The Conspiracy Hypothesis*

THE JUDEO/CHRISTIAN CYCLES

FOURTH END-TIME (c. A.D. 2132): Secularism

| Church/State Secularism | The Antichrist (666) | I Ching Dragon Language | The Mark of the Beast |

The Rehabilitation of Christianity

I think that modern people tend to see the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century as being the causative factor for the rehabilitation of Christianity; but The URANTIA Book presents it instead as being a result of the secularistic revolt against the monolithic church of the dark ages which, awoke Christianity from its spiritual hibernation. Protestantism is part of fragmented Christianity:

“The rehabilitation of Christianity, following the passing of the dark ages, resulted in bringing into existence numerous sects of the Christian teachings, beliefs suited to special intellectual, emotional, and spiritual types of human personality. And many of these special Christian groups, or religious families, still persist at the time of the making of this presentation” (2075 A).

“Christianity was hibernating” (2074 D) when Peter Abelard and Arnold of Brescia, the “Elijah” and “Elisha” of that millennial cycle insisted that spring had finally arrived and brought about the awakening. Neither of the two were secularists, per se, but an argument can be made that modern day secularism came about as a result of their influence on their times. Both were religionists ordained by the Catholic Church. Neither was an atheist, nor an agnostic, nor a humanist. They were Christians, nothing else, but they were styled “heretics” because they differed in belief from the traditional doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. However the trend which they began -- rather, expanded and magnified, for they (like also the original Elijah and Elisha) did not originate it -- did develop into the fully-fledged secular revolt.

“It required a great power, a mighty influence, to free the thinking and living of the Western peoples from the withering grasp of a totalitarian ecclesiastical domination. Secularism did break the bonds of church control … ” (2081 B)

The fact that Abelard and Arnold gave birth to, or midwived a philosophy which now …

… “threatens to establish a new and godless type of mastery over the hearts and minds of modern man” (2081 C) …

… is not to be taken as evidence that they were not actually and literally the Elijah and Elisha of their time. Rather, long after their day had passed:

“the secularist revolt went too far and lost sight of God and true religion” (2081 D).

“In revolting against the almost total control of life by religious authority, and after attaining the liberation from such ecclesiastical tyranny, the secularists went on to institute a revolt against God himself, sometimes tacitly and sometimes openly” (2081 D).

And this is but a replay of what the Yahweh worship, which had been inspired by Elijah and Elisha, came to do at the end of its millennial cycle when its own established, ecclesiastical, totalitarian Sanhedren decreed Jesus’ death! And it is also a replay of what the Catholic Church, which was the institutionalized representative of Jesus’ teachings, did to Abelard and Arnold! This is, in fact, the very essence of the end-time cycles.

Church/State Secularism

Secularism has two distinct aspects, the first is the state, the Siamese twins of, according to The URANTIA Book, politics and economics: “Secularism no sooner frees man from the domination of the institutionalized church than it sells him into slavish bondage to the totalitarian state. Secularism frees man from ecclesiastical slavery only to betray him into the tyranny of political and economic slavery” (2081 C). The second distinct aspect is the Church, as has already been mentioned. It is a fact that today “the majority of professed Christians of Western civilization are unwittingly actual secularists” (2081 B). This answers the question as to why some religionists today in the present world seek political and legal advantage over their religious competitors, and why some nominal religionists seem to think righteous goals can be accomplished by legislating them.

If the majority of Christians are indeed secularists, then the Church is but a step away from becoming a secular humanist institution with a religious veneer. The two horns of the second “Beast” of Revelations, Chapter Thirteen, may then represent the religion and politics of secularism, that is: Church and State!

“And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast … ” (Rev. 13:11-12)

Some, it is true, see the two horns as representing the two main divisions of Christianity, Protestant and Catholic.

Secularism (humanism), as revealed by The URANTIA Book, provides an understanding for the possible fulfillment of Paul’s vision of the Antichrist (however Paul does not actually use that title):

“There [shall] come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.” (II Thess. 2:3,4)

This is a perfect description of the present philosophic position of a secular humanist, that there is no God -- only man, but that man is, as it were, divine. If the time comes when the Church leaders are secularists, then little more is needed for Paul’s words to be fulfilled, only for one of them to become more prominent than the rest. It seems that the times of millennial transition create social (religio/political) “niches” -- conditions calling for certain roles to be played -- these are then then filled by individuals in the same way in which species are said to adapt themselves into ecological niches. Such a person may exemplify the truth of the period, as in the case of an Elijah or an Elisha; or exemplify its evil, as do the state’s “Beast” and the church’s “False Prophet”. They would, of course, do this of their own free will. The Antichrist (666) -- the “Beast” of our own present/future -- will be that person who portrays the “second Hitler”, which the times themselves will demand; and our end-time’s “False Prophet” will be the religionist who best exlemplifies the secular humanist Christian leadership, and who supports this fourth end-time “Beast”. This is, of course, assuming that Christianity does not rise above its presently degraded state and “cease to sponsor the social systems and industrial policies of Western civilization while it humbly bows itself before the cross it so valiantly extols, there to learn anew from Jesus of Nazareth the greatest truths mortal man can ever hear -- the living gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man” (2086 D).

Such successful rehabilitations of the end product of the preceding millennial evolution of religion has not happened yet in the story of the end-time cycles since the bestowal of Melchizedek. But it shall and it must since we are assured that the truth of Jesus’ teachings will ultimately prevail. The world would have been inestimably better off if the Jews of the first century had been able to accept Christ, and -- again -- it will be likewise inestimably better if Christianity can become the truth-bearer of the new bi-millennium by adapting itself to the new revelation:

• “The great hope of Urantia [earth] lies in the possibility of a new revelation of Jesus with a new and enlarged presentation of his saving message which would spiritually unite in loving service the numerous [denominational] families of his professed present-day followers.” (2086 A).

• “If Christianity could only grasp more of Jesus’ teachings, it could do so much more in helping modern man to solve his new and increasingly complex problems” (2086 C).

• “What a transcendent service if, through this revelation [the Urantia Papers], the Son of Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the church that bears his name, and to all other religions! Surely the Christian fellowship of believers will not hesitate to make such adjustments of faith and practices of living as will enable it to ‘follow after’ the Master in the demonstration of his real life of religious devotion to the doing of the Father’s will and of consecration to the unselfish service of man. Do professed Christians fear the exposure of a self-sufficient and unconsecrated fellowship of social respectability and selfish economic maladjustment? Does institutional Christianity fear the possible jeopardy or even overthrow, of traditional ecclesiastical authority if Jesus of Galilee is reinstated in the minds and souls of mortal men [and women] as the ideal of personal religious living? Indeed the social readjustments, the economic transformations, the moral rejuvenations, and the religious revisions of Christian civilization would be drastic and revolutionary if the living religion of Jesus should suddenly supplant the theologic religion about Jesus.” (2090 C).

• “If the Christian Church would only dare to espouse the Master’s program, thousands of apparently indifferent youths would rush forward to enlist in such a spiritual undertaking, and they would not hesitate to go all the way through with this great adventure.” (2085 B).

However, The URANTIA Book also points out that:

“If Christianity persists in neglecting its spiritual mission while it continues to busy itself with social and material problems, the spiritual renaissance must await the coming of … new teachers of Jesus’ religion who will be exclusively devoted to the spiritual regeneration of men. And then will these spirit-born souls quickly supply the leadership and inspiration requisite for the social, moral, economic, and political reorganization of the world.” (2082 D)

One way or the other:

“The call to the adventure of building a new and transformed human society by means of the spiritual rebirth of Jesus’ brotherhood of the Kingdom should thrill all who believe in him as men have not been stirred since the days when they walked about on earth as his companions in the flesh.” (2084 D)

Do you get this thrill when you read of these things here or in The URANTIA Book? If so, appropriate action is not something that should be put off indefinitely. Shall we wait until others do it? Or shall we begin this moment to prepare ourselves with the help of our Thought Adjusters and the Spirit of Truth for the time when this mission begins and the call is made to step forth as unencumbered men and women of the realm, both willing and able to present the promised “enhanced demonstration of righteousness”, to demonstrate the religion of Jesus, rather than preach a religion about Jesus, to a spiritually starving world? Even if everything is wrong which I have learned about the Judeo/Christian millennial cycles and about the bi-millennial revelatory cycles, all of which point directly to the year A.D. 2021, nevertheless the New Revelation of Jesus has to be close at hand!

Why NOT “save the world”? It is exactly what a lot of us have always wanted to do anyway. It should be, of course, left up to the Father’s will and carried out according to divine planning. It MUST have real, spiritual backing if it is to succeed. Thousand-year reichs are not attainable by evil methods, but “do-gooding”, that is, righteousness, can transform millennia.

The Antichrist (666)

The revelatory material, such as that of Paul, above, or John in “Revelations”, or Daniel, quoted elsewhere many times on this site, focuses more on the role and on the individual end-time niche-fillers than on the systems, and they entirely overlook the process -- the millennial cycles. But the identifying symbols they use can be astounding. The Whore church, “Mystery Babylon’s” raised cup almost unmistakably identifies “Pope Calixtus II” (“Calixtus” means “chalice” or “cup” in Latin), and he chose that name for himself. Therefore we should not dismiss the number 666 too quickly. It may turn out to be right on target.

Paul continues:

“And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” (II Thess. 2:4-10)

With all of the available technology, especially if there actually does exist a whole body of secret, futuristic applications which have been developed for national security purposes (a topic I dealt with in the Conspiracy Theory), a “second Hitler” would have little trouble performing a whole array of “power, signs and lying wonders”! And notice that he (or possibly, she) is said to come after the “working of Satan”, which would seem to imply having something to do with the false liberty or license of the Lucifer Rebellion (see 613 C). The URANTIA Book sums up the “theft of liberty” by false liberty in these words:

“No being in all the universe has the rightful liberty to deprive any other being of true liberty, the right to love and be loved, the privilege of worshipping God and serving his fellows” (615 B).

The parallels between Hadrian and Paul’s “Wicked [One]” are also striking; but then Hadrian has been accredited with being the first secular humanist. Paul’s words also fit Pope Innocent II without too much adjustment (remember, Jesus said, speaking of scripture, that “nothing which human nature has touched can be regarded as infallible” (1768 D)). Pope Innocent boldly proclaimed himself to be master of all Christendom, a title belonging rightfully to Jesus. And he condemned both Abelard and Arnold to perpetual silence. Still, he only claimed to represent the Paradise Father here on earth, claiming no form of divinity for himself as did Hadrian (at least as we know the Roman Senate did for him). Neither of these men, these “Beasts” of their particular millennial transition periods, fulfilled the rest of Paul’s prophecy (above), even though many apparently false miracles were attributed to the 12th century millennial-transition’s “False Prophet”, Saint Bernard. In all likelihood that is being saved for the coming “Beast” of our own millennial end times, and possibly those of the next (A.D. 3132) if the millennial cycles continue unabated.

Perhaps due to the corruption of the text, Revelations, Chapter Sixteen presents the dragon, beast, and false prophet as separate entities, but Chapter Thirteen rolls them up together. However, while not actually mentioning the false prophet, it does include his (or her?) attributes. There the beast speaks “like a dragon”:

“And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.” (Rev. 13:11)

It may be that one horn represents the Church and the other the State -- one horn the “False Prophet” and the other the neo-Hitlerian “Beast”, the Antichrist (666).

The I Ching and Dragon Language

To speak like a dragon implies language, and a “dragon language” does not only exist, but has an interesting modern application as well. It was Wilhelm Liebnitz who developed the

I Ching Hexagram

________ ________ ___ ___ ________ ___ ___ ________

binomial math from which the digital language employed by computers was produced. Liebnitz, himself, took his zeros and ones almost unchanged from the six light (yang) or dark (yin) lines used to construct I Ching hexagrams, and which are able to produce thousands of possible combinations, since lines may “change” from one type to the other, causing two hexagrams to be produced, one before and the other after such “changes”.

These “changing” lines as well, have a special significance which the static ones do not, which also adds to the numbers of possible combinations. It is as if each of the sixty-four basic hexagrams consisted of six lights, some off, some on, and others -- sometimes all -- which blink once from off to on or vice versa. The arrangements of these lights before, during, and following the blink constitutes the discrete unit which embodies the entire answer, in that it all refers to specific chapters and statements in the text. The I Ching is at once the oldest book in existence on the planet and the world’s first computer, a computer designed to operate entirely according to chance! Thus it was believed to avail itself to the Controller of Chance, which the Taoists envisioned as “Heaven”. And by this method, it was further believed that the sage could learn the “mind of Heaven”.

The I Ching (or Book of Changes, as its name is sometimes translated) is an ancient Chinese oracle predating Melchizedek by a millennium in its original form. It has since been updated with the

Confucius

teachings of Melchizedek by way of Confucius and others. The hexagrams, while being much more simplified, are similar in appearance and function to the familiar Unit Price Code (UPC) -- the postage stamp-sized arrangement of lines found on the labels or packaging of most consumer products.

Unit Price barcode

Each hexagram, just like each individual UP mark, indicates a file where data is stored -- in the I Ching’s case it indicates pages where specific wisdom of Confucius, the Duke of Chou, King Wen, and Fu Hsi is to be found and read in answer to a question previously posed to the oracle.

The way it works, a fortune-teller, or Taoist wishing to communicate with “heaven”, flips three coins or manipulates a large handful of sticks (50 yarrow stalks) to randomly determine line-by-line the answering hexagrams. The Taoist belief finds correspondence in modern holographic theories of the universe. The smallest snippet of a holographic film is said to contain the whole picture, although a blurring effect increases with the diminishment of size, since fragments contains less information than the whole film. In the same manner the hexagram obtained is believed to somehow reflect cosmic entirety. Here the word “reflect” is used in the supernal sense of “reflectivity”, which The URANTIA Book describes as representing “the most complex interassociation of all phases of existence to be found in all creation”, and has to do with the ability “to know about remote conditions instantaneously and simultaneously with their occurrence” (105 B). In their Introduction to the James Legge translation, Ch’u Chai and Winberg Chi say that, “together, all the hexagrams were supposed to represent symbolically all the possible situations or mutations of creation, a universe in miniature.”

In his introduction to Richard Wilhelm’s translation C. G. Jung, called this reflective modelling “synchronicity”. For the I Ching practitioner, however, this knowledge is usually confined to conditions existing on earth (Urantia), rather than all creation. The process -- if it indeed represents anything more than mere superstition and happenstance -- fits into the areas of “serendipity” and “divine providence”, as well as syncronicity. The URANTIA Book says:

“But what man calls providence is all too often the product of his own imagination, the fortuitous juxtaposition of the circumstances of chance. There is, however, a real and emerging providence in the finite realm of universe existence, a true and actualizing correlation of the energies of space, the motions of time, the thoughts of intellect, the ideals of character, the desires of spiritual natures, and the purposive volitional acts of evolving personalities.” (118:10.7)

Jung, for his part, denies that such an explanation ever “entered into the Chinese mind. On the contrary,” he writes, “according to the old tradition, it is ‘spiritual agencies,’ acting in a mysterious way, that make the yarrow stalks give a meaningful answer.” Or as we might put it, the angels or midwayers do it. The process differs little, except in its technique, from ordinary bibliomancy, wherein the Bible is allowed to fall open and expose a random passage, which is similarly supposed to provide one with real information concerning current or future situations, but which The URANTIA Book calls “arrant fetishism” (969 D). Books, however, after a time -- because the spine gets damaged -- begin to fall open at the same places, but the manipulation of the stalks or tossing of the coins

Traditional I Ching coins

largely does away with this problem and thereby keeps the result more realistically in the area of chance.

Still, it is not impossible that the unconscious mind somehow governs the outcome -- especially when the yarrow stalks are used, which requires a division of the bundle by hand. If so, the results would differ little in essence from “inspiration” which The URANTIA Book teaches is a response “either to the uprisings of the subconscious or to the stimulus of the superconscious” mind, which in either case appears to be from a “more or less foreign” source ( ref. 1000 C - D) -- Jung’s Chinese “spiritual agencies”. In any case, no matter how the hexagrams are gotten, ultimately it is the mind of the practitioner which interprets the words written in the book into meaningful terms relating to his or her life situations, thus all the same hidden powers of mind, as well as actual spiritual communications (and distortions thereof) combine to give the end result. And we should never forget that The URANTIA Book points out that sometimes actual spiritual communication occurs “in spite of”, rather “because of” the process used to evoke it. ( ref. 1099 C)

I used the I Ching for a number of years before giving it up recently in order to learn to “depend solely upon Jesus and his incomparable teachings” (ref. 2082 D). Sometimes its answers are so vivid that the book actually seems to be speaking directly to you with its printed words. It can be quite an astounding experience. And I have even seen its answers predict the future, which -- after all -- is the ultimate test of science. It did, after all, convince Jung of its efficacy, just has it has other wise and intelligent thinkers of both Occidental and Oriental lands for millennia.

But just as the stilled-mind practices of Eastern religions were a well established tradition when The URANTIA Book revelation was given yet were virtually ignored therein in spite of the revelators having utilized “more than one thousand concepts representing the highest and most advanced planetary knowledge of spiritual concepts, assembled from the God-knowing mortals of the past and present” (17 A), so too, neither is “chance”, change, nor synchronicity presented by them as representing a mechanism for obtaining universal reflectivity data or for communicating directly with supernals. Nothing takes the place of thoughtful and sincere prayer, leading to worship and worshipful (“Jesus-style”) meditation, as a method of accessing otherwise hidden truth and knowledge, and even as a “technique for the adjustment of difficulties” (2089 A). We don’t need to slavishly follow the words of some book or of internal (or seemingly external) “voices” -- even those which are just below the threshhold of perception -- in order to be motivated in the right direction in our varying life situations.

Fu Hsi is said to have discovered the complete set of eight trigrams (two trigrams, or three-line figures, make up one hexagram) in the markings on a turtle’s back (see picture), according to a Chinese myth. That same myth portrays Fu Hsi as being both the first emperor of China and a

Fu Hsi discovers the I Ching trigrams on a turtle’s shell.

dragon, as well -- or, variously, a half-dragon/half-man! It might be noted in this context that the ancient imperial seat of power in Peiking -- Beijing -- has from ancient times been called the “Dragon Throne”, and dragons do even now symbolize power and authority.

Therefore, since computers use Fu Hsi’s “words” of yin and yang, or off and on (technically low or high current flow), they may be said to speak “like a dragon”. This is assuredly true symbolically, and we are dealing here with the interpretation of symbols.

The Mark of the Beast

Past and present “Information Age” technology and projections of its possible future applications have accounted for further delvings into Revelations Thirteen. The “mark of the beast” which in John’s vision everyone must have in order to “buy or sell”, is conceived of by many Christian eschatologists (people who study “end-times”) as being a tattooed or invisible magnetic or laser-read personal identification code which, when scanned, would bring up one’s whole dossier including a credit statement onto a computer screen, just like a barcode does with the price of pickles. They claim that the mark might also indicate an embedded chip into which would be encoded similar data, but since only the chip and not a whole data base needs to be accessed, this would speed things up at the checkout. The society would be, according to their vision, cashless. Thus, without the “mark”, that is, without an accessible credit account, one could not “buy or sell”.

A control/communications chip could also fulfill the prophecy about the location of the “mark” in the forehead.

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six [666].” (Revelations 13:16,17)

The technology for a digital numbering, location, and identification system is said by both conspiracy theorists and eschatologists already to be in place, having previously been tested on orphans in the Southern United States, ostensibly as a kidnap location/prevention system. It is likewise believed to include satellite tracking technology currently being used on convicted criminals sentenced to house arrest (Home Electronic Incarceration) who must wear such a chip in an anklet. The question remains whether or not a secularist society will implement this system on its ordinary citizenry, and who the leader of such a society might be.

It appears that the system of the beast is secularism, and the “Beast” will be that leader who, in its name, persecutes the current end-time’s “Elijah” and “Elisha” -- the “John the Baptist” who is to come, and his follower who picks up his mantel and puts his teachings into real-time operation, who also and in so-doing, brings about the “cleansing of the sanctuary” (ref. Daniel 8:14). The estimated time of his arrival is A.D. 2132. While this date seems far off, it must be understood that end-time evils culminate or peak in the advent of the various, epochal “Beasts”, and that the very seeds which will develop into full-flowered iniquity are sprouting around us at this moment.

In A.D. 2021 the New Revelation of Jesus should begin! And it is possible that we can be fairly sure of this date!

(NEXT:) “TIMING: This Epoch’s ‘Demonstration of Righteousness’”