in browser, or right-click and choose “Save link as…” In our last conference we proposed government by hagiocracy in the Garden of Innocence. We’ve been looking back to the ideal Garden of Innocence to gather the concepts of a past–that didn’t happen–so that the lamb-like meek-of-heart will know how to implement God’s original ideals in the coming New Earth which, in the Book of Revelation, has been promised to surely happen. In a previous conference entitled “Garden Family,” we saw that the garden was intended to develop into a beautiful city of God, not the Tower of Babel. The Old Testament prophets saw in vision that Babel and Babylon would be defeated and all the nations would stream toward Jeru-shalem the city of peace [cf Is. 2:2].
The Apocalypse gives the gigantic dimensions of this city which sits on a mountain, dominating the earth. It’s 12,000 stadia wide, 12,000 stadia long, and 12,000 stadia tall (not counting it’s mountain base). A stadia was the standard 185 meter length of a stadium in ancient Greece and Rome. Try to imagine a city 1,380 square miles with it’s buildings reaching 1,380 miles into the sky. The atmosphere is approximately forty miles high at most. This city reaches into outer space, symbolically touching heaven. This city, if it’s a literal city, would cover more than half the states in the U.S., or all of Europe, or most of China or India and no planes could fly past it. There is no mountain on the planet large enough to support this towering city which makes the Tower of Babel look like a joke. The Apocalypse is a book of symbols to instruct us about spiritual realities.
In my Thursday night seminar on the Apocalypse we’ll soon be talking about the temple-like structure of this enormous city, and the symbol of its adornments, etc. In this Tuesday night seminar which we’ve entitled “Beyond Consecration to Jesus through Mary” we are focused on the role of the central female in the first book of the Bible and in the last book of the Bible. If you take away the main actress you carry off the story. Nothing remains but a pile of props, and some funny characters dressed up in animal costumes. The Genesis Garden cast includes a talking snake, a variety of tame animals and a man without clothes and a woman who likes snakes. The cast in the Apocalypse features a flood-spewing serpent, seven-headed beasts and other multi-eyed creatures, a man in a white robe riding on a white horse and a pregnant woman in hard labor. When the First Woman got her lines wrong, the curtain went down, the gates closed and we never got to see the end of the play. The Last Woman is a sky-woman engaging with a snake-in-the-sky and then we see a city-in-the-sky. Today we are living in sky technology. We depend on cell towers and satellites to run our businesses. We use rockets to defend our homelands, and the sky is the highway for a great deal of our traveling and freight transportation. The Apocalypse raises the Garden story to a new dimension. It’s our dimension. It’s a parable, not a myth. The symbols stand for real things. A new earth is coming. The serpent doesn’t win. The earth belongs to its Maker who wants the original plan to be fulfilled. The Garden story will be resumed. The New Eve is not going to get her lines wrong. She will succeed in the role where the First Eve failed. How do we know that? Because it’s the same woman who stood faithfully by the Tree of Calvary, near the New Adam on the sixth day of the week, that is the Good Sixth Day we call Good Friday. Everyone rested on the seventh day. Jesus rose on the eighth day, the first day of a new creation week for those who acknowledge Christ as Lord. The next part of the drama is about the climax on the Great Day when all the earth will acknowledge that Yahweh is God and Jesus is Lord.
Many people today are rightly concerned about a world government that will not acknowledge God or God’s laws. A New Earth modeled on the Garden of Innocence would be governed by holy persons, people who revere God. In a recent conference we considered how Ezra and Nehemiah and the Maccabees attempted to institute a hagiocracy even while King Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great, and then the Roman Caesars, were ruling large portions of the earth’s population. The Apocalypse envisions a time when people who love virtue will be in command, not in obscure pockets of the earth, but in the majority of nations. The old-fashioned meaning of “minister” is a person who serves. In the New Earth public ministers will see themselves as servants of God, servants of God’s people.
When we speak of world government we are talking about the principles that underlie government in the world. If “might makes right” in most governments, then that’s a principle. If “paying for services with borrowed money” is going on in most of the earth’s governments, then that’s a world government principle. If “wasting and abusing natural resources” is happening in most countries, then that’s another world government principle. Now it could be that a great Antichrist figure will rise up and he will be hailed as a leader of the world and all the nations will unite under his government, and then a Leader on a White Horse will arise and he will oppose this one-world-government. Then there will be a battle with bombs and bullets and the end result will be a one-world government by a hagiocracy. So either way, we end up with one set of leadership for the world. Maybe. But don’t hold your breath. Let’s remember Psalm 22:
and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
God likes variety. Pope St. John Paul rejoiced in the variety of cultures when he traveled throughout the world. The Holy Trinity is not made up of three identical Persons, equal yes, identical–far from it. I don’t think a one-world-government would please the Lord. The Trinity revels in the unique gifts they have bestowed on nations, persons and even geographical landscapes. People would need leaders who are attuned to their language and culture. One size garment will fit nobody. Miss America pageants supposedly represent the ideal, perfect women, so it made a lasting impression on me as a teenager when I was told that, that year, not one contestant matched the average height and weight of those fifty “ideal” women. All were considered beautiful, but no two were alike. So God finds beauty in many nations.
The hagiocracy of the Garden proposes principles. It will be up to each nation in the family of nations to implement the principles in their circumstances. What we learn from the Fall in the Garden, and from the battle in the Apocalypse, is that the enemy of holy government engages directly with a Woman. When the serpent tricked Eve, hagiocracy was defeated. In the Book of Revelation we see a huge red serpent using all his artillery, not primarily against the riders on white horses, but against one small woman and her offspring. If he can defeat that woman, he’s won the game. This entire seminar has been devoted to understanding the New Eve, the Blessed Virgin Mary. We want to know why she is so important in our present generation, and why She wants us to be consecrated to her, and how to live that consecration fruitfully.
Women have an important place in a holy government. As we saw last week, hagiocracy has three governing bodies which correspond to the Persons of the Holy Trinity: Executive Fathers, Judicial Mothers and Legislative Sons. In many respects this resembles the ideals of our own Republic which strives to protect the equal dignity of every person. The U.S. Constitutions presents a trifold balance of powers: an executive branch, a judicial branch and a legislative branch. In our reflections on the Garden we saw that the candidates had to be approved by the people. A democratic election process corresponds to the Garden for the executive and legislative branches. The judicial appointment process also resembles the Garden because the candidates are not elected by the general populace, but appointed by the leaders. The ideal is to choose worthy judges, not judges who strive for the popular office by campaigning. In the Garden of Innocence, the judges are chosen with care, hand-picked on merit because they are the beloved wives! The entire judicial branch is feminine. G. K. Chesterton greatly appreciated feminine gifts. His writings are full of witty, yet poignant remarks:
It is quite certain that the skirt means female dignity, not female submission; it can be proved by the simplest of all tests. . . . when men wish to be stately, impressive, as judges, priests or kings, they wear skirts, the long, trailing robes of female dignity. The whole world is under petticoat government; for even men wear petticoats when they wish to govern [What’s Wrong With the World by G.K. Chesterton, 1910].
Kings and cassocks have passed away, but judicial robes remain. The judge has to cover over his own personality, as it were, to look beyond his personal aspirations and opinions. In most cultures, a lady covers over her figure with loose garments so as to let her integrity and wisdom shine forth as her most valued quality. Women who wear scanty clothing are sadly sending the unladylike message that their only value is skin deep.
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised [Prov 31:30]
The brooding dove in the Holy Trinity, the motherly, consoling, wise Spirit is the guide and model for the female judges. And is it not significant that the Holy Spirit is always veiled in mystery, without a clear name or face? A woman “hides” behind the name of her husband to be the driving spirit in the family, the hidden engine “thrust” behind the scenes, filling husband and children with enthusiasm and confidence. Her self-fulfillment is the joy she experiences in keeping the family united in its ideals.
The woman is the bond! There is no Trinity if there are two Fathers and one Son, or two Sons and one Father. They cannot act as one unit without the unique Person who is their driving Spirit, who whirls around them and between them. Allow me to quote from the angels’ prayer to the Trinity in the approved apparition at Marienfried, Germany in 1946:
Hail to you, Spirit of the Eternal One, forever giving forth holiness, acting from all eternity in God! O, stream of fire from the Father to the Son! O, raging storm blowing strength and light and fervor into the members of the body eternal; unending fire of love, creative spirit of God in the living ones, red stream of fire from the Ever-Living One to the mortals!
King James of England instituted the custom of having judges ride a circuit each year to hear cases, rather than forcing everyone to bring their cases to London. The young United States followed this model with circuit judges who rode through their districts hearing cases. Even the Supreme Court judges did so for the first hundred years. The ideal was for the judge to be familiar with the people. We still have the term “circuit courts”. Envision spirit-filled justices, blowing strength and light and enthusiasm for the law between the Executive Branch which must enforce laws with justice and compassion, and the Legislative Branch which must enact particular laws so as to implement in a practical manner the general law of the Constitution. The Supreme Court passes judgment on the law-makers and the law-enforcers. With corrupt judges, the nation gets away with murder, extortion, and chaos. Patriotism dies. The national spirit dies. Every citizen lives for himself.
The appointment of keen judges is vital to a nation’s well-being. In a Garden society, the role of a judge fell naturally to women. In the Old Testament women judges were revered. Deborah was famous for her integrity. In one of our native American tribes the women had the right to depose any man serving on the council if the women judged that the man wasn’t worthy. In some places in South America a boy can’t join the school sports team unless he is named by the girls.
The trinity of the family operates directly at the level of individual human persons: the Father, the Mother, and the Firstborn Son who represents all the offspring. A nation is a family of families, so it operates at the level of social persons. Each government branch is a social body, and a body must have a head and a face. A leaderless body can’t coordinate itself in a direction to function as a unit. In the Garden City, the Executive Branch has its First Minister Adam, High Priest and King of the Earth. The Legislative Branch (or in British parlance, the House of Lords) has its Chancellor or Speaker who is also an Elder or Bishop in this nation of priestly people. And finally, the Judicial Branch has its Supreme Court Justice or better, Gebirah Eve, the Queen-Mother who presides with her son in the royal court.
In the Garden of Innocence, the First Mother was espoused to the First Father. The conception of their son, Ben Adam, was the fruit of Eve’s virginal obedience. Her Son and Savior appeared fully grown and walked through the Garden revealing to them the identity of God as a Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The First Eve was the Gebirah, Queen-Mother of the Son of God and Son of Man, Lord of Heaven and Earth. Their Divine Son, Jesus would have anointed her husband Adam, as King and High Priest of Earth. Therefore Eve would have been a double Gebirah because her obedient virginity had merited the rebirth, as it were, of her husband who is now reborn as Adam, King of the Earth. After their first-born Son, the Savior, returned to heaven, the subsequent natural offspring of Adam and Eve as man and wife would all be royal sons and royal daughters, born in the state of grace as children of God. But, of course, this never happened because the Original Parents committed the Original Sin. The first Eve was queen of nobody.
But God had a backup plan in mind, not only to redeem individuals to let them enter heaven, but to redeem Paradise Lost and recreate the Earth, the adam. (Always remember that adam means dirt or earth). This evening, I’m preaching to the choir. All of you sitting here in this room already believe that Mary is Mother of the Savior and rightfully the New Eve, the Gebirah. You already acknowledge her as queen and you have given her your hearts. You are ready to follow her into battle in this mysterious warfare with all the “isms” represented by the Serpent and the beasts of the Apocalypse. But what we haven’t clarified is her status as truly the double Gebirah. In the Hebrew language the superlatives are nouns instead of adjectives. In English we use an adjective: this company makes a good tire, but this company makes a great tire. But a Hebrew commercial would advertise the “tire of tires.” The loveliest song is the Song of Songs. The highest king is the King of Kings. The original Eve was supposed to be the Queen of Queens. In Mary’s maternity we are familiar with her status of Mother of the King Jesus, but as New Eve she has to be established as the Gebirah of Gebirahs. But let us consider that the First Eve should have been the cause of her husband’s coronation, and his rebirth as King of the Earth, from which they would have had authority over all the nations of the earth, namely their own children, so where exactly is the parallel for a the New Eve?
Although Mary did not subsequently give birth to natural line of children through a natural father, the earliest Fathers of the Church identified Mary as the New Eve, the Woman of Genesis chapter 3. As centuries passed, attention was focused on other titles for Mary. Then Bl. John Henry Newman, a convert from Protestantism, reminded us Catholics how important it is to see Mary as fulfilling the role of the New Eve. Scripture doesn’t use that precise title, but Jesus calls Mary “Woman” on significant occasions when He should normally address her as “Mother:” namely at Cana, and on Calvary. St. Justin was a the Philosopher who was martyred about ad 130 because he had vigorously taught the Christian religion very openly all over the Roman empire in an effort to make converts from the pagans. He taught the Eve-Mary parallel as something fully accepted by the Church. Here are two important passages where he identified Mary as the new Eve.
For Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived the word of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her: wherefore also the Holy One begotten of her is the Son of God [Lk 1:35] and she replied ‘Be it unto me according to thy word.’ [Lk 1:38] And by her has He been born . . . by whom God destroys both the serpent and those angels and men who are like him; but works deliverance from death to those who repent of their wickedness and believe in Him [Chapter C/100].
Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” [Lk1:38]. But Eve was disobedient; for she did not obey when as yet she was a virgin. . . . having become disobedient, was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race; so also did Mary, having a man betrothed [to her], and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience, became the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race. And on this account does the law term a woman betrothed to a man, the wife of him who had betrothed her, although she was as yet a virgin; thus indicating the back-reference from Mary to Eve . . . And thus also it was that the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith [Chapter XXII:4].
That’s fine for comparing Mary to the failed Eve, but we are looking ahead to Eve’s complete mission. We find a “woman” in Revelation chapter 12, crowned as queen and in battle with a huge serpent. She is already crowned. A Hebrew woman who is a crowned queen, is a gebirah, the mother of the king. She had been the wife of his father during his reign, but the wife is not the queen. The prince succeeds his father as king after the king has died and, hopefully, gone up to heaven. So how can the queen mother have more children. The gebirah is, by definition, the widow of a king and the mother of the king’s son. How can she bear more children?
Only one woman could have done that, Eve. The obedience of the First Eve would have been the cause of her husband’s coronation. In resisting the Tempter and submitting to God’s will they both died to themselves. Jesus appeared as their son, the fruit of their obedient love. Jesus is Ben Adam, son of Man. Both Jesus and Adam would be sons of Eve because Adam, would have been reborn, as it were, the fruit of Eve’s obedience to be anointed by the Son of God as King of the Earth. Eve would have become both the queen-mother and queen-wife. Together they would have had authority over all the nations of the earth, namely their own children. Eve would have been the mother of princesses and queens, thus the Gebirah of Gebirahs.
In the Apocalypse, we see a queen mother giving birth. The mother of the King of Kings is having a second round of children. She is giving birth to “a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron” [Rev 12:5]. The text does not say it’s her firstborn son, but only a male child. This birth is costing her great anguish. We have to look carefully at the birthing. She is in the heavens. And so is her son, the King of Kings who is riding a white horse. So who is the father of this male child? A Queen always give birth to a prince. This boy is caught up to be protected by heaven until he comes of age, or perhaps his subjects arrive at sufficient maturity that they can recognize him.
In the Garden of Innocence, the first brother of the firstborn is the head of the Legislative Branch, forming a trinity of leadership with his parents, the heads of the Executive and Judicial branch. What is his title in a hagiocracy where all the members form one assembly, one royal, priestly people? It could be Lord Chancellor or Speaker of the House or Elder or Bishop. In the Church today, who is the first elder after Jesus, the firstborn son? The vicar of Christ, the pope. Mary is the Mother of Jesus. The scene in the Apocalypse suggests that She is giving birth in anguish because the Church is in need of a bishop-elder who will rule with an iron staff, a man who will not bend to compromise. Satan wants to destroy this boy but heaven protects him.
But wait a minute. Jesus became “the first-born among many brethren” [Rom 8:29], namely of all of us because we are one body with him. Mary did not start a new line of natural offspring, but cooperated in the redemption of Eve’s children of wrath. All the redeemed are her “offspring” through the one birth of her son. Right? Or is that a simplification? We are not one person, but many persons in Christ, just as there are three Persons in the Holy Trinity. We are united. We are one. But we are unique and individual. In a certain sense, Mary keeps giving birth down through the ages.
If Mary is the fulfillment of the New Eve, then the parallel should extend to her lawful husband, Joseph. Joseph and Mary died to self. They consented to the heavenly conception of Jesus and did not engage in natural intercourse. For the rest of their lives they abstained from conceiving a parallel half-race, which would have been a line of half-brothers of Jesus, naturally superior in rank of royalty to the rest of the children of Eve. No. God wanted one family of Adam. Joseph and Mary would rebirth the children of Eve through a royal adoption.
If Jesus called himself Ben Adam so many times, rather than Ben Joseph, it was to emphasize that he was the Son whom Adam and Eve failed to conceive. He is the fulfillment of God’s Original Plan. Jesus is truly God, and also truly a member of Adam’s race, through his physical birth from Mary. When Mary bore Jesus she became Mother of God, the great Gebirah. Like the ideal first Eve, Mary’s widowhood is momentary through the mystical death of Joseph who died to his self-will. But unlike Eve, Mary never physically conceives anyone with her “revived” husband.
Joseph is not on a par with Mary who physically conceived the Son of God. Nevertheless, Joseph is the legal father of Jesus, and of all of Mary’s offspring, the Body of Christ. Joseph is truly the New Adam. In the New Testament, Jesus is never called the New Adam, but the “Last Adam” or “Second Adam.” “The first Adam was from the earth, a man of dust; the Second Adam is from heaven” [1Cor 15:45,7]. St. Paul is focusing on a fact that human race is transformed and elevated because all those “born” or “descended” from the “second man” are a new creation. The Son of Adam–Adam the Second–fulfilled his duty as “the first-born among many brethren” [Rom 8:29]. But Joseph’s role is to be the ideal First Adam in the new creation, just as the role of his wife Mary is the ideal First Eve.
Joseph has no authority of his own. All power comes from his Son, so we tend to look to Jesus as wearing the crown, and Mary, the Gebirah, as wearing a crown. But the Woman of the Apocalypse makes it strikingly evident that the crowned Gebirah-in-the-heavens is still married, still bearing children with her spouse, no not physically, but in a higher, sky-high, reality. If the Woman is in labor with the bishop-elder who will be a strong ruler with an iron staff, then she must have conceived him with her husband, Joseph, not with her son as incest would violate the Law of God. We will speak of Joseph more extensively in the next conference.
Has it not been in the plans of Freemasons for three centuries to bring down the papacy? To cut the head off of a body is to disperse all the members. The body loses its strength when the leadership isn’t clear. This makes the body vulnerable, more easily conquered. If the Church has witnessed a great offensive in the past, it’s nothing compared to the Apocalyptic struggle that’s coming soon. Only a great and anguished intervention from the Queen of Heaven, and her husband, will secure the papacy. Perhaps for a time the head and body will seem defeated, but the papacy will be kept safe at God’s throne and a new pope, with the humility and meekness of a babe, will assume leadership. The Church has known chaotic times in the past when it carried on a few years without a pope. But when this pope, ascends the throne, he will fully know to whom he owes the throne. He will declare the final triple dogma which will authorize his Mother as truly the Queen of Heaven and Earth. She will finally be able to fulfill her role as Gebirah of Gebirahs and reign with the King of Kings. Together they will expel the demons from their realm forever. The earth will enjoy a peace that it’s never known.
Let us pray for the advent of this threefold government of the New Adam, the New Eve, and the New Elder that soon every nation and every family will be inspired by the Trinitarian model. Issiah prophesied:
Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end . . . from this time forth and for evermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this [Isa 9:7].
Amen!