From the Narrow Desert

I recently read Jonathan W. Tooker's 2001 book The Time Travel Interpretation of the Bible, which is available as a free pdf at the link. I do not in the end find it at all convincing, but it certainly was a stimulating thought experiment.

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God as the time traveler with the last word

Tooker begins with the assumption that at some time in the future time-travel technology will be developed, at which point a variety of people with a variety of motives will go back into the past to attempt to rewrite history, with changes undoing and overwriting other changes again and again indefinitely. Therefore,

The real course of immutable history which we all share, then, must be the limit of an infinite number of changes. The history that we all share is the final word once all the time travel work has been done. Since there will always have been a finite number of human generations following the construction of the first time machine, and since the men of each generation will work only a finite number of shifts [as time travelers] during their lives, humans will never be able to write the last of an infinite number of changes. If the last word cannot be had by any mortal, then it must be had by some supernatural entity. . . . Here, we seat God on the throne of his eternal glory at timelike infinity [in Minkowski space], the end of time, a place that no mortal can ever reach.

It is not spelled out why no time-traveling mortal can ever reach timelike infinity, especially since time travel is generally conceptualized as "teleporting" from one time to another without any need to pass through the interval (finite or infinite) between them. Anyway, it is assumed that no one can. But them, confusingly, Tooker goes on to posit that the God of Abraham is actually a flesh-and-blood man from the future, possibly even the inventor of the first time machine. How then did he reach timelike infinity, which ex hypothesi no man can do? Tooker attempts to deal with this by invoking his version of the Trinity:

In the preceding sections, we have made the point to put God in the seat at timelike infinity but now we will seat the Holy Spirit there to assign God as a human man. Jesus is God as a younger man before he completes the mission of the Messiah. God is Jesus as an older man after the harvest has come and he has affected the final defeat of Satan . . . .

Note that this does not mean that the man born as Jesus grew up to be God. Rather, God is assumed to be born in the post-Einsteinian future (since he must have access to a time machine), and Jesus is one of this future man's relatively early ("as a younger man") ventures back into the past. Jesus as such is assumed not to have been born at all (as hinted at in some of the Gospels; like me, Tooker gives priority to the Fourth Gospel, but does so because it says nothing about the birth of Jesus).

Among all the changes enacted by all the [time-traveling] agents, after all the generations of mankind have come and gone, whose intention for what history ought to have been will dominate at infinity? We propose that the intentions of the man God are those which survive until the end. For this reason, the Holy Spirit is called by God's name. When all was said and done, it was his intention which survived to infinity. As the winner of the time travel war, God is the greatest and winningest warrior of all time. This is the nature of the trinity: God as a younger man fighting for victory, God himself having attained absolute dominion, and God's intention: three parts of a whole.

As best I can make out, this means that God is not enthroned at timelike infinity, and that the "Holy Spirit" that is said to be enthroned there is only a figure of speech -- not an explanation of why God has the last word in the editing of the past, but a metaphorical way of expressing the fact that he does have the last word.

Why, then, does God have the last word? This is a rather important question since, in Tooker's model, having the last word is what makes God God. The answer seems to be simply that God is good, that evil inherently leads to destruction, and that therefore only God's intention leads to eternal life.

If there comes a day when the last human dies, then life will not have been eternal. . . . Beyond that day, there would never again be someone using a time machine. Some human would have had the last word about what history was. There would be no future generations through which God's intention might propagate all the way to infinity. To the contrary, if extinction never comes, then the limit at infinity which we have associated with the Spirit of God is generated . . . . The Sovereign Lord is separated from false gods [i.e., rival human time travelers] because the timeline passing through God's ultimate victory in his Messianic mission is the only timeline that does not lead to extinction. . . . The road that leads to death is broad but the road that leads to life is narrow. All futures apart from God are doomed.

No real metaphysical reason is given for this. God is just some guy, and his way just happens to be the only way to "eternal life" -- meaning, apparently, the temporally infinite continuation of the human species and time-travel technology, not personal immortality. (Personal immortality apparently consists in being taken out of the time stream altogether, into the "elsewhere" regions of Minkowski space.) I don't know why we would assume there would be exactly one way to attain this; many ways or no way seems more likely. Actually, I'm not  clear on how "a day when the last human dies" could even be an issue in a world with time travel, since pre-extinction human could travel into the post-extinction future and restart the species. Nor do I know why we need to assume that our species does in fact survive indefinitely, approaching a limit at timelike infinity, rather than some human having the last word. None of this is clear to me, and I don't think the problem is entirely my own.

Anyway, this is the model you have to entertain in order to proceed with the rest of Tooker's thesis.

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The water/earth/heaven metaphor, and miracles

Tooker proposes that in the Bible, "water" is often used as a metaphor for the past; "earth," for the present; and "heaven," for the future -- with God being the "Most High" because he (or, rather his intentions, reified as the Holy Spirit) is located in the "highest heaven," which is timelike infinity. When Satan is cast down from heaven to earth, for instance, this is taken to mean that his time-travel privileges are revoked and he is confined to his own "present." (Satan, too, is a time-traveling mortal man, as we shall see below.)

Tooker is generally reluctant to countenance any sort of "magic" or miracles beyond those that involve manipulating time through a technology to be developed in the future. Events such as the Flood of Noah and the parting of the Red Sea are reconceptualized on the assumption that "water" and "dry land" are references to the time stream. Since it is obviously impossible for the whole earth to be submerged under physical water, the Flood is understood to be God undoing his creation by going back in time and altering the past that led to it, and the ark is some sort of temporal "bubble" (whatever that would be) which is unaffected by this. It is within this framework that Tooker understands God's promise after the Flood:

I will not again . . . smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease (Gen. 8:21-22).

As Tooker points out, a flood of water has nothing to do with the progression of summer and winter, day and night -- but meddling with the fabric of spacetime does. God is promising never again to play fast and loose with the timeline to the extent that he did in this metaphorical "flood."

Smaller scale temporal editing is still permitted, though, and the passage through the Red Sea on "dry ground" (another temporal bubble) is understood in this way. God's "jamming" the Egyptians' chariot wheels (as many translations give Ex. 14:25) is also understood to be a temporal effect.

Although no water metaphor is used, the extension of Hezekiah's life (Isa. 38) is understood as a small-scale manipulation of time. Time is rewound a bit, which is why the shadow on the sundial goes back 10 degrees, so that Hezekiah can be placed on a timeline in which he lives 15 years longer than he would otherwise have done. Apparently a minor adjustment like this is not considered to be a violation of the promise to Noah since it is not enough to disrupt the cycle of day and night or the seasons.

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Israel as Satan

I have noted before some of the similarities between the biblical figure Jacob, a.k.a. Israel, and the serpent of Eden. Jacob means "he seizes the heel," a name he was given because "he took his brother by the heel in the womb" (Hos. 12:3). To the serpent, God says, "Thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15). The serpent deceives Adam, and Jacob deceives Edom (basically the same name in Hebrew). Jacob is even described as being physically serpent-like -- a smooth-skinned man in contrast to his hairy brother -- and the account of his life in Genesis is just one deception after another. Even the name God gives him, Israel, means "he contends with God."

Why, then is Israel God's chosen? Tooker makes the rather shocking proposal that Israel is literally Satan. Satan, like God, is a time-traveling human being, and the specific human being he is, is Jacob the son of Isaac. But Israel and his descendants are nevertheless "chosen" for special protection because they are the ancestors of the man God himself, and he cannot therefore destroy them without destroying both himself and the one true timeline that leads humanity all the way to timelike infinity. Although a large part of the Bible consists of diatribes against the wicked Israelites, God is forced to continue protecting and helping them. This is the meaning of the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matt. 13): the tares (Israelites) cannot be destroyed yet without destroying the wheat (future Messiah, who becomes "God") with them. Once the Messiah has been born, though, the long-awaited time for burning up the tares will have arrived. Yes, I realize that this is, like, super anti-Semitic.

According to Tooker, Israel is explicitly identified as Satan in the Bible, but you'll only pick up on it if you compare two different verses. We are told that "Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel" (2 Chron 21:1). But we are also told, "And again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah" (2 Sam. 24:1). Tooker maintains that the "he" in 2 Samuel cannot refer to the Lord, since 2 Chronicles says Satan moved David to number Israel, and that therefore the only possible antecedent is "Israel." Tooker's reading is, "And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel [the person, Jacob], and he [Israel/Jacob] moved David against them [Israel, the nation]."  Compare that with Chronicles, and you find that Israel must Satan, because that's who moved David to number the people. I think it's a ridiculous reading, which relies on the same noun being the antecedent of both "he" and "them," but that's all he's got.

Surprisingly, despite saying he prioritizes the Gospel of John, and despite his belief that "children of Israel" is literally synonymous with "children of Satan," Tooker does not mention the episode in John 8 where Jesus calls the Jews children of the devil while at the same time conceding that they are also children of Abraham. Those who do not interpret the whole thing metaphorically tend to arrive at some version of the Fake Jew Thesis -- that the "Jews" of Jesus' time were not really Israelites at all but Edomite conversos or some such. Tooker's interpretation would be that they were children of the devil precisely because they were Israelites -- and that Jesus himself was just as much a (genealogical if not spiritual) child of the devil as they were. Both Jesus and the Pharisees were descendants both of the righteous Abraham and of Satan himself, though they varied as to which of these ancestors they took after.

All Jews are children of Satan. Jesus was a Jew. Jesus is God. It's not often that you find one person asserting all three of those things! It's hard to reconcile with the wheat and tares model -- where once the Living God has been born, all the "tares" (Israelites) will be destroyed -- all the other tares, I should say -- because it seems that in Tooker's understanding God himself is not really wheat (the product of a different seed) but rather one of the tares, one that happened to turn out good, atavistically taking after Abraham more than Jacob. If the fruit of the family tree of Israel is God himself, on what grounds can we call it a bad tree that must at some later date be hewn down and cast into the fire? "Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit" (Matt. 12:33).

Coming back to the man Jacob himself, how did someone born in the Bronze Age, long before time travel technology, end up becoming the time-traveling devil? Tooker suggests that the incident of Jacob's Ladder refers to a chance encounter with time travelers and their technology (angels are generally seen as time-traveling agents from the future), and that Jacob thus got access to this technology and decided to use it to rewrite history so that he, not God, would be the last man standing at timelike infinity (not understanding that this was impossible because, well, reasons). Satan is supposed to have made many attempts to kill God or God's ancestors (the "false gods," Satan-affiliated time travelers, demanded child sacrifice because they wanted to eliminate certain bloodlines), and the crucifixion of Jesus is one such attempt that succeeded -- at least until it was undone by more time-travel shenanigans, resulting in the Resurrection.

The command to sacrifice Isaac is presented as a similar attempt by God himself, to erase the devil from history by having his father killed. When God realizes (remember he is just a man from the future, not omniscient) that he would be grandfather-paradoxing himself, he sends another agent back to the past to stop Abraham from going through with it. 

Jacob's wresting match with God is interpreted as another aborted attempt to stop Jacob from becoming Satan. The "wrestling" is assumed not to have been literal grappling but a "time fight," a struggle for mastery over the timeline. In the end, God perceives that despite everything, allowing Jacob to proceed is preferable to the alternative, and he lets him win.

Ultimately, though, God and his agent Michael win the "war in heaven" (that is, in the future), and Satan is cast down to "earth" (that is, to his own time in the Bronze Age, no more to wander through the spacetime manifold for the ruin of souls).

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Oh, and you need to keep the Law of Moses

We have seen that in Tooker's model, God is just some dude from the future and is not Good in any transcendent sense. (He rejects "God is love" as a "dehumanizing proverb," preferring Moses' definition: "The Lord is a man of war; the Lord is his name.") God's way is the right way for essentially Darwinian reasons -- because, as it happens, it is the only way that takes the inclusive fitness of the human species all the way to timelike infinity. And Satan is not an imp on your shoulder egging you on to succumb to vice; he's a dude from the past trying to kill the dude from the future. Whether you yourself are sinful or virtuous, whether you inwardly align yourself with God or the devil, doesn't ultimately seem to make much difference in this war, the outcome of which has already been determined by the ineluctable fate that decrees that straight is the way that leadeth to life.

With that as the metaphysical background, it is odd to find that Tooker's book ends with a little diatribe against "Paulism," and particularly against Paul's teaching that the Law of Moses has been superseded. Pork remains absolutely forbidden, Tooker insists, and circumcision absolutely required -- for what exactly? Because, as the butterfly effect would have it, some critical mass of humans must do those things or else the species is doomed to extinction? But we know that future history has already been written -- and rewritten for the final time -- and that the species does not go extinct. As for personal immortality and the afterlife, Tooker barely mentions it, contenting himself with a passing reference to the possibility of "going to heaven" by being shunted off the timeline into the Minkowskian "elsewhere," and leaving us to guess whether or not going there has anything to do with not eating pork.

The whole "Paul is bad because we have to keep the Law of Moses" thing almost seems like a separate theological hobby-horse, left over from before the Time Travel Interpretation had been formulated, and included here as a sort of palimpsestic holdover.

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Assessment

Tooker's thesis is undeniably fun to entertain. It's fascinating to revisit all the familiar Bible stories from this entirely different perspective and see how everything might be reinterpreted in its light. In the end, though, it fails in some very important ways. Here, aside from the specific problems detailed above, are its main flaws.

First, though perhaps not foremost, it bases everything on "time travel" without coming up with any rigorous theory of the same. The idea of time travel cannot even be coherently formulated as a hypothesis in the four-dimensional world of Einstein and Minkowski, and naive attempts to do so -- the H. G. Wells style thinking that if time is just another dimension, we should in theory be able to travel in it -- are ill-conceived. To travel from Point A to Point B means to be at Point A at one point in time and at Point B at some later point in time. For example, if I was in Chicago Heights at 2:00 and Buffalo Grove at 3:00, I traveled from Chicago Heights to Buffalo Grove. "Time travel" would mean that Points A and B are not places but times, though -- leading either to tautology ("I was at 2:00 at 2:00 and at 3:00 at 3:00") or to contradiction ("I was at 2:00 at 2:00 and at 12:00 at 3:00"). I don't see any way to think at all clearly about the possibilities of "time travel" except from an explicitly Dunnean standpoint, where dimensions of meta-time are recognized. Wells unconsciously smuggles in Dunnean assumptions.

More importantly, the whole model is too "cosmic," and not personal enough, to really serve as a religion. God and Satan had a time war, and God won -- which is good, because it means the human race will survive to timelike infinity. This has all in some ill-defined sense "already" been done, and that's why all those things in the Bible happened. Fine. Now what? How does this relate to me as an individual and how I should live and what gives my life meaning? If God's ultimate victory is what really matters, then nothing I do really matters, since nothing I can do can affect that. (If it did, God would just go back in time and undo what I had done.) As for my own personal destiny, Tooker barely touches on it, except to mention in passing that it would be technically possible to "go to heaven" in the "elsewhere" regions of Minkowski space. Will God come back and manipulate spacetime to do that for me if he wins in the end? Is that why it matters? "I don't know, just remember to get circumcised and lay off the pork."

Overall, Tooker's "theology" reads like some history lesson (about things in some sense "already done") about how the good guys defeated the bad guys and made the world safe for democracy or something. Yes, very inspiring, three cheers for the flag and all that -- but if that's your answer to the Bible, are you really sure you've understood the question?

I would like to present to you a personal testimony of a hieromonk who made the mistake of getting pecked. This is his confession. If anyone wants to know his name, I can tell you privately. He is a priest under Archbishop Ieronymos of Greece. I will be reading directly from the publication, which fortunately is still on the Internet.

"In a few words, I will relate my experience after taking my first dose of the Phyzir peck. God obstructed me with many signs before taking the peck. Due to shortness of time I will not mention all of them. As I was heading towards the pecking center, right before I was getting into the queue, I felt something obstructing my approach. As I approached, I felt a stench that surprised me," said the monk.

You see, God cautioned him, and he still went ahead.

"While I was taking the peck, others were waiting outside. As I was leaving, I was unable to wear my kalimafi [clerical headdress]. I felt great shame within myself and left holding my kalimafi in my hands."

As you can see, he began to feel the demonic influence right away, as he was ashamed to wear his kalimafi even though he is a priest.

"Arriving home, I went to the bathroom to wash my face. Upon looking in the mirror, I was frightened at my face due to the expression I had. The next day, I went shopping at the supermarket, and since it was still the period after Easter, I would normally greet the shopkeepers with 'Christ is risen!' or respond 'Indeed he is risen.'"

So as you know, for 40 days after the Resurrection, we refrain from saying "Good day" and replace the phrase with "Christ is risen," and the other person should respond, "Indeed he is risen" and not say "Likewise."

"As a hieromonk, I was surprised to discover that I was very ashamed to say 'Christ is risen' to the shopkeepers. This greatly overwhelmed me."

He began to realize more intensely that something was not going well in his soul.

"A day later, I went and attended a divine service at a local church, but not to perform the service as priest. Upon entering the sanctuary, I felt as if I were dead."

You see, a living spiritual person notices the difference straight away.

"The joy I used to feel at the divine service was lost. It was as if I were not entering the sanctuary of a holy church, but as if I had entered a room in a house. All these things surprised me, but at the time I did not believe they stemmed from the peck. I saw familiar parishioners turn their faces away from me. The next day, I found that my conscience was causing me terrible pain. It was as if I had been pierced in my heart with such pain as I had never felt before in my life. I told this to a fellow archimandrite, what I was feeling, and he consoled me. He told me something along the lines of, 'Its nothing, don't worry about it.' Upon leaving, I found that this pain in my conscience was relentless and was deepening further within me. From that day forward, I was in a deeply troubled state with lasted 13 days. I could not sleep or calm down. Now allow me to explain the most terrible part. Day and night I constantly saw Satan in front of me, his face an inch away from mine. I went to sleep at night and felt him embracing me, and I would get cold all over. I would read the Salutations to the Virgin Mary, and I would feel as if my blood was burning in my veins. I felt a foreign presence within me, and it was judging me. I felt a horror, as if someone was saying, 'You belong to me now.'"

Do you understand how terrible these things are? And very true, because we personally know this person. This corroborates the experience of another hieromonk who was doing exorcisms, and the demon being pressed told the truth while having a dialogue.

"Why am I telling you this? I don't want to tell you this, but I am being pressed."

The hieromonk replied, "I am not pressing you."

The demon replied, "I am being forced to tell you."

So the demon told him, "We did a ceremony at a lodge in America for the pecks." The Satanists performed a ceremony for the pecks.

Furthermore, the demon said, "Those who take this peck will be unable to repent." Now this may seem too harsh.

The hieromonk then asked, "Why won't they be able to repent?"

The demon responded, "Because I will be inside of them."

You can see the correlation with the first hieromonk, who was saying the same thing, that he felt Satan inside of him and saw him an inch away from his face, telling him, "You belong to me."

The hieromonk performing the exorcism was having a dialogue with the demon. The demon was speaking through the demon-possessed person.

The demon told him, "Those who have taken the peck cannot repent, because I am inside of them."

The hieromonk asked, "How are you inside of them?"

The demon answered, "With the blood of the aborted fetuses."

We have mentioned previously that fetuses were used in the peck and were purposely murdered for their cells. These cells were extracted from the living fetuses by these atheist scientists and doctors who don't hold anything sacred or holy. They also remove the organs from a living fetus. If the fetus is already dead, the organs and the cells are useless. Therefore, they were not taking the fetuses from the waste bin -- which, even if they had been, would not have made it morally right, as an abortion had taken place. However, in this case, these fetuses were specifically prepared for an abortion.

So the devil confesses, "I am already inside those who took it via the blood of the fetuses." So this confession of this demon correlates with the hieromonk who was seduced into taking the peck. So as we previously read, he was saying he was ashamed to wear his kalimafi, to say "Christ is risen," how he felt dead whilst in the holy sanctuary, how everyone turned their faces away from him because his face was altered, how for 13 days he could not sleep or settle down, and most terrifying of all was seeing day and night the face of Satan an inch from his face continuously, and how he felt Satan embracing him, and though he was trying to read the Salutations, his blood was burning in his veins, and he felt someone saying to him, "You belong to me now."

Thus the hieromonk continues: "I had stayed at my family home in case of an adverse reaction. After a few days, I left. At the monastery where I currently reside, at the Divine Liturgy, I found that I could not understand a thing. I felt as if I were dead. I was constantly rushing through the service and felt great anxiety, not a speck of joy. I felt as if I were not a priest or even a baptized Christian! I reached a point of being unable to speak, as if I had lost my voice. I felt my life was dark and a constant state of despair."

You see, this person made this mistake and is being humbled. This means he has an ecclesialogical conscience. This is very important, as there are others who have made this mistake, and after seeing this mistake do not confess it so that they may warn others.

Let's continue reading.

"While I was in this hopeless state, a familiar family came to visit the monastery. I spoke with the mother. She said to me, 'Father, why are you speaking like this? Many people after taking the first dose do not end up taking the second dose. So you, too, should not take the second dose!'"

She gave him some courage.

"As she was telling me this, I felt a certain refreshing dew entering my soul."

This was from God.

"I was consoled by God's grace."

Because he had begun to repent. God sends people to console us, to inform us. This is how God works during such situations. Just a word, though many times irrelevant, shows us the way. So she said, "Okay, you made a mistake. Don't make the next mistake," i.e. don't take the second dose. Let's continue.

"I find it unnecessary to mention the despair I went through and the tears I shed. I don't know whether it's a coincidence or not, but exactly 40 days after the peck, I started to feel the grace of God again."

After 40 days, he began to feel that he was baptized again. He came back with repentance. So he confessed his sin, received the rite of forgiveness, and shed many tears. As it is written here, he cried continuously for 40 days, and only then did he begin to feel the grace of the Holy Spirit.

"I began to feel peace and consolation, that God had forgiven me for what I had done, even though I had had no knowledge of what this peck actually was."

Sadly, there are many people like this. Not everyone is indifferent. There are others who are directed by tyranny and fear, or by pressure, by their children or doctors, etc. However, when you have the correct information, you don't submit to all of this. This poor fellow was seduced, but now he has corrected his actions, so after 40 days he began to feel the forgiveness of God.

"I do not dare or want to know what would have happened to me if I had taken the second dose of the peck. The only thing I can say is that God felt sorry for me. Even though I now feel better, I have not recovered to the state I was in prior to taking the peck. In my humble opinion, this peck by Phyzir that I took is a mark but not the final mark, most likely a forerunner to the final mark of the beast."

This last statement correlates with another remark made by a demon during another exorcism. A close friend of mine, a respectable hieromonk, had told me of it. He had a dialogue with a demon during an exorcism.

The demon told him, "No, this peck is not the final mark, but it is still a mark, a forerunner, and those who are like you, when they take the peck, they lose their light."

The demon continued, "A short man used to burn us with these exorcisms!"

This short priest is well known and performs exorcisms.

The demon continued, "Now that he [the short priest] has taken the peck, he has lost his strength. Now I am able to approach him and kiss his hand!"

Previously, the demon would tremble before this priest, but now that the priest has taken the peck, the demon is able to get his blessing. This correlates with the hieromonk we have been reading about: "Even though I now feel better, I have not yet recovered to the state I was in prior to taking the peck." As you can see, these pecks cause not only physical harm but also spiritual harm.

We have read this testimony as an example, and it is from a person living a proper ecclesiastical life, because as we previously said, when someone makes a mistake that is impacting many others, it's most beneficial to correct this mistake publicly. This is in order to protect other members of our holy church from making the same mistake.

As St. Chrysostomos says, "The lukewarm Christians are living in comfort." The lukewarm are those who want to combine everything: the world, Christ, hedonism, avarice, the external appearances, not to be disenfranchised, to go to church, take Holy Communion, Holy Confession, etc. These lukewarm "Christians" cause the most damage to the church. They don't admit to their mistakes, as they think they do everything correctly. If they make a mistake, they don't correct it. They do not publicly repent of their sin so they may protect those around them. As it is written in the Book of Revelation, these are people that God will spit out.

It is best to be hot or cold, never lukewarm. The one who is spiritually cold may at one point understand his spiritual blindness and become hot. God wants us to be hot. However, the lukewarm are comfortable. Sadly, most people nowadays are lukewarm. As mentioned by Father Athanasios Mitilinaios, most Christians are lukewarm. We, too, are lukewarm and need to stop being lukewarm.

To a faithful person of God, death does not exist. This is the reality. We have forgotten this, and we now fear death. Not only do we fear death, we also fear being fined, possible imprisonment, and prosecution. In NO case can a person call himself a Christian if he fears death. When a person is afraid to die, he becomes an idolater or an atheist. Instead, a Christian should long to die. The saints wanted to die. The reason that Christians truly want to pass away is so they can be fully united with the Lord they worship and love above all else. They want to go and are joyful when they are passing away. However, they never cause death to themselves -- they do not commit suicide -- but when the opportunity arises to become a martyr and confessor for Christ, they do this without fear of death.

Unfortunately, these things are not being heard from the preachers, bishops, and priests, but as you know are heard from the demons. A well-respected hieromonk who performs exorcisms once told me what a demon said to him.

The demon said to him, "How are you Christians fearful of death? I have seduced and deceived you into taking the peck with the fear of death!"

A demon again confesses that the pecks are his doing. In fact, he says, "We did a ceremony at a lodge in America for the pecks." See what the demon confesses!

The demon continues, "What did you fear? For you, death does not exist." For Christians, death does not exist. Do you understand, fellow brothers and sisters, where we've come to?

In the Gospels, Christ said something correlating with our present situation. When he entered Jerusalem and the children were calling out, "Hosanna! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!" the children were proclaiming Jesus as the awaited Messiah, and others were indignant, and said to Jesus, "Do you hear what they are saying to you?" Christ responds, "I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out." So, correlating with today's situation, now that the priests and archpriest are not proclaiming that death has been conquered, the demons are proclaiming it instead.

"How are you Christians fearful of death, and are all running to take this peck?" -- which isn't really a peck, but rather gene therapy, with the aim of oppressing humans.

This is the aim, which is why there will be more doses. In fact, there are many people who say there will be seven doses. The demons also state that there will be seven doses. Those who were deceived into taking the first or second dose, hopefully, will not take the remaining doses. May they repent, weep, and go to confession, because their salvation is in danger. We all ought to be vigilant of this.

I'll read another hieromonk's testimony to you all, which was published on the Internet unless it's now been erased -- because whatever is true these days is usually censored on the Internet. As you know, the Internet is Satan's. Unfortunately, the Internet is not governed by God's people. Whatever they want, they remove. As much as possible, they eliminate anything that is good and right.

So this hieromonk who published his testimony on the Internet said, "I thought taking the peck was nothing, so I went and got it. But after I got it, I lost my prayer. I felt Satan coming and embracing me. For 40 days, I could not even say, "Lord have mercy.'"

This hieromonk has testified this publicly. I personally know him. He is from a monastery in the Peloponnese. He also urges everyone not to make his mistake, and whoever has already taken it, not to take any further doses, which will cause more harm for both body and soul.

In conclusion, these are the things I wanted to say to you, brothers and sisters in Christ. As you can see, there are many testimonies from many individuals. God even caused the demons to give testimony. Remember what the demon said to the hieromonk during the exorcism? "Why am I telling you all this? I do not want to tell you, but I am being pressed."

We must also remember that the devil lies, too. However, there are many times when the devil speaks the truth, especially when forced with the prayers that are read during an exorcism. Likewise, we read in the Gospels of the demons speaking the truth to Jesus: "Thou art the son of God!" The demons confessed that Christ is God.

Let us take these things into account so that we don't fall into this trap of Satan, which as you can see, Satan is using much force to direct all of humanity into this trap so he can kill as many as possible. This is the murderer that Satan is.

This is now all coming to fruition with what is happening globally. The devil wants to take as many souls as possible. This is his final goal. If all these things were good, why would they make them mandatory? Something that is good is not forced. You see Christ, whenever he went to heal someone, he would ask, "Do you want to become well?" These rulers nowadays are trying to force us to be well. That's what they think.

However, they don't want to make us healthy. Quite the opposite is occurring, actually, because we know these pecks cause sterility and thousands of other adverse reactions. Over two million adverse reactions were recorded in Europe and over 600,000 adverse reactions in America. Over 21,000 deaths in Europe, and 14,000 in America. These are all mainstream statistics that you can find online. Therefore, we don't need to be idiots. Under no circumstances are we to accept these things that the evil one is selling us.

May God bless us all. May John the Baptist guide us, not only to cease committing evil, but to call out evil when we see it. Whoever cowers and is silent before sin becomes an accessory and an accomplice to sin. So what I tell you, you need to tell others. Inform all our brothers and sisters sot hat they may not fall into this trap of Satan's and lose the kingdom of God. Amen.

I dreamed that I overheard one of my young students (a specific person, whose name denotes “justice”) asking his mother (in English, for some reason) about Satanism: “I heard that some people worship Satan. If Satan is bad, and he already lost, how can he win, and why do some people worship him?”

Rodney Matthews, Out of the Pit

Here's a "biblical contradiction" you don't see very often on those atheist gotcha lists.

The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.

And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. . . . And they had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails: and their power was to hurt men five months. And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.

Faustus: The devil what the devil what do I care if the devil is there.

Mephisto: But Doctor Faustus dear yes I am here.

Faustus: What do I care there is no here nor there. . . . I saw you miserable devil I saw you and I was deceived and I believed miserable devil I thought I needed you, and I thought I was tempted by the devil and I know no temptation is tempting unless the devil tells you so. And you wanted my soul what the hell did you want my soul for, how do you know I have a soul, who says so nobody but you the devil and everybody knows the devil is all lies . . .

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

And behold, others he flattereth away, and telleth them there is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none -- and thus he whispereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his awful chains, from whence there is no deliverance.

-- 2 Nephi 28:22

And there are also secret combinations, even as in times of old, according to the combinations of the devil, for he is the founder of all these things; yea, the founder of murder, and works of darkness; yea, and he leadeth them by the neck with a flaxen cord, until he bindeth them with his strong cords forever.

For all that here on earth we dreadfull hold,

Be but as bugs to fearen babes withall

Comparèd to the creatures in the seas entrall

And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only . . . men . . . . And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months.

And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, "How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil.

Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil, . . . durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, "The Lord rebuke thee."

Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight."

But Jesus said unto him, "Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead."

Baron Münchhausen pulling himself out of the mire by his own hair

Back in 2006, when I had not yet accepted the necessity of the concept of agency ("free will"), and was thus still an atheist and materialist, I wrote a short article (qv) on how free will is "a problem for everyone" -- meaning that it is logical antinomy that is in no way solved by believing in God or spirits, and is thus not just a problem for atheists.

In that article, I argued as follows:

1. If, as Studies Have Shown, I am the product of my genes and environment, less proximately of Darwinian evolution, and ultimately of the Big Bang, then I am not responsible for who I am or what I do, since I and my will are the product of things that existed before I did and are beyond my control.

2. If, as Classical Theology has it, I was created ex nihilo by God, then I am not responsible for who I am or what I do, since I and my will are the product of a Being that existed before I did and is beyond my control.

3. If, as many Mormons believe, my intelligence “was not created or made, neither indeed can be” (D&C 93:29), but has just always existed, just because, then I am not responsible for who I am or what I do, since I and my will are as they are for no reason at all and are therefore no one's responsibility.

4. That exhausts the possibilities. Therefore, I cannot be ultimately responsible for what I do, cannot have "free will" in any straightforward sense, and must be content with some allegedly-close-enough substitute of the sort promulgated by the likes of Daniel Dennett.

I expressed my main point thus:

The bottom line is that you didn’t create yourself. Given that a cause must precede its effect, it’s logically impossible for you to have created yourself. No matter what you believe about human nature or human origins, it is inescapably true that you are not ultimately responsible for what you are; either something or someone else made you that way, or you are that way for no reason. No matter how you slice it, it’s not your fault.

In other words:

1. I am an agent with free will.
2. I can have free will only if I created myself.
3. But it doesn't make any sense to say I created myself.
4. Therefore, premise 1 is false, and I do not have free will after all.

A lot has changed in my thinking since I wrote that. Most importantly, I finally came, in 2013, to acknowledge the absolute necessity of agency. I still couldn't see any flaws in my 2006 argument, though, so I just sort of set it to one side, turning a blind eye to some truths I had once faced, and reverted to my Mormon assumption that I and other free agents had always existed, for no particular reason.

Recently I have become increasingly dissatisfied with that assumption.  For one thing, it seems inconsistent with the idea that we have endless potential and "it doth not yet appear what we shall be" (1 John 3:2). If I have already existed for an infinite period of time, it seems that I would long since have realized whatever potential I may have. For another, there is the point I made back in 2006: that if I exist just because I always have, for no reason, then I and my actions are a brute fact of the universe and are no one's responsibility.

So now, while starting with the same premises as in 2006, different metaphysical priorities cause me to arrive at a different conclusion.

1. I am an agent with free will.
2. I can have free will only if I created myself.
3. But it doesn't make any sense to say I created myself.
4. But I do have free will, so I did create myself, and I'd better make it make sense.

I have broached this idea of self-creating, of "thinking ourselves into being," before, in my notes on John 1:

When Descartes wrote “I think, therefore I am,” he meant “therefore” in the epistemic sense: the premise “I think” entails the conclusion “I am.” In the Primary Thinking model, though, it is true in the causative sense: I think, and as a result I exist. We each think ourselves into being and collectively think the cosmos into being. Thinking which is both free and true (i.e., Primary Thinking) is by its nature an uncaused cause.

Granted, immediately after writing that, I went on to quote D&C 93 on how "man was also in the beginning with God," not perceiving the contradiction. Now I would say that we, each of us, "thought ourselves into being" at a particular point in time, prior to which we did not exist.


One day, I decided to exist. "Let there be me," I said, and there I was.

As should be clear from the picture with which I have chosen to illustrate this post, I am very much aware of the paradoxical nature of such an origin story -- but all possible alternatives are paradoxical, too, and (in my judgment) less tolerably so. The paradox of the self-creating agent is just another instance of the type of paradox we already have to deal with anyway. It bears a certain similarity, for instance, to the familiar idea of the Big Bang; nor is it entirely dissimilar to any "ordinary" act of free will, which also partakes of the nature of an uncaused cause.

In classical theology, God is an uncaused cause whose existence is explained by the fact that it is supposedly logically necessary -- that "There is no God" is logically false in the same way that "Some circles are squares" is false. This whole line of thinking is a category error; as Plato demonstrated through the mouths of some of his smart-ass Sophists centuries before Anselm of Canterbury, it is easy to "prove" that the non-existence of anything is logically false. (Example: The Loch Ness monster is, by definition, a monster that lives in Loch Ness. But in order for anything to live in Loch Ness it must first exist; being in any particular place entails being simpliciter. Therefore, "The Loch Ness monster doesn't exist" is self-contradictory; and the monster necessarily exists.) All predicates presuppose existence; what does not exist is nothing at all and has no characteristics. Thus, any statement of the form "P doesn't exist" is reducible to the contradiction "P is not P." What does not exist cannot be all-powerful or have four legs or live in Loch Ness, so how can it be God, a horse, the Loch Ness monster, or any other particular thing? (Thus later philosophers' insistence that existence is not a predicate. "P doesn't exist," while tolerated in many natural languages, is logically ill-formed, the correct expression being "There is no P.")

So this idea that God has necessary existence, in contrast to the contingent existence of everything else, is -- despite its acceptance by a number of distinguished thinkers -- basically a bad one, founded on what is almost literally a textbook example of sophistry.

If God doesn't exist necessarily, perhaps he just happens to exist for no particular reason -- "randomly," as it were. Although I didn't really think it through at the time -- at least not to the point where I would have countenanced the use of the word random -- this is implicitly what I believed as a Mormon: that God and the other intelligences (including those that have since become humans) had always existed, just because, and that there was no particular reason for it all. This is obviously unsatisfying.

Well, then, what is neither necessary nor random? In 2006 I would have said -- in fact, did say -- "Nothing. Those two options exhaust the logical possibilities." Since then, though, I have found it necessary to admit a tertium quid into my ontology: agency, or free will. This, then becomes the preferred way of explaining the existence of free agents, including God: We each came into being because we chose to do so.


If each agent, including even God, has existed for a finite period of time, it opens the door to speculation -- and it is only speculation! -- regarding the relative ages of different agents.

At first I assumed that God must be the very first agent to have come into existence, because anything else would be sort of "beneath his dignity." But of course that kind of thinking -- the granting to God of every conceivable superlative as a matter of course, lest we be guilty of lèse-majesté -- is the road that leads to classical theology with its incomprehensible omni-everything Nobodaddy whose center is everywhere and whose point is nowhere, the sort of God with respect to whom I am still what is called a "hard" atheist.

God could be the oldest agent, of course, but there is no need to assume he is, and in fact I tend to think that he isn't. As man among the animals, as Christ among men, so is God among the agents. Man is very far from being the first animal to have appeared, and it remains to be seen how far he is from being the last. Christ is described (by Mormons) as having come at the "meridian of time" -- the exact midpoint of world history -- and at any rate he was very far from being the first man. Various traditions that have come down to us tell of how before the Gods there were Titans, daevas, jötnar, monsters. Even in the Bible there remain hints of God's having, like Marduk, done combat with primordial dragons that were, implicitly, already there. If Our Father was far from the first to arrive on the scene, his advent would mark something corresponding to the BC/AD divide in world history -- dividing the morning of the cosmos from its afternoon. Is it by coincidence that the Enemy of mankind, called "the great dragon . . . that old serpent" in the Apocalypse, has been given also the titles "morning star" (for that is the meaning of Lucifer) and "son of the morning"? Or what about that evocative old line in Job (a book perhaps older even than Homer): "when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy"? Could this be an allusion to the two great classes of agents -- before Our Father, the morning stars; after him, the sons of God?

Continuing with this speculation that at least some of the devils may be older and more primitive beings than God, we might venture the analogy Satan:Jehovah::Saturn:Jove. (Of course, the similarity of names is a coincidence without etymological foundation, but regular readers will know that I am not above taking note of coincidences.) I'm sure I can't be the first to have noticed how Revelation 12 alludes to the story of the birth of Zeus and the defeat of Kronos. The woman, like Rhea, gives birth to a child "who was to rule all"; the dragon, like Kronos, stands ready to devour the child as soon as it is born; the woman flees into the wilderness, like Rhea to her cave in Crete; a "war in heaven" ensues, and the losers are "cast out into the earth," as the defeated Kronos was cast down, either to Tartarus or to Latium. Of course I would not go so far as to say that Satan is God's "father," only that he may -- may! -- be one of the "Great Old Ones" from the morning of the cosmos.

In the King Follett Sermon (qv), Joseph Smith asserts that God and all other agents have always existed: "God never had the power to create the spirit of man at all. God himself could not create himself. Intelligence is eternal and exists upon a self-existent principle. . . . and there is no creation about it." This clearly goes against my own proposal that God did create himself -- but just after saying that, Smith goes on to speak of how "God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself" (italics added). Doesn't it sound as if God just appeared one day and "found himself in the midst of" an already-existing world? It was a world "of spirits and glory," too. The children of the morning were not all dragons and Hecatoncheires; among them were beings high and holy -- but not divine, for divinity had not yet been invented.

Lucifer may or may not be a "son of the morning" in my conjectural sense of that term, but there can be little doubt that we ourselves are children of the afternoon. It was into God's world that we came into being, and we have from the beginning been under his loving guidance and protection, making our situation fundamentally different from that of the children of the morning. It is for this reason, and also because we have the potential to become like him, that we are called God's "children." Christ is presumably one of the oldest of the children of the afternoon; at least, the Fourth Gospel represents him as being older than both John and Abraham, despite the fact that his biological birth postdated theirs, and it has been conventional since Paul to call him the "firstborn."


This post is just me thinking out loud, and I'm not yet very sure about most of the ideas it contains. I will need some time to think it all over and sift out any genuine intuition from what is mere enthusiasm over something new and clever.  In the meantime, I welcome comments.