Chapter Eleven: The government is not hereIT would have been very interesting to know the reaction of Karl Marx and Lenin to a modern-day clergy's acceptance of 'violence as justification for the overthrow' of an oppressive regime. The clergy is also a renowned 'man of peace.' Bishop Desmond Tutu, speaking in Oslo, Norway, on Sunday, December 9, 1984, where he had gone to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, was reported by the world press to have said of the evil apartheid policy of the then prevailing white-minority regime of South Africa that, 'the time will come when armed struggle will be justified for its overthrow.' Bishop Desmond Tutu is currently the Anglican archbishop of Johannesburg, the seat of the evil government of oppression.The question was not whether Desmond Tutu was going to lead an armed struggle, as Lenin heroically did in Russia in 1917. Rather, the man of religion, under heavenly influence, was uttering Solomon's 'time to break down' cyclical revolutionary turn of our globe. When the time arrives, it will happen; before then' No. But would Lenin dismiss Tutu's word as 'subjective innocent desire' bearing no direct relationship to South Africa's unjust and oppressive social relationships'The authority of the heavens or, in other words, the jurisdiction of the heavens over the earth is total and binding. Successive generations and individuals are merely agents of primordial events in the cycle; historical and contemporary events, mysteries, and some development have constantly proved this. Our space age has gotten us used to the idea of a universe 'out there' and to the possibility of exploring it from earth. Is the place 'out there' what the Bible means by 'heaven'' Not really.The Jews used to speak about three heavens. Nearest to us is the first, where the birds fly. Next comes the second, where the sun and moon and the stars sit. Last of all is the home of God. Now the big difference between the first two and the third is that the first two heavens are visible to the naked eye, but the third is not. This is the main distinction the New Testament makes. There is a visible and there is an invisible universe, and it is this invisible realm to which chiefly the name 'heaven' is given. The Lord Jesus spoke about his coming down from heaven to give life to the world.On a clear night, the naked eye can see about 4,500 stars, so the astronomers say. The telescope of even a small observatory makes nearly two million stars visible, and a modern reflecting telescope brings the light from thousands of millions more to the viewer - specks of light in the Milky Way, which, in the colossal dimensions of the Cosmos, is only a tiny part of an incomparably large stellar system of a cluster of Milky Ways, one might say, containing some 20 galaxies.Scientist Erich Von Daniken, using conservative figures, reckons that without taking into account unknown galaxies 'We may surmise that there are 18,000 planets comparatively close to the earth with conditions essential to life similar to those of our own planet.' He says: 'The time has come for us to admit our insignificance by making discoveries in the infinite unexplored cosmos. Only then shall we realise that we are nothing but ants in the vast state of the universe. And yet our future and opportunities lie in the universe, where the gods promised they would.'Modern man has a bigger conception of the universe than any have had before him. Modern science is still discovering how vast it is and presents statistics to us that baffle our minds, since our faculty of imagination cannot really handle them. If we take the Bible's teaching, every new discovery will serve only to make us more aware of the supreme greatness of God who created it all.Our own planet, Earth, is only one of several millions of other planets comprised in the universe, all subject to a law governed by determinism. Nothing in the universe or nature is 'by chance,' rather all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner. The universe stretches into infinity and is orderly.This orderly interaction of the contents of the universe is the evidence of a unity - a unity of necessity - the rigid, law-governed character of everything existing and man's freedom. The Creator is in charge from above where He has predetermined everything, including the limits of man's life and actions.This must not be confused with man's freedom of action (within those limits) on which there is no fetter of any kind; his volitional acts, decisions, actions, and knowledge in society are products of his insight, remotely supervised from above the stars.Whatever pertains to the freedom of the human will, which we have said is free ' that also is conserved by the concurrence of God. Nor is there any man who wishes or does anything who does not do as God has decreed from eternity that he should choose or act. In what way this is possible, human freedom being preserved, man is unable to understand. Since we clearly conceive this, our ignorance of how it can be, should not lead us to reject the truth. For we clearly and distinctly understand, if we consider our nature, that we are free in our actions, and we deliberate about many things simply because we choose to do' In what way the human will can be thus procreated by God so that it retains its freedom, we do not know.Furthermore, the revolutionary turns of our planet have two slopes - ascending and descending - ''and on these slopes they bear all seasons, from ice to flowers. Each segment of these slopes produces men adapted to its climate, from those who live in sunlight to those who live in lightning.'The men produced for each climate in successive generations are quite many in mankind's history. We have noted the patriarchs - Adam, Noah, Abraham, Israel, Moses, Joshua, David, Daniel, Mohammed, and others of scriptural history. Perhaps I should also mention but a few post-scriptural figures on either 'segments of the revolutionary turns' of our planet: Martin Luther, Umar Moukhtar, Isaac Newton, Napoleon, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Abraham Lincoln, Lenin, Hitler, and a handful of others.The sky sets the scene, with its old dwelling places of the gods and its world-shaking signs of the thunder, lightning, and storms.At certain revolutions, all the damnd are brought, and feel by turns the bitter change of fierce extreams, extreams by change more fierce, from beds of raging fire to starve in ice. Their soft Ethereal warmth and there to pine immovable, infixed, and frozen round: Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire. (Paradise Lost, 597-603)Neither religion nor the fixed cyclical revolutions of the Earth absolve man from duty, exertions, and striving to regain the paradise lost, in the here and now. This is demonstrated in the biography of King David of Israel, a 'vicegerent' of God, a revolutionary, warrior, and killer of unbelieving giants, when he said: 'I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living''Whatever ambivalence there is in this declaration (and I agree it is subject to more than the literal translation), it is clear that he fought and did see that goodness in the here and now of his day. That is not all, he continues to rule mankind even from the heavens - Jesus was David's descendant through Joseph, the carpenter, if we apply the legal presumption that any child born of the wife in a subsisting marriage is the child of the husband. We would even go further to declare that the Virgin Mary was indeed a direct descendant of David in her own right. She was the daughter of Heli, a descendant of David.When I behold this goodly frame of, this World, of Heaven and Earth consisting, and compute their Magnitudes - this Earth, a spot, a grain, an atom, with the firmament compared and all her numbered stars, that seem to roll spaces incomprehensible (for such their distance argues, and their swift return Diurnal)' and on their orbs impose such restless revolution day by day (Paradise Lost, 8, 15-31)The cycle of revolutionary turns of the earth under the watchful eye of heaven is described in the scholarly translation of the Dead Sea Scriptures. We see therein how the ancient writers of the scrolls and the men of Qumran were inspired by:a widespread and well-attested contemporary belief that the great cycle of the ages was about to complete its revolution. This belief was based on a conception, which can in fact be traced to remote Indian antiquity, that existence consists not in linear progressive development - that is, in 'history' - but in a constant cyclic repetition of primordial and archetypal events. When major upheavals occurred, it was promptly supposed that the cycle was nearing its end, that the Great Year was at hand, and that the cosmos was about to revert to chaos. The primal elements, restrained and regulated at the beginning of the world, would again be unleashed; all things would dissolve in an overwhelming deluge or be burned in that everlasting fire which rages in the depths of the earth. Then the cycle would begin again; a new world would be brought to birth'Astrology, consciously, and metaphysics, unconsciously, are enlightening men on some of the mysteries in religion. Copernicus gave us the heliocentric notion in AD 1500, which was revolutionary at the time, that the earth and other planets orbited around the sun and that the earth was not at the centre of the universe. Thus, the 'light and day' of the beginning, when the earth was 'void' and 'dark,' was explained.From Copernicus to Galileo and Michael Nostradamus to Kepler, our inner eye has been directed to the association between earthly destiny and planetary situations or the 'Wheel of Providence' in the revolutions occurring here. At the height of World War II (1939-1945), Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, with the aid of astrologers, published some of Nostradamus's quatrains - translated to have predicted Hitler's defeat - to boost British morale at their gloomiest periods of the war.Across the Atlantic, the Americans similarly used Nostradamus' astrology in a home-front propaganda effort. Nostradamus, a French physician and astrologer born in 1503, was said to have read the stars and made predictions of profundity to mankind and for some particular nations. MGM Studios in Hollywood produced a series of shorts on Nostradamus's predictions in those war years, captioned 'Nostradamus Said So.' The films, shown nationwide, served a great deal of national interest and gave tremendous encouragement to America's stand against Nazi-Japanese aggression. On the other side, the Nazis too used Nostradamus for propaganda. Before the fall of Paris in June 1940, the Nazi propaganda machine had bombarded France with leaflets bearing predictions of the Nazi's sure victories. You must then ponder the question: who did the stars favour - at least at that time if all sides found Nostradamus's prophecies appropriate for each of them' This is the ambivalence comprised, despite the control of the earth and by extension of man, from heavens, in planetary situations. Heaven impels; it does not compel.It still boils down to the agency of the individual or a collective action, or a national one, as the case may be, at the correct time - predetermined - to bring about favourable or disastrous ends. The factor of man's action is obviously vital for the desired end, and religion does not tie man's hands for that action.Those affecting mankind as a whole would appear to be following the Apocalypse as described by Jesus Christ, when he talks in Matthew about the 'desolating Sacrilege spoken of by Prophet Daniel.' Which will precede 'the end of the World.' Christ had said, with details, that there would be terrible wars, earthquakes, pestilence, and famine; men would become beastly and most treacherous among themselves. He explained the beastliness: 'because wickedness is multiplied, most men's love will grow cold.'Nostradamus' scholars claim that Nostradamus, in some of his quatrains, has put dates and places on Christ's authoritative Apocalypse. Talking about 'anti-christs,' Nostradamus said, before his death in 1566, there would be three of them: Napoleon, Hitler, and a third, yet to come, would be from the Middle East: 'Fire from the centre of the earth, the great earthquake shall be in the month of May: Saturn, Capricorn, Jupiter, Mercury in Taurus, Venus and Cancer: Mars in zero''Some scholars and astrologers have expressed the view that the 'next conjunction of Saturn, Capricorn, Jupiter and Mercury would occur in 1988.' May 1988 was therefore given as Nostradamus's prediction of the cataclysmic quake. But where does Nostradamus say this earthquake will strike' 'Fire from the centre of the earth shall make an earthquake in the New City.' According to many scholars, whenever Nostradamus wrote about 'new cities,' he was referring to cities in the New World of America. Here, he could have been referring to the new cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles, both of which sit on an earthquake line. 'Fire from the centre of the earth shall make an earthquake in the New City'! Nostradamus foresees that these disasters will be worldwide.Nostradamus, like the Bible, predicts that these natural disaster will precede a great war, a war far more total and debilitating than all the other wars put together. Nostradamus not only predicts World War III but even predicts when and where it will begin and who will be fighting. He tells us how long the war will last and who will survive. In one quatrain, he tells us that the war will begin when the Sun, Mars, and Mercury conjunct in the sign of Aquarius and the conjunction is known to be an intricate one. Nostradamus predicts that it will happen again in 1994 and that could be the year when World War III might begin. However, there was no World War III in 1994, nor indeed has there been another World War since the end of World War II in 1945. In another quatrain, he gives an actual date when the war will be underway.In the year 1999 and seven months, from the sky will come the great king of terror; he will bring back to life the king of the Mongols' out of the country of Greater Arabia shall be born a strong master of Mohammedan law. This king will enter, wearing a blue turban. He is one that shall cause the infernal gods of Hannibal to live again. He will be the terror of mankind, never more horrid.'This king, Nostradamus said, would wage war against the West. When' Well, starting between 1994 and 1999. Where' From the Middle East, in an invasion of Europe spreading across the entire world!He is a warlord by a great king of terror - a third anti-christ after Napoleon and Hitler, a leader so terrible he will bring the world, according to Nostradamus, face-to-face with final annihilation. Nostradamus clearly suggests that the Middle East will play a central role in the trouble to come. Surely, there would be few contemporary foreign-policy experts who could quarrel with him on the relevance of the Middle East in all this. World attention has, for a long time, been focused on that part of the world, with its oil deposits and its perennial upheavals and military skirmishes. The earliest history of mankind took off from that region.Except for putting names, places, and rough estimates of time on the apocalyptical doom of the world, Nostradamus evidently saw in real terms what the Living Oracles have prescribed for mankind in the event of widespread culpable lawlessness, subject perhaps only to the mercy and compassion of God, the Creator. At the publication of the First edition of this book in 1987, the world had not witnessed terrorism on the scale and dimension that now obtains.Nostradamus had predicted the emergence 'of a warlord, king of terror between 1994 and 1999 from the Middle-East.' A group of Jihadists fro the Middle East had been assisting the native Afghan Mujahedeen fighters against the Soviets in the latter's invasion of Afghanistan (1979-1989), a war that was inconclusive but which certainly emboldened the Jihadists. At the same time, there was yet another militant Islamist group said to have been established and organised about 1988, styled and called Al-Qaeda, led by one Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. This group joined forces with the Jihadists in fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda established a network in Arab countries and parts of Europe and Africa. This terror organisation planned and carried out terrorist attacks, not only against the West, but also against Western interests in Africa as well. Some of the most notorious attacks and carnage planned and effected by Al-Qaeda include the following:1. Nairobi, Kenya - August 7, 19982. Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania -August 7, 19983. Aden, Yemen (USS Cole) -October 12, 20004. World Trade Centre, U.S. -September 11, 20015. The Pentagon, U.S. - September 11, 20016. Istanbul, Turkey -November 15, 20037. Madrid, Spain - March 11, 20048. London, UK -July 7, 2005.The September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States were said to be the most devastating terrorists acts, killing more than 3000 people. Two commercial jumbo jets were deliberately crashed by Al-Qaeda suicide bombers into the World Trade Centre towers in New York. A third jumbo jet was crashed into the Pentagon, America's military headquarters, while a fourth jumbo jet, intended either for the United States Capitol or even the White House, was prevented from reaching its destination only by the heroic actions of the American passengers on board, who engaged the terrorists in a life-and-death fight that resulted in the airplane crashing, instead, in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The heroes, unfortunately, perished alongside the terrorists, for no one survived the crashed. All these prompted the U.S. President, George W. Bush, in 2001 to declare 'war on terrorism.'It is reported that the original targets for the 9/11 attacks might have been the nuclear power stations on the East Coast of the United States, but that these targets were later altered by Al-Qaeda, as they feared that such an attack might get out of hand. The 'reign of terror' continues dangerously to spread; only recently, to be precise, July 11, 2010, Al-Qaeda associates detonated bombs that killed 74 innocent people watching the final match of the 2010 World Cup in Uganda.We have seen in preceding pages, John's vision of the Beast and the dragon. The Beast's power and viciousness will indeed subdue the earth-for a while - and there will be war in the sea, on land, and in the air before the millennium.What meaning shall we, as ordinary mortals, ascribe to all this' First and foremost, there is the essence of the recognition of God's overruling power over the destiny of man, communities, and nations alike. And second, the correct application of that recognition in the observance of His laws as modernised by Jesus can avert a mass global destruction of mankind. The proposition is that it is not beyond mankind to avert such a catastrophe, as long as there exists the law to guide and regulate human society. The law here is the law set by God to which all are subject and not municipal commands of the prince or a sovereign, which are always subject to manipulations. The government of the earth is in heaven, as Daniel's whole biography realistically demonstrates.That the Most High rules even in the kingdom of men is not an abstraction, but a truism. Crowns, thrones, kingdoms, empires, dominions, and governments are removed, destroyed, and replaced from above. The source of political power for good or bad is not from here but from above; the democratic or undemocratic elections, credible or fraudulent, we conduct to elect presidents and prime ministers or to have them removed (as the case may be) have been predetermined by the King. Similarly, violent and fraudulent purloining of governments are sanctioned from beyond the cosmos.This is not to be understood that human communities have no part to play in all this. They are indeed the index. The religion in us instructs and stimulates us to positive action, having in view the communal improvement of our social and spiritual relationships under the aegis of the Living Oracles. If the Oracles adjudge the people sufficiently lawless - in the context of the law of God and conscience - the King immediately puts a vile and base person in their government house or presidential palace, through human agency with consequential ills for the people.Conversely, a community that strives to acknowledge the overruling power of the creator, organising its social and spiritual relations with a fair amount of the context of the oracular injunction in its secular transactions, is more likely to be favoured from heaven through the prefecture of a good, God-fearing leader with resultant support from above, by which that community enjoys a relatively blissful and satisfying national bounty.Abraham Lincoln saying, 'we have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven,' and that his nation had been preserved in peace and prosperity, growing in numbers, wealth, and power as 'no other nation' might seem to be political rhetoric in patriotism to cynics, but in truth, Lincoln had an insight into the nature and source of governance. But what about the vile and the 'basest kind' of men imposed over a community' Does the fact that such imposition is not unknown to the Most High absolve the tyrant from liabilities for his own horrors' As sure as the morning follows the night, he will pay a thousand-fold for every bit of his actions. We have already discussed Nebuchadnezzar and noted how his humiliation was by the decree of the watchers and the word of the holy ones.The course of events in world history is charted from heaven because the government is not here. It follows therefore that the outcome of encounters, such as military or related violent strife, cannot always be conclusively predicated on a computerised assurance of military superiority. When the Living Oracles decided to reach an overblown, haughty, and ungodly people a lesson in humility, so shall it be done, in spite of whatever formidable and awesome destructive hardware may be at their disposal. The decision is from above. The modern world has experienced and witnessed, at times, the capitulation of strong and vastly superior forces before a weak and inferior adversary.Such capitulation might be explicable with reference to a proven case of human error of judgment or similar causes, but it still does not alter the fact that things have not gone the way they were planned. In World War II, Hitler, at the beginning, unleashed the most formidable military monster the world had ever known, trampling underfoot, left, right and centre, European states in their scores. In no time, the Nazi war machine had subdued Western Europe, leaving alone Britain, who in those early years was hopelessly under-armed to repel Hitler's full invasion, should he decide at that point in history (1940-41), to launch an all-out invasion.Meanwhile, there were two other most crucial nations, the United States and the USSR, not in the war yet, but whose active involvement could alter the fortunes or misfortunes of the war for either side. Winston Churchill, the British prime minister scarcely concealed his most ardent desire for America's declaration of war on Germany, but there was quite a sizeable public opinion in America, though sympathetic of the British travail and inclined to provide moral assistance, that nonetheless would prefer that America stayed out of the shooting war. The American Congress quickly passed the Neutrality Act, whereby the United States of America, to the disappointment of the British and the satisfaction of the Nazis, was kept out of the war in that agonising (for the British) period.
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