Author Topic: THE EARTHMOVERS (Read 111508 times)

Neil Obstat · « **Reply #135 on:** February 01, 2014, 10:38:14 AM »

Quote from: cassini

The sun, an admirable instrument, the work of the Most High . . . breathing out fiery vapours, and shining with his beams, he blindeth the eyes. Great is the Lord that made him, and at his words he hath hastened his course.

(Ecc. 43:2-4). 'and at his words he hath hastened his course'

Wow, as Cardinal Bellarmine said, the Copernicans would have a hard time trying to convince anybody the likes of the above quote from Scripture was not literal. Yet they did, and got popes to believe them.

We do well to realize that the words "...breathing out firey vapours..." were written at a time when the popular notion of the sun was that it was an "immutable orb" of utter purity and without change in its aspect and substance -- even though it did, ironically, move across the sky. This topic is explored briefly in The Principle.

These first two propositions are couched amidst others that are commonly recognized even today as indisputable:

The sun,

breathing out firey vapours

at his words he hath hastened his course

an admirable instrument

the work of the Most High

shining with his beams

he blindeth the eyes

great is the Lord that made him

But it's the first two, "...breathing out firey vapours, at his words he hath hastened his course...," that are the ones, the full impact of which we might overlook.

It wouldn't be until 400 years AFTER Cardinal Bellarmine wrote his letter, that modern astronomers would find out just how true Scripture is with the sun 'breathing out firey vapours', at the same time that modern scientists would ignore the second proposition, "...at his words he hath hastened his course."

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Neil Obstat · « **Reply #136 on:** February 04, 2014, 06:28:13 PM »

Quote from: cantatedomino

THE EARTHMOVERS: Since the beginning of time, different formations of stars, known as constellations, were recognised and identified by man. In the beginning these clusters of stars were divided into twelve slices of a circle like so:

The story which the Zodiac unfolds in the course of the year lies in the meanings of these names given by God to each of the stars in its forty-eight constellations when He set them in order in the beginning, making of them, as the Psalmist says: “faithful witnesses in heaven” (Ps. 88:38) of His plan for the world . . . Put in proper order, beginning not with Aries as now deployed, but with Virgo, and ending with Leo rather than with Pisces, the Zodiac foretold in the stars the story of the Incarnation, the Redemption and the world to come long before the Bible was written. Virgo is of course the Blessed Virgin and Leo is Jesus Christ, the Lion of Judah, universal Lord of Creation. (This incidentally, provides the answer to the mystery of the Sphinx which, having the head of a woman and the body and tail of a lion is therefore simply a representation in stone of the ancient Zodiac). (Solange Hertz: The Sixth Trumpet, Remnant Press, Minnesota, 2002, p.11.)

It comes as no surprise then – in the context of that great battle of principalities and powers resulting from that martial decree of Genesis 3:15 - to find occult interference with the Zodiac of Holy Scripture. This new astrology asserted that earthly spirits, ghosts, and other agents joined the heavenly angels, and all began to influence planetary formations in a manner that, they said, had a direct effect on human behaviour and our destiny, depending on where these cosmic bodies are within the zodiac belt.

This way the astrology ‘signs’ became the object of fraud, superstition and the occult, with men and women claiming to read prophesies and messages from the ‘gods’ in them. So, just as the signs in the stars were hijacked for diabolical purposes, an astrology that became a useless occult belief system for vast numbers of people throughout the last few thousand years even to this day, so too would God’s astronomy be hijacked and replaced by one that would also be used to serve the occult forces on earth.

The Catholic Church, of course, absolutely rejects the idea that the sun, moon or planets could actually influence or predict one’s present or future behaviour. The Church teaches that men have free will and that God alone knows the future. Such a notion as the position of stars or planets being able to determine the destiny or behaviour of men is anti-Christian.

Let us now trace the history of this occult use of God’s named Zodiac. For [most of] the tempted ones in the second history of mankind, forgot the worship of the true God, as happened in pre-diluvian times, and they began to adore and personify as gods the sun, moon and stars. In the beliefs of the ancient sun worshippers the sun is God, the giver of life.

We believe this cult was assisted by Satan to reflect two of his greatest inabilities by proxy; (1) to mimic the light of the Trinity for himself, and (2) to compensate for his most abject failing, his inability to generate. Read now how God’s symbols were transformed to Pagan gods.

The sun thus deified and personified was made the theme of allegorical history, emblematic of his yearly passage through the twelve constellations. The zodiac is the apparent path of the sun among the stars. It was divided by the ancients into twelve different parts, composed of the clusters of stars named after “living creatures,” typical of the twelve months . . .

The sun, as he pursued his wan among these “living creatures” of the zodiac, was said, in allegorical language, either to assume the nature of or to triumph over the sign he entered. The sun thus became a bull in Taurus, and was worshipped as such by the Egyptians under the name of Apis, and by the Assyrians as Bel, Baal, or Bul. In Leo the sun became a lion-slayer, Hercules, and an archer in Sagittarius. In Pisces, the fishes – he was a fish – Dagon, or Vishnu, the fish-god of the Philistines and Hindoos. When the sun enters Capricornus he reaches his lowest southern declination; afterwards as he emerges from that sign the days become longer, and the sun grows rapidly in light and heat; hence we are told in the mythology that the sun, or Jupiter, was suckled by a goat . . .

The beautiful virgin of the Zodiac, Virgo, together with the Moon, under a score of different names, furnishes the female element in these mythological stories, the wonderful adventures of the gods. These fables are most of them absurd enough if understood as real histories, but the allegorical key being given, many of them are found to contain profound and sublime astronomical truths. This key was religiously kept secret by the priests and philosophers, and was only imparted to those initiated into the MYSTERIES. The profane and vulgar crowd were kept in darkness, and believed in and worshipped a real Hercules or Jupiter, whom they thought actually lived and performed all the exploits and underwent all the transformations of the mythology. By these means the Priests of Egypt ruled the people with a despotic power. (Robert Hewitt Brown: Stellar Theology and Masonic Astronomy, p.7.)

Robert Brown here reflects on ‘sublime astronomical truths.’ To be able to trace the movement of the sun, moon and stars (planets) against a background of the constellations was no doubt a wonderful ability. But we now know that one of their ‘astronomical truths’ was their belief in a solar system with the earth, not the sun, doing the moving. Sir Isaac Newton discovered this and in freemasonic writings they acknowledge this as an accepted truth.

The two images in the above post are the framework for astronomical clocks, which were in common use up to the time of Galileo, and then after him, gradually became more rare, until now -- when it is rather common for even obscure trivia buffs to have no knowledge of them.

It seems to me there is a reason that people today don't care to know about astronomical clocks, and that reason is, they would then have to confront a fact that they don't want to confront, and that is, that people less informed than they are, who lived only 500 years ago, knew something these moderns don't know.

There is another thread where I have made a few posts on this topic of astronomical clocks.

This astronomical clock, in Prague, dates from the 14th century:

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cantatedomino · « **Reply #137 on:** February 10, 2014, 08:24:22 AM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: Now given there is no astronomy that can demonstrate this ‘truth,’ we are of the opinion it was divulged to them by Satan, so as to deceive the world from the very beginning.

The people worshiped the sun, moon, and stars as gods, and a knowledge of their true nature would have at once put an end to the influence of the priests, who were believed by the ignorant and superstitious crowd to be able to withhold or dispense, by prayers, invocations, and sacrifices, the divine favor. The priest of a pretended god, when once his god is exposed, stands before the world a convicted impostor. To deny the divinity of the sun, moon, and stars, or, what was the same thing, to permit science to disclose their true nature to the masses of the people was consequently held by the priesthood of Egypt as the highest of crimes. By knowledge of astronomy the priests were able to calculate and to predict eclipses of the sun and moon, events beheld with superstitious awe and fear by the multitude. Seeing how certainly these pre-dictions, when thus made, were fulfilled, the priests were credited with the power to foretell other events, and to look into the future generally. So they cast horoscopes and assumed to be prophets. (Robert Hewitt Brown: Stellar Theology and Masonic Astronomy, p.9.)

The word Helios for sun comes from Helios the sun god, thus heliocentrism and heliolatry. He is the son of Hyperion and Theia. In the Scriptures (3 Kings 16:31-33) we are told of Baal, the sun god of the Phoenicians, characterised by the most scandalously impure rites. Then there were the sun gods of the Canaanites and Mithraists of Persia. Sun worshipping is condemned in the Scriptures (4 Kings 23:5-11; Wisdom, 13:2), the latter lesson repeated by St Paul in Romans 1:20, wherein he says the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and moon were created as witness to their Creator and not to be the gods that rule the world.

[4 Kings 23:5-11: And he destroyed the soothsayers, whom the kings of Juda had appointed to sacrifice in the high places in the cities of Juda, and round about Jerusalem: them also that burnt incense to Baal, and to the sun, and to the moon, and to the twelve signs, and to all the host of heaven. The king stood upon the step: And he caused the grove to be carried out from the house of the Lord without Jerusalem to the valley of Cedron, and he burnt it there, and reduced it to dust, and cast the dust upon the graves of the common people. He destroyed also the pavilions of the effeminate, which were in the house of the Lord, for which the women wove as it were little dwellings for the grove.

[Note the connection between idolatrous sun-worshipping and the sins of Sodom, from the beginning right down to the men of the Second Vatican Council.]

And he gathered together all the priests out of the cities of Juda: and he defiled the high places, where the priests offered sacrifice, from Gabaa to Bersabee: and he broke down the altars of the gates that were in the entering in of the gate of Josue governor of tile city, which was on the left hand of the gate of the city. However the priests of the high places came not up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem: but only ate of the unleavened bread among their brethren. And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Ennom: that no man should consecrate there his son or his daughter through fire to Moloch. And he took away the horses which the kings of Juda had given to the sun, at the entering in of the temple of the Lord, near the chamber of Nathanmelech the eunuch, who was in Pharurim: and he burnt the chariots of the sun with fire.

Wisdom 13:1-5: But all men are vain, in whom there is not the knowledge of God: and who by these good things that are seen, could not understand him that is, neither by attending to the works have acknowledged who was the workman: But have imagined either the fire, or the wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and moon, to be the gods that rule the world. With whose beauty, if they, being delighted, took them to be gods: let them know how much the Lord of them is more beautiful than they: for the first author of beauty made all those things. Or if they admired their power and their effects, let them understand by them, that he that made them, is mightier than they: For by the greatness of the beauty, and of the creature, the creator of them may be seen, so as to be known thereby.]

The mysteries then spread east to Egypt where they reached their peak.

The direction of religious activities fell into the hands of a Priestly Class. In time, what scientific knowledge this Priestly Class discovered it treated as secret knowledge to be concealed from the public.

[There is nothing new under the sun. The priests of the scientism establishment, freemasons for the most part, continue to manage information expertly, with an eye to deceiving the public and concealing from them necessary knowledge. The suppression of Thomism and Scholastic Metaphysics in seminaries and universities around the world is a prime example of this stratagem. The suppression of the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, in the Mass, in the rituals of all Seven Sacraments, and in the Divine Office, is another example. Finally we have the full-spectrum, wholesale dumbing down of the masses at the hands of fraudulent anti-education in public schools.]

The Priests then used their secret knowledge, by the fostering of superstitions, and by the performance of "miracles, to control the civil governments and the daily lives of the people. (Dr. Stuart R. Crane: The Other Religion, 1976.)

[Modern examples of this include the superstition that the sun causes cancer, so we must stay out of it; the superstition that cholesterol is causing the obesity and diabetes epidemics; the superstition that vaccines prevent disease; the "miracle" of the lunar landing.][/color]

In their religious panoply the Sun was considered as the symbol of the male principle, the regenerator of the Earth, and as the highest symbol of the un-seen God Principle. (The radiant all-seeing eye) This is the reason for the Sun-worship which has been practiced in every part of the world to the present day. This priestly craft took up the study of astronomy, to the degree that such was possible without the aid of telescopes, and by ingenuity and by careful measurements and record keeping, they achieved great understanding of the motions of the moon and planets, and deduced, accurately, the size and shape of the Earth. The Ziggurats of Babylon and the Pyramids of Egypt were not simply religious shrines, but were primarily astronomical observatories manned by this Priestly class. The knowledge which was thus gained was, however, never shared with the people but was kept as a closely guarded secret. The people were kept in ignorance so that the Priestly Orders should always remain dominant.[/i] (Ibid.)

Also, when you think about it, the false Egyptian religion, which affirmed that the body was needed to go to the next life, and thus required mummification, was not a religion for the masses. Only the upper classes received the burial rites. Is this correct? If it is, the the Love of the Sacred Heart for all men, especially the obscure and downtrodden, is revealed in even greater majesty and magnificence. Consider that in Christianity, kings and strangers, Saints and sinners, all get the same Sacraments and funereal rites. [/font]

cantatedomino · « **Reply #138 on:** February 10, 2014, 08:25:34 AM »

On December 23, 2012, Fr. Joseph Pfeiffer gave a beautiful sermon on demonic evolution. It fits here perfectly.

Listen here:

http://www.inthissignyoushallconquer.com/father-joseph-pfeiffer

cantatedomino · « **Reply #139 on:** February 10, 2014, 08:30:27 AM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: The history of the Egyptian cult consists of facts, mysteries and myths, some revealed like this.

Semiramis was very highly honoured in Egypt where, by her intrigues and diabolical arts, she greatly contributed to the spread of idolatry. I saw her in Memphis, where human sacrifices are common, plotting and practicing magic and astrology. It was Semiramis who here planned the first pyramid; it was built on the eastern bank of the Nile. The whole nation had to assist in its construction . . . This building was the centre of Egyptian idolatry, astrology, witchcraft, abominable impurity. Astrologers and necromancers calling up spirits of the dead dwelt in the pyramid and there conjured up diabolical visions . . . But I saw that, even at the coming of Semiramis to Memphis, these people, in their pride had designedly confused the calendar. Their ambition was to take precedence of all other nations in point of time. With this end in view, they drew up a number of complicated calendars and royal genealogical tables. By this means and frequent changes in their computations, order and true chronology were lost. That this confusion might be firmly established, they perpetuated every error by inscriptions and the erection of great buildings. For a long time they reckoned the ages of father and son, as if the date of the former’s demise were that of the latter’s birth.

The kings, who waged constant war with the priests on the subject of chronology, inserted among their forefathers the names of persons that never existed. Thus the four kings of the same name who reigned simultaneously in Thebes, Heliopolis, Memphis and Sais were in accordance with the design, reckoned one after the other. I saw too that once they reckoned nine hundred and seventy days to a year, and again, years were computed as months. I saw a pagan priest drawing up a chronological table in which for every five hundred years, eleven hundred were set down.

The evolution establishment has perpetrated the exact same scam in our own day.

I saw these false computations of the pagan priests at the same time as I beheld Jesus Christ teaching on the Sabbath at Aruma. Jesus, speaking before the Pharisees of the Call of Abraham and his sojourn in Egypt, exposed the errors of the Egyptian calendar. He told them that the world had now existed 4028 years. When I heard Jesus say this, He was Himself thirty-one years old. (Katarina Emmerick (1774-1823), the Augustinian nun who bore the stigmata, received many visions of past events including the above. From her writings Mel Gibson acquired details used in his film The Passion of the Christ.)

(In the Scriptures one finds Katarina’s age for Christ accurate: Adam 5 days, Noah and the flood 1056 years (2941 BC), Abraham 1950 after creation, Exodus 2540, birth of Jesus 3997, death of Jesus 4030, fall of Jerusalem 4070, the year 2000AD 5997 years old and so on.)

The Egyptians were led by a pharaoh. His function was to maintain the order of the universe, established at creation and embracing not only the social and political structure of Egypt, but also the laws of nature, the movement of the heavenly bodies, the rotation of the seasons and the flood control of the River Nile. One most prominent god was Re, the sun god. Cities such as Anu ‘the City of the Sun,’ known as Heliopolis to the Greeks, were built in his image. These cities regularly contained temples, most noted of all the magnificent Sun Temples ‘that once formed the sacred heart [b]sacred heart???!!! [/b]of ancient Egyptian spirituality.’ The architecture of these temples more often than not communicated a heliocentric system of six planets situated around a central fire to symbolise the sun.

Then there were the pyramids, built as a stairway to the gods of the sky. Finally the phallic obelisks, consecrated to the sun-god, which, according to the historian Pliny, is the meaning of the word in Egyptian.
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cantatedomino · « **Reply #140 on:** February 10, 2014, 08:53:51 AM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: It is known that the Greek philosophers Solon, Pythagoras, and Plato had visited Egypt to learn first hand the wisdom of the Egyptians. A study of the numerous writings of Plato’s that survived show that their course outline was to produce a small core of selected philosophers, expert in mathematics, harmonics, astronomy, dialectics, natural science and political theory, who would not seek power themselves but ‘advise’ those who ruled. This philosophy further influenced Gnostic teachers who were accused by Catholic apologists of being disciples of Plato and of following the platonic system in making ‘arithmetical science the fundamental principle of their doctrine.’ Rome’s long disapproval of Platonic philosophy resulted in the closing down in 529AD of the Academy Plato founded in Athens in 380BC.

The Egyptians, we know, had a slightly different version of history to that of the global Flood brought about by God’s anger with mankind, as revealed in Genesis chapters 6-9. They taught that local deluges had at times flooded and destroyed peoples and places off the face of the earth. The gods however supposedly saved Egypt and her ancient buildings, temples and sanctuaries. Perhaps here we see good reason why the Egyptians falsified the ages of their buildings as recorded by Katarina Emmerick. Contained in these ancient temples and sanctuaries, they claimed, was preserved knowledge of the origin of the world when man had fraternised with the gods. Classical writers, we find, were besotted with this. And so, we find, were Renaissance Catholics:

[They] extolled the immensely old wisdom of the Egyptian priests, and especially their revered knowledge of the heavens and the motion of the stars. Many deemed Egypt a sacred land, a land in which the gods had once dwelt and taught men the divine and sacred science and where secrets of immortality had been revealed to those who were worthy. (Hancock & Bauval: Talisman, p.154.)

We can posit that this same phenomenon - devils teaching men certain secrets of the natural order and the composition of material bodies - is responsible for the modern techno-monstrosity in which we all now languish. If one looks into the history of chemistry, one will discover that many, if not most of the "elements" on the periodic table were "discovered" in the 1700's and 1800's; and that these "discoveries" were the result of violent experimentation on natural bodies. For example, in the lab, water is split into hydrogen and oxygen when it is electrocuted. In plant photosynthesis, where water is alleged to undergo dissolution into its constituent parts, it is not unreasonable to surmise that natural electromagnetism, powered by the sun, is the agent of motion.

For interesting meditation fodder, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chemical_elements_discoveries

The Egyptian sect aspired to gain the favours of the pure gods and goddesses of ‘spiritual’ heaven and sky - gods such as Isis and Osiris, gods of light, Re or Ra, and Atum, deity of the solar disc and of the sun itself - so that they could be protected from harm on earth and gain paradise in the hereafter. Followers of this sun-based occultism believed they could achieve salvation and immortality with their gods through magic or heka, a divine and sacred science, a gnosis, knowledge of the true nature of things, a compilation of ancient wisdom.

Spurred on by their sun-deities, the Egyptians sought to build a spiritual and temporal ‘heaven on earth,’ a world imitating the domain of the sky. To this end they built cities reflecting this devotion, and throughout their land they erected many temples to the sun, pyramids according to cosmic measurements, obelisks and other monuments, those pillars reaching up to the gods in the sky.

Magic powers were gained by restoring the magician to the prelapsarian status of man as the complete image of his creator, thereby enabling him “to participate in God’s creative work.” Magic is part of the redemptive process; through its use, man can redeem the creation from its bondage. Magi, according to Paracelsus, were “natural saints,” “holy men in God who serve the forces in nature.” (B.J. Gibbons: Spirituality and the Occult, p.39.)

cantatedomino · « **Reply #141 on:** February 10, 2014, 08:56:05 AM »

I do believe that the Good God says that men who serve the "forces in nature" are idolaters:

Romans: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice. Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; His eternal power also, and Divinity: so that they are inexcusable.

Because that, when they knew God, they have not glorified Him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things . . . Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is blessed for ever. Amen . . . [These] did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them.

cantatedomino · « **Reply #142 on:** February 10, 2014, 09:01:34 AM »

THE EARTHMOVERS:

Chapter Four

The Sacred Doctrine Of Geocentrism

No thesis on the Earthmovers could ignore the book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, authored in 1896 by Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918). Andrew White, the son of a self-made wealthy merchant who opened his own bank, was baptised in the Calvary Episcopal Church in 1835. He went to Yale University where he became a member of the ‘Skull and Bones’ fraternity, a secret society of selected students. There he read history, and excelled in his studies and writings. After receiving his BA at the age of twenty-one he spent a further year of study in Europe. When he returned he rejoined Yale University to achieve an MA in history. Then, in the mid-1860s, after a spell as professor of history at the University of Michigan, he served in the New York Senate where he met senator Ezra Cornell, a Quaker farmer from Ithaca, New York, who made a fortune in the telegraph industry.

When money became available for higher education, and even more offered by Cornell, the two decided to use it to fund a new university. In 1868 the new University of Cornell duly opened its doors in Ithaca with White serving as the university’s first president until 1885. Throughout his career, Andrew White amassed a huge library of books (30,000). In particular, he built up a collection on the Reformation, witchcraft, and the masonic French Revolution, a set he left to the University of Cornell after he died.

At the time of Cornell's founding, White announced that it would be "an asylum for Science—where truth shall be sought for truth's sake, not stretched or cut exactly to fit Revealed Religion." [Lindberg and Numbers, 1986]. Up to that time, America's private universities were exclusively religious institutions, and generally focused on the liberal arts and religious training (though they were not explicitly antagonistic to science). In 1869 White gave a lecture on "The Battle-Fields of Science," arguing that history showed the negative outcomes resulting from any attempt on the part of religion to interfere with the progress of science. Over the next 30 years he refined his analysis, expanding his case studies to include nearly every field of science over the entire history of Christianity, but also narrowing his target from "religion" through "ecclesiasticism" to "dogmatic theology." The final result was the two-volume, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. - - - Wikipedia.

Andrew White was without doubt a most brilliant scholar, linguist and researcher. He was acquainted with all the best libraries in Europe as well as America, and had a capacity to absorb the scholarly works of the learned authors of most nationalities. With regard to the subject matter under examination, in the preface of this book, he tells the reader:

I propose to present an outline of the great, sacred struggle for the liberty of science – a struggle which has lasted for so many centuries, and which yet continues. A hard contest it has been; a war waged longer, with battles fiercer, with sieges more persistent, with strategy more shrewd than in any of the comparatively transient warfare of Caesar or Napoleon or Moltke. (Andrew D. White: A History, New York, Appleton, 1896.)

cantatedomino · « **Reply #143 on:** February 10, 2014, 09:03:51 AM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: An informed reading of this lengthy book shows ‘White’s work is utterly worthless as history,’ in that many scholars have found numerous inaccuracies and prejudice when describing the conflicts he conjured up from one clash to another. Moreover, what White accepted as ‘science’ would not have qualified as such were it not for the assumptions of the Copernican revolution that set the standard for what is called modern science. Much of what he included as proof or verification for heliocentrism against geocentrism, for uniformitarianism against catastrophism (that the geography, topography and fossils of the earth were shaped, formed and buried by a gigantic worldwide Flood of Noah, as recorded in the Bible), for evolutionism against creationism, is based on prejudiced and wishful thinking, not true science.

But White, like so many other anti-Catholics writing on the same subjects, was in the propaganda business, and the extent of his success was astounding. ‘It was,’ he said, the ‘theological spirit that had a tendency to dogmatism which has shown itself in all ages to be the deadly foe not only of scientific inquiry, but of the higher religious spirit itself.’ What White found unacceptable was that in theology we find infallible truths that rightly oppose the ‘scientific’ inventions of godless minds and therein lay the clashing of faith and false reasoning, the two totally incompatible, and warfare was inevitable.

White’s History has a most varied and comprehensive bibliography. Its footnotes take up a considerable space, and his source material was found in many different languages. The book has enjoyed numerous editions, has been translated into many languages, has been read by millions, and is still in print. [Prometheus Books, 59 John Glenn Drive, Buffalo, New York, 1993.]

Is it any wonder then it is often quoted in textbooks and elsewhere as an authoritative source on the history of faith and science? As one would expect, at times White takes licence. For example, he ties the Church to the Ptolemaic theory that it never defended, nor any other model; simply a fixed earth at the centre of the universe (not necessarily the mathematical centre) and a moving sun.

All the above apart, White’s account of the metaphysical geocentric world cannot be faulted and is worth reproducing. So vast is his bibliography and footnotes that it would be impossible to reproduce them in this work so we shall not include them. On geocentrism, White wrote:

This doctrine was of the highest respectability: it had been developed at a very early period, and had been elaborated until it accounted well for the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies; its final name, ‘Ptolemaic theory,’ carried weight; and, having thus come from antiquity into the Christian world, St Clement of Alexandria demonstrated that the altar in the Jєωιѕн Tabernacle was ‘‘a symbol of the earth placed in the middle of the universe:’’ nothing more was needed; the geocentric theory was fully adopted by the Church and universally held to agree with the letter and spirit of Scripture. Wrought into this foundation, and based upon it, there was developed in the Middle Ages, mainly out of fragments of Chaldean and other early theories preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures, a new sacred system of astronomy, which became one of the great treasures of the universal Church – the last word of revelation.

Three great men mainly reared this structure. First was the unknown who gave to the world the treatises ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite. It was unhesitatingly believed that these were the work of St Paul’s Athenian convert, and therefore virtually of St Paul himself. Though now known to be spurious, they were then considered a treasure of inspiration, and an emperor of the East sent them to an emperor of the West as the most worthy of gifts. In the ninth century they were widely circulated in Western Europe, and became a fruitful source of thought especially on the whole celestial hierarchy. Thus the old ideas of astronomy were vastly developed, and the heavenly hosts were classed and named in accordance with indications scattered through the sacred Scriptures.

The next of these three great theologians was Peter Lombard, Professor at the University of Paris. About the middle of the twelfth century, he gave forth his collection of Sentences, or statements by the Fathers, and this remained until the end of the Middle Ages the universal manual of theology. In it was especially developed the theological view of man’s relation to the universe. The author tells the world: ‘‘Just as man is made for the sake of God – that is, that he may serve Him - so the universe is made for the sake of man, that is, that it may serve him; therefore is man placed at the middle point of the universe, that he may both serve and be served.’’ The vast significance of this view, and its power in resisting any real astronomical science, we shall see, especially in the time of Galileo.

The great triad of thinkers culminated in St Thomas Aquinas – the sainted theologian, the glory of the mediaeval Church, the ‘Angelic Doctor,’ the most marvellous intellect between Aristotle and Newton; he to whom it was believed that an image of the Crucified had spoken words praising his writings. Large of mind, strong, acute, yet just – even more than just – to his opponents, he gave forth, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, his Cyclopaedia of Theology, the Summa Theologica. In this he carried the sacred theory of the universe to its full development. With great power and clearness he brought the whole vast system, material and spiritual, into its relations to God and man.

Thus was the vast system developed by these three leaders of mediaeval thought; and now came the man who wrought it yet more deeply into European belief, the poet divinely inspired who made the system part of the world’s life. Pictured by Dante, the empyrean and the concentric heavens, paradise, purgatory, and hell, were seen by all; the God Triune, seated on his throne upon the circle of the heavens, as real as the Pope seated in the chair of St Peter; the seraphim, cherubim, and thrones, surrounding the Almighty, as real as the cardinals surrounding the Pope; the three great order of angels in heaven, as real as the three great orders, bishops, priests, and deacons, on earth; and the whole system of spheres, each revolving within the one above it, and all moving about the earth, subject to the primum mobile, as real as the feudal system of western Europe, subject to the Emperor.

Let us look into this vast creation – the highest achievement of theology – somewhat more closely. Its first feature shows a development out of earlier theological ideas. The earth is no longer a flat plain enclosed by four walls and solidly vaulted above, as theologians of previous centuries had believed it, under the inspiration of Cosmas; it is no longer a mere flat disk, with sun, moon, and stars hung up to give it light, as the earlier cathedral sculptors had figured it; it has become a globe at the centre of the universe. Encompassing it are successive transparent spheres, rotated by angels about the earth, and each carrying one or more of the heavenly bodies with it: that nearest the earth carrying the moon; the next, Mercury; the next, Venus; the next, the sun; the next three, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; the eighth carrying the fixed stars. The ninth was the primum mobile, and enclosing all was the tenth heaven, the Empyrean. This was immovable, a boundary between creation and the great outer void; and here, in a light which no one can enter, the Triune God sat enthroned, the ‘music of the spheres’ rising to Him as they moved. Thus was the old heathen doctrine of the spheres made Christian.

In attendance upon the Divine Majesty, thus enthroned, are vast hosts of angels, who are divided into three hierarchies, one serving in the empyrean, one in the heavens between the empyrean and the earth, and one on the earth. Each of these hierarchies is divided into three choirs, or orders; the first, into the orders of Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; and the main occupation of these is to chant incessantly – to ‘‘continually cry’’ the divine praises. The order of Thrones conveys God’s will to the second hierarchy, which serves in the movable heavens. This second hierarchy is also made up of three orders. The first of these, the order of Dominions, receives the divine commands; the second, the order of Powers, moves the heavens, sun, moon, planets, and stars, opens and shuts the ‘‘windows of heaven,’’ and brings to pass all other celestial phenomena; the third, the order of Empire [rather Powers or Authorities], guards the others [warrior angels].

The third and lowest hierarchy is also made up of three orders. First of these are the Principalities, the guardian spirits of nations and kingdoms. Next come Archangels; these protect religion, and bear the prayers of the saints to the foot of God’s throne. Finally come Angels; these care for earthly affairs in general, one being appointed to each mortal, and others taking charge of the qualities of plants, metals, stones and the like. Throughout the whole system, from the great Triune God to the lowest group of angels, we see at work the mystic power attached to the triangle and sacred number three – the same which gave the triune deities in Egypt, and which transmitted this theological gift to the Christian world, especially through the Egyptian Athanasius.

Below the earth is hell. This is tenanted by the angels who rebelled under the lead of Lucifer, prince of the seraphim –the former favourite of the Trinity; but, of these rebellious angels, some still rove among the planetary spheres, and give trouble to the good angels; others pervade the atmosphere about the earth, carrying lightning, storm, drought, and hail; others infest earthly society, tempting men to sin; but Peter Lombard and St Thomas Aquinas take pains to show that the work of these devils is, after all, but to discipline man or to mete out deserved punishment.

All this vast scheme had been so riveted into the Ptolemaic view by the use of biblical texts and theological reasoning that the resultant system of the universe was considered impregnable and final. To attack it was blasphemy. It stood for centuries. Great theological men of science like Vincent of Beauvais and Cardinal d’Ailly, devoted themselves to showing not only that it was supported by Scripture, but also that it supported Scripture. Thus was the geocentric theory embedded in the beliefs and aspirations, in the hopes and fears of Christendom down to the middle of the sixteenth century. (A. D. White, A History, pp.116-120.)

cantatedomino · « **Reply #144 on:** February 10, 2014, 09:06:12 AM »

THE EARTHMOVERS:

Aristotle’s World

Aristotle’s geocentric universe was conceived as operating from the outside looking inward, focusing on the earth. The geocentric universe - while not regarded as large as we are led to believe it is today - was unambiguously finite. Aristotle reasoned that the universe, because it rotated around every day, had to be finite, a reasoning that could not be disputed. This proved to be theologically sound also within Catholicism, for only God is infinite. Cosmic infinity invites Pantheism. Indeed, this aspect of the geocentric universe is extremely important in concentrating the spiritual intellect of man, visual proof that keeps us aware that we are creatures separate from God and not part of a pantheistic scenario.

Aristotle distinguished between that which he believed could be directly investigated (the earth regions) and that which could not (the celestial region). The lower region of change and irregularity he called Nature and the upper unchanging region he called Sky. That all-important frontier, where one transgressed into the other, was the moon’s path or sphere of the moon. The philosopher here introduced a religious or spiritual element in that outside of this boundary, the mysterious heavens, he believed to be the sole domain of deities, incorruptible but adhering to law and order.

In the Aristotelian world there were four grades of terrestrial reality: mere existence (as in clay or rock), existence with growth (as in trees), existence and growth with sensation (as in beasts), and all these with reason (as in man). The properties in matter were then only four, called the Four Contraries: hot, cold, moist and dry, and the four elements: fire, air, water and earth. In the sublunary world – nature in the strict sense – the four elements had all sorted themselves out into their ‘kindly stede.’ Earth, the heaviest, had gathered itself at the centre. On the earth sits the lighter water. Above that is the still lighter air. Fire, the lightest of all, whenever it is free, flies-up to the circuмference of nature and forms a sphere just below the trajectory of the moon. Above the moon, in the sky, forming the celestial spheres there was thought to be a Fifth Element or Quintessence, the aether. Alas, because it existed out of reach, we mortals would have had no experience of it.

The ancient perception of the cosmos was that it was the sun that illuminated the whole universe. The stars, they believed, had no light generating powers, merely reflecting that of the sun just as we now know those ‘wandering stars,’ the planets, do. Aristotle then tells us ‘Outside the heaven, beyond the Primum Mobile, there is neither place nor void nor time. Hence whatever is there does not occupy space, nor does time affect it.’ Compliant with Christianity, the doctrine speaks loud and jubilant. What better place for Heaven, caelum ipsum, full of God, ‘pure light, intellectual light, full of Love’ as Dante saw it.

To account for the specific movements of the sun, moon, stars, and planets, Aristotle proposed that the heavens were literally composed of 55 concentric, crystalline spheres to which the celestial objects were attached with the Earth at the centre. The whole system, he thought, was kept in motion by fifty-five, unmoved movers (Metaphysics 12:8). Such reasoning was again pagan, but interestingly, seems to have anticipated the work of the angels of Christian Revelation. The knowledge of God’s use of angels as His primary instruments arises from theology.

cantatedomino · « **Reply #145 on:** February 10, 2014, 09:08:16 AM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: St Thomas Aquinas said that ‘‘every visible thing is put under the charge of an angel.’’ There is a near unanimity of the Fathers, both east and west, that angels, under God and by His order, govern the movements of the heavenly bodies. St Thomas explains the reason for this. The angels are part of the universe; we are situated between the angels and the animals in the hierarchy of being and have more in common with the angels above us than the animals below us by reason of our intelligence and free will. That the angels should govern the movements of the heavens in a way analogous to the appointed governance of man over the earth, is eminently reasonable and in complete harmony with the Scriptures and the many aspects of angelic activity revealed to us therein. (Paula Haigh: Was It Infallible. Nazareth, KY. USA, 1992.)

But also important for this subject is the nature of the Angels. They are pure spirits of tremendous intellect and will, far greater in power and purity than men in their rational nature. Franciscan theologian Fr Valentine Long, in his book, says that all of them are “instant theologians.” (Fr Valentine Long: The Angels in Religion and Art, 1970, p.48.) Not only that but as soon as there existed a Universe to contemplate, angels were also: “…instant astronomers. Our telescopes, probing its vast reaches, can only pick out the less remote stars; so that what we have learned of the cosmos remains infinitesimal compared to the magnitude of our ignorance. But we must not ascribe to the Angels our limitations. At a glance they comprehended it all.” And if “instant astronomers” then also “instant” physicists, “instant” biologists, and scientists generally, seeing into the very constitution of natural creatures and understanding nature’s laws in a manner inaccessible to the human mind. In fact, this can be docuмented. (Miss Paula Haigh: Fairy-Land is Hell, Magic is Demon Power, 2004, p.15.)

It is true that all the stars and heavenly bodies by the natural direction given them by God pursue their several courses but these great worlds are material and, therefore, as the Angelic Doctor points out, are liable to decay and deterioration. To prevent therefore, disorder and confusion in the thousands of heavenly bodies which are whirling through space with inexpressible speed, God gives each one, in His all-wise Providence, an Angel to keep it in its course and avert the dire calamities that would result were it to stray from its allotted orbit . . . Few people think on all this when on beautiful star-lit nights they gaze on the Heavens and the myriads of stars. How fitting it would be to salute the countless Angels who guard these stars: “Oh glorious Angels of the stars, we love you, we thank you. Please bless us and shower on us your protection. (E.D.M.: All About Angels, Catholic Printing Press, Portugal, 1945, pp.31-2.)

And if the angels have total comprehension of the universe, which they have, then Lucifer and his fallen demons, with permission from God, are capable of passing on such knowledge to just about anyone that they care to inform, always though, to serve their purpose.

The demons are prevented by their state of mortal sin, from that knowledge which renders the good Angels supremely happy: the knowledge whereby they see God and all things in Him. For this reason, the demons expend all of their intellectual power and energy (which is tremendous) in probing the secrets of nature and revealing to mankind those things which are most likely to attack his Faith and bring him down to Hell by playing on his evil passions, especially the lust for power and money. (Miss Paula Haigh, Fairy-Land is Hell, Magic is Demon Power, p.42-3.)

cantatedomino · « **Reply #146 on:** February 10, 2014, 09:09:24 AM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: Coming closer to earth, in the vast aetherial region, many of Aristotle’s intelligences lose that pureness and goodness and were thus known as ‘daemons.’ Again we find an easy analogy with the Christian concept, as depicted in the Apocalypse, that of the fallen angels who were cast ‘down’ from heaven. Between the moon and the earth they gather until God casts them into their final place in Hell.

And that great dragon was cast down, the ancient serpent, he who is called the devil and Satan, who leads astray the whole world; and he was cast down to the Earth and with him his angels were cast down. - - - (Apoc. 16:9).

‘Hell,’ a place as well as a state, according to mediaeval tradition, created by God for Satan and those who reject Him for whatever reason, from hatred to apathy, lies in the very centre of the earth, the furthest place from heaven. Earlier, in her insights, we read of that pit in Mary of Agreda’s ‘Mystical City of God.’ Elsewhere, Cardinal Bellarmine wrote:

The last is natural reason. There is no doubt that it is indeed reasonable that the place of devils and wicked damned men should be as far as possible from the place where God, angels and blessed saints will be forever, the abode of the blessed (as our adversaries agree) in heaven, and no place further removed from heaven than the centre of the earth. (Quoted by Karen Armstrong: A History of God, Vintage, p.334.)

cantatedomino · « **Reply #147 on:** February 10, 2014, 09:16:40 AM »

In the Name of Jesus let every knee bow of those that are in heaven
(Angels) on earth (man) and under the earth (devils). (Phil. 2:10)

In Genesis, the Bible states that God created the stars, sun and moon to shine in the firmament of heaven, and to give light upon the earth. The Copernican or heliocentric proposal violates this concept by reversing this order. If the sun is the centre of our universe then it is the earth that resides in the heaven and not the other way around, as the same Cardinal Bellarmine made clear in his Letter to Foscarini in 1615.

And if Your Reverence would read not only the Fathers but also the commentaries of modern writers on Genesis, Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Josue, you would find that all agree in explaining literally that the sun is in the heavens and moves swiftly around the earth, and that the earth is far from the heavens and stands immobile in the centre of the world.

With the advent of heliocentrism, Hell also became redundant. Once ‘science’ supposedly demonstrated that the earth (with its hellish interior) was in fact flying around the sun, then the theological Hell taught by the mediaeval Catholic Church began to lose its credibility. And with Hell went Satan for many, for the two are intrinsically linked, discredit one and you consign the other to the same myth. Indeed such a notion of Hell in the bowels of the earth is but an embarrassment to modern Catholics, and not even the fact that science speculates the interior of the earth is one huge burning flaming mass has helped restore the traditional place of Hell. To those who cringe at the idea of a moving sun, a fixed earth, Heaven, Hell and Purgatory as taught by the Church, they think now as fallen mankind.

At the final judgement however, traditional theologians teach, all from ‘middle earth’ shall share in the knowledge of God’s infinite justice and mercy. This will include a fusion in us of all that God created for His Own Glory that, we believe, must include a comprehension of His geocentric cosmos. The Scriptures foretell that immediately thereafter, no matter where one deserves to go for all eternity, all shall sing the praises of God’s perfect judgement. (The Catholic Church: Burns & Oates, London, 1948, 1956, pp.1101-1140.)

In addition to the bliss of Heaven, which springs from the immediate Vision of God, there is also an accidental blessedness, which proceeds from the natural knowledge and love of created things. (Sent. Communis.) (Lugwig Ott: Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 1963, p.478.)

cantatedomino · « **Reply #148 on:** February 10, 2014, 09:21:12 AM »

THE EARTHMOVERS: The first and most manifest philosophical proof of God, apart from the proof inherent in design, of course, is the conclusion from motion.

Now whatever is in motion is put into motion by another, for nothing can be in motion except it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality . . . It is therefore impossible that in the same respect and in the same way a thing should be both mover and moved, i.e., that it should move itself. Therefore what is in motion must be put in motion by another.

If that by which is put in motion, be itself put in motion, then this also must need be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover . . . Therefore it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God. . . . (ST, Q.2. Art. 3)

It is irrefutably reasonable then, according to St Thomas, because we see and experience movement, God, as First Mover, exists. It follows surely, there cannot be motion without His causality. The scholastic view was that such a Prime Mover is found in the wholly transcendent and spiritual God who ‘occupies no place and all places and is not affected by time.’ Thus how He moves things cannot be attributed to some kind of motion [in] Him, but as Aristotle says: ‘He moves as beloved.’

The cosmos, the Primum Mobile, is moved by its love for God as an object of desire moves those who desire it. Once moved, it communicates motion to the rest of the universe.

Motion is a process that necessitates causality and specifically,
the primary causality of God acting in all things.

The removal of God from the act of motion was in fact begun by Galileo and completed by Isaac Newton. Galileo determined that marbles would roll down slopes and balls would fall from towers in a consistent manner on their own, ignoring any assistance from God. Newton took this inertia out into space, claiming the cause as an attraction of matter itself, and that these movements would continue forever unless something directly effected a change of direction. That, and not so much the claim for heliocentrism resulting from Newton’s claim of particle attraction, flushed God and His angels from any cause or say in how the universe moves.

In her essay Galileo’s Empiricism, from which we base the next few chapters, Paula Haigh explains that the scholastic dictum on faith and science was to distinguish but not to separate. The Aristotelian philosophy on motion as found especially in Aristotle’s Physics and in St Thomas’s Summa Contra Gentiles, defines motion as the passage from potency to act. Motion, they reason, is a property of all created beings for, by the very fact of their ‘creaturehood,’ they are composed of these two principles, potency and act. Potency determines and limits what a specific motion is capable of arriving at in actuality. The limits are determined by the nature of the created being, and act is always the realisation of some specific potentiality that flows from the nature of the being that changes.

Miss Haigh continues stating there is no such thing as absolute motion or absolute change because there is no such thing as motion or change apart from the being that moves and changes. The scholastics argued the absolute necessity, both physical and metaphysical, for God’s primary agency in all things. The primary agency of God is absolutely necessary in order that the being of any and all individuals be sustained in existence and empowered to act through their forms, for God alone is Pure Actuality, all Existence, Pure Act, with no trace of becoming, of change, or of potency, which latter is always a sign of the imperfection of need.

Thus these philosophers attribute all motion, of whatever kind, from the tiniest caused by the 2nd law of thermodynamics to the motions of the universe - as an effect, both [of] God and [of] the natural agent or secondary cause, though in different ways. In all discussions on motion a distinction must be made between the primary cause, who is God, and the secondary cause, to which He imparts the actuality necessary to bring any potentiality into motion.

All motion then, of whatever kind, is due, as an effect, both to God and to the natural agent or secondary cause, though in different ways.

[NOTE: The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the universal principle of decay (change) observable in nature. For example, the 2nd law is responsible for changing a new building – without maintenance - into ruins over time, and for a machine rusting into dust.]

Christian theology shows the love God has for us His creatures and our love for Him in recognition of this. We see also God’s love sustains the inanimate universe that necessarily ensures the existence of man. Thus we are totally dependent on Him for everything, within ourselves and without. We call this divine concursus; that act by which God’s energy flows into all the operations of creatures. The motions of the universe are presided over by God’s mediate concursus, signifying the remote divine activity that gives and preserves created power of action.

It follows then that God must have left His mark in the heavens. Aristotelian thinking, combining the motions of the universe with the love of God, always – mistakenly though - saw circular movements as reflecting, as close as possible, the divine and omnipresent Mover. Each sphere attains it in a less degree than the sphere above it. Residing in each and every sphere we find a conscious and intellectual being, moved by ‘intellectual love’ of God.

“The earth stands in relation to the heaven as the centre of a circle to its circuмference. But as one centre may have many circuмferences, so, though there be but one earth, there may be many heavens.” St. Thomas (I, Q 68,a 4, ad l) here establishes two principles: (1) Earth is the centre of creation, and (2) there may be many heavenly bodies revolving along many pathways, thus producing many circuмferences around the Earth, and these may be referred to as “heavens.” Thus the Moon revolves around Earth in a lunar heaven; the sun in a fiery heaven, and so for the planets and stars. Likewise, the divisions or layers of Earth’s atmosphere are “heavens” of a corporeal nature. And all of these relate most necessarily and intrinsically to the Earth as to their centre and raison d’être. In sum, Heaven is the Throne of God and the Earth is His footstool (Matt. 5:34-35); Isaiah 66:1 and Psalms). [Acts 7:49: ‘Heaven is my throne and the earth a footstool for my feet. What house will you build Me, says the Lord; or what shall be the place of My rest?] This indicates a necessary relationship of Earth to God, the Creator, and of Man the servant-creature to God the Creator. Our Lord’s coming elevated this unique relationship to the supernatural order but did not change its intimacy or necessity, rather increased it while elevating it. (Miss Paula Haigh, From the Beginning)

roscoe · « **Reply #149 on:** February 10, 2014, 11:34:55 AM »

Sola Scriptura Protestant Morman(Moroni) Bibliolatry :reporter: