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Sunday, December 11, 2022

Zion vs the Beast V: One Heart and One Mind

 Previously: The Atlantean Leviathan

In the last four posts we've gone over what Zion isn't, namely, a strongman model ruled by "benevolent" quasi "divine" priest-kings in a socialistic, communistic, and atheistic democracy. Saint John called this Satanic substitute for Zion a Beast, and described it with imagery from Atlantean myth and philosophy passed down in the Mystery Schools. A large body of scripture has been dedicated to warning us about about events that will transpire when the latter-day Zion is gathered, but little however, has been revealed about what Zion actually is. There are only three societies mentioned in scripture that were successful in living the requirements for Zion: the city of Enoch, the city of Melchizedek, and the Nephites in Bountiful described in 4th Nephi. Enoch and Melchizedek's societies were taken into heaven, and the Nephite experiment lasted almost 200 years before dissensions and contentions began creeping in again. 

Scriptural descriptions of these societies are brief and vague, leaving the details of their laws, monetary systems, societal structures, and communal logistics an enigma. How were they able to achieve the societal status of having "no poor among them"? What does it really mean to have one, heart, one mind, and all things common? How does justice, equality, liberty, and freedom fit into the Zion blueprint? And what kind of government, if any, did these societies have? Unfortunately, scripture is bereft of these details, but just like the prophecies about the latter-day Beast, there are clues placed throughout ancient and sacred texts that can help us gradually form the pieces of the puzzle into a picture that begins to make sense. 

In addition to these clues, the writings and talks of Denver Snuffer over the last decade have shed further light on what a Zion society might look like. Think what you want about Denver, but he has written and spoke more about Zion than any other "spiritual guru" to come out of the Remnant movement. Some opine that he is a prophet, a teacher, or even the Davidic servant, but he has never claimed to be any of those titles. He has claimed, however, to have been in the presence of the Savior, which is a hard pill for many to swallow, and from those experiences he has claimed to have received a message to deliver, the crux of which is how to prepare a people for Zion. He stated once that since 2014, when he delivered his ten talks throughout the Mormon corridor, he has only really been giving one long talk, the continual theme being Zion. I have read, listened to, and/or studied almost every recorded talk that Denver has given, which you can find here, and I can tell you that everything he says about Zion is backed up in scripture. And, in my opinion, any intellectually honest discussion of Zion and its requirements should include what Denver has taught about it. The only way to know for sure if he is telling the truth is to study it out for yourself and take it to the Lord in sincere prayer. Remember, it is the message that is important and not the man. God can reveal truth through any person He wants, even a lawyer from Sandy, Utah. 

With that said, let's get started... Obviously, there is no way to condense all the material on Zion into one blog post, as volumes could be written on the subject. I'm just hoping this post will pique your curiosity, and serve as a catalyst for you to do your own research, because this topic is exhilaratingly fascinating. Think for just a moment about the almost endless volumes of literature that have been written on utopia, dystopia, and idealism. As human beings, we are collectively obsessed with fantasizing about higher forms of living, idyllic societies, and grandiose ideals. It is as if there is some kind of innate seed of altruism planted deep within our souls that yearns for something more; something that transcends our current existence. Because we are the offspring of God and have experienced something much better than this mortal realm, although we don't remember it, we long to return to it. 

Unfortunately, Satan has used this yearning to convince elites that such grandiose ideals for society can be accomplished by a powerful State, through the destruction of personal liberty. This idea has been called many things, but in our modern lexicon, it is known as Progressivism, and its modus operandi is to transform society from the outside in, through the legislative process. But, as many governmental experiments have proven throughout history, attempts to legislate morality and idealism have led to the misery and death of many souls. The purpose behind God's Zion is to create the ideal society from the inside out, to change individuals first, and through their own volition, work together in harmony for a higher ideal. The most detailed account in scripture that we have in regards to Zion is in 4th Nephi, and even that is short and sweet. The characteristics of their society were as follows:

And it came to pass in the thirty and sixth year, the people were all converted unto the Lord, upon all the face of the land, both the Nephites and the Lamanites; and there were no contentions and disputations among them, and every man did deal justly one with another. And they had all things common among them; therefore, there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free and partakers of the heavenly gift...

And it came to pass that there was no contention in the land because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people; and there were no envyings, nor strifes, nor tumults, nor whoredoms, nor lyings, nor murders, nor many manner of lasciviousness. And surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God. There were no robbers, nor no murderers, neither were there Lamanites nor no manner of -ites, but they were in one the children of Christ and heirs to the kingdom of God. And how blessed were they, for the Lord did bless them in all their doings, yea, even they were blessed and prospered until an hundred and ten years had passed away. (4 Nephi 1:1,3, RE) 

Between the lines of these versus are implications that are rich enough to cover volumes of literary commentary, but I'll do my best to touch on the major points in this post. The Book of Mormon is written in chiasmas form, the beginning and the end contain prophecies and spiritual instruction (the Doctrine of Christ), the middle is full of Christian principles of living that teach us how to govern ourselves, how to serve others, when self-defense is justified, and the proper structure of Christ's church, the most important part being that priests and teachers are unpaid, are no better than the hearer or listener, and are to labor with their own hands for their support. In addition to Christian principles, the middle of the Book of Mormon also exposes false doctrine, anti-Christian philosophy and practice (from antichrists like Nehor, Korihor, and Sherem), and secret combinations. When studied in its full context, the Book of Mormon serves as a handbook for Zion, foreshadowing every facet of the society described in 4th Nephi throughout its hundreds of pages of pretext. The principles of Christ expounded in the Book of Mormon, when lived individually, can lead to collective peace and harmony. 

All Converted With No Contention

Mormon tells us first that all were converted to the Lord, "upon all the face of the land, both the Lamanites and the Nephites." This seems to be a prerequisite for Zion, which begins in the heart of the individual. Each of us must repent and turn to face God individually before we can qualify to live in such a society collectively. Denver explained that being saved and/or converted is a prerequisite for Zion in a talk he gave in 2019 entitled, Civilization
Our traditions have not and cannot bring Zion; that will require viewing God's work in a new way. Individuals may be saved individually and have been throughout history. But Zion is not about individual salvation. Zion is about covenant people of God, individually saved as a prerequisite, then gathered together to live in peace. (Transcript, p. 3)

The conversion of individuals in preparation to live in peace is in direct opposition of the progressive philosophy of legislating equality and societal bliss. It cannot be done through force, compulsion, unrighteous dominion, or legal processes. The latter method presupposes that those who write the laws are somehow superior to those who are subject to them, as if only they know what is good for society. God has stated unequivocally however, that He is no respecter of persons, and such lawmakers are assuming authority they do not possess, and are merely gratifying their vain ambitions. The elitist philosophy that some are destined to rule over others is deeply entrenched in the Mystery Schools, and has been since Cain made his first oath to Satan. If you've been following this current blog series, Zion and the Beast, you'll be familiar with the writings of Manly P. Hall, specifically his musings on the secret destiny of America. In one of the books he wrote on that subject, America's Assignment With Destiny, he graced his concluding chapter with these pretentious words: 

Truth always come to man through man. The great initiate-teachers have offered their souls as channels for the distribution of cosmic truths. These teachers are not only unselfish, they are also adequate for the ministry which is their chosen task. Through long periods of discipleship, they have become learned in statescraft, in law, medicine, art, literature, and science. In their natures, philosophy and mysticism have been unfolded far beyond the understanding of the profane. Obviously, the Great Schools, functioning through their trained and appointed messengers, constitute the highest leadership available to man or required by man... (p. 114, emphasis added)

This flowery language is subtly imbibed with the aforementioned philosophy: that some men are qualified to rule over others. These "unselfish" ministers, who have advanced far down the path of initiation, "constitute the highest leadership available to man or required by man," says Hall, who asserts that truth can only come "to man through man." In other words, humanism is his god, and only humanism can bring about his philosophic utopia; ruled by men over men. Hall asserts that only:

When a sufficient number has attained this degree of true leadership, the imperishable democracy of the sages will become a fact in the mortal sphere. (p. 115)

Leadership is therefore reserved only for the illuminated, the adepts who have become gods through the obtainment of gnosis, or knowledge granted by the Great Architect of the Universe, whom they refer to as Lucifer. The Book of Mormon, through simple language, plain and precious, penetrates the flowery pomp of Hall's rhetoric, and reduces it to its logical conclusion. The philosophy is introduced by Laman and Lemuel, who surmise that the right to rule belonged to them, Nephi's elder brethren. Throughout the history and wars between the Nephites and Lamanites we can see this philosophy playing out, ultimately resulting in the Gadianton belief that they were superior and deserved to possess the rights of government, as opined by the Luciferian initiate Giddianhi. But in Helaman we learn that all the fluff of one group being "destined" to rule over another boils down to one thing: the "right" to plunder. Mormon elucidates:

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... (Helaman 3:1, RE)

As Isaiah saw in vision, this haughtiness of man shall eventually be made low, leaving individuals to govern themselves, which is the only way true peace and utopia can be brought about. Consider the following observation about the Nephite society that Denver Snuffer made in the same talk quoted above:

These people were most remarkable for what they lacked... divisions, contentions, and disputes... What were the names of their leaders? We don't know because, apparently, there were none. Who were their teachers? Again, we don't know because they were not identified. Who governed? Apparently no one. They had things in common, obeyed God's commandments, and spent time praying and hearing the word of the Lord. They were so very unlike us. (Civilization, p. 17, emphasis original)

Mormon's next line in the description of Zion practiced by the Nephites at Bountiful sounds simple, yet its implications are complex, "and there were no contentions and disputations among them." When Jesus introduced His doctrine to the surviving Nephites at Bountiful, the ones who would eventually establish a Zion society, a major tenet was that there should be no contention about those points of doctrine. The spirit of contention, He declared, is not of Him, but of the Devil, who "stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another." His doctrine consists of just a few simple concepts: believe and have faith in Him, repent, be baptized, become as a little child, etc. But surely there is more to the Gospel than that... what about principles, prophecy, dreams, visions, angels, healing, speaking in tongues, and the ineffable mysteries? What about the Holy Order, the Priesthood, the sealing power, temples, work for the dead, the Second Comforter, sealing, adoption, and on and on... After all, didn't Joseph Smith say that Mormonism embraces all truth? 

It most surely does, however, the doctrine is the springboard, the starting point, the gate of entrance. We are not supposed to argue about it, or change the requirements for entering the gate. We are not supposed to include or exclude people from the Gospel merely on our own whims, or our pretended authority, like modern Pharisees do. Any concept above and beyond the doctrine declared by Christ to the Nephites comes to each individual, line upon line, precept upon precept. And when we share those higher things with others, we are to do so by the Spirit, without contention, so that all who hear and participate are edified together. 

If you take any random grouping of people and put them together in a room to have a discussion about religion and politics you can count on major disagreements ensuing. It is a rare thing in this world to find any two people that agree on everything they talk about, and that is the way it is supposed to be. A world where everyone agreed on everything all the time would be mundane and boring. God created us to be vastly different from each other, all coming with our preconceived notions of truth and reality accompanied by varying personalities. There is absolute truth, but God has promised to teach us that incrementally, as we are able to handle it. In the meantime, we need to realize we don't know much of anything, and what an utterly futile and fruitless endeavor it is to attempt to force our beliefs on others. Being of one heart and one mind does NOT mean we all believe and act the same way. The point of Zion is to get people to live in harmony regardless of glaring differences of opinion in religion and politics - the two most divisive topics that exist. 

In a revelation given to Denver Snuffer called the Answer to the Prayer for Covenant, the Lord explained what being of one heart looks like:

Be of one heart, and regard one with another with charity. Measure your words before giving voice to them, and consider the hearts of others. Although a man may err in understanding concerning many things, yet he can view his brother with charity and come unto me, and through me he can with patience overcome the world. I can bring him to understanding and knowledge. Therefore, if you regard one another with charity, then your brother's error in understanding will not divide you. I lead to all truth. I will lead all who come to me to the truth of all things. The fullness is to receive the truth of all things, and this too from me, in power, by my word and in very deed. For I will come unto you if you will come unto me. (T&C 157:53, emphasis added)

It doesn't matter if someone errs in understanding, because guess what? We all do. The Lord is the source of all truth, and if we will just let others be, and love them for who they are and not what they believe, He will reward us by leading us to all truth. The right of the dissemination of all truth is His, and His alone. We only have bits and pieces of it, even great prophets who have beheld the Lord like Moses or the brother of Jared have limited understanding. A man, or woman, who has been in God's presence can still err in understanding. God cannot possibly reveal all the truth to someone all at once, it would be too overwhelming, that is why we can only trust Him. Those in Zion will be in the same predicament, but He promises that if we have charity for one another, He will restore knowledge of hidden things, hidden from the foundation of the world, even unspeakable things, greater than man can utter. 

In the next verse the Lord makes a fascinating statement. He reveals that the reason why Satan stirs us up to anger is to control us. It is the age-old divide and conquer stratagem, the Hegelian Dialectic, establishing order out of chaos. This is how governments and powerful religious institutions maintain their "power over the flesh." How ironic that the concepts we argue about the most, i.e., politics and religion, create the very institutions that literally control our thoughts and our actions. Here is what the Lord declared:

Study to learn how to respect your brothers and sisters and to come together by precept, reason and persuasion rather than sharply disputing and wrongly condemning each other, causing anger. Take care how you invoke my name. Mankind has been controlled by the adversary through anger and jealousy, which has led to bloodshed and the misery of many souls. Even strong disagreements should not provoke anger, nor to invoke my name as if I had part in your every dispute. Pray together in humility and together meekly present your dispute to me, and if you are contrite before me I will tell you my part. (T&C 157:54, emphasis added)

Anger and jealousy? In other words, drama. People love drama, it dominates our society, our media, our entertainment, our politics. Drama can consume us, it can destroy our agency by concentrating our energies on the vulgar and the profane. Politicians use it to control populations through fear; the opposite of love. The Book of Mormon has a phrase for this phenomenon, it consists of two words: stir up. If you do a word search with that phrase you will find over forty versus in the BOM in which it appears. It is very often used in the context of a leader endeavoring to incite anger and hatred for political gain or to start a war. Mormon tells us the lawyers also used it to make money:

Now it was for the sole purpose to get gain, because they received their wages according to their employ, therefore they did stir up the people to riotings and all manner of disturbances and wickedness... (Alma 8:12, RE, emphasis added)

In the case of Amalickiah, the word inspire is used in place of stir up, but its meaning is identical. He was a man skilled in political Machiavellianism, he killed all the right people and made all the right moves in order to rise to power in a very short time. The first thing he did after he became king of the Lamanites was to appoint political propagandists to stir up the Lamanites to anger against the Nephites. He needed an imperialist war to become a dictator over the entire promised land. Mormon tells us that:

...as soon as Amalickiah had obtained the kingdom, he began to inspire the hearts of the Lamanites against the people of Nephi. Yea, he did appoint men to speak unto the Lamanites unto from their towers against the Nephites...(Alma 21:31, RE)

And finally, the Jaredite example teaches us that people can be stirred up to the point where they are all-consumed with revenge, resulting in the destruction of an entire civilization:

And the people of Coriantumr were stirred up against the people of Shiz, and the people of Shiz were stirred up against the people of Coriantumr; wherefore, the people of Shiz did give battle unto the people of Coriantumr. (Ether 6:13, RE)  

Getting back to what the Lord said in T&C 157, He equates anger, jealousy, bloodshed and misery with this overall concept of contention. And then He declares the true meaning of taking His name in vain. It is not just cursing His name and combining it with other profanities, it is using it as an appeal to authority to back up your side of an argument. His words should give us pause: "as if I had part in your every dispute." He doesn't spend His time arguing, He certainly didn't during His mortal ministry. So why should we? Why do we have a tendency to play the God card? "God says you're wrong, God supports our side of this war, God wants us to do it this way, God wants our team to win, God has given His authority to us," etc. This is the logical fallacy of the appeal to authority, which means that those who use this argument are so insecure in their beliefs that they need some authority outside of themselves to prove their point, and God becomes the scapegoat. Religious leaders use this argument for gain, and it's called priestcraft, politicians and kings have historically equated themselves with the divine, and it's called statecraft. Jesus is telling us that He has no part of any of it. In Zion, no one will be going around telling others that God wants them to act, believe, or live a certain way. That won't be necessary, because the scriptures reveal all those who make it there will already know Him:

And they shall not teach every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. (Hebrews 1:23, RE, see also T&C 158:15)

Contention was the reason why the early Saints failed to establish Zion, it created the divisiveness that prevented the people from having one heart and one mind. In a revelation to Joseph Smith, the Lord explained how the Saints lost their inheritances:

Behold, I say unto you, there were jarrings, and contentions, and envyings, and strifes, and lustful and covetous desires among them; therefore, by these things they polluted their inheritances. (T&C 101:2, see also, T&C 156:3)

Speaking of drama, Denver made another interesting point about the scriptural societies that became Zion in the talk entitled Civilization. In our modern society, our history books are full of "great" men who are revered for the things they accomplished. Like the Greeks, we have our own lexicon of heroes with their own monuments, whether it's giant faces carved in stone mountains or statues and shrines erected in "holy" places. By not including the details of what made Enoch and Melchizedek's societies successful, the scriptures tell us more about them by implying what they were not. Denver elucidates:

Maybe the point is that nothing and no-one stood out as remarkable or different within the community. There were no heroes and no villains; no rich and no poor; no Shakespearian plot lines of betrayal, intrigue, ambition, conflict, and envy. There was no adultery, theft, robbery, murder, immorality, and drunkenness--in other words, nothing to entertain us. Because all our stories, movies, music, novels, television plots, and social media are based upon and captivated by everything that is missing from these societies. (Civilization, p. 17, emphasis original)

In other words, no crime, no drama, no idolatry, no leaders vying for power, no unrighteous dominion, and no mindless entertainment. A society that we could scarcely imagine because it so far out of our scope of reality. To accomplish such a daunting ideal, we will have to change nearly every paradigm we have. 

Equality and Dealing Justly

Have you ever thought about what the true meaning of dealing justly is? This phrase only appears three times in the Book of Mormon: twice in regard to the Nephites at Bountiful, and once in Alma when he is explaining the concept of restoration to his son Corianton. Alma asserts that the meaning of spiritual restoration is to be restored in the next life to what you were in this life, whether it be:
...evil or evil, or carnal for carnal, or devilish for devilish; good for that which is good, righteous for that which is righteous, just for that which is just, merciful for that which is merciful. Therefore my son, see that you are merciful unto your brethren. Deal justly, judge righteously, and do good continually... (Alma 19:11, RE, emphasis added)

For starters, dealing justly means treating others the way we want to be treated, or in other words, the golden rule. But for Zion the implications of dealing justly go a bit further. For instance, unlike Manly P. Hall's Atlantean utopia, in Zion there will be no paternal State parceling out public outlays to its citizenry. There will be no taxes or government at all - because all taxes are legal plunder. No tax is collected without the underlying threat of force, and money or goods taken under threat is the very definition of plunder. Mormon informs us that in the Nephite society there were no robbers or murderers, which to me, means there was no State. 

My favorite libertarian philosopher, Lysander Spooner, once stated that:

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.

If there is no State in a society, there is no seat of power to squabble over, no abstractive vehicle for obtaining the goods of others. If an ordinary robber, acting alone, attempts to rob you, he has to confront you personally, using some weapon to threaten you to give up your wallet. But a State has no face, no corporeal body, and no substance at all. It is merely an idea, an idea that has conscripted vast resources, armies, police, and weapons of mass destruction to support that idea. Unlike the individual robber, who is lucky to get away with a few bucks, the State robs you over and over again throughout your life, demanding obedience, fealty, and loyalty, and claiming it is for your own good. 

In primordial history, individual robbers were limited as to the amount of loot they could get, but some ancient group of them originally formed a band, a cartel if you will, and figured out that if they used the right words and expressed the right ideas to their victims, they could overtime create a "legitimate" organization to do their robbing for them, and thus the State was born. I believe the first robbers to accomplish this were Cain and his progeny, but that is a topic for another time. The point is, it is impossible for everyone to deal justly in a society if there is a State robbing everyone, as there will always be those who are lining up for its spoils, i.e., "benefits." This creates two classes of people: the plunderers and the plundered. Justice, equality, and having all goods in common cannot exist in such a society. So, in the coming Zion how will that really look? 

The Book of Mormon offers the first clue. When Mosiah was setting up his Christian republic (system of judges) among the Nephites, he explained to them that freedom comes with a cost, and that cost is that every person be accountable for their own sins. He wasn't talking about spiritual sins, he was talking about societal sins. In other words, instead of the limited liability system we live under today with our laws forcing us to get insurance, we become fully liable for damages we cause to others' bodies or physical property. I wrote about this topic in this post, on the subject of common law and maritime law. Common law stems from Mosaic law, where restorative penalties were carried out to their fullest extent. One meaning of dealing justly is that you accept full responsibility for your actions. Here is the Nephites' response to Mosiah:

And now it came to pass, that after Mosiah sent these things forth among the people, they were convinced of the truth of his words. Therefore, they relinquished their desires for a king and became exceedingly anxious that every man should have an equal chance throughout the land; yea, and every man expressed a willingness to answer for his own sins. (Mosiah 13:9, RE)

Equality does not mean that everyone is made equal, equality means that we all have "an equal chance throughout the land." But with that equal chance comes risk, and some take larger risks than others. And with those larger risks, come heavier consequences if things go wrong. This dear readers, is what it means to be free, and Mormon said that they were all made free. However, in Zion there is even more to dealing justly than merely being accountable for one's own actions. There is a higher law, which is explained in another talk given by Denver called Equality, given in Challis, Idaho in 2021. He begins by introducing a revelation given to Joseph in 1831 that can be easily misunderstood:

Nevertheless, in your temporal things you shall be equal in all things... (T&C 61:4)

Denver explains that this verse does not mean "that we will have identical property and identical possessions and be identically situated with one another..." It means, just as Mosiah taught, that all will be given an equal chance to do one thing: labor. We will all be equal in our opportunity to labor, which labor we can mix with the resources of the earth to create food, housing, and other goods. Denver points out that the Book of Mormon defines what it means to be equal in Alma:

And when the priests left their labor to impart the word of God unto the people, the people also left their labors to hear the word of God. And when the priest had imparted unto them the word of God, they are returned again diligently unto their labors, and the priest, not esteeming himself above his hearers; for the preacher was no better than the hearer, neither was the teacher any better than the learner, And thus they were all equal, and they did all labor, every man according to his strength. (Alma 1:5, RE, emphasis added)

And here is Denver's commentary:

They weren't all priests. (Well, that's not equal.) There weren't all teachers. (That's not equal either.) But they were all equal. "And they did all labor..." Oh, so they have one thing in common, and the one thing that they have in common is work, "...every man according to his strength." You have to give what you have. And one man's strength may not be another man's strength, but he needs to give according to the strength that he has. And one woman's strength may not be what another woman's strength is, but she must give according to the strength that she has...

Equal (as the Lord is explaining here [Denver is quoting Ezekiel 8:7, RE]) means "accountable." Every one of us is equal in the eyes of God, meaning you're going to pay a price or you're going to receive a reward, all of this talking about after they die. The righteous (after they die) shall live. The wicked (after they die) shall be dead. Everyone is equal. (Equality, p. 5, emphasis original)

In Zion there will be no magic potion that produces all the goods that we will have in common. Those goods can only be created by individual labors and pursuits, and voluntarily distributed among the people. No governing body or overseeing agency will distribute those goods; it will be done on an individual and case by case basis. First and foremost, we are each responsible for ourselves and for our families, and then when we have "enough and to spare," we share the "to spare" with others. Denver explains this by quoting the following scripture:

For it is expedient that I, the Lord, should make every man accountable as stewards over earthly blessings, which I have made and prepared for my creatures. [For] I, the Lord, stretched out the heavens and built the earth as a very handy work, and all things therein are mine. And it is my purpose to provide for my saints, for all things are mine, but it must needs be done in my own way. And behold, this is the way that I, the Lord, have decreed to provide for my saints: that the poor shall be exalted, in that the rich are made low, for the earth is full and there is enough and to spare... I... prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves. [So] therefore, if any man shall take of the abundance which I have made and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall with Dives lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment. (T&C 105:4-5, as quoted by Denver in Equality, p. 15). 

And here is Denver's commentary on it:

See, those words mean what those words say:

"The earth is full and there is enough..." That's one thing; that's when the labor of your hands has finally fed you. And then after you've made the ground sufficiently productive, there is not just enough, but there's also "and to spare." It is that "and to spare" that enough hard labor will eventually yield that can be used to help others. And not just the one who produces. 

"If any man shall take of the abundance which I have made and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel... " Okay--of the abundance. That's not the "enough." That's the "to spare." You have to produce "enough"--and that in and of itself may be a mighty challenge in a desolate wilderness--before you get to the point that you are producing both "enough" and "to spare." And when you have enough to spare, that abundance needs to be imparted in order to allow others to come and labor alongside you. (Equality, p. 15, emphasis original) 

This is what I believe is the higher law of dealing justly. The voluntary sharing of the "to spare" in the latter-day Zion will be what levels the playing field between the rich and poor. It will be the catalyst that creates the conditions where all goods will be held in common, and will be an important step in becoming one with our community and with God, who owns it all. It is this voluntary sharing of goods, beginning with simple food and housing, that will eventually result in what Isaiah prophesied about Zion millennia ago:

For the Lord shall comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, and he will make her wilderness like Eden and her desert like the garden of the Lord... (Isaiah 18:2, RE)

The wilderness of the Rocky Mountains, where I believe Zion will be located (See this talk for more details on Zion's location), will never turn into Eden without our labor. God's promise that the earth will "yield its increase" is contingent upon our labor. Nothing will replace good 'ole fashioned hard work; even in Zion someone has to take the garbage out, it won't walk out the door by itself.  

Becoming One: Overcoming Contradiction

Have you ever wondered why the Lord wants us to be one? Does He mean that we should all think and act alike, losing our individuality and becoming a cog in the proverbial wheel of society? Are we supposed to blend into one societal mass, a metaphysical blob that combines all of its members into one homogeneous being? Are we to sacrifice our autonomy to be part of the group? Is society a living, breathing, and self-acting entity? Of course not. In fact, there is no such thing as a group. You cannot see, touch, hear, or smell a group. It does not exist. When you look at a group of people all you see are varying individuals; when you look at a forest all you see are distinguishable trees. The individual is antecedent to the group, which can only exist as an abstraction in your mind. Therefore, the entire premise of collectivism is based on the lie that the individual must give up his/her rights for the good of the group, which is a lie precisely because there is no group at all. We are all born with the innate, a priori knowledge that we existed first, and in the first place received our agency from God, a gift bestowed to each individual spirit, and that no group, or organization posing as a group, i.e., the State, can legitimately take that agency away. 

So I pose the question: what does Jesus really mean when He says that we should be one? What did He mean when He told the Nephites that He, and the Father, and the Holy Ghost are one? Joseph Smith explains what it means in the Lectures on Faith:
And he being the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, and having overcome, received a fullness of the glory of the Father - possessing the same mind with the Father, which mind is the holy spirit that bears record of the Father and the Son, and these three constitute the great matchless, governing, and supreme power over all things, by whom all things were created and made that were created and made. 

And these three constitute the Godhead and are one: the Father and the Son possessing the same mind, the same wisdom, glory, power, and fullness, filling the all - the Son being filled with the fullness of the mind, glory, and power of the Father - possessing all knowledge and glory, and the same kingdom: sitting at the right hand of power, in the express image and likeness of the Father - a mediator of man - being filled with the fullness of the mind of the Father, or in other words, the spirit of the Father, which spirit is shed forth upon all those who believe on his name and keep his commandments. (Lecture 5:2, RE, emphasis added) 

The Father and Son being one does not mean that they have the exact same personality, or that they have somehow morphed into the same trinitarian Being. But they do possess the same mind, which consists of wisdom, glory, power, fullness, and possessing all knowledge. So when Jesus asks us to be one with Him and the Father, He is offering those same gifts to us: wisdom, glory, power, fullness, and knowledge. Thus, being one is not some kind of relinquishment of autonomous sovereignty, but rather is an invitation to be part of a fraternity, or circle of friends that share beliefs and ideas. In other words, Jesus is asking us to fellowship with one another. He is asking us to make friends. 

Joseph Smith, writing from Liberty Jail in 1839, expressed poetically what it means to have a friend:

But those who have not been enclosed in the walls of a prison without cause or provocation can have but a little idea how sweet the voice of a friend is. One token of friendship from any source whatever awakens and calls into action every sympathetic feeling. It brings up in an instant everything that is passed. It seizes the present with a vivacity of lightening. It grasps after the future with the fierceness of a tiger. It retrogrades from one thing to another, until finally all enmity, malice, and hatred, and past differences, misunderstandings, and mismanagements lie slain victims at the feet of hope. And when the heart is sufficiently contrite, then the voice of inspiration steals along and whispers, My son, peace be unto your soul. (T&C 138:11)

Joseph had been suffering for months on the floor of that cold, filthy, jail cell. He and his cellmates could not even stand all the way up and were not given adequate food. His statement comes from a letter that he wrote to the church in March, after spending the frigid winter in the jail. These poetic words came from the deep recesses of his soul, tempered by months of incessant suffering. It is as if he had an epiphany as he wrote, summing up with profound clarity what it really means to be one. Denver has commented on Joseph's words, making them applicable to us today:

Just like Joseph, we have perpetual conundrums and contradictions. We all face them. Some are of our own making but others are just inherent in living in this existence. When we thoughtfully consider the challenges, just like Joseph it seizes the mind, and like Joseph in Liberty Jail, makes us reflect upon so many things with the "avidity of lightning". That was Joseph's word. The mind is in this frenzied state, and with the avidity of lightning he's jumping from subject to subject, a fence to a fence, from things that console to things that outrage you. From things you know to be true to things that offend you. Back and forth, and back and forth, until, as Joseph puts it, "...finally all enmity, malice and hatred, and past differences, misunderstandings and mismanagements are slain victorious at the feet of hope; and when the heart is sufficiently contrite, then the voice of inspiration steals along whispers [.]" It's almost poetry, the way Joseph describes what he went through there. But it is poetry describing the actual bona fides of Joseph receiving answers from God. (That We Might Become One, pp. 3-4)

These words are inspiring to muse upon, but can people really live together in Zion devoid of all enmity, malice, hatred, past differences, misunderstandings, and mismanagements? Enoch's people certainly did, but it took hundreds of years before God took the entire city into heaven; it took time to perfect Zion. Not only does it take time, it will take people actually living together in a society. No monk living in isolation, meditating for hours on end each day, could ever achieve Zion. Such a monk will never encounter a situation where he would have to put off enmity, malice, and strife, because there is no one else around to annoy him. Let's face it, in every social group, no matter how big or small, there is always someone that gets on someone else's nerves, especially in families. There is always someone who is a know-it-all, or so insecure that they always have to be right - even when they are wrong most of the time. There are always those who are manipulative, condescending, boisterous, or socially awkward. And let's not forget about the tight wads; those who always let others drive and never pitch in for gas, or who live to get their next free meal. 

Now that I've brought you back to reality, how to we get back to Joseph's ideal, the place where "the voice of inspiration steals along and whispers...? We can start by simply letting people think they are right, even when they are wrong. We can beg God in our prayers to remove our reactions to those who reek of irritation and annoyance. We can counter manipulation and condescendence with service and unconditional love. We can choose not to be angry with our brother or sister who takes advantage of us, we can befriend the socially awkward, we can console the insecure, and we can humor the boisterous. In other words, we can have compassion on our fellow saints. The truth is, we are all broken in some way, all lost, all fallen, all laden with the baggage of mortality. We are all here on earth because of one common choice we made in the pre-existence: that choice was to follow Christ. Whether we know it or not, we are all searching for Him, all searching for something higher; transcendental of our current circumstances. That yearning, that longing for something more, creates the need for fellowship, for friendship, for acquaintance, to share in the hope for higher existence. Zion is that something more, that higher existence, and it can only come by removing our egotistical barriers, and dismantling our myopic paradigms.

Denver explained how contention is cultivated, and how our tools to change the minds of others are limited to persuasion, in talk entitled That We Might Become One, given in 2018:

The more we contend and dispute with one another the better we become at contention. We polish the rhetorical skills to oppose others. That spirit of contention can take possession of us and when it does, we are hard-pressed to be a peacemaker with others...

Our tools must be limited to persuasion, gentleness, meekness, love unfeigned, pure knowledge, all of them mustered "without compulsory means" to persuade others to accept truth. And if we fail to make the persuasive case then the problem is not others, the problem is that we've got to figure out how to be sufficiently knowledgeable as as to bring them aboard. 

I believe every person we encounter down here, no matter who they are, wants to follow Christ. That's why we're here. The only reason they got here was because they want to follow Christ. Therefore, since they are predisposed to following Christ the reason they are not doing so at present is because no one has taken the time, no one has taken the trouble of giving sufficient cause to them to change, to turn, to repent, and to follow Christ. And by the way, at this point, none of us know enough in order to be able to truly follow Christ, because we are all riddled with half truths, part understanding, and the need for constant repentance, all of us. (p. 7, emphasis added) 

That last part is paramount, "we are all riddled with half truths, part understanding, and the need for constant repentance..." No one, not even those who have been in the presence of God, know all the truth. Omniscience is reserved for God and Him alone, therefore, it is foolishness to assume we know virtually anything at all. And worse than that, it is utter folly and hubris to assume that any one of us knows more than anyone of our fellow Saints. Nephi said it this way:

Oh that cunning plan of the Evil One. Oh the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! When they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not the counsel of God, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves. Wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not; and they shall perish. But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God. (2 Nephi 6:9, RE)

The ironic thing about the search for truth is that it is littered with contradictions. We may spend years researching some rabbit hole only to find that it leads nowhere, and we have to start again (trust me I know from experience). We may feel inspired to go down another rabbit hole, only to have the Spirit ultimately lead us in another direction. It is almost as if God requires us to endure contradictions to humble us. In fact, that is exactly the effect of experiencing them. If we already "know" something, the natural response is to file it away in a box and put it on a shelf labeled, "I have figured this out and no longer need to search." But the instant we do that, even if what we have found is actual knowledge, we leave ourselves open to deception. Satan, the great Opposer, sneaks in and whispers flattering words like, "you're so smart, it's OK to let this knowledge create a wedge (dig a pit for thy neighbor) between you and others, it makes you better than them... you did the research, you put in the effort, and they didn't because they're lazy and stupid." And if it is knowledge that does not have the effect of lifting and blessing others, we should question the source of it, reset our minds to tabula rasa, and start over again. 

In the book of Abraham we learn that there will always be a level of intelligence greater than the one we have attained to, no matter how far we've progressed, or think we have progressed. Abraham writes:

And the Lord said unto me, These two facts do exist - that there are two spirits, one being more intelligent than the other; there shall be another more intelligent than they. I am the Lord, your God; I am more intelligent than they all. (Abraham 5:4, RE)

Perhaps the point of gaining knowledge in this mortal sphere, essential to salvation as Joseph Smith once opined, is to prepare us for greater contradictions in the world to come. What if part of our eternal progression is relearning how to humble ourselves as we ascend up Jacob's ladder by being confronted with conundrum after conundrum with each step? The fact of the matter is, that Jesus Christ experienced greater contradictions than any of us could ever bear, and afterward stayed true to the Father, and remained without sin. Joseph Smith mentioned this when he was explaining the relationship between the Father and the Son in the Lectures on Faith. He writes:

... the Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, a personage of tabernacle, made or fashioned like unto man, or being in the form and likeness of man, or rather, man was formed in his likeness and in his image - he is also the express image and likeness of the personage of the Father, possessing all the fullness of the Father, or the same fullness with the Father, being begotten of him, and was ordained from before the foundation of the world to be a propitiation for the sins of all those who should believe on his name, and is called the Son because of the flesh - and descended in suffering below that which man can suffer, or in other words, suffered greater sufferings and was exposed to more powerful contradictions than any man can be. But notwithstanding all this, he kept the law of God and remained without sin... (Lecture 5:2, RE, emphasis added)

If Jesus Christ, the greatest of all, the most intelligent of all, "was exposed to more powerful contradictions than any man can be," how can we, mere mortals, allow our comparatively miniscule contradictions to drive wedges into our relationships with others? What a foolish thing to be divided over doctrine, precepts, tenets, creeds, or perceived knowledge, most of which are meaningless in the grand scheme of things. In Zion, there will continue to be contradiction, in fact, the further we progress up the ladder, the more powerful those contradictions become, it is all a part of our becoming like God. The point of Zion is to not let those contradictions divide us, to not let them get in the way of the two great commandments: loving God and loving our neighbor. Mormon informs us that the Nephite community that achieved Zion were "one in the children of Christ and heirs to the kingdom of God." How did they achieve this? There were "no manner of -ites," or in other words, no tribalism to divide them. No "our people verses your people," no customs and traditions to argue over, no "our ways are better than your ways." Ultimately, no contradictions worth even mentioning. 

Christ set the greatest example. He could have contended with everyone He met, and He would have always been right. But, as Denver explains, He chose not to:

How much of the gospel of Christ would not have been possible for Him to preach if He'd gone about contending? He chose not to. In that respect, perhaps His most godly example was the patience with which He dealt with those around Him; kindly, patiently, correcting them when they largely came to Him with questions trying to trap Him, but affirmatively stating in the Sermon on the Mount how you could take any group of people and turn them into Zion itself, if we would live the Sermon on the Mount. (That We Might Become One, p. 8)

Having "no manner of -ites" ultimately means that people give up their propensity to insecurity by exclusively associating their identity with a clan, a race, a tribe, a nation, a state, or even a team. This doesn't mean we have to give up who we are or where we come from, it just means we cannot let such trivial matters divide us. Ultimately, we are all part of one big family of God; all spiritual brothers and sisters in the grand scheme of eternity. The things that divide us here are merely illusions, planted deliberately in our periphery to test us. As Denver asserts, if we would just live the Sermon on the Mount to its fullest extent we could achieve Zion, as it is the blueprint for such a society. In this post, I wrote about the revolutionary nature of that sermon, specifically in regard to its nonviolent threat to Roman hegemony. But much more than that, it is roadmap to personal salvation, and an instruction manual to live in peace and harmony with one another. 

The Hive Mentality: A Satanic Substitute

Before closing this post, we must visit the evil side of having one mind, the Satanic substitute for unity. In the book of Revelation, specifically the sections we have been covering in this series, John describes the ten kings that will rule under the New World Order as having "one mind," giving "their strength and power unto the beast." This means that they will support the beast agenda because of what he will promise them. However, no two people have the same mind, and those ten kings will have their own secret agendas and ambitions, answering to the Beast in the meantime to move up the political ladder. The propensity of political leaders is to subtly shape and mold public opinion to carefully limit the scope of independent and free thought. After all, people who do not think for themselves or who do not have access to all the facts are much easier to control. 

This concept of the hive mentality has been pushed on the American people for the last century; for the purpose of dissuading dissent and suppressing the free flow of information. The State has accomplished this through the gradual nationalizing of public education that began before the progressive era. John Dewey, who was educated in the Hegelian Dialectic by his psychology mentor G. Stanley Hall (most likely a Skull and Bones appointed professor), played a pivotal role in the burgeoning federal educational system. In his own words, the goals of the State were admittedly not to create brighter minds, but more obedient citizens. This quote is taken from his personal educational manifesto, dubbed "My Pedagogic Creed”:
The school is primarily a social institution. Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends. Education, therefore, is a process for living and not a preparation for future living. (Source)

The “social ends” he is alluding to are the ends/goals of the State, and by “process for living” Dewey means conformity, or fitting into society. Admittedly, he confesses that State education is not designed to prepare an individual for the future, but is geared toward creating in the individual a dependence upon the social group/herd, and/or the State. Public education teaches at the lowest common denominator, which relegates children into a homogenous mold, stifling the brightest and enabling the dullest. Historical narratives are varnished and squeaky clean, omitting pertinent facts that paint government or its progressive proponents in a negative light. Free markets are castigated as barbaric and archaic while socialistic movements are heralded as noble, progressive, and grandiose. Most egregiously, obedience to authority and governmental paternalism is the supreme doctrine preached in public classrooms, even if it is unspoken, it is incessantly implied. This Satanic substitute of having one mind has the effect of diminishing that mind, even to the point that those brought up in such a system entirely lose their God-given ability to reason or think for themselves, which is, of course, the goal.

In a concise little book authored by Murray Rothbard entitled, Education: Free and Compulsory, the American descent into compulsory education is laid out, and surprisingly, began in the early 1600s in Massachusetts. The theocratical Puritans set up a compulsory literacy law to reinforce Calvinism and obedience to the local magistrate. The government, according to Rothbard, was "Calvinist absolutism," or strict adherence to the church, its dogma, and its leaders. Church attendance was mandatory, even though not every citizen qualified as a member. It was not until one achieved "membership" that they could vote in elections. John Winthrop was the first governor of Massachusetts, and believed that "natural liberty" needed to be reigned in by "God's ordinances," and that "correct civil liberty means being good 'in a way of subjection to authority'." As you recall, it was the reverend Roger Williams, the dissenting rebel, who, after being forcibly expelled from Puritan tyranny, founded Rhode Island in 1638. Adrian Larsen has written a very interesting article on this man, click here to read it. 

After the Revolutionary War, Massachusetts made school attendance mandatory by 1789, but it took another century before the rest of the states would follow suit. According to Rothbard:

In 1850, all the states had public schools, but only Massachusetts and Connecticut were imposing compulsion. The movement for compulsory schooling conquered all of America in the late nineteenth century. Massachusetts began the parade, and the other states followed, mainly in the 1870s and 1880s. By 1900, almost every state was enforcing compulsory attendance. (Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 41)

Prevailing in some states was the Platonic view that government should assume full control and care over children. According to the "father of the public school system in South Carolina," children were to be taught strict obedience to the State:

all children will taught in them... in these schools the precepts of morality and religion should be inculcated, and habits of subordination and obedience be formed... The state, in the warmth of her solicitude for their welfare, must take charge of those children, and place them in school where the minds can be enlightened and their hearts can be trained in virtue. (As quoted by Rothbard, in Education, p. 45) 

Rothbard goes on to discuss the myriad "educational reformers" who began to appear on the scene and with "tireless propaganda... came to control the schools through positions on the state boards of education, as superintendents, etc.; through the control of teachers' training institutions, and thereby of the teachers..." The effect was to the centralization of all schools under Federal regulations, even though it is the actual states that run the schools. The system relegates the states to mere extensions of the national government, whose educational "standards" are carefully designed to curtail creativity and logical reasoning. Here is Rothbard's conclusion:

The effect of progressive education is to destroy independent thought in the child, indeed to repress any thought whatsoever. Instead, children learn to revere certain heroic symbols (Gentile), or to follow the domination of the "group" (as in Lafcadio Hearn's Japan). Thus, subjects are taught as little as possible, and the child has little chance to develop any systematic reasoning powers in the study of definite courses. (Education, p. 53)

Similarly, the LDS Church has accomplished the same phenomenon with its doctrinal centralization policy called "correlation." All Church study materials, as well as Sunday School, Relief Society, and Priesthood lessons are all approved by a the corporate "correlation" committee before being published. I have heard so many people brag about this system because for some reason they think it is a good thing that "no matter what ward or stake you walk into, on any given Sunday, throughout the entire world, the lessons are exactly the same." Yet, all the "approved" materials are coming from a central governing authority, and everyone involved in the process is a paid employee of the corporate Church. Members are strongly discouraged from studying non-Church-approved sources (in fact they are told that doing so is threatening to their salvation) when looking into Church history, and are told by the leaders that some questions won't be answered until we pass through the veil. The effect of this "oneness" of mind is to fall deeper into apostasy, and deeper into intellectual and spiritual enslavement by Church leaders. Those who celebrate correlation as some kind of sign that the "Church is true" are in effect celebrating their idiocy, their darkness of mind, and their further separation from God. 

Being one does not mean that we have to give up our ability to think and reason, our cognitive independence, or our very mind. In the context of Zion, it entails allowing others to fall where they may on the cognitive and intellectual scale, and love them without judgement. No mystery or rabbit hole will be off-limits, no institution will be threatened by studying sources outside its purview, and no central authority will be in charge of parsing out "approved" study materials. God will be in charge of what is taught, and He will teach us knowledge about the universe, hidden things about the earth, and unspeakable things about the eternal world. 

Perhaps the theme of this entire post can be summed up in one scripture from the Book of Mormon. After Alma and his people escaped from king Noah, he set up Christ's church among them. When he ordained priests to teach them, he "commanded' them to only teach faith in Christ and repentance. This was not because he was the president of some committee to control church approved curriculum, but rather he was following the Lord's dictum to only teach His doctrine to His church... to prepare the new converts for greater things. The greater things were not controlled by Alma, they came to the saints line upon line, precept upon precept, and individually according to their faith and diligence. But in the meantime, they were to have their hearts knit together in unity and love, they were to love and accept each other as they were, from the least to the greatest. 

And it came to pass that Alma, having authority from God, ordained priests; even one priest to every fifty of their number did he ordain to preach unto them and teach them concerning the things pertaining unto the kingdom of God. And he commanded them that they should teach nothing save it were the things which he had taught them and which had been spoken by the mouth of the holy prophets. Yea, even he commanded them that they should preach nothing save it were repentance and faith on the Lord, who had redeemed his people. And he commanded them that there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another. And thus he commanded them to preach. And thus they became the children of God. (Mosiah 9:9, RE) 

Stay tune for part VI...  "All Things Common," in which we'll explore what having our goods in common might look like.

Postscript: Recommended Blog Post and Collective Prayers Needed

Denver has recently published a new blog post on the theme of Zion entitled Remaining Restoration, which I highly recommend. 

Also, my friend Ken Cromar, who is very active in the freedom movement, has asked us to pray for the Brunson Brothers, as one of their cases to "drain the swamp" has found its way to the Supreme Court:

Click here for background on the case

And click here to go to Ken's website

Sunday, November 20, 2022

Zion vs the Beast IV: The Atlantean Leviathan

 Previously: Daniel's Little Horn

Have you ever had a dream within a dream, only to wake up to the realization that you’re still dreaming? Hearing a distance voice softly echoing, growing louder and louder until it’s screaming in your ear the words: wake up! The abyss we’re about to descend into is a rabbit hole within a rabbit hole, a circle within a concentric circle, a journey into the upside down. 

If you've read Part II and Part III of this series, you'll know that we have identified Scarlet/Mystery Babylon as English Freemasonry and the Beast as its creation: French Freemasonry. We don't know all the details of what this last-days Beast will look like, but scripture and history have given us many clues to look for as the time draws nearer for this leviathan to "rise up of the sea" as Saint John saw in vision. In this post, we will nail down the philosophical legend that matches perfectly with John's description of this allegorical Beast. But first, a background on how Freemasonry, and its mother, Mystery Babylon, have viewed this promised-land of America is necessary to give you the deep philosophical context behind their "secret plans" for this great land. 

The Secret Destiny of America

Manly P. Hall, one of the most famous 33rd Degree Freemasons that has ever lived, has written much on the esoteric teachings of the mystery schools. In my opinion, he is the Carroll Quigley of Freemasonry, an ideologue who truly believed that what the highest levels of Freemasonry espouse will bring about a "better" world. His writings are laden with the mystic myths and esoteric legends of myriads of ancient cultures and peoples.  And I must say, this man, who passed away in 1990, has contributed copiously to the exposure of the "mysteries" and the "secret doctrine" of what these insiders believe, the very "secret plans" of the ancient Gadiantons. Ironically, without his unwitting scholarship, we would not know as much about Lucifer's plan to enslave the world prior to Christ's return. Hall has written volumes of literature, but the books I will focus on in this post, are The Secret Destiny of America, published in 1944, and America's Assignment With Destiny, published in 1951. 

Drawing on the work of Spyros Cateras, who wrote a book called Christopher Columbus Was A Greek in 1937, Hall asserts that Christopher Columbus was not the humble Spaniard we've all been led to believe. His real name was Prince Nikolaos Ypsilantis, and he hailed from the Greek island of Chios. He sailed not from Italy or Spain, but from the Greek port of Mahon. He was heavily influenced by Plato and his writings about the lost empire of Atlantis, and in addition to looking for a better trade route to the Orient, he could've been inspired by other Greek mariners who "navigated the Atlantic ocean in ancient times." Cateras, author of the book mentioned above, believes that the Greeks discovered the Americas centuries before the Spaniards, and reveals that "the language of the ancient Mayas of the American continent contains many words of pure Greek belonging to the Homeric period." Hall surmises that Columbus already knew about the Americas through hidden Greek history, and hints that he was either a mystery school initiate or closely working with an agent (a mysterious man who counseled Columbus on his first voyage) who was. 

Hall heaps praise upon Columbus, as if he were some shining light, born out of the Renaissance, contributing to the "mental emancipation of man from the tyranny of ignorance, superstition, and fear" (notice those three words are how the mystery schools label the church, the state, and the mob, I wrote about that here). But Columbus was not the benign, good-intentioned explorer we were all taught about in school. The man was a downright tyrant, who allowed his men to plunder, murder, and rape the native inhabitants of the West Indies where they landed. Like other ambitious men, he was plagued by greed and the desire for power and authority. Adrian Larsen, on his blog To The Remnant, has written a fascinating article on this very subject. He destroys the paradigm that many LDS people have of Columbus; that he was the Gentile that Nephi saw the Spirit wrought upon to cross the many waters, a paradigm I used to believe in myself. The article is the first in a series of posts called Destruction, and is titled, A Man Among the Gentiles

It has been since the discovery of the Americas that both the Rosicrucians and the Templars began to be interested in the Americas for the new location of their Atlantean utopia. According to the different cultural legends of Atlantis, it was situated somewhere in the Atlantic ocean, west of the straights of Gibraltar, which the Greeks called the Pillars of Hercules. The pillars were the gateway, so to speak, to what was considered a better world; perfect in philosophy, science, morality, equality, and governance. In the Grecian dialogue known as the Critias, Plato tells the tale of the lost Atlantean continent, along with the details of its governmental structure and geopolitics. Plato's account is the most detailed we have, but the myths and legends of various cultures, both primitive and civilized, also tell a ubiquitous story of a great civilization destroyed by a flood. Some of these cultures tell stories of serpent-gods who, emerging out of the sea, dwelled with their ancestors for a time teaching and instructing "them in agriculture, architecture, medicine, science, language, religion, and statesmanship" (Secret Destiny, p. 63). One such culture was the ancient Mayan civilization, and the god who appeared to them was Quetzalcoatl. 

As Hall tells it, Quetzalcoatl was "a mysterious old man who came out of the sea riding on a raft of serpents." To him, the "Mayas owed their cultural superiority." He was said to have come from the east, an allusion to sun-worship, and "carried with him the symbol of the cross," an allusion to zodiacal astrology. His name has two meanings, the first, Quetzal means "the bird of Paradise," and coatl, means "serpent," and as Hall explains: "the Serpent veiled in plumes of the paradise-bird" (See, Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, p. 559). Quetzalcoatl is said to have dwelled with the Mayan people for some time as their "benevolent priest-king," and when he departed, he "called to his raft of serpents, and then floated away to the east, with the promise to return at a distant day to rule over his nation." 

Hall asserts that the Mayas were an advanced culture, "the highest civilization to be developed in the Americas," who formed, "the first great democratic State on a continent curiously set aside for the perfection of the dream of democracy." Hall's "dream of democracy" is ensconced in the Atlantean utopia of old, what he considers the perfect pattern of government. It is this utopia that Freemasonry wants to resurrect, philosophically raising it "out of the sea." It is this system of government that is the Satanic imitation of Zion, ruled by ten "benevolent" priest-kings, who will have total control over their subjects and geopolitical regions. According to Hall, the Mayas practiced a similar system of government, by electing priest-kings, which priesthood was "powerful," but "benevolent, given to learning, and a patron of the arts and sciences." Are you beginning to see the pattern of exalting men to the status of "benevolent" gods? This humanistic pattern is part and parcel of the Satanic imitation of men becoming gods through the intellect. I'll get into the government of Atlantis later as we match it up with the description of John's Beast. For now, let's return to Quetzalcoatl. 

There are many interesting parallels with the legend of Quetzalcoatl and Jesus. According to Hall, the "Feathered Snake" was "a kind of Messiah, who suffered, died, and arose again." Other legends of Quetzalcoatl depict him as a white-bearded god, who came anciently to the American continent as a resurrected instructing them in heavenly things. Some have made the connection that the myth of Quetzalcoatl came from the American Native's diluted accounts of Jesus visiting the Nephites, as told in the Book of Mormon. After all, it was prophesied that the Lamanites would dwindle in unbelief until the Gentiles were to take the Gospel to them. Hall also makes another point, which sounds an awful lot like the Book of Mormon teaching that prosperity is based upon the laws of Jesus Christ. Remember, the Nephites, and us, the Gentiles, are told in the Book of Mormon text that our prosperity and rights of obtaining the promised-land are directly related to our correct worship of the God of this land, Jesus Christ. Hall writes:
It is believed that the Mayas hold the world record for continued peace. They flourished as a great powerful nation for five hundred years without war with other tribes or internal strife. The high civilization attained by the Mayas was due primarily to the laws given them by Quetzalcoatl. So long as they obeyed these laws they continued to prosper. (Secret Destiny, p. 64, emphasis added)

It is not unreasonable to assume that this teaching could have made it's way to South and Central America centuries after Jesus visited the Nephites in Bountiful, which I believe was located somewhere in the Mid-western or Eastern United States (I'm a heartland model guy). Consider for instance, that Quetzalcoatl, according to ancient lore, was born of a virgin and was known as the "Divine Incarnation," and "Lord of the Winds." Hall, quoting Mendieta in his Ecclesiastical History, reveals that Quetzalcoatl was described:

...as a white man with a strong formation of body, broad forehead, large eyes, and a flowing beard. He wore a mitre on his head, and was dressed in a long white robe reaching to his feet, and covered with the design of red crosses. In his hand he held a sickle. His habits were ascetic; he never married, and was most chaste and pure in his life, and is said to have endured penance in a neighboring mountain, not for its effect upon himself, but as an example to others... He condemned sacrifices, except of fruit or flowers, and was known as the god of peace; for when addressed on the subject of war, he is reported to have stopped his ears with his fingers. (America's Assignment, p. 12)

Sounds like Mendieta is describing a distorted version of Jesus, except for the red crosses, a definite allusion to the Rosicruscians. Even more interesting, is Hall's quotation of Lord Kingsborough, who describes Quetzalcoatl as the "morning star":

The Messiah is shadowed in the Old Testament under many types; such as those of a lion, a lamb, a roe, the morning star, (or the planet Venus, otherwise called Lucifer), the sun, light, a rock, a stone, the vine, wine, bread, water life, the way, and he is there recognized as in the triple character of a king, priest, and prophet. It is very extraordinary that Quetzalcoatl, whom the Mexicans believed equally to have been a king, a prophet, and a pontiff, should also been named by them, Ceyacatl, or the morning star. (Ibid, pp. 19-20, emphasis added)

Morning stars are described by Job as those who sang together and shouted for joy when the foundations of the earth were laid. This appellation could be attributed to both Christ and Lucifer, as well as many others of God's children who have come to this earth. Lord Kingsborough's parenthetical assertion that the morning star is synonymous with the planet Venus, which is also known as Lucifer, is most interesting in light of Isaiah's indictment of Lucifer as a "son of the morning," who desires to exalt himself "above the stars of God." Could it be that the legend of Quetzalcoatl is just another chapter of the age-old plans of Lucifer to insert himself into the position of Messiah, a title he coveted before he fell from heaven? 

Regardless, the legend of Quetzalcoatl could very well have come from Christ's visit to the Nephites, originally at least, and subsequently corrupted into the serpent-bird myth that we have today. This fits Satan's pattern of taking a truth and changing it into a half-lie that benefits him. The serpent is, after all, a symbol that he wears proudly, an emblem of his pseudo-wisdom in tempting Adam and Eve to partake of the forbidden fruit while telling them that they would "be as the gods, knowing good from evil." Ironically, their fall brought about the very circumstances that allow us the opportunity to progress in eternity. It is only here in mortality, burdened by our individual circumstances and struggles, that we can offer up the sacrifice of all worldly things. Joseph taught in the Lectures on Faith that a religion that doesn't require the sacrifice of all things cannot save us, and is not a true religion. The mystery schools however, believe the opposite, that knowledge is what saves, and that "enlightened" el-ites (a word that means a group of gods) should rule over the ignorant, i.e., the profane. This teaching, all you will see, is subtly embedded into their Atlantean utopia. 

Hall goes on to applaud the socialistic system the Mayas lived under, although he admits that because of a lack of complete historical records, we aren't aware as to the exact details of the "legal codes" taught them by Quetzalcoatl. Nevertheless, he asserts that the Mayan records contain the following details:

The Mayan nation was a collective commonwealth living under an advanced form of socialized order. They possessed all goods in common, and shared equally in the benefits of their production. They possessed no money or monetary symbol of any kind; and it has been suggested that this lack of currency was in part responsible for their five hundred years of peace... Each gave a part of his goods to maintain the State, and this contribution was employed to build public buildings, parks, schools, and places of public sport. There seems to have been no poverty, and little if any crime. No buildings have been found which suggest prisons or other places of confinement. (Secret Destiny, p. 64, emphasis added)

Notice the two phrases I bolded and italicized above. The first sounds like a description of the Nephites in Bountiful who achieved Zion for a short time, who, had all things common among them.  However, they did not have the second one, a State. In the last-days Zion, there will not be a State; there will not be an abstraction ruling over the people. Christ alone will rule, as the King of kings. The way that you can know that Hall's utopia is Satanic is that it omits Christ (who king Benjamin said was the only Head under which freedom was possible), and it adds a State, the very Beast that John's vision is warning us about. Don't look at Hall's history of the Mayas as literal history, he cites no sources for his assumptions, but rather look at it as conjecture for his philosophical ideal of "perfect" government. Remember, Satan's plan was to rule us, God's plan was for us to rule ourselves. In 4 Nephi, the short description of the "heavenly gift" included the fact that the Nephites "dealt justly with one another." Keep in mind, the text does not say that the government dealt justly for them, this was a purely individual endeavor that allowed them to live in collective harmony. 

Hall's Secret Destiny for America stems from the Satanic imitation of a promised-land based upon worshipping the true God of this land, Jesus Christ. Satan has inserted himself into the picture as an imposter-god, clothed in feathers and snake skin. Hall explains in The Secret Teachings of All Ages, that "The Red 'Children of the Sun,'" were the ancient mystery adepts of the Americas. The title of Freemason comes from the Egyptian word, Phre-Massen, which means children of the sun. I wrote about that here. According to Hall, these "red" children of the sun, students of the mystery schools of ancient America, practiced the initiatory rites set forth in the Popol Vuh, a sacred Mayan text. Hall believes that this priestly class "once ruled both Americas," which is reminiscent of the Egyptian priestly class looked upon as a divine race. Remember the stated goal of Mystery Babylon is to control, usurp, and subjugate both church and state. Here Hall is glorifying in this philosophy as if it is some kind of spiritual sacrament. He further explains where the name America came from, and I'm guessing most of you have never heard this before:

These Children of the Sun adore the Plumed Serpent, who is the messenger of the Sun. He was the God Quetzalcoatl in Mexico, Gucumatz in Quiche; and in Peru he was called Amaru. From the latter name comes our word America. Amaruca is, literally translated, "Land of the Plumed Serpent." The priests of this God of Peace, from their chief centre in the Cordilleras, once ruled both Americas. All the Red men who have remained true to the ancient religion are still under their sway. One of their strong centres was in Guatemala, and of their Order was the author of the book called Popol Vuh. In the Quiche tongue Gucumatz is the exact equivalent of Quetzalcoatl in the Nahuatl language; queztal, the bird of Paradise; coatl, serpent -- "the serpent veiled in plumes of the paradise-bird!" (Secret Teachings, p. 559, emphasis added)

Next time you're singing the patriotic song, America the Beautiful, as yourself if your singing is a tribute to this beautiful land, or to the serpent it was named after, a serpent that represents Lucifer himself. As I always say, nothing is ever as it seems. Hall's point about these priests ruling from the Cordilleras is interesting to say the least. Cordilleras is a borrowed Spanish word for mountain range, and remember that it was the Gadiantons who also had their headquarters in the mountains. As you recall, Lachoneus, the righteous Nephite governor, gathered his people together with provisions to defend themselves against a contingent of robbers, who descended upon them from the mountains:

And it came to pass that in the latter end of the eighteenth year, those armies of the robbers had prepared for battle, and began to come down, and to sally forth from the hills, and out of the mountains, and the wilderness, and their strong holds, and their secret places... (3 Nephi 2:7, RE)

The Gadianton/mountain connection gets more interesting when you consider that Isaiah equates mountains and hills with nations. Is ruling from a high/secret place in the mountains symbolic of these priestly classes having control over the nations? Recall from my last post that John saw Scarlet sitting on seven mountains, or nations, controlled by secret societies stemming back to the Round Table groups. Consider in our modern lexicon the term Deep State, used by many conservatives, libertarians, and conspiracy researchers today. The word deep, in this context, implies that you have to penetrate into many layers of political and social strata to find out who is actually ruling you. Mountains have many layers of strata, rock, and earth, and are nearly impossible for man to penetrate with his puny implements for digging and drilling. The deep interior of a massive mountain will never see the light of day unless God moves or destroys it through earthquakes or other natural disasters. Is God trying to tell us something by using mountain imagery to describe the secret works of Gadiantons, who are seeking deep to hide their councils from the Lord? Does this also correlate with the Deep State today, which is ruled by similar Gadiantons subscribing to the age-old secret plans the Devil revealed to Cain? Is it also a coincidence that the Deep State has been constructing huge underground military bases miles below the earth? These are interesting connections to ponder, and I believe that there is nothing that God included in the Book of Mormon text that should not be applied to us today. 

Getting back to Manly P. Hall, he next turns his attention to the North American Indians of the Great Lakes region. It was these Indians, under the leadership of Hiawatha, the chief of the Iroquois, that made a pact of peace between five warring tribes: the Seneca, Cayuga. Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk. This was called "The League of the Five Nations," and according to Hall, was the inspiration behind Woodrow Wilson's pipe dream of the failed League of Nations created after World War I. Hall explains that another Indian leader, Great Rabbit, a mythological legend to the Algonquins, was instrumental in upping the number of nations in the league to seven, an interesting correlation with Scarlet's seven mountains. Hall uses the pretext of the Native American's League for a typology of America's destiny to become a world commonwealth. He explains that in addition to being a defensive body, the League of seven nations was "also useful in settling inter-tribal disputes." As I will explain later, this is the same pattern of government that existed in ancient Atlantis, in its league of ten kings. Hall claims that Nostradamus prophesied of this very form of government existing in the future on world scale, with America at the helm:

It is in the larger picture of the world's future that Nostradamus indicates the coming of the great league, or assembly of world powers. This league is to be the only human hope of peace, the only solution to a competition between nations. The formation of this league begins the new life of the human race, will allow the human being at last to emerge into the estate for which he was fashioned.

Barbarism ends with the beginning of world civilization. To be civilized, according to Cicero, is to reach that state of personal and collective behavior in which men can live together harmoniously and constructively, united for the betterment of all. By this definition, we have never been civilized. We have existed in a state of cultured savagery. 

The promise of Nostradamus is especially meaningful in these difficult years; for he assures us that the commonwealth of nations is to become a reality. (Secret Destiny, p. 51) 

Think of the double-speak Hall is using here. He subtly equates the term barbarism with individualism. To him, only a world commonwealth of nations can bring about civilization. Ironically, it is governments that engage in barbarism, after all, they are the perpetrators of war, plunder, and slavery. For the most part, it is individuals who seek peace and civilization, while the State, i.e., the Beast, is the organization guilty of foisting "cultured savagery" upon its subjects. Uniting all the nations of the world under such a commonwealth, will only make the Beast bigger, stronger, and more hungry for power. Hall's Beast, the future one-world government called the New World Order, will be organized out of the raw philosophical materials that comprised the Atlantean empire, and whether that ancient empire  existed or not doesn't matter, because they (the Luciferian globalists) are working tirelessly to bring this utopia about. 

Speaking of utopia, in America's Secret Destiny Hall touches on a few famous authors who wrote about ideal societies such as Thomas More, Tommaso Campenella, Trajano Boccalini, and Johann Valentin Andreae, but settles on one man he calls "the master of all fable." This man is the infamous Sir Francis Bacon, the Rosicrucian initiate who, according to Hall, was the main editor of the first King James Bible, which, "bears more Mason's marks than the Cathedral of Strasbourg." Bacon wrote a utopia that is painfully dry and abstract to the profane reader (I know because I read it in preparation for this post, it was the longest 38 pages I've ever read), but to the adept, it is saturated with esoteric mysticism. Mysticism cloaked in the profundities of the rites of an ancient empire, one that Bacon (and his secret society) worked tirelessly to resurrect during his lifetime. 

The New Atlantis and The Great Plan

Bacon's utopia, The New Atlantis, was published posthumously in 1627, by Bacon's chaplain and closest confidant, William Rawley, who writes this in the introduction:
This fable My Lord devised, to the end that he might exhibit therein, a model or description of a college, instituted for the interpreting of nature, and the producing of great and marvelous works, for the benefit of man; under the name Solomon's house, or the college of the six days work. (Secret Destiny, p. 57-58)

According to Hall, the college of the six days work, is: 

...a thinly veiled reference to the perfection of nature through art. The six days are the days of creation by which the natural world was brought into existence, according to the account given in Genesis. As God created the Universe in six symbolic days, so man by art - that is, philosophy - must create the condition of his own perfection by means of six philosophical steps. (Ibid, p. 58) 

In other words, the six days college is an allusion to the mystery schools, who represent the illumined classes, those who will perfect man in "six philosophical steps." Recall that John tells us that six is the number of a man, and has deep philosophical meaning, in addition to being one-third of the number that makes up the Beast. Notice the Luciferian concept in Hall's description that man "must create the condition of his own perfection," i.e., through intellect. Here we have the model for the blatant anti-Christian doctrine of the ancient "secret schools," as Hall calls them. 

Bacon's novel begins with a group of mariners sailing from Peru to China who are catapulted off course due to tumultuous winds. Facing certain death and starvation, they pray to God for deliverance, who leads them to "the fair harbor of a great city in an unknown land." There, in the hands of the hospitable natives, they are nursed back to health and accepted as guests into the beautiful city with all its splendor and achievements in the arts and sciences. According the Hall, the ship they sailed in on represents science, "sailing forth from the limits and boundaries of the old world into the unknown sea of Universal learning." The name of the strange new land was Bensalem, meaning, the Son of Peace, an imitation of the New Jerusalem. The city traded with the entire world in rich merchandise, including "gold, silver, jewels, silks, spices," and other commodities. Hall asserts that this merchandise represents the "Light of Truth," and that the nation, called Atlantis, was "declared to the same as America." 

Those who comprised the government were benevolent priest-kings, who made up the college of Solomon's house, and included among them were "ambassadors, agents, and representatives among all the nations of the world..." After the sailors are fed and brought back to health, one of them is allowed to visit with one of the Fathers of Solomon's house, and the remainder of the insipid novel is a lecture describing the civilization's advancements in arts, science, technology, medicine, and philosophy (which is a replacement for religion).  

The Father reveals that "the end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible." In other words, the search for enlightenment. The Father relates to the man the vast array of "laboratories, observatories, mines and hospitals, and the various engines and inventions by which the elements could be controlled and the secrets of Nature discovered." They had gardens for studying plants, parks for studying animals, medicines for every illness, and they conducted experiments on the senses of man, to discover what stimuli contributed to human enjoyment (music, flavors, sounds, etc.) as well as what deceived them ("the methods by which men could be deceived"; sounds suspiciously like Huxley's Brave New World). Interestingly, the experiments on plants and animals led them to create new hybrid species, eerily reminiscent of the myths and legends of chimeras created before the flood, as well as our modern day GMO experiments on crops. 

According to Hall, every part of the novel is steeped in esoteric meaning, and to him it was a travesty that Bacon was not able to publish the second part, which would have described the actual laws of the commonwealth, based upon Plato's description of Atlantis. Although, Hall is sure that it was written before Bacon's death and kept hidden by the mystery schools, and still exists somewhere today. Hall asserts that Bacon's dream was to bring the six-days college, i.e., Freemasonry, to "America, an area set aside by Nature for the perfection of philosophy and the sciences." If you dig deep into the philosophical idealism of the novel, you will find a subtle resonance with communism and socialism. In the utopia there is no crime, no poverty, and "all men were employed according to their tastes and ability [to each according to his need, from each according to his ability], and each contributed in his own way to the sum of useful knowledge." But as George Orwell once wrote in his classic novel, Animal Farm, "some animals are more equal than others," and some men in the New Atlantis are more qualified to rule than most others. 

Bacon was obsessed with the idea that America was destined to be the New Atlantis, and formed a secret society to that end, clandestinely known as the Order of the Quest. After the Spanish Conquistadores had decimated the Americas with their plundering, pillaging, killing, and torturing under the aegis of a "holy inquisition," the French, Dutch and English began colonization programs on the Eastern seaboard. Hall describes Bacon's role as thus:

Bacon quickly realized that here in the new world was the proper environment for the accomplishment of his great dream, the establishment of the philosophic empire. It must be remembered that Bacon did not play a lone hand; he was the head of a secret society including in its membership the most brilliant intellectuals of his day. All these men were bound together by a common oath to labor in the cause of a world democracy. Bacon's society of the unknown philosophers including men of high rank and broad influence. Together with Bacon, they devised a colonization scheme. (Secret Destiny, p. 68)

Hall reveals that through these "secret channels," word was spread that the "Western Hemisphere was the promised land of the future." He actually used the term promised land. And even more blatantly blasphemous, they referred to this scheme as the Great Plan, which began as early as Jamestown:

After the Jamestown settlement gained some semblance of order and permanence, descendents [sic] of those men who formed the original Baconian Society left England and settled in the colony. It was through them that the Great Plan began to operate in America. There were most fortuitous marriages between the families of the original custodians of the philosophical legacy. From the minglings of the bloods of the Bacons, the Wottons, the Donnes, the Herberts, and the Mores, the Virginia colony derived many of its prominent citizens. Lord Bacon guided the project and probably outlined the programs to be followed after his death. (America's Assignment, p. 73, emphasis added)

Promised land? Great Plan of the eternal God? Sound familiar? I think we have a copy-cat on our hands here. Freemasonry, according to Reverend M.F. Carey, was introduced the the colonies as early as 1606. It is well-documented in the book, The Temple and the Lodge, that there were Freemasons on both sides of the Revolutionary War, especially in military orders that existed since the French and Indian War of the 1750s. Many of the famous generals and commanders, Howe, Clinton, and Cornwallis included, were reluctant to engage in the aggressive warfare that was commonplace in other parts of the world under British dominance or assault. The Colonialists were, after all, English brothers, and those in secret societies on opposites sides of the war were forced to engage in fratricide. The authors of the book highlight this phenomenon as a major contributing factor to the Colonial victory. The British had superior firepower, more funding, and more field experience than the fledging Colonial armies, there was definitely more at play here than pure military tactics, strategy and maneuvers. Baigent and Leigh (authors of the Temple and the Lodge) write:

In fact, Britain did not lose the war in North America for military reasons at all. The war was lost because of other, entirely different factors. It was a deeply unpopular war, much as the war fought in Vietnam by the United States two centuries later was to be. It was unpopular with the British public, with most of the British government, with virtually all the British personnel directly involved - soldiers, officers, and commanders. Clinton and Cornwallis fought under duress, and with extreme reluctance. Howe was even more adamant, repeatedly expressing his anger, his unhappiness and his frustration about the command with which he had been saddled. His brother, Admiral Howe, felt the same way. The colonists, he declared, were the "most oppressed and distressed people on earth." (The Temple and the Lodge, p. 325)

In addition to the Masonic infiltration of the military, most of the founding generation involved in the Declaration of Independence and subsequent Constitutional Convention were also Masons. Hall explains that Benjamin Franklin was so highly respected in lodges throughout England, France, and the Colonies, that although, "he did not make laws... his words became law." Franklin rubbed shoulders with Voltaire and Lafayette, both members of the French Lodge of Nine Sisters, and in America he began the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, and had become the Provincial Grand Master of Pennsylvania in 1734. George Washington was also a Freemason, declaring in 1791, that "I shall always be glad to advance the interests of this Society and be considered by them a deserving brother" (although he later lost interest in the group, and his involvement has been greatly exaggerated). Other founding Masons were Robert Morris, Paul Revere, Peyton Randolph (first presider over the Continental Congress), General Joseph Warren (who fell at Bunker Hill), General Nathaniel Green, Major General Henry Knox, and Thomas Jefferson. Hall writes that:

Of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, nearly fifty were Masons. Only one is known with certainty not have been a member of the Order... All but two of Washington's Brigadier Generals were Masons, as was Ethan Allen of Green Mountain-boy fame. Of the fifty-five members of the Constitutional Convention, all but five were Masons. (America's Assignment, pp. 96-97)

Now, I am not trying to say that just because most of these men were Masons they were evil or knew about Bacon's Great Plan for America. Most of the rank and file Freemasons have no idea what is transpiring at the top of the fraternal pyramid. Despite the influence of secret societies, Nephi asserts that many of the Gentiles fighting for independence were humble and merely seeking for religious freedom. Nephi saw that God was with them, and helped them prevail over their Mother Gentiles. Like I said before, God has such infinite foreknowledge that He knows the intentions of good and bad men, and can use both to further His purposes. The promised land here in America is in an all-out tug-of-war between God's intention to create Zion, and Satan's intention to create the Beast system. One thing about wheat and tares is that they grow together on the same field, and in America that field is the philosophical soil that contains the embryos for both liberty and tyranny, and in a day coming very soon, both will develop into their respective fetuses. 

The Old Atlantis: Plato's "Philosophic Democracy" 

William T. Still, in his 1990 book, New World Order, further elucidates on the Great Plan, which according to Manly P. Hall, originated in the Atlantean Mystery Schools:
Where did this ancient order originate? Hall claimed that it originated in the legendary Atlantis. He claimed that the Atlanteans devised a plan - a "Great Plan" - which would guide world events for millennia to come, and that it included a mysterious blueprint for what would later become America. Hall said that ancient Egyptian secret societies inherited this Great Plan and were well aware of the existence of the land mass in the Western Hemisphere which we now call America, long before it was "discovered" by Columbus. (New World Order, p. 36) 

Hall wrote in The Secret Destiny of America that the Mystery Schools have always maintained a plan for the establishment of a "world democracy" based upon the Atlantean empire. He asserted that this "bold resolution was... that this western continent [America] should become the site of the philosophic empire." In America's Assignment With Destiny, Hall explains that the Great Plan was being brought to fruition by the "initiated" few, who were gently guiding the ignorant many:

The Great Plan reached the Western Hemisphere through a series of incidents. Many early explores and colonizers are known to have been associated with Secret Societies. There is no historical way of determining the secret spiritual convictions of so-called conquistadors, adventurers, and founders of plantations. It is a well-established fact that arts, sciences, philosophies, and political convictions accompany less valuable merchandise along trade routes and caravan trails. Some of the colonizers were probably unaware of the parts they were playing, and the settlements which they founded remained for generations without the strength of security to advance ideological programs. The work, then as always, was in the hands and keeping of a few initiated leaders. They were responsible for the results, and they built slowly and wisely, thinking not of their own days or of their own reputation, but of the future in which the Great Plan would be fulfilled. (p. 58-59, emphasis added)

So what is the big deal about ancient Atlantis? Why do the Mystery Schools want to resurrect this old "philosophical empire"?  The answer is because it incorporates every philosophy that these deleterious secret societies believe in. Namely, socialism, humanism, Luciferianism, communalism (communism), priestcraft, magic arts, sorcery, witchcraft, and the divine right of kings, kings who have ascended through illumination to become gods. The Great Plan, dear readers, is Satan's plan incarnate on the earth, the plan he presented that resulted in his expulsion from heaven. And just like the legend of ancient Atlantis, the New Atlantis will face a similar demise. As I explain the idiosyncrasies of the ancient commonwealth in what follows, remember that the prophet Daniel saw that the Kingdom that God will set up, i.e., Zion, would destroy all other kingdoms, and will be the only thing left standing. Take comfort in the fact that God will not allow the New World Order to exist for very long, but as Saint John's sobering testimony reveals, exist it will. 

Hall draws upon the writings of Plato that come from the dialogue called the Critias, which is said to have been derived from an earlier account from a Greek philosopher named Solon, the so-called father of Greek democracy. Hall adds his own undocumented conjecture that Solon was trained in the Mystery Schools of ancient Egypt, in the temple of Isis, where it has been rumored that Plato and Socrates also received their training. Hall may have been privy to an oral tradition that has not been written down, which is why his rendition of the Platonic account of Atlantis is laden with added philosophic commentary. As a 33rd degree Mason, Hall knows what he is talking about, and like I have said before, it does not matter if Atlantis existed or not, what matters is what the Mystery Schools believe about it. That is what is going to affect you and me. 

The following is a summary of what Hall writes in chapter 5 of The Secret Destiny of America, entitled, "The Ancient League of Nations":

Plato used the Atlantean legend to propagate his own ideas about what Hall described as "the proper form of human government." Atlantis was ruled by ten "benevolent" priest-kings who were given their authority and respective territories from their father Poseidon, the Greek god of the seas. They ruled over seven islands and three great continents. Originally, the legend began as the ten kings being five sets of twins birthed by a mortal woman, Poseidon's lover named Cleito. The first born of these semi-divine sons was named Atlas. The capital city of the seven islands and three continents was Atlantis, and in the center of it stood a temple of Poseidon. The laws of Atlantis were inscribed in a column standing close to a golden shrine of the sea god, and the ten kings took an oath to uphold these laws.

The kings were not to take up arms against each other, and were to consult each other in all matters concerning the "public good." No king had the power to execute one of his subjects without the consent of a majority of the other kings, and each was held accountable by the league for how he conducted the affairs of his own kingdom. Plato described this commonwealth as the "the government of the Golden Age," and Hall equates its laws with "the laws of heaven," and describes it as thus:

By the three great continents of Atlantis are to be understood, Europe, Asia, and Africa; and by the seven islands, all the lesser peoples of the earth. The league of the ten kings is the cooperative commonwealth of mankind, the natural and proper form of human government. The Atlantis, therefore, is the archetype or the pattern of right government, which existed in ancient days but was destroyed by the selfishness and ignorance of men...

The king was the father of his people, impersonal and unselfish, dedicated to the public good, a servant of both the gods and his fellow men. The king was descended of a divine race; that is, he belonged to the Order of the Illumined; for those who come to a state of wisdom then belong to the family of the heroes - perfected human beings... One who achieved this state was by virtue of his own action a superior man, and this superiority was the only aristocracy recognized by Natural Law. (Secret Destiny, p. 26) 

In a nutshell here is what Hall is saying: "right government" consists of being ruled by kings who descend from a divine race (bloodlines of the Illuminati?), who belong to the family of the heroes (Nephilim?), who are "perfected human beings," and are superior to the rest of society and recognized by "Nature" (the god Lucifer?) as our aristocratical rulers. These "perfected human beings" have achieved their state, not through the atonement of Christ (the prototype of the saved man), but through the intellect, or illumination. His reference to the "family of heroes" is interesting, as this word is derived from the Greek god Hercules and is synonymous with the Hebrew word Nephilim. In addition to meaning giants, it also means demi-god, or a semi-divine race of men. John Daniel, in Scarlet and the Beast, quotes Dr. Alfred Rehwinkel from his book, The Flood, published in 1952, who offers the following insight on the enigmatic concept of the Nephilim, or the men of great renown:

The Hebrew word [nephilim] means more that what we understand by the term "giant." It means those that fall upon others, brigands, thugs, tyrants. These nephilim were famous in that world. They had made a great name for themselves through their acts of violence, lawlessness, and corruption. There were known by all, and their statues were probably found in the antediluvian shrines of honor. 

There are nephilim, or giants, in the world today. They are the men who rule this world. They hold their councils in secret. The dispose of countries and millions of human beings as so many figures on a chessboard. They confiscate property that does not belong to them and condemn millions of innocent people to a horrible death of misery and starvation. They blot out whole cities of men, women, and children, with hell-born missiles of death, but they are applauded as great men and renowned, and their portraits and statues are given a place of honor in the halls of fame in our world today. (Scarlet, p. 549)

It will be these types of men who will rule in the New Atlantis, the same age-old pattern of men exercising control and dominion over others. As you may recall, in the Book of Mormon we learn about a particular leader of the Gadianton robbers named Giddianhi, who in an epistle to Lachoneus reveals his true self as an initiate of the Mystery Schools. Giddianhi comes right out and says he is the leader of the secret society of Gadianton, and implores Lachoneus and the Nephites to yield themselves up to him, which if they do they would become partners of all their substance (an allusion to communism). He also admonishes Lachoneus to become acquainted with their "secret works," which he knows "to be good." Giddianhi, like Manly P. Hall, actually believes that Luciferianism is good, and a true religion. He is an idealogue, who sincerely believes that his fraternal society of illumined brothers has a right to rule and govern the Nephites. He actually believes this, just as Hall believes that "perfect government" consists of rule by an elite and divine aristocracy (See 3 Nephi 2:2, RE)

Ancient Atlantis was the model for Plato's "philosophic democracy," which was devoid of competition, i.e., capitalism, had no poverty and very little crime, and was driven by the engine of cooperation. Hall explains that in this utopia "men followed the occupations which they preferred and lived a communal existence, together sharing the fruits of their labors." Hall asserts that this government of ten kings, "is a pattern of world government to insure the prosperity of all peoples and activate the preservation of peace." However, the true design of the "Great Plan" consists, just as Bill Cooper has opined, of a "one-world socialistic totalitarian state," which will crush human freedom and enslave the world to the Beast system. 

The scriptures reveal truth in an exercise of the ultimate reductio ad absurdum, which is a Latin phrase for taking an argument to its logical conclusion. For instance, whom Hall refers to as a "divine race of benevolent priest-kings," the Book of Mormon refers to as Gadianton robbers who plunder and murder for gain. What Plato calls a "philosophic democracy," Saint John calls a Beast. What Hall implies is the "proper form of human government," John says will kill anyone that doesn't worship its image. Whom Hall speaks of as the "guardians of the public good," John describes as merchants, sorcerers, deceivers, blasphemers, and fornicators, who are drunken with the blood of the saints. And ultimately, what Hall describes as the secret schools of the illumined, John and Nephi call out as Mystery Babylon, the Mother of Harlots, the whore of all the earth. Are you seeing the pattern? The conspirators fluff up their esoteric philosophy as some grandiose plan that will lead humanity down a path of enlightenment and societal euphoria, but God is telling you through His prophets that they are just robbers and murderers, vying for power and authority over the flesh, who worship a false god who is jealous of the real One. 

Hall ends his description of Atlantis with the tale of its destruction. The people began to be greedy, feasting their "covetous eyes upon the goods of others" (I thought they had all things in common?). The rulers were then infested by this same greed, and began to perpetuate a scheme to take over the entire world. The ten kings "decided to use their common power to subdue all the earth," resulting in "tyranny and oppression, and despotism and the exploitation of peoples." Zeus, seeing their intrigue, became so enraged that he called a counsel of the gods to determine what to do with the Atlanteans, and the rest is deluge history. Ironically, Hall opines that the "destruction of Atlantis can be interpreted politically as the breaking up of the ideal pattern of government." What Hall doesn't grasp, but Saint John does, is that granting that much control into the hands of only ten rulers will always inevitably result in the abuse of power, that almost all men have a disposition for. Fortunately, Nephi has told us what will happen to the New Atlantis, he says that the Great and Abominable Church will war among themselves, as the incessant and all-pervasive lust for power will lead the wicked to their own demise. 

With all that being said, we are now ready to get into the metaphors of John's Beast, and as you will see, they line up perfectly with Atlantean myth. 

John's Ten-Headed Leviathan

In Revelations 13:1 of the KJV, and 4:6 of the RE, John introduces us to the Beast:
And I saw another sign, in the likeness of the kingdoms of the earth, a beast, rise up out of the sea, and stood upon the sand of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of Blasphemy. (Revelations 4:6, RE)

The beast, who represents earthly kingdoms, or governments, will "rise up out of the sea."  What does John mean by this? Remember that Nephi said that the Mother of Harlots will sit upon many waters and have dominion over all the people of earth? In conjunction with Nephi, John explains, that the angel told him that the sea was imagery for masses of people (See Revelation 6:13, RE). This Beast will rise up from the midst of billions of people, meaning that it will be born of revolution. John also makes a hint to ancient Atlantis in this first line, because the Mystery Schools believe that the ancient empire will philosophically rise up out of the sea. In 1932, Edgar Cayce, the famous psychic from Kentucky, believed that Atlantis would literally rise up out of the sea, somewhere west of the Straits of Gibraltar, but Hall understood this to be a metaphor. In his book, The Lost Keys of Freemasonry, he surmises that Masonry is a derivative of the Atlantean Mystery School:

Masonry is a university, teaching the liberal arts and sciences of the soul to all who will attend to its words. It is a shadow of the great Atlantean Mystery School, which stood with all its splendor in the ancient City of the Golden Gates, where now the turbulent Atlantic rolls in unbroken sweep.

After quoting this passage in his book, Mr. Daniel makes the following commentary:

Hall suggests the antediluvian civilization was democratic, that Freemasonry planned over three centuries ago to recreate a universal democratic society that will philosophically "rise up out of the sea," and like Atlantis, join with ten kings to lead mankind in the pursuit of universal happiness. He says that the Christian Church has delayed the search for the "New Atlantis." And he alludes to the ancient Roman empire as the last attempt at resurrection of the Atlantean project and states another attempt would be made. (Scarlet, p. 561)

Because ancient Atlantis was supposedly a democracy, the New Atlantis will likewise be a democracy, but remember democracy is mob-rule, and not based upon principles or laws as is a Constitutional Christian Republic that Mosiah set up among the Nephites. A democratic form of government is easy for elites to manipulate, as is obvious in our current American democracy (that was supposed to be a Republic). The key point is that this new Atlantean government will be sold as a democracy, because we have been conditioned to believe that democracy is synonymous with self-government, but nothing is further from the truth. 

John then sees the Beast stand "upon the sand of the sea," which in my opinion (and I have nothing to back this up), is symbolic of the Beast bringing the law of the sea, or Maritime Admiralty Law, onto the land, replacing Constitutional Law, i.e., the law of the land. Of course, this has already been done in America, but I believe it will be done again when the Beast empire rises to power. 

Next is John's famous line that the Beast will have "seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns, ten crowns," which is a direct allusion to Atlantis. William T. Still explains the connection in his book, New World Order:

According to this account [the Critias], at its peak, some 10,000 years before the Greek civilization, Atlantis was ruled in complete harmony by a cooperative commonwealth of ten kings, known as the Atlantic League. Seven of these kings ruled over the seven islands that actually made up what was called the "continent of Atlantis." The other three kings of he Atlantean kingdom ruled over the other three known continents Europe, Asia, and Africa. (New World Order, p. 43)

The seven heads are the seven islands, and the ten horns with their ten crowns are the ten regions or districts and ten kings of Atlantis. Still then makes the following commentary, and keep in mind he is writing in 1990:

According to noted biblical scholar Charles Ryrie, the ten horns of the beast are the ten kings mentioned in Daniel 7:24, who will rule over ten nations. Ryrie interprets the Bible as saying that one of these kings will be different, more brutal than the others, and he shall destroy three of the other kings. The Bible says that this most brutal king, referred to as the Antichrist, will "defy the Most High God, and wear down the saints with persecution, and try to change all laws, morals, and customs. God's people will be helpless in his hands for three and a half years. (Ibid, p. 44)

The term "Antichrist" is found in the Bible but bereft of the upper case A. John uses the term in 1 John 2:18 (1 John 1:9, RE), but he seems to be speaking about a philosophy and a group more than just one single person. In my opinion, the king of Assyria described by Isaiah fits most with Daniel's description of the brutal king, who will break away from the "philosophic democracy" and exact his own will upon the world. Ironically, God will use him to destroy Mystery Babylon and the remnants of the Beast empire will war amongst themselves. Hall's utopia will implode from the inside, leaving only chaos in its wake. 

In my last post, I covered the other pertinent prophecies of John in regard to the first beast, I just wanted to show here that John's first few sentences line up perfectly with the supposed government of the fabled Atlantis. As far as the second beast goes, the one John describes in this verse, I have no commentary. This beast is the man that many Christians refer to as the Antichrist, but John never uses that term in the book of Revelations. He maintains that the beast and a false prophet will work together to deceive those who will take the mark of the beast, and both will remain in the lake of fire and brimstone until the end of the millennium. Jesus told his apostles in the book of Matthew (11:6, RE) that there would arise both false christs and false prophets, who would deceive the very elect by showing great signs and wonders. It definitely sounds like there will be more than "one" antichrist. 

In a post I did a while back called Offending the Little Ones, I quoted sections of D. Christian Markham's second volume of Two Churches Only, where he transcribed an interview from a person calling herself by the pseudonym Svali. She was interviewed by investigative journalist Greg Szymanski in March of 2000 in which she revealed unspeakable and disturbing things she was forced to go through and witness as a child growing up in an Illuminati bloodline. Just after witnessing the brutal sacrifice of a young child, she was forced to get on her knees and swear allegiance to "he who is to come," which sounds an awful lot like John's second beast. This is how she describes what these people believe:

They are not Satanic... they are Luciferian, which is different. The ultimate goal of their spiritual philosophy and their sense of discipline is that they believe that should you complete all of your training, you become a god. That is their actual end goal. They believe in achievement of Godhood - of Illuminist philosophy - through what they call enlightenment, or Illumination, which is how they got their name. 

They are international. In Europe there are twelve fathers who sit, who represent the different nations of Europe. They are very expectantly awaiting He Who Is To Come, and during that ceremony in the Vatican, on my knees I had to swear my allegiance to serve He Who Is To Come... (There Are Save Two Churches Only, Volume II, p. 231).

Let This Sink In For A Moment

Before I close this post there is something I want to drive home, deep into the recesses of your minds, where I hope it will stay. Everything that Satan, his Fallen Angels, the Mystery Schools, the Luciferians, the global elite, the theosophical philosophers like Manly P. Hall, and ancient and modern Gadiatons have been working for, IS THIS MOMENT IN HISTORY. The goal of world government has been on the docket for millennia... every thing the Deep State is involved in - its wars, its false flag events, its vaccine mandate programs, its social welfare programs, its draconian legislation, its spying and data selling, its transgender and transhumanist agendas, its environmental programs, its "free" trade agreements, its currency manipulation, its critical race theory, its "sustainable" 2030 agenda -  is all geared toward one-world government. Yes there are different groups vying for power, but the agenda is the same. It doesn't matter who wins out in the end, because as Nephi has told us, they will destroy each other. But before that happens, we are going to live through pure hell, many of us may not make it out alive. Some of us may have to choose between accepting the mark of the beast and death itself. Some of us may be the martyrs of Jesus that John saw in his vision, and some of us may be those who dwell safely in Zion awaiting the Lord's return. It really doesn't matter which fate befalls you, as long as your faith is rooted in Christ. He, who has treaded the wine-press alone, will also alone overcome the Beast and his ten kings

What you need to understand right now is that this conspiracy is real... Gadiantons are real. Luciferians are real. The Mystery Schools are real. The Church of the Devil is real. These aren't just idle words on the background of a blogger program... this isn't some thriller movie that keeps you on the edge of the couch at night but you completely forget about in the morning. It's real, and nothing, or no one, is going stop these sycophants from accomplishing their goals, except Christ Himself. They have coopted every major religion, almost every government of every nation, almost every Hollywood producer, almost every large corporation, almost every University, most of mainstream academia, the medical industry, the Big Tech industry, every government bureaucracy, and almost every politician. They are very close to controlling all of the world, and those who you think are your shepherds are assisting them. For those of you who still think that the LDS Church is being led by prophets of God, please watch these videos produced by Rebekah Griffin. The corporate Church is fulfilling the prophecy of Moroni, by literally building up the very secret combination that is vying to destroy the freedom of all nations. 

Here is part one, which got pulled down from YouTube:

And here is part two, just released:


As you study the prophecies of the ancient prophets that we have gone over in these last few posts, let the words of Moroni ring in your ears. Of all the voices of the Book of Mormon, it is his that speaks directly to us about this pernicious secret combination that will exist in our day. As we slumber and are drunken with the worldly pursuits of Babylon, it is his faint voice, whispering to us from the dust, imploring us to "awake" and arise, penetrating deep into the subconscious realm of dreaming within dreams. And as we begin to wake up, regaining line upon line of consciousness, awaking from one layer of dreams to another, his voice gets louder and louder, until it's screaming in our ears, and then our eyes begin to open, and the colossal leviathan appears before us, and we wonder how we didn't see it there before, hidden in plain sight. 

Here are Moroni's sobering words. I know you've heard them before, but read them again, and this time, let him wake you up to the fact that the LDS Church, one of those organizations that is building it up, is doing so to overthrow your God-given freedom:
Wherefore, the Lord commandeth you, when ye shall see these things come among you, that ye shall awake to a sense of your awful situation because of this secret combination which shall be among you; or woe be unto it because of the blood of them who have been slain. for they cry from the dust for vengeance upon it, and also upon those who build it up. 

For it cometh to pass that whoso buildeth it up seeketh to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries. And it bringeth to pass the destruction of all people, for it is built up by the Devil, who is the father of all lies, even that same liar who beguiled our first parents, yea, even that same liar who hath caused man to commit murder from the beginning, who hath hardened the hearts of men that they have murdered the prophets, and stone them, and cast them out from the beginning. 

Wherefore, I, Moroni, am commanded to write these things, that evil may be done away and that the time may come that Satan may have no power upon the hearts of the children of men, but that they may be persuaded to do good continually, and that they may come to the fountain of all righteousness and be saved. (Ether 3:18-19, RE, emphasis added)

I want to clear something up that you may be confused about. In the books I've been studying many of the authors indict the United States as the apocalyptic Beast. I can't speak to this, however, I believe that the Beast will be heavily influenced by the United States, and it will definitely be a major player in its development. But the claim that the U.S. is the current Beast is, in my opinion, premature at best. However, I believe that the ideological soil for the Beast's development will be cultivated in this land, which is part of the Great Plan of the Mystery Schools.

With that said, stay tuned for part V... I'll be leaving the concept of the Beast and moving onto Zion...

Recommended Video

Literally minutes after I published this post my friend sent me a documentary on the exact same topic. The producers make a case that Hall and Bacon believed ancient Atlantis was right here in America. Enjoy:


Ancient Temples II: A Gothic Castle in Logan

  Previously: Saint George and the Dragon Welcome readers to Ancient Temples part II, where we'll explore the official story of Utah...