“So, You Wanna Go Back to Egypt” – title and lyrics from Keith Green’s album, circa., 1980
Author’s Note: This series is autobiographical to provide background for the books and articles you will find on this website. When the series is finished, I will provide a summation in a bio-page. Links to previous installments are found at the bottom of the article. – JWS, website creator.
I was reaching a peak in literary output as mentioned in the previous installment. Since the Grail Church Trilogy was produced for a restricted audience, maybe 200 people received it: Hierogamy & the Married Messiah (2004, Textbook Edition), The House of Bethany: A Study on Footwashing and the Family of Jesus (2007), and Merlin: High Priest of the Holy Grail (2011). These works represented my doctrinal distinctives.
All of these were produced after many years of research. The Hierogamy book was researched in the 1980’s and 1990’s. It was embodied first in issues of Biblical Terranomics, especially Issue #22 which, too, was published to a restricted audience. Other than arguing for a married Jesus, it presented the belief that intergenerational Hierogamy is the means to overcome the practical effects of Original Sin.
But the term “Hierogamy” has been corrupted by modern polytheists to mean magical sex. That is not how I use the term, nor how it was described by the Early Church Fathers.
I relied upon Methodius’ “Banquet of the Ten Virgins,” but I did not interpret that allegory through the lens of Augustine’s Manichaeism, which came later. I rather interpreted it upon the assumption that Canticles – the Song of Solomon – is inspired Scripture and that it depicts what God considers to be “normal sexuality”: i.e. heterosexual, procreative, and polygamous.
In The House of Bethany, I extended that study into an application of Psalm 45 to the marital life of Jesus. Not only was He married, but He also had a harem – and the harem was a tool to advance the Messianic Kingdom of the House of David according to Bible prophecy. In other words, the harem of Jesus was the First Christian Church. Before it was Apostolic, it was Desposynic.
Merlin: High Priest of the Holy Grail provides more supporting evidence for the first two books (which is why it is a part of a trilogy) and advances an historical analysis to show that this belief is not a mythical view of the past, but a real one with traceable actors known to history. It acquired the mythical mystique because it was, and is to this day, considered a dangerous heresy. The history had to be hidden in the symbolism of the Grail legends.
But this Trilogy would be of little use if it did not result in a covenant community, which became my next quest. Until 2010, various people would come to live on my property to study and try to integrate. They all ended as disappointments, either as they moved on by their own initiative, or I had to ask them to leave.
I had long given up on the church as the agent of Christian Reconstruction. I turned to the civil body politic.
In 2008, Congressman Ron Paul ran for President. I had already voted for him before when he ran on the Libertarian Party ticket. He was not an unknown to me.
This time, he was running as a Republican, and like many, I was hopeful that his emphasis on free markets and personal freedom would be successful.
I ran for a party position as Precinct Committeeman and then was elected to a District level position (Secretary). My eldest son, Josiah, became a Young Republicans delegate and together at the 2008 State Convention, we helped engineer what became the “Sound Money” plank to the Party Platform. More details can be found here and here.
By 2010, I was the leading opponent in the State Senate race against an incumbent, Joyce Broadsword, who some derisively called a RINO, although I never did. I found her to be a solid Republican and a good person, just not well-versed on economic matters.
The fact that I was unwilling to launch smear campaigns against her disappointed the Party rank and file who lusted for blood. So, they launched a campaign against me and loaded the ticket with a third candidate – a transplant from California.
Because I had received the District’s endorsement, I was unwilling to drop out of the race. Consequently, to reverse that endorsement, personal attacks were launched against me criticizing my theological writings, especially my book from 20 years earlier: Eros Made Sacred, the Biblical Case for Polygamy. Even though the Constitution guarantees that “no religious test” shall be required to hold government office (Art. VI), the forerunner of what has now become the GOP inquisition to purge the Party of less than fanatical extremists, was imposed on me in a classic case of projection: I was painted as a revived Richard Butler, a North Idaho malcontent from the 1980s notorious as a neo-Nazi – this from an alleged section of the book entitled, Polygamy & the Survival of the White Race.
The irony was that my attackers from within the Party were the true racists, neo-Confederate transplants from the Constitution Party: an outcome which has been proved since then, which can be found here: Idaho Potatoes.
Press reports of this smear campaign are easy to find on the Internet. It was quite scandalous.
The following represents a sample of my responses in a Community Letter.
My son, Josiah, was also the District Parliamentarian, and in the heated District meeting, offered balanced counsel on the process – which while it strengthened my opponents – nevertheless represented his ability to rise above the fray and show true leadership.
While I was running for the State Senate seat, he was running for my precinct committeeman position, which needless to say, he lost because Democrats, at the time, were allowed to vote in the Republican primary and crossed over at the behest of local church people.
It was from this experience that I realized that I needed to “put down my pen.” I closed the Grail Church website, closed the bookstore and concentrated on building an estate for my children. I would run as a Democrat in 2012 to promote the “state bank” ala Ellen Hodgson Brown. But it would be a part of a strategy taught by Jesus “to make friends of the children of mammon.”
The next ten years would result in building a successful business, various civic ventures including starting a credit union, and continuing my family church and home school. I was in this for the long haul which meant that whatever I had to contribute had to somehow be passed-on to the next generation.
… to be continued
Next Installment: Part 13 – “Ooh, such fire and smoke – Can’t God even take a joke?”
Previous Installment: https://2046ad.org/so-you-wanna-go-back-to-egypt-part-11-about-that-cow/
