Mystery Babylon Part II: Superstition

Hiram Abiff and the three Ruffians

Welcome to part two of this Mystery Babylon series. As promised, in this segment I'll be delving into the Masonic meaning of the three fishes that consumed the phallus, or generative force, of Osiris. The phallus, symbolized by the Egyptian Obelisk, represents the Lost Word of Freemasonry, and when it is recovered, Mystery Babylon will be able to establish it's "utopia" on earth; a one-world socialistic totalitarian state. The three fishes represent the Church (Superstition), the State (Fear), and the Mob (Ignorance); the three instruments the conspirators will co-opt and then use to implement the New World Order.

These institutions are the sworn enemies of the mystery schools and they believe in keeping their enemies close in order to deceive you. They know that most people are psychologically dependent on Church and State and find childlike security in these worldly organizations. After all, we are all "children" of God, and are subconsciously looking for a paternal substitute during our sojourn on this earth. This human weakness is exploited by the mystery adepts, and the very institutions we are raised to believe are bastions of security are, in reality, instruments of enslavement. This is why Nephi said, "cursed is he that putteth his trust in the arm of flesh." The only being worthy of our trust is Jesus Christ, the one true God. 

To understand where the symbolism for these three fishes come from we need to understand some basic Masonic lore. Freemasonry traces it’s origins back to the temple of Solomon, which was built by Hiram of Tyre. They insert an extrabiblical character named Hiram Abiff, a supposed friend of the real Hiram, who was a craftsman and a "Master Builder."1 He is also known as "the Widow's Son," a representation

Mystery Babylon: Into the Abyss

Two Women: Two Churches

John described two women in his vision on Patmos that symbolically represent two groups. The first woman is described thus:

And there appeared a great sign in heaven, in the likeness of things on the earth: a woman, clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. And the woman, being with child, cried, travailing in birth and pained to be delivered... And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up unto God and his throne. (Revelation 12:1-5)

Later John reveals her identity: she is the church of God, her child was the Kingdom of God and his Christ.  Joseph Smith taught they were distinctly different entities from one another.

And the second woman:

And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten thorns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and adorned with gold, and precious stones, and pearls, and having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication. And upon her forehead was a name written: Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wondered with great awe. (Revelation 17: 3-5)

John also reveals her identity: "the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth." (17:18)

Nephi also saw what John saw. He described the two women in this way: 

And it came to pass that he [the angel] said unto me: Look, and behold the great and abominable church, which is the mother of abominations, whose founder is the devil. And he said unto me: Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth. And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the whore of all the earth, and she sat upon many waters; and she had dominion over all the earth, among all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people. (1 Nephi 14: 9-10, Emphasis Added)

 As for the first woman, we know she is not the LDS Church, or any organization for that matter. She represents the humble followers of Christ, spread throughout the margins of society, whose numbers are few.

 But who is the second woman, who "reigns over the kings of the earth?" Indeed, what is the "Great and Abominable church of the devil"?  H. Verlan Andersen, a friend of President Benson's and a good man, wrote a book with that very title. He concluded that the church of the devil is "prostituted government." He was definitely on the right track but the rabbit hole goes much, much deeper. I am going to attempt to plunge deep down that abyss in this post, but there is so much material that I might have to stretch this out in several parts. Nevertheless, this stuff is important and needs to be addressed. It is the only way to understand how the world really works and what is behind current agendas like the Covid "pandemic." 

The Secret Plans of the Gadiantons

Thanks to the Book of Mormon we know about Secret Combinations and their plan of world domination. However, the prophets did not reveal to us the details of the secret plans and oaths of the conspirators, yet we are told by Moroni that "they are had among all people." This omission was not because God wants us to remain ignorant of the oaths, but rather because there was limited room on the plates and the "secret plans" are literally everywhere, hidden in plain sight all around us. But they do give us clues as to where to start looking:

And behold, I am Giddianhi; and I am the governor of this secret society of Gadianton; which society and the works thereof I know to be good; and they are of ancient date and they have been handed down unto us. (3 Ne 3:9 Emphasis Added)

"Ancient date."  That is where we start. Keep in mind what Giddianhi said, "and the works thereof I know to be good." Make no mistake, this is a religion, and they believe it to be the correct one. Their object of worship is Lucifer, the "Light Bearer," (lucious is the Latin word for light). Just as we make covenants with Christ, they make them with Lucifer:

And Satan said unto Cain: Swear unto me by thy throat, and if thou tell it thou shalt die; and swear thy brethren by their heads, and by the living God, that they tell it not; for if they tell it, they shall surely die; and this that thy father may not know it; and this day I will deliver thy brother Abel into thine hands. (Moses 5:29)

Here the modus operandi of that church is revealed. They make covenants with Satan by taking blood oaths, pledging to die if they tell the secret, and using murder to get gain:

And Satan sware unto Cain that he would do according to his commands. And all these things were done in secret. And Cain said: Truly I am Mahan, the master of this great secret, that I may murder and get gain. Wherefore Cain was called Master Mahan, and he gloried in his wickedness. (Moses 5: 30-31) 

It is imperative to remember that God does not work in darkness. He does nothing in secret. Everything he does is plain and precious, easy to understand, available to everyone, nondiscriminatory, and openly published. He does not require a "worthiness certificate" to enter a place where "sacred" (actually secret) oaths are sworn to an organization. He does not require secret hand shakes, signs, or tokens to pass through a "veil," or to advance to a "world" beyond this earthly one. These are all tenets of Satan's church, not God's. Keep that in mind as we proceed. Another clue from the Book of Mormon:

And it came to pass that they had their signs, yea, their secret signs, and their secret words; and this that they might distinguish a brother who had entered into the covenant..." (Hel 6:22)

What types of secret societies and fraternal orders use secret signs and handshakes? Their are hoards of them, but the Freemasonic Order is the ground level. They provide the vetting ground for Satan's church, and very few move up the ranks. Most of them are good people who think they belong to a benign and philanthropic fraternity, but nothing could be further from the truth. The word Freemason has a dual meaning. To the unillumined, it sounds like a society based upon building and construction, a symbol of their role in framing and directing society. But to the initiated, the meaning has ancient underpinnings.

In the Greek, masonry is a corruption of the word mesouraneo, which denotes the phrase, "I am in the midst of heaven." And what is heaven but the firmament, where all the great orbs appear to man. The sun is the center of "heaven" or the sky from our perspective on earth, and hence is the source of all light to us. But the derivation goes back even further. The modern word "free" is similar to the Egyptian Phre, meaning the sun, and the prefix of the word mason, mas, means a child. Hence the Egyptian Phre-Massen, literally means Children of the Sun, or the Sons of Light. (Brown, Stellar Theology and Masonic Astronomy, p. 64)

And who is the bringer of light to these organizations? Lucifer, of course. Just as Christians become the sons of God, the highest initiates become the sons of light, or Lucifer. Nephi was right. There are only two churches. Everything that is taught in this world is derived from one or the other. To understand the significance of the harlot John saw, we have to go back to ancient Egypt. She represents the Mystery Schools (Mystery Babylon), the very organizations in which the secret plans of the Gadiantons have been passed down through the ages. 

The Osirian Cycle and Egyptian Sun Worship

To understand what the Mystery Schools are based upon, you have to be familiar with the Fable of Osiris. Although we know that Cain was the first to receive the mysteries from Satan, the history is easily traced to Egypt, which is the best place to start.

The Fable of Osiris is best explained by Manly P. Hall, who is regarded by Masons as the most prolific writer on the mysteries and "secreting teachings of the ages." In what follows I'll be paraphrasing from Hall's book, Freemasonry and the Ancient Egyptians, which is quoted at length in D. Christian Markham's comprehensive work, There are Save Two Churches Only: Volume I. This book is mind-blowing, by the way, and is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Mystery Schools from the perspective of the Restoration.

Hall pulls his account from Plutarch, the Roman philosopher, who is also a mystery school initiate, and begins with Egyptian mythology starting with the goddess Nut, also known as Rhea. She is the wife of Seb/Saturn but also marries her own son Ra or Helios the sun god. Then she cheats on him with Seb (these gods are promiscuous and apparently incestuous), and becomes pregnant. When Ra finds out he declares that she "will not have progeny in any month or year." Nut tricks Ra with the help of Thoth (Mercury), a gambler who won some illuminations from the moon goddess and uses them to add 5 extra days to the Egyptian calendar, extending the year from 360 days (the exact amount of degrees in a circle), to 365 days. 

On those five extra days, safely hidden from Ra, Nut has her children in this order:

1. Osiris who becomes "Lord of all the Earth."

2. Aroueris (the elder Horus) 

3. Typhon or Set

4. Isis

5. Nephthys

Osiris becomes the King of Egypt and marries Isis. Typhon, married to Nephthys, is the jealous and ambitious brother who conspires to kill Osiris with the help of 72 others. As Osiris is traveling the world and teaching the people law and religion, Typhon fashions an elaborate chest that fits his brother's body perfectly. On the day of his return to Egypt, the chest is brought to the King's banquet feast and Typhon announces that the chest will be rewarded to whomever most nearly fits in it. One by one each prince tried to lay in the box but none were the perfect size (think Cinderella and the glass slipper; these stories don't came out of thin air). Finally, when it was Osiris' turn, his body fit like a glove. Upon his entering the chest the 72 conspirators clamped it shut, nailed it, and poured hot lead over the cracks, and thereupon cast the chest into the Nile where it meets the sea.

Isis wandered all of Egypt looking for the box. She eventually finds it on the coast of Byblos (meaning bible or book), where a Tamarisk tree has grown around the chest totally enveloping it into its trunk. When the king of Byblos discovers it he orders the tree cut down and made into a pillar at his palace. Isis went to the kingdom in disguise as the queen's nurse and at night would transform into a swallow, flying around the pillar and bemoaning her husband. At length, she revealed her true identity and petitioned the king to cut out the chest. Retreating to the desert, she performed magical rites whereupon Osiris' body was temporarily reanimated, and from this union she becomes pregnant with the child Horus (the younger one). Fearing for the child's life, she left the chest and delivered him in a secluded place unbeknownst to the tyrant Typhon. 

Typhon chanced upon the chest, and knowing the magical powers of Isis, cut the body up into 14 parts (a very significant number to the mystery schools) and spread them over all of Egypt. He also held Isis and Horus prisoner until they escaped with the help of Thoth. Isis hid Horus in a papyrus swamp and once again traversed Egypt looking for the body parts of her dead husband. She eventually recovered them all except for the phallus, or penis. Through her magic she was able to reproduce this organ in gold, and with his body whole again she ensured his complete transition to the underworld. (please note the Egyptian obelisk is the symbol of Osiris' phallus and can be found in 

architecture all around the world; we have several in the United States, the picture below is of the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas). 

What happened to the original phallus? It was cast into the Nile and devoured by three fishes who represent Ignorance, Superstition, and Fear. 

These concepts also symbolize the Church, the State, and the Mob. 

These are how the mystery schools keep you, whom they refer to as the “profane,” in the dark and easily subjugated. More on this later. 

Little Horus receives a vision from his father instructing him how to overcome the hosts of Typhon, and upon prevailing, takes him prisoner. Yet queen Isis doesn't have the heart to execute her brother. Horus is angered by this and removes her royal insignia from her head, but the ever helpful Thoth gave her a new helmet in the shape of an Ox's head. Typhon is released and Horus does battle with him yet again, eventually prevailing and winning the kingdom. In some respects he becomes the literal reincarnation of Osiris; the two are sometimes considered one and the same. 

Isis and Osiris have one last union. The shade of his body visits her from the underworld and she is imbued with an immaculate conception, because "she knew no man" (sound familiar?). Keep in mind throughout this narrative that "God creates and Satan imitates."1 

Is God a fellow tax protestor?

 What did Jesus mean?

Jesus once told a couple of snarky Pharisees to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." Biblical scholars and religious pundits have debated this verse endlessly trying to determine what Jesus meant. Are we supposed to pay taxes like good little citizens? Does Caesar (the government) have a right to collect taxes? Or was the Lord just being sarcastic? Apparently, all the Pharisees could do was "marvel" at Jesus' brilliance in snaring them. 

This blog post will not be an attempt at deciphering that scripture. For all we know it was Jesus' way of getting the annoying Pharisees to shut up and be on their way. But it does bring up a good question: what constitutes the "things that are Caesar's"? 

In my last post I postulated that the State is not a legitimate organization because it can only exist through "predatory" means, i.e., coercion and theft. It does not produce, so anything Caesar gets has to be extracted from Caesar's subjects. According to natural law, those "things" do not belong to someone who did not produce, sell, or trade them voluntarily. So why would Jesus concede that Caesar is worthy of having stolen items rendered to him? 

To make us think. An exercise in rhetorical logic. Caesar does not have any thing but God has created everything. What Jesus is presenting is a logical paradox in parable form. What he really means is Caesar is nothing and God is everything. He is taking the argument to its logical conclusion and showing the absurdity of it all; Caesar, the emperor, has no clothes! But everything belongs to God. Brilliant! But I don't need to use the Bible to prove that God loathes taxation.

Enter the Book of Mormon

There are four instances in the Book of Mormon that mention taxes. In each one the practice is unequivocally condemned. The first time the word appears in the text it is uttered from the lips of King Benjamin, who declares that he labored for his own support and did not "laden" his people with taxes. Laden means weigh down, which is exactly what taxes do to people; like stacking bricks on someone's back. Think of the sheer irony of the Book of Mormon: A king announces to his people that he's had a job all along and that he didn't tax them. It doesn't get more un-Babylonian than that. God is making a point; we should pay attention. 

The next reference comes five chapters later, when Ammon and his brethren, on an errand from King Mosiah, run into King Limhi and his people in the wilderness. They have found themselves in bondage to the Lamanites, paying a 50% tax on literally everything they produce. When Limhi discovers that Ammon is a fellow Zarahemla-ite, he rejoices and rationalizes that if their long-lost brethren could deliver them out of bondage it would be better to be "slaves to the Nephites than pay tribute to the king of the Lamanites."

Now we all know the story: after they escape Lamanite bondage, King Mosiah receives them with joy, but Limhi's willingness to become a voluntary slave to escape a "grievous" tax should tell us something. Any degree of taxation is indeed a form of slavery. The definition of a slave is someone whose labor and body has been hijacked by another. In the case of taxation, our labor is stolen from us; the average blue-collar worker in America labors for three to five months out of the year to pay the government. Welcome to modern slavery. 

And now we come to king Noah. Here we get into what the taxes were actually used for. His 20% tax, less than what most middle class Americans pay, was used for a bunch of public works projects, that benefited, well, king Noah and his cronies. Many elegant buildings, a spacious palace and throne, a tower, a winery, and a re-modeling of the temple. Ah but didn't these create a lot of jobs? Didn't these public works bolster an otherwise sluggish Nephite economy? Perhaps to the naked eye this would seem so. The skilled artisans hired by the companies awarded the government contracts surely benefited. But what of the unseen? Where would that 20% have gone if left in the hands of those who created it? What businesses and industries would the Nephites have built and invested in that would have benefited the entire society? We'll never know.

It was Noah and his priests who were the primary beneficiaries of this system, which supported their wives and concubines, and allowed them to live riotously as a gang of thieves living off of the spoils of the Nephite producers. Thus, Mormon observes, "he had changed the affairs of the kingdom."1

Gadiantons and the State

Where the State is, the Gadiantons are Also

The great 19th century libertarian thinker Lysander Spooner once made a statement about the nature of the organization we know as the State:

"All the great governments of the world--those now existing as well as those that have passed away... have been mere bands of robbers, who have associated for purposes of plunder, conquest, and the enslavement of their fellow man. And their laws, as they have called them, have only been such agreements as they have found it necessary to enter into, in order to maintain their organizations, and act together in plundering and enslaving others, and in securing to each his agreed share of the spoils." (Source)

This is interesting language when one considers the workings of the Gadianton Robbers described in the Book of Mormon. It begs the question: What was God really trying to teach us by including these accounts in the text? Why should we be concerned about Gadianton and his band of merry robbers anyway? What do they have to do with the State?

Turns out a whole lot, in fact. For wherever there is a State, Gadiantons lurk behind the scenes like vultures circling a carcass.

The history of Nephite rule evolved from a monarchy to a system of checks and balances not unlike the American Constitutional system. Mosiah's exposition on higher and lower judges is reminiscent of the federalist view of the Founders, which was that state judiciaries were the final arbiters of constitutional law.  Then in 1801 Chief Justice John Marshall decided that the federal government should have the power...to check its own power. The result was the now infamous ruling in Marbury v. Madison. 

The point is, constitutional governments don't last very long; there are always hungry robbers scheming to get their grubby hands on the spoils of the productive class. The great paradox of government -and one I think is being presented in the Book of Mormon- is that the State always ends up in the hands of robbers. 

The Nature of Power

To firmly grasp this concept we have to delve into a little philosophy and ask: what is the nature of political power? According to Betrand de Jouvenel, "Power in its pure state consists... in command, a command which has an independent existence" (On Power, de Jouvenel, p. 98). This command, which google dictionary defines as "to give an authoritative order" or to "dominate a strategic position from a superior height," is what wise statesmen have attempted to limit. But how do you limit power with power? Ah, this is the paradox. If a lot of something easily corrupts (as Lord Acton has pointed out), how can a little of it, or the separation of it, not also lead to corruption? It seems, then, that attempts to limit power can only result in varying degrees of corruption. It may be true that smaller units of corruption are favorable over larger units, as in American federalism, or Mosiah's judges, but states' rights didn't last long and neither did the incorruptible judges in the Book of Mormon.

Furthermore, we are told by Joseph Smith that most men will abuse authority when given the chance (D&C 121), which certainly explains why even those smaller units are corrupted so easily. The problem, then, is not the indefatigable task of chopping power into more tolerable bits; the problem is that a State or government exists at all and offers a seat of power for the taking.

 

Gangster Politicians 

The Gadianton's show up on the scene a mere forty-two years after the Nephites established their judicial system. Gadianton, the leader of the band, is the typical mafia-style gangster with no compunction about killing to gain political advantage. His modus operandi is to use intrigue and assassination to acquire his ends. The goals are power and gain, and any means are justified to obtain them.

Unlike the cartoonish perception of gangsters we entertain today, these Gadiantons were both intelligent and patient, waiting twenty years for the next opportunity to knock off a judge after Kishkumen's failed attempt and demise. When Cezoram and his son were finally eliminated, the record explains that the robbers infiltrated the Nephite government and seduced the population:

The more part of the Nephites... did unite with those bands of robbers, and did enter into their covenants and their oaths, that they would protect and preserve one another in whatsoever difficult circumstances they should be placed, that they should not suffer for their murders, and their plunderings, and their stealings (Hel 6:21).

Now compare the words of Lysander Spooner:

And their laws, as they have called them, have only been such agreements as they have found it necessary to enter into, in order to maintain their organizations, and act together in plundering and enslaving others, and in securing to each his agreed share of the spoils. 

Notice the phrase enter into appears in both quotes. Mormon says covenants and oaths and Spooner says agreements. Preserve one another or act together. And both quotes used the word plunder. It is almost like we are reading the same thing. And remember: according to Spooner, this is what all governments do, at least eventually. Spooner speaks of the "organizations" of these schemers. What might he be talking about? These details are left out of the Nephite record but there are copious examples in modern America history.

The Two Founding Fraudsters 

Some of America's first plunderers were none other than Robert Morris and Alexander Hamilton. Morris, a Philadelphia merchant and Congressmen during the Revolutionary War, was given control of the newly created Finance department by the Continental Congress in 1781. Through his clandestine negotiations with Congress he was able to commandeer the other nascent departments of War and Marine. His main ambition was to establish a central bank patterned after the Bank of England. He recruited a young Alexander Hamilton who had been serving as Washington's aide de camp during the war. Hamilton, ambitious and brilliant, got his hands on a few pamphlets on finance, haphazardly read them, and wrote a "marathon" letter to Morris praising the English economic system known as mercantilism. Outlined in the letter was the nationalist agenda we are so familiar with today: a central bank, a high protective tariff, a powerful central government, and a large public debt. Morris would eventually recommended young Hamilton to Washington for the future position of Secretary of the Treasury.

Morris' first congressionally approved experiment with a national bank was called the Bank of North America. Loans to the bank in specie (gold and silver) would come from private financiers and foreign countries. The quasi-private bank would loan out cheap credit to politically-connected businesses like Morris' and his war contracting buddies. Millions were siphoned off for his private benefit, and more was lent out than was held in reserve, resulting in currency debasement and the bank's relapse into completely private hands in 1783. Colonialists just weren't willing to use inflated bank notes that couldn't buy what gold and silver could.

For the banking scheme to work, Morris and Hamilton needed a restructuring of government. Preferably centralized, and with the power to tax. 

Rob From the Poor to Give to the Rich

The Revolutionary War was financed by the individual states, primarily through paper currency creation. Instead of money, war bonds (IOUs) were issued to pay the soldiers. These "military certificates" represented the bulk of the debt held by the states. Because of inflation, the bonds and the paper currencies had lost most of their value, leaving the new nation with two ways to solve the problem: 1, let the individual states raise their taxes to cover the losses, or 2, allow the federal government to assume the debt of the states. 

After the Constitution was ratified, Hamilton got his appointment of Secretary of the Treasury, and persuaded Washington to sign a twenty-year charter for the First Bank of the United States, with Morris' former partner, Thomas Willing, appointed bank president. All the old government debt was nationalized, new bonds were issued, and a new federal tariff was enacted into law. The nationalist soup was beginning to simmer.

Hamilton, Morris, and myriad other New York politicians and politically connected businessmen knew that all those old bonds would be redeemed at face value within a few months. Despite the slow movement of news in those days, these insiders hired peddlers to race down the eastern seaboard swindling the poor veterans out of their bonds for pennies on the dollar. Thomas Jefferson recounts the incident as follows:

The base scramble began. Couriers & relay horses by land, and swift sailing pilot boats by sea, were flying in all directions. Active partners and agents were associated & employed in every state, town and country neighborhood, and this paper was bought up to 5 and even 2% in the pound, before the holder knew that Congress had provided for its redemption at par. Immence sums were thus filched from the poor and ignorant. (Quoted in Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Central Banking as an Engine of Corruption.)

The unwitting veterans, the very men who had fought for America's independence, were fleeced by these modern Gadiantons. Indeed, one could say they were plundered. Morris (Hamilton's benefactor) is estimated to have made $18 million on the intrigue, and New York governor George Clinton made $5 million, an enormous fortune for that time. Although this was a one-time gain for these corrupt political entrepreneurs, Hamilton's central banking program would ensure that similar opportunities would arise in the future, and that congressional votes would be cast in favor of new banks when old charters expired. 

This banking "engine" of corruption, as Jefferson called it, would be a means for politicians to plunder Americans, buy votes, hand out subsidies to politically-connected businesses (crony capitalism), and engage in war, for centuries to come. The entire nationalist agenda outlined by Hamilton: central banks, high tariffs, corporate welfare, and a large public debt, are no doubt instruments of legal plunder. Hamilton quipped that a large public debt was "to us a national blessing." A blessing indeed to the elites, but a curse to the average American, who would be relegated to nothing but financial collateral for national loans. Check out Tom DiLorenzo's work on this curse.

There have been intermittent periods in American history when political figures like Andrew Jackson have smashed the banks and paid off the national debts, but the conspirators never seem to give up. In 1913 the Federal Reserve Act was passed, creating a permanent quasi-public banking establishment that has been mulcting the American people for over one-hundred years: setting arbitrary interest rates, creating booms and busts, and recessions and depressions, causing low and middle-class-destroying inflation, bailing out government-favored businesses, and financing massive genocidal wars.

Who is Really Running Things?

Could it be that the scriptures in the Book of Mormon addressing the Gadiantons are a direct warning for our day? This next verse should help convince you that they are:

"And seeing the people in a state of such awful wickedness, and those Gadianton robbers filling the judgment-seats--having usurped the power and authority of the land; laying aside the commandments of God, and not in the least aright before him; doing no justice unto the children of men; condemning the righteous because of their righteousness; letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money; and moreover to be held in office at the head of government, to rule and do according to their wills, that they might get gain and glory of the world, and, moreover, that they might the more easily commit adultery, and steal, and kill, and do according to their own wills." (Hel 7:4-5, Emphasis added).       

Gadiantons have been "at the head of government" in this nation since its inception, validating Spooner's words that all governments are made up of robbers. The nature of the State itself provides the perfect vehicle for theft to be implemented on a large scale. And worse, it provides the tools for central planners to trick the unsuspecting public into believing that the very organizations and programs designed to fleece them have been created for their own good. 

The State's main task is to clothe outright plunder, theft, and murder in a cloak of moral legitimacy, otherwise it risks losing its power. Its very existence is dependent on the support of its loyal citizens, who have to believe that the State represents some grandiose ideal, or some elevated part of themselves. To the citizen, the idea of the State has to embody all of their abstractive perceptions of the highest morality of humanity, or it will be left as the emperor who "has no clothes." Men like Spooner have simply removed the veneer of clothing and discovered the State for what it really is: a gang of thieves. 

Murray Rothbard, in his short treatise entitled, The Anatomy of the State, succinctly describes what

exactly the State is and what it is not. His definition, echoing the words of Franz Oppenheimer, is that the State "is the systematization of the predatory process over a given territory" (p15). What is the predatory process?  The means and power to forcibly extract resources from its producers, the citizens, to uses for its ends. Because the State does not and cannot produce, it is a parasitic organization, "born in conquest and exploitation" (Rothbard p.16). According to Rothbard, the State is not a voluntary "social contract." In fact, is is not a contract at all. A contract is between two willing parties who agree to a partnership for mutual benefit. Try to terminate your "contract" by not paying taxes and see what happens. The State will throw you into a cage paid for by others' tax "contracts." 

Are We The Government?

Rothbard's second point is that the State is not us, and it is not we. It is simply them. Those individuals who have seized control of the organization that controls the monopoly on force. That is all it is. No bells, no whistles, no illustrious clothing, just brute force. 

The genius of convincing the public that "they" are the government, is that it can hide behind every immoral and evil act it does by projecting the blame onto the hapless citizen. "If the government conscripts a man, or throws him into jail for dissident opinion, then he is 'doing it to himself,'" writes Rothbard, who continues that, "Jews murdered by the Nazi government were not murdered; instead they must have 'committed suicide'" (p.10). Likewise, it was not President Truman who dropped the atom bomb on Japan, it was "we" Americans. It is not the IRS that takes our money, it is me paying money to part of myself. It is not Biden implementing unconstitutional vaccine mandates, it is "us" forcing ourselves to be jabbed, etc. See the utter nonsense? Yet people buy into it, at least subliminally. 

But what if we actually believe that it is "us" doing all these things? Well then we become emotionally and morally invested in what the State is doing. We take sides. We give politicians our support. We cheer when statues of Saddam Hussein come crashing down and are dragged though the streets of Baghdad. We rejoice when Obama's health care system is forced on everyone. We beam with satisfaction when our neighbors are forced to take an experimental vaccine so we can be "protected" from them. We feel safe from "terrorists" when the Patriot Act makes pat-down searches at airports and warrantless arrests the norm. In other words, the actions of the State become subconsciously embedded into our moral awareness and we draw ideological lines in the sandbox of government intervention. We rationalize our normative views of what the State should and should not do. When we are aware enough to remove these mental barriers, the lines and the sand disappear, exposing a reprobate and diabolical criminal organization. 

Seduced Into Compliance

Another tool the State uses to propagandize the public is nationalism: to promote the love of one's homeland as a high moral ideal. Man's natural affinity to identify with a  group makes this tool highly effective at garnering support for the State's actions. Symbolism that is intertwined with religion is carefully inserted into the garb, rituals, and ceremonies of government and its officials: sacraments in the form of parades, ceremonies and uniforms, emblems as flags, badges, medals, coats of arms, and national seals, hymns as national anthems, chants and pledges, Sunday school as fireside chats and patriotic speeches, and sacrifice as military service and conscription. These play upon the emotions of  religious people and can lead them to believe that immoral acts are virtuous. War (mass murder) becomes "noble." Paying taxes and obeying unjust laws become "duties." Saluting the flag and pledging allegiance become "sacred oaths," questioning authority becomes a "vice," and tattling on neighbors becomes a "virtue." This may have been what Mormon was talking about when he says that the Gadiantons seduced the Nephites:

And it came to pass on the other hand, that the Nephites did build them up and support them, beginning at the more wicked part of them, until they had overspread all the land of the Nephites, and had seduced the more part of the righteous until they had come down to believe in their works and partake of their spoils, and to join them in the secret murders and combinations. (Helaman 6:38)

The Nephites were also seduced by the spoils they offered. Consider our modern day parallels: food stamps, corporate welfare, bank bailouts, free education, pell grants, welfare programs, Medicare and Medicaid,  unemployment benefits, etc. Not only were they seduced, but they came to believe in these works. They became ideologues, justifying to themselves that they were "entitled" to such spoils. Thus, they built up the Gadiantons by voting for them, utilizing their public goods, supporting their wars, accepting their handouts, and believing their propaganda. 

This State-sponsored seduction is accomplished by those whom Rothbard calls the "opinion-molders." Because they are in the minority, the State has a vested interest in hiring intellectuals and demagogues to convince the public of its supposed legitimacy. As Rothbard says, they must be "persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise, and, at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other alternatives" (Anatomy, p20). 

Rothbard explains that because the "masses of men do not create their own ideas" they can be easily molded by the intellectuals. In America the State divides these ideas into opposing camps of right and left. Both "wings" belong to the same bird and consequently share the same brain. Thus, the illusion of a choice is given to the public who can choose representatives they think reflect their views. But in the end, no matter which wing is in the majority, the State still achieves it goals and obtains its ends. (See the Hegelian Dialectic). 

In the Book of Mormon, after Amalickiah had become king of the Lamanites by murder and conspiracy, he hired propagandists to "speak unto the Lamanites from their towers, against the Nephites" (Alma 48:1). He was using the intellectuals to persuade the Lamanites to go to war against the Nephites. Today the State uses radio, television, and internet towers to speak propaganda to us: which economic policy to support, which foreign wars to rally behind, and lately, which germs to be most afraid of. Notice that it wasn't until after the Nephites were seduced to the point that they believed in and supported State programs, that the Gadiantons "did obtain the sole management of the government." (Hel 6:39)

The Most Abominable Sin

Now there are a lot of things that God abhors, but Gadiantons and Secret Combinations take the cake. Consider the following from the book of Ether:

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. (Ether 8:18, Emphasis added)

Moroni goes on to explain that the Lord does not work in secret, and has forbidden murder, ominously warning us that whatever nation upholds these secret combinations will perish. He specifically calls out the American Gentiles, imploring them not to let these "murderous combinations" get above them. How many of us have read these verses time and again and not ever wondered why God loathes Gadiantons above all else? 

I can speculate a few reasons. Once the combinations get above us, as our State appointed overlords, they can do much more than just steal and murder. They wage war on your mind. They want to convert you. They want you to think that you couldn't possibly survive without their all-wise oversight over your every choice. They want you to rejoice in your enslavement and trust in them like a child trusts its parent. They want you to believe in them. They want your adulation, reverence, and unfailing obedience. God disdains them because they embody the great Satanic ideal, Satan's very program incarnate. They will save you all, in exchange for your agency and your mind. Just like Satan, they want you to surrender your will to them and worship them. Remember Moses' experience in the wilderness? The jealous Satan ranted and raved up and down the earth, "son of man, worship me... I am the Only Begotten, worship me!" (Moses 1:12, 19)

Satan thinks he is God. He is the ultimate megalomaniac. His narcissistic personality traits trickle down to modern-day Gadiantons and Secret Combinations. Why would they not want to be like their master? Think of every dystopian novel you've ever read: 1984, Brave New World, The Hunger Games, Fahrenheit 451, Anthem, Divergent, The Alliance, etc. What is the common theme? A State full of sociopaths. 

The same story is told over and over again: people living under totalitarian control, stripped of their humanity and ability to choose, most of them comfortable in their slavery. But someone always wakes up. There is always a Winston, a Catniss, or a Montag. There is always someone who has enough of a mind left to realize that something is not right. It is like awakening from a dream. The scriptures are full of such imagery: awake to a sense of your awful situation! (Ether 8:24)

God -the real one- reveals that it was the devil who "put into the heart of Gadianton" those "secret oaths and covenants." Mormon further elaborates:

Yea, it is the same being who put it into the heart of the Gadianton... who is the author of all sin. And behold, he doth carry on his works of darkness and secret murder, and doth hand down their plots, and their oaths, and their covenants, and their plans of awful wickedness, from generation to generation according as he can get hold upon the hearts of the children of men. (Hel 6:29, 30 Emphasis Added)

Did you catch that last part? Satan wants your heart. He knows you are never going to outright give it to him, unless you're some kind of devil worshipper or member of the Skull and Bones. But he already has the hearts of the conspirators, so how could he get yours, the good Christian, the great majority, the multitudinous masses? If he could just create on organization, an institution, an entity that you can put your trust in; an abstraction of your mind that you believe has your best interest and does your bidding. A seemingly inevitable, monolithic, ubiquitous superstructure that protects you from bad guys, feeds you, instructs you, and lulls you into blissful apathy. The beneficent Leviathan, the altruistic Beast. The counterfeit for the image of God. The great deception. The ultimate idolatry. The State. 

The sobering truth is those plans that the devil passes down from generation to generation are designed to create tyrannical States. He doesn't care about the Gadiantons; they are just pawns in his game, the real target is you.
 

The Good News: None of it is Real

God is "no respecter of persons." There are no such things as leaders who are "qualified" to rule. Because "all are alike unto God," it is a logical fallacy to suppose that we need leaders to tell us what to do. According to Christ, the "least among us" (Luke 9:48) are the greatest. The leader is the servant, not the master. There is no hierarchy. Power in heaven is the opposite of what it is on earth, which makes the State the greatest satanic illusion ever contrived. John, on the isle of Patmos, explained it in perhaps the only possible way we can comprehend; the image of the Beast. You can't see the State because it does not exist. You can only see the images it portrays: flags, armies, kings, presidents, courts, statues, fasces, buildings, etc. It hides behind these symbols to deceive you into believing it is real. 

But it is none of these things. It is merely an idea, conceived of and summarily rejected in a heavenly council eons age. Government, which literally means mind control, exists primarily as a figment of our imagination. Its only real power comes from the credence we lend it. If everyone stopped believing in it, it would vanish in an instant. The man behind the curtain is merely a man, blinded by his own hubris and perceived greatness. Christ is the only one who has ever "condescended" far below our station as mortals on earth, and because of his great suffering, and lamb-like submission to a tyrannical State, he is the only one qualified to rule this earth.

We began this post with a quote by Spooner, and we will end with one. Perhaps he can explain best why God would consider the State the most abominable institution of all: 

But this theory of our government is wholly different from the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.  

The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. he does not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentlemen to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave. (Spooner, No Treason) 

Bibliography and Suggested Reading 

Andersen, Verlan H. Many Are Called But Few Are Chosen. Orem, Utah: Andersen, 1967.

Anderson, Verlan H. The Great and Abominable Church of the Devil. Orem, Utah: Andersen, 1972.

DiLorenzo, Thomas J. "A Note on the Machiavellian Origins of Central Banking in America." The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Vol. 14, No. 7 (Spring 2011): 78-87.

DiLorenzo, Thomas J. "Central Banking as an Engine of Corruption." Mises Daily Articles, (March 2021). https://mises.org/library/central-banking-engine-corruption

DiLorenzo, Thomas J. Hamilton's Curse: How Jefferson's Arch Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution-And What it Means for Americans Today. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2008.

Jouvenel, Bertrand de. On Power: Its Nature and the History of Its Growth. Boston: Beacon Press, 1962.

Rothbard, Murray. Conceived in Liberty. Vol. 4, Chapters 69 & 70. Auburn, Alabama: The Mises      Institute, 2011. 

Rothbard, Murray. The Anatomy of the State. Auburn, Alabama: The Mises Institute, 2009.

Rothbard, Murray. The Mystery of Banking. Second Edition. Auburn, Alabama: The Mises Institute, 2008.

Spooner, Lysander. No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority. Vo. IV, 1870.