And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.
2 Kings 6:17
The notion of a “chariot of fire” comes from the biblical story of the ascension of the Prophet Elijah as discussed in our previous installment. We are told that he went up in a “whirlwind” and flew away in a “chariot of fire” that was drawn, according to Elisha’s eyewitness account, by “horses of fire.”
It seems that the Prophet Elisha is a central figure in these stories about heavenly “chariots of fire” as is indicated in the text cited above concerning a different encounter involving the invading Syrian army. These stories had become so common to popular lore at the time, that when King Joash approached Elisha on his deathbed, with sorrowful tears he recited Elisha’s earlier lament over Elijah, “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof” (2 Kings 13:14 cf. 2:12).
The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were in decline, as were all of the ancient city-states. The age of empire was dawning in what the Prophet Daniel would describe as a succession of four great empires – Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome – then an extended period of tenuous copycat empires which, according to the Historicist School of Isaac Newton’s persuasion, would extend throughout the Middle Ages into the Modern Age, and then to the “Mystery Babylon” of our own time today.
Obviously, in these stories, we encounter a legend which is comparable to other ancient stories of the transport vehicles of “the gods.” Erich von Daniken’s dubious classic Chariots of the Gods (1968) and other ancient alien investigations are too numerous to cite here. While we can believe that “God” with a capital “G” could certainly have used such vehicles as an intermediary of his will, it is also possible that we are witnessing the intervention of “gods”, little “g” or a more advanced species which has been sent to help ours.
We are not sure what Elisha meant in the above account in which he prayed that his servant’s “eyes would be opened” so that these vehicles could be seen. My guess is that a cloaking device was used and that one had to “focus” before they came into view. Perhaps, there was a miraculous sharpening of the wavelength in which the light waves could be seen. Some people are able to see “auras” and perhaps that is all that is meant here. But I tend to think that things are sometimes “hidden in plain sight” in which case staring or focusing is what is needed.
In Elisha’s experience, it seems that the transition from the age of the city-state to the imperial age was accompanied by intense extra-terrestrial activity, especially as it involved the decline and fall of the Kingdom of Israel. While history is replete with stories of strange fiery aircraft, it has been the 20th Century which witnessed an explosion of UFO sightings. If ours is the terminal generation, it is reasonable to believe this would be the case in some kind of attempt to save our species.
Whether that is possible, as in an evacuation attempt – as suggested by the many claims of “alien abduction” and the Evangelical doctrine of “the Rapture” – both seem unlikely. Extended space travel would alter the species. We would have to morph into some kind of weird looking space alien to ever survive space travel. It seems more likely that these “advanced” aliens are collecting DNA for a reseeding project after the next nova cycle: a la “pan spermia.” The Evangelical doctrine of the Rapture calls for an outright end of the species in an ill-defined celestial transformation with a resurrection that makes us into something else.
Whatever the case may be, we believe that such interventions are over. ET encounters will decrease or cease altogether in the near future because these beings have to get out of the solar system before the next nova. We think that will happen in 2046 AD at the peak of the next Gleissberg Cycle. But it could happen before in a “Prelude” disaster which we will discuss much later in this series.
ET’s are not immortal beings impervious to physical realities. Nor is their technology invincible, even if far more advanced than ours. A stellar nova is a disaster which, as a possible star death, would be the ultimate cosmic disaster. It would obliterate any technology at every dimension of existence. In other words, without adequate distance or shielding, nothing survives such an event.
Since it is too late for evacuation – and time-travel in the Diehold seems to be another untested, dubious solution – shielding becomes primitive man’s best option. “The earth helped the woman” (Revelation 12). Shielding using geopolymers was introduced in the last issue as a possible solution and will be discussed in detail in our third and final installment.
We are told in the Bible that Moses “was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7). He was, perhaps, the greatest wizard of his generation. Yet, he condemned and forbade all aspects of wizardry as a foundation for society, instead choosing a system of ethics and standards. Moses chose ethics over metaphysics as a solution to the human condition.
The demythologists of our time forget an important fact about ancient pagan legends: the ancients practiced shamanism. Shamanism is the belief that true knowledge, even supernatural knowledge, can only be discovered in altered states of consciousness: that the rational world is the true matrix of deception. This “wizardry” achieves the altered states through sorcery: drug-induced hypnosis.
Other than a few allegations from disaffected Bible scholars such as John Allegro of the Dead Sea Scrolls committee (The Sacred Mushroom & Christian Myth) and Morton Smith (Jesus the Magician), the biblical injunctions against “drunkenness,” whether achieved through strong drink or hallucinogenic plants, is pretty much universally acknowledged. Spiritual knowledge may come through “dreams and visions” but those conditions of sleep are not artificially induced, but rather occur as a sovereign act of Divine communication or beseeched through a condition of “fasting and prayer”: the abstention from worldly comforts and pursuits.
Consequently, we don’t know for sure whether the “stickmanonstone” pictographs from cave dwellers represent “Birkeland currents ” or the imaginings of a witch doctor high on drugs. Do we prefer to believe the cockiness of a drunk driver who fails a sobriety test (“I can hold my liquor!”) or the objective observations of the state trooper who pulled him over? Do we believe shaman drug-induced fantasies about the cosmos or the objective reality witnessed by sober observers? We have a right to question dope-smoking “UFOologists.”
Cosmologists do well to keep that in mind when evaluating ancient mythology. Authors like von Daniken slip into science fiction, which while entertaining and offering a new useful perspective perhaps, nevertheless, do not sufficiently appreciate the soundness of the biblical record as it has come down to us in the Received Text. I will choose to believe the Exodus account written by Moses over the one left by the Egyptian sorcerers. Likewise, an occultist might tell me that the planet Saturn was once Earth’s sun. I could believe it should there be corroborating evidence, but I will not believe it just because it came from someone’s “astral journey.”
The “chariot of fire” in the Elijah story is not the same as “the chariots of the gods” of modern mythologists. We believe that his successor, Elisha, witnessed these encounters in a state of full consciousness. These were not visions; they were experiential events. My consideration of the existence of “extra-terrestrials” is disciplined by an attempt to find a sound interpretation of the Scriptures, not the latest episode of the X-Files.
The process of replicating the technology of the chariot of fire follows the same process of revelation by which Noah discovered the science to construct the Ark. More in our next installment.
— JWS, April 3, 2022
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