SEVEN YEAR DIRGE
DIRGE WITHOUT MUSIC
BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Dirge Without Music” from Collected Poems © 1928, 1955 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted with permission of Elizabeth Barnett and Holly Peppe, Literary Executors, The Millay Society.
Source: Collected Poems (HarperCollins, 1958)
The four horsemen are the beginning of the song. The opening prelude which testifies to everything afterward.
People, even Christians who are not futurists, seem to think we who are futurists exist in this ghoulish world of drooling hand-wringing joy at the thought of all that death and destruction. We are supposed to find a thrill in all the madness and destruction whereas most of us are merely trying to be the Jeremiahs of the age, warning that the end is near and we need to follow God's warnings concerning that time. that we need salvation NOW and that we need to be saved before we face that fate. Some think we are preaching a return to God or a coming to Him out of fear. So let me expand on the themes in Revelation just a bit.
God is saying He could have done this at any time and he could have let it happen at the very beginning of this seven year final bow. He could have obliterated Adam and Eve and he could have let the flood take everyone including Noah and he could have let the Jews stay in Egypt. He could have let the People die in the wasteland. He could have let the church obliterate the parts of the Bible it didn't like and could have let the Gnostic lies be included. He could have let Guttenberg fail. The Bible could still be in now almost unreadable Latin. He could have simply turned his back when Hitler was nearing a nuclear bomb. He could have let Russia get it first. He has been working his mercy to extend the fact of his existence to extend human existence despite the human urge to destroy the message, to dilute the Truth.
He created the Garden with the possibility of failure. He allowed us the choice of the Garden or something different and he took our failure and introduced a way into glory. Everything, every thing has been to show us the way to HIM. The pain, the anguish, the disease, the fallenness of our capability to love in it's many fashions, yet the depth of His love it can sometimes express in the worst moments, has been to glorify Him by pointing us to Him and get us saved. His glory is our return to the worship of Him and the purpose for which He designed us. Some us have a vision of saved humanity singing his praises forever. That vision fits some of what we are taught, but that singing carries with it the promise of a mission beyond the grave. of a reward with other work and service when this time is done. The work or a reconstructed planet, the work of maintaining it in the next universe beyond this one.
The time beyond the four horsemen is the reason for the four horsemen. They show the work of fallen man, of Adam eating the fruit, of the act of disobedience which ended the union with God: the walks in the cool of day, the plentiful food, the perfect union of man and woman, of the natural world and humanity. For instance, the beasts we once commanded will turn totally against man, the terrier going for his mistress' throat while she sleeps, the cat attacking a child from a perch in the kitchen, the macaw racking talons on the forearm of it's trainer. The things we think will be a magnification of the bad that once was will actually be the growing of their true power once God no longer holds them back.
We need to realize evil has existed so that God could give us a clear picture of what life is like without Him. We may even have been created, as I heard one commentator say, so that Satan would begin his rebellion. He may have thought himself next in line for rulership and seen us created and been so offended that God would share his image with such lower beings that he struck out, not understanding God's love or plan any more than we do. Not know that God knew he would rebel.
Humanity looks at the coming destruction as it's presented in RESIDENT EVIL: THE FINAL CHAPTER, which, of course, being from Hollywood ever looking for "franchises", it isn't. The main villain is a doctor who has become obsessed with the idea of purging mankind so that his idea of perfection can succeed. Throughout the movie series he has been fighting a female super powered lead. In their last installment, his clone has taken over a super tank and is leading a following of zombies to attack the last uninfected human settlement. He has humans in the tank he uses as bait to lure the zombies along once one of the humans is tied to a rope and pulled running behind the tank. The doctor has crosses hung all over his holding place for the humans. In a flashback we see him lecturing the ruling board of his company about how humanity is already on the road to destroying itself and he proposes that the big business he runs unleash it's defective serum virus to trigger the end and the rich sleep in glass holding tanks safe from the plague until the germs finish the job and then the rich and "righteous" can emerge and have resources all to themselves. The comparison he makes is to Noah and the ark. Man thinking he is God.
And don't miss the idea that the false god is returning withe an army of the resurrected to kill off the living who fight against him. this paints the picture of the final battle in a new light. Human beings against a phony who has the dead following only because he has them fooled. One minister on the radio said it is hard to imagine someone foolish enough at the end of the Tribulation to want to stand against God. The portrait of what fools them is painted in that movie sequence. If he's a false god , then he can be killed, he can die and he has been lying along so the Bible can't be believed as prophecy. People who have mangled the messages of prophecy over the years or denied it has modern implication miss that they have laid the groundwork for the ones who want to call it all a lie when the message applies to current events.
Please note that my flights of guesswork with the idea of a North Korean attack and a new ice age are just that. I don't know how the cataclysm that destroys the hinterlands occurs. I like the idea of God using our own errors against us as he certainly does in unleashing the four horsemen. Leaders may simply all decide to unload on the US or the current political splitting may become intense we may end in a major civil war which would lead to the country imploding and citizens using seized nuclear weapons against each other, not unlike that video from last week. I will stay with my scenario but please do ot see it as prophecy, merely as speculation. Recall that God was more than willing to clearly predict the arrival of his son and that he would be scourge, but he was far more subtle in telling of the resurrection of the Son first. Satan reads Scripture and quotes it all over the place. It is the Word God gave to us and likely gave to the angels before us in some other fashion. He may reveal all this so that the AC and the FP will know that the end is due in seven years. But they will not believe they can lose. They will have so many victories before, they will simply not believe
THE FINAL CHAPTER follows the mythic pattern we outlined here and detailed much more in Myth Misunderstanding: John's Gospel. The male hunter myth versus the female fertility myth. Women seeming to represent life and life bearing against men who can only think of building their image in envy of the woman's ability to actually produce life. That the men have gotten into cloning for reproduction provides the not so subtle message they are trying to take over the reproduction role. The reasoning of New Age believers is that the Man image of God has led to the "disfunction" of Christianity: God being called "Him" makes it "fail" to relate and focus on the Law of Love we talked about two posts ago.
To a degree they have diagnosed the problem, one God makes obvious every time we listen to Him in the Bible, one we already mentioned: sin. And again: the horsemen are all the evil humanity began in the Garden now given "faces" as the end of things begins. God wants us to see clearly this is in fact man's sin coming to fruition: What we see as judgement is more the allowance of things to happen, God's judgement on sin being the allowance of that sin's actual penalty, the separation from God and from God's perfect world. Unrepentant sinners get to live in the "freedom" they wanted, the "freedom" that following Satan has created for all the rebels. Like children: "Give me what I want I have the right to that!" We end as orphans when we take that path.
But the female figure in CHAPTER is also a reflection of the prototype one that finds a new name at the end of times: The Whore of Babylon.
Re 17:1 And one of the seven angels who had the seven vessels came and said to me, Come here, so that you may see the judging of the evil woman who is seated on the great waters;
2 With whom the kings of the earth made themselves unclean, and those who are on the earth were full of the wine of her evil desires.
Re 17:3 And he took me away in the Spirit into a waste land: and I saw a woman seated on a bright red beast, full of evil names, having seven heads and ten horns,
4 And the woman was clothed in purple and bright red, with ornaments of gold and stones of great price and jewels; and in her hand was a gold cup full of evil things and her unclean desires;
5 And on her brow was a name, SECRET, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF THE EVIL WOMEN AND OF THE UNCLEAN THINGS OF THE EARTH.
6 And I saw the woman overcome as with the wine of the blood of the saints, and the blood of those put to death because of Jesus. And when I saw her, I was overcome with a great wonder.
7 And the angel said to me, Why were you surprised? I will make clear to you the secret of the woman, and of the beast on which she is seated, which has the seven heads and the ten horns.
8 The beast which you saw was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the great deep, and to go into destruction. And those who are on the earth, whose names have not been put in the book of life from the first, will be full of wonder when they see the beast, that he was, and is not, and still will be.
9 Here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman is seated:
10 And they are seven kings; the five have come to an end, the one is, the other has not come; and when he comes, he will have to go on for a little time.
11 And the beast which was, and is not, is himself the eighth, and is of the seven; and he goes into destruction.
12 And the ten horns which you saw are ten kings, which still have been given no kingdom; but they are given authority as kings, with the beast, for one hour.
13 These have one mind, and they give their power and authority to the beast.
14 These will make war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, because he is the Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with him are named, marked out, and true.
15 And he said to me, The waters which you saw, where the evil woman is seated, are peoples, and armies, and nations and languages.
16 And the ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will be turned against the evil woman, and will make her waste and uncovered, and will take her flesh for food, and will have her burned with fire.
17 Because God has put it in their hearts to do his purpose, and to be of one mind, giving their kingdom to the beast, till the words of God have effect and are complete.
18 And the woman whom you saw is the great town, which is ruling over the kings of the earth.
(BBE)
Re 18:1 After these things I saw another angel coming down out of heaven, having great authority; and the earth was bright with his glory.
2 And he gave a loud cry, saying, Babylon the great has come down from her high place, she has come to destruction and has become a place of evil spirits, and of every unclean spirit, and a hole for every unclean and hated bird.
3 For through the wine of the wrath of her evil desires all the nations have come to destruction; and the kings of the earth made themselves unclean with her, and the traders of the earth had their wealth increased by the power of her evil ways.
4 And another voice from heaven came to my ears, saying, Come out of her, my people, so that you may have no part in her sins and in her punishments.
5 For her sins have gone up even to heaven, and God has taken note of her evil-doing.
6 Give to her as she gave, even an increased reward for her works; in the cup which was mixed by her, let there be mixed as much again for herself.
7 As she gave glory to herself, and became more evil in her ways, in the same measure give her pain and weeping: for she says in her heart, I am seated here a queen, and am no widow, and will in no way see sorrow.
8 For this reason in one day will her troubles come, death and sorrow and need of food; and she will be completely burned with fire; for strong is the Lord God who is her judge.
9 And the kings of the earth, who made themselves unclean with her, and in her company gave themselves up to evil, will be weeping and crying over her, when they see the smoke of her burning,
10 Watching from far away, for fear of her punishment, saying, Sorrow, sorrow for Babylon, the great town, the strong town! for in one hour you have been judged.
11 And the traders of the earth are weeping and crying over her, because no man has any more desire for their goods,
12 Gold, and silver, and stones of great price, and jewels, and delicate linen, and robes of purple and silk and red; and perfumed wood, and every vessel of ivory, and every vessel made of fair wood, and of brass, and iron, and stone;
13 And sweet-smelling plants, and perfumes, and wine, and oil, and well crushed grain, and cattle and sheep; and horses and carriages and servants; and souls of men.
14 And the fruit of your soul's desire has gone from you, and all things delicate and shining have come to an end and will never again be seen.
15 The traders in these things, by which their wealth was increased, will be watching far off for fear of her punishment, weeping and crying;
16 Saying, Sorrow, sorrow for the great town, she who was clothed in delicate linen, and purple, and red; with ornaments of gold and stones of great price and jewels!
17 For in one hour such great wealth has come to nothing. And every shipmaster, and all who are sailing on the sea, and sailors and all who get their living by the sea, were watching from far away,
18 And crying out when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What town is like the great town?
19 And they put dust on their heads, and were sad, weeping and crying, and saying, Sorrow, sorrow for the great town, in which was increased the wealth of all who had their ships on the sea because of her great stores! for in one hour she is made waste.
20 Be glad over her, heaven, and you saints, and Apostles, and prophets; because she has been judged by God on your account.
21 And a strong angel took up a stone like the great stone with which grain is crushed, and sent it into the sea, saying, So, with a great fall, will Babylon, the great town, come to destruction, and will not be seen any more at all.
22 And the voice of players and makers of music will never again be sounding in you: and no worker, expert in art, will ever again be living in you; and there will be no sound of the crushing of grain any more at all in you;
23 And never again will the shining of lights be seen in you; and the voice of the newly-married man and the bride will never again be sounding in you: for your traders were the lords of the earth, and by your evil powers were all the nations turned out of the right way.
24 And in her was seen the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been put to death on the earth.
(BBE)
Women were betrayed by Satan most of all, taken in first because Satan saw Eve as an easier target and one who could be used to certainly seduce Adam. Easier not because she was woman was dumber or more naive, easier because God told Adam about the forbidden fruit BEFORE Eve as created.
Gen:16The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;
17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."
18 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him."…
New American Standard Bible
Adam had then told the Law to Eve. It was less clearly passed by man to woman than by from God to man. This was the first error made by Adam. He could have simply asked God for guidance in relating his one Law accurately. Satan took advantage of a moment walking alone, of time without the mate beside her, without their partnership. Satan knowing they were vulnerable if alone, were made to have each other. We are all more vulnerable, less powerful in the Spirit, alone.
If lectured on the Old West mythology that haunts the gun obsessed and the gun hating. The idea of the woman needing rescue is as foolish as the idea of men needing to be the rescuer. So the idea as the woman as goddess resounds with as much foolishness as the idea of man as god. Yet our sin leads to separation in leadership. God has proven with Deborah and Barak, Priscilla and Aquila and others that He is as willing for woman as for man to lead so long as the partnership has equality of purpose and union of belief in Him.
Often it is only the union caused by child birth that keeps couples together and lets them learn the need for each other especially when there are threats of disease or harm to the children. Often the pain of childbirth and the caring for the child keeps the separation away and begins the work pf God toward the union of all.
But man and woman are separated even as God was separated from them. And Satan keeps pounding that idea of separation of the sexes in the false religions he founded.
He leads men and women to the misuse of sexual pleasure creating the idea that it gives women power over men, rather than that it s a gift for both ti share with each other. Female priesthoods of old were raised around that idea and men took power and used the priestesses even as they used the priests or the medicine men to cement the power of the male hunter leadership, even as Nimrod used it in the post-Flood world.
https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Topical.show/RTD/cgg/ID/13148/Nimrod-Semiramis-Tammuz.htm
And again the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was the human sacrifice to the false god and the keeping of the cross symbol as strictly Christian can be looked at as wrong or looked at as the statement of God overpowering the great false Christ with his own symbol of power even as he reclaimed the Earth by that action, paying the price. That Satan will not honor that payment justly made has made the case for his claim being false to begin with and without merit.
Future possible: Spain is currently breaking apart. A new state is trying to form in Catalonia.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41780116
Only one thing can unite and hold Europe together. A union of it's money value. Debts forgiven that are owed state to state. An army forged to hold the states together when separation is threatened. The unnatural urges of humanity to be divided can only be overcome by an unnatural force of arms and then only for a moment.
But that ice age notion. Climate change map NOW.
http://www.climatehotmap.org/
The idea of thernice caps is worth a lponger space than I have here.
Next time.
Humanity looks at the coming destruction as it's presented in RESIDENT EVIL: THE FINAL CHAPTER, which, of course, being from Hollywood ever looking for "franchises", it isn't. The main villain is a doctor who has become obsessed with the idea of purging mankind so that his idea of perfection can succeed. Throughout the movie series he has been fighting a female super powered lead. In their last installment, his clone has taken over a super tank and is leading a following of zombies to attack the last uninfected human settlement. He has humans in the tank he uses as bait to lure the zombies along once one of the humans is tied to a rope and pulled running behind the tank. The doctor has crosses hung all over his holding place for the humans. In a flashback we see him lecturing the ruling board of his company about how humanity is already on the road to destroying itself and he proposes that the big business he runs unleash it's defective serum virus to trigger the end and the rich sleep in glass holding tanks safe from the plague until the germs finish the job and then the rich and "righteous" can emerge and have resources all to themselves. The comparison he makes is to Noah and the ark. Man thinking he is God.
And don't miss the idea that the false god is returning withe an army of the resurrected to kill off the living who fight against him. this paints the picture of the final battle in a new light. Human beings against a phony who has the dead following only because he has them fooled. One minister on the radio said it is hard to imagine someone foolish enough at the end of the Tribulation to want to stand against God. The portrait of what fools them is painted in that movie sequence. If he's a false god , then he can be killed, he can die and he has been lying along so the Bible can't be believed as prophecy. People who have mangled the messages of prophecy over the years or denied it has modern implication miss that they have laid the groundwork for the ones who want to call it all a lie when the message applies to current events.
Please note that my flights of guesswork with the idea of a North Korean attack and a new ice age are just that. I don't know how the cataclysm that destroys the hinterlands occurs. I like the idea of God using our own errors against us as he certainly does in unleashing the four horsemen. Leaders may simply all decide to unload on the US or the current political splitting may become intense we may end in a major civil war which would lead to the country imploding and citizens using seized nuclear weapons against each other, not unlike that video from last week. I will stay with my scenario but please do ot see it as prophecy, merely as speculation. Recall that God was more than willing to clearly predict the arrival of his son and that he would be scourge, but he was far more subtle in telling of the resurrection of the Son first. Satan reads Scripture and quotes it all over the place. It is the Word God gave to us and likely gave to the angels before us in some other fashion. He may reveal all this so that the AC and the FP will know that the end is due in seven years. But they will not believe they can lose. They will have so many victories before, they will simply not believe
THE FINAL CHAPTER follows the mythic pattern we outlined here and detailed much more in Myth Misunderstanding: John's Gospel. The male hunter myth versus the female fertility myth. Women seeming to represent life and life bearing against men who can only think of building their image in envy of the woman's ability to actually produce life. That the men have gotten into cloning for reproduction provides the not so subtle message they are trying to take over the reproduction role. The reasoning of New Age believers is that the Man image of God has led to the "disfunction" of Christianity: God being called "Him" makes it "fail" to relate and focus on the Law of Love we talked about two posts ago.
To a degree they have diagnosed the problem, one God makes obvious every time we listen to Him in the Bible, one we already mentioned: sin. And again: the horsemen are all the evil humanity began in the Garden now given "faces" as the end of things begins. God wants us to see clearly this is in fact man's sin coming to fruition: What we see as judgement is more the allowance of things to happen, God's judgement on sin being the allowance of that sin's actual penalty, the separation from God and from God's perfect world. Unrepentant sinners get to live in the "freedom" they wanted, the "freedom" that following Satan has created for all the rebels. Like children: "Give me what I want I have the right to that!" We end as orphans when we take that path.
But the female figure in CHAPTER is also a reflection of the prototype one that finds a new name at the end of times: The Whore of Babylon.
Re 17:1 And one of the seven angels who had the seven vessels came and said to me, Come here, so that you may see the judging of the evil woman who is seated on the great waters;
2 With whom the kings of the earth made themselves unclean, and those who are on the earth were full of the wine of her evil desires.
Re 17:3 And he took me away in the Spirit into a waste land: and I saw a woman seated on a bright red beast, full of evil names, having seven heads and ten horns,
4 And the woman was clothed in purple and bright red, with ornaments of gold and stones of great price and jewels; and in her hand was a gold cup full of evil things and her unclean desires;
5 And on her brow was a name, SECRET, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF THE EVIL WOMEN AND OF THE UNCLEAN THINGS OF THE EARTH.
6 And I saw the woman overcome as with the wine of the blood of the saints, and the blood of those put to death because of Jesus. And when I saw her, I was overcome with a great wonder.
7 And the angel said to me, Why were you surprised? I will make clear to you the secret of the woman, and of the beast on which she is seated, which has the seven heads and the ten horns.
8 The beast which you saw was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the great deep, and to go into destruction. And those who are on the earth, whose names have not been put in the book of life from the first, will be full of wonder when they see the beast, that he was, and is not, and still will be.
9 Here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman is seated:
10 And they are seven kings; the five have come to an end, the one is, the other has not come; and when he comes, he will have to go on for a little time.
11 And the beast which was, and is not, is himself the eighth, and is of the seven; and he goes into destruction.
12 And the ten horns which you saw are ten kings, which still have been given no kingdom; but they are given authority as kings, with the beast, for one hour.
13 These have one mind, and they give their power and authority to the beast.
14 These will make war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, because he is the Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with him are named, marked out, and true.
15 And he said to me, The waters which you saw, where the evil woman is seated, are peoples, and armies, and nations and languages.
16 And the ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will be turned against the evil woman, and will make her waste and uncovered, and will take her flesh for food, and will have her burned with fire.
17 Because God has put it in their hearts to do his purpose, and to be of one mind, giving their kingdom to the beast, till the words of God have effect and are complete.
18 And the woman whom you saw is the great town, which is ruling over the kings of the earth.
(BBE)
Re 18:1 After these things I saw another angel coming down out of heaven, having great authority; and the earth was bright with his glory.
2 And he gave a loud cry, saying, Babylon the great has come down from her high place, she has come to destruction and has become a place of evil spirits, and of every unclean spirit, and a hole for every unclean and hated bird.
3 For through the wine of the wrath of her evil desires all the nations have come to destruction; and the kings of the earth made themselves unclean with her, and the traders of the earth had their wealth increased by the power of her evil ways.
4 And another voice from heaven came to my ears, saying, Come out of her, my people, so that you may have no part in her sins and in her punishments.
5 For her sins have gone up even to heaven, and God has taken note of her evil-doing.
6 Give to her as she gave, even an increased reward for her works; in the cup which was mixed by her, let there be mixed as much again for herself.
7 As she gave glory to herself, and became more evil in her ways, in the same measure give her pain and weeping: for she says in her heart, I am seated here a queen, and am no widow, and will in no way see sorrow.
8 For this reason in one day will her troubles come, death and sorrow and need of food; and she will be completely burned with fire; for strong is the Lord God who is her judge.
9 And the kings of the earth, who made themselves unclean with her, and in her company gave themselves up to evil, will be weeping and crying over her, when they see the smoke of her burning,
10 Watching from far away, for fear of her punishment, saying, Sorrow, sorrow for Babylon, the great town, the strong town! for in one hour you have been judged.
11 And the traders of the earth are weeping and crying over her, because no man has any more desire for their goods,
12 Gold, and silver, and stones of great price, and jewels, and delicate linen, and robes of purple and silk and red; and perfumed wood, and every vessel of ivory, and every vessel made of fair wood, and of brass, and iron, and stone;
13 And sweet-smelling plants, and perfumes, and wine, and oil, and well crushed grain, and cattle and sheep; and horses and carriages and servants; and souls of men.
14 And the fruit of your soul's desire has gone from you, and all things delicate and shining have come to an end and will never again be seen.
15 The traders in these things, by which their wealth was increased, will be watching far off for fear of her punishment, weeping and crying;
16 Saying, Sorrow, sorrow for the great town, she who was clothed in delicate linen, and purple, and red; with ornaments of gold and stones of great price and jewels!
17 For in one hour such great wealth has come to nothing. And every shipmaster, and all who are sailing on the sea, and sailors and all who get their living by the sea, were watching from far away,
18 And crying out when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What town is like the great town?
19 And they put dust on their heads, and were sad, weeping and crying, and saying, Sorrow, sorrow for the great town, in which was increased the wealth of all who had their ships on the sea because of her great stores! for in one hour she is made waste.
20 Be glad over her, heaven, and you saints, and Apostles, and prophets; because she has been judged by God on your account.
21 And a strong angel took up a stone like the great stone with which grain is crushed, and sent it into the sea, saying, So, with a great fall, will Babylon, the great town, come to destruction, and will not be seen any more at all.
22 And the voice of players and makers of music will never again be sounding in you: and no worker, expert in art, will ever again be living in you; and there will be no sound of the crushing of grain any more at all in you;
23 And never again will the shining of lights be seen in you; and the voice of the newly-married man and the bride will never again be sounding in you: for your traders were the lords of the earth, and by your evil powers were all the nations turned out of the right way.
24 And in her was seen the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been put to death on the earth.
(BBE)
Women were betrayed by Satan most of all, taken in first because Satan saw Eve as an easier target and one who could be used to certainly seduce Adam. Easier not because she was woman was dumber or more naive, easier because God told Adam about the forbidden fruit BEFORE Eve as created.
Gen:16The LORD God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;
17 but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die."
18 Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him."…
New American Standard Bible
Adam had then told the Law to Eve. It was less clearly passed by man to woman than by from God to man. This was the first error made by Adam. He could have simply asked God for guidance in relating his one Law accurately. Satan took advantage of a moment walking alone, of time without the mate beside her, without their partnership. Satan knowing they were vulnerable if alone, were made to have each other. We are all more vulnerable, less powerful in the Spirit, alone.
If lectured on the Old West mythology that haunts the gun obsessed and the gun hating. The idea of the woman needing rescue is as foolish as the idea of men needing to be the rescuer. So the idea as the woman as goddess resounds with as much foolishness as the idea of man as god. Yet our sin leads to separation in leadership. God has proven with Deborah and Barak, Priscilla and Aquila and others that He is as willing for woman as for man to lead so long as the partnership has equality of purpose and union of belief in Him.
Often it is only the union caused by child birth that keeps couples together and lets them learn the need for each other especially when there are threats of disease or harm to the children. Often the pain of childbirth and the caring for the child keeps the separation away and begins the work pf God toward the union of all.
But man and woman are separated even as God was separated from them. And Satan keeps pounding that idea of separation of the sexes in the false religions he founded.
He leads men and women to the misuse of sexual pleasure creating the idea that it gives women power over men, rather than that it s a gift for both ti share with each other. Female priesthoods of old were raised around that idea and men took power and used the priestesses even as they used the priests or the medicine men to cement the power of the male hunter leadership, even as Nimrod used it in the post-Flood world.
https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/Topical.show/RTD/cgg/ID/13148/Nimrod-Semiramis-Tammuz.htm
In verse 14, Ezekiel expresses his "dismay" at yet a greater abomination: "women . . . weeping for Tammuz." This is another pagan practice, a very sexual one involving ritual prostitution. Ezekiel saw them involved in a rite in which they were mourning the death of a Mesopotamian god whose myth said he was resurrected to new life, a mockery of the redeeming death and life-giving resurrection of the true Son of God. This vision reveals that paganism had deeply affected the women in Israelite society as well.
In verse 16, the prophet sees a fourth vision in the inner court of the Temple—"about twenty-five men with their backs toward the temple and their faces toward the east, and they were worshipping the sun toward the east." This is obviously some sort of pagan sunrise service, in which they honor the sun more highly than God, to whom they contemptuously show their backsides.
Each abomination is described as being greater in wickedness than the one before. In verse 17, God asks, "Is it a trivial thing to the house of Judah to commit abominations which they commit here [in the Temple!]? For they have filled the land with violence; then they have returned to provoke Me to anger."
These leaders displayed no social responsibility whatsoever. They led their society to become one of rape and rapine, murder and violence in every quarter. Yet these hypocritical leaders dared to return to God's Temple, retiring furtively to its inner rooms to practice their pagan rites "in the dark" (verse 12).
Here, God supernaturally reveals to the prophet some of the secret sins of the nation of Israel. One of these sins is lamenting for a pagan god named Tammuz. Who was Tammuz and why would women be weeping for him? The New Encyclopedia Britannica writes in the article "Tammuz": ". . . in Mesopotamian religion, god of fertility embodying the powers for new life in nature in the spring" (Vol. 11, p. 532).
This "nature god" was associated with two yearly festivals, one held in late winter and the other in early spring.
The cult of Tammuz centred around two yearly festivals, one celebrating his marriage to the goddess Inanna, the other lamenting his death at the hands of demons from the netherworld. During the 3rd dynasty of Ur (c. 2112—c. 2004 BC) in the city of Umma (modern Tell Jokha), the marriage of the god was dramatically celebrated in February—March, Umma's Month of the Festival of Tammuz. . . . The celebrations in March—April that marked the death of the god also seem to have been dramatically performed. Many of the laments for the occasion have as a setting a procession out into the desert to the fold of the slain god. (ibid. Emphasis ours.)
What does the worship of Tammuz have to do with the sign of the cross? According to historian Alexander Hislop, Tammuz was intimately associated with the Babylonian mystery religions begun by the worship of Nimrod, Semiramis, and her illegitimate son, Horus. The original form of the Babylonian letter T was † (tau), identical to the crosses used today in this world's Christianity. This was the initial of Tammuz. Referring to this sign of Tammuz, Hislop writes:
That mystic Tau was marked in baptism on the foreheads of those initiated into the Mysteries. . . . The Vestal virgins of Pagan Rome wore it suspended from their necklaces, as the nuns do now. . . . There is hardly a Pagan tribe where the cross has not been found. . . . [T]he X which in itself was not an unnatural symbol of Christ, the true Messiah, and which had once been regarded as such, was allowed to go entirely into disuse, and the Tau, "†", the sign of the cross, the indisputable sign of Tammuz, the false Messiah, was everywhere substituted in its stead. (The Two Babylons, 1959, p. 198-199, 204-205)
And again the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was the human sacrifice to the false god and the keeping of the cross symbol as strictly Christian can be looked at as wrong or looked at as the statement of God overpowering the great false Christ with his own symbol of power even as he reclaimed the Earth by that action, paying the price. That Satan will not honor that payment justly made has made the case for his claim being false to begin with and without merit.
Future possible: Spain is currently breaking apart. A new state is trying to form in Catalonia.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41780116
Only one thing can unite and hold Europe together. A union of it's money value. Debts forgiven that are owed state to state. An army forged to hold the states together when separation is threatened. The unnatural urges of humanity to be divided can only be overcome by an unnatural force of arms and then only for a moment.
But that ice age notion. Climate change map NOW.
http://www.climatehotmap.org/
The idea of thernice caps is worth a lponger space than I have here.
Next time.
