The New Paganism – Part V

 

THE phrase “secret society” in this series has less to do with covert operations and more to do with a central ideology that pervades its members: Gnosticism. It is the belief that they are special custodians of ancient “secret knowledge” — knowledge that can make them lords over the earth. This heresy goes all the way back to the beginning and reveals to us a diabolical masterplan behind the new paganism emerging at the end of this era…

 

THE FIRST LIE

Eve wasn’t tempted by a roaring lion or a squawking eagle but a snake, a creature whose movements and voice are quiet, subtle, hissing.

Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God made… (Genesis 3:1)

And these were the words with which he tempted her as she stood before the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil.

God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil. (Genesis 3:5)

Gnōstikos: “knowledge”. With that, Eve, and then Adam, were tempted to believe that there was a “secret knowledge” that could make them like God.

After the fall, death entered the world—despite the serpent’s other lie that “you will not die.” Like all Satan’s lies, it was a half-truth; Adam’s and Eve’s souls were indeed immortal… but now their bodies would suffer the consequences of original sin, as well as their progeny henceforth.

Now, the Scriptures really don’t tell us much about the ensuing fall of mankind into depravity. One can only surmise that the tension between knowing one’s spiritual immortality and yet the inevitability of death, is what eventually led to all manners of evil outside of paradise: superstition, alchemy, sorcery, divination, magic, and ultimately worship of nature itself (Pantheism), all in a futile attempt to gain that secret knowledge that would restore man’s dominion over himself (and others). It’s as if Satan whispered in fallen man’s other ear: “Ah, well you see, God never had your best interests in mind after all! Let me show you how you can indeed become gods.”

Long story short, God set aside for himself a Chosen People, delivering them from Egypt, which by then, was deeply immersed in the occult (which means “covered or concealed”). The Jews, then, would be the people from whom salvation for the entire world would come. As such, God began to impart to them, not secret, but divine knowledge—wisdom from on high that was not to be hidden but rather a beacon to the pagan nations. God’s covenant would not be esoteric (only for a few) but the beginning of a life-giving Revelation—truth that would eventually set all of creation free.

This Revelation began with the Ten Commandments. But when Moses descended Mount Sinai with the tablets on which they were inscribed, incredibly, the Chosen People had fallen into idolatry: they had made for themselves a golden calf, which they worshipped…

 

THE FIRST SECRET SOCIETY

Stephen Mahowald has authored an excellent and concise book that traces what happened next after the Israelites lapsed into idolatry.

Lucifer, the father of lies, whose work for the destruction of souls began in the Garden of Eden, now put his insidous and most grandiose plan to date into action—a plan that would lead countless souls to perdition. The cornerstone of this plan was laid with the birth of the Kabbala. —Stephen Mahowald, She Shall Crush Thy Head, p .23

Mahowald explains how, according to Talmudic Jews, God gave His people, not one, but two inspired revelations.

There was the written Law of Moses received atop Sinai, but there was also the oral tradition acquired by seventy elders who came to the base of the mountain but were forbidden to proceed farther. The Pharisees said these seventy elders, or Sanhedrin, received a much more extensive and profound revelation than Moses, a revelation which was never written down, yet took precendent over the written law. —Ibid. p. 23; quoted from The Other Israel, Ted Pike

The Kabbala, then, refers to a library of knowledge or a body of teachings that formed an “ancient and secret oral tradition among a small and elite group of Israelites.”^[1]Ibid. p. 23 Hundreds of years later during the Babylonian Captivity, the Israelites were plunged again into the midst of pagan occultists, alchemists, magicians and sorcerers.

…these occult sciences were combined with the secret mysticism of the Kabbalists… it was during that time that sects of the Scribes and the Pharisees were born. —Ibid. p. 30

The Kabbala (oral tradition) was eventually written down in what became known as the Talmud. It contains both the esoteric knowledge given to that first Sanhedrin at the base of Mount Sinai, and the “hybrid religion that developed when this Kabbalistic mysticism was wedded to Chaldean magic and idolatry.”^[2]Ibid. p. 30 Satan’s lie was now codified.

While not all Pharisees in Jesus’ time were Kabbalists (consider Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus), the majority were, and became the dominant elite. To understand how far these Kabbalistic Pharisees had apostatized from the true Revelation, one need go no further than Christ’s rebukes:

You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)

[They are] those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars… (Revelation 3:9)

This ancient Kabbalism is considered the font of ancient Gnosticism that over the centuries influenced all the major secret societies including the Manichaeists, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, Illuminati, and Freemasons. American Albert Pike (a Freemason who is considered the architect of the “new world order”) attributes the practices and beliefs of the Masonic lodges directly to the Kabbala of the Talmudic Pharisees.^[3]Ibid. p. 107 These lodges were organized precisely to implement this secret knowledge that promised they would rule the world… that they would “be like gods.”  

The organization of the Secret Societies was needed to transform the theorizings of the philosophers into a concrete and formidable system for the destruction of civilization. —Ibid. p. 4

Monsignor George Dillon, that 19th century Irish priest whose works Pope Leo XIII lauded, warned:

There is a supreme directory which governs all the secret societies on earth. This organized, atheistic conspiracy is the commencement of the contest which must take place between Christ and the Antichrist. Nothing can be more necessary than that the elect of God might be warned. —Ibid. p. 138 (my emphasis)

 

LEADERS OF IDOLATRY

In the context of this present series, it is enough to understand that these secret societies always lead souls into idolatry, whether it is the worship of self, the State, the State leader, or Satan himself. “At the center of these sects,” writes Mahowald, “there always is to be found a small group, a core as it were, of Luciferians.”^[4]Ibid. p. 40

According to Scripture this worship of Satan, the dragon, will eventually become global. It is commanded through the convincing power of the “beast.”

They worshiped the dragon because it gave its authority to the beast; they also worshiped the beast and said, “Who can compare with the beast or who can fight against it?”… All the inhabitants of the earth will worship it, all whose names were not written from the foundation of the world in the book of life, which belongs to the Lamb who was slain. (Revelation 13:4, 8)

There’s something else, another key detail:

I saw a woman seated on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names, with seven heads and ten horns. The woman was wearing purple and scarlet and adorned with gold, precious stones, and pearls. On her forehead was written a name, which is a mystery, “Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth.” (Rev 17:4-5)

The word “mystery” here comes from the Greek mustērion, which means:

…a secret or “mystery” (through the idea of silence imposed by initiation into religious rites.) —Greek dictionary of the New Testament, The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible, Spiros Zodhiates and AMG Publishers

Vine’s expository on biblical words adds:

Among the ancient Greeks, ‘the mysteries’ were religious rites and ceremonies practiced by secret societies into which any one who so desired might be received. Those who were initiated into these mysteries became possessors of certain knowledge, which was not imparted to the uninitiated, and were called ‘the perfected.’ —Vines Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, W.E. Vine, Merrill F. Unger, William White, Jr., p. 424

In my writing Mystery Babylon, I explain the stunning Masonic roots of America as it pertains to this passage in Scripture. Suffice it to say for our purposes here, the Western democracies have been the political instrument to spread the philosophic empire of the secret societies with America as its military and economic arm. That, and America is also home to the United Nations and One World Trade Center.

America would be used to lead the world into the philosophic empire. You understand that America was founded by Christians as a Christian nation. However, there were always those people on the other side who wanted to use America, abuse our military power and our financial power, to establish enlightened democracies throughout the world… —Dr. Stanley Monteith, The New Atlantis: Secret Mysteries of America’s Beginnings (video); interview Dr. Stanley Monteith

When our founders declared a “new order of the ages”… they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. —President George Bush Jr., speech on Inauguration Day, January 20th, 2005

The Western hegemony is also understood by some biblical scholars to constitute the remnants of the Roman Empire.

“The Beast,” that is, the Roman empire. —Cardinal John Henry Newman, Advent Sermons on Antichrist, Sermon III, The Religion of Antichrist

Do you see how it’s all coming together? Then you should also understand why God is going to judge the West (cf. The Fall of Mystery Babylon):

The Book of Revelation includes among the great sins of Babylon – the symbol of the world’s great irreligious cities – the fact that it trades with bodies and souls and treats them as commodities (cf. Rev 18:13). In this context, the problem of drugs also rears its head, and with increasing force extends its octopus tentacles around the entire world – an eloquent expression of the tyranny of mammon which perverts mankind. No pleasure is ever enough, and the excess of deceiving intoxication becomes a violence that tears whole regions apart – and all this in the name of a fatal misunderstanding of freedom which actually undermines man’s freedom and ultimately destroys it. —POPE BENEDICT XVI, On the occasion of Christmas Greetings, December 20th, 2010; www.vatican.va/

Thus, says Benedict…

…the threat of judgment also concerns us, the Church in Europe, Europe and the West in general. With this Gospel, the Lord is also crying out to our ears the words that in the Book of Revelation he addresses to the Church of Ephesus: “If you do not repent I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” Light can also be taken away from us and we do well to let this warning ring out with its full seriousness in our hearts, while crying to the Lord: “Help us to repent!…” —POPE BENEDICT XVI, Opening Homily, Synod of Bishops, October 2nd, 2005, Rome.

The reason for this judgment is precisely because the West, with her Christian roots, wealth and resources, could have helped lead the rest of the world out of the darkness of idolatry into the light of the Gospel.

Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more. ( Luke 12:48)

Instead, we are leading the world deeper into it—both the governing apparatus and the wolves and unrepented sin within the Church. And thus, we are coming to the end of Western civilization as we know it…

 

TO BE CONTINUED… the conclusion, next.