SIDE BAR NOTES
[1] To get the most out of this chapter, prereading the following Scriptures may be helpful: Dt 5:6-21, Rv 13:1-18, 17:1-6.
[2] ... an observation made by Sherlock Holmes in the book, The Sign of the Four (1890) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
[3] Or, to put it more clearly, on the Julian calendar, the Presentation and the Ascension 40 years later, both occurred on the same day in May. But since Hebrew calendar dates move around from year to year on that calendar it is the Descent of the Holy Spirit that is exactly 40 years after the Presentation, as both occurred on the same day in the month of Sivan, namely, Pentecost.[4] This was discussed in chapter 1. The Gospels are somewhat ambiguous as to which of the two days it occurred. [5] Of all the holiday connections found in this book any that connect to multiday holi-days always land on either the 1st day or on the Sabbath that occurs in the middle of the festival. So any event that fell on an inauspicious day within a multiday holiday is more of a miss than a hit. [6] Mt 16:4, NABRE. [7] Jon 2:1.
[8] The timing is given in Acts 1:3. And with there being no mention of the holiday until the time of St. Augustine in the 5th century (Wynne 1907), there is no certainty where the tradition came from that Christ ascended on a Thursday. But a calcul-ation based on this verse from Acts is a logical possibility.
[9] Or, as Jesus put it when confronted about His dis-ciples' failure to observe Jewish customs on fasting, "Can the wedding guests mourn [He asked] as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast." Mt 9:15, NABRE.
[10] Gn 7:11.
[11] The debate can be found in the Babylonian Talmud (Rosh HaShanah 12a) with Rabbi Yehoshua taking the losing position that the Great Flood began in the spring.
[12] Of the oldest, intact, Greek texts; the Codex Alexandrinus dates to the 5th century AD, while the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus date to the 4th. But many fragments have also been found that predate the time of Christ. [13] The oldest, intact, Hebrew texts, the Aleppo and Leningrad Codices both date to the 10th century AD. [14] Minkoff 2012. [15] Compare, for instance, Lk 3:36 to Gn 11:12, or Gal 3:16-17 to Ex 12:40. In both cases (and many others) there is a dis-crepancy between the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Old Testament but there is no conflict found with the Septuagint.[16] Gn 8:14-16. [17] Mt 24:36.
[18] This is arrived at by the recognition that, with Jesus's birth on 24 Nisan, being April 5 in 8 BC, the most straightforward calcu-lation of Pentecost that year would set it to May 16. And that also sets the dates for both the Presen-tation and the Ascension to the 16th.
[19] … the primary com-batants consisting of Israel and the 3 surrounding Arab states (Jordan, Syria and Egypt).
[20] ... not that either pair was ever fully separated.
[21] Mt 16:2-3 with Mt 24:4-44 and in consid-eration of the Old Testament connection just discerned, verse 24:37 is of particular interest.
[22] Gn 13:15, but Zep 2:1-2 tells also of the regathering of Israel.
[23] Calculated from Gn 15:13, Ex 12:40 (LXX only), 2 Sm 5:4-5, 6:3-5 and 1 Kgs 2:11-12, 6:1. [24] There was no year Zero (making it 1,883 + 33 - 1 = 1,915).
[25] Ex 12:40 (LXX only),[26] Gn 12:4, 21:5, 25:26, 47:28.
[27] 1413 BC is 40 years after 1453 BC (the depicted year of the Exodus). And Jos 4:19 gives the exact day. [28] 1 Kgs 10:14-29, Mt 6:29. [29] David's reign was 40 years: 7 years from Hebron and 33 years from Jerusalem (1 Kgs 2:11), the Ark being with him in both locations. And with the relocation occurring in 1009 BC (according to the timeline), it sets the start of Solomon's reign to 976 BC, which in turn is also 3 years prior to the start of the Temple's construction (1 Kgs 6:1). [30] Neh 13:26. [31] Ezr 1:1 states that Cyrus issued his famous decree comman-ding the Judahites return to their homeland in the first year of his reign. And with his defeat of the Babylonians known to have occurred in October 539 BC, sometime shortly after that date is when the decree is commonly held to have been issued.
[32] Zep 2:1-2 and other Scriptures have been interpreted this way.
[33] With the exception of of some massaging of sentence structure, and the additions of a few more clarifications, sidenotes and references, this dis-cussion is essentially the same as it appeared in the two prior editions of this book, last published in 2020.
[34] For expedience, the author (being a US citizen) will, for the remainder of this discourse, be writing in first person terminology (using the words we or us) when referring to America or its citizens. [35] At least the majority of Americans seem to have been of this persuasion. But rather than cite endless references to support this allegation, it will simply become obvious with further reading as the mores and morals of this time are contrasted with those of later decades [36] But don’t take these statements as suggesting that all (or even most of) the issues involving Native Amer-icans (or any other marginalized group) had been resolved. They weren’t (and still aren’t). The point is merely that progress had been made.
[37] See, for instance, Durand 1984. But there are many others.
[38] Ratzinger 2000.
[39] The publication year of Pope Leo XIII’s prayer to St. Michael, suggests his vision would have occurred sometime between the years 1884 and 1886. And some accounts place it on Oct. 13, 1884, making it exactly 33 years prior to the Fatima miracle on Oct. 13, 1917. [40] The Com-mandments will, therefore, provide the framework for this discussion. And as to their ordering, in the next installment of this Series, Levels III and IV will show a decided preference for the Catholic enumeration. So that will be the ordering cited here. For non-Catholics this means the Jewish (and Protestant) 1st and 2nd Commandments will be consolidated as the Catholic 1st. And the Jewish (and Protestant) 10th will be divided to become the Catholic 9th and 10th Commandments.
[41] Bernays actually invented the term, public relations, because he felt the common word for what he was doing, propaganda, had acquired too negative a connotation.
[43] … the Nazi propa-gandist, Joseph Goebbels, for one.
[43] The 2002 BBC docu-mentary, The Century of the Self, provides a very thorough overview of what we lost (Curtis 2002).
[44] No. 10 (RC): Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods (Dt 5:21b, paraphrased).
[45] Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parent-hood, from 1914 on until her death in 1966, was in the forefront of this movement. [46] God commanded that we be fruitful and multiply (Gn 1:28). And not only does the Bible never record God rescinding that command, in Gn 38:6-10 He makes it very clear how He feels toward those who defy it. [47] … a certain road is paved with them.
[48] And Pope Pius XI warned us of them in his 1930 encyclical, Casti Connubii. [49] Nelson and Goankar 1997, 357.[50] Sutton, Hamilton and Matthews 2011. [51] And by the 60s, it was triple what it was in the 40s. Data obtained from Koob 2011.
[52] There were far worse posters that could have been used to examplify of the lewdness of pre-code Hollywood. But this one gets the point across as to what they were pushing without polluting this commentary too much with prurient imagery.
[53] No. 9 (RC): Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. (Dt 5:21a).
[54] … as described in Hitler's manifesto, Mein Kampf (pg. 134), when you want the masses to believe a lie, make it so prepos-terous no one would believe you would say such a thing unless it was true.[55] The book: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) followed shortly thereafter by Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). [56] Reisman and Eichel 1990.
[57] See Maslow and Sakoda 1952 or Cochran, Jenkins, Mosteller and Tukey 1954.
[58] Sex studies are relevant only to the times they are conducted. It is logical to conclude, therefore, that those studies in the 60s (and later) which supposedly corroborated Kinsey’s skewed studies did so only because society had, by that time, become obsessed with the subject (thanks largely to Kinsey).
[59] Blum 2004.
[60] No. 8 (RC): Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. (Dt 5:20).
[61] Videos of Murrow’s attacks and McCarthy’s rebuttals are available on the web. And each side has its merits, so viewing both is recommended to get the clearest picture of the times. See, for instance, KD 2022 and pinoyelvis 2018.
[62] Is 34:4, also Rv 6:14.
[63] Gamboa and Leonard 1990, 90.
[64] No. 7 (RC): Thou shalt not steal. (Dt 5:19).
[65] For those few who may be unfamiliar, this is in reference to the charis-matic 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy (shown in the photo seated with his wife, Jackie).
[66] … or, at least, as equal as is reasonably possible through legislation.
[67] And it is Margaret Sanger, once again, to be thanked for it, as the invention of the Pill is often credited to her personal involvement in its development. [68] The reference this time is to Hugh Hefner and the misogynistic playboy phil-osophy he’s promoted over the decades through his magazine. [69] In the image of God, He created them. Male and female He created them. (Gn 1:27, NRSV). See also Gal 3:28.[70] A child is never a detriment, but, for the sake of both the mother and child, it is better to have one within the bounds of marriage, than not.
[71] No. 6 (RC): Thou shalt not commit adultery. (Dt 5:18).
[72] In 1960, when the surge began, the divorce rate had risen to only double what it was in 1900. But by 1980 when the surge peaked, it was over 5 times the 1900 rate (Schweizer 2020). [73] US crime rates tables 1960-2019. [74] Ventura and Bachrach 2000. [75] And this time it was Pope Paul VI trying to warn us of all the evils we were unleashing through his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae.
[76] … a choice remi-niscent of Lk 23:13-25.
[77] CDC 2008.
[78] American Life League 2015.
[79] Prior to the rating system, blue movies were available. But they were found mainly in the rundown sections of cities. So, anyone wanting to see them had to work for it. Today, thanks to the rating system and premium cable channels, the situation is reversed. The sewer now runs down main street, and it is the responsible parents being forced to do all the work to protect their families from it. [80] See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse … (Dt 11:26-27, NRSV). [81] Also, as prophesied (Dt 11:28).
[82] No. 5 (RC): Thou shalt not kill. (Dt. 5:17).
[83] This is in reference to the 1985 attempt to kill Libyan president Muam-mar Qaddafi because of his refusal to turn over the perpetrators of the Achille Lauro hijacking. [84] The Iran-Contra affair.
[85] Ratzinger 2000.
[86] In 1950, roughly 10% of mothers with children under 18 were in the workplace. But those numbers began to rise in the 60s such that by the 80s it was more than half, for both mothers and women, in general. And it con-tinued to grow throughout the decade until it finally plateaued at close to 70%, which is where it still stands today (US Dept. of Commerce 1975 and US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2009).
[87] Kinsey's theories had grown that powerful by the 80s, being bolstered by both the hedonism that erupted in the 60s to become the social norm and by the many later biased studies bent on justifying that lifestyle. And the most persuasive, may be the writings of two American pop psycho-logists and gay agenda champions: Dr. Evelyn Hooker, who’s flawed 1957 study was instrumental in getting homosexuality removed from the DSM (the APA's list of mental disorders) in 1973 (Schumm 2012) and Dr. George Weinberg, who coined the term homo-phobia in 1966. [88] ... the two Big Lies created in the 40s having come to full fruition in the 80s to be used against us for our children. [89] The photo is of Dr. Jack Kevorkian (also kown by his nickname, Dr. Death): euthanasia’s most notorious modern advo-cate. He became famous for his invention of an assisted suicide machine that he would employ several times starting in 1990. [90] No. 4 (RC): Honor thy father and thy mother. (Dt 5:16, para-phrased). [91] Occurring in the spring of 1999, the Columbine High School mass shooting was not the first to occur in the 90s. But it may be the most infamous example of a violent teenage epidemic that erupted mid-decade and plagues us to this day.[92] Coughlan 2014. [93] See again Johnson, Blum and Giedd 2009, referenced at the end of chapter 6.
[94] ushistory.org 2014.
[95] The American Relig-iosity Index (depicted in the graph) is calculated by Grant 2008 (which see) from a composite of 5 rel-igious indicators reported by Gallup. [96] Barna Group 2014.
[97] Lk 15:4.
[98] Terry 2004. [99] And this is just one of the many ways the homosexual priesthood has injured the Church.
[100] No. 3 (RC): Remem-ber, keep holy the Lord’s day. (Dt 5:12-15, para-phrased).
[101] The Y2K scare.
[102] … much as it was just prior to the American Civil War.
[103] This is a reference, of course, to the 2008 Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.
[104] The ultraliberal NBC comedy, Saturday Night Live, is probably the most egregious example of a network show resorting to misrepresentations and even lies in their treatment of her. But then they’ve been doing that since their premiere, portraying Ford, Reagan, Quayle and GW Bush as doddering idiots, GHW Bush as a wimp, Carter and Obama as super geniuses and Nixon, Cheney, and Bush strategist, Karl Rove, as downright evil. [105] The reference here is to CBS news anchor, Katie Couric, receiving the coveted Walter Cronkite Award for her Sarah Palin “gotcha” interview (see CBS News 2009). [106] Stanek 2008.[107] Illinois Review 2008 and/or UCSB 2008.
[108] Rv 13:11-12. And today the two horns might be better understood as representing the twin prongs of attack by what's also been labelled "the fake news" (namely, the legacy media and social media).
[109] I was of this opinion long before I discovered this association between the last 100 years and the Ten Commandments.
[110] Powers 2011.
[111] Morran 2012.
[112] Schaeffer and Dinesh 2023.
[113] … not to mention the many cable shows inspired by them (like 2005’s Inked and Miami Ink) which in turn promoted it further.[114] Wikipedia provides a good corroborative over-view in its History of tattooing (Modern Western tattooing) article. [115] … as that which was prophesied in Mt 13:24-30 may have some bearing on what we are presently seeing with this artform now coming into its own. [116] Gn 1:27, but see also Lv 19:28, which specifi-cally bans these body altering practices. [117] … and in some cases, the hatred we harbor, by proxy, toward ourselves. [118] The following discussion on rhe 2010s was first written in the middle of the last decade. And with a few embellishments made in the 2nd edition of this book it remains a commentary to be read from that perspective. The coverage of the 2nd half of the 2010s up to the middle of the 2020s will be covered in the Epilogue. [119] No. 2 (RC): Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. (Dt 5:11, abbr.). [120] Rv 13:16 may have some relevance here.[121] No. 1 (RC): I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have any strange gods before me. (Dt. 5:6-10, paraphrased).
[122] A video of this 2006 speech is available at the YouTube channel, Barack-Obamadotcom.
[123] Rv 13:1-2.
[124] Rv 13:11-13.
[125] His breathtaking ability to say one thing while doing the opposite has been well documented. It is as though there is no connection, whatsoever, between his words and his actions. See, for instance, Ellis 2010, Blanton 2014 or Savage 2014. [126] Vaknin 2009. [127] … evidenced by his first term devotion to building a monument to himself, Obamacare, rather than focusing on the biggest issue facing the country, the economy. (His affection for its name, originally given it as a pejorative, is also very telling). See Schwandt 2012. [128] This is easily seen by his perfect 100% rating from NARAL (National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) for his 2005–2007 Senate voting record and his 0% rating from the NRLC (National Right to Life Committee). See OTI 2024. [129] See obama messiah.blogspot.com/. for a long list of deification attempts. [130] Bauer, et.al. 2010. [131] The internet abounds with images, articles and videos asserting it (by journalists, politicos and legislators alike). Simply Googling “Obama Nero” is sufficient to show the multitude who’ve seen the parallel. [132] Theologians throughout Christian his-tory have understood that the number of the beast’s seventh head (666) suggests he will be a major world leader similar in behavior and temperament to Nero, whose name in Greek numerals also totals 666. (See footnote to Rv 13:18, NABRE). [133] Kurtz 2010.
[134] Dn 9:27 where the reference to the “week” is understood to mean a week of years (or seven years). [135] This became conspicuously obvious by his inability to replace a Supreme Court justice in the final year of his presidency. [136] Rv 17:1-6. [137] A whore can be anyone (male or female) who trades their integrity for a temporal benefit, like, say, money or power or fame. And since Babylon was understood by the early Christians as a veiled reference to the city of Rome (footnote to 1 Pt 5:12-13, NAB), many theologians have also opined of a possible Catholic connection. [138] These criteria do, however, disqualify our current president, Donald Trump (so long as he maintains his commitment to Pro-Life policies), and suggests we look instead at either his opponent in the 2016 election, his 2020 opponent or a later successor. [139] US and worldwide totals updated continually online at Abortion Counters 2025. [140] From the same source, 1.7 Billion abortions have occurred worldwide since 1980. [141] American Life League estimates approx-imately 310 million babies were chemically aborted in the US between the years 1965 to 2009. [142] This is in reference to an obser-vation made by Jesus in Lk 17:26-27 concerning the end times. Further on in that same discourse He also wondered whether, on His return, He would find any faith left in the world (Lk 18:8). And while this question may have been puzzling to prior gener-ations, it seems incredibly apropos to ours. [143] There is one wild card in this deck, however, that has not yet been considered. He is our current president, whom many on the Right (the Pro-Lifers especially) feel came into office in response to prayer. His role in these matters, and that of his successor, will be examined in the Epilogue.
[1]
The purpose of this book from the start was to introduce to the reader a numerical key hidden within the Sacred Scriptures that can be used to unlock the historical record and reveal, at long last, some of the world's most jealously guarded secrets. And in subsequent chapters, where the dates it has found in New Testament times have been thoroughly scrutinized, this key has been seen to pass every test put to it. The enormous improbability of all the holiday connections it has discovered being merely coincidental is, by itself, more than enough evidence to validate it. And for those who may need a reminder, two graphics have been created to summarize what's been found. The first, displaying all the holidays, was presented at the end of the last chapter in Figure 7.3, while the math that ties them all together is presented in Figure 8.1, linked below.
But it is not just the math and the holidays that attest to this key. We’ve also seen it expressing complex theological opinions on a great many topics, giving us intelligent and often eye-opening interpretations of some of the Bible’s most controversial passages. And it has weighed in on secular controversies, too. But its greatest achievement is that it’s done all this without conflicting with any of the dogmatic beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church. More than that, it has actually substantiated quite a few of those beliefs and many from mainstream science, as well. In other words, it has performed exactly as one might expect of a key given us by God.
It is no longer appropriate, therefore, to view this key hypothetically, as there is left only one reasonable explanation. And, that is, that this 2/3rds Rule, as preposterous as it may have originally sounded, really does lay the groundwork for a 5th Gospel. Or, as a certain fictional British sleuth once noted, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. [2] And so, in having now seemingly examined pretty much everything this, now-authenticated, key can give us during the time of Christ, it is tempting to see if it can be used to tell us something of our own time or divine, perhaps, even into the future.
With this key being a closed exponential progression, however, there is a mathematical limit to how far it can take us. And that limit was 3:00 PM, April 3, 33 AD. That's where all its permutations went off into infinity and the Creation epic came to a close. So there is no direct way to use the 2/3rds Rule to give us information about anything occurring after that date and time. But that doesn’t leave us dead in the water.
We already saw, in chapter 6, for instance, the 2/3rds Rule, on an alternate pathway, reaching beyond Calvary to give us the date of the Assumption. By following its precedents several other dates were found there, too, to define the later ministries of Sts. Peter and Paul. And in the last chapter, we also saw its influence extending even into the present day to condemn our modern attitudes on abortion. So, in recognition, too, of it being a modern discovery, there is ample evidence to suggest it may have a lot more to say of our time, as well. And this chapter is devoted to finding out, at least some of, what that might be.
To get a feel for how this will work, however, it is instructive to begin this investigation in the beginning, that is, at the very start of the 7th Day to see what additional light the 2/3rds Rule can shed on the three events, occurring immediately after the Crucifixion, that Scripture singles out as being most significant. And that would be the Resurrection, the Ascension and Pentecost.
As to the first, the Resurrection, it has been found by the Rule to have occurred exactly 40 years after the Nativity. And this resulted in the odd yet stunning coincidence of our Lord's ascension and the arrival of the Paraclete (8 days later on Pentecost) both occurring exactly 40 years after the Presentation - the timing being dependent on the calendar (Julian or Hebrew) being used. [3] But the math tying these three events together was already discussed in chapter 1. The holidays they connect to, however, have not yet been fully examined. So we’ll cover them here.
Two of them, though, do not require much additional discussion, as their holiday connections are quite famous already. The Resurrection, for one, is well known to have occurred on either the 2nd or 3rd day of Passover. [4] And although missing the 1st day of a multiday holiday by 2 or 3 days would not normally merit calling it a hit, [5] Jesus more than made up for it by foretelling that this would be the case with the Resurrection. In that regard He specifically said that …
An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign,
but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah. [6]
And in rising on the 3rd day of His entombment (to mimic the prophet, Jonah's 3-day entombment in the belly of the great fish) [7] He fulfilled the prophecy perfectly. But He also fulfilled it in the negative sense by not rising on the 1st day of Passover, as that would have firmly connected it to the holiday and established it, therefore, as another sign. So, as was stated, there is no need to look any closer at the Resurrection for maybe something more enlightening. Jesus has already told us that the 3rd day of Passover is all we are going to get.
And it is similarly unnecessary to dig deeper into the Church's baptism on Pentecost. That holiday connection has been known and expounded upon by theologians for 2,000 years. And it is kind of foolish to think that anything more could be added here that hasn't already been said.
Of the three, then, it is the Ascension that is ripe for further discussion, as tradition has never associated it with any Jewish holiday. But even without the 2/3rds Rule to tell us there needs to be one, given what we know from Scripture alone of the Resurrection and Pentecost, it has to be considered a little odd to anyone that an event, as important (and datable) as Christ’s ascension into heaven, should have been deprived of a commemoration. In the least, an Old Testament foreshadowing seems warranted. Until now, however, no such honor has ever been recognized.
But there is a reasonable explanation. And it has to do, once again, with interpretations of Scripture that tend to lead people away from the truth rather than leading them to it. It begins with the passage from the Book of Acts where we are given the timing for the Ascension. It tells us that prior to His ascent the newly risen Christ appeared to the Apostles over 40 days. So with the 40th day (after, but including, Easter Sunday) landing on a Thursday it is easy to see where the tradition may have sprung that Christ ascended on that specific day. [8] And if counting from April 5 (the actual date of the Resurrection) it translates to a May 14 Ascension in 33 AD (26 Iyar on the Hebrew calendar). But this is not the only way to legitimately count out 40 days.
If using cardinal, rather than ordinal, numbers you arrive at Friday, May 15 (or 27 Iyar) being the date of the Ascension. And if counting from the day after the Resurrection (using the Jewish convention for counting the Omer to Pentecost) the Ascension lands on Saturday, May 16 (or 28 Iyar). So there are, at least, 3 legitimate ways of dating the Ascension from Scripture. And all 3, believe it or not (even the traditional date), yield results that would be considered hits by the standards established by God through His 2/3rds Rule.
Looking first at the traditional date, May 14, it is on this same date in 1948 that the modern state of Israel declared its independence from the British Empire. And this date could have easily become a holiday. But the Israeli people felt it much more appropriate to remember their country's rebirth using their new national calendar, making 5 Iyar the date they chose for their annual celebration (as that was the Hebrew calendar date on which it happened). So with the true year (and, thus, Julian calendar date) of the Ascension still being debated, and the subsequent holiday, Yom Ha'Atzmaut, being observed on 5, rather than 26, Iyar, it is understandable that this holiday connection has seemingly never been noticed.
But the relationship the Ascension might have to Israeli Independence is also a little problematic, in that, for the Jewish people, the establishment of an autonomous Jewish state, after so long a wait, was, and still is, a cause for jubilation. For Christians, however, the physical departure of our Lord and Savior from our world, after His being with us for so short a time, does not really match that joy. [9]
Moving on, then, to find a link more fitting of the occasion we come to the Friday, May 15 (27 Iyar) candidate for the Ascension. And although this one does not connect to a holiday, it does harken back to a very intriguing (and possibly prescient) Old Testament foreshadowing. It is one, too, that did not have to wait until the writing of this book to be seen. It directly links the Ascension to the Great Flood and it has been available to all for centuries but for three issues that kept it from view.
It required first, of course, that the Ascension be counted out for 27, rather than 26, Iyar. But even after getting past that hurdle, there are two other major reinterpretations of Scripture needed to get there. And without the 2/3rds Rule's prodding to provide the necessary incentive, the critical exegesis never happened and this connection has never, therefore, been seen.
The most formidable of these two remaining difficulties is in our choice for what we’ve traditionally accepted as an authoritative source text for our Bibles, for although the Greek Septuagint says Noah and his family entered the Ark on the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the Masoretic (Hebrew) Scriptures say it was the seventeenth day. [10] And since there has always been a prejudice amongst Jewish and many Christian scholars for the Hebrew Text over the Greek, the seventeenth day is what we see in most Bibles today.
The other problem, though, is the designation of the second month. As has already been discussed in previous chapters, the fall month, Tishri, was once the first month of the Hebrew calendar in every sense. But that system was amended under Moses when Nisan was named the first month of the liturgical year. So, when the Bible says that Noah and his family entered the Ark on the second month, to which second month is it referring? Is it the spring month, Iyar (from a liturgical perspective), or the fall month, Cheshvan (from a non-liturgical view)?
After some debate, the ancient Talmuudic rabbis eventually settled on the position that the secular calendar should prevail. So Cheshvan became, from then on, the agreed-upon month that Noah entered the Ark. [11] And the combination of these two biases concerning the day and the month has completely obscured the relevance of this date to the New Testament.
But (as will be shown more clearly in the next installment of this Series), the 2/3rds Rule has consistently found in its examination of Levels III and IV of Creation a definite preference for the Septuagint’s rendering of the Scriptures over that of the Masoretic (Hebrew) Text. The Greek Texts that have survived, after all, are only a few centuries removed from New Testament times (making them the closest representation we have of what was used back then), [12] while the oldest Masoretic (Hebrew) Text comes to us from several centuries later, [13] suggesting a much greater probability of it being corrupted. And comparisons of the Hebrew Text with the recently discovered, Dead Sea Scroll fragments (which date to the time of Christ and earlier) show that in many cases the Masoretic Text actually has been corrupted. [14] Beyond this, the Septuagint also appears to have been the preferred text of the writers of the New Testament if their citations from the Old Testament are any indication. [15]
Summing this up, the 2/3rds Rule, and many other sources, side with the Septuagint’s version of Genesis being the most authentic. And when you take the added leap that the second month was a reference to Iyar (and not Cheshvan), an obvious parallel appears connecting Noah's Flood to Christ's Ascension. It is purporting that both Jesus and Noah departed our company on the same day (27 Iyar). And, once again, the 2/3rds Rule is the tool that brings this foreshadowing to light.
But as interesting as all this may be, it needs to be read in context with the verses that follow, which say Noah stepped back out of the Ark onto dry land on the very same day of the following year! [16] And the implications here to the date of the Second Coming are hard to ignore.
So are we being told by this the exact day of Christ's return? Maybe. Maybe not. Who can say for sure until after this prophecy is fulfilled? And, even if it is giving us the day of the Second Coming, we still don’t know the year. It could be this year, or the next, or a thousand years from now. So Christ’s assertion that no one but His Father in heaven knows "the day or the hour" [17] remains intact.
In any event, that, then, is the case for a Friday, May 15, Ascension. And most should agree that this foreshadowing from the time of Noah is a much better fit with the mood of the occasion than Israel Independence Day. It is for this reason also that it was the preferred position of the previous editions of this book. But pencils have since been sharpened. And a more rigorous inspection has shown that the date of the Presentation is much more likely to have taken place, from a mathematical perspective, on May 16th, setting the Ascension to that day, as well. [18]
This is not to say, however, that the Friday Ascension would have been impossible. It could have occurred on that day, or even on Thursday (in accord with that tradition). But a Saturday, May 16, Ascension requires virtually no massaging of the data for it to align with a Pentecost Presentation. More than that, though, 28 Iyar is also a Jewish holiday. It is another modern commemoration, this one known as Yom Yerushalayim (or Jerusalem Day). But, unlike Yom Ha'Atzmaut, it is a very appropriate day for the Ascension to have landed on. Here's why.
In ancient times the city of Jerusalem was the central focus of Jewish worship. And that memory is retained in the hearts of the Jewish people to this day. It is the city of David, and the home of their sacred Temple. But it also became revered as a holy city by the Muslims when the religion of Islam arose. So in the turmoil that gave birth to the modern state of Israel in 1948, Jerusalem was a divided city. In an attempt to keep the peace it had been partitioned into two sectors, with one sector being given to Israel and the other to the Muslim population. And that is how it may have remained if not for the hostilities that continued to escalate.
Specifically, on June 5, 1967 a coalition of Arab states [19] attacked Israel (hoping to finally irradicate it), and learned very quickly that they were extremely outmatched. In a war that lasted only 6 short days, Israel not only threw back the attackers but expanded its territory in the process. And the biggest prize in the contest was the capture of the Muslim sector of Jerusalem.
This happened on June 7. And every year since, it is celebrated as Yom Yerushalayim on the Hebrew calendar day that it occurred, 28 Iyar. It is not hard to see, therefore, how good a fit the Ascension might be with this day. It celebrates a triumphant Christ reuniting with His Father in heaven on the same day the triumphant Israeli's saw their Holy City becoming one. [20]
So that now completes this discussion on the Ascension. And as it turns out, it was not only not bereft of a holiday. There are as many as 3 possibilities linking it to a Jewish tradition. And on whichever date it truly landed (May 14, 15 or 16), it provides one more example of the math of the 2/3rds Rule taking us into our own time and possibly into the future. So there is plenty of incentive to go there and see what more there may be. It actually seems to be beckoning us there.
Anything found pertaining to the future, however, is not to be considered set in stone. The standard disclaimer applies, as these forecasts are merely to be thought of as possibilities - what might occur, perhaps, if we fail to heed the warnings and continue on our present course. And, as it is with all prophecies, we’re not going to truly get it, anyway, until after it’s been fulfilled.
Any possible connections we might turn up of end times prophecies, would, therefore, also be speculative, of course. But there is nothing wrong with speculating. In fact, the Scriptures strongly suggest that we should all be on our toes trying to read the signs of the times. [21] This seems to be the way God wants it, for in observing the signs, Christians of every generation have been convinced of the Master’s return in their lifetime. And that has kept the Church alive and her adherents ever vigilant. Nevertheless, the signs today seem to be much more in line with the Second Coming occurring in our time than any other time, thus far, in the Christian era.
One such sign is the establishment of the modern state of Israel. It is a fulfillment of a prophecy that has also been connected, by some, with the end times. [22] And the 2/3rds Rule, having just linked the Ascension to both Israel and the Second Coming, adds to that belief. But that is not all it has to say. It provides one other big sign in support of Divine Providence being deeply involved in Israel's formation. And this one reaches back some 4,000 years to its founding.
It comes from the recognition, mentioned in chapter 3, that King David began his reign over Israel in 1016 BC. And when you factor in all the other pertinent scriptural clues, it calculates to Abraham being called by God to the land of Canaan in 1883 BC. [23] This, incidentally, is arguably the most important year in the history of the chosen people, for this is the year they were chosen. And it is exactly 1,915 years prior to the start of the Christian era in 33 AD. [24]
Taking it one step further, if you add another 1,915 years to that you arrive at the year 1948, which is the year the UN formally recognized Israel as an independent Jewish state! So reestablishing the Jewish people in their own sovereign homeland was no idle happenstance. It apears to have been part of God's plan from the start. And the timeline in Figure 8.2 provides a graphic description.
It is interesting to see, too, in the timeline that God seems to have foreshadowed what He was going to do with the chosen people by His actions when He first became conspicuously involved in their lives. Scripture's account of those early days tells us that the timespan from the call of Abraham to the Exodus out of Egypt was 430 years. [25] But, when you add up all the times it also gives us of Abraham's descendents leading up to their migration to Egypt, [26] it comes to 215 years (or exactly half of 430). And that is strange coincidence that is maybe a little too strange. It hints at being intentional. And within it a theme can be discerned consisting of one period of increase being followed by a period of equal length marked by decline that eventually becomes so severe that all seemed lost. So this is where we see God stepping in to make everythig right again. And in this instance He did it through Moses.
But the timeline shows this was no fluke. And God apparently wanted to make sure we realized that. So after the Israelites went through their 40 year limbo in the wilderness, He did it again. This time the period of increase began on the day the Israelites entered the Promised Land, or rather 10 Nisan in 1413 BC. [27] And Scripture further tells us they rose to the pinnacle of their power in that land under their King Solomon, [28] whose reign began in 976 BC. [29] But Solomon also brought idolatry into the Kingdom through his intermarriages with foreign wives. So that would mark the start of their decline. And Scripture concurs. It was all downhill from there. [30] In fact, in the end they'd lost their kingdom and were living in exile in Babylon.
But, once more, all was not lost, even though it sure appeared to be. God would miraculously save them again and this time through the Persian king, Cyrus, who defeated the Babylonians in 539 BC, and in a magnanimous gesture unheard of in ancient times restored the Judahites to their homeland that same year. [31] The entire span from start to finish (from 1413 to 539 BC) was 974 years. And it was predictably subdivided into two periods of 437 years each.
The point, however, is made and there is no way around it. In these two restorations we can now clearly see that God employed a mathematical model devoted specifically for dealing with His chosen people. And with it not being seen until now, He seems to have done so solely to tell us today that He really was responsible for the establishment of the modern state of Israel. Mathematically, it is a struggle defined by 1,915 years of increase followed by 1,915 years of decline that culminated in a reversal of fortune so unexpected and so complete it can only reasonably be described as an act of God.
But you don't need the 2/3rds Rule to see God's hand in this. Nor do you need to be some sort of a prophet or supergenius. And that is because it seems almost impossible that any people deprived of a homeland for so long, should be able to hang onto their identity amidst so much adversity. That alone is enough to get your attention. But, that in the end they should also be saved from near extinction at the hands of maniacs and rewarded for their tenacity by being given back their homeland, has made many a scholar (faith-filled or not) stand up and take notice. It is nothing short of miraculous. And this numerical corroboration merely emphasizes what many are sensing already; that God is doing something new in the world.
But when you factor in the Scriptures that suggest the Second Coming will happen shortly after the establishment of the Jewish state, [32] you have to wonder if there is anything more the 2/3rds Rule can tell us of that time. And well yes, there is maybe one more thing to add.
A prophecy for our time [33]
In chapter 5 it was noted that after mankind was expelled from the Garden and the Word took on the arduous task of bringing us all back from the brink, He seems to have done so employing His Ten Commandments as His rehabilitation plan. This will be thoroughly covered in the next book in this Series. But for here it is sufficient to realize that in the 2/3rds Rule's layout of the Creation epic, 10 steps are calculated that take us from the dawn of Man at the start of Creation Level III to the onset of Christ's ministerial years at the start of Creation Level V. And every one of those steps show a certain pocket of humanity getting past a major hurdle.
It is a pathway to civility Christ appears to have set up to prepare us for His arrival. And each hurdle, when examined closely, reflects our adherance to a new Commandment. We appear to have been progressively groomed in this way, one Commandment at a time. Or rather the Jewish people were. And through them the rest of the world was blessed to follow suit.
What is important here, though, is the recognition that western civilization is based on these ten principles. By our adherence to them we were lifted out of a barbaric time, a time when might meant right in most every circumstance, a time when our passions generally won out over logic and ethics, and a time when out of fear and superstition we had sunk so low we were sacrificing the most innocent among us to appease our savage concept of God.
And through these Commandments we’ve been shaped into societies that are governed by laws, societies that strive to address the needs of all their citizens and have come to the realization that ours is a God of love, not hate, who values self-sacrifice and the love we show to others. At least that is the way it is in most God-fearing countries today despite the different methods they may use to try and bring this about.
With that in mind, we can now take a fresh look at modern times to see how those same Commandments apply to us today. But it would be cumbersome and ultimately not very informative to examine how they apply to every country in the world that was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. For clarity then, it is best to try and narrow our focus to one nation that epitomizes the values of all the Judeo-Christian countries. And in recalling from chapter 1 that both the conception and birth of the United States of America seem to have been prefigured in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, we have what may be the perfect bellwether.
It is just as many people have already observed entirely on their own; the US truly is an exceptional country. We’ve seen that demonstrated most emphatically twice in the 20th century when US forces stepped into two world wars to tip the balance and save the rest of the world from tyranny. This is very much what you'd expect from a country whose origins were foreshadowed by that of the savior of the world. The US has become over the past hundred years the last bastion, and the greatest hope, for freedom on the planet. It is understandable then, why so many have asserted that as it goes, so goes the world.
You probably can’t say it was obvious from the start that the United States was destined for such a high calling. At its late 18th century founding, it was not that big a country. And being slave holders, its landed gentry ruling class was nowhere near as enlightened as its founders. There were also many other injustices inherent to the country that continued into the next century, particularly, as regards the often-atrocious treatment of African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans and those in the lowest income levels.
But the country’s founding documents were filled with lofty ideals (Judeo-Christian ideals) allowing Americans a great deal of freedom to grow and improve. And improve we did. [34] So whatever the United States may have been at the start of the 19th century, thanks largely to the influence of our Constitution, Victorian Era ethics and a major evangelical push spurred on by the abolitionist movement, by the start of the 20th century we were God-fearing and doing our best to adhere to all ten of the Commandments. [35] The Holy Spirit had undoubtedly played a large part in that, too.
This is not to say, however, that we’d solved all our problems. There was still plenty to do to promote equal treatment for men and women of all races and ethnicities. The labor movement had not yet reached its goals and the need to regulate unscrupulous business practices was an idea still in its infancy. But we were working on those issues. And on the positive side, we’d already abolished slavery, made peace with the Native Americans and the lawlessness of the western territories was pretty much a thing of the past. [36]
We’d also enacted many federal laws to regulate morality. Distributing contraceptives, for instance, was illegal, as was the sale of pornography. And neither could be sent through the mail. Abortion too was illegal pretty much everywhere. And attendance at weekly worship services was over 50%. Our fashions were modest and dignified (as all the photos from that period attest), divorce was almost unheard of, and it was only small pockets of our population that regularly involved itself with vice.
It is understandable, then, that by the start of the 1920s we’d become a world power. And our potential was probably never greater than it was at that juncture in history. We’d become a shining example to the rest of the world of what a country can accomplish when it puts God first over everything else. The blessings God shows to those who trust in His ways were apparent everywhere and it brought millions to our shores.
But very few today would say we are still at that high a potential. Something has happened. In recent times, we have seen a kind of reversal of that upward trend. And the rate of our unraveling is dizzying. Starting in the 1920s it is as though we have been rejecting one Commandment per decade. And in search of a spiritual explanation, two supernatural incidents occurring just prior to this decline might be able to give us a clue.
The first is an otherworldly encounter that is claimed to have occurred in the late 19th century. According to some sources, [37] while in the midst of saying Mass, Pope Leo XIII is reported to have fallen into a trance where he was made privy to a conversation between Jesus and Satan. Satan, for his part, boasted that if given 100 years and more power, he could destroy Christ’s beloved Church. And to this challenge, Jesus is said to have acceded, granting him both the time and the power.
This is a chilling story, and it is the supposed provocation for the Pope’s authorship of the Prayer to St. Michael (which he, thereafter, required to be read at the end of every Mass, worldwide). To be perfectly honest, however, the truth of this story has never been verified by the Vatican. And the earliest known printed reference to it is from a 1930s magazine article (written some 50 years after the fact). Nevertheless, there is so much evidence in our modern world to support it that it has the ring of truth. And as such, many are still prone to accept that something of this nature must have occurred (even if it wasn’t exactly as reported). It wouldn’t be the first time that the seed of truth was found within a myth.
But if it is true, we should also expect that God would have given the rest of the world some additional warning when all of this was going to start. And in the Fatima Apparition of 1917 we see that He may have done just that. [38] The message this time was delivered by His own Blessed Mother to three peasant children in Portugal. And through them she warned us of many calamities cal
calamities that were coming. She also offered to help us in our efforts to weather the storm. All that was required on our part was an act of faith to prove we believed she could help.
In typical human fashion, however, it would not be until the 1980s that we would finally take her up on her offer of heavenly assistance. Had we acted sooner we might have averted the horrors of the 2nd World War. In acting when we did, however, we do appear to have averted the horrors of a 3rd. But, miracle
regardless of how we responded, that’s twice in roughly 30 years where God seems to have gone out of His way to warn us of impending trouble. And unlike the vision of Pope Leo XIII, there is no ambiguity about the Fatima Apparition. This one was verified by a miracle witnessed by upwards of 100,000 people. So something evil was definitely afoot. [39]
And Satan’s plan of attack would have logically been against the Commandments. They had been the means the Word used to civilize the world. They would, therefore, also be the key to the world’s undoing. [40] And it would be God’s flagship, the United States of America, that would be the logical focus for the main attack, because (as has been noted) in bringing us down, so too would go the rest of the world.
The 1920s
As to the time, the onset of the 1920s is when America seemed to be at its moral peak. This is also where we see the first signs of crumbling. So any amplified spiritual attack would have logically begun then. But anyone living in the 20s might not have recognized it by the way the decade started. In short order two Amendments to our Constitution were passed and both were very telling of how high-minded we were back then.
One of those Amendments (the 19th), at long last, gave women the right to vote. And the other (also known as the Volstead Act) prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transport of alcoholic beverages anywhere within our borders. Had we recognized the danger we were in we might have waited to pass that Prohibition amendment for a more enlightened era. But having just returned victorious from a war that was to end all wars, we’d gotten pretty cocky and could foresee nothing that could possibly bring us down. This, however (and as has already been mentioned), was all about to change.
Contributing to our overconfidence was the economy, for the 20s was a decade when our stock market was booming and people everywhere were making money, hand over fist, by doing nothing but investing. And in our good fortune we found much to celebrate. The Jazz Age was also suddenly upon us, and under that influence, no one seemed to be paying attention to the Volstead Act anymore. It was a time of flappers and speakeasies. And by mid-decade, the 20s, were, as they say, roaring.
It was also a time when the criminal element rose to great heights, becoming so organized and tenacious that, to this day, we’ve not gotten rid of it. But Prohibition wasn’t really the cause, as so many have come to believe. The gangsters were just a symptom of a greed that had infected the entire country. And it wasn’t merely the seemingly invincible stock market that made us so greedy, either. It was Satan at the helm and the power he wielded was our first encounter with a totally new form of advertising.
In 1919, an American nephew of Sigmund Freud named Edward Bernays went to New York City to set up the world’s first public relations agency. [41] And in just a few years, he’d made a fortune using Freudian psychology to manipulate the public into buying products they normally wouldn’t buy.
Prior to this decade, companies tailored their advertisements simply to our needs. But Bernays was the first to intentionally target our subconscious desires. And he did so with phenomenal results
results. Under contract by many diverse industries, he used his techniques to convince us to buy new cars every year, to entice women into smoking cigarettes, and make bacon and eggs a popular breakfast staple. And none of these practices were common prior to Bernays getting involved. His influence extended even into politics. And in seemingly no time at all, ethical, honest campaigning and advertising had become a thing of the past.
Bernays, of course, didn’t accomplish all this single-handedly. There were plenty of others who’d build on his
his techniques once he became successful. [42] But the primary reason he and his imitators were so effective is the simultaneous arrival of a brand-new form of mass communication.
It was radio. And even though the technology had been around for decades, it wasn’t until the end of the First World War that radio broadcasts in America became economically feasible. So, when the first commercial stations went on the air in the summer of 1920, it must have seemed to Bernays as though the medium had been created just for him.
For us, however, this alliance was a power we’d never encountered before, and it wasn’t long before
before we’d become like sheep lined up for the shearer. Not everyone fell for this new and enhanced form of mental manipulation. But there were enough that many scholarly observers have accurately noted that in the 20s we went from a country whose citizenry bought only what it needed, to one controlled by its desires. [43] And to those of us who’d succumbed, it didn’t matter anymore if there was any logical connection between the product and the pitch. All we knew was that the advertisement had somehow triggered a primal urge and we suddenly had to have whatever it was they were selling.
To do this, though, we needed money and that’s where the stock market came in. It had become such a reliable source of income that it seemed ludicrous not to invest. And the kicker was you didn’t even have to invest any money to start. You could buy the stocks on credit and pay them off with the profit you later made from them. It was called buying on margin and that was the final lure that suckered us all in.
The transformation was complete. Owing to the cajoling of unscrupulous advertisers and a country overflowing with wealth we’d gotten spoiled. And just that quickly, the land of American dreamers had transformed into one teeming with get-rich-quick schemers. Had we only heeded the 10th Commandment we might have recognized it was all too good to be true. But all the smart people (Bernays included) were saying the market would never crash, so we ignored it. And when the bottom eventually did fall out, in the fall of ‘29, we found ourselves with no money and beholding to one less Commandment. [44]
The 1930s
In the aftermath of the stock market crash, we were a nation in shock and turmoil. Some, like the notorious criminals John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde, continued in the pursuit of easy money after
after the legal means of attaining had dried up. But for many more it was a humbling experience. And the evidence suggests our initial reaction was to huddle together, turn our sights back to God and repent. But Satan was not done with us yet. He simply switched focus to a different front in a campaign he’d been waging for two decades already.
Through the efforts of progressives and liberals in the 1920s and earlier he had been slowly chipping away at American attitudes on contraception. [45] But even into the 30s it was still a tough sell, until that is, he received the support of a most unlikely ally … the Anglican Communion. At their Lambeth Conference, in
in 1930, the Church of England rejected thousands of years of moral teaching (defying even the Bible which is not in the least bit ambiguous on the subject) [46] to declare that using contraception was no longer a sin for married couples under certain circumstances. It was like throwing gasoline on a slow burning fire. In very little time, all the other major Protestant denominations followed suit. And that “certain circumstances” clause (thought to be so important) was completely ignored.
Oh, their intentions were good. They always are. [47] It was the height of the Great Depression, and they felt this might relieve some of the burden people were experiencing. But attacking the family is no solution, and all it really did was make us weaker as our imaginations began to wander into all sorts of new possibilities.
So by the end of the decade (and with the additional support of the US government who, for the first time, began promoting condoms to our servicemen as a means of fighting VD) the results aaaaa were
were predictable. [48] Condom sales were booming, [49] the birthrate had plummeted, [50] and the divorce rate was twice what it was before the progressives got involved. [51] You can’t say as a country we’d become completely adulterous. But if the divorce rate is any indication, we were definitely thinking about it.
The movie industry had played a role in this as well. With radio, it too had blossomed in the early 20s to become a major player in mass media. And the
the risqué and scandalous content of many of those early silent films was having an obvious influence
influence on fashions and behavior in that decade. Our clerics were especially concerned. So when the talkies came out in 1929, they saw the heightened danger and went to Hollywood demanding the producers clean up their act and stop pushing sin.
And to their great credit, they were successful. Fearing government censorship, the movie moguls created the Hays Office in the early 1930s to regulate the moral content of their own productions. And (for a while anyway) they did their best to make movies in accord with our morality rather than theirs. [52]
They had much less success, however, bridling the behavior of their stars. And the tabloids kept telling us of all their tawdry affairs. Some seemed to be getting divorced and remarried every year. This was our last word on the subject. These were our idols; the
the people we’d fashioned our lives after. And if they had no respect for the sanctity of marriage, we thought, why should we? And thus, our adherence to the 9th Commandment was, similarly, gone with the wind. [53]
The 1940s
By the 1940s Satan had brought the rest of the world to its knees through the twin specters of Fascism and Socialism. And all it took him to do it was to fill the world with covetousness. But the lies he’d spread through the rest of the world had never fully caught on here. So we spent the first half of the decade fighting and defeating one threat and neutralizing the other. And thus, the world was saved once again for democracy.
And if Satan didn’t already know it, he knew it now. To succeed in his plans, he would have to take us out first. From here on in then, there is no doubt, we were the primary focus of his rage. With only five years left in the decade, though, he would have to work fast to incite another major upheaval. But as it turned out there was just enough time for what he had in mind. He’d employ a tactic he’d already used with great success in fascist Europe. It was called the Big Lie. [54] and to ensure that he’d get through to both ends of our political spectrum, he would fashion two.
For the left, it came packaged in the form of a sensational new book written by a self-proclaimed "sexologist" named Alfred Kinsey. [55] Kinsey’s studies on the average sexual behavior of men and women shocked the world. Never mind that the average American wanted nothing to do with his surveys and that his study groups consisted disproportionately of prisoners and sexual deviants … or that he, himself, was extremely deviant. [56] His biased conclusions that sexual deviancy was the norm and that we were all homosexual to some degree were hyped as true.
But it wasn’t the scientific community that supported it. [57] They were pretty clear in their skepticism of Kinsey’s methods and conclusions. It was our media (our magazines and movies) that
that made his pseudo-science seem legitimate. So we bought into it too, making Kinsey the hot topic in our offices and at our social gatherings.
You might call it, an emperor’s new clothes strategy and Satan played it masterfully. For most everyone knew it was baloney, but the subject matter was so intriguing, it was much more fun in the beginning just to play along. In coming years, however, as we continued to laud and support every new and ever more absurd claim being made about human sexuality (all inspired by and in many ways based on Kinsey’s flawed foundation), the penalty for dissenting became severe. Today you might be thought a bigot or a homophobe or the worst thing imaginable, a closet deviant. And it’s left us with only two politically correct options: either get on board or keep our mouths shut. And in playing that game by the devil’s rules, we’ve unwittingly turned all the lies into self-fulfilling prophecies. [58]
But that was just one of the two big lies that originated in the 40s. And the other would also have a major impact on American attitudes in years to come, as it was associated with what came to be called the Cold War.
After World War II ended, US involvement in foreign affairs didn’t end with it. Sovereign countries were being swallowed up left and right by socialist aggressors who saw their own victories over Germany and Japan as license to increase their territory. Somebody had to step up to take them on. And at the time, we were the only free country powerful enough to do it. So the Truman Doctrine was drafted, which quickly evolved into treaties with other free countries in Europe and Asia. And just like that, a line was drawn halting the Soviet Union’s incursions beyond Eastern Europe. Later, we would go head-to-head with Red China in Korea and Vietnam. And while some may question the rationale for our involvement in those fights, it is hard to argue that we weren’t, at least, trying to do the right thing.
But the world had suddenly become a chessboard with both sides doing their utmost to secure their position. And it was a situation we were not accustomed to. Prior to World War II, the US had primarily been an isolationist country, caring little about the affairs of foreign countries. World War I had gotten us a little more involved. But now we were fully and unavoidably entrenched and we would have to formulate a completely new mindset to deal with it. This was a watershed moment in American history. And with our CIA newly created to tackle these matters, we had a major decision to make as to how it should operate.
Do we adhere to the slogan we’d stamped on our money, trust God, and insist that our government adhere to the same moral standards we applied to our own citizens in all its foreign affairs?
Or do we adopt much the same tactics our enemies were using and allow black operatives to wreak unholy havoc throughout the world?
We all know the answer. Of the two possible roads, we chose the low one (the one most travelled by). And we’ve been on it to this day, even though the Cold War has been over for nearly thirty years. So the even bigger question now is, how did it happen? It is certainly understandable that some in our government might think this way. But how did our entire country’s moral compass get so messed up that we averted our eyes and allowed them to do it?
Well fear may have had something to do with it. On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic warhead, and it scared the bejeezers out of us. The Red Scare had officially taken hold, and with our media fanning the flames, it wasn’t long before the mere suggestion that someone or some country was communist made us jumpy. Suddenly nothing was off the table when it came to saving us from nuclear annihilation. And
And we weren’t about to start quibbling over the tactics our country would use to do it.
And so, it began. Starting in the 50s our country began meddling with the sovereignty of countries all over the world. Free countries that were only mildly socialist were overthrown. Mass murdering dictators were supported and, in some cases, installed. And our CIA became involved in political assassinations, targeted killings, and even torture all in the name of national security. [59]
And deep down we knew it was wrong, especially after we began learning of all the despicable things our government was doing. But Satan had anticipated that our feet (being clay) might get cold. So at the end of the decade he added one final embellishment to keep everything in place. And some might say it was the most ingenious trick he ever played. Others might call it the dirtiest.
They called it television. And from the moment we laid eyes on it, we were mesmerized. It seemed to have the power to make us believe everything it said. And it, too, was telling us that we needed to support our government’s actions in its war on socialism. It also warned that to think otherwise was somehow unpatriotic. And in the 40s we were nothing if not patriotic. So we yielded to the wisdom of our new electronic oracle, and became in the process a nation of hypocrites.
And with our integrity thus shattered, so too went our allegiance to the 8th Commandment, [60] as we nervously set our sights to the atomic age, where the consequences of our lies were just beginning to unfold in a world suddenly gone M.A.D.
The 1950s
And as might be expected from a country that had abandoned now three of the Commandments, when the 50s began we were seeing communists everywhere and making all kinds of false allegations against our neighbors. It was the new American way, being spearheaded by Joe McCarthy in the Senate and the Un-American Activities Committee in the House.
This is not to say, however, that there wasn’t any threat. There was. And it had been growing now for several decades. Unfortunately, the tactics used to root it out were glaringly outside the boundaries of our Constitution. Suspects were presumed guilty, blacklisted, and even imprisoned merely for their association with known communists or their refusal to name names. And our media was right in the thick of things cheering it all on … for a time anyway.
But the media was also one of the prime targets, which really put a strain on the relationship. And in its gradually pulling back its support, it took us with it such that those being victimized by the un-American activity of the House’s Un-American Activities Committee were becoming our heroes. This was certainly not the desired outcome. But the more our legislators pressed, the more their efforts were portrayed and seen as a witch hunt that had done far more harm than good. And when in 1954, television journalist, Edward R. Murrow went on the air to condemn Joe McCarthy. [61] it wasn’t long after that, that public sentiment had shifted allowing for McCarthy’s eventual senatorial censure. So TV was also learning, as Satan and his cohort withstood one of our fiercest counterattacks.
And in surviving he would be emboldened in many other arenas. The 50s wasn’t just about how we came as a nation to have sympathy for communists. Our moral envelope was being pushed in many areas and another major assault was coming from the entertainment industry.
This was, after all, the decade that gave us rock ’n’ roll. And the hypnotic and sexually stimulating effect that music had on the young alarmed many parents. But our opposition, by this time, was far too feeble to enjoy any long-term success.
And in our movies, hemlines were getting higher and necklines lower as
as Hollywood began testing our resolve in those waters again. But the vanguard of this media assault was undoubtedly the magazine industry. The laws we’d had in place against sending pornography in the mail had been largely dismantled in the 30s and 40s, allowing entrepreneurs like Hugh Hefner and his Playboy Magazine to take our morals to the gutter. As Isaiah had warned, the heavens were being rolled up like a scroll. [62] But it was happening so slowly nobody was noticing.
Internally, however, it was causing all sorts of turmoil. But psychiatry was there to help us adjust. Having long ago rejected the ideals of good and evil, God and the devil, however, psychiatrists had little understanding of the causes of our problems, much less a solution. But they did have drugs. In the 50s we had drugs of all types, to alter our moods and keep our consciences at bay as we continued down our slippery slope.
But the Commandments suggest that greed should have had something to do with this decade. And indeed, greed might be the best single word that could be used to describe our greatest failing in the 50s.
As a consequence of the technologies we had to develop in fighting and winning the war, we had become a superpower in the world, but not just militarily. Those new technologies had commercial applications, too. And so, just as it was in the 20s, with peacetime came another economic boom. And with all the new gadgets and toys that we could now buy, our ad agencies sent our desires into hyper-drive. Consumerism on steroids might be another way of putting it, as keeping up with the Joneses became a national obsession. But we’d been driven like this since the 20s. And we’re like this still today. There was, however, a new evil waiting to erupt, and it arose from the source of much of this new-found wealth.
Looking back, in the 30s and 40s our labor unions had finally succeeded in obtaining for much of the American workforce a fair wage and decent working conditions. And that also gave us a powerful middle class, with all the associated social and economic benefits included. But there was one major segment of the workforce that had missed out on the windfall. They were the American farm workers. And, lacking organization and political clout, the Great Depression hit them harder than anybody.
But World War II brought with it a major upheaval in the labor force. With many of our young men engaged in warfare overseas, there was suddenly a real scarcity of laborers stateside. To compensate for some of the shortage, women were recruited to take on their jobs (many of which had traditionally always gone to men). And to the amazement of some, they proved to be every bit as capable at this work as the men they were replacing. But as successful and groundbreaking as this solution had been, it only addressed part of the problem. There was still a great need for workers in the most labor-intensive jobs.
So in 1942, a joint agreement called the Bracero Program was forged with Mexico, wherein tens of thousands of Mexican laborers received lodging in American camps to work on our railroads and pick the crops in our fields. And this program (which continued even after the war ended) had the potential to do for our economically challenged neighbors to the south (and farm workers in general) the same as the war effort had done for the women’s movement.
To accomplish that all we had to do is give them the same fair compensation for their work as workers in other industries were now getting. But we had gotten spoiled by the ridiculously low wages the Dust Bowl era farm workers were willing to accept just to keep from starving. And we also felt we were already doing these foreign workers a huge favor simply by giving them jobs and housing (which was more than many of them had at home).
So in 1950, the program was expanded, bringing in hundreds of thousands more workers. And what was originally justified as a program to help both countries swiftly degraded into a veiled excuse for exploitation. The Braceros were paid next to nothing. They had few rights and none of citizenship. And in bringing in so many it completely undermined the efforts of our own farm workers to get a decent wage. They became like our indentured servants, the equivalent of a slave labor force. [63] But they also kept our grocery prices low, so we saw nothing to complain about.
The program finally ended in 1964. But when it did, our hypocrisy didn’t end with it. The jobs the Braceros vacated were simply filled by those we’d lured to come here illegally and take their place. And the situation has only gotten worse as millions now flock here to do the menial jobs we refuse to do, for wages we’d personally find insulting. And that’s not even counting the millions our companies now exploit overseas to keep our prices low and our standard of living among the highest in the world.
Like it or not then, much of the prosperity we saw in the 50s, and continue to see today, has been built on the backs of the poorest people in the world. And until this shameful situation is remedied, it must be admitted that, as a nation, we’ve discarded another Commandment [64] for the love a few extra dollars.
The 1960s
It would be our children, though, who’d call us on our behavior. And because of it, the 1960s began with a glimmer of hope. The nihilistic, countercultural, beat movement that arose in the 50s in response to our hypocrisies, had given sway to an idealistic new youth movement in the early 60s. They retained the same contempt for the materialism, jingoism and sexism that had become so characteristic of our culture. But they were not cynical about it as the beatniks had been.
Our kids actually felt they could change things. And their optimism was fueled largely by the election o a dynamic new president who seemed, to many, like a light turned on in the darkness, like a breath of fresh air, as someone who might have both the wisdom and the courage to fix all that had gone wrong. [65]
Of all the positive developments of the early 60s, however, the most inspiring and effective, by far, was the faith-based civil rights movement. And in that noble effort, African Americans at long last broke through the final barriers to equal treatment. Segre-gation laws were dismantled through-out the land and legislation was passed to help ensure all races had an equal opportunity to prosper. [66]
But Satan would have none of it. After allowing us those initial successes, he quickly dispatched assassins to eliminate our models for positive change and neutralized the efforts of many others by convincing them that violent, rather than peaceful, resistance was the best way to achieve their goals. And for the rest of us he had drugs; loud, seductive rock music, illicit sex, and lots and lots of drugs. And that was pretty much all it took for him to diffuse the situation and chalk up another decade lost.
But in the midst of all this, there arose one drug, in particular, that was more destructive and insidious than all the others put together. This drug, which came to be known by a deceptively simple name, had nothing to do with altering our consciousness, however. And it had no positive medicinal benefit either. Yet it was going to fix everything. At least, that’s what they said.
They called it the Pill. First synthesized in 1960 and rushed into the market two years later, it was the world’s first oral contraceptive. [67] And the women’s movement seized on it immediately, lauding it as the great equalizer. Finally, they reasoned, they had the means for total personal control of their own bodies. And in this manner, they could also now engage in sexual intercourse as casually as men. In other words, the Pill provoked the women’s movement to adopt the same philosophy as that of a man who’d made a fortune degrading and objectifying them in the public’s eye. [68] And that alone should have caused a thousand warning buzzers to go off in their heads.
For men and women were already equal. We were created that way. [69] But we’re not the same. So how can that balance be maintained if one sex is denying part of their physiology (their fertility) in order to compete? Heck, even with the Pill, the only measurable gain this sameness philosophy has afforded women (from our human perspective, anyway) is leave a tragically large number of them pregnant without the support of the men who got them that way. [70]
But we were young and stupid and hadn’t figured any of this out yet. All we knew for certain is that we liked having sex and the floodgates were now open. So we dove headfirst into those once forbidden waters with no concern for the outcome. This was the sorry state of America at the close of the decade, where adultery, and every other form of sexual sin between consenting adults, became legal and commonplace. And our children, for all their noise and bluster, accomplished nothing they’d set out to do, and, in the end only made things worse, as yet another Commandment was wantonly abandoned, [71] and our country traded away its capacity for rational thought for a bite of forbidden fruit.
The 1970s
And as we entered the 70s, it became painfully obvious that the Pill had not been the solution it had been hyped up to be. In fact, in abandoning our sexual mores we’d become, as a nation, obsessed with the subject. And that inspired a whole host of new problems. The divorce rate had skyrocke
skyrocketed, [72] as had the rape rate. [73] And the national birthrate had only been lowered for those we wanted to reproduce, married couples.
For our children, however, it had the opposite effect. [74] It promoted an attitude of sexual irresponsibility, and the logical result was, once again, predictable, [75] an epidemic of unwed mothers. Something had to be done about all those children. So, in the 70s we had ourselves another big dilemma.
-
Do we swallow our pride, admit that this new social experiment had been a failure, and go back to being sexually responsible?
-
Or do we forge ahead to higher levels of depravity?
We all know the answer to this one, too. In this contest between our newfound sexual addictions and our children’s lives … we chose ourselves, of course, [76] and cheered when the Roe v. Wade ruling made abortions legal throughout the land.
Oh, our intentions were noble. (They always seem that way, anyway). And the catchphrases we came up with to justify them were numerous.
“You can’t expect a woman whose been raped,” we cried, “to carry her rapist’s child!”
“And how dare the government (or anyone else, for that matter) tell us what we can, or cannot, do with our own bodies!”
“Besides, it’s not as though we’re going to start having abortions willy-nilly, simply out of convenience.” (At least, that’s what we thought.)
And so, with no recognition for the rights of anyone other than ourselves … the slaughter began. And in seemingly no time at all we were performing abortions at a rate of over one million per year. [77] And all those victims of rape and incest we claimed to be so concerned about represented less than 1% of the carnage.
“But they’re not people until we say they are,” was our last word on the subject. And Joseph Goebbels could not have said it better. But all the Nazi doublespeak we could come up with could not change the facts. We were killing our own children and we’re still doing it, nonstop, to this day. And even though today’s statistics claim that the abortion rate is dropping, it really isn’t. They’re just not counting all the children who’ve died because our morning-after pills prevented them from reaching the supposed safety of their mother’s wombs. [78]
That’s what abortion has become in our jaded world, merely a secondary means of contraception. And despite our refusal to admit to ourselves what we were doing, and all the verbal gymnastics we employed to shield ourselves from the truth, our consciences knew what was going on. And it was now taking a very heavy toll. But Satan was there, too, as he’d been in every decade, to give us his own substitutes for what he had taken.
In the 20s and 30s, it was alcohol. Then came psychiatry with its pep pills and tranquilizers. And by the 60s, there were drugs of every type imaginable (some legal, some not) to alter our moods and soothe our embattled souls. And psychiatry was here in the 70s as well to tell us everything was going to be OK. Guilt, they said, was not a symptom of the problem. It was the problem. So we did whatever we had to, to be rid of it.
Our drugs, in response, became harder and more addictive. And our music seemed to be getting louder and darker (and weirder) every day. But it was our movies that took the most advantage and changed the most to feed our lust for new diversions.
The studios had seen how much money the magazine and music industries had made by lowering their standards, and they wanted their piece of that pie, too. But they also feared our reaction if they simply abandoned the censorship standards we’d forced them to adopt in the 30s. So they offered, as a compromise, a rating system, claiming it would ensure we continued to receive quality entertainment. But all it really did was allow them to pander to our lowest appetites on the big screen and rake in huge profits in the process. [79] And most of us knew we were being conned, but this time, nobody seemed to care.
As for television, its programming was still fairly tame. But then, it was on a different course. Since the 60s its reporters had been in the rice paddies and jungles of Vietnam, providing Americans, for the first time, a close-up view of the horrors of war. And it had a very sobering effect. So when we finally did pull out from a war that had become extremely unpopular it was not lost on anybody (TV especially) how important a role television had played. And given the role it was also now playing in bringing down a president (Nixon), TV was getting a huge sense of its own power. But television hadn’t been responsible for these failures. It was merely reporting on events endemic of a sick society that was getting sicker with each passing decade.
Back when all this started, our country was truly blessed, just as the Bible promises for those who keep the Commandments. [80] And even though we were losing that adherence and bringing curses into the land because of it, [81] the blessings continued to outnumber them. This is seen in our resolve and even in our technology, both of which had advanced so much that, by the end of the 60s, we actually had people walking on the moon.
But in embracing abortion as our final solution, we’d also lost our adherence to the 5th Commandment. [82] And in passing the median of the Commandments, the curses we invoked now outnumbered the blessings. So with our national engine now running on only four cylinders and our greatest days seemingly behind us, we chugged and sputtered our way into the next decade, trying to convince ourselves that our politicians were right when they proclaimed our best days were ahead of us, while knowing in our hearts there was something seriously wrong.
The 1980s
And the 80s began, appropriately enough, with America being held hostage (or so our TV’s claimed). But America wasn’t really being held hostage (not by any human agency anyway). It was merely some of our diplomats being held hostage by one of those countries our CIA had meddled with back in the 50s. And that we’d encounter some fallout from having installed and supported a dictator in their country for 27 years was to be expected.
You wouldn’t have known any of that from watching television, however. To the networks it was a ratings goldmine, and they played up the patriotism angle to the hilt. That and Republican saber rattling made it the number one issue in the Presidential election. And for better or worse, it destroyed Jimmy Carter’s presidency and gave us Ronald Reagan. In so doing, television, whose liberal bias was already quite pronounced, also learned another valuable lesson. You might expect that we, too, would have learned something good from it. Judging by our later cheers (when our new president attempted to assassinate a head of state with F-111 fighter/bombers), [83] or by our collective yawns a few years after that (when he was caught funding right wing paramilitary rebels in Nicaragua by selling weapons to those same Iranians that had earlier held our hostages), [84] you’d have to say we learned nothing.
On a more positive note, we did see the end of the Cold War at the conclusion of the decade. And there are many who cite Ronald Reagan’s attempt to end the stalemate by forcing the Soviet Union’s hand with his Star Wars initiative as the reason. Had it been left solely to our own machinations, however, things might have just as easily gotten worse rather than better - a lot worse.
In truth, it was merely our Lady making good on a promise made some 70 years earlier, [85] and in her typical spectacular fashion.
But of all that happened in this decade, most remember it for its prosperity, for just as it was in the 20s and in the 50s, the 80s saw another economic boom. It came about simply by cutting taxes. And in the flood of opportunities that followed, we proved to be greedier than our parents and grandparents ever dreamed. It was the Me Decade; the time of the yuppie, junk bonds and insider trading; a time when money was so plentiful that two hands just didn’t seem enough to pull it from the trees it was growing on.
In other words, this was the decade where both spouses joined the workforce. [86] And when you add to that another sad consequence of our so-called sexual liberation, the distressingly high number of single parent households (from escalating divorce rates and unwed motherhood) you’d have to say our children were in serious danger due to parental neglect.
“But we’d been raised largely by television and the public school system,” we countered, “and we turned out OK.”
“Besides, today they have daycare centers and nannies and video games and all sorts of other things to occupy their time while we’re away.”
And for when they acted up (which is to be expected from that sort of neglect) psychiatry had drugs for them too. “Hey, they’d worked for us,” we rationalized, “why not our kids?”
There were, of course, a few glitches in our plans. For one, with offerings like Doom, Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto, the video games our children were being exposed to were not nearly as wholesome and family friendly as those we’d played. And television, though still not explicit, was no longer the beacon of Judeo-Christian ethics it had been in its golden age (if it ever had been). But the biggest problem was brewing in the public-school system.
Secular humanism had been gaining ground with teachers since the time of Kinsey. And, in 1962, when the Supreme Court banned prayer in schools, it kind of opened the doors to it. The Court’s decision was not a bad one, however. You can’t have schools forcing children to pray in ways that are contrary to their upbringing. The problem lay in how the lower courts and school administrators interpreted the ruling, because many saw it as a ban on all things Christian. And that included Judeo-Christian ethics.
But in taking that stance, those schools were faced with a difficult dilemma. If one system of ethics is deemed, by the courts, to be off limits, what do they replace it with? Some sort of ethical system is needed, but there are none that are inoffensive to everyone. Those that appeal to moral absolutists (like Muslims, Christians and Jews, for instance), are repugnant to moral relativists (like atheists and secular humanists), and vice versa. So for years, schools just tried to straddle the fence on the matter. But Satan gave us a little present in 1980 that made that position untenable.
It was the AIDS epidemic (another unwanted and horrible consequence of our choice for hedonism in the 60s). And, for the sake of the children, it forced our schools to take a stand. But where?
-
Do they promote the use of condoms (the Band-Aid approach)?
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Or chastity (the cure)?
Most schools chose both and completely under-mined the Judeo-Christian position in the process.
So while some of us were still telling our children to abstain from sex until marriage, our schools were telling them, “and when you don’t, use a condom.”
And to our revulsion for the aberrant lifestyles that were spreading this terrible disease; our schools labelled that hate speech and threatened expulsion to any who'd further that view. [87]
But we’d also said the US is an exceptional country - and they were telling them of all our government’s dirty little foreign policy secrets since World War II. [88]
And it left our kids wondering who should they believe - The parents they rarely saw? Or the pied pipers we’d abandoned them to? In the end, it wasn’t much of a contest and we kind of made their minds up for them anyway. So in fitting tribute to our losing, by our own selfishness, the
the hearts and minds of our children, at the end of the decade this guy showed up, ... [89]
... a harbinger, no doubt, of our own just fate when our children are grown and running things.
So with over 50% of our children now coming from broken homes, and many of those parents from the so-called normal households more interested in pursuing “the almighty dollar” or their “soul mates,” or their “inner child,” or whatever, so too went our children’s love and respect for us and the 4th Commandment. [90]
The 1990s
And having now handed Satan the reins to our children’s upbringing (which, by the way, he was only too happy to accept) we strode unfettered into the 1990s where Satan’s heightened influence over our children was just beginning to show itself in the most disturbing ways. [91]
And in search of the reasons some of our children have gotten so violent, our violent video games might be a good place to start looking. But the glorification of gangsters in our movies and music has certainly also played a part. And our science has basically proven there's a causative link between teen violence and that found in video games and other media outlets. [92] Our brains, we’re told, are still developing even into our mid-twenties. [93] So we need to be very careful about
about what goes into them until that time. To do otherwise is to risk turning our children into homicidal monsters … which we’ve apparently done in some cases.
You’re not going to hear much of this from our modern news media, however. They’re always ready with the smoke and mirrors when one of their number comes under attack. Instead, they’ll say it’s the guns that are the problem. “Yeah, that’s the ticket. It’s the guns.” And that’s about the same as blaming the car when a drunk driver runs down a pedestrian. Incredulously, though, many have bought into that argument and picket the government to ban them. It’s better, I guess, than calling attention to a more appropriate cause, like say, our own societal and parental failings.
But violent video games were just one of many evils that arose to tempt us in this decade. Of even greater concern was what was suddenly available to everyone on the internet, for the 90s saw the arrival of the Information Age and the World Wide Web, with personal computers becoming popular in both home and office as our accessway to it. But do not get this wrong. Since we control to a large degree the content, the internet has shown great promise as a means of leveling the playing field.
But it’s also highly addictive and like every other media outlet it needs to be regulated, for as it is today it can be a portal to virtue and every conceivable vice. And it is the pornography, the filth, that is particularly pernicious on the web. And most everyone agrees that something needs to be done. But nothing ever seems to happen - another sign of the times.
On the international scene, at the start of the decade we had Operation Desert Storm, our first war choreographed specifically for television. It even had its own timeslot in our TV guides as all the major offensives strangely seemed to coincide with the onset of primetime.
Whether there were any misdeeds on our part during this war is largely unknow since our military
military banned field reporting and spoon-fed the media all its information. They’d learned their lesson in Vietnam, too and were not about to let television ruin for them another war. Upwards of 100,000 Iraqis were killed in the conflict (by some reports) as opposed to 148 Americans. [94] But without our TV’s to show us the bloodshed we didn’t pay much attention to that. Our gaze instead was strategically fixed onto how cool and sophisticated our weaponry had become since Vietnam.
And when the war was over (and the dictator we’d once supported was put back in his place) we thought we might take advantage of the peace by paying back some of our skyrocketing national debt. But events in the following decade would soon put an end to that idea.
As pertains to the Commandments and as might have been expected, the 90s is where the majority of Americans stopped going to church. And studies suggest there have actually been two mass exoduses from the pews; one in the 60s and latest starting here in the 90s. [95] And as a result, less than forty percent of the population now regularly attends weekend services. [96]
In searching for the cause, the licen-tiousness of the 60s certainly must have had something to do with it. That’s when attendance first began to decline. But this second decline is maybe better under-stood as our negative reaction to the Church’s response to the first.
The 60s scared a lot of churchmen. And in an effort to win folks back, many bent over backwards to try to be more relevant.
relevant. Some of that may have been good, but more often than not it involved perverting Scripture. And having set that precedent back in the 30s by legitimizing contraception, today’s churches have opened their doors to all manner of heresy … from the acceptance of sodomy … to the rejection of Hell.
“God is too nice a guy to allow anyone to suffer for eternity,” they preached.
“One day all will be forgiven.”
“So why do we need to go to church?!” was our logical response.
But that’s just the approach some Protestant denominations have taken to this war we’re in. The Catholic response hasn’t been much better, however, for although the Catholic Church hasn’t altered her teaching in two thousand years, it’s not being preached. In a typical Catholic homily, maybe, maybe you’ll hear something about abortion. But that’s about it. You’ll hear nothing about the less politically correct ills of our society, nothing about homosexuality, nothing about sex outside of marriage, and never, ever will you hear anything about contraception. The watered-down drivel you’ll generally hear instead is enough to make you run for the exits. And if it wasn’t for the Sacrament dispensed at the end of Mass, I suspect most would.
But it may not be so much the priests at fault here, as it is the American bishops. It is under their leadership that this oppressive speak no evil atmosphere has flourished. And whether it be due to cowardice, a fear of lost revenue or a doctrinal dispute with Rome, they’ve rationalized it all away with a mantra they’ve been chanting since before Vatican II.
“Catechesis,” they say, “is for the classroom, not the pulpit.”
Great. And now if we can just get Satan to put restrictions on when and where he teaches. … But he won’t, of course, because unlike our bishops, he’s in this fight to win. So he uses every media outlet at his disposal and every opportunity to trash the Church and mislead the people.
In the meantime, our young are deserting the Church in droves. But why should that be a surprise if all they know of Church teaching is what they’ve heard from the enemy? How long do we have to wait and how bad does it have to get before our shepherds wake up and realize they’re not feeding their flocks?! The good shepherd tends always to the sheep on the fringes. [97] In focusing their homilies only on those in the comfort zone (those who have no need of instruction) the perimeter is untended, and the flock gets smaller … and smaller … and smaller.
And the Catholic Church scandals that came out at the end of the decade didn’t help matters, either. This was another place where our bishops let us down. Having swallowed the Kinseyan lie that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, from the 50s to the present day, many seminaries have opened their doors to it and the results have been horrendous. From the mid-60s to the early 90s, for instance, thousands of male children were molested. [98], [99] And our bishops only compounded the travesty with years of cover-up. So even though the majority of the molestations actually happened years earlier, the scandal didn’t hit the papers until the late 90s, early 00s.
But this is understandable. Pulling us away from the Church and her Sacraments was vital to Satan’s plans. So he waited until just the right moment to play this card and seal the deal. And it worked. With just a handful of his degenerates and some well-intentioned, but seriously misguided bishops, he managed to fill us all with disgust and distrust for the entire priesthood and organized religion in general.
“They’re all a bunch of perverts and hypocrites,” we charged, as we rationalized our own flight from the pews. And with that tiresome 3rd Commandment now out of our lives, [100] and but two Commandments remaining, we set forth into the new millennium, stripped of our Sacramental armor, and virtually defenseless against Satan’s final assaults.
The 2000s
But we didn’t do so with confidence. And it was not without a little apprehension, either, that we ushered in the 21st century. It wasn’t out of concern for our real situation, however, but an overblown fear that all our computers were going to fry and send us back to the Stone Age. [101] And given how much our technology had taken over our lives by this point, this might have actually been a good thing.
It didn’t happen. But not long after Satan did give us something to really be concerned about, as apparently some folks felt not enough Americans had been killed in the Gulf War and they set out to try and even the score.
Now a casual observer might recognize that the events of 9/11 were just more expected fallout from our own covert operations overseas. And many have. But it was also an act of unfathom-able
able evil. And it shook us to the core to think that anyone could hate us so deeply. It also gave us pause to reflect on those who’d attacked us … for those they’d killed … and for the heroism displayed that day. But when that was over, and the anger set in, it made war with somebody, anybody the only course of action we could conceive of.
It also scared us, and understandably so. But our fears soon became greater than the actual threat, convincing many that our now extremely exaggerated unease over national security could be mollified at the cost of our civil liberties. So we basically gave our president carte blanche to do whatever he thought necessary to keep us safe, with the naïve assumption that the wars he waged and the intrusions he came up with to see into our lives would only be a temporary situation.
He was a good man, though, and we trusted him not to take advantage. That character assessment was not, however, shared by everyone … not by a long shot. By this time in America, the disparity between our political parties was no longer just about ideology. We had become a people with two radically different views on morality. [102] For some it may have been earlier, but this polarization first became noticeable around the time of the Roe v. Wade ruling. For many on the Right (our mothers especially), abortion was a clear violation of the 5th Commandment. And its legalization became for them a line they couldn’t cross. So, from that first whiff of sulfur, they dug in their heels to prevent further decline. And in their fervor, their movement soon became a defining plank of the Republican party platform.
But the liberals and the progressives (who are inclined to be moral relativists) never saw the connection between abortion and the Commandments. And with nothing solid to hang onto, they’ve continued in their slide to this day. But it hasn’t been without a great deal of angst. For the more they drank of the devil’s Kool-Aid, and the farther away they got, the greater their hatred of the unwavering position of the conservatives became. And 40 years of blood guilt from their advocacy of legal abortions didn’t help matters, either. This is not true of all Democrats, of course, but it does seem to be the direction of the party.
So now, a full generation later, with the ethics of so many Democrats so contrary on so many issues, it is no exaggeration to say that today anyone even moderately Pro-Life is thought by them a Nazi. This was especially obvious in their hatred of President Bush, which became almost maniacal. But it was even more pronounced in their hatred of another Pro-Life candidate, who came along later, who’d committed the unforgivable crime (in their minds anyway) of giving birth to a special needs baby while in her forties rather than having him aborted. [103]
She was a former city mayor, a former state governor, a former TV news reporter, a business entrepreneur, a married mother of five, a devout Christian and as the vice-presidential running mate of John McCain, she was as qualified to be president as at least half the men who’d already held the position. By almost every measure then, she was the living embodiment of the left's ideal for what a truly liberated woman should be. And, let's be honest, had she been a progressive they would have erected statues to her.
allnged
But she was no liberal, making her anathema to everything the modern women’s movement stood for. As such, her very existence challenged every moral belief the liberals now held dear. And if they could not destroy her, it would force them to re-examine their own views on abortion, on hedonism and everywhere else they harbored feelings of guilt. And whether they were conscious of what was truly motivating them or not, that pain, as it is with all the traumatized, was to be repressed at all costs.
So their initial reactions were understandably full of vitriol and way beyond what would be expected of anyone else’s candidacy. But what they said of her on camera was nothing compared to the filth said of her and her children on the web. The demonic seemed incapable of containing itself as long as she was standing. And it was not just those on the Right who were noticing the puppeteers coming out from behind the curtains.
Everything Satan had built up in this country over the past 80 years was suddenly in jeopardy by one seemingly unflappable female. Something had to be done to bring her down and the liberal media was only too happy to jump in, doing their best to make her look corrupt or incompetent in their magazines and on their comedy shows. [104] And even those TV journalists we’d come to trust seemed to be in competition to take her down, with awards and accolades being doled out to those who did the most damage. [105]
There was something seriously messed up in all of this. And it was something we’d never seen before. In past elections, our evening newscasts had always tried to be objective (despite their liberal biases) if for no other reason than to maintain viewership from both ends of the political spectrum. In doing that in this decade, however, they’d also seen George W. Bush elected, not just once, but twice! And this was apparently more than they could bear. So a decision was made (unconscious for some, intentional for others), that never again would they sit back and allow a Pro-Life candidate attain the highest office. The emotional stakes had simply gotten too high.
And in 2008, they made good on that promise, doing their utmost to paint the candidates on the Right as being either too old and or just stupid, while at the same time depicting the candidate on the Left as the Second Coming of Christ. And in their duplicity we wound up electing … a man so Pro-Choice that as a state senator he actually voted several times in favor of killing children even after they’d been born! [106] … a man so liberal that in the same capacity had advocated for the use in schools of sex manuals that had lessons on masturbation and homosexual sex for five-year-olds! [107] And even though candidates in former elections had been brought down by far less, these issues had no effect in 2008. But it’s not because we didn’t care.
Actually no one knows how we might have reacted. We were never given the opportunity. Recognizing how incendiary these issues were, our trusted evening newscasters decided to ignore or whitewash as much as possible these and the 1,001 other sins of the Democrat candidate. The Republican challengers never had a chance. They were fighting two foes: the Democrat candidate, Obama … and his love smitten, attack dog media.
Television had finally come of age in America as a true propaganda machine. In its ability to decide which issues are relevant and which aren’t, it was deciding our elections for us now. And it has to be considered one of the saddest days in American history - the day that television became fully aware of its own power … and used it.
And for those familiar with the Book of Revelation, it is enough to make one wonder, if St. John, the Evangelist’s vision of the false prophet as a beast with two horns might have looked something like this ... [108]
But that discussion is maybe best reserved for the next decade. For this one, and as pertains to the Commandments, if there is one area where we, as a nation, fell to a new low in morality, it has to be in our language. And although some may not have even noticed, for those of us who never swear
swear it is as if, from the day the new millennium began people have lost all control of their tongues. [109] And today it is a rare place where you won’t find profanity.
You hear it in the workplace (wherever that may be). You hear it in the streets and in the restaurants. You can't look at Twitter (now X) or a comments section on the web without seeing it. And the most disheartening place of all is in the schoolyard. It seems to be the only way people know how to communicate anymore. And our children are naturally picking it up, too.
Our media is predictably, once again, in the forefront in promoting it. Our movies, for instance, are filthy with profanity (and have been for decades) as are our video games. And in our music, it wasn’t all that long ago the mere hint of a four-letter word was cause for scandal. But rappers and hip hoppers broke through and basically annihilated that barrier back in the 90s. And today expletives are used so cavalierly in lyrics (in all forms of pop music) that no one seems to even raise an eyebrow anymore. [110]
Not to be outdone, television has also become one of the biggest offenders. Profanity has been a defining characteristic on cable TV, for instance, from its origin. Its live broadcasts and reality style programming are rife with swearing. But even on many of its scripted programs, their writers don’t seem to be able to get through a sentence without punctuating it with the vulgar name of a body part, bodily function or excretion.
And on network television, where bleeped profanity was once something that only happened by accident on late night interviews and live broadcasts, today it is purposely written into scripts for comedic effect, leaving little confusion as to the actual words that are being bleeped. It has become the latest trend in the media’s continuous attempts to lower its standards (and ours). And it should not be at all surprising then that the amount of bleeped profanity (according to one study) rose more than 2,000 percent in a mere five years from 2005 to 2010. [111] But with the high courts emasculating the FCC in recent decisions by taking away much of its ability to regulate it, it only promises to get worse. Besides, with so little distinction anymore between the bleep and the word it is supposedly suppressing, how long can it be before the façade is dropped altogether?
Hand in hand with the turn our language has taken, is the amount of tattooing and body piercing we’re seeing lately. And whereas this practice was once common to only a small minority of people (like sailors and gang members and carnival workers), today, with so many of our youth identifying with gangsters, the so-called art form has come into its own. It had been steadily growing since the 1970s, but the main thrust of the craze began predictably enough right around the year 2000. Prior to that time, you can’t even find statistics on them. Nobody paid much attention. Today, however, upwards of 30% of the population reports having at least one. And for adults, aged 50 and under, it’s close to half. [112]
But it’s our media celebrities that are in the forefront promoting this fad, [113] as these days, they all seem to be sporting them. And since they are our trendsetters, we, of course, have been following suit, just as we always do and have since time immemorial. [114] But when looking into the twisted faces of those who’ve become addicted to the practice, those who’ve grotesquely augmented their bodies with horns, for instance, and mutilations and by splitting their tongues, it is not hard to see the faces of those who are really orchestrating this.
It is as though we’ve become the butt of some bizarre cosmic joke by our unwitting complicity in Satan’s desire to make us all over into his dark image. [115] But we need to focus and remember we were created in the image of God. [116] And the violence we do to that image is directly proportional to the hatred we harbor towards it. [117] So these obscenities we’ve carved into our bodies are essentially no different from the obscenities that stream from our lips. Separately, or together, they are nothing short of blasphemy. And deep down we know that too. It is just the latest phase of a rebellion we’ve been waging against God in this country that started such a seemingly short time ago.
The 2010s, Part 1: The Obama Years [118]
But it must be admitted, with all the cussing and tattooing and piercing and blaspheming going on, that we’ve also sworn off our obedience to the 2nd Commandment, [119] which sadly, we aaaa were
were only too happy to do. In fact, it’s become a rite of passage. And with our morality thus decimated, we cluelessly stepped into the 2010s, primed and ready to do any number of foul things to our bodies, accept any mark, [120] as soon as our celebrities give us the green light and tell us it’s cool.
This is what our media has bought us to in a mere 90 years. As a country, coveting has become a national
national pastime. We cheat on our tests. We cheat on our taxes. And we cheat on our spouses without batting an eye. We do abominable things to our children and when our parents get old, we have similar measures reserved for them too. And when we’re asked if we go to church, we angrily stretch out our tattooed arms at our surroundings and shout, “This is our church!”
But we only have one more Commandment to go. [121] And by all appearances, we’ve only what remains of this final decade to turn things around. We still, as a country, pay lip service to God. Will the 2010s be the decade we finally come to our senses? Or will we simply continue our slide to its logical Godless conclusion? Judging from past performance and from the perspective of the author (writing this, as he is, in 2015) it doesn’t look very promising. And it seems very appropriate to see this as the decade of the atheist. Their ads and billboards seem to be popping up everywhere these days. Our own president even haughtily declared it in a keynote speech when he noted “We are no longer a Christian nation” (making it sound as though this was a good thing). [122]
And whereas in former times our atheist celebrities kept a fairly low profile, espousing atheism today is seen as being edgy, as though they are punching through that one last barrier to freedom. But the blasphemies and obscenities that come out of their mouths as they denounce their Creator and all who follow Him is stark evidence that they are not nearly as emancipated as they think they are. They claim to be free thinkers but in shedding themselves of God they’ve lost much of their free will. Enslavement is a much better descriptor of their sad state.
Despite their ignorance, however, they’ve performed their master’s tasks well. Our young, in particular, have been heavily influenced. But that too should be no surprise, what with their having been carefully groomed for it in our secular public schools over the past 30 years. It was only a matter of time before they took this last step.
And we, their parents, have nothing to brag about either, given how many idols we’ve now erected in our own lives to take the place of God. There is seemingly one for each of the Seven Deadly Sins our forefathers warned us about. And if we were to attach a familiar contemporary face to each of these sins to personify them, we might have another of those beasts St. John told us of in his Book of Revelation: this one being the seven-headed, ten-horned beast, [123] which draws its power from that other beast identified, the false prophet. [124] aka, the mainstream media (with the ten horns representing, perhaps, all the lies we’ve adopted to replace the Commandments we’ve discarded from our lives).
Before unveiling the resultant graven image, however, a word of warning needs to be issued, as there is one person depicted in it people may have a problem with. It is Barack Obama, our 44th president. But the reader needs to know that with his being our first, and thus far, only US president of African descent, the author found no pleasure in including him, and would have avoided doing it altogether if there was someone, anyone, else who fit the criterion as well as he did. But there were no other contenders, in the author's opinion, that had nearly as many of the necessary dubious qualifications, so to exclude him would have been disingenuous.
Sincere condolences are, therefore, extended to any reading this book, who adore our 44th president and feel he’s been unfairly maligned in this depiction. Know also that the importance of the role he’s played as a symbol of racial pride is understood. And it would have been wonderful had he even come close to living up to the expectations of that role (as there are certainly many of his racial identity who could have).
But sadly, when you look past the polished veneer and the eloquence of his speaking voice and consider instead his incessant lying, [125] his narcissism, [126] his penchant for self-aggrandizement, [127] his fanatical obsession with all things Pro-Choice, [128] the vast number of people who appear to actually worship him, [129] and his seeming lack of empathy for the suffering going on in this country due to his unwillingness to do anything contrary to his socialistic ideology to combat it, [130] it becomes hard to deny that he did a very good impersonation of the Roman Emperor Nero while in office. [131] And that makes him a prime candidate for the seventh and last head for the beast, [132] with Envy (the root sin of socialism) being the best choice for the Deadly Sin to apply to him. [133]
Legend
And it needs to be repeated that those depicted in the above image reflect only the author’s subjective opinion as to which Americans from the past 100 years fit best the profile for each Deadly Sin. But the other main requirement was that they be someone many have come to idolize in American society and primarily for their espousal of that Sin. And although none are thought to be The Antichrist, they do (like many throughout history before them) all seem to possess a spirit of Antichrist, as per 1 John 2:18. Starting counterclockwise from the right to left, they are:
3) Alfred Kinsey for Intem-perance (aka Gluttony). Together with Timothy Leary (another Icon for this Sin) they are worshipped by drug abusers, pot smokers and hedonists of every stripe (whether hetero- or homo-), for their skewed statistics, which gave us all a scientific basis, and thus license, to indulge in all manner of vice.
4) John Dillinger, the notorious bank robber and murderer, turned folk hero by our media, for choosing the path of least resistance (crime and violence) over hard work and diligence in his quest for fame and fortune for Sloth.
7) And US President, Barack Obama (our first blatantly socialist president), whose popularity is due largely to the color of his skin and all the state sponsored give aways he promised, for Envy.
6) The fictitious stockbroker, Gordon Gekko, from the iconic 1980s movie Wall Street, for Greed. And although many others might have been selected (a certain Hungarian stockbroker comes to mind), money, itself, may be the best choice for the object of our worship.
2) Jack Kevorkian, the assisted suicide promoter, for Pride. He is the face of every American who acknowledges no greater authority than themselves even unto death. This, our greatest failing, is what has kept us on this dark path to this day.
5) Hugh Hefner, the man whose lifestyle many have coveted, is our icon for Lust. While Marilyn Monroe, his first centerfold and the woman he used to attain his fame (and vice versa) is another American Icon that could have been cited here. They seem to have been perfectly tailored to be the poster boy and pinup girl for this Deadly Sin.
1) Margaret Sanger for Hate. Ignoring her advocacy for euthanasia, forced sterili-zation and segregation of peoples (Christians espe-cially) she deemed “unfit” or “dysgenic,” (Conley 2017), as a pioneering advocate for contraception and the founder of an organization (Planned Parenthood) that has turned killing children into a multi-billion dollar industry she’s become an icon for leftist women’s groups, LGBT activists and all who despise the Church, the Command-ments and the true natural order of things.
Now Scripture tells us the time of the seventh head should be seven years. [134] And that would fit as well with Obama’s presidency, which was virtually powerless in its final (eighth) year. [135] But the Bible further informs us there is to be a rider for this beast, someone it refers to as the Whore of Babylon. [136] This would presumably be someone, of any gender, who embraces all the ills the beast has wrought in our world and aims to use them as their vehicle to power. [137]
And although we do not yet know who this person is with certainty, from what we know of the heads of the beast (and from Scripture, which says he/she will be drunk from the blood of the martyrs), it points to another Pro-Choice advocate (making those martyrs all the unborn children we’ve callously murdered to maintain our progressive lifestyles). [138]
You know, we like to look at all those genocidal regimes from the recent past (at Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, at the killing fields of Cambodia and Rwanda, etc.), and think ourselves superior. But in this nightmarish, apocalyptic world we’ve adapted to, those regimes have nothing on us. Since Roe v. Wade, over 66 million children have been killed in this country in our abortion mills – over 66 million! [139], [140] And when you factor in all those who’ve died from abortifacient contraception it's probably more than twice that. [141] That’s a higher death toll than that of all those other modern genocides combined.
These were people God brought into our world, people He had great plans for. And there was a time, not so many years ago, that we all knew that! But our media has totally desensitized us to it, convincing us it’s not a child, just a choice. And so, just as it was in Noah’s time right before the Great Flood, [142] we go about our daily business, totally oblivious to the evils we are doing and the consequences that lie ahead. But this cannot go on forever. Justice has long ago prevailed against those other genocidal regimes. They’ve all been brought to ashes. Given the magnitude of our crimes, how long can we expect God’s patience to last for us? [143]
But as important as it is that we all ask ourselves this question, at its core there is something even more compelling that requires our attention. For while it is acknowledged that a lot of what has been written here is subjective (merely one person's perspective on how to best fit all the data into a framework constructed of biblical end times prophecy and the added revelations of the 2/3rds Rule), there lies within it a potential for true consensus. So whether you disagree with some, or even most, of the opinions expressed, the main point of this discussion is to draw attention to the root cause of our problems; because as a country we all seem to agree that we’re in trouble, but we’re paralyzed by our inability to agree on where it’s coming from - and what we need to do to fix things.
In simply recognizing, therefore, that our difficulties are due to our lost adherence to the Commandments, we are given the knowledge, and with it the power, needed to work together to lift our country back up to what it once was. That seems to capture the essence of what the 2/3rds Rule is trying to tell us here, and hopefully that message will be heeded.
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ENDNOTES
[1] To get the most out of this chapter, prereading the following Scriptures may be helpful: Dt
5:6-21, Rv 13:1-18, 17:1-6.
[2] ... an observation made by Sherlock Holmes in the book, The Sign of the Four (1890) by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
[3] Or, to put it more clearly, on the Julian calendar, the Presentation and the Ascension 40
years later, both occurred on the same day in May. But since Hebrew calendar dates move
around from year to year on that calendar it is the Descent of the Holy Spirit that is exactly 40
years after the Presentation, as both occurred on the same day in the month of Sivan, namely,
Pentecost.
[4] This was discussed in chapter 1. The Gospels are somewhat ambiguous as to which of the
two days it occurred.
[5] Of all the holiday connections found in this book any that connect to multiday holidays
always land on either the 1st day or on the Sabbath that occurs in the middle of the festival.
So any event that fell on an inauspicious day within a multiday holiday is more of a miss than
a hit.
[6] Mt 16:4, NABRE.
[7] Jon 2:1.
[8] The timing is given in Acts 1:3. And with there being no mention of the holiday until the
time of St. Augustine in the 5th century (Wynne 1907), there is no certainty where the
tradition came from that Christ ascended on a Thursday. But a calculation based on this verse
from Acts is a logical possibility.
[9] Or, as Jesus put it when confronted about His disciples' failure to observe Jewish customs
on fasting, "Can the wedding guests mourn [He asked] as long as the bridegroom is with
them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will
fast." Mt 9:15, NABRE.
[10] Gn 7:11.
[11] The debate can be found in the Babylonian Talmud (Rosh HaShanah 12a) with Rabbi
Yehoshua taking the losing position that the Great Flood began in the spring.
[12] Of the oldest, intact, Greek texts; the Codex Alexandrinus dates to the 5th century AD,
while the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus date to the 4th. But many fragments have
also been found that predate the time of Christ.
[13] The oldest, intact, Hebrew texts, the Aleppo and Leningrad Codices both date to the 10th
century AD.
[14] Minkoff 2012.
[15] Compare, for instance, Lk 3:36 to Gn 11:12, or Gal 3:16-17 to Ex 12:40. In both cases
(and many others) there is a discrepancy between the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew
Old Testament but there is no conflict found with the Septuagint.
[16] Gn 8:14-16
[17] Mt 24:36.
[18] This is arrived at by the recognition that, with Jesus's birth on 24 Nisan being April 5 in
8 BC, the most straightforward calculation of Pentecost that year would set it to May 16. And
that also sets the dates for both the Presentation and the Ascension to the 16th.
[19] … the primary combatants consisting of Israel and the 3 surrounding Arab states (Jordan,
Syria and Egypt).
[20] ... not that either pair was ever fully separated.
[21] Mt 16:2-3 with Mt 24:4-44 and in consideration of the Old Testament connection just
discerned, verse 24:37 is of particular interest.
[22] Gn 13:15, but Zep 2:1-2 tells also of the regathering of Israel.
[23] Calculated from Gn 15:13, Ex 12:40 (LXX only), 2 Sm 5:4-5, 6:3-5 and 1 Kgs 2:11-12,
6:1.
[24] There was no year Zero (making it 1,883 + 33 - 1 = 1,915).
[25] Ex 12:40 (LXX only).
[26] Gn 12:4, 21:5, 25:26, 47:28.
[27] 1413 BC is 40 years after 1453 BC (the depicted year of the Exodus). And Jos 4:19 gives
the exact day.
[28] 1 Kgs 10:14-29, Mt 6:29.
[29] David's reign was 40 years: 7 years from Hebron and 33 years from Jerusalem (1 Kgs
2:11), the Ark being with him in both locations. And with the relocation occurring in 1009 BC
(according to the timeline), it sets the start of Solomon's reign to 976 BC, which in turn is also
3 years prior to the start of the Temple's construction (1 Kgs 6:1).
[30] Neh 13:26.
[31] Ezr 1:1 states that Cyrus issued his famous decree commanding the Judahites return to
their homeland in the first year of his reign. And with his defeat of the Babylonians known to
have occurred in October 539 BC, sometime shortly after that date is when the decree is
commonly held to have been issued.
[32] Zep 2:1-2 and other Scriptures have been interpreted this way.
[33] With the exception of of some massaging of sentence structure, and the additions of a
few more clarifications, sidenotes and references, this discussion is essentially the same as it
appeared in the two prior editions of this book, last published in 2020.
[34] For expedience, the author (being a US citizen) will, for the remainder of this discourse,
be writing in first person terminology (using the words we or us) when referring to America
or its citizens.
[35] At least the majority of Americans seem to have been of this persuasion. But rather than
cite endless references to support this allegation, it will simply become obvious with further
reading as the mores and morals of this time are contrasted with those of later decades.
[36] But don’t take these statements as suggesting that all (or even most of) the issues
involving Native Americans (or any other marginalized group) had been resolved. They
weren’t (and still aren’t). The point is merely that progress had been made.
[37] See, for instance, Durand 1984. But there are many others.
[38] Ratzinger 2000.
[39] The publication year of Pope Leo XIII’s prayer to St. Michael, suggests his vision would
have occurred sometime between the years 1884 and 1886. And some accounts place it on
Oct. 13, 1884, making it exactly 33 years prior to the Fatima miracle on Oct. 13, 1917.
[40] The Commandments will, therefore, provide the framework for this discussion. And as to
their ordering, in the next installment of this Series, Levels III and IV will show a decided
preference for the Catholic enumeration. So that will be the ordering cited here. For non-
Catholics this means the Jewish (and Protestant) 1st and 2nd Commandments will be
consolidated as the Catholic 1st. And the Jewish (and Protestant) 10th will be divided to
become the Catholic 9th and 10th Commandments.
[41] Bernays actually invented the term, public relations, because he felt the common word
for what he was doing, propaganda, had acquired too negative a connotation.
[42] … the Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, for one.
[43] The 2002 BBC documentary, The Century of the Self, provides a very thorough overview
of what we lost (Curtis 2002).
[44] No. 10 (RC): Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods. (Dt 5:21b, paraphrased).
[45] Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, from 1914 on until her
death in 1966, was in the forefront of this movement.
[46] God commanded that we be fruitful and multiply (Gn 1:28). And not only does the Bible
never record God rescinding that command, in Gn 38:6-10 He makes it very clear how He
feels toward those who defy it.
[47].… a certain road is paved with them.
[48] And Pope Pius XI warned us of them in his 1930 encyclical, Casti Connubii.
[49] Nelson and Goankar 1997, 357.
[50] Sutton, Hamilton and Matthews 2011.
[51] And by the 60s, it was triple what it was in the 40s. Data obtained from Koob 2011.
[52] There were far worse posters that could have been used to examplify of the lewdness of
pre-code Hollywood. But this one gets the point across as to what they were pushing without
polluting this commentary too much with prurient imagery.
[53] No. 9 (RC): Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. (Dt 5:21a).
[54] … as described in Hitler's manifesto, Mein Kampf (pg. 134), if you want the masses to
believe a lie, make it so preposterous no one would believe you would say such a thing unless
it was true.
[55] The book: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) followed shortly thereafter by
Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953).
[56] Reisman and Eichel 1990.
[57] See Maslow and Sakoda 1952 or Cochran, Jenkins, Mosteller and Tukey 1954.
[58] Sex studies are relevant only to the times they are conducted. It is logical to conclude,
therefore, that those studies in the 60s (and later) which supposedly corroborated Kinsey’s
skewed studies did so only because society had, by that time, become obsessed with the
subject (thanks largely to Kinsey).
[59] Blum 2004.
[60] No. 8 (RC): Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. (Dt 5:20).
[61] Videos of Murrow’s attacks and McCarthy’s rebuttals are available on the web. And each
side has its merits, so viewing both is recommended to get the clearest picture of the times.
See, for instance, KD 2022 and pinoyelvis 2018.
[62] Is 34:4, also Rv 6:14.
[63] Gamboa and Leonard 1990, 90.
[64] No. 7 (RC): Thou shalt not steal. (Dt 5:19).
[65] For those few who may be unfamiliar, this is in reference to the charismatic 35th
President of the United States, John F. Kennedy (shown in the photo seated with his wife,
Jackie).
[66] … or, at least, as equal as is reasonably possible through legislation.
[67] And it is Margaret Sanger, once again, to be thanked for it, as the invention of the Pill is
often credited to her personal involvement in its development.
[68] The reference this time is to Hugh Hefner and the misogynistic playboy philosophy he’s
promoted over the decades through his magazine.
[69] In the image of God, He created them. Male and female He created them. (Gn 1:27,
NRSV). See also Gal 3:28.
[70] A child is never a detriment, but, for the sake of both the mother and child, it is better to
have one within the bounds of marriage, than not.
[71] No. 6 (RC): Thou shalt not commit adultery. (Dt 5:18).
[72] In 1960, when the surge began, the divorce rate had risen to only double what it was in
1900. But by 1980 when the surge peaked, it was over 5 times the 1900 rate (Schweizer
2020).
[73] US crime rates tables 1960-2019.
[74] Ventura and Bachrach 2000.
[75] And this time it was Pope Paul VI trying to warn us of all the evils we were unleashing
through his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae.
[76] … a choice reminiscent of Lk 23:13-25.
[77] CDC 2008.
[78] American Life League 2015.
[79] Prior to the rating system, blue movies were available. But they were found mainly in the
rundown sections of cities. So, anyone wanting to see them had to work for it. Today, thanks
to the rating system and premium cable channels, the situation is reversed. The sewer now
runs down main street, and it is the responsible parents being forced to do all the work to
protect their families from it.
[80] See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse … (Dt 11:26-27, NRSV).
[81] Also, as prophesied (Dt 11:28).
[82] No. 5 (RC): Thou shalt not kill. (Dt. 5:17).
[83] This is in reference to the 1985 attempt to kill Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi
because of his refusal to turn over the perpetrators of the Achille Lauro hijacking.
[84] The Iran-Contra affair.
[85] Ratzinger 2000.
[86] In 1950, roughly 10% of mothers with children under 18 were in the workplace. But
those numbers began to rise in the 60s such that by the 80s it was more than half, for both
mothers and women, in general. And it con-tinued to grow throughout the decade until it
finally plateaued at close to 70%, which is where it still stands today (US Dept. of Commerce
1975 and US Bureau of Labor Statistics 2009).
[87] Kinsey's theories had grown that powerful by the 80s, being bolstered by both the
hedonism that erupted in the 60s to become the social norm and by the many later biased
studies bent on justifying that lifestyle. And the most persuasive may be the writings of two
American pop psychologists and gay agenda champions: Dr. Evelyn Hooker, who’s flawed
1957 study was instrumental in getting homosexuality removed from the DSM (the APA's list
of mental disorders) in 1973 (Schumm 2012) and Dr. George Weinberg, who coined the term
homophobia in 1966.
[88] ... the two Big Lies created in the 40s having come to full fruition in the 80s to be used
against us for our children.
[89] The photo is of Dr. Jack Kevorkian (also kown by his nickname, Dr. Death): euthanasia’s
most notorious modern advocate. He became famous for his invention of an assisted suicide
machine that he would employ several times starting in 1990.
[90] No. 4 (RC): Honor thy father and thy mother. (Dt 5:16, paraphrased).
[91] Occurring in the spring of 1999, the Columbine High School mass shooting was not the
first to occur in the 90s. But it may be the most infamous example of a violent teenage
epidemic that erupted mid-decade and plagues us to this day.
[92] Coughlan 2014.
[93] See again Johnson, Blum and Giedd 2009, referenced at the end of chapter 6.
[94] ushistory.org 2014.
[95] The American Religiosity Index (depicted in the graph) is calculated by Grant 2008
(which see) from a composite of 5 religious indicators reported by Gallup.
[96] Barna Group 2014.
[97] Lk 15:4.
[98] Terry 2004.
[99] And this is just one of the ways the homosexual priesthood has injured the Church.
[100] No. 3 (RC): Remember, keep holy the Lord’s day. (Dt 5:12-15, paraphrased).
[101] The Y2K scare.
[102] … much as it was just prior to the American Civil War.
[103] This is a reference, of course, to the 2008 Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin.
[104] The ultraliberal NBC comedy, Saturday Night Live, is probably the most egregious
example of a network show resorting to misrepresentations and even lies in their treatment of
her. But then they’ve been doing that since their premiere, portraying Ford, Reagan, Quayle
and GW Bush as doddering idiots, GHW Bush as a wimp, Carter and Obama as super
geniuses and Nixon, Cheney, and Bush strategist, Karl Rove, as downright evil.
[105] The reference here is to CBS news anchor, Katie Couric, receiving the coveted Walter
Cronkite Award for her Sarah Palin “gotcha” interview (see CBS News 2009).
[106] Stanek 2008.
[107] Illinois Review 2008 and/or UCSB 2008.
[108] Rv 13:11-12. And today the two horns might be better understood as representing the
twin prongs of attack by what's also been labelled "the fake news" (namely, the legacy media
and social media).
[109] I was of this opinion long before I discovered this association between the last 100
years and the Ten Commandments.
[110] Powers 2011.
[111] Morran 2012.
[112] Heimlich 2007.
[113] … not to mention the many cable shows inspired by them (like 2005’s Inked and Miami
Ink) which in turn promoted it further.
[114] Wikipedia provides a good corroborative overview in its History of tattooing (Modern
Western tattooing) article.
[115] … as that which was prophesied in Mt 13:24-30 may have some bearing on what we are
presently seeing with this artform now coming into its own.
[116] Gn 1:27, but see also Lv 19:28, which specifically bans these body altering practices.
[117] … and in some cases, the hatred we harbor, by proxy, toward ourselves.
[118] The following discussion on the 2010s was first written in the middle of the last decade.
And with a few embellishments made in the 2nd edition of this book it remains a commentary
to be read from that perspective. The coverage of the 2nd half of the 2010s up to the middle of
the 2020s will be covered in the Epilogue.
[119] No. 2 (RC): Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. (Dt 5:11, abbr.).
[120] Rv 13:16 may have some relevance here.
[121] No. 1 (RC): I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt not have any strange gods before me.
(Dt. 5:6-10, paraphrased).
[122] A video of this 2006 speech is available at the YouTube channel, BarackObamadotcom.
[123] Rv 13:1-2.
[124] Rv 13:11-13.
[125] His breathtaking ability to say one thing while doing the opposite has been well
documented. It is as though there is no connection, whatsoever, between his words and his
actions. See, for instance, Ellis 2010, Blanton 2014 or Savage 2014.
[126] Vaknin 2009.
[127] … evidenced by his first term devotion to building a monument to himself, Obamacare,
rather than focusing on the biggest issue facing the country, the economy. (His affection for
its name, originally given it as a pejorative, is also very telling). See Schwandt 2012.
[128] This is easily seen by his perfect 100% rating from NARAL (National Association for
the Repeal of Abortion Laws) for his 2005–2007 Senate voting record and his 0% rating from
the NRLC (National Right to Life Committee). See OTI 2024.
[129] See obamamessiah.blogspot.com/ for a long list of deification attempts.
[130] Bauer, et.al. 2010.
[131] The internet abounds with images, articles and videos asserting it (by journalists,
politicos and legislators alike). Simply Googling “Obama Nero” is sufficient to show the
multitude who’ve seen the parallel.
[132] Theologians throughout Christian history have understood that the number of the
beast’s seventh head (666) suggests he will be a major world leader similar in behavior and
temperament to Nero, whose name in Greek numerals also totals 666. (See footnote to Rv
13:18, NABRE).
[133] Kurtz 2010.
[134] Dn 9:27 where the reference to the “week” is understood to mean a week of years (or
seven years).
[135] This became conspicuously obvious by his inability to replace a Supreme Court justice
in the final year of his presidency.
[136] Rv 17:1-6.
[137] A whore can be anyone (male or female) who trades their integrity for a temporal
benefit, like, say, money or power or fame. And since Babylon was understood by the early
Christians as a veiled reference to the city of Rome (footnote to 1 Pt 5:12-13, NAB), many
theologians have also opined of a possible Catholic connection.
[138] These criteria do, however, disqualify our current president, Donald Trump (so long as
he maintains his commitment to Pro-Life policies), and suggests we look instead at either his
opponent in the 2016 election, his 2020 opponent or a later successor.
[139] US and worldwide totals updated continually online at Abortion Counters 2025.
[140] From the same source, 1.7 Billion abortions have occurred worldwide since 1980.
[141] American Life League estimates approximately 310 million babies were chemically
aborted in the US between the years 1965 to 2009.
[142] This is in reference to an observation made by Jesus in Lk 17:26-27 concerning the end
times. Further on in that same discourse He also wondered whether, on His return, He would
find any faith left in the world (Lk 18:8). And while this question may have been puzzling to
prior generations, it seems incredibly apropos to ours.
[143] There is one wild card in this deck, however, that has not yet been considered. He is our
current president, whom many on the Right (the Pro-Lifers especially) feel came into office in
response to prayer. His role in these matters, and that of his successor, will be examined in the
Epilogue.
Published: January 5, 2025
Last Update: January 22, 2025