Man has created codes to keep secrets and has broken codes to learn those secrets since the time of the Pharaohs. For 4,000 years, fierce battles have been waged between codemakers and codebreakers, and the story of these battles is civilization’s secret history, the hidden account of how wars were won and lost, diplomatic intrigues foiled, business secrets stolen, governments ruined, computers hacked. From the XYZ Affair to the Dreyfus Affair, from the Gallic War to the Persian Gulf, from Druidic runes and the kaballah to outer space, from the Zimmermann telegram to Enigma to the Manhattan Project, codebreaking has shaped the course of human events to an extent beyond any easy reckoning.
–The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet.
There are times in which my mind grows weary with fools who believe they have found hidden codes within the bible. One such person who recently wrote the Painful Truth was cock sure he was on to something big. Really big!
Throughout history, amateur sleuths have been driven in part by the knowledge that steganography—the art of hiding messages—has long been practiced. Enter Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell. He was was a lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement. He was posted in Malta for three years, working as an intelligence officer for the Mediterranean under the Director of Military Intelligence. He frequently traveled disguised as a butterfly collector, incorporating plans of military installations into his drawings of butterfly wings. His work was one of stealth for the benefit of his nation. The intelligence community of Britain had the knowledge and the ability to decipher his drawings from foregone knowledge of the spies mission.
The Nuts.
There are those who have been convinced that through divine revelation or the assistance of extraterrestrials, the builders of the Great Pyramid embedded the sum total of scientific knowledge within the dimensions of the structure. Pyramidologists persist in their claims despite a 1992 effort to debunk them by Dutch astrophysicist Cornelis de Jager. Jager demonstrated the dimensions of any object can be manipulated to yield a desired outcome; he derived the speed of light and the distance between the Earth and Sun from his measurements of a bicycle.
This past May, a Venezuelan state TV host announced he had discovered a conspiracy to assassinate the elder brother of President Hugo Chavez. The evidence could be found in a newspaper crossword puzzle. This kind of amateurish investigation is called “pathology of cryptology.” A term coined after a chapter title in David Kahn’s book “The Codebreakers”
Perhaps these people are altruistic in that they may receive an intrinsic reward in the form of personal gratification or that they see things they desperately wants to see even if they are not really there. I believe that these people have a need for recognition, to be the first to find a secret code with secret information. It is what they “believe” that will propel them to the status of scientist (authority figure) within their minds.
Another Type of Nut.
Hence we have seen in the cog’s an array of “new knowledge” “new pronouncements from God” from those who deem themselves as Gods number one man and utmost authority. The only difference from those mentioned above is that in the “churches of God” altruistic behavior is non existent. There is no sign of this behavior within the leadership. So just why do these clowns go to great lengths to convince a limited supply of Armstrongist blue ribbon tithe paying patrons of their spin?
The answer is found in money. The ability to collect large amounts of wealth and enrich oneself. For it is money that can build a life of leisure, a life free of burdensome toil that most of humanity cannot even imagine.
Their greed is nothing more than a cheap anesthetic to deaden the pain of an empty life.
The way to bring meaning into life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community that surrounds you, and devote yourself to creating something useful that gives you purpose and meaning and that you can share with others.
It has been said that there are three great forces that rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed. Being stupid at times is to be human. But fear and greed, these are the tools that destroy individual emotional responses. We call this the “herd mentality” or “herd behavior.”
One example of this is Adolf Hitler. He used herd behavior and crowd psychology to his advantage by placing a group of German officers disguised as civilians within a crowd attending one of his speeches. These officers would cheer and clap loudly for Hitler, and the rest of the crowd followed their example, making it appear that the entire crowd completely agreed with Hitler and his views.
The “tools” of fear and greed that the churches unload on the membership affects the everyday decision-making, judgment and opinion-forming behaviors of the individual. No longer can they think for themselves but they think as a collective. One mind, one thought. One good example is the Borg from the Star Trek series. A collective that robs all individualism from its members.
SO, when you hear your church leader say “God has revealed a new truth to me” recall this Psalm:
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you (God, not the minister) are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
Think for yourself and discover freedom!