A SPACE STORY FROM THE BEGINNING

THE OLD TESTAMENT REVISITED
By Roland Smyth
Continued - 5

So... the Old Testament says Jehovah was an angel, but is that anything to worry about? Aren't angels always the "good guys?"

No, they aren't, and consequently, yes, there might indeed be something to worry about. For as anyone familiar with the Bible is sure to know, there is a sizable band of "fallen" angels on the loose who have as their leader a most disagreeable autocrat named Lucifer. (alias the Devil, the Adversary, etc.)

There was a time, before the Fall, when Lucifer was the brightest and most accomplished angel of all. He and God were the best of friends. But Lucifer's vanity got the best of him and he decided he could run this corner of the universe better on his own terms, rather than on God's. So he gathered a battalion or two of fellow rebel angels around him, and together they struck out on their own to stir up all kinds of trouble down here on poor ol' planet Earth.

Now just because they fell from grace doesn't mean they stopped being angels. Nobody waved a magic wand and changed them all into a bunch of croaking frogs. Neither did they sprout a pair of horns, develop cloven hooves, or grow a pointed tail. There may well be creatures of that sort lurking around somewhere in the solar system, but nowhere in the Bible is Lucifer designated as one. He was an angel, plain and simple, and since angels are routinely identified as men in the Scriptures, it follows that Lucifer too must look like a man. so forget the wings, the horns, the hooves and the tail. Begin thinking of Lucifer as just another extraterrestrial who, with the appropriate clothing and perhaps a few other adjustments, could pass himself off as any human, great or small. The same goes for his cohorts too, of course.

In any case, the point I'm trying to get across here is that you've got to watch out for those angels/extraterrestrials. To be sure, some of them can be trusted, but in the case of Lucifer and his crew the same advice does not apply.

Never mind if they're smooth talkers, dress in white, and perform technological and supernatural wonders (miracles), it's still a wise idea to run a security check on each and every angel, and to be as thorough as you can about it. Remember that the New Testament warns us that Lucifer and his crew (angels/devils/demons, or whatever) are masters of deception. They may show up and claim to be on our side, and even appear to be on our side, but such tricks are as old as time itself.

Besides posing as the "good guys," I've been given to understand that in past centuries these deceivers went so far as to masquerade as gods, with Lucifer, of course, assuming the role of their Chief God. Perhaps too, when Lucifer was off somewhere holidaying or looking for new territory to annex to his dominion, his executive officers might have filled in for him while he was away, each becoming Chief God of however many vassal states were under their control at any particular point of time. I don't suppose the local populace would even notice the difference.

You begin to wonder if, perhaps, Jehovah might have been one of the above chief Gods. He did, after all, possess all the requisite qualifications. He was an angel; he performed dazzling miracles; he was blatantly vain, he was incredibly cruel; he was no stranger to war; he destroyed entire cities; but most important of all as a mere angel he told a real whopper of a lie when he claimed to be the sole Creator of the universe and everything in it. One wonders how many other lies, large and small, were issued from his lips or transmitted telepathically and recorded as Holy Writ. You then begin to wonder why anyone in his right mind should put any faith at all in a "God" of such low ethical standards.

And what about all those animal sacrifices Jehovah required? When we think of the ancient Greeks sacrificing bulls and rams and what not to Zeus, we regard the custom as primitive, barbaric, and even Satanic. We seldom pause to consider that the same wholesale slaughter of livestock on sacred alters was also carried out by the ancient Israelites. About the only real difference between the Greek and Israelite ceremonies was the name of the god being propitiated.

Again, I would recommend that you read through the first few chapters of Leviticus, or better yet, all of them. Only then will you come to realize how extensive animal sacrifice was in ancient Israel. Not only was it a daily ritual, it was often a full time daily ritual in which the blood of one slaughtered animal after another was drained into special basins--for what specific purpose we are not told, except that it, along with the fat of the animals, belonged to Commander Jehovah. Mind you, some of this blood was regularly sprinkled on the priests in attendance, the sides and "horns" of the alter, and various other objects within the place of worship. That's how Jehovah wanted things done, and you haven't heard the half of it yet. It's all pretty weird if you ask me.

And the, there's Jehovah's destruction of Sodom and Gomorra, to name just two of the cities he leveled. Have you ever really imagined how many innocent adults, children, infants and babies perished in the conflagrations? Likewise, how many innocent Egyptians were slaughtered by Jehovah's Angel of Death because Pharaoh, and Pharaoh alone, refused to release the Hebrews? And let's not forget the invasion of the so-called Promised Land (promised by whom?). How may innocents with the assistance of Jehovah's advanced technology, were put to death during that lengthy campaign? Here's just one example of the carnage: "They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it --men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys." (Joshua 6:21) Nowadays that sort of militarism would be deplored as the worst kind of maniacal barbarism.

Jehovah by no means reserved his burning anger for the Gentile peoples only. Oh no. Countless thousands of Jews felt the full weight of his wrath throughout their history. The forty years of "wandering" during the Exodus, for example, was a grueling punishment for their sins, not a pleasurable prelude to a future full of happiness. At one point Jehovah even threatened to completely exterminate the whole lot of them because of the golden calf episode, but Moses stepped in and skillfully talked him out of it. (Exodus 32:9-14) But even at that, a full 3,000 unfortunates were randomly executed by the Levites (who were the priestly class), for Jehovah simply had to deal out some sort of horrific punishment.

There were other mass executions during the Exodus too, but the entire book is so jam-packed with fascinating events and gory killings that I suggest you read all forty chapters of it. Don't wait for a movie to provide all the details; due to the terrible violence the censors would never allow it into the theaters.

Anyway, I could go on and on about Jehovah's brutal behavior, but I think everybody has more or less been informed in this regard. After all, it's no big secret that he was a god of wrath, vengeance, and jealousy--and proud of it to boot! It's just that no one likes to think about these negative attributes all that much.

The thing is though, when one does stop to think about them, it's as plain as plain can be that Jehovah actually displayed more Satanic characteristics than he did Godly ones. What's more, he had the audacity to boast of his cruelties, as, for example, in Ezekiel 20:25-26, where he declares in reference to the Israelites: "I gave them over to statutes that were not good and laws they could not live by. I let them become defiled through their gifts--the sacrifice of every firstborn--that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am Jehovah!"

There's nothing terribly horrible about sacrificing the firstborn of sheep, cattle and chickens, so Jehovah must have had something else in mind in the above quote, such as human sacrifice perhaps. Evidence of this will be given in the Notes section.

But even without human sacrifice, what sort of God would give his people "statutes that were not good and laws they could not live by"? I think Jesus supplies the best answer to this question in John 8:39-47. I'll paraphrase the scene here, and then you can determine for yourself if my interpretation is correct by consulting your own Bible.

Jesus was arguing theology with a group of Jews one day, and in the course of the argument the Jews defended their position as God's legitimate representative on Earth by reminding Jesus that they were Abraham's descendants. Jesus replied that Abraham was not, as everyone believed, the ancestral father of the Jews.

The Jews naturally protested this serious affront to their all-important lineage, and then, to get right to the core of the matter, they decided to bypass Abraham altogether by claiming that ultimately their father was god himself.

Now claiming god as their father is a common metaphor used by most of the world's religions, but in this particular instance it's interesting to note that from a genetic engineering point of view the claim could be taken quite literally; for remember that it was Jehovah who arranged for Sarah's "miraculous" pregnancy, and there's no reason why he couldn't have contributed his own genetic material to an invitro fertilization procedure instead of Abraham's. Indeed, if such were the case it would explain why Jesus disaffirmed Abraham as the Jews' ancestral father, for in pure genetic terms their "father" would in truth have been Jehovah! (See Isaiah 63:16 on this.)

It could just be, then, that when the Jews challenged Jesus by claiming "God" as their father (ie., Jehovah), they weren't speaking metaphorically at all. Which makes Jesus' reply to their claim extremely interesting, for he said: "You belong to your father the Devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

That's pretty strong language! Clearly, Jesus had strongly implied that Jehovah was not God at all but the Devil. And his brief summary of the Devil's personality matches Jehovah perfectly, for as I think I've demonstrated adequately enough, the Commander was, to a considerable degree, both a murderer and a liar. In the Notes section I'll list even more evidence of this. There's no shortage of it, believe me, but I'll be able to list only a small fraction. Should you require more evidence, simply pick up your Bible and browse through it-- and don't forget to underline the passages you find particularly surprising, otherwise it'll take you ages to look them up again.

Tow rap up this section I'd like to refer you to a couple of parallel accounts in the Old Testament which, when compared one to the other, also clearly imply that Jehovah was, if not the Devil himself then at least one of his executive officers.

The accounts in question occur in 2 Samuel 24:1-25 and 1 Chronicles 21:1-30. Each account outlines the details of the same specific event in Israel's history, but they were written by two different authors who were separated in time by a period of around five hundred years. Thus there are slight variations in the two records, for attitudes and beliefs do change over such a lengthy span, and these changes are reflected in historical documents.

The contents of the accounts are not important enough to comment on in detail here, but I would suggest you read them just the same, for they are not exactly dull either. The point I want to stress is that in the first version (circa 950 BC) the predominant character is Jehovah; but in the second version (circa 425 BC) the predominant character, who performs the same action and is clearly the same fellow, is this time identified as none other than Lucifer!

So why the disparity between this aspect of the two accounts? Well, my guess is that Jehovah was still active in the region at the time of the first historian's life, and that regardless of his frequent outburst of rage he was nevertheless assumed by the Israelites to be their god. He did, after all, offer them a great deal of assistance, and I suppose that made up for his bad side.

The second historian lived during a time when, it seems certain, Jehovah and the Fleet had for some reason long since departed. Their absence, plus the advantage of five hundred years of hindsight, no doubt allowed the second historian to have different ideas bout the whole affair. While still believing by force of tradition alone--that some remote deity named Jehovah was the true God of Israel, he could not bring himself to accept the Commander as the predominant character in what was, as you'll discover upon reading the two accounts, a most tragic chapter in Israel's history. The second historian, therefore could only conclude that the villain in question had to have been Lucifer, and consequently he corrected what he must have assumed to be the error of the first historian. The final compilers, true to their usual habit, entered both accounts in the Canon.

My speculations concerning these two historians might be way off the mark, of course, but they at least seem plausible. Besides, the point is that the two accounts wee entered into the Old Testament, and the latter one proves that influential elements of even the Jewish community back in the fifth century BC sometimes perceived Jehovah as the Devil, although they never really made the direct connection between the two. They just assumed they were dealing with two personalities instead of one.

Anyway, in this section I've spoken the unspeakable by suggesting that the "God" of the Old Testament was, if not the devil himself, then someone closely affiliated with him. I haven't been struck down by a bolt of lightning yet, so I guess it's OK to forward such speculations. After independently studying the Bible and related texts for three yeas, it's difficult not to. Consequently I've written what I think needs to be written and I hope you will afford some measure of consideration to it all and make of it what you will. Should you agree in whole or in part with my findings, I'm sure UFO research will take on a whole new dimension for you which, I'm equally sure, will liberally spice up your continuing investigations into the subject.

And by the way, if you have a hard time taking a Biblical character like the Devil seriously, it's probably because of the over-imaginative image that has been attached to him. You know... the horns, the cloven hooves, etc. It might help, there for if you begin thinking of the Devil as a sort of Darth Vadar type of figure who, instead of relying exclusively on brute force to have his way, is bound by some past agreement to restrict his interference in our present affairs to acts of clever deception. Like promoting himself as God via the retention of the Old Testament as Holy Writ, for instance.

A scheme like that would have been a pushover for him and his agents. All they had to do was infiltrate the early Catholic church by means of Go-like telepathic messages, high-tech visions (projected holograms/), and ploys of that nature. In this way the early church decision makers could easily have been persuaded to include the Old Testament in the Christian Bible, and the rest would take care of itself for the most part--especially after the printing-press and TV were invented.

Well, that's just another theory of mine. Sounds plausible though, so I thought I'd pass it on.
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Tomorrow the Notes Section. That will end this little book. I hope it has given you something to think about.

In all instances of the word "Satan" I have changed it to Lucifer or the Devil. The word Satan was not used until the New Testament. It only meant adversary or opponent at that time in that language.