Patmos, The Emperor Worship Cultus, and The American Sniper
By Mark Dankof
WordPress.com, March 4, 2013
“I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering, and kingdom, and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.”
Revelation 1:9
“I [Jesus] know your afflictions and your poverty–yet you are rich! I know the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not [ref. Romans 2: 28-29], but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.”
Revelation 2:9-10 [To the Church at Smyrna]
“I [Jesus] know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not [ref. Romans 2: 28-29; cf. John 8: 31-58], but are all liars–I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you.”
Revelation 3: 8-9 [To the Church at Philadelphia]
“The whole world was astonished and followed the Beast. Men worshiped the Dragon because he had given authority to the Beast, and they also worshiped the Beast and asked, ‘Who is like the Beast? Who can make war with him?’ . . . Then I saw another beast, coming out of the earth. He had two horns like a lamb but he spoke like a dragon. He exercised all the authority of the First Beast on his behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the First Beast . . . And he performed great and miraculous signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to earth in full view of men. Because of the signs he was given power to do on behalf of the First Beast, he deceived the inhabitants of the earth. . . . He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. . . . His number is 666.”
Revelation 13: 3-4; 11-14; 16-18
“For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now–and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect–if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time.”
Matthew 24: 21-25 [Jesus in the Olivet Discourse]
“When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar [Jewish revolt against Roman administration in Palestine] was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood,’ he said, ‘It is your [Jewish mob's] responsibility!’ All the people [Jewish mob] answered, ‘Let his blood be upon us and on our children!’ Then Pilate released Barabbas [Zionist Jewish political revolutionary and capital crimes convict] to them. But he had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.”
Matthew 27: 24-26
The Empire’s next phase in deception and destruction both foreign and domestic unfolds next week in Washington with the latest American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conclave. Joe “I am a Zionist” Biden will pinch hit for El Presidente as the main podium attraction for the Synagogue of Satan’s pep rally for an American-Israeli pogram of mass murder directed at the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). Biden’s presence at this sinister event is superseded in ominous overtone only by the presence of Mr. Obama in the Zionist State itself during the Vice President’s appearance at The Tribe’s lovefest in the Capitol, an event The Times of Israel emphasizes will concentrate on the achievement of two objectives with the American Congress. Objective One is to extract from Congress the enactment of legislation that will designate Israel a “strategic ally” of the United States, a status enjoyed by no other country. Objective Two is to “. . . facilitate a U. S. green light should Israel decide to strike Iran.”
This agenda is right on with John Hagee of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio and Christians United for Israel. Hagee’s $150 million dollar empire is entirely devoted to the Empire, and the Empire’s strategic alliance with the Zionist State, Talmudic racial supremacy, and a Jewish driven International Banking System fueling the advent of the global New World Order. One may be forgiven for seeing Hagee as a version of the second beast with two horns in the Apocalypse, providing religious legitimacy to the Dragon and The First Beast with his satellite television audience of 100 million awesomely mesmerized. ‘Who is like the Beast? Who can make war with him?’ seems to be making its way to the forefront of Evangelical and Pentecostal Television in a nightly paroxysm of moral and political obscenity differing from the ancient offerings of Al Goldstein’s Midnight Blue only in Mr. Hagee’s insistence on thankfully covering his rotund temple with tailored clothes, and in his avoidance of the ‘F’ word. Paradoxically, in terms of absolute and ultimate evil, he may have trumped Goldstein in spades.
Perhaps the most absurd of Hagee’s intellectual deficiencies and theological assertions contradicted by history is his insistence on the application of an absolutely toxic brand of exegetical quackery when it comes to half of Genesis 12: 3, which states that ” I [God] will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse.” Ignoring the 7 fold structure of God’s promise in Genesis 12: 2-3; the Old Testament’s account of the specific reasons for the judgment of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 B. C. at the hands of the Assyrians; the Old Testament’s account of the specific reasons for the judgment of the Southern Kingdom of Judah at the hands of the Babylonians in 586 B. C.; the entirety of the New Testament teaching on the nature of the Kingdom of God in Christ; the specific condemnations of National Israel for its rejection of Jesus Christ chronicled in the New Testament (Matthew 21-24 as merely one example); the New Testament’s use of the 7th aspect of God’s promise in Genesis 12: 3 (Acts 3: 25; Galatians 3:8); and most importantly, the eschatological evidence in the New Testament that the evil World System and its Beast have their roots in False Israel and “signs and wonders” of demonic source and origin, the Christian Zionist juggernaut led by Hagee seems determined to provide redemptive history with the ultimate fulfillment of 2 Corinthians 11: 13-14. There, in Paul’s conflict with the Judaizing infiltrators of the Church of Corinth in the first century, the Apostle observes that, “Such men [Judaizers] are false apostles, deceitful, workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.” The Ugly Truth’s re-post today on “Israel Wields Bible’s Soft Power as Far as Brazil,” seems grimly suggestive of what is developing. Global deception is well underway, courtesy of The Hidden Hand.
If Hagee believes the United States has been especially blessed of God since the establishment of the modern Zionist State in 1948, he must be looking at a different America than that observed by an increasing number of his countrymen and countrywomen. Economically, the United States has seen the evaporation of its once awesome manufacturing capability; the accumulation of a national debt approaching $17 trillion dollars; the eclipse of what was the strongest middle class of any country on the planet; and a binge of Fiat Money creation by the Federal Reserve matched only by the intoxicating resort to perpetual borrowing from foreign Central Banks and the postponement of the day of reckoning.
Militarily, the tie-one-for-the Gipper outcome in the Korean War and the military disaster of Vietnam, have now paled in comparison to the eroding cancer of America’s Israeli-driven War on Terror in the Middle East and Central Asia. The final tally for the invasions and losing wars of counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan in lost lives and casualties remains to be tabulated, as do the final economic numbers for these miserable ventures. Steiglitz of the World Bank speaks of a $3-5 trillion dollar expenditure on these quixotic efforts, even apart from new ventures in Syria and the threatened war with Iran. Add the eventual tally for the Empire’s military competition with China in Africa for raw materials and minerals, and the larger picture emerges. Paul Craig Roberts wryly observes that dying Empires run out of both men and money before the life support plug is pulled.
Politically, the United States continues to be downgraded in the eyes of the global community, even as its adoption of Israeli police state philosophy and methodologies connect the War on Terror to a War on the American Constitution.
And culturally, a Zionist-run America has produced the full blown acceptance of abortion-on-demand, homosexuality and every other form of sexual perversion, and the replacement of a lawful society with one soaked in lawless and violence. The questions I thought Ron Paul should have asked Ralph Reed and the denizens of the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference during the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary sweepstakes, may be asked of John Hagee and the advocates of an American Empire wedded to Israel at this very moment. How would he and they respond to the following presentation and analysis?:
“The truth of the present crisis is that every advocate of American Empire and its marriage to the Zionist Beast, is an avowed advocate of supporting–and being financed–by the very people who have given us every one of the maladies we decry: a fiat American currency, a direct Federal income tax, usurious interest rates, endless foreign wars, a morally polluted American culture, an economic globalism which has destroyed the once-vaunted American manufacturing economy, and the imposition of a domestic technological surveillance structure that threatens to replace the freedoms of our beloved Old Republic with a repristinated Stalinism.
“To all Ladies and Gentlemen of genuine Christian faith and commitment and all American patriots of any religious persuasion, I simply ask a few simple questions of you, and of the American people who are listening. First, why is the domestic and foreign policy of the modern American conservative movement and the Republican party being defined by a view of Biblical prophecy unheard of until the 19th century, and largely promoted worldwide by the House of Rothschild’s distribution of the Scofield Reference Bible through its Oxford University Press? Secondly, why are we in an alliance with a nation that has repeatedly committed crimes against the United States, including the Lavon Affair, Mossad involvement in the Kennedy assassination, the premeditated attack on the USS Liberty in June of 1967, the Pollard spy case, participation with Communist China in the theft of American nuclear secrets at Los Alamos through the PROMIS affair, and the more recent Ben Ami Kadish and AIPAC/Rosen/Weissman spy cases?
“Why are we in an alliance as American conservatives with a domestic Jewish lobby which has militantly supported and financed the radical feminist, abortion, and homosexual lobbies most of us are sworn to oppose?
“Why are we, as a pro-life movement, committed to policies of genocide against the Palestinians and the advocacy of the mass murder of Iranians, at the behest of an ‘ally’ which is the chief nuclear, biological, and chemical military power in the Middle East, and a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signed, however, by Iran?
“And why, pray tell, are people presently in Washington, talking about recovering American Constitutional Principles, in the context of ongoing obeisance to the chief players in a central banking cabal which has handed to us the direct Federal income tax, the Federal Reserve Board, $17 trillion in national debt, and every globalist trade treaty that has destroyed both American sovereignty and our economic vitality?
“And why are American Christians and patriotic Americans across-the-board not concerned that Israeli intelligence is promoting agitation-propaganda through the Rupert Murdoch News Corp chain designed to begin a Third World War? Why are these people silent about the Israeli infiltration of our intelligence agencies, our Homeland Security Department, our Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), and our telecommunications industry? Who is the real perpetrator of what happened on September 11th, 2001, and why?
Additional recent news stories simply and finally underscore the Beastly character of what Matthias Chang terms the Zionist-Banking-U. S. Military Industrial Complex.
Several of these recent stories will suffice to illustrate the Beast’s stranglehold on the Empire. The first is Keith Johnson’s February 11th, 2013 essay for the American Free Press entitled, “Wall Street Vultures Drive Up Food Prices Even as Billions Across the Globe Starve.” Johnson chronicles how the poster boy of Jewish Global Finance and Power, Goldman Sachs, made $400 million dollars in profits last year by betting on the prices of food staples like wheat, corn, and soy. The pouring of billions of dollars into the commodity derivatives markets, and the financialization of the commodities market with products like the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI), has enabled food speculators like Goldman Sachs to control 61% of the market for basic foods, up from 12% in 1996. This in turn has facilitated the doubling of global prices for food since 2003, with an estimated 868 million undernourished people the victims. Trace who and what Goldman Sachs is funding politically in the United States and globally. Can you say, “He [the Beast] also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. . . . His number is 666. . . .?”
The second story relates to the American military, the accompanying Warrior Cultus, and the untold story of what serving the Empire does to the Warriors. Victor Thorn unfolds this metastasizing evil for the same edition of the American Free Press. Citing the work of journalists Kelly Patricia O’Meara for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and Clay Dillow for Popular Science, Thorn takes the uninitiated into the bizarre world of the utilization of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and Transcranial Ultrasonic Mind Control for American military personnel. Google these terms with the names of the journalists in question. We may well ask, “What is the Empire’s real position on the value of innocent human life?” Its position on the innocent lives in Palestine, the Middle East, and Central Asia has already been established. But what is it doing to its own flesh and blood? And what mythology sells its soul-devouring agenda to the comatose subjects of Caesar?
Thorn proceeds to the most ugly fact haunting the Warrior Cultus. In 2012, the number of American soldiers who committed suicide surpassed those killed on battlefields. He cites Kelly O’Meara’s research, which tells us that from 2001-2009 the United States Army suicide rate increased more than 150%, even as military orders for psychiatric drugs for troops rose 76% over the same period. Put differently, what happens when, as Michel Lonsdale asks Robert De Niro in the movie Ronin, True Belief for the Warrior has died? Who does the Warrior subsequently decide that he is? What life is left when Belief in an Empire Served has Died?
In terms of the last 12 years, these lies of the American Empire woven as mythology began with the lie of what really happened on September 11th, 2001 and who was behind the attack. That was compounded with the lies regarding why the Empire was invading Afghanistan and Iraq.
That then led to the pack of lies surrounding the tragic death in Afghanistan of NFL star Pat Tillman. Read the complete Wikipedia account to refresh historical memory. The official story was that Tillman was killed by “enemy fire.” After an extensive official cover-up of the truth, the United States Government finally acknowledged that the official story, used ongoingly in television ads and football stadium halftime ceremonies around the country to drive the American public to greater ongoing support for the War on Terror, was a lie. The new version said that he was killed by “friendly fire.” Or not so friendly fire. . . . read the Wikipedia account thoroughly for the troubling circumstantial evidence, never properly investigated, that Tillman came to oppose American military involvement in Afghanistan, and was subsequently murdered by some of his own uniformed colleagues for that opposition. The point is simply this: the Government that lied about 9-11, lied about the reasons for the invasions and occupations of two foreign countries, and lied about Pat Tillman, is the same Government being used by the Zionist Beast that controls it to justify illegal interventions in Libya and Syria among others, as a prelude to a mass murder in Iran being sold by Netanyahu and his American apologists as “self defense.”
“Enemy Fire,” “Friendly Fire,” “Al-Qaeda,” “Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq,” “Bin Laden,” “Democracy,” “Freedom,” and “Self Defense” . . . Has George Orwell risen from the dead to write American, Israeli, and NATO press releases? And what Beast is being served by the American, Israeli, and NATO press secretaries? Put differently, how do people like John McCain keep effectively spinning these Red, White, and Blue whoppers for a new set of coming victims and their families? Even as McCain’s father, Admiral McCain, wove myths to protect Israel after the USS Liberty attack in 1967? Whose script are these mannequins reading from?
This then leads to the recent tragic death of Chris Kyle, the American Sniper. Kyle holds the all-time record for kills for an American military sniper. He also holds a distance record for a kill notched at some 2,100 yards removed from the targeted victim. Unlike what is now known about Pat Tillman, Kyle remained a Warrior For Whom Belief in Empire Lived, until his tragic and ironic death at the hands of an American Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) victim and Marine Corps denizen, who shot Kyle to death on a Texas gun range. The American Sniper’s undeniable prowess with a high-powered rifle and scope is unquestioned and formidable. His ability to think theologically, morally, and philosophically about what it was he was actually serving is the issue in question, not simply for him, but for the thousands who flocked to Texas Stadium for his funeral adorned in American Flags and carrying placards of support for every long since discredited canard used to support the War on Terror and the War on Civilizations. Michel Lonsdale might ask these well meaning folks also, “Where do You go, and what do You do when Belief has died? Who are You, really?”
The Christian Cross was strongly in evidence in Texas Stadium, albeit as a supplemental secondary symbol for the more prominently evidenced Old Glory. But did the faithful really believe their fallen hero was a defender of a culture informed by the morality of the New Testament and the Lord Jesus Christ? How sustainable is that in the wake of the Roe v Wade decision, the societal and legal imprimatur now placed on homosexuality and the legitimacy of sexual perversion of every brand, and the Economic Darwinism that divides a predatory Elite from the vulnerable? How sustainable is that given the foundational falsehoods undergirding the War on Terror and unswerving American support for a Zionist ideology that empowered the first century mob that called for the release of Barabbas and the death of Christ, even as it now seeks the eradication of Palestinians and Iranians in the name of an Eretz Yisrael in continued disobedience to the Lion of the Tribe of Judah and mere human decency itself?
The February 28th New York Times, the American Jewish Power Elite’s print daily of record, informs us in Matt Haber’s piece for the Thursday Styles section, “A Hush-Hush Topic No More,” that the latest trend in the Empire’s evolving mores in matters sexual involves the move toward the eventual mainstreaming of “sex play involving bondage and domination.” The reader is treated to the inside scoop on the Big Apple’s Paddles nightclub on West 26th Street; a report on the “blockbuster success” of E. L. James’s “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy (65 million copies sold worldwide according to Publishers Weekly); and the February premiere of the movie “Kink” at the Sundance Film Festival, a documentary directed by Christina Voros and produced by James Franco, tabbed by The Hollywood Reporter as a “friendly film” to the world of “bondage/discipline, domination/submission, and sadism/masochism.”
This is the wave of the Empire’s present and future. It is Emperor Domitian’s Rome all over again. Does the Christian or denizen of the Old American Empire die and kill for it, as the members of the Cult of the American Sniper apparently believe? This remains the compelling question of the day, and during the increasing onset of nightfall.
The argumentation for a suspense of Belief in Empire and its War on Terror has already been made. The pictures of the Kyle funeral introduced into evidence simply chronicle the record of that day for those who cling unknowingly to the Beast as the Lamb. The symbolism of the funeral and its venue, suggest that someone was indeed disguised that day as an Angel of Light (2 Corinthians 11: 13-14). The light was extinguished, enshrouded in an impenetrable darkness.
Which leads us to the last question of this particular day headed toward an impending night soon to overtake it. What will be the fate of those who openly question the American Empire, its marriage to the Zionist Beast, and the unmistakable Emperor Worship Cultus that accompanies it?
Chapter 1, verse 9 of the Apostle John’s Apocalypse is here most instructive and concurrently proleptic in suggesting the probable answer. John begins his own story and that of all of history by telling us under the influence of the Spirit of God that he is writing from an island called Patmos.
Patmos is a small, rocky island of 50 square miles in that part of the Aegean known as the Icarian Sea. The barren nature of the island made it a logical choice for the Roman government and Emperor Domitian (81-96 A. D.) as a place of banishment for criminals. In physical appearance, the island was a striking first century paradox, with the island’s desolate countenance in absolute contradiction to the magnificent scenery posited by the white crags of the shoreline and the beauty of the open ocean beyond.
The Apostle was exiled there by Emperor Domitian for a simple reason. John was in staunch resistance to the demands of the Emperor that the Cult of Emperor Worship be enforced and its practices observed by its subjects. Christians who recognized that Christ was Lord, not Caesar, were facing increasing hostility and the targeting of the central Roman government.
John does not acquiesce to the demands of the first century Beast in any way. From Patmos, at the approximate age of 100 and after the death of all of his earliest and closest colleagues, he writes his Apocalypse to encourage the faithful to engage in the identical resistance to the machinations and deceptions of Beast and Empire. Their Souls in Eternity depend on this resistance and this faithfulness. The resistance requires suffering and faithful endurance (1:9). For those who persevere, the endgame is the Crown of Life. There can be no synthesis of the agendas of the Christ and the Beast. The lines of demarcation must be understood in the Spirit’s provided discernment, and observed faithfully even to the point of death (2:10). For those who understand the meaning of Eternity and the Crown of Life, they are assured that they will avoid the “Second Death” (2:11). Those who follow the Beast will be the only ones to experience the Second Death and the Lake of Fire.
John’s Apocalypse alternates between the first century Beast and the prophecies pertaining to the Beast of the twenty first. Both Beasts are wedded to the Synagogue of Satan (2:9/3:9). Both Beasts deceive with both the wielding of the secular sword and the performance of false signs and wonders (chapter 13). Both Beasts demand deification and the trappings of deity. Both Beasts desire the death and destruction of all who fail to take their mark and swear ultimate allegiance to them. Take heed, those who confuse the Kingdom of God in Christ with the Emperor Worship Cultus, the Synagogue of Satan, and the Warrior Cultus attached to them. The clock is running out.
As for those who pretend to be serving Jesus and the American Republic while working for The Tribe, we know who you are, Alex Jones and Michael Savage, among the many. We understand how well The Tribe pays, how easy life at present is, compared to a trip to exile on a modern day Patmos somewhere with its mandate of “suffering and patient endurance” (1:9).
But that life of ease is as illusory as the power of the Beast. His end shall come. So shall yours. And Act II for you and your followers, and the followers of John Hagee and The American Sniper, is an Act Without End. It gets rather hot in the Lake of Fire. But you will get every primetime interview with Benjamin Netanyahu, John Hagee, John McCain, Mitt Romney, General Stanley McChrystal, General Norman Schwartz, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Joseph Lieberman that your heart desires. The studio bookings are great. But no studio ice water allowed.