[CTRL] THE END OF THE WORLD & THE NEW WORLD ORDER

[Hilary A. Thomas]

 -Caveat Lector-

Skeptic Magazine
Summer, 1996 Tim Callahan
>From Skeptic vol. 4, no. 3, 1996, pp. 44-51.
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THE END OF THE WORLD & THE NEW WORLD ORDER
Black Helicopters, Hong Kong Gurkhas,
Global Conspiracies, & The Mark of the Beast
By Tim Callahan
As I write this introduction to the excerpt from my new book on Bible
Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment?, the movie Independence Day set a new
record of $96 million gross on its opening weekend. The movie opens with a
youthful technician in the SETI program headquarters checking the monitors
for signs of extra terrestrial intelligence, while his boom box blasts the
rock song "It's the End of the World." For the erstwhile Earthlings in the
movie it almost was the end of the world as the space aliens were not
exactly the friendly types depicted in ET, Close Encounters of the Third
Kind, and other Sci Fi blockbusters.
Why are we so fascinated by "end of the world" stories? Sure, Independence
Day owes some of its success to a huge marketing campaign that began on
Superbowl Sunday seven months before (telling viewers this would be their
last Superbowl Sunday party); and to the spectacular special effects
depicting the explosion of the Empire State Building, the White House, and
other national monuments. But there is something deeper here, that goes to
the heart of our psyche-the belief that one way or another we are doomed.
Sci Fi authors and film producers are simply capitalizing on a theme that
has been with us since biblical times.
In Skeptic, Vol. 3, #2, I wrote a review of Hal Lindsey's book Planet
Earth-2000 A.D., in which I showed that as we approach the big millennium
date doomsday warnings will proliferate in pop culture. Lindsey (like all
doomsayers) was cautious, however, hedging his prediction with alternatives
for 2007 or even 2048 (when he will be long gone), just in case 2000 comes
and goes without incident. In my book I review all the major biblical
prophecies, especially those concerned with the end times. In this essay
(the final chapter from the book) I link biblical prophecies of the end
times (the "mark of the beast" and all that) with modern global conspiracy
theories that involve black helicopters, Hong Kong Gurkhas, militia, and
the so-called "New World Order" which are supposed to signal that the end
is nigh. So before you decide to eat, drink, and be merry, read on.
Modern Technology & Other Signs of the End
The Bible, especially the book of Revelation, is filled with allegorical
stories and symbolic tales. The problem is in interpretation. Are these
stories prophetic warnings for us, or social commentary for the readers of
the time of their writing? Fundamentalists and conspiratorialists try
desperately to stretch apocalyptic writings (that were about the politics
of their time) to fit modern times. They also try to fit poetic pictures of
destruction into modern technology. The most obvious of these is the idea
that fire raining down from heaven means nuclear-armed missiles. Another is
the idea that the phrase "every eye shall see him" (Rev. 1:7) refers to the
return of Christ being seen worldwide on television.
Hal Lindsey has speculated that the demonic locusts, the plague of the
fifth trumpet, represent helicopters. Here is the actual description of the
locusts from Rev. 9:7-10:
In appearance the locusts were like horses arrayed for battle; on their
heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human
faces, their hair like women's hair, and their teeth like lions' teeth;
they had scales like iron breastplates, and the noise of their wings was
like the noise of many chariots rushing into battle. They have tails like
scorpions, and stings, and their power of hurting men for five months lies
in their tails.
In that their wings make a rushing noise, that helicopters could be said to
look as if they have stinger-like tails, and that the locusts' armor could
be said to be a description of the metal skin of helicopters, the locusts
could be stretched to fit these modern machines, if one uses a good deal of
imagination. Hal Lindsey apparently took the locusts with faces of men as
being the crew of the helicopters as seen in the cockpit from without. Just
how it is that military helicopters would torture, but not kill, for five
months is not explained. On the other hand, locusts commonly live for five
months, and the prophet Joel's locusts were also like horses (see Joel
2:4-9). It is also hard to figure how they could have come out of the smoke
from the bottomless pit (Rev 9:3) or why their king would be Abaddon, the
angel of the bottomless pit (Rev. 9:11).
Even if helicopters do not work that well in fulfilling the imagery of
Revelation, they do figure in conspiracy theories. Listen to any
fundamentalist radio station for a while and you will hear reports of
ominous black (i.e. unmarked) helicopters harassing good conservative
folks. Supposedly they were hovering over the Branch Davidian compound in
Waco just before the tanks went in. People have claimed that the
helicopters are often filled with men wearing unusual uniforms, hence the
speculation that they are carrying foreign troops and that these are trial
runs for the U.N. takeover of the U.S., eventually instituting the world
government that will be ruled by the Antichrist. Among the people who claim
to have been buzzed and harassed by low-flying black helicopters are
Christians who are home-schooling their children to keep them out of the
secular school system. Despite the popularity and availability of video
cameras and despite reports of repeated harassment, none of these sightings
have ever been substantiated. This last minor fact has not reduced the
fears concerning the infernal machines in the least. If anything, the
ability of the black helicopters to avoid detection has added to their
satanic mystique.
Another report of foreign troops being brought in to take away our rights
was the assertion that the federal crime bill of 1994 had in it a provision
for bringing in foreign police-specifically from Hong Kong-to enforce laws
in America. The idea was that, unlike American cops, the foreigners would
not have any compunction about firing on a crowd of American citizens.
There was even one report that the police being brought over from Hong Kong
were Gurkhas, troops with a legendary reputation for savagery.
Reality was something else again. While there are about a thousand Gurkhas
stationed in Hong Kong, they are used for border patrol only. Members of
this elite corps of the British army are not so much noted for savagery,
but rather are famous for their honesty, trustworthiness, sense of personal
honor, and most of all for their valor. Since 1911 Gurkhas have won 13
Victoria Crosses, the British equivalent of the Congressional Medal of
Honor. The likelihood that these elite troops, so fiercely loyal to the
Queen, would be loaned out to the U.S. to kill Americans is nil. However,
there is just the smallest grain of truth to the rumor that the government
was going to bring in Hong Kong police. On page 843 of HR 3355, section
5108 directed the Attorney General, the heads of the FBI and the Drug
Enforcement Agency (DEA), along with the Commissioners of the Immigration
and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Customs Service to recruit former
Royal Hong Kong Police officers into Federal law enforcement positions. The
true story is this. Hong Kong is shortly due to revert to the People's
Republic of China. Thus, the officers of the Royal Police will soon be
without either a job or a home. The fact that the INS was involved in the
recruitment plan should tell anyone that these officers would be brought in
as naturalized citizens. Since Hong Kong is an international port, its
police are experienced in coping with black market goods and drug
smuggling, hence the participation of the FBI, the DEA, and the Customs
Service in the recruitment program. This is a far cry from bringing in
foreign police for crowd control. In any case, this recruitment plan was
dropped from the final version of the bill.
Another horror story of the impending world government is that they have
already subverted our money, planting occult symbols on dollar bills that
hint at the drive to a globalist dictatorship. This was done during the
(infamous) Roosevelt administration. The symbol in question is the pyramid
with an eye on the back of the dollar bill. Below it is the Latin
inscription Novus Ordo Seculorum, which translates as "New World Order." Or
does it? What we have here is a compound error made up of bad Latin, bad
spelling, and poor history. Those readers who, like myself, took some Latin
in high school, might remember that the suffix "orum" is the genitive
plural for nouns in the second declension. Seculorum would have to be
plural and mean "of the worlds," which seems a rather clumsy phrasing. It
certainly would be if in fact the word in question was "seculorum."
Actually, in their desire to read an apocalyptic conspiracy into our
currency, the millenarian crowd has added the letter "u" between the "c"
and the "l" of the word printed on the dollar, which is seclorum or "of the
ages." Thus, far from saying "New World Order," Novus Ordo Seclorum reads
"New Order of the Ages." Since this symbol and motto are on the back of our
country's Great Seal and were put there when the nation was being founded,
they represent the revolutionary sentiment that by dispensing with kings,
whose rule was autocratic and based on force, and replacing that system
with a republic based on reason, balance of powers, and self rule, the
founders of our nation were creating a new order for the ages.
Another phrase to be found on the back of the dollar bill, in fact one more
prominently displayed than the Latin motto as well as being written in
English is: "In God We Trust." For some reason this phrase and its obvious
implications seem to be consistently overlooked by conspiracy theorists.
Other excursions into modern monetary subversion involve credit cards, bar
codes, and other technologies that could potentially be a modern version of
the Mark of the Beast. The most technologically sophisticated of these
would be a computer microchip inserted under the skin either in the
forehead or the back of the hand. Such technology is actually available and
has been used to locate sheep and cattle grazing on range-lands. However,
such solid state electronics are extremely vulnerable to electromagnetic
fields, such as those generated by television screens. Sitting too near the
boob-tube could erase the Mark of the Beast from many a couch potato.
There are, of course, other technologies that suggest themselves as
potential Marks of the Beast. Whole books have been written on how the bar
code is a prelude to it. The cashless society is another concept that fits
into the idea of having to take the mark if one would buy or sell. Thus,
credit cards in general and Visa cards in particular are candidates for the
Mark of the Beast. In the case of Visa cards, we have a dubious excursion
into numerology, which should, like astrology and palmistry, be anathema to
fundamentalist Christians. The basic scheme of numerology is that every
letter in the alphabet is assigned a number from one to nine as follows:
1 : 2 : 3 : 4 : 5 : 6 : 7 : 8 : 9
A : B : C : D : E : F : G : H : I
J : K : L : M : N : O : P : Q : R
S : T : U : V : W : X : Y : Z :
Then the numbers of each word or name analyzed are added up. If a two or
three digit number results, those numbers are added in a column until a
number from 1 to 9 is reached. These nine numbers have specific
psychological characteristics assigned to them, much as do the 12 signs of
the Zodiac. Applying this system to the word VISA, we get the following:
V I S A
4+9+1+1=15 1+5=6
In the original numerological system, 6 stands for natural harmony as in
the six colors of the spectrum. However, in order to make the Visa card
come out as the Mark of the Beast, those fundamentalists who indulge in
this sort of nonsense substitute biblical symbolism wherein 6 is the number
of imperfection. Thus, by extrapolation, 6 means the same as 666. And
voila! we have the Number of the Beast!
(I will concede two items. First, while they do look for satanic
conspiracies in many innocent aspects of the mundane world, very few
fundamentalists involve themselves in interpretations as arcane as the
numerological value of the Visa card. Second, the fear of some form of
mandatory identification card and its misuse by a centralized government,
even on the national level, is a reasonable one. While I like the
convenience of my charge cards, untraceable cash transactions, which cannot
be monitored by either a government or a corporation, constitute a
democratically sound safeguard against intrusions into one's privacy. It is
when these entirely valid concerns are linked to paranoid millennial
fantasies that bizarre interpretations result. If we must interpret every
universal identification system in apocalyptic terms, then every American
citizen, upon being assigned a social security number, has taken the Mark
of the Beast.)
So far I have dealt with supposed symptoms of the satanic New World Order.
Let us now look at the institutions millenarians and others of their ilk
see as the movers behind this globalist conspiracy.
Global Conspiracies
Those who see the world in terms of a system under Satan's control, who see
themselves-as many fundamentalists do-as being under siege, not only see a
satanic pattern in world events of today, but see them as entrenched in
history as well, particularly in the events of the twentieth century. They
also see the Satanic conspiracy as having so pervasively infiltrated our
system that virtually no one in power is untouched by it. For example, John
McManus, present head of the John Birch Society, said that not only was the
Reagan administration thoroughly infiltrated by agents of the New World
Order, and the public brainwashed by the "liberal media," but that William
Bennett and Rush Limbaugh were both brainwashed by the New World Order
(Live From L.A. KKLA November 29, 1993). Since not even Rush Limbaugh can
be trusted, it is not surprising that McManus also pointed out that the
heads of CBS, NBC, ABC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los
Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World
Report, and the National Review are all members of the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR), seen as one of the chief architects of the New World
Order.
Besides media heads, who else is a member of the CFR? According to Gary Kah
in En Route to Global Occupation (as well as other sources), former and
present members of the CFR include Adlai Stevenson, Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Cyrus Vance, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paul Volker, Lane Kirkland, Henry
Kissinger, George Schultz, Nelson Rockefeller, David Rockefeller, Alan
Greenspan, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, George Bush, Richard M. Nixon, George
McGovern, Michael Dukakis, Donna Shalala, Richard Cheney, Colin Powell,
Jimmy Carter, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Edward Kennedy, Jesse
Jackson, and many others. That people whose political beliefs cover such a
broad spectrum are all members of the CFR should tell anyone that the
organization, in actual fact, has no particular political leaning of its
own. In short, the membership is too broad, varied, and extensive to be an
indicator of any significance. Rather than revealing an entrenched
conspiracy, this partial membership list indicates a prestigious
organization that people prominent in politics, education, the media, and
finance frequently join. Kah even admits that Dukakis only joined the CFR
after his unsuccessful bid for the presidency.
Other organizations high on the enemies list in this basic conspiracy
scenario are the Trilateral Commission, the Club of Rome, the Bilderberg
Group, and lesser organizations such as the Aspen Institute. All of these
share with the CFR the qualities of being unofficial advisory bodies with
distinguished membership rosters.
Official government and international organizations in the supposed
conspiracy include the Federal Reserve System (FRS) and, of course, the
United Nations, the world government itself. Facts have little credibility
in the minds of conspiracy addicts when it comes to the major players in
their cherished scenario. That the UN is unable to control or bring into
obedience one warlord whose clan controls one section of one third-world
city would seem to make it a paper tiger. The same is true of the European
Community, the other major contender for the role of Empire of the
Antichrist. That the EC was either unable or unwilling to intervene
effectively in Bosnia, its own back yard without American assistance, makes
it a bit of a dud as the Neo-Roman Empire. Conspiracy theorists counter
that the U.N. and the EC are allowing the conditions in Bosnia and Somalia
to deteriorate for various reasons of their own, among them being a
draconian program of population control. Of course, if either of these two
institutions were to intervene effectively, these same theorists would use
those events as evidence of the growing power of the UN and the EC. Thus,
their belief is confirmed regardless of what happens, a sure sign of
intellectual self-deception.
As Michael Howard points out in his 1989 book The Occult Conspiracy:
"Conspiracy theorists regard the UN with suspicion because of the alleged
involvement of the CFR in its creation" (Howard 1989, p. 167). The Council
on Foreign Relations was formed when the United States failed to join the
League of Nations, which had been set up after World War I chiefly by
President Woodrow Wilson and his special advisor Col. E. M. House. In 1919
Col. House met with members of a British group called the Round Table that
was the brain-child of 19th-century diamond and gold magnate, Cecil Rhodes.
Rhodes was obsessed with the vision of a world government based on British
values, and had set up the Round Table as a means toward that end. (This,
of course, makes Rhodes scholars suspect as agents of the New World Order.)
Members of the Round Table agreed to set up a non-governmental advisory
body aimed at influencing nations toward peaceful resolution of conflicts.
In England it was called the Institute for International Affairs (IIA); in
America it became the CFR. An unofficial Anglo-American advisory group or
think tank hardly fits the role of end-time bogey. However, the CFR does
have a strong internationalist bent. In many ways the organization's lack
of ideology has been used against it. As Howard puts it (p. 166):
In the eyes of their opponents the CFR is currently dedicated to destroying
the sovereignty of the United States, reversing the democratic process
which instigated the 1776 American Revolution, promoting internationalism
and the foundation of a world super state embracing both capitalism and
Communism in a new political order. The evidence for this seems to be
largely based on the neutral stance adopted by the CFR in American
politics.
Formerly, the CFR was viewed by its critics as being an elitist right-wing
power group and was even accused of financing Hitler's rise to power. No
support has ever been found for this claim.
Next to the CFR, the Trilateral Commission is perhaps the most
anathematized international advisory group in existence. Founded in 1970
and having a membership drawn from Japan, Europe, and North America, its
stated goal is to "encourage closer cooperation among these three
democratic industrialized regions" (item 15479, Encyclopedia of
Associations, 1995). The Club of Rome has a broader appeal, being concerned
with issues as varied as environmental degradation, overpopulation,
economics, etc. The Bilderberg Group was originally founded in 1954 as an
anti-Communist organization, but softened its stance in the wake of
detente.
All of these organizations have properties that lay them open to attack
from the more paranoid among us. First of all, since they are composed of
an international elite, there is the suspicion, no doubt somewhat
justified, that their members think that they know better than the common
man or woman how the world ought to be run. Second, since they often
discuss sensitive issues, they often keep their meetings secret. This
implies covert operations and clandestine plots. Third, given that all of
these organizations wish to draw upon people influential in the worlds of
finance, politics and media, there is considerable overlap of membership
among them. This gives the appearance of an international conspiracy.
Certainly the potential for elitism and conspiracy exists among these
organizations, but the varied political views of the members would tend to
act as a safeguard against such an occurrence. Howard gives this word of
caution with regard to such organizations (p. 163):
In general, as far as it can be detected at all by those who are directly
in contact with its working, this influence can be characterized as benign.
However, the unpalatable fact must also be faced that in some instances the
pursuit and exercise of power in the political arena can have a corrupting
effect, especially when it encounters the inherent weakness of human
nature.
Probably the greatest weakness of human nature seen in these organizations
is in their inherent failure, because they are so much a part of the
established system, to comprehend or anticipate what might variously be
called novelty, chaos, or serendipity. As two examples of this failure to
comprehend the curves thrown us by reality, consider that it was the
professionals who got us into Vietnam. Consider also that the experts were
caught just as flat-footed as the rest of us at the break-up of the Warsaw
pact and the fall of the Soviet Union.
The Federal Reserve System (FRS), along with any international banking
system, is another source of paranoia for the conspiracy crowd. Any control
or manipulation of the money supply is assumed to be part of a monetary
conspiracy inimical both to individual freedom and national sovereignty.
McManus has claimed that our national debt is being deliberately increased
to put us in hock to international bankers as part of the plan to destroy
our national sovereignty and create the New World Order. The FRS, or the
Fed, created by congress in 1913, has the function of controlling the money
supply, which it does by buying and selling government bonds, regulating
the rate at which commercial banks borrow money from the Federal Reserve
Bank, and regulating the requirements as to what percentage of commercial
banks' assets are held in the Federal Reserve. If the Fed buys government
bonds, reduces the discount rate to commercial banks, or lowers their
Federal Reserve requirements, the money supply is increased, interest rates
fall and inflation increases. When the Fed sells bonds, raises the discount
rate or the Federal Reserve requirements, less money circulates, interest
rates rise, and inflation is reduced. Obviously businesses are affected,
often much against their will, by the policies of the Fed. Hence, it is not
always well thought of, and among conspiracy theorists it has become viewed
as an agent of the New World Order, this despite the fact that its present
chairman, Alan Greenspan, was a prot�g� of the late Ayn Rand and is
strongly influenced by Libertarian economic theory.
Templars, Freemasons & the Dreaded Illuminati
It is understandable that those who see the world as rushing to its final
doom are likely to see any group urging international cooperation as being
an instrument of the Antichrist. Instead of seeing the CFR and the
Trilateral Commission as idealistic and somewhat elitist brain trusts,
millenarians see them as a network of semi-secret societies wielding power
illegitimately, not merely to influence but to control sovereign national
governments. But whence came these powerful shadow regimes? Conspiracy
theorists trace them all the way back to the Knights Templar, who, starting
out as crusaders and protectors of pilgrims, supposedly fell under various
influences including pagan mystery religions and the Assassins of Alamut.
Having become corrupt and rich, the Templars tried to control the wealth of
Europe but were valiantly stopped by Philip the Fair of France (1268-1314).
Upon being put to the question the leaders of the Templars revealed that
they worshiped a goat-headed idol called Baphomet, which they anointed with
the blood of unbaptized babies, and that they ritually defiled crucifixes
and practiced sodomy in their secret rites. Gary Kah and other conspiracy
theorists report this story with evident relish. The Templars, after all,
make wonderful foils. As the first internationalists whose wealth and
banking system made them the creditors of and potential powers behind the
governments of rising national states, they resemble the picture the
theorists in their paranoia have painted of the CFR, the FRS, the
Rockefellers and the Rothschilds. That they were secretly practicing
satanic rites confirms the theorists in their assurance that their modern
counterparts are part of the Kingdom of the Beast. All of us who grew up
reading Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe are predisposed to believe the worst of
the Templars from the start. After all, Bois-Gilbert and the other heavies
in the classic were all Templars.
But how much of this story is true? And how does it relate to modern times?
The Templars were obviously quite powerful and somewhat corrupt. By the
beginning of the 13th century, three crusading orders-the Templars, the
Knights of St. John, and the Teutonic Knights-between them controlled 40%
of Europe's frontiers and as such exerted considerable influence in the
courts of Europe. The Templars made money by ferrying crusaders and
pilgrims to the Holy Land and importing spices from there to Europe. As
their wealth increased, they became the bankers of Europe and they became
increasingly lax in fulfilling their religious vows. They conspired with
the Sultan of Egypt to thwart Frederick II's crusade, and by 1254 were at
open war with another crusading order, the Knights Hospitaler. When Acre,
the last Christian stronghold in the Levant, fell to the Moslems in 1291
the Templars were expelled from the Holy Land. Now they were no longer even
nominally crusaders. In 1307 Philip the Fair found himself facing
bankruptcy and owed the Templars large sums of money. Thus, he made common
cause with Pope Clement V to destroy the order, whose increasing wealth and
independence were alarming the Church. The Grand Master of the Templars,
Jacques de Molay, came to Paris that same year to discuss a new crusade. He
was arrested, and Templar lodges and treasuries were seized throughout
France. Pope Clement issued a bull ordering the arrest of all members of
the order throughout Christendom. It was then that the Templars made their
confessions either under torture or the threat of it. Considering that both
the King of France and the Pope needed some criminal charge upon which to
base the seizure of Templar treasuries, it is hardly surprising that the
order was found to have become heretical. To this day it is unclear which
charges if any made against the Templars were true. De Molay protested his
innocence even as he was being burned at the stake in 1314.
The significance of the Templars is that there is a link between them and
Freemasonry. Late in the Middle Ages powerful craft guilds flourished in
Europe. But, as the result in the decline in the building of new cathedrals
and the subsequent drop in guild membership, the masons began to allow men
not involved in the trade to join as honorary members. These men became
known as "free and accepted masons" or Freemasons. In some countries, after
the fall of the Templars their remnants were absorbed into the Masonic
Guilds. Much of the medieval tradition, however, was embellished in the
17th and 18th centuries when the Freemasons adopted the rites and trappings
of various chivalric orders. Though the organization is not specifically
Christian, it began with a distinctly Protestant, anticlerical bias. The
Templars, seen as prototypes of Protestant martyrs, were taken as a
chivalric ideal to aspire to. So it is in modern times that the Masonic
club for teenage boys is called the DeMolay, and the Knights Templar is one
of the advanced lodges in Freemasonry. Without going into a detailed
history of the Masons, let me just point out that their system of secret
lodges allowed for open discussion of politics in countries where voicing
one's opinion could result in imprisonment or death. In Latin countries
Freemasonry tends to attract free thinkers and anticlericals. This fact
plus the association of the Templars with the Masons has laid the latter
open to all the charges leveled against the former, not only by
fundamentalists but by European and South American dictators. In volume 22
of the Encyclopedia Britannica the true significance of the Masonic lodges
is mentioned in a discussion of the history of Italy in the late 1700's (p.
223):
In the Italy of the old regime, there had been no representative political
life. But the increase in the number of Masonic Lodges at the end of the
18th century demonstrated the desire for secret discussion of problems
different from those that were agitating the academies and the agrarian
societies. Not all the Freemasons became supporters of the Revolution and
the French, but many of them did so. The moderate and constitutional
demands of the Masonic Lodges began to be accompanied by more democratic
demands, and there were in Milan, Bologna, Rome, and Naples cells of
Illuminati, republican free-thinkers, after the pattern recently
established in Bavaria by Adam Weishaupt.
But were the Illuminati really such radicals? Indeed they were, and they
were justly considered a threat by virtually every government in Europe.
And what were the Illuminist beliefs that were so threatening to the
governments of Weishaupt's day? Among them were such dangerous ideas as
universal suffrage, equality of the sexes, and complete freedom of
religion. Other Illuminist beliefs were of the utopian socialist variety.
They included the abolition of social authority, private property and
national states. Humanity, in the Illuminist vision, would live in anarchic
harmony and universal brotherhood, and would enjoy peace and free love.
This may make the Illuminati sound like a cross between Marxists and 1960's
flower children, and is no doubt the image that so horrifies fundamentalist
conspiracy theorists. But all such comparisons are doomed to error, because
implicit in them is a disregard for historical context. To understand the
Illuminati, one must understand the politics of Europe in the late 18th
century, the time of the Enlightenment. In reaction to the excesses of the
religious wars of the 1600s the intellectuals of the 1700s were rational,
secular and anticlerical. The growth of science and rationalism provoked
the thinkers of that day to question everything, and they found much that
did not stand up well in the light of reason. Thus, in addition to being
rational and secular, they were also democratic and egalitarian. And seeing
the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the nobility and the
state religions, they considered the abolition of private property a
necessary step to change what was clearly an unjust social order. Despite
the prevalence of democratic ideals in the philosophy of the time, most of
the states of Europe were ruled by kings who were absolute despots.
(Remember that the American Revolution was just starting the year the
Illuminati came into being.) These powers naturally resisted the democratic
flow of their culture tenaciously, so tenaciously in fact that it took the
rest of the 18th century, all of the 19th century, and part of the 20th to
remove them. Thus it was not until late in the 1800s that the French were
free of both the Bourbons and the descendants of Napoleon Bonaparte. It was
not until the end of World War I that the Hohenzollerns of Prussia, the
Hapsburgs of Austria, and the Romanovs of Russia were removed, and the
empires of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Turks broken up. Indeed, we are
still today dealing with the aftermath of the persistence of these
monarchies.
As a graphic indication of how the battle lines were drawn, consider that
as part of the Illuminist initiation ceremony the candidate was led into a
room containing an empty throne, a crown, a scepter, and a sword, and was
invited to take them up. But, he or she was told, if they did so they would
be denied entry into the order. The crowned heads of Europe were not likely
to take kindly to a secret society harboring such sentiments, nor were the
established religious authorities. This, coupled with the anticlerical and
anti-Christian bias of the Illuminati, made them even better foils than the
Templars had been in the Middle Ages. Thus they were branded as atheists,
Satanists, assassins and whatever else would feed a sensationalist,
fear-mongering campaign. (I should point out that as Marxist as the
abolition of property sounds, a variant of that principle-land
redistribution-was practiced in America when, following the Revolution, the
estates of Tories were seized, broken up, and given to landless families.
Since most of the newly independent colonies still limited voting rights to
property owners, this meant that the number of voters was increased
significantly.)
Are the Illuminati still active? Are they the unifying power behind the
CFR, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergers, and the Club of Rome?
Are they the secret masters of worldwide Free masonry? For the most part
the Illuminati were absorbed into other revolutionary groups. No doubt many
joined the French Revolution or shifted in the 19th century from utopian
socialism to Marxism. There is no evidence that they exist today.
On the other hand the influence of Freemasonry is such that men holding to
its ideals were instrumental in creating one of the 20th century's greatest
powers, a power whose global influence and military might is greater than
any known in the history of the world, a power viewed by many small nations
as a distinct threat to their sovereignty. In fact, one of these nations
has identified this power with Satan. This ominous power is the United
States of America.
Most of the founders of our nation, including George Washington, were
Masons. Such was the influence of Freemasonry that the back of the Great
Seal, that symbol on our dollar bill that so terrifies conspiracy
theorists, contains the pyramid with an eye in it, which is a Masonic
symbol.
Humanists and New Agers
Not only were most of the founding fathers Freemasons, at least one,
Benjamin Franklin, was a Rosicrucian. The Rosicrucians were supposed to
have access to the teachings of Christian Rosenkreuz, who was born in 1378
and lived for over 100 years. He had supposedly learned esoteric
disciplines held by the ancient Egyptians, the Pythagorean philosophers of
ancient Greece and other occult wisdom. In reality, the earliest
Rosicrucian writings date from 1614. This secret fraternal order may
actually have been founded by the Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus
(1493?-1541). While it attracted many of the intelligentsia of the 18th
century, the Rosicrucian order never seems to have developed as an
organization of significant political influence to match the Freemasons. It
was a common belief in the 18th-century that ancient civilizations had held
secret knowledge lost to people of their day. To some degree this was true
in that, for example, the technology to make large panes of clear glass,
lost since the fall of the Roman Empire, was not rediscovered until the
1600s. The supposed esoteric knowledge of the Egyptians, however, was more
the stuff of which the legends of Atlantis were made. Fraternal orders used
supposed access to ancient hidden knowledge as a means of self-validation.
The Masons claimed descent from the masons sent by Hiram of Tyre to build
Solomon's Temple. Naturally, these Phoenician masons brought with them
secrets of the ancient Egyptians. Thus, fraternal orders developed a
quasi-pagan mythology as part of their ritual. Fundamentalists in general
and conspiracy theorists in particular have seized on this, anathematized
the Masons and Rosicrucians, and see in their rituals a pagan revival.
Another pagan revival or intrusion of occult influences is that popular
pastiche of westernized eastern religion, astrology, warmed over
19th-century mysticism (theosophy and the like), revived paganism of
dubious validity and general feel-good spirituality called the New Age
movement. Of course, the phrase "New Age" is too close to "New World Order"
to not provoke fundamentalist paranoia.
Both the pseudo-pagan rites of the Freemasons and the New Age movement
excite millenarian fears as being the religion of the false prophet in Rev.
13:11-15. The facts that the New Age movement is patently silly, that the
Rosicrucians have been reduced to soliciting new members through ads in
pulp magazines, and that the mumbo-jumbo of
Masonic ritual is nothing more than the usual hokum of fraternal societies
have not blunted those fears in the least. And, since conspiracy theorists
point out the great overlap in the ranks of professional politicians of
Masons and members of the CFR, fears of the Illuminati are revived.
As an example of how absurd such fears of a pervasive sub rosa paganism
are, I can offer my experiences with Masonic organizations, indirect though
they were. Out of filial duty I attended a number of officer installations
as my parents moved up the ranks as members of the Garden Grove chapter of
the Order of the Eastern Star, a Masonic organization for women and married
couples. Having met the other members of the lodge and heard their
political and social views, I can safely say that, as staunch Nixon
supporters in the Vietnam War years, these people were not Illuminist,
neo-pagan revolutionaries. It is common at these installations for the
newly installed officers to introduce the friends and family members who
have turned out to support them. Many of these are from other Masonic
women's or couples' organizations, such as Daughters of the Nile or the
Amaranth. Like the officers they had turned out to support, these women
were quintessentially Orange County Republican. Thus, when one of the
matrons introduced one of her friends as "the High Priestess of my White
Shrine," momentary visions of these ladies indulging in pagan rites and
child sacrifice dissolved in the face of their obvious middle-class
conservatism.
What stretches credulity even further is the supposed link between New
Agers and secular humanists, particularly since the latter generally hold
the former in absolute contempt. The prime mechanism of indoctrination into
this pagan/humanist world system is seen by millenarians and conspiracy
theorists as being the public school system. The main tactics are seen as
dumbing down students to make them manageable and desensitizing them to
such horrors as infanticide. The system's chief architect is generally
considered to be the late John Dewey, whom they hold responsible for modern
failures in education. The problem with this view is that Dewey's model of
permissive education hit its peak in the 40s and was dealt a death blow by
the pressure to emphasize math and science at the expense of the humanities
following the launch of the first Sputnik satellite in 1957. That the
emphasis in science has not produced better educated students since then is
a product of family breakdown, oversized classes, the encumbering of
teachers with all sorts of baggage based on social agendas, the pervasive
influence of television, and a host of other societal problems, none of
which are demonstrably related to clandestine conspiracies.
As an example of fundamentalist fears that children are being desensitized
to such horrors as infanticide, consider a brief article by fundamentalist
author Berit Kjos (pronounced Chos) that appeared in a magazine called
Media Bypass. Kjos told of a mother who was trying to restrict the use of a
novel called The Giver in the classroom because it contained a scene in
which a low birth-weight baby is efficiently done away with. The mother
felt that it desensitized children to infanticide. Kjos (1995) says of the
book:
Laura's mother knew that The Giver fit into the flood of classroom
literature that force children to think the unthinkable and reconsider the
values they learned at home. It also models many of the pitfalls and
supposed perfections of the utopian school-centered community documented in
Goals 2000 and other blueprints for change prepared by the educational
establishment.
And now for a dose of reality. I was so intrigued by Kjos's article that I
went to the library and read The Giver, which was the winner of the 1994
Newbury Award. The novel is about a futuristic society which is seemingly
utopian. As the story unfolds it becomes more and more evident that the
society is quite sinister. Old people, incorrigibles and problem babies are
"released." Up to the point of the climactic scene which Laura's mother
thought would desensitize kids to infanticide, "release" has by implication
been a mystical letting go. When the hero actually views the "release" of a
low birth-weight baby it turns out to be a horrific scene in which the baby
is killed by lethal injection and disposed of down a garbage chute.
Desensitizing? Hardly! The scene is traumatic. If anything it is likely to
turn the kids into right-to-lifers.
Laura and her classmates were required to make their own decisions as to
whether the society portrayed in The Giver was right or wrong, though how
they could think it right is a bit hard to figure. Fundamentalists object
to such exercises. This is curious since they are the first to complain
about "dumbing down" in the school system. One would think that exercises
that make kids examine why they believe what they believe would be the
opposite of dumbing down. Yet, when it comes right down to it
fundamentalists want their children taught by rote. This is fine as far as
it goes. Multiplication tables, rules of grammar and proper spelling can
and should be laid out in black and white terms. But children also need to
exercise their minds. And here is the rub. People can only be taught to
think for themselves by questioning the validity of ideas. People who
question invariably start questioning the Bible or at least how their
parents and other authorities interpret it. Since children who question
things may end up questioning their parents' premillennial beliefs,
fundamentalists, when it comes right down to it, really do not want their
kids to think.
The Importance of Conspiracy Theories
As part of the crisis that provokes the creation of a world government,
Gary Kah sees the possibility of a Syrian attack on Israel, with a possible
nuclear exchange as part of the hostilities. He cites the failed, or as he
puts it, as yet unfulfilled prophecy of the destruction of Damascus in Is.
17:1 (that Damascus would be destroyed and never rebuilt) as possibly being
fulfilled in this exchange, thereby validating both the prophecy and his
scenario. That prophecies that clearly were not fulfilled are assumed to be
awaiting fulfillment-some day-highlights the impossibility of falsification
built into the fundamentalist scenario. There is in essence a basic
dishonesty that pervades both millenarian prophecies and conspiracy
theories. There may also be, among those who accuse the rest of us of being
dupes or agents of a conspiracy, some hidden agenda of their own. Whether
it is from sloppy research or sympathetic politics, Gary Kah has quoted
extensively from so-called historian Nesta Webster to back up his assertion
that the Illuminati/Freemasons are responsible for Marxism and everything
else of evil in the world. Michael Howard says of Nesta Webster (1989, pp.
161-162):
Typical of these politically motivated conspiracy theorists was Nesta
Webster who wrote a series of best-selling books in the 1920s exposing the
so-called Jewish world domination plan. She claimed that the Jews, working
through secret societies and the international banking system, were the
eminences grises behind the revolutionary movements of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries�Webster believed she was the reincarnation of a
countess who had been executed in the French Revolution and was convinced
it was her duty in this lifetime to expose the secret societies who had
plotted the 1789 uprising�Webster revealed her true political colours in
1923. Her books had reviled Marxism as the modern cover for the "Jewish
menace" and in that year she went a step further by joining the British
Fascist Party�.
That dishonesty which makes prophecy unfalsifiable and fails either by
insufficient research or design to report the fascist anti-Semitism behind
a cited author may not be entirely limited to that of an intellectual
nature. It might well be cynically, cold-bloodedly monetary as well. While
I cannot read the minds of those fostering millenarian fears and thus
cannot absolutely prove a deliberate attempt to deceive on their part,
there are ample motives that might lead them to fan millennial paranoia.
Consider Hal Lindsey. According to the back cover of his book, Planet
Earth-2000 A.D., he has authored 11 books. All of these are on the end-time
and all are best-sellers in the Christian market. Their combined world-wide
sales exceeds $35 million. In addition to this Lindsey has speaking tours,
talk show appearances, etc. While I have no idea what portion of the sales
go to him or how much of this money he devotes to charities, it is a sure
bet that his celebrity status makes for a more attractive life than merely
pastoring a local church would.
Then there is Don McAlvany, editor of The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor,
another conspiracy theorist who mixes stories of implanted biochips as the
Mark of the Beast with ominous predictions of impending economic collapse.
He advises his readers to buy gold and silver as a hedge against the coming
disaster. Interestingly enough, McAlvany is a dealer in silver and gold.
Could it be that that his financial interests are to some small degree
shading his prophecies?
While such end-times speculations as seeing the Mark of the Beast in the
bar code, Visa cards, and implanted computer chips, or fears that Hong Kong
Gurkhas will be imported into the U.S. for crowd control may seem harmless
and rather silly, the avid adherence to the belief that these are the last
days has serious consequences in that it motivates the way a sizable bloc
of American voters views both domestic and foreign policy. In his book The
Mind of the Bible-Believer, Edmund D. Cohen points out that it was
extremely fortunate that the Soviet Union was run by atheists. Since they
did not view the world as being fulfilled in an apocalyptic vision and did
not believe that they had immortal souls that would survive a nuclear
armageddon, they had a built-in reason to avoid an atomic war. Hal Lindsey
has many times boasted that his lectures at places such as the Air Force
Academy are always heavily attended and well received. Perhaps we should
thank God that the Cold War ended before one of Lindsey's enthusiastic
listeners pushed the nuclear envelope too far.
Even with the end of the Cold War, there are consequences that voters
holding the premillennial mind-set may plunge us into. Consider that their
belief in the end-times has not been in the least bit shaken by the end of
the Cold War and consider that the sweeping Republican electoral victories
of 1994 were accomplished by a shift of only 2% of the voters coupled with
a low voter turn-out. Since one of the voter blocs influencing that swing
to the right consists of fundamentalist Christians looking forward to
Armageddon, defense spending will likely not be based on rational
considerations alone. Further, an aggressive, even bullying foreign policy
could emerge, particularly in terms of our dealings with the Islamic
nations and Russia.
While the influence of premillennialists may well prove a windfall for
defense contractors, it could easily have a disastrous effect on how the
government deals with internal issues. Consider the example of the infamous
James Watt. As Secretary of the Interior, it was his job to enforce
environmental regulations. As a premillennialist, however, it was his
belief that there was no point in defending the environment since the world
was going to end soon and the whole thing would be destroyed anyway. There
is no end to the number of problems this rationalization could be applied
to. Why worry about the problems of homelessness or drug addiction? The
world is going to end soon. Why bother using our taxes to fund vaccinating
school children? The world is going to end soon. Why bother reforming
injustices? The Lord is coming back to institute a perfect society in a few
years at most. Particularly when the financial benefits of more defense
spending and less emphasis on environmental and social programs fit so
nicely with the eschatology of the premillennialist voters, we will see how
destructive are the fantasies woven by Hal Lindsey and others of his ilk.

Bibliography
Cohen, E. D. 1988. The Mind of the Bible Believer. Buffalo: Prometheus
Books.
Howard, M. 1989. The Occult Conspiracy. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books.
Kah, G. H. 1992. En Route to Global Occupation. Lafayette, LA: Huntington
House Publishers.
Kjos, B. 1995. "Serving a Greater Whole." Media Bypass. June 1995.
Lewis, D. 1993. Prophecy 2000. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Press.
Lindsey, H. with C.C. Carlson. 1970. The Late Great Planet Earth. Grand
Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House.
___. 1994. Planet Earth-2000 A.D. Palos Verdes: Western Front Ltd.
Lowry, Lois. 1993. The Giver. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
McAlvany, D. S. (ed.) 1994. The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor. August 1994.

Universal Jewish Encyclopedia. Landman Isaac (ed.). 1941. New York:
Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Inc.
Bibles
Revised Standard Version. 1952. New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons.
Zondervan Amplified Bible. 1987. Lockman Foundation (eds.). Grand Rapids:
Zondervan Publishing House.

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