this saviour. The Incas of Peru believe in the return of their great teacher Viracocha. The Maya of central America wait for the return of Kukulcan. For the Aztecs of Mexico this saviour will be Quetzalcoatl, the leader of the Gods.
But Scott, I don’t think we should fall into the trap of thinking that a host of different saviours will suddenly appear on the world scene at some future time, with each claiming to be the long awaited saviour, and each ministering only to their own group of believers.
Instead, I believe that when this predicted Saviour appears at the end of the current age, every society will see in his arrival the fulfillment of their own holy books of prophecy. His coming will unite all the different cultures of the world. He will be their King, and they will be his people.
Scott: So Alan, do all the people of the world simply have to wait for this saviour to arrive, or should they be doing something to prepare for his coming?
That is an excellent question Scott. The fundamental message of almost every major religion is to exhort their followers to prepare for the arrival of their saviour by diligently following the teachings of that religion, and by living sober, virtuous and peaceful lives.
Unfortunately Scott, there is one glaring exception to this rule.
Scott: And what is that?
The exception to this rule is Islam, or to be more precise, radical Islam as interpreted by the Shi’ite Muslims of Iran and by the Sunni Muslims of ISIS, or the Islamic State. Both of these groups share similar beliefs about events leading up to the return the Islamic saviour, whom they call the Mahdi.
Here again, Scott, I need to clarify what I mean by this. I am not suggesting that everyone who lives in Iran is a radical Muslim, or that all Muslims are doomed. But what I do want to stress is that the leaders of both Iran and ISIS very definitely do believe in what I am about to say.
For example, both of these groups agree that we are now living in the “End of Days”, and that the Mahdi (or the 12th Imam) can be expected to appear at any time. They also believe that when he does appear, he will rule the entire earth, and that every person alive at that time will be converted to Islam.
But this is where they differ radically from the Jewish and Christian religions. Although Islam recognises Jesus as a prophet, they consider him to be inferior to Muhammad. Furthermore, they claim that at the time of the end, Jesus will return to the earth before the Mahdi.
However, when Jesus does return, they believe that he will not come as the Messiah or the Son of God. Instead, he will come as the deputy to the Mahdi who will force all Jews, Christians and other infidels or unbelievers to make a simple choice. Convert to Islam or die.
So according to this radical interpretation, Jesus will come to prepare the world for the arrival of the Mahdi by helping to establish a global Islamic kingdom or Caliphate, whose headquarters will be in Jerusalem. And this is the motivating force behind the gospel of ISIS, and why it has so much appeal to Muslims everywhere.
Scott: So what exactly is the message of ISIS?
Well Scott, in a nutshell, the message of ISIS is this:
• We are now living at the time of the end.
• There are no longer any individual countries. Instead they are all part of the future world-wide “Caliphate” or Islamic State.
• It is the duty of every Muslim, no matter where they live, to prepare for the final battle between the faithful and the infidels. (Jews, Christians, unbelievers, etc.)
• The arrival of the Mahdi is imminent.
• When the Mahdi returns to the earth there will be a Day of Judgement.
• On that day, every person will have to give an account of their life, and whether they fulfilled the demands of the Mahdi.
• Those Muslims who did will join the Mahdi in Paradise. Those who did not will die.
• Time is short. The time to save your soul is NOW.
So the appeal of ISIS to Muslims everywhere, is that by joining them in their quest to rid the world of infidels, they are preparing for the arrival of the Mahdi. These people are not being radicalised, as the West calls it. Instead, they are being saved, since every person who joins ISIS today is guaranteed personal salvation.
However, Scott, it is worth noting that although the radical leaders of ISIS and Iran both agree on the need to destroy infidels and establish a new Islamic Caliphate based in Jerusalem, they differ in their strategy of how to achieve this.
Scott: So Allan, what sort of strategies do they have?
Well Scott, the main difference between the strategy adopted by Iran and that of ISIS is this. ISIS is motivated by the desire for conquest, while Iran is motivated by the desire for destruction.
As I’m sure you know Scott, the main headquarters of ISIS are based in Raqqa, a Syrian city located on the north bank of the Euphrates River, about 160 kilometres (100 miles) east of Aleppo. However, the focus of everything they do is on a tiny town just outside Aleppo. Its name is Dabiq.
What makes Dabiq unique is its significance in the Islamic end-time scenario. According to the Hadith, which are recorded sayings of Muhammad, the prophet said that the last hour would not come until the “Romans” arrived in Dabiq.
Followers of ISIS believe that the final battle between the Muslims and the unbelievers, who are lumped together under the title of Romans or Crusaders, will take place in Dabiq. In other words, Dabiq is the Islamic equivalent of the Biblical Armageddon.
ISIS places such great emphasis upon the name Dabiq, that they use it as the title of their glossy propaganda magazine which is available online to recruit followers from around the world. So if you don’t understand the symbolism of Dabiq, Scott, then you really don’t understand what ISIS is all about.
As I said earlier, the main objective of ISIS is conquest. They want to conquer as much land as possible and include it as part of their new Islamic Caliphate, in readiness for the arrival of the Mahdi. And at the moment, the prime target in their sights is the city of Damascus.
It is worth mentioning in passing here the words of Isaiah. In the first verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Book of Isaiah, the Hebrew prophet wrote: “The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap“.
I don’t know if you have seen recent pictures of the Syrian cities of Alleppo and Homs Scott, but they are already ruinous heaps. They have been reduced to piles of rubble as a result of prolonged artillery barrages and barrel bombs dropped by the forces of Assad.
And it is also worth noting that ISIS is already entrenched in parts of Damascus. So how long do you think it will be Scott, before Assad bombs the rest of the city to pieces in order to “save” it from the terrorists as he calls them? Isaiah’s words are coming true before our eyes.
Scott: So Allan, you said that Iran has a different strategy from ISIS.
Yes Scott. As I said earlier, Iran’s motivation is the destruction of everything that opposes their view of Islam. And not just in the Middle East, but in the entire world. No sooner had the Ayatollah Khomeini succeeded in establishing the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, when he announced:
“The governments of the world should know that Islam will be victorious in all the countries of the world, and Islam and the teachings of the Qur’an will prevail all over the world“.
And just last year his successor Ayatollah Khamenei went on record to say:
“I can tell you with utmost confidence that the promise of Allah for the coming of the Mahdi and the establishment of a new Islamic civilization is on its way. The battle to establish the Mahdi’s kingdom will only end when the Islamic society can get rid of the oppressors’ front, with America at the head of it“.
Boat loads of books, magazine articles and newspaper reports have been devoted to the topic of Iran’s ultimate goal, which is to destroy Israel, whom they call the “Little Satan”, as well as America, which of course is the “Great Satan”. As the present Ayatollah announced in 2001:
“It is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map of the region.”
Iran continues to pound this message home at every opportunity. They even have an annual day of protest known as “Al-Quds” day, (Quds being the Arabic name for Jerusalem) where they hold public demonstrations in support of the Palestinians and calling for the destruction of Israel and the conquest of Jerusalem.
It never ceases to amaze me Scott, that here we are in the 21st century, and we have one country calling for the total annihilation of another country, and is able to do so with impunity for year after year without any repercussions from the United Nations or the international community.
But Iran is not content with mere words. For years now they have embarked on a clandestine campaign to achieve their goals. They do this in two ways. First of all, they spend billions of dollars every year sponsoring terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as other Jihadi groups around the world.
The second way they do this is of course through their long-term plan to develop nuclear weapons, as well as the missiles necessary to deliver them to any part of the world. Iran’s recent test of a precision-guided medium-range missile was just another step towards their ultimate goal.
In fact, Scott, I would like to recommend that listeners watch a documentary that is now available on YouTube. Although it was made over three years ago, it provides graphic evidence of Iran’s sinister activities. The documentary is called “Iranium“. I’ll put a link to this video on my Blog.
Scott: Obviously this is a subject that we could talk about for hours. However, at the beginning of this Podcast Allan, you talked about a road map of events that would occur at the time of the end. Does this road map tell us anything about how this ISIS crisis is going to end?
Actually Scott it does. And it does so in great detail. I don’t know if you recall a discussion we had several years ago on the subject of the invasion of Israel. In that Podcast I outlined what the prophet Ezekiel had written, and it is worth repeating now.
In chapter 38 of the Book of Ezekiel, the prophet wrote about a time when Israel would be threatened by many nations, and that the armies of these nations would surround Israel on every side. This great coalition of armies would come from, and I quote, “the north parts”, and from countries like “Persia, Libya and Ethiopia”.
As I said earlier, Scott, the immediate goal of ISIS is the conquest of Damascus. And although the present government of Assad is presently being propped up by weapons and manpower from Russia and Iran, I fully believe that Assad will soon fall and that ISIS will succeed in conquering the capital.
Once they have done that, they will undoubtedly turn their attention towards Israel, and in particular, the long awaited Islamic dream of recapturing Jerusalem. Such a holy crusade would undoubtedly attract other Jihadis from all the countries mentioned by Ezekiel.
According to Ezekiel, this coalition of Islamic forces would gather on the borders of Israel with the goal of over-running the country and slaughtering all the Jews, thus ridding the land at last of the hated Zionists, and leaving it free to be taken over by ISIS and their cohorts.
But just when they are poised for success, Ezekiel predicts that there will be a miraculous intervention by God. As he writes:
“And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire and brimstone.”
As a result of the earthquakes on the land, and the aerial bombardment from the skies, the armies that had gathered on the borders of Israel will be decimated. Those few who survive these disasters will either be unable, or unwilling, to pursue their assault.
Ezekiel writes that only “a sixth part” of the invading armies will survive the onslaught of brimstone and fire descending on them from the skies.
“Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, thus saith the Lord God; behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal: And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee.”
So to answer your question Scott, if Ezekiel is correct, only one in six of this Islamic alliance will survive. The forces of ISIS and Iran will be crushed, never to threaten Israel again.
Scott: So where does that leave Israel?
I was listening to someone on the radio recently, and he said that if he wanted to be safe in the coming days, he would move to Israel.
While I admire his confidence Scott, my interpretation of Bible prophecy suggests that Israel will soon witness some of the greatest atrocities in the history of the planet. And heaven knows, the Jews have experienced enough of them in their own history already. But that is a topic for another time.
Scott: Thanks again Allan. This has been a fascinating glimpse into end-time prophecy. I hope that we can get together soon and continue this discussion.
You have been listening to Allan Colston, author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac“. Do join us for our next Podcast in the series titled “Signs of the Times”.
Allan, AUDIO, Signs of the Times, November 23, 2015, 2:38 pm
Scott: My name is Scott Paton. I am talking today with Allan Colston. He is the author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac”. This is a book dealing with prophecy.
For those listeners who may be new to this topic, this Podcast is another in the series “Signs of the Times”. Hello Allan and welcome to the Podcast.
Thanks Scott. It’s been quite a while since we last chatted. As readers of my Blog will know, I have had quite a few health issues lately, but I am happy to say that these are over now.
Scott: Well Allan, I’m certainly glad to hear that. So what do you plan to talk about today?
Well Scott, Iran has been in the news quite a lot lately, so I thought this would be a good time to revisit a subject that we have talked about in various Podcasts over the last few years, and that is about Iran and its quest for nuclear weapons.
Scott: I look forward to hearing what you have to say about that Allan, especially since Iran recently concluded a deal with the West on the subject of nuclear arms. Perhaps you could start off by giving us a summary of what that was all about.
Certainly Scott. My pleasure.
As I explained in our Podcast entitled “Persia Reborn“, the land that we now call Iran was once part of a much greater land empire called Persia, which had a long and proud cultural tradition extending back for several thousand years.
However, their traditional system of Government changed in 1979 when the former leader, the Shah Reza Pahlavi, was overthrown as a result of a series of strikes and demonstrations which had effectively paralyzed the country.
It was then that one of the instigators of this revolution, a cleric by the name of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, returned from exile in Paris to become the Supreme Leader of the country that now became known as the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Ayatollah Khomeini showed little interest in developing nuclear energy, and neither did his successor. In fact, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who became the new Supreme Leader in 1989, actually issued a Fatwa, or religious decree in the mid-1990s, banning the use or development of nuclear weapons.
All that changed in 2001, when Islamic terrorists attacked and destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. In response, President George Bush launched bombs and missiles against various Taliban facilities in Afghanistan.
And of course, as we all know, Bush did not stop there. In March, 2003, he ordered US forces to launch an attack on the city of Baghdad, in a mission that came to be known as “shock and awe”, thereby beginning his war against Saddam Hussein and the forces of Iraq.
So in the space of just two years, Iran saw the countries on either side of them attacked by a coalition of Western forces that led to the removal from power of both of their leaders. Clearly, it was time for Iran to act, and act they did.
Scott: So Allan, what did the Iranians do?
Well Scott, although they continue to deny it to this day, the Iranians began their quest to develop nuclear weapons. And as we talked about in our Podcasts titled “Iran’s Nuclear Blunders” and “Nuclear Showdown“, the immediate priority of the Iranian government was to buy time.
The first thing that Iran needed to do was to create an elaborate smokescreen, that was designed to fool other countries into thinking that all they were doing was enriching uranium to the level consistent with that needed to fuel a civilian nuclear power plant.
Secondly, they needed to make sure that the facilities they were building to enrich uranium to the level needed to make atomic weapons, were hidden from the prying eyes of the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
As part of their strategy of stalling for time, Iran first entered into a series of long drawn out negotiations with the international community, over whether they should undertake this enrichment process themselves, or whether they should simply import enriched uranium from other designated countries like Russia or the United States.
These discussions dragged on for years without ever reaching a conclusion, which of course was exactly what the Iranians intended. However, things changed in 2006 when the United States as well as other Western nations imposed severe economic sanctions on Iran.
Over time these sanctions damaged the Iranian economy to such an extent that in November, 2013, they decided to begin a series of formal negotiations with the P-5+1 countries, consisting of China, Russia, France, the UK and the United States, plus Germany and the European Union.
Finally, in July of this year, a formal agreement was reached between the various parties involved that became known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. And it was this agreement that became the deal on nuclear arms that you were referring to.
Scott: Thanks Allan. That really helps me to understand how it all came about. Which brings me to my next question. What did this agreement have to say?
Well Scott, obviously it had a lot to say. In fact the published text of this Joint Plan of Action ran to 159 pages. But in a nutshell, this is what Iran and the P-5+1 countries agreed:
Iran agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium completely, as well as reduce its stock of low-enriched uranium by 98%. It also agreed to reduce the number of its centrifuges by two-thirds for the next fifteen years.
Also, for the next fifteen years, Iran will only be able to enrich uranium to a level of 3.67%, and they will not be able to build any new uranium-enrichment or heavy-water facilities. The existing heavy-water plant at Arak will be converted.
Under this agreement, whatever enrichment activities that Iran does decide to undertake over the next ten years will be limited to a single facility that only uses first-generation centrifuges, and not the more advanced kind which they have been using up until now.
Both parties agreed that all the terms of this agreement would be monitored and verified by inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who would be granted regular access to all existing Iranian nuclear facilities, as well as any other sites which the IAEA may wish to inspect in the future.
In return for these conditions, it was agreed that once the IAEA inspectors had verified that Iran had fulfilled all of the above obligations, all nuclear-related sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union and the United Nations Security Council would be lifted.
This agreement was signed in Vienna on 14 July, 2015. It was immediately hailed by President Obama as a triumph of negotiation, and a victory for diplomacy that would rid the entire Middle-East from the spectre of war with Iran for the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately Scott, this is where things began to unravel, and now just four months later, you have to wonder how the various countries involved in these negotiations with Iran could have allowed the situation to have gone so badly wrong.
Scott: What sort of trouble are you referring to?
In answer to your question Scott, there is an old English proverb that says that anyone who sups with the devil needs a long spoon. What this means is that anyone who deals with a devious person needs to be ultra-cautious, for fear of being harmed.
And those who negotiate with Iran have every reason to be concerned, as subsequent events have now proved. For at the very heart of the Iranian approach to these negotiations was their strategy of “Taqiyya“.
According to the Shi’a practice of Islam, “Taqiyya” is a religious dispensation which permits an individual to commit illegal or even blasphemous acts, as a means of deceiving another in order to gain a future advantage.
The ink was hardly dry on this agreement when Iranian President Hassan Rouhani went on local TV to say that Iran had got everything that it wanted, plus a lot more. For example, his version of this agreement went as follows:
• Our prime objective in entering into these negotiations was to keep our nuclear program intact, and to have all sanctions lifted. This we have achieved.
• At first they wanted to limit us to 100 centrifuges. Now we keep 6,000.
• They wanted restrictions for 25 years. Now it is 8.
• First they said we could only have first-generation centrifuges, now we can have IR6, 7 and 8 advanced centrifuges.
• At first they said that the heavy-water plant at Arak had to be dismantled. Now it will remain under certain conditions.
• At first they said that the underground nuclear facility at Fordo had to be closed. Now it will stay open and we will keep 1,000 centrifuges there.
• All sanctions, including on missiles, will be lifted on the day of implementation. Not just suspended, but lifted completely.
In fact President Rouhani presented such a distorted picture of the final agreement, that one had to wonder whether he had ever paid any attention to the details of what had been negotiated in Vienna. But worse was to follow. Much worse.
Scott: Why do you say that, Allan?
Well Scott, as President Obama went to great lengths to explain to both Chambers of Congress, this agreement is founded not on trust, but on monitoring and verification. In other words, the inspectors of the IAEA will verify that Iran does what the agreement says.
In fact this assurance by Obama was a complete farce. For example, the agreement states that in the event of Iranian violations, sanctions will be re-imposed by all the nations involved. The term that Obama used was that these sanctions would “snapback” into place.
However, Article 37 of this agreement explicitly states: “Iran has stated that if sanctions are reinstated in whole or in part, Iran will treat that as grounds to cease performing its commitments under this JCPOA in whole or in part.”
But it is not just a question of whether or not sanctions can or will be reinstated if Iran fails to abide by the terms of this agreement Scott, the harsh truth of the matter is that the immediate outcome has already begun to fulfill Iranian expectations.
Scott: Can you give us some examples?
Well Scott, as President Rouhani told the Iranian people, his primary purpose in entering into these negotiations was to remove the international sanctions. He had good reason to gloat, for without even waiting for Iran to do anything, numerous nations have already dropped these sanctions altogether.
The United Kingdom has already lifted the ban on 22 Iranian banks and companies that were previously blacklisted. German trade with Iran has risen by 33 percent, making it the Islamic Republic’s third largest trading partner after China.
China has agreed to help Iran build five more nuclear power reactors. Russia has now agreed to deliver S300 anti-aircraft missile systems which were previously banned under the sanctions, and is also engaged in talks to sell them Sukhoi fighter planes.
France has sent its Foreign Minister as well as a 100 person strong delegation to negotiate new business deals, including projects to double Iran’s crude oil exports. India’s trade with Iran has jumped by 17 percent, and is negotiating to build a massive sea and rail hub at the Iranian port of Chah-Bahar.
So as you can see Scott, the international community have not even waited for the starting gun to go off before jetting off to Iran to promote their own trade and commercial interests. So what hope is there that Iran will keep to their nuclear obligations now that sanctions are unravelling by the day.
Scott: So tell me Allan, if the previous sanctions are unravelling as you say, do you think that Iran will continue to honour its nuclear obligations under this agreement?
Well Scott, if the past is any guide, the world should not hold its breath. Iran has not stuck to the agreements it made in the past, so there seems little reason to believe that they will start doing so now.
Take for example the recent missile test conducted by Iran. The agreement had hardly been completed when Iranians announced that they had test-fired a new precision-guided medium-range missile that was capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.
This was a clear violation of the 2010 Security Council resolution banning ballistic missile tests by Iran, as well as a violation of the JCPOA agreement in which they agreed not to launch ballistic missile tests for the next eight years.
So in terms of the principle of “Taqiyya” which I described earlier, this was a classic example of “Gotcha“. “You gullible Westerners fell for the trap we laid out for you“.
That may seem bad enough Scott, but the “worse” that I was referring to earlier, is that Iran has not even agreed to the conditions of the agreement announced with so much fanfare by President Obama.
Scott: What do you mean by that Allan?
Well Scott, the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, who is the final authority on all matters involving the Islamic State of Iran, has not only not approved the terms of the JCPOA agreement, but he has added new conditions since the original agreement was finalised.
In a letter which he dictated to the Iranian President Rouhani after the agreement had been announced, Khanenei prescribed nine new conditions that would have to be met by the JCPOA, and if they weren’t, Iran would cease to be bound by the terms of the agreement.
Here again we see the principle of “Taqiyya” at work. “We set new conditions that you have to meet, and if you don’t then we will scrap the deal, at the same time telling the world that you were responsible“. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place!
So the bottom line announced by the Tehran Times in its edition dated November 7, 2015, is that any sanctions imposed, or re-imposed, by anyone under any circumstances at any time, will invalidate the agreement, and absolve Iran of the need to fulfill its side of the deal.
Scott: So Allan, let me ask you this. Based on what you have talked about today, do you think that Iran will one day get nuclear weapons?
That’s a good question Scott. Obviously only time will tell. But you may be interested in something that took place some forty years ago. It happened in August, 1974, on the road to Tibet.
I was living in India at the time, and to escape the blistering heat of the Southern plains, I decided to travel up to the mountain kingdom of Kashmir. I ended up spending the entire summer there, moving from one hill station to another.
At the time that this incident took place, I was staying at a tourist bungalow at the hamlet of Sonamarg. This exquisite retreat is located along the main road that winds its way from Srinagar in Kashmir, through the Zanskar mountains of Ladakh, up to the western plateau of Tibet.
On the day in question, the monsoon had begun in earnest, and the rain was coming down in torrents. I had met two students from England a few days earlier, and to escape the deluge the three of us were sitting on the covered veranda of the tourist bungalow, drinking tea.
As we talked, our discussion was interrupted by the arrival of an amazing-looking man. To me, he looked like the living image of the 19th century Russian mystic, Grigori Rasputin. He simply walked in out of gloom, and at our invitation, joined us at our table.
He was dressed in thick sheepskin clothing held together by a large black leather belt. Covering his head was what looked like a fisherman’s oilskin hat, and on his feet were black wellington boots that reached up almost to his knees. He seemed to be in his mid-thirties.
But the most striking feature about this man was his thick black beard and his piercing dark eyes. Once he had settled down and accepted our offer of a hot drink, we asked him where he had come from and where he was going. His answer astonished us all.
He said that he had come from France, and was on his way to visit his Guru who lived in Tibet. When we asked him how he had travelled, he said that he had covered most of the journey overland and on foot, hiking through fields and forests to avoid border officials along the way.
When we asked him what route he had taken, he delved into the heavy rucksack that was slung across his back, and pulled out a large map that was covered in plastic to protect it from the rain. He opened it up carefully and spread it out in front of us.
As he was pointing out the various countries he had travelled through en route, I was struck by an unusual feature which appeared on the map. It was a series of black crosses which were scattered over the map in what seemed to be a haphazard fashion.
You’ll never guest what they were Scott.
Scott: Well I have to admit that you’ve got me there, Allan.
When I asked him what they were he replied: “The crosses mark the places where future nuclear explosions are going to take place“. When I asked him how he knew, he said that his Guru had shown this to him on a previous visit.
Scott: That’s amazing Allan. So where were these black crosses located?
Well this is where things get a little vague. You have to remember that this meeting took place over forty years ago. The other thing is that he sat on the opposite side of the table from me, so the map was upside down. But I remember seeing about five or six of these crosses.
Of course, from the vantage point of my present research, I wish I could have had the chance to ask him more questions. But unfortunately, no sooner had he had finished his drink when he got up and said he needed to be on his way. He vanished into the gloom as mysteriously as he came.
Scott: So tell me Allan, do you remember anything about where these crosses were located?
As I say Scott, from where I was sitting on the verandah that day, the map was pretty much upside down. However I do recall the various countries that were marked on the map, and the crosses appeared to be in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
As you can imagine, I have thought about that meeting many times over the years, especially in view of my own research into future prophetic events. And from my point of view, this does seem to fit in with Biblical End Time prophecies.
Of course, even if these crosses do mark the location of future nuclear explosions, they don’t indicate the source of these attacks. But based on what we know today, Pakistan already possesses nuclear weapons, and Iran may be close to getting them in the near future.
So to get back to your earlier question Scott, if I were a betting man, I would lay good odds that there will come a time when Iran will succeed in getting nuclear weapons, and will use them in the course of hostilities with neighbouring nations.
Not a pleasant prospect Scott, but as you have heard me say many times, I believe we are now living in the End Times, and that the time of Great Tribulation predicted by Jesus and the Old Testament prophets, will soon be upon us.
Scott: Thanks Allan. This has been a fascinating insight into events that have been taking place recently in Iran, and how they may fit in with ancient prophecies of the “End Times”.
You have been listening to Allan Colston, author of the book “The Last Days of Tolemac”. Do join us for our next Podcast in the series titled “Signs of the Times”.
Allan, AUDIO, Signs of the Times, November 9, 2015, 2:23 pm
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