Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Infallible Hypocrites


                              The Stone of Destruction

“For the things which some men esteem to be of great worth, both to the body and soul, others set at naught and trample under their feet. Yea, even the very God of Israel do men trample under their feet; I say, trample under their feet but I would speak in other words--they set him at naught, and hearken not to the voice of his counsels.”—1 Nephi 19:7

There are some more of those niggly things rattling in the back of my mind these days. They are some of the statements by the CJCLDS leaders that have bothered me for quite some time. Intuitively, I knew they were inherently wrong, but being too distracted with other matters as we so often are in this modern world, I set them aside. Today they flowered under the auspices of discussing reconciliation and forgiveness with my daughter over her struggles.

Dallin Oaks has caused quite a furor in his abnegation of accountability speech before the press, stating:

"I know that the history of the church is not to seek apologies or to give them," 1-27-2015

This is a typical Mormon testimony if I ever heard one. In reviewing this morning the Seven steps of Repentance outlined by Assistant to the Twelve, William Critchlow to BYU students in 1964, I wrote down the following:

Recognition
Remorse
Relating
Restitution
Resolution
Reformation
Realization

Surely “apology” fits in there somewhere? Like Recognition and Remorse, and Restitution? Isn’t this the very concept that apology connotes? I will proceed with this accepted premise by all rational and moral people. It is after all, the Webster definition which people use most:

2    an acknowledgment of some fault, injury, insult, etc., with an expression of regret and a plea for pardon

If the reader does not accept this premise, they live by a different model of reconciliation than the rest of us and what I write is of no value to them.

The very first indictment Dallin makes against themselves is, that since the beginning of the Church, it has not been a policy, practice, or precept, for the Church leaders to exercise repentance for past harms they have committed. Apology IS an essential part of repentance. I don’t know how to make this more plain. The leadership of the CJCLDS has committed errors and mistakes, born of their zeal. The leaders of the CJCLDS never have, nor will they ever, repent of any offenses nor harm they have committed against members of the Church. That’s what I get out of it, and that is what the context of his speech upholds.

The significance of this bold self-indictment begins with realizing who is making this justification. Dallin is an ex State Supreme Court Justice. As such he has a professional history of executing justice and clemency on behalf of the People of the State of Utah. To get there he first had to undergo coursework in law, which includes recitations on the founding principles of our moral codes, their theories, their precedents by the early magistrates of English judicature. To be considered for such a prestigious civil appointment an attorney must demonstrate able command and adroitness in administering justice, accountability, and restitution. But what we find here since he vacated that office is a Chief High Priest, speaking for all his associate Apostates, that they as head of the CJCLDS do not have to comply with their own precepts!

A chief judge!
A chief high priest!

Reminiscences of the priests of Noah and the Gadianton robbers.

In making such a declaration Dallin, on behalf of all the Church leadership, sets at naught both the civil and Mormon ecclesiastical moral codes. They are all above the moral foundation of the principles of the Gospel, i.e., 2nd, Repentance (4th Article of Faith).

Well, so? Well the Atonement of Christ as they preach it is predicated upon repentance. If a person does not repent, one cannot have their transgressions forgiven. If the 15 Apostates have no need to repent, according the doctrines of their own Gospel (which applies to all men), then they have no need of the Atonement either. They are innocent and guiltless, even though they confess having made offenses and errors against members and nonmembers (LGBT etc ad nauseum). They don’t need  a Redeemer. They set at naught the agony, blood, and death, as well as the teachings of the very man whom they insist they represent on earth. This kind of infallibility not even the Popes claimed.

What does their sacred Book of Mormon say about this behavior?

“Yea, and we may see at the very time when he doth prosper his people, yea, in the increase of their fields, their flocks and their herds, and in gold, and in silver, and in all manner of precious things of every kind and art; sparing their lives, and delivering them out of the hands of their enemies; softening the hearts of their enemies that they should not declare wars against them; yea, and in fine, doing all things for the welfare and happiness of his people; yea, then is the time that they do harden their hearts, and do forget the Lord their God, and do trample under their feet the Holy One--yea, and this because of their ease, and their exceedingly great prosperity.”—Helaman 12:2

“Behold, they do not desire that the Lord their God, who hath created them, should rule and reign over them; notwithstanding his great goodness and his mercy towards them, they do set at naught his counsels, and they will not that he should be their guide.”—Helaman12:6

So the 15 Apostates now assent to the crucifixion of Christ, because they claim they are above the need for repenting, the need to apologize and make right, being reconciled with the offended, and leaning upon the mercies of Him whom they claim is their head. They are without culpability even though they have offended the poor, meek and submissive of the Redeemer.

By their own Scriptures they indict themselves of their own wickedness. As Joseph did before them, boasting he did more for the “Church” than Jesus, they too say they have no need for Him, His works, His sufferings unto death, His permission to enter the highest degree of exaltation.

How did they get there?

“And now my beloved brethren, I say unto you, can ye withstand these sayings; yea, can ye lay aside these things, and trample the Holy One under your feet; yea, can ye be puffed up in the pride of your hearts; yea, will ye still persist in the wearing of costly apparel and setting your hearts upon the vain things of the world, upon your riches?
Yea, will ye persist in supposing that ye are better one than another; yea, will ye persist in the persecution of your brethren, who humble themselves and do walk after the holy order of God, wherewith they have been brought into this church, having been sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and they do bring forth works which are meet for repentance--
Yea, and will you persist in turning your backs upon the poor, and the needy, and in withholding your substance from them?”—Alma 5: 53-55

With annual salaries in excess of 6-7 figures, it is no wonder their hearts have become so hard they can rationalize their mistakes under the broad definition of apology. In the Book of Mormon, no High Priest was better at subverting the laws and corrupting the moral codes than those who were also lawyers. With billions of wealth at their control, to construct extravagant apartments in prestigious and convenient locations downtown, with a modern shopping mall for their convenience, while less than 1% of the Church’s wealth is distributed to the poor, how could they not declare themselves privileged?

“And ye shall also forgive one another your trespasses; for verily I say unto you, he that forgiveth not his neighbor's trespasses when he says that he repents, the same hath brought himself under condemnation.”—Mosiah 26:31

Dallin Oaks and Boyd Packer also tell us that the "intellectual is an enemy to the Church." I should say! God forbid that anyone use the intelligence God endowed them with to search out Truth and Light (D&C 93:36). Forbid them to ask reasonable and perspicacious questions, demanding rational answers. Forbid them to find Truth anywhere useful, as counseled three times in their Doctrine and Covenants (88:118, 109:7, 109:14). In our search for Truth to increase our intelligence let us cover the Church leader's transgressions (D&C121:37), even though in so doing their Priesthood comes to an end because the heavens withdraw themselves.

Hannah Arendt, Holocaust survivor and researcher (a Jew), found from investigating the cause for the Hitlerian regime and the atrocities they committed, wrote the chief cause was failure of people at all civil levels was not to think, just obey their superiors, and ignore the consequences. As I have written elsewhere, the rise of Totalitarianism derives from this root behavior, a behavior characteristic of all religious cults. Don't think, don't question, don't challenge. Its done for you. Just obey. A totalitarian organization run by men declaring themselves above the doctrines of Salvation as they taught for over 150 years.

Notwithstanding this, I am astonished at the magnitude of cognitive dissonance permeating the minds of the members, who when learning of these things did not refuse to enter any chapel on the following Sunday, staying home to fill out their formal resignations from such a Church run by an abominable cadre of proud, doting men.


SethSmee

References
http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/faith/2122123-155/no-apology-really-mormons-question-apostle

Helaman 12:2
Yea, and we may see at the very time when he doth prosper his people, yea, in the increase of their fields, their flocks and their herds, and in gold, and in silver, and in all manner of precious things of every kind and art; sparing their lives, and delivering them out of the hands of their enemies; softening the hearts of their enemies that they should not declare wars against them; yea, and in fine, doing all things for the welfare and happiness of his people; yea, then is the time that they do harden their hearts, and do forget the Lord their God, and do trample under their feet the Holy One--yea, and this because of their ease, and their exceedingly great prosperity.

Helaman 12:6
“Behold, they do not desire that the Lord their God, who hath created them, should rule and reign over them; notwithstanding his great goodness and his mercy towards them, they do set at naught his counsels, and they will not that he should be their guide.”

Alma 30:32
“Now Alma said unto him: Thou knowest that we do not glut ourselves upon the labors of this people; for behold I have labored even from the commencement of the reign of the judges until now, with mine own hands for my support, notwithstanding my many travels round about the land to declare the word of God unto my people. And notwithstanding the many labors which I have performed in the church, I have never received so much as even one senine for my labor; neither has any of my brethren, save it were in the judgment-seat; and then we have received only according to law for our time. And now, if we do not receive anything for our labors in the church, what doth it profit us to labor in the church save it were to declare the truth, that we may have rejoicings in the joy of our brethren?”

Mosiah 26:31
“And ye shall also forgive one another your trespasses; for verily I say unto you, he that forgiveth not his neighbor's trespasses when he says that he repents, the same hath brought himself under condemnation.”

Alma 5:53-5
And now my beloved brethren, I say unto you, can ye withstand these sayings; yea, can ye lay aside these things, and trample the Holy One under your feet; yea, can ye be puffed up in the pride of your hearts; yea, will ye still persist in the wearing of costly apparel and setting your hearts upon the vain things of the world, upon your riches?
Yea, will ye persist in supposing that ye are better one than another; yea, will ye persist in the persecution of your brethren, who humble themselves and do walk after the holy order of God, wherewith they have been brought into this church, having been sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and they do bring forth works which are meet for repentance--
Yea, and will you persist in turning your backs upon the poor, and the needy, and in withholding your substance from them?

The Rise of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Destiny and the Meaningful Life


Destiny and Autonomy

“…people raised in the atmosphere of a mass movement are fashioned into incomplete and dependent human beings even when they have within themselves the making of self-sufficient entities.”—Eric Hoffer

Wait a sec, does Morgdoc really answer the Big Three Questions? Telling me I am a child of God explains who I am? Telling me this mythological tale about a war in heaven explains where I am from and where I am going?

Knowing who my parents are doesn’t tell me anything about who I am. Telling me I am a product of some Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent Creator only makes matters worse. That leaves a person spiritually infantilized until death.

As for the Plan to save everybody, doesn’t the premise for Salvation seem fairly stupid? Saved from what? The original war in heaven is a mythical tale several thousand years old, harking back to a time when the planets were in disarray from intrasolar cometary impacts. The Fall truly was the end of the Golden Age, when an advanced civilization was obliterated by celestial disorder which culminated in a massive cataclysmic event. The origin of the "War in Heaven" is solely derived from these ancient accounts. Just like the magical thinking of a child who believes he is the cause of his parent’s divorce, Man created this tale to explain why the Gods went away and took Paradise (the Hebrew Edem) with them. Capricious Gods with unrefined passions squabbling among themselves over how their children are going to grow up, to be eventually like them? I don’t need a Plan to do that. Just keep me infantilized. Enter the modern Mundunugu.

Who are you? Morgdoc tells you that you’re a child of God, born of earthly parents kind and dear, but when an adult you are a worker bee provider if you’re male, and a worker bee baby-factory if female. People are encouraged to identify themselves with roles, instead of their identity being a discovery on life’s journey.

What do you want? Morgdoc says you should become a God. First you must be a good follower and do everything, rituals, roles, and incantations the Chief Shaman tells you to do, no matter the spiritual, economic, or social cost. Everyone wants a return to the Golden Age of Paradise where all temporal needs are met, with love and peace abounding in an ageless world. But Mordoc insists (like ALL other religions) it can only be accomplished by their program.

Where are you going? Morgdoc prescribes the Celestial world, and anything less is failure, notwithstanding the lower ones are kingdoms of glory. Total happiness can only be had at the top, even if your cherished family and friends don’t make it. Once you get into any of these, you’re stuck there for eternity. But at the top you get to have infinite numbers of children, worlds without end. You’ll be so busy there will be no boredom. No need for adventure, retirement or vacation.

Who do you serve, and who do you trust? Morgdoc wants you busy with Church programs, procedures, and implementing policy. Just follow the Chief Shaman, he’ll never lead you astray. Someday, in losing yourself in these rituals, so they proclaim, you’ll discover who you are, and then all your posterity will serve you as God. Wonderful. Just what I always longed for--to become a megalomaniac being worshiped and served by my multitudinous offspring in endless fawning and choir cantatas.

Which Personality Are You?

There are basically three types of personality, those who want to be taken care of, those who want to dictate to the first group, and those who eschew both to find their own Path.  The latter are frequently the pioneers, seekers, dreamers, and the inquisitive.  The former are predominantly those who are conformists, followers, socialites, females, and yes-men.  A true leader never evolves from the first group, but feminists, tyrants, politicians, and priests do.  Those of the third group are the visionaries who stake out the boundaries of new frontiers in spite of the objections of others.  They are the ones who advance civilization, and are frequently scapegoated.  The first and second groups have nothing to offer but plagiarism, boasting, and stagnation.

Good leaders were never good followers and don’t need them—precisely why others follow them.  Only those who are dedicated to a Cause perpetuate this myth of leadership.  These personalities span the breadth of Mania (egomaniacs, etc.).  Followers are those who are ignorant, often gullible, lack self-confidence, seek purpose through other’s mandates, and live life in a fog.  Together they form a binding symbiosis of reciprocal worship.

Wrote Eric Hoffer: “The frustrated follow a leader less because of their faith that he is leading them to a promised land than because of their immediate feeling that he is leading them away from their unwanted selves. Surrender to a leader is not a means to an end but a fulfillment. Whither they are led is of secondary importance.”

We come into this world naked and screaming.  We go out sighing and apprehensive.  In between is best enjoyed treating everything as a stewardship within the self and an adventure. If life is anything but an adventure, you're a masochist. Such an excellent approach to screwing up your stewardship.

This world is about accountability or its lack thereof.  What we hear is it is either God or the Devil who did it.  Seldom is “it” attributable to the works of man. All religion is based on this scam and artifice. But ultimately, full autonomy is dependent upon being your own best agent for growth, happiness, and worth. If you don't radiate it, you can't receive it in kind. The magnitude of one's divinity is not orchestrated by obeisance to a dogma or movement's leader. It resides solely within your own desire for Good.

However possible, find a way to remove oneself from the clutches of those who must dictate other people’s lives.  Such beings are empty and their souls decayed.  They have no internal worth to manifest to the world.  Their boring and vacuous personalities and gross feelings of inadequacy compel them to interpose their ethereal Utopian visions upon others to relieve their internal emptiness with the vanity of their hubris.  From these ranks the megalomaniacs are born. It is instructive to note here that everyone of them are men of charisma. As if that is a perfecting human quality. What did we learn about America's Revolutionary pseudo prophet?

The happiest possible course in life is dependent upon two principles of Stewardship: a) one’s destiny is solely and irrevocably centered in the individual and their level of accountability, and b) their public liberty is entirely dependent on minding their own business, helping others only where invited and their accountability is manifestly demonstrated by their behavior.

Recently it came to my attention the efforts of David Blankenhorn's Institute of American Values to "restore" marriage to its former social prestige. A Harvard graduate (a college founded by the Massachussets Bay Colony composed of 1000 Puritan "refugees", read early ultra conservatives, for the sidereal purpose of educating America's clergy), David is intent on growing his own movement to realize this social restoration. While an admirer of Charles Murray's (also a Harvard graduate) research and several conclusions, he has been oblivious to Charles' repeated admonitions that this objective cannot be accomplished by David's methodologies and politics. Harvard undergraduates are required to take coursework in the following areas:
  • Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding
  • Culture and Belief
  • Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning
  • Ethical Reasoning
  • Science of Living Systems
  • Science of the Physical Universe
  • Societies of the World
  • United States in the World
Somehow David missed the boat in these classes concerning marriage and its co-optation by the Catholic church during the late Roman Empire. Prior to this period marriage was a cultural institution, with as much variety and diversity of social values as there are cultures in the world. In the 1600s it became a European institution of divine love with the High Voyeur at its head by Popish influence, rather than the economic union it had been for millennia. Being an economic union, it had little to do with the integrity or solidarity of the family (i.e. marital and sibling bliss) although its intent was to service family economic requirements. In sum, marriage do not create the filials bonds, it was an attempt at enlarging them. Such notions of family solidarity still persist within Mediterranean cultures which are largely clannish or tribal, independent of marital economic concerns. Today such an objective can be accomplished by an endowment by the wealthy. Conversely, companionships and romance, particularly during Roman and late Greek times was serviced outside of marriage. But David wants to resurrect this Hydra of love AND economic union within an economic climate vastly outstripping the resources and rewards available to more than half of America's population. David is dyed in the second personality traits, while Charles is mostly of the third, albeit with some dangerous leanings toward the second. For all his Harvard education--the most prestigious in the world by some standards--he misses the most fundamental dilemma of today's rising generation: the rewards are no longer there because those entrusted with it preservation are those who broke the "social contract." David would have everyone become the first personality type. The rising generation does not have faith in the institutions and values of their elders. Because the same opportunities their parents enjoyed are no longer within their reach (by their own skill and acumen and not artificially induced by the government or Church), they are abandoning the so-called "traditional" values for a revamped framework that gives a modicum of reward, dysfunctional or not. To realize satisfaction in their life's endeavors, they are recreating Charles Murray's four elements: Religious Faith, Family Bonds, Vocational Pursuits, and Communal Identity. They are doing what their ancestors have done since the dawn of recorded history--creating God in their own image, for better or worse. 

 Bruce: What if I need you?  What if I have questions?
God:    “Ha ha ha.  That’s your problem Bruce—that’s everybody’s problem.  You keep looking up.”

Thou Art God

Seth Smee 

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Joseph Smith Post-Revolutionary Pseudo-Prophet



                     Joseph the American Romantic Revolutionary

As stated in an earlier post, my captivation with Morgdoc centered in the theology. The idea that God revealed His intentions to Man was the crux of my interest in religion. From the moment in second-year Seminary the various forms of Revelation were presented, I embarked on the quest of ascertaining where and when and in what form they took place. To me it seemed that any man was certain to have foibles and follies, sufficient to preclude him in a man’s eyes from being worthy of divine communication. Consequently, I never stopped to investigate Joseph Smith until the very last. Although I doubted God to be of the nature and character he was purported to be by Christianity, I chose to give Him the benefit of doubt, believing He was honest and trustworthy, but men were not always. Looking for the evidence of divine manifestation became the central question I had in all matters of religion. The favorable stories I’d heard about Joseph and other church functionaries I accepted as plausible, while the reports of deception and fraud by his critics were themselves lies and deception—IF the matter of revelation could be proved.

My second year of CES seminary was taught by Max Pinegar, twin brother of Rex Pinegar who was elevated into the quorum of Seventy beginning in the mid 1970’s. Max taught us there were several different forms of divine revelation, the appearance of the Father and/or the Son, Angels, or inspiration by the Holy Ghost. There was a specific form, as defined by Joseph Smith, to the appearance of Heavenly Beings. Apparitions with no specific intelligence to convey were not of God, for God was not in to frivolous, meaningless appearances. Personages of Spirit were intangible and would not extend their hand to the recipient, since physical matter would pass through and no contact possible. To do so on the part of a Messenger was intent to deceive, and therefore not of God. The appearance of resurrected Beings however, required the recipient to be overshadowed by the power of God to survive death. Their Glory was intolerable to human flesh. Uh-huh, well I let that one slide, first looking for the evidence.

The only materials I had to work with until historical books about the Church founding began appearing in the bookstores were the Church’s own scriptures and the Journal of Discourses. The other early publications were only to be found through connections with people who had access to Church archives until it was all digitized and marketed as the LDS Collector’s Library by Infobases in the mid 1990’s. Thus began the laborious reading of hundreds of pages of history, looking for evidence of revelation subsequent to Joseph Smith’s. The only thing I found of significance was Brigham Young’s disclaimer about “open revelation”, the types that Joseph had. His position was that all the necessary revelation of that type was given to Joseph, and since then only the influence of the Holy Spirit was required. Convenient. Well I never found any historical evidence of divine appearances in the Church archives, until I heard about Lorenzo Snow’s story of Jesus appearing to him in the Salt Lake temple, just outside the president’s office. What that was about no one had any idea. Not even Lorenzo revealed what the appearance was about. Until Spencer Kimball announced a revelation on the Priesthood issue, I had not found a single instance of Angelic intervention in the Church since Joseph’s last proclamations in Nauvoo.

I waited with great anticipation for the written account of Spencer’s revelation. And waited. And waited. Even after the Church’s policy was changed there was still no account published. (I eventually did find an account by Bruce McConkie published by Deseret Book in an obscure booklet about ten years later.) To my knowledge, the change in policy concerning Blacks and the Priesthood was not even presented to the Church membership for ratifying acceptance, which is a procedure established by Joseph himself and covered in the Doctrine and Covenants. Spencer and his cohorts had failed to follow the Church’s own regulations. They had good reason not to, but that is another matter. By this time I knew that something serious was up in the Church, and that many of the changes taking place were quite suspect. My investigation into Church history continued and it was not until the latter 1990’s that I discovered Heber J. Grant discontinued the personal witness requirement of the Apostles as condition for acceptance into the Quorum of Twelve. Max had taught us that having the special witness of Jesus was a requirement to being ordained an Apostle. It was especially true for the succeeding president of the Church. But I never found evidence of it anywhere in public Church records. When I found Heber had made that change I finally understood why fundamentalist splinter groups were claiming the Church had fallen into apostasy during president Grant’s administration. It was at this time I secretly harbored the strong suspicion of the same. Doctrines were changing, albeit slowly. Church publications and teaching manuals were slowly renovating the Gospel principles I was taught by the CES in Seminary and Institute classes.

Still I clung to the notion that heavenly influence was present in the Church, even though the evidence began to mount that more and more high officials were acting on their own initiative. They constantly asserted what God’s Will was, but never once offered bonafide evidence of divine intervention. But I did find mounting evidence on the Infobases’ CD rom and publications by Church researchers to indicate no such revelation had ever taken place. Ultimately, after excommunicating the Church from my life, I did find evidence that all the apparitions Joseph laid claim to were extraordinarily convenient to particular circumstances involving mass exodus from his church.

There are those, no longer members, who consider Joseph a genius. I could not accept that conclusion. An accomplished mountebank did not have to be a genius, especially if he surrounded himself with people who had expertise in history, religion, and theology. Joseph had access to these resources in spades, and what made it possible for him to successfully impose on people’s credulity was the fact that it all took place during the frontier period. The best information available at the time was newspapers and hearsay public meetings. The vast majority of converts were uneducated by today’s standards. Written English had not yet been standardized.

In the early days of my excommunicating the Church, I had a brief discussion with a professor of history concerning Joseph Smith’s creative abilities. He opined that Joseph was a genius. My estimation of that word is it is one of the most misused and therefore abused words in the English language. There are six definitions of it in Webster, and all but two are obsolete. Of these, the most common is the sixth:

a) great mental capacity and inventive ability; esp., great and original creative ability in some art, science, etc.
b) a person having such capacity or ability
c) popularly, any person with a very high intelligence quotient.

Saul Bellow argued on the subject of novelists that “Genius is always, without strain, avant-garde. Its departure from tradition is not the result of caprice or of policy but of an inner necessity.” The concept of “avant-garde” here is the key: they are leaders at the forefront of new or unconventional movements according to Webster. The only “necessity” driving Joseph Smith was his documented, professed ambition to financially provide for his family. It began with stone peeping and treasure hunting, a form of hawking that he continually modified and embellished as necessity required to “keep the spice flowing.” At every historical vignette of Church history, we find him attaching some element of ideology from his associates, Rigdon, Cowdery, Pratt, Bennett, Seixas, the Occult of his father, the circuit preachers, contemporary religious oratories, and the extant methodology of social and political revolution inherent in Free Masonry. Taken as a whole we don’t see an over-arching creation of a new religion born of the “restoration” so favored by Rigdon, but a desperate amalgamation of ideas born of impending church dissolution. Apologists for the Church massage the whole of it to appear as a long sequence of revelations to sustain the restorative theme. But any person possessed of ordinary inquisitiveness finds far too many discrepancies, convenient alterations and additions to staunch the exodus every time his scheme was exposed. Before his death he boasted:

“In all these affidavits, indictments, it is all of the devil--all corruption. Come on! ye prosecutors! ye false swearers! All hell, boil over! Ye burning mountains, roll down your lava! for I will come out on the top at last. I have more to boast of than ever any man had. I am the only man that has ever been able to keep a whole church together since the days of Adam. A large majority of the whole have stood by me. Neither Paul, John, Peter, nor Jesus ever did it. I boast that no man ever did such a work as I. The followers of Jesus ran away from Him; but the Latter-day Saints never ran away from me yet.” Sunday, May 26, 1844 History of the Church V6, Ch19, p408

It is clearly evident from this boast his lack of education and indisposition to read. His command of history is virtually nonexistent. As a product of the prevailing dogma, he does not realize he is perpetuating the Inquisition’s obsession with evil and the Devil. Paul started a corrupt church that filled the world with Inquisition. Peter, James, and John continued the community that Jesus taught, while by some accounts Jesus lived out his life in anonymous exile. Anyone in Nauvoo with a lick of sense could observe that the Campbellites kept the Church of Christ together without the turmoil Joseph, by his wanton disregard of the law, brought upon himself. The Quakers had been around for a century also without shakeouts.  Twelve days later William Law his eschewed first counselor, publishes the first exposé of Joseph’s misconduct. A month almost to the day of Joseph’s boasting the conniving, lying brothers were dead and Joseph’s precious church thrown into confusion, intrigue, conspiracy, and fragmentation. In the succession squabble to follow, designee heir to the church younger brother Samuel dies a month later precipitously and conveniently before Brigham returns with the other Apostles. Quinn makes a fairly good case for assassination by the Danites. Shortly thereafter William is made patriarch to take Hyrum’s place but succeeds in getting disfellowshipped over a triviality and eventually excommunicated. With that ends the Smith dynasty and control over Joseph’s Zionist machinations.

To say that Joseph Smith was a genius is to denature the creative works of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Michelangelo, etc. He wasn't a man ahead of his time as these men were, he was a product of it—of that itching quarry of rabble craving a spiritual guide. He was an adept innovator and plagiarist in the style of Bonneville, Buonarotti, Nodier, Gébelin; innovators of the revolutionary spirit that arose in Strasburg, Germany. These are just a sampling of men who, working within and through the Masonic organization, attempted to foist a political and (when that fizzled out) social revolution in continental Europe during the same period. Freighted with conspiracy and secrecy at every level, with hubris oozing as sudoriferous glands they thought, each in his own manner, to change the landscape of their world. Joseph was precisely in this state of mind when John C. Bennett appeared in Nauvoo (1841-2), proposing Joseph take up Masonry with the obvious purpose of allying about himself a cabal of loyal people, willing to lay down their lives to prevent his extradition and prosecution. Here Joseph finds the exact mechanism to implement Rigdon’s Far West Salt Sermon ideology while avoiding personal culpability.  Since the anti-Masonic movement of his youth had subsided, Joseph had no qualms in frontier Illinois to resort to such revolutionary devices to strengthen his grip on his ever fluctuating cabal.

The element most missing from the history of the Church and Joseph in particular is the influence of Masonic ideology that suddenly appears in the Church in 1842. It is instructive for the historical student to examine the European revolutionary movements at this time, and its ripple effect throughout all of Masonry. While it is unlikely that Joseph had any direct contact with these groups, the ripple effects definitely were apparent in American society earlier than the Jacobins. What we see is just as the nations were transformed from the events leading up to World War I, so the nations were also ideologically transformed beginning with the French Revolution, sparked by the American. The American “revolution” was the beginning of a century of Western civilization revolution, producing the political crises of the 20th century. There was an equal fever and zeitgeist far broader than that which stormed over upper New York during Joseph’s youth.

The essential influence of Masonry manifesting in the Church can be recognized by summarizing the revolutionary characteristics Mr. Billington outlines in his book, Fire in the Minds of Men. Every one of them appear during the rise of Mormonism:

Late 18th century occult Masonic revolutionary elements:

  •  Movements begin with a lust for a “new order” (all religions are false/apostate)
  •  Observance of prime numbers in the organization (presidency of three, five sets of three apostles, seven presidents of seventies, etc.)
  •  Idealized distant past of Christianity (Rigdon)
  •  Communal—Utopian islands; gathering places and communitarian practices
  •  Perpetuation of revolutionary Faith (aggressive missionary force)
  •  Fundamentalism in elevating moral virtues
  •  Secular revolution concurrent with religious evolution (United Order)
  •  True Believing religious ideology within a moral meritocracy
  •  Creation of a revolutionary (Zionist) vernacular
  •  Employment of the press for the dissemination of ideology
  •  Civic mobilization through militarization and political infiltration/domination (Nauvoo)
  •  Censorship, denunciation, and surveillance (Nauvoo)
  •  Appeal to rapture and emotional persuasion (testimony bearing and speaking incoherently)
  •  Appearance of multiple radical splinter groups and the consolidation of power in a sequestered cabal
  •  Creation of pseudo-egalitarian societies (priesthood hierarchies and Relief Society)
  •  Global political pretensions and radical social change
  •  Creation and preservation of oracular mystique (insistence of direct revelation without evidence)
  •  Inner circles of fraternal orders (Aaronic and Melchizedek quorums)
  •  Employment of ancient symbols, numerology, astrology, and music to establish links with ancient movements (temple, garments, organizational structure, pervasive Restoration themes)
  •  Relegation of women to secondary status in the hierarchy (polygamy and female society)
  •  Presence of messianic mission, hubris, and divine favoritism often accompanied by a measure of megalomanism (celebration of Joseph more than Jesus, etc.)
  •  Adoption of kingship, kingdoms, elitism, and Millennialism with egalitarianism external to the movement’s core (only the Second Anointed gain status over the rabble membership)
  •  Implementation of purges to prevent betrayal/exposure (usage of excommunication and slander)
  •  Revolutionary movement modeled on Masonic (Illuminist ideology) structure
  •  Ascension in the hierarchy conditional on loyalty, not oracular power or wisdom
  •  Total confidence, obedience and veneration of the leader
  •  Highest fraternal circle is sequestered from the common membership (Apostles & Seventies)
  •  Progression of intelligence from lower to higher spheres (Plan of Salvation and priesthood pecking)
  •  The sense of persecution and longing for liberty
  •  The ultimate end of the revolutionary movement is a “deocracy” or theocratic Republic
  •  Leadership always composed of journalistic intellectuals rather than politico-military figures

From this extensive list it is quite obvious that Joseph had no “revelation” concerning Masonic practices and its ideology. What Joseph had been doing was the very essence of it. The previous half-century of Masonic development was rife with revolutionary thought and energy. John Robison writes of it at great length; James Billington charts its origin from that same locale and ideology that precipitated the Inquisition. Alexis de Toqeville describes the rooting of it on American soil.

Billington ponders the reasons for the difference in revolutions between America and the several uproars across Europe. (The differences are outlined in Democracy in America.) He never quite gets the idea that the driving force of revolutions is the acute repression felt by the dispossessed. He does not realize that the United States did not really revolt. There was no ideological shift of the populace as there was across Europe. In the words of Franklin the motive was “to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers….” But of course we are told in grammar school it was all about Independence from English economic and political oppression. The “ideological” revolution in America took place over the preceding century as Europeans voted with their feet against the prevailing European powers, abandoning their homes and comforts for the arduous opportunity the new frontier afforded, removed from the bureaucracy, taxation, and constant warring among royal relatives. While Europe passed the nineteenth century in belligerent, ideological revolt against monarchy and then Imperialism, the United States was heralding the century of corruption and “the audacious confidence man”; the huckster and the sucker. Here everyone in business, politics, or religion was on the take—the obsession with materialism and property de Toqeuville discourses on. (Once again we see that Emma’s father Isaac Hale knew the score early on.) After the examples of Adams, Hamilton, and Washington bending the Federal government to their own apotheosis with covert Constitutional violations, the common citizen was onto the scam as much as the preachers who blazed across upstate New York in a fit of mock piety. In such an age and social movement, Joseph Smith found it his milieu.

It is common knowledge that a charismatic man is a romantic and idealist, both in his world view and his sexual relations. The magnetic personality as they called it back in Mesmer’s day (late 18th century) was essentially the hustler who had a talent for subtle pandering to vanity, of both their own and everyone else’s. How else could Joseph have been taken in by the Kinderhook plates? Free Masonry during Joseph’s impressionable years was wide-spread across America. It is now known and documented the Smith family (father and Hyrum) were immersed in it, particularly the Captain Morgan debacle, with Joseph applying his polygamist charm to Morgan’s widow Lucinda, just a decade later. Continental Europe’s Free Masonry, composed of its own form of Zionist Millennialism, along with the occult Mysticism transmogrified from Hermeticism, was every bit a part of American society. All the elements we see in Joseph’s “prophetic” career are plainly manifest in American culture of the period. There wasn’t a single aspect of his religion that was new. Every piece of it can be found in full fruition across American society of the era. From pumping his maid Fanny Alger in the barn, to scamming the investors in the Kirtland Safety Society, to his coronation as King over all Israel, he was doing exactly what so many of the elite were doing in political circles. His “inventiveness” was no more original than that of Charles Russell (Jehovah’s Witnesses), William Miller—James and Ellen White (Seventh-day Adventists), George Fox (Quakers), or Thomas and Alexander Campbell, whom Sidney Rigdon plagiarized, striving to do one up with his own version of the Campbell Bible. All these “inventors” of religion did was produce a variation on a theme, upping the ante of a predecessor.

That which is most ironical is that within the pages of The Book of Mormon we find all the proscribed behaviors therein being practiced by the very people who produced it! If there was any valid prophecy that Joseph uttered, it was his unwitting declaration about his own cabal:

“And they were kept up by the power of the devil to administer these oaths unto the people, to keep them in darkness, to help such as sought power to gain power, and to murder, and to plunder, and to lie, and to commit all manner of wickedness and whoredoms. And it was the daughter of Jared who put it into his heart to search up these things of old; and Jared put it into the heart of Akish; wherefore, Akish administered it unto his kindred and friends, leading them away by fair promises to do whatsoever thing he desired.

And it came to pass that they formed a secret combination, even as they of old; which combination is most abominable and wicked above all, in the sight of God; For the Lord worketh not in secret combinations, neither doth he will that man should shed blood, but in all things hath forbidden it, from the beginning of man. And now I, Moroni, do not write the manner of their oaths and combinations, for it hath been made known unto me that they are had among all people, and they are had among the Lamanites. And they have caused the destruction of this people of whom I am now speaking, and also the destruction of the people of Nephi.” Ether 8:16-21

One must remember Hannah Arendt’s exposition of the immoral nature of the central cabal. Mendacity is its modus-operandi. This is the religion and the "prophet" purporting to possess exclusive authority to save all of humanity, both the living and the dead! A true American revolutionary of the Masonic caste.

SethSmee


REFERENCES
James Billington Fire in the Minds of Men
John Robison Proofs of a Conspiracy
Eric Hoffer The True Believer, The Ordeal of Change
Milton Mayer They Thought They Were Free
Hannah Arendt  The Origin of Totalitarianism
Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Cowdery, Orson Pratt Ether 8 Book of Mormon
De Toqueville Democracy in America Book 2 Chap 12; Chap 20

Vanick et al Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon
Gore Vidal The Essential Gore Vidal Essays
http://www.olivercowdery.com/smithhome/smithhis.htm

Friday, August 22, 2014

Saviors, Weakness of Soul

                                           


                                               The Messiah Complex

                           Tell the truth, and people will bash in your head
                                                                      —Hungarian Proverb


    It is one of the fundamental and oldest of ploys by government officials to stir up dissention and riot among the populace, and blame a scapegoat who they have created by propaganda as the villain of social unrest. The story is repeated in the Book of Mormon throughout the Gadianton period. It is present in the pogroms of the National Socialist and Bolshevik revolutions. It is so common in America’s foreign policy for the last century hardly anyone blinks an eye to it. It doesn’t take much investigation into the recent subversion of Libya, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so forth to see it glaring from the newsprint. Such was the case among the Jewish Sanhedrin when Jesus was made the scapegoat of insurrection. As yet I have to learn when in history such a tactic was first used. But it is clearly evident in the Gospels that the Jews (the Zionist leadership of that day) made good use of it, as they have been doing since, right up to this very day. It is a tactic used in our time to stir people up to war against our neighbors under a false flag of patriotism. Its been documented by journalists and politicians, priests and even a number of Jews, such as Benjamin Freedman.

What he was
When Jesus was arraigned before Pilate, he was accused of provoking political discord by claiming he had right to be King of the Jews. The passage is in John 18 and likely the most important part of the Gospels above any other passage. Here we learn what Jesus was really doing, and the Christians of the world have paid no attention to it.

Pilate enters the judgement hall and gets right to the point, suspecting that the Sanhedrin is trying to set him up, he asks Jesus straightway: Are you the King of the Jews? Jesus wants to know what Pilate’s position is and answers with his own question: Are you asking to know for your own information, or did somebody put you up to it? Pilate lets the cat out of the bag: What do I know of your kind? Your own people and the chief priests have put this debacle (insurrection and aspiring to the throne) in my lap. YOU tell ME, what have you been doing? Whether Pilate is aware of Jesus’ activities or not we cannot say (not without resorting to “spurious” texts). But he wants to be impartial and hear the matter from the accused.

Jesus spells it out so Pilate can make no error: My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my subjects would be fighting for my freedom from the Sanhedrin. My kingdom is not of the kind you and the Sanhedrin need worry about. Pilate rejoins to make sure there is no inferential subterfuge: Are you a king then? Here Jesus is quite clear about what his mission on earth is: I was born and came into the world for this purpose only; to bear witness of the truth. Every one that reveres and adheres to the truth cleaves to my elucidation of it.

It is also a ploy by those who desire distinction among men, to subvert a movement or popular trend from within, if it cannot be accomplished by direct confrontation, whether covertly or overtly. Thus did Saul of Tarsas to the followers of Jesus; as was done to the Bolsheviks as they had done to the populace; as Hitler to the National Socialist party; as the Communist party USA; as the Illuminati to the Freemasons; as the Zionist Jews to the world’s banking and business trusts, and non-democratic governments around the world.

Context
There is a Gospel story of Jesus entering into the house of a chief Pharisee on the Jewish Sabbath. Everyone’s eyes were upon him. A man suffering from edema was present and Jesus decides to put his detractors on the defensive by asking, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath? Getting no response he heals the man and sends him off, adding with the question put to them: Which of you fail to go attend one of your cattle that is in a bind on the Sabbath? Now having gotten everyone’s attention he proceeds to speak in parables to them. He attracts a crowd, at length the Publicans and street rabble come along to hear. The Jews love to hear their priests tell allegories. By this time the Pharisees are a bit miffed and murmur he’s not behaving like they do: Get lost, you sinners. We won’t be seen associating with you.  So Jesus changes the tack of his allegories to expose the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. This got them perturbed and they ridiculed him. Seeing he had them in their own noose, got more explicit and expounded on their fate. Seeking to justify themselves feeling convicted of their wickedness, they lean on Abraham. But Jesus declares that neither Abraham nor Moses, nor anyone coming back from death could persuade them to repent.

Then he turned to his disciples, who seem to be at his heals everywhere he goes, and admonishes them not to take offense like the Pharisees if they happen to be rebuked at some time for their faults. Interestingly, his apostles request him to increase their faith, and Jesus being a bit perturbed at this tells them if their faith was as little as a mustard seed they could get the flora to observe their command. And if they merely did what was commanded of them they would yet be unprofitable servants.

At this juncture he’s had enough of the folks who just can’t seem to get the object of the parables and makes his way downtown by way of Samaria and Galilee. One must presume if the story is contiguous, that the chief Pharisee he had dinner with lived in a swank subdivision at the outskirts of Jerusalem. Along the way he encounters some lepers who beg him to have mercy and heal them. Having compassion on those afflicted, he does so according to their own faith. But this really gets to the Pharisees who are a mite defensive, following him to find a way to use the law to shut him up. They demand he tell them when the kingdom of God should come, and he tells them explicitly: You ain’t going to see no kingdom come by looking for it. You ain’t going to see it come by people preaching in the streets, declaring its arrival (apparently a reference to John the Baptist among others). Just as plain as he can make it clear to the Pharisees and to his disciples he said: the kingdom of God is within a person’s heart. He tells his disciples the day will come when they will lament the time gone by when they had his company. He warns them by allusion that the Pharisees have crafted a plan to accuse him falsely of seeking to take over the kingdom of the Jews.

Jesus, a priest, a rabbi, a magi, a physician. A man of the craft. Throughout the Gospel stories we never read of him declaring of himself any other such agenda, nor that his intent was to build a church, for the Jews don’t attend churches to worship. (The use of the word “church” in Matthew 16 is an anachronism, and clear indication the passage is corrupt, the word first being derived from the Greek, and is interpolated hearsay by the translator.) They go to synagogues to learn. They go to the temples to buy off their offences to God. His Gospel is not new, it had been declared through the ages before him (The Essenes, among whom he first learned his craft, were the conservators of The Way of the ancients.). By lineage, he had a claim to the throne of the southern kingdom, but it was not as direct as others contemporary with him, being that such lineage goes through a bastard child of Tamar and Judah. Judah himself can only claim this royal prerogative through the fabled story of his progenitor Jacob buying off his brother’s birthright. So within the context of kingdoms and kings as had been practiced in Mesopotamia for several millennia, Jesus didn’t have a right to anything but a petty vasalship.

What he was not
So how did Jesus get mixed up in this plot? Well Andrew, Peter’s brother, was a follower of John the Baptist. After John declares Jesus to be the Lamb of God to Andrew and another, the two immediately tail Jesus and follow him home. The next day Andrew shags his brother Peter and tells him he and his bud have found the prophesied “Messias.” The thing snowballs as Jesus picks up Philip from the same suburb as Andrew and Peter. Philip goes off to find his bud Nathaniel and tells him they have found the Mosaic-law-and-prophets-prophesied coming of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. (Nathaniel is a skeptic, but flip-flops after Jesus tells him he saw Nathaniel before Philip shagged him. Huh?) Stop right there! Isn’t this declaration a bit opportunistic? In Matthew Jesus asks Peter who he thinks Jesus is and Peter tells him he is the Christ, the Son of the living God. But the word Christ is Greek for “the anointed”, meaning the Messias. But it doesn’t have anything to do with also being the Son of God. Is Peter adept at Greek, or is this the Gospel author slipping in the Greek form? (By the way, Peter’s subsequent rebuke by Jesus as possessed of Satan is another anachronism, for Satan in Hebrew means “accuser,” while its Greek equivalent  diabolos from which diablo or devil is derived means “aggressor.” The first anachronism is "Jesus of Nazareth")

And where does it say in Deuteronomy or any of the Pentateuch books that “Jesus of Nazareth”, a son of Joseph, was the prophesied Messiah? The town of Nazareth is not even mentioned in available Jewish writings of the period, and only appears no earlier than 200 AD in the writings of Sextus Julius Africanus and Origen by the dubious variant Nazará.  The etymology of “Nazareth” is disputedly undecided by scholars as to whether it is a genuine variant of the Aramaic language of the time. To date, no one knows for sure if there truly was a town called Nazareth, although the purported location has an archeological history extending back to 2200 BCE. Nathaniel declares Jesus to be the Son of God, and the King of Israel. Here again we are confronted with anachronisms, products of a much later age by True Believers who are descendent scribes (by 200+ years) of the early sect. We know that Nathaniel would have to be ignorant of Israelite history, for the northern kingdom was known as Israel, while the southern kingdom was of Judah. If Jesus was a descendent of Judah, how then could he be the rightful king of Israel, while later at the Crucifixion he is labeled the king of the Jews? Whoever wrote the Gospels did not get their stories straight, as we see over and over throughout the narratives. Much has been investigated on this problem by able scholars such as Bart Ehrman, F. Scrivener, Vincent Taylor, etc. After these chroniclers got through with their fraudulent treatment of so-called eye-witness accounts, Constantine (who was raised in England as a Christian) directed St. Augustine and Eusebius to gather all these disagreeable contorted manuscripts and compile a single compendium and dogma according to his decrees. Whereupon Eusebius gathered them all up, saved those that conformed to the decrees, and directed the burning of those then labeled heretical at the Council of Nicea.

Salvation Obsession
The problem originates with the term Messias. The earliest form of this word in Hebrew is MSSH, a derivative of Messeh/Mûshûs referring in ancient Mesopotamia to the sacred crocodile. Those who by lineage had the right to rule in Egypt were anointed with the crocodile’s fat, by their consort, the Queen. This ritual was a part of the ring-lord culture which predates the Sumerian civilization, originating in the Balkans. The selling of the birthright by Esau to Jacob is likely a story fabricated by his descendents, for the birthright is a blood and firstborn prerogative. It cannot be sold or given away, only conferred upon next of kin with the death of the rightful heir if he has no posterity. This is the Sumerian legacy of kingly birthright, observed by the Pharaohs for centuries. Esau, who we learn very little of in the Old Testament, fathered the kings of Assyria and Babylonia, as well as the Hyksos kings of Egypt. The tiny wannabe kingdom of Israel is surrounded by their cousin rulers who have the most direct claim to kingship. So we can discern here that in the book of Isaiah, even if the author knew anything about the royal dynasty, was in error about a prophesied Messiah liberating the Jews at some distant time. But since the specific reference is another anachronistic bending of Isaiah (a self-fulfilling prophecy, found everywhere in the New Testament), we can set that also to rest. Jesus by lineage could never be a King of kings, because he was not a direct descendent of Esau! As for his anointing as the Messias, this is presumed to have happened when Mary Magdalene washed his feet with her tears and anointed his head with spikenard. (And now you know the rest of the story behind the Second Anointing ritual in the Morgdum temple. While the form is only partially there, the right of possession is a fraud and impossible for Caucasian Mormons. Without a direct pedigree to the Starfire council of nine—the Elohim, they have no claim to a kingdom of any kind under any aegis. The bestowal of full priesthood authority on the earth is a hoax, for kingship was never inclusive of priesthoods, even though the high priesthood was administered with spiked olive oil in ancient Israel.) In some scholarly circles it is asserted that Jesus did not receive of any priesthood until after anointing, at the end of his ministry. This priesthood was of Melchizedek descent, although its authenticity is quite dubious because of the intervening years and lack of records between the time of Melchizedek and the Nazarene community in Galilee.

Readers of the corrupted scriptures (and they are all corrupt, including those of the Essenes and the Ebionites, etc) assume that because those men Jesus chose to become his apostles were looking for a Messias (or “foundation stones” as the Essenes describe them), that he acknowledged being the Messias. If this be true, then he was lying to Pilate when he was asked if he was a king of the Jews, and he denied it. This is one of the most fundamental falsehoods perpetrated in the ancient texts, that Jesus declared himself to be the long awaited Messias to deliver Israel from bondage. Attend this passage from the Gospel of the Twelve:

“And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him: and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am?
They answering said, John the Baptist; but some [say], Elias; and others [say], that one of the old prophets is risen again. He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter answering said, The Christ of God. And he straitly charged them, and commanded [them] to tell no man that thing;...”

Peter believes that Jesus is the Messias (Christ, in Greek, and another hearsay anachronism), but Jesus immediately demands that they say nothing to anyone about this. Why? Because it is too early in his ministry for the people to know? Does he want them to discover it on their own? Or is he trying to quell this assumption by his disciples without actually coming out and telling them he is not who they think he is? If he told them he was not the Messias, would they continue to learn his teachings? It is my view that Jesus did not disabuse anyone of their beliefs, but allowed them to discover for themselves the truth of his doctrines and his mission. It was not a question of deception. It was a condition of having eyes that saw, ears that heard, and a heart that garnered the truth when it was manifest. How often did Jesus remind his chosen disciples about seeing and hearing? This was ever the way of the Masters, for they never went about proselytizing to obtain acolytes. People who adore and cherish the truth are not interested in becoming an acolyte, and certainly not in participating in a cult (worship; reverence, devotion, admiration of the charismatic proselytizer). They see, hear, and understand truth when it is before them, and treasure it in their hearts. They’re not looking for someone to lead them, guide them, walk beside them, helping them find “The Way.”

It has ever been the method of personalities seeking acclaim, status, and influence to impose upon the credulity of others. Joseph Smith was exceptionally adept at this and Isaac Hale among many other contemporaries, saw right through it. Joseph was able to ferret out what people believed and reflect an image of it back to them, so they were gulled by their own credulity. By definition, a politician must do this. When he fails, he loses credibility and is replaced. Hitler did it, Stalin did it, George Washington did it, all religious founders did it. Saul of Tarsas did it. The vanguard of the Messias was John the B, but the vanguard of Christianity was Paul the Persecutor. How did they do this? By fomenting the beliefs of the people. Neither Jesus nor Paul, nor Peter created Christianity. The people who craved it did. The people who craved Germany’s national salvation are the ones who created National Socialism. Hitler just rode the wave. Everywhere one looks into the causes of WWI, you find historians describing a world that was economically and socially ripe for it. Tyrants don’t grasp the reigns of power, people give it to them. Cults are not created by the charismatic leader. People exalt him. Monk monasteries are not created by the teacher. The people create it. It is people looking for the means and personage to facilitate escape from accountability. The eminent psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz, wrote:

“People dream of making the virtuous powerful, so they can depend on them.  Since they cannot do that people choose to make the powerful virtuous, glorying in being victimized by them.  After their secular savior—their Robespierre or Stalin—is safely in his grave, then the people glory once more in denouncing him as a betrayer of their trust.  Then they repeat the cycle.... The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy—and, in our age, monomedicine.  The belief that there is only one right way to live—only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs—is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity.

This appellation of Messias in the Bible is nowhere to be found declared by Jesus of himself. It is contrary to his stated mission, and anywhere in a text that such appears to be the case there will be found a conflation of Christian salvation doctrines with it. The reader assumes it means what they are preconditioned in their minds to think it reads.  When John the B. inquired of Jesus if he was that awaited Messias, how did Jesus respond? He sent John’s messengers back with the declaration that the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, etc., and let John decide for himself. Kind of a rude response if John the B. thought he was preparing the way for Israel’s political deliverer. John the B. was a Nazarene, as was Jesus, and his father Joseph. None of these Nazarenes, who were trained by the Essenes in The Way, knew what to think of Jesus as he went about fulfilling his mission.


Historical Background
Investigating the origin of the Nazarenes we find ourselves back at the time of the Babylonian captivity. The Israelite priests were introduced to Pythagoras. The irony is that much of the Greek religious pantheon derived from the Mosaic influence in Egypt. With the intervening years the Greeks morphed the Mosaic deities (not just one, in the beginning) into their own, adding embellishments and their own characteristics. The Levitical priests of the exile then inserted this Greek perspective into their rewrite of the Torah, which is the Deuteronomist version of the royal cult which Margaret Barker was trying to retrieve in her investigative works, The Older Testament and The Great Angel. This royal cult was none other than the Sumerian pantheon of gods. YHWH, the Judaen god, merged with the Israelite god Elohim, are respectively in Sumerian culture, Enki-Ea, and Enlil/NinLil. Without the Sumer tablets professor Barker was at a standstill in disassembling the confusion. (Joseph Smith didn’t stand a chance getting the distinction corrected. His “inspired” version of the Bible is worse than a joke.) The kings and queens of all the empires dating back to Sumer are all blood related originating in Ansar the heavenly father, and Kisar the earthly mother. Both these deities are heavily referenced by Jesus in his teaching recounted in the Essene Gospel of Peace. There Jesus does not refer to them as literal parents of the human race, but as archetypes of Nature which are bestowed human qualities. It was common to deify the kings and queens in ancient religious practice, who personify the Creators of heaven and earth.) The etymology of Nazari/Nazarene stems from Ansar. The Hebrew, a Phoenician script, with their blessed abandonment of vowels (!!!) wrote it as NSR (which allowed as many variants of pronunciation as one can conjure), becoming Nas Sar, Nasi Sar, both meaning “prince.” Thus Nasi Sar is the equivalent of “Prince of princes.” It is easy to see how a pissant wannabe nation would convert the concept of “Prince of princes” into “King of kings” as part of the national identity elevation over their rightful cousins and the self-fulfillment of their prophecies.

At the time of Jesus, anyone could consecrate themself to some particular objective for any amount of time, revocable by the father or mother over minors, and be referred to a Nazorean. The firstborn son was often consecrated to god (e.g. Sampson), which explains why Mary and Joseph, Nazari themselves, introduced Jesus to the order. This consecration was begun with the initiation into the Essene sect, for rights of purification and instruction. So now you know how Jesus as a youth could sit in the temple and confound the elders. He was trained in the ancient texts preserved by the Essene community. What does Jesus do at the conclusion of his personal preparations and sanctifying? Luke tells us he went into the temple and declared the prophecy of Isaiah 61 was fulfilled in their ears! Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. He was raised by devout True Believers. The “salvation” promised by the Lord in Isaiah is the recapture of their Golden Age of political supremacy, economical prowess over other nations, and the healing of the maimed both physically and spiritually. It is a restoration of all they had lost, ascribed to their wickedness and disobedience in serving other gods. As a Master Jesus did not see himself as a political deliverer of the captive, but a deliverer of those who were held captive by their suffering, their ignorance, their infirmities. He sought to teach them personal responsibility and accountability for their physical and spiritual health.

It is interesting to note here that in the Essene book of Moses, the higher law which Moses downgraded for the dim-witted was:

Thou shalt have no other Laws before me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any image of the Law in heaven above or in the earth beneath. I am the invisible Law, without beginning and without end.
Thou shalt not make unto thee false laws, for I am the Law, and the whole Law of all laws. If thou forsake me, thou shalt be visited by disasters for generation upon generation.
If thou keepest my commandments, thou shalt enter the Infinite Garden where stands the Tree of Life in the midst of the Eternal Sea.
Thou shalt not violate the Law. The Law is thy God, who shall not hold thee guiltless.
Honor thy Earthly Mother, that thy days may be long upon the land, and honor thy Heavenly Father, that eternal life be thine in the heavens, for the earth and the heavens are given unto thee by the Law, which is thy God.
Thou shalt greet thy Earthly Mother on the morning of the Sabbath.
Thou shalt greet the Angel of Earth on the second morning.
Thou shalt greet the Angel of Life on the third morning.
Thou shalt greet the Angel of Joy on the fourth morning.
Thou shalt greet the Angel of Sun on the fifth morning.
Thou shalt greet the Angel of Water on the sixth morning,
Thou shalt greet the Angel of Air on the seventh morning-
All these Angels of the Earthly Mother shalt thou greet, and consecrate thyself to them, that thou
mayest enter the Infinite Garden where stands the Tree of Life.
Thou shalt worship thy Heavenly Father on the evening of the Sabbath.
Thou shalt commune with the Angel of Eternal Life on the second evening.
Thou shalt commune with the Angel of Work on the third evening.
Thou shalt commune with the Angel of Peace on the fourth evening.
Thou shalt commune with the Angel of Power on the fifth evening,
Thou shalt commune with the Angel of Love on the sixth evening.
Thou shalt commune with the Angel of Wisdom on the seventh evening.
All these Angels of the Heavenly Father shalt thou commune with, that thy soul may bathe in the Fountain of Light, and enter into the Sea of Eternity.
The seventh day is the Sabbath: thou shalt remember it, keep it holy. The Sabbath is the day of the Light of the Law, thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work, but search the Light, the Kingdom of thy God, and all things shall be given unto thee. For know ye that during six days thou shalt work with the Angels, but the seventh day shalt thou dwell in the Light of thy Lord, who is the holy Law.
Thou shalt not take the life from any living thing. Life comes only from God, who giveth it and taketh it away.
Thou shalt not debase Love. It is the sacred gift of thy Heavenly Father.
Thou Shalt not trade thy Soul, the priceless gift of the loving God, for the riches of the world, which are as seeds sown on stony ground, having no root in themselves, and so enduring but for a little while.
Thou shalt not be a false witness of the Law, to use it against thy brother: Only God knoweth the beginning and the ending of all things, for his eye is single, and he is the holy Law.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's possessions. The Law giveth unto thee much greater gifts, even the earth and the heavens, if thou keep the Commandments of the Lord thy God.


The loss of Israel ‘s political preeminence was through the curse they brought upon themselves by departure from the lesser Laws of Peace and Prosperity. The original code of Law was had among the people of this planet going back all the way to Horus, when the “Gods” came down among men and taught them how to live. It was the teachings of the Akhu that the Essenes were attempting to preserve. The problem was the Deuteronomists, the exiled Levtical priests in Babylon, who not only re-wrote the lesser Law in contemporary terms, but destroyed the references to the older Law which they were charged to preserve, by not perpetuating them as the Shemsu-Hor had been doing for thousands of years. In this they violated the first commandment of the Law: thou shalt not subvert it nor make any facsimile of it. (Technically, Moses did just that when he dumbed it down, rather than leave the people to their lusts.) The restoration they were looking for began at the time of Isaiah’s prophecies when he warned the king of Judah against foreign alliances (ca 739 BC). Disregarding these warnings Judah fell into Babylonian subjection. This is the origin of the “restoration” and “salvation” in Jewish beliefs, transmogrified into the Christian (Pauline) prophecy of the return of Jesus as King of kings, Lord of lords, and the Mormon doctrine of Apostasy and Restoration preparatory to his Millennial reign. Of course the entire house of embellished and corrupt prophetic cards collapse because Jesus’ mission was the restoration of the Jews to the original Law they had abandoned, who all were astonished at his understanding and wisdom. He just didn’t tell Pilate the whole story, because he knew if the people began keeping the Law as had been given them anciently the Roman subordination would collapse of its own weight, while the people would have internal peace by living justly with all men. Such a course would be construed as subversion by Roman authority. What is most important to observe in these historical accounts is that Jesus does NOT portray himself as a political liberator in the Gospel of Peace, whereas in the later Christian Gospels (including the Essene Gospel of the Twelve) it is a remnant of the Tolkien (Sumerian) Return of the King, the Solar Myth. This subversion of Pauline Christianity was implemented by the conspiracy of Constantine, Augustine, and Eusebius at Nicea. They incorporated the solar myth of pagan origin, as well as the fabrication of the miracle fables we read today, and the present abomination of blood Atonement by crucifixion. The Jews never considered Jesus a Messias because the orthodox among them were looking for a king with the power to break their occupation and economic servitude. It is for this reason he was mocked as the King of the Jews at the crucifixion, all the while the Sanhedrin leaders were scapegoating him with this propaganda in order to subvert his rising popularity among the people. He was seen as the political third party between the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Morgdumb is correct about the early Church apostasy. What they don’t realize, though Joseph Smith did have a small clue, was that the entire New (and Old) Testament was corrupt, not just translated incorrectly. The apostasy began with the Pauline churches that split off from the Essene driven Jerusalem “church.” This “church” fled Jerusalem with the advent of the Roman destruction in 64AD. The apostasy began with Paul arrogating to himself the status of Apostle of Jesus, with Peter tailing along for a short period. Peter was not the conservator of the church, for in the Essene Gospel of the Twelve Jesus explicitly tells Peter, he, Jesus, is the rock, the cornerstone, and the twelve form the foundation of the allegorical building of his “kingdom.” Peter never did find his conviction, for it was Jesus’ brother, James the Just who watched over the Jerusalem church until martyrdom. Peter fades into the background until he too is martyred. Saul of Tarsus, seeing that he could not obtain the Jewish daughter he wanted to wed, persecuted the Essenes until his so-called conversion, where upon he changed his tactic of persecution by Jewish law to subversion by phoney conversion and false self-effacement. Paul’s “conversion” stories are just as inconsistent as Joseph Smith’s, and he used the same con game that Joseph did to jump start his own religion.

Conclusion
When one reads the Gospel of the Essenes, the character of Jesus and his purported mission is consistent with his actions as a teacher and healer in the four Gospels. What is not consistent is all the Messianic and Divine hyperbole found in the New Testament and the self-fulfilling retroactive prophecies—the wresting of the Old Testament passages that ordinary Jews knew did not have anything to do with the Rabbi Jesus.

Jesus was who he said he was, and not what later acolytes of Paul’s preaching made him into. He was an ordinary man of extraordinary education and virtue—a man of the craft, born of a physical father Joseph, also a man of the craft, and a young virgin maiden, Mary. Taught by the Essenes in his youth and learned in the various skills of the craft in other countries, his stated mission was to bear witness of the truth, to heal the infirm. When he told the Nazari of his youth the truth of their own hypocrisy, they sought to “bash in his head” as the Hungarian proverb warns. And so it was with all those he confronted with their works of mischief, wickedness, and abandonment of accountability.

One cannot make the blind to see that does not know he is blind; nor the deaf to hear, that does not know he is deaf; nor heal those who do not feel ill; nor the arrogant to understand who do not know their ignorance.

Seth Smee

Addendum 9-28-14
U.G. Krishnamurti, pointing "to his heel and said that it was the only `sole', and that the other soul, if there was one, was fed to the point of indigestion by all those holy men and so-called messiahs.”

Bruce: “What if I need you?  What if I have questions?”
God:    “Ha ha ha.  That’s your problem Bruce—that’s everybody’s problem.  You keep looking up” [for your solutions]. Bruce Almighty




When a toddler is ready to walk on his/her own, (S)he lets go of the parent's fingers and begins the exploration of the world, solo. It is a rite of passage missing in transition to adulthood, in the individual, the family and Nations.



REFERENCES
John 18:33-37
Luke 14
Luke 4:16-30
Luke 9:18-21
Gospel of the 12, Lection IX
Gospel of the 12, Lection XIII
Gospel of the 12, Lection XVII
Laurence Gardner, Genesis of the Grail Kings, xiii, p155, Realm of the Ring Lords
The Nazarene Way of Essenic Studies, Caesar's Messiah; http://www.thenazareneway.com/Caesar%27s%20Messiah%20Commentary.htm
The Golden Age Project, http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/genesis.php
Bart Ehrman, Jesus Interrupted
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason pp19-20
Thomas Szasz, The Untamed Tongue p155,160
Hannah Arendt, The Origin of Totalitarianism p458
Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind
“Religion is not a matter of God, church, holy cause, etc. These are but accessories. The source of religious preoccupation is in the self, or rather the rejection of the self.” p25

“It is the weak who strain their ears for a new word, clutch at every promise and rally around a savior and a redeemer.” p28

The True Believer
“When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need of something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives. Hence the embracing of a substitute will necessarily be passionate and extreme. We can have qualified confidence in ourselves, but the faith we have in our nation, religion, race or holy cause has to be extravagant and uncompromising. A substitute embraced in moderation cannot supplant and efface the self we want to forget. We cannot be sure that we have something worth living for unless we are ready to die for it. This readiness to die is evidence to ourselves and others that what we had to take as a substitute for an irrevocably missed or spoiled first choice is indeed the best there ever was.” p16


Charles Moore, History of Western Civilization I, April 2003 Lara Lee Show
“...the head of the Jesuits, gathered together a bunch of Jesuits not long ago in Rome and explained to them the truth about Islam. And the truth about Islam is that it was created deliberately by the Catholic Church, on the advice of St Augustine, at the time of the fall of the Roman Empire. And the reason behind this is rather startling. It turns out that Christianity was found not by Jesus, but by Constantine at the council of Nicea. That there was a Jesus, the last thing in the mind of that person was to have a Church, or any organization to follow him. He was too busy trying to share his life and insights with the people around him. His life is like that of Buddha, who also forbade any religion in his name. Now, all Masters do that; the true Masters don’t want religion following them, they simply want people to find out what they found out. Constantine founded Christianity, and the guy he got to the editing on the scriptures was named Eusebius. Eusebius was delivered by the bishops of the then up and running gatherings of so-called Christians.”

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Personal Epiphany







Just prior to turning 41 I filed for divorce. This was an agonizing decision I had wrestled with for several years. Losing my bid as plaintiff in court I spent the ensuing months possessed of considerable anxiety over the propriety and consequences of the decision and its subsequent loss. I was fearful of having taken a course in life for which there was no remedy for my children, and had consigned myself and them to an endless misery. The struggle to find useful purpose in 19 years of non-functioning marriage consumed my daily thoughts. I had failed miserably to be a decent father on more than one occasion. Against this backdrop I found myself suddenly extricated from the trivialities of bachelor living to another existence. On the night of November 8th, 1991 I retired to bed much earlier than usual. The date is peculiar as it was the 56th wedding anniversary of my deceased parents, the same day of the week, the same time of evening of their ceremony, and at the time of this experience I had not any knowledge of these details. The last thing I remember seeing before falling asleep was looking at my alarm clock which read 8:30PM.


The next thing I was conscious of was walking north on the sidewalk outside the house where I grew up. This house was demolished as were most of them on the street by the 1970s. Presently my parents walked up from behind and “spoke” to me about going into the house to discuss important matters. After some unknown length of time discussing my marital situation with my mother we exited the house back in the direction they had arrived and we made ascension into another place via a swirling dark vortex. There were a number of people who were also entering and departing. It all seemed so natural and ordinary. The moment we entered the blackness, we moved at such speed I don’t remember anything of the journey, only the arrival at a quarried stone building used for consultation--the kind people engage in to obtain a clearer sense of purpose.

We arrived at a room on an upper floor and my mother instructed me to enter through a door to our left where I would be visited shortly by way of their prior arrangement. I would guess the room was on the order of twenty to thirty feet on each side. I was alone and the room was empty and windowless, but well lit without evidence of artificial lighting.  Presently the door opened and a man came in, dressed in simple white robes.  He was taller than I, about six feet.  He had a strong build without looking excessively muscular, and walked with perfect confidence.  His hair was white with some moderate curling, and it appeared to flow down around his head like a waterfall.  Within a moment I recognized him, not from his facial features, but from the aura of his countenance.  I suddenly remembered we were friends and that we had spent time with each other often before I had entered mortality. It was a flood of warm memories instantly unlocked.  As He approached me I knew him to be Jesus and the same overwhelming, enveloping love I had experienced with my mother years earlier flowed from His being.  Only His was much stronger and radiated farther out.  I was also aware of His immense age.  He had been alive for a very long time in terms of planetary years.  My impression was at least a quarter million, but there is no way to quantify it in mortal terms. I was not nearly as old as He.

I was filled with deep feelings of respect and esteem for Him, and He for me. I felt a measure of awe, and filled with a wonderful sense of value in being privileged to have had His friendship all of my existence. The conversation though mental and extremely fast went something like this:

Jesus: (With considerable affection and slight humor) “You know we could have had this visit a lot sooner, but your attention was so riveted on your mistakes and guilt none of us could reach you. We’ve been waiting.”

Smee: (Feeling a lot of remorse and humiliation) “I did not know who to trust, not for lack of trying to find intelligent help. I tried really hard in spite of all the adverse situations to do the right thing, and made a serious mess of my paternal stewardship. I fear my children may never recover from my mistreatment of them, and then the divorce turned out far worse than I had anticipated. What hope have they now of growing to adulthood without serious relationship issues? I feel really hopeless about their prospects for a functional life. I can’t help wondering if I could have found some way to hang on in spite of their mother’s indifference to our emotional needs.”

Jesus: (brilliant with love, acceptance, confidence) “I know about all you have gone through, all you have done for good and ill, about your children, their struggles, and their fate. They will be fine, you have not damaged their lives “beyond repair”, and they will be attended to while in the flesh, just as you have been. None can judge or condemn you for your mistakes and their evil consequence but you alone. It is not mine to do either, but only mine to extend the helping hand to those who are willing and in need, to lead them through the door of transcendence. The measure of mortality is not in the mistakes men make, any lack of conviction, will, or power to control. It is not through merit nor my “grace” as the world perceives it that Man obtains transcendence and redemption. The purpose of mortality is not after the manner of Man’s conception, and therefore the value of the soul is not predicated upon the concepts of fallibility nor merit. Rather mortality’s purpose is to experience powerlessness and by it magnify the virtue of compassion and love, for love is the very essence of power in all of Creation. The measure of your life will not be in the misdeeds nor the good deeds you have achieved, to be weighed in a balance scale. It is solely by the amount of love you have administered to those who need it, that their own flame dies not. Your fallibility and its consequences are redeemed through my love as it is in all love, as you permit it to have influence in your life. The purpose of life is in how much you grow in love, for these mortal experiences are but a process in this journey of Being. The only harm you can commit is refraining from loving others when they require it, and erecting prison walls of guilt, remorse, and unforgiveness about yourself. To do so delays growth and produces exquisite, unnecessary torment from which not even Man’s God can deliver.

So that you may find rest to your soul, let us review your life from the beginning. Let us examine your choices and the growth you have obtained from them. You shall see the whole of your life, all that it was before mortality, all that is has been to now and may be until you die the mortal death, and where these choices are leading you to.”

Smee: (gaining courage and hope) “Lead on Lord. Restore my soul. Show me who I am.”

Presently the walls seemed to fade away and in their place scenes from my life appeared.  It was panoramic, only all around me.  It was like stereoscopic vision, with multiple scenes happening, past, present and future, each with their own issue and events pertinent to a particular cusp.  I had never imagined it would be possible to learn on such a scale.  Here we think, read, and speak in serial form.  There, it was in parallel, the mind multitasking each subject with complete ease.  As I learned from observation and a kind of interactive process with what I saw (the scenes changed according to what I wanted to understand), I marveled at how there seemed to be no limitation to the amount of information the human mind could process at once.  It has taken a number of years since this review to unzip all those packets of entwined learning and put them into a serialized form I could articulate.  Even then it has been very difficult to put into words for there is often no analog of experience in mortality with which to describe those things.

The whole of my life was there before me, behind me, all around. I could analyze and evaluate all I wished to while at the same time absorbing the meaning of each experience and knowing its value. I saw my earliest experiences up to entering the physical body, all that had transpired in it, numerous possibilities yet to be chosen, the transition of dying, and returning home. It was like conversing with a congregation of souls and not losing focus with a single individual, all the while correlating the meaning and significance of each person’s communication into an integral whole. It was real-time; being in tune with Creation, being in touch with life. This panoramic review continued for quite some time. It seemed but only an instant, yet in retrospect encompassed subjectively most of the “day.”

At length when I was satisfied, understanding that which I had seen, I had another question, like a yearning.

Smee: (great curiosity and thirst for understanding) “Lord, I want to know why we are, what we are to become. Where can I go from here, after mortality is finished? Is it possible for such a seemingly insignificant person as I among innumerable souls, many of whom possess great capacity, to amount to something of value to the whole of Man’s existence? What IS Man’s Destiny?”

Jesus: (laughing with delight) “Those are big questions that are not easily answered. To gain those answers, one must learn many new ideas, and that requires experiences of growth. But come along, let us visit some of the different levels of progression that Man has achieved. Let us behold the marvels of that which they have attained. It will be a fun experience!”

Smee: (terribly agitated with excitement) “Yes! Let’s go see what others have become! I want to see what if any, limits there are to what I may achieve, and how much happiness can be created.”

So with Jesus close by my side we traveled great distances over the next “day”, stopping to observe  many places throughout this region of space, how other souls had chosen to realize their potential. Most of those localized civilizations we observed from a distance. There was little interaction with them because of my lack of sufficient growth to comprehend the nuances of their objectives. Our perceptions and understanding of Creation comes in stages of development. This is hard to explain. The Universe is endless. It is not possible to take it all in. If I were to guess, we went to the local group of galaxies. I’m pretty sure it was not limited to just our own, which is relatively young. But the scenes were magnificent. Beautiful creations everywhere, both in Nature, and that which Man had invented. There was a level of happiness and love in each one unique to their enterprise unparalleled in anything I had contemplated or beheld before. Satisfied that there was plenty to keep me occupied for a very long time, and prospects for happiness and beauty unlimited, we returned to the same room we had departed from.

Feeling immensely edified and enlarged, saturated with awe and wonder at those scenes I had observed, I wanted to keep them forever in my heart and mind. I had to ask:

Smee: “Going back to my mortal life, can I retain what I have learned from our adventure?”

Jesus: (very amused but steadfast) “Knowing now what you do about yourself, do you believe you can refrain from trying to manipulate life and avoid the painful experiences to come? Do you believe you can still realize the full growth you want by circumventing the hardest parts and still arrive at the person you want to be?”

Smee: (dismayed and acquiescing) “You are right. I could not resist trying to avoid the painful parts. I would only succeed in making my life and the lives of others more complicated. But I don’t want to go back to that feeling of hopelessness and despair for the future. I need to know I will get through all those things and mortality will turn out well. How can I know I am making the right choices?”

Jesus: (brilliant again with His love and compassion) “Most of these things will be suppressed in your memory, particularly what you have observed in our journey together. This is necessary so that you will not be overwhelmed by them when you experience the challenging events to come. The torment of the contrast will make them all the more difficult and cause you to shirk them. However, you can be permitted to remember particular portions of what you have seen and learned after the critical moments have passed, so that you can know you are still heading in the direction you want to go.”

Jesus extended His hand and touched me with His index finger on the forehead between the eyebrows, and then again midway on the breastbone while speaking thus:

Jesus: “I seal these memories in your mind and heart, to be held in reserve until the end of mortality. You will know and remember only that which is needful to sustain you in tribulation, to give you hope and peace to your soul. You will not be alone, but can receive of my presence as you desire to be comforted.”

His touch changed me in ways I cannot describe. I felt transformed, as if a part of me was supplanted with something greater. It was a sense of surety, of confidence and self-assurance. In a way it felt like being reunited with my pre-mortal self. The emotional impact was almost overwhelming. I felt myself return to my physical body briefly, restless with a remorseful agitation for the person I had been, and then leaving that distraught person behind. Instantly I was back in His presence, feeling whole.

Jesus: (exuding joy and gaiety, pointing to the room’s corner behind Him a long table appeared, laden with comestibles) “Let’s celebrate this time together. Here is a banquet of fruits and vegetables to refresh ourselves.”

At this juncture my parents entered the room and we all feasted to our satisfaction upon the most exquisite tasting food I’d ever had. Jesus then departed to attend other matters. The next thing I remember was arising from sleeping in a second floor bedroom of the old house mentioned earlier. I trotted down the stairs which were adjacent to the kitchen. Somehow I knew mother was there, and seeing her she greeted me. I asked her where dad was and she said he had matters to attend to. I was disappointed. I had not heard him utter a single word the entire time. I had hoped we could discuss those issues that had bothered me when living in that house, and now he was gone.

I asked mother if any of what I had experienced actually happened, or if it was all just a fabrication of my own dreaming. She said it indeed did happen, just as I had experienced it in every detail, and that I should not deny it, for it would be cause for regret. She had been preparing something to eat for us and I sat with her enjoying a breakfast I could not remember having done since a young boy.

I awoke in a manner similar to the previous time she had visited with me. It was an event of strange disorientation, a kind of vertigo, but not of physical balance. It was somewhat like stepping between two moving trains, one traveling at a different height and speed, combined with a sense of awareness of location changing over a great distance. I was there, then rapidly and with the sensation of extreme movement, like stepping onto a people mover at an airport, I was here. I felt the sense of elapsed time change, and was instantly awake and alert. Opening my eyes I saw the clock which glowed with the time of 12:30 AM.

There have been moments over the intervening years I've cursed having experienced this epiphany. Before it happened, it was never something on my mind, the transcendence of a spiritual quest. All I wanted was answers to some basic issues that had plagued me since my earliest childhood memories. Like many people who have passed through their Near Death Episode and struggled with adjusting to living in this world of flesh, I've had my moments too. I don't like in the aggregate being here. I love the living beings on this planet more than I did before. The beauty of this planet is extraordinary in its depth and variety. I went through a period of increased sensitivity to light, irritation with hard raucous music, and an increased revulsion of news broadcasts or TV/movie programming that focuses on denigration of the human soul. I no longer have any interest in religion. It is a creation of Man, and its method of operation is domination and control of the human soul. Contrary to popular belief of the religious, it is the most stifling activity man can engage in to prevent spiritual growth.

There have been sudden moments of illumination of people's lives I hardly knew and knowing from it the troubles they would have if they didn't relinquish their lust for control of life. I wrestled, and at times continue to wrestle with depression during personal setbacks or that of other people who lose their health, spouse, or friends. I'm not one of those people who can say I am better for having been through this. There have been times when it has been a light to my footsteps, imparting courage and confidence to those who falter from their own burdens. At times the love of Jesus has sustained me in full confidence, rarely for myself, but to lift up the dispirited. There are still certain things that scare the bejesus out of me, but none of them to do with death. The thing I fear most is a protracted illness, fraught with pain and disability, that would encumber those closest to me with an impossible burden. I have been a helping hand over the years to such people and their family. It is not an easy task to lift up the hands of those who've lost their courage and spirit from travail.

Perhaps someone may find the answers here that I was searching for. The one thing that has stuck with me all this time is the extraordinary certitude I have about it. Religion was never my source of faith or conviction. For me, the answers I received imparted a clarity of understanding that surpasses all other forms of learning. May this story help restore a sense of personal value to an ailing soul.

SethSmee