FAITH AND
SALVATION - PART 2
An essay by
John W. Hawkins
______________________________________________
Like the event that
ended the age of the dinosaurs,
Velikovsky postulates a
powerful agent external to the
earth was responsible for the sudden extinction of the
mammoths and other animals at the end of the Pleistocene
epoch:
"We cannot imagine
any cause or agent for this, unless
it be an exogenous agent, an extraterrestrial cause. for
the removal of the poles from their places, or the
shifting of the axis, also, only an external agent could
have been responsible." From John White, “Pole Shift”,
Man, who hunted these
mammoths and painted remarkable
likenesses of them on the walls of caves, must have been a
witness to these events as well.
Although no written
language is extant from this period, there are many
legends transmitted orally from generation to generation
which confirm the reality of these cataclysms in the past.
Disruption in the normal rotation of the earth would cause
massive flooding to the coastal areas around the world.
It is no accident, therefore, that many traditions report
a great deluge in the past which "covered the earth".
Western cultures are
most familiar with the story of
Noah being commanded by God to build a huge boat, the Ark,
whereby he, his wife, their three sons and their wives,
and pairs of all the animals were able to escape the
"worldwide" flood.
(See Gen. Chps. 6-9). In the Chaldean
account the patriarch who constructs the ark is named,
Xisuthros, and others
besides his immediate family are
allowed on board. After
landing on the highest mountain
in eastern
like Enoch but unlike Noah, was taken up to the heavens.
Joseph Campbell tells us
in his "Myths to Live By":
"According to many
of the mythologies still
flourishing in the Orient, a world flood occurs inevitably
at the termination of every aeon [i.e.
age]" (p. 75).
The Aztecs in
tradition that every world cycle terminated with one of
four types of cataclysms based on the predominance of one
of the four elements: earthquakes (earth); volcanoes
(fire); floods (water); or cyclonic winds (air).
Similarly, the Hopi tradition in
three prehistoric worlds with the first being destroyed by
volcanic action (fire) and the second by ice (water) which
covered the land after a shift in the earth's axis.
Plato in his essay,
"Timaeus", recounts a story told
by an Egyptian priest to Solon, the grandfather of
Socrates:
"O Solon, Solon,
you Hellenes are but children. . . .
There is no old doctrine handed down among you by ancient
tradition nor any science which is hoary with age, and I
will tell you the reason behind this. There have been and
will be again many destructions of mankind arising out of
many causes, the greatest having been brought about by
earth-fire and inundation." (ibid, p.38)
The Egyptian priest goes
on to tell Solon that the
Greeks are the remnants of "the fairest and noblest race
of men that ever lived" whose original home beyond the
"
subsided beneath the surface of the ocean. Its name, he
said, was Atlantis.
According to the occultist, Madame
Blavatsky, Atlantis had its
final inundation 12,000 years
ago (ibid, p. 330), which was thus quite possibly caused
by the same cataclysm which ended the age of the mammoths.
We instinctively recoil
from these stories of past
worldwide convulsions with their decimation of whole
animal populations, including man himself. Such events do
not fit in with our carefully constructed theories about
the predictability of nature and with our ability to
control its awesome forces to ends of our own choosing.
In the last two hundred years there has been considerable
controversy in scientific circles over whether the structural
changes that have occurred to the earth were
due to uniform (and hence predictable) forces acting
throughout its history or whether they were the result of
catastrophic ( and hence unpredictable) events.
The Scottish geologist,
James Hutton, in his "The
Theory of the Earth", published in 1785, first proposed
the idea of uniformitarianism, but it
was not fully
accepted as scientific doctrine until it was championed by
Sir Charles Lyell in his "The
Principles of Geology",
published in three volumes between 1830 and 1833. This
theory then became a cornerstone of
evolution - hence his motto: "Natura
non facit saltum."
(Nature makes no leap.) The
doctrine of gradualism
continues to be scientific gospel today.
So widespread is this
belief among today's earth
scientists that they discard out of hand, or rationalize
away, any evidence supporting periodic global
catastrophies. In particular have they discounted (and
even vilified) carefully researched evidence of
catastrophism set forth by the
late Immanuel Velikovsky.
(e.g. ""Worlds in Collision", 1950; "Ages in
Chaos", 1952;
and "Earth in Upheaval", 1955.)
In his "Mankind in
Amnesia" (published posthumously by
Doubleday in 1982) he elaborates his thesis that "global
catastrophies of ancient times .
. . had devastating
effects on the human psyche.
Collectively, mankind acts
like an amnesia victim seeking to relive a traumatic
experience. Though
surrounded by literary, geological and
astronomical evidence of our violent heritage, we try to
avoid the realization that earth-wrenching cataclysms have
occurred - as recently as a hundred generations [2,700
years] ago." (from the book's jacket).
Symptomatic of an
unconscious race memory of traumatic
events occurring in past ages is the fascination,
sometimes even panic, by many people following the
appearance of a comet in the heavens. We have already
noted the etymology of the word "disaster" as "evil
star".
Therefore, comets in earlier times were thought to be
omens of sickness, disease, famine and death. As the
author of "Cometomantia" wrote in 1684:
"If it once be
admitted that comets distemper and
inflame the air, and exhaust the succus
[i.e. juices] of
the Earth, it will necessarily follow, that a barren soil,
and the corrupting and blasting of the fruits must be a
product of them; and from these will naturally ensue
dearth, scarcity and famine.
And, as the inevitable
effect of both, we must expect sickness, diseases, [and]
mortality . ." (As found in Nigel Calder's "The Comets
are
Coming", Viking Press, NY, 1981, p.23).
Earlier we quoted a few
of the many biblical
prophesies about the end times which describe future
global catastrophies similar to those
that have occurred
in the past. Let us now
turn to some examples of what
other seers and prophets predict for mankind at the end of
the present world cycle.
One of the most famous
seers to arise since biblical
times was Michel de Nostredame, better
known simply as
Nostradamus. He lived in France in the sixteenth century
and was a medical doctor as well as a student of the
heavens. "He upheld
the Copernican theory that the world
was round and circled round the sun more than 100 years
before Galileo was prosecuted for the same belief."
("The
Prophesies of Nostradamus",
Translated and Edited by Erika
Cheetam, Berkley Books,
1981, p.6). His prophesies were
written in ten groups of 100 quatrains each called
Centuries (the 7th, however, contains only 42 quatrains).
He wrote "that he deliberately confused the time sequence
of the Prophesies so that their secrets would not be
revealed to the noninitiate."
(ibid, p.10). He published
the first three Centuries and part of the fourth in 1555
and the complete ten Centuries were published in 1568, two
years after his death.
Like the biblical
prophets of old he claimed to
receive his revelations from God.
In the preface to
"Centuries" he wrote:
"By the grace of
God and the good angels, the prophets
have had committed to them the spirit of vaticination
[i.e. prophesy], by which they see things at a distance,
and are enabled to forecast future events. . . . As for
ourselves personally, who are but human, we can attain to
nothing by our own unaided natural knowledge, nor the best
of our intelligence, in the way of deciphering the
recondite secrets of God the Creator." (As found in J.
White, op. cit., p.303-4).
By design most of his
prophesies are couched in
language that is a combination of French, Provencal,
Italian, Greek, Latin and even anagrams in order to
prevent their plain meaning.
"We must not forget that he
was a Jew deep in magic and therefore in constant danger
of persecution as a sorcerer by the Church." (ibid, p.304)
Because he was a student of astrology as well as what we
now call astronomy, he sometimes "dated" his quatrains
by
giving the position of the planets in one of the signs of
the zodiac. Since these
configurations can occur more
than once, multiple dates are possible for some of his
prophesies. He also dated
some of them by the appearance
of a comet or unusual sighting in the heavens. For
example, he writes:
"After great misery
for mankind an even greater
approaches when the great cycle of the centuries is
renewed [1999-2000?]. It will rain blood, milk, famine,
war and disease. In the sky
will be seen a fire, dragging
a trail of sparks [a comet?]." (II. 46)
"Mabus [?] will then soon die and there will come a
dreadful destruction of people and animals. Suddenly
vengeance will be revealed, a hundred hands, thirst and
hunger, when the comet will pass." (II. 62)
Many of the "end
time" prophesies refer to an
"Antichrist" who, before the true Messiah comes, sets
himself up as a world ruler who will bring the long hoped
for era of peace on earth.
Instead, however, he brings on
even more dreadful destruction which culminates in the
final battle of Armageddon, which according to John's
Revelation (9:16) will bring 200 million soldiers into
battle and one third of humanity will be killed.
Nostradamus tells us that the
leader of the war will be
Ghengis Kahn
reincarnated. War, he says, will last
for
twenty-seven years:
"In the year 1999,
and seven months, from the sky will
come the great King of Terror. [The true Messiah?] He will
bring back to life the great king of the Mongols. Before
and after Mars [War] reigns happily." (X. 72)
"The third
Antichrist [after Napoleon and Hitler?]
will soon be annihilated, twenty-seven years his war will
last. The unbelivers are dead, captive, exiled; with
blood, human bodies, water and red hail covering the
earth." (VIII. 77)
Nostradamas
speaks more plainly about a polar shift
occurring at the end of the age in his "Epistle to Henri
II":
"There will be a
solar eclipse more dark and gloomy
than any since the creation of the world, except after the
death of Christ. And it
shall be in the month of October
that a great movement of the globe will happen, and it
will be such that one will think the gravity of the earth
has lost its natural balance and that it will be plunged
into the abyss and perpetual blackness of space. There
will be portents and signs in the spring, extreme changes,
nations overthrown, and mighty earthquakes." (J. White,
op. cit., p.307)
Twentieth century
prophets have also predicted a shift
in the earth's polar axis at the end of the age. Perhaps
the most famous and gifted was Edgar Cayce, who his
biographers variously called "The Miracle Man of Virginia
Beach" and "The Sleeping Prophet". He was born in
Hopkinsville, Kentucky in 1877 and died in 1945. He was
raised in a poor but very religious, Christian family. At
the age of twenty-four he found that he was able to
diagnose his own recurrent
throat problem while in a
hypnotic trance. He then
discovered he was able to do the
same for other people even though they were not even
present at the time. (Usually a street address was
sufficient for him to find them and diagnose their
problem.) In the remaining
thirty-five years of his life
he gave some 16,000 "readings" for more than 8,000
people,
many of which are transcribed and fill nearly 50,000 pages
of text on more than 10,000 major subjects. The
Association for Research and Enlightenment, which he
founded in 1931, is the repository for these records, many
of which are available to the public. (Their address is
P.O. Box 595, Virginia Beach, VA 23451.)
Even before the polar
shift at the end of the present
world cycle Cayce predicted there would be major physical
changes to planet earth. In
a 1934 reading that dealt
with world affairs while under his self-induced trance he
said:
"As to the changes
physical again: The earth will be
broken up in the western portion of America. The greater
portion of Japan must go into the sea. The upper portion
of Europe will be changed as in the twinkling of an eye.
Land will appear off the east coast of America. There
will be the upheavals in the Arctic and in the Anarctic
that will make for eruption of volcanoes in the Torrid
areas, and there will be the shifting then of the poles -
so that where there has been those of a frigid or the
semi-tropical will become more tropical, and moss and fern
will grow. ..." (ibid,
p.202-3)
In a reading in 1939,
however, he predicted that some
of these earth changes would come about gradually:
"In 1998 we may
find a great deal of the activities as
have been wrought by the gradual changes that are coming
about . . . [at] the change between the Piscean and the
Aquarian age. This is a
gradual, not a cataclysmic
activity in the experience of the earth at this period."
(ibid, p.203)
Yet in 1936 his response
to the question: "What great
change, if any, is to take place in the earth in the year
2000 to 2001 A.D.?", he answered:
"When there is a
shifting of the poles. Or a new
cycle begins." (ibid)
Not only did he say that
"the earth will be broken up
in the Western portion of America" but he also predicted
that New York City and the Connecticut, Georgia, South
Carolina, and possibly North Carolina, coastlines would be
inundated as well. (ibid, p.197)
There are contemporary
psychics and seers that also
prophesy major earth changes and a shifting of the poles
at the end of this century.
Ruth Montgomery, for example,
has written through her "spirit guides" (from "The
World
Before", p.271-2, as found in J. White, op. cit. p.247):
"It will be well
for those there [on earth] to
understand that it [i.e., the polar shift] is not the end
of the world, but a process of readjusting sunshine and
rain, the sea and the land, so that some areas of the
earth are refreshed and others put out to pasture, so to
speak. There will be some
seas where there is now land,
and vice versa, ice caps in new places, and balmy breezes
at the poles. When the
shift occurs, the souls then on
earth will be terrified and turn to God in their helpless
fear, although some will unfortunately resume their
nefarious ways. Yet on the
embers of a devastated
civilization will arise a better one based on brotherhood,
and thereafter the return to earth of him who promised
that when he came sinners would be separated from the near
saints, and peace would reign for a thousand years. That
time is not too far away, in the twenty-first century."
However, her guides go on to assure her that:
"Those who die will
not be not be wiped out, but
returned to spirit with opportunity for renewed spiritual
growth. for this reason, we
on this side are permitted to
tell of the coming event, so that those in physical body
will understand the principle and regard it in proper
light. The passage from
death to spirit, and spirit to
physical life is one and the same process, no more to be
feared than sleeping and wakening.
Those who pass into
spirit when the axis shifts will be free from pain and
misery, while those who escape death will have an
interesting time of it in restoring order and reviving the
sweetness of spiritual knowledge." (ibid)
Will only sinners be
"returned to spirit" in these
climactic events which are predicted to occur at the close
of the age? If so why do
the "spirit guides" in the last
quote say they "will be free from pain and misery"? Is
there no such place as hell as well as heaven in the
afterlife? To see what fate
awaits those who "walk
through the valley of the shadow of death", let us now
turn to a discussion of what we can expect in the life
hereafter and the ultimate destiny of mankind.