OCTOBER 20 2018
MURDER
In the Beginning: Cain murdered Abel.
Sarajevo 1914: Murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Istanbul 2018: Murder of Journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
GLOBE Twenty First Century: Murder of CREATION.
Cain murders his brother over a religious dispute.
In June 1914 a radical anarchist killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Their assassination in Sarajevo sparked a series of events that eventually led to World War I.
In October 2018, a Saudi murder squad, on orders of Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, known colloquially as MbS, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, killed journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who had criticized him, comparing him to Putin. This murder, I believe will lead to the dissolution of Saudi Arabia.
Creational Murder. Twice this year surveys have indicated that arthropods, invertebrates including insects that have external skeletons, are declining at an alarming rate. In Puerto Rico’s Luquillo rainforest with data taken during the 1970s scientists found that biomass had fallen 10 to 60 times. Identical declines have occurred in the lizards, frogs, and birds that eat arthropods. Over the past 30 years, forest temperatures have risen 2.0 °C, and studies indicate that Climate Heating is the driving force behind the collapse of the forest’s food web. Earlier surveys in Germany tell the same story. As the insects go, so do we.
Unintended consequences.
Abel’s death distorted creation forever.
The 1914 murder led to World War I, which killed millions of French, British, German and Russian soldiers. Its aftermath caused a complete realignment of the world, with the Austro-Hungarian Empire disappearing, countries splitting mostly along linguistic and ethnic lines, while the German African colonies were divided between France and Great Britain. The Czar was killed and Russia became a Communist state.
The harsh conditions imposed on Germany after WWI, eventually led to World War II, 1939-45, which again caused untold millions of death and wounded and the displacement of many more.
Saudi Arabia fuels the world. It has the largest deposits of precious petroleum of any nation. The world needs the Saudis and its ruler knows this all too well. It has filled MbS, that young Arab prince, with untrammeled hubris, thinking that he can get away with murder. Pride comes before the fall.
Cosmos-cide, due to our love for fossil fuels – of which a good portion originates in Saudi Arabia – spells the death of humanity, as EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING ELSE.
THE MURDEROUS 20TH CENTURY
In the years prior to World War I Europe was a divided continent. Kaiser Wilhelm was closely related to the British throne, an admirer of the Anglo-Saxon way of life, and fond of everything military. His status of high royalty had isolated him from common sense and thorough insight, which led to foolish actions and stubborn persistence in following the wrong path. His generals catered to his militaristic tendencies and encouraged his battle plans to attack France, prepared decades in advance.
Based on books such as Christopher Clark’s “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914” it is clear that, as Clark writes, the European leaders were “watchful but unseeing.” He feels that all world leaders then were equally foolish.
In “The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914” Margaret MacMillan wonders why this war occurred at all. In the years prior to 1914 there had been minor crises that had not burst into full-blown war such as in the Balkans, Bosnia, and Morocco. These incidents actually had brought a new dedication to defusing conflicts, as Andrew Carnegie and Alfred Nobel bent all their powers toward promoting peace, yet this GREAT WAR happened for no real apparent reason. She concludes that Germany was more responsible for starting the 1914-18 conflict than France or England, whose commercial interests too played a role.
World War II was a direct consequence of World War I. Eric Hobsbawm, a noted historian, saw World War I and World War II as one event, also expressing the belief that the 20th Century started in 1914, and ended in 1989, with the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire, making it the shortest century in human memory.
Including the HOLOCAUST an estimated 100 million people died violently in the 20th Century, ten percent of those alive in the year 1900.
The 1989-2018 Interlude.
I am now starting to see that 1989-2018 is merely an interlude to the LAST EPOCH OF HUMANITY, with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and the global incidence of COSMO-CIDE as opening bells.
So what is my reasoning?
There is mounting evidence that Mohammed bin Salman, de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia sent a 15-man death squad to the Saudi consulate, armed with a bone saw, to murder and dismember Khashoggi, who was a member of an influential and prominent Saudi family.
This past week I had an almost 2 hour discussion over coffee with a friend, a retired Political Science Professor at McGill and the University of Toronto, centering solely on Jamal Khashoggi. He feels, and I concur, that dismembering his body, allegedly while he was still alive, portrays a religious fanaticism and a heinous hatred, that suggests that these murderers wanted to expunge the very soul from his body.
In the Middle East history as we know it began started with a murder fueled by religious differences when Cain killed Abel.
I also believe that there, in the Middle East, history as we know it, will end.
That needs clarification.
I believe that Khashoggi was killed, with one of the reasons being religion. I base this on the fact that Muslims, like Christians, believe in an afterlife.
Khashoggi’s death, as reported, suggests a religious ritual, an exorcizing execution as he was seen as an infidel/dissident. His torment was cruel. First his fingers were cut off, so that he could not write anymore; then his tongue was removed, so that he could not speak anymore; then his head was severed so that he could not think anymore. Perhaps they also cut off his penis. Yes, as my wise friend suggested: it was a ritual murder.
We also wondered why Khashoggi entered the consulate at all, suggesting a naivety that led to his death. It seems to me that he had a close friend there, a Judas, on whom he relied for security, and that this man betrayed him.
Khashoggi was no innocent, knew the workings of the Saudis. He was intimately acquainted with the methods the Saudi consuls and ambassadors employed. He himself had worked in two of them: Washington and London. He knew the beast, the way it thought, the way it acted, the way it smelt.
He also thought he knew the rules. He had worked for Turki bin Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief. The rules of the game were brutal, but they were rational. There were clear red lines. If you knew about them, you could calculate the risks you were taking.
Totally unaware.
Khashoggi had just bought a flat in Istanbul. He was going to get married the day after. The couple was still waiting for the furniture to arrive. He might have thought the worst they would do was to question him. But would he have risked kidnap, let alone his life, for a piece of paper that would allow him to remarry in Turkey? My learned friend suggested that they could have gone to Las Vegas to be married, if they really wanted to be formally united.
Khashoggi told his friends that he had left the kingdom because he could not stand the prospect of prison. That was why he felt a moral duty to speak out. If he was free, and thousands like him languished in jail, then it was his duty to speak.
I believe Khashoggi’s murder was a sacrificial act, carried out by a religious fanatic, a man for whom there was no rationality, no rules, no restraint, a man who could act with total impunity, and from whom no one was safe.
I believe that the 33 year old Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, by ordering Khashoggi’s execution, has unleashed Satanic forces, and sealed his own death sentence, and, since he has a wide following, the entire Saudi Arabian ruling clan is in disarray, especially since the country is so religiously divided. It has a sizable Shia minority of roughly 10 percent and also millions of adherents of a puritanical brand of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism that is an enemy of Shia Islam, the ruling religion there.
Tom Freedman of the New York Times writes, “I believe that the promise of M.B.S….. is finished. He’s made himself radioactive. All of his reforms had intense conservative opponents. This is not Denmark, and yet, without sweeping social, economic and religious reforms, Saudi Arabia could well become a huge failed state. Remember, one of ISIS’ biggest sources of young recruits was Saudi Arabia…..It’s a mess….”
The Middle East: as the cradle of life, is it also its death scene?
What will happen? Why do I see this event as so calamitous?
I believe that Mohammed bin Salman’s actions will lead to a religious civil war within Saudi Arabia, a nation already at extreme odds with itself. The fuse is creeping not only to this brazen prince, but also to the oil riches the nation hoards, a substance the world cannot do without. Civil wars are among the most cruel, the most atrocious, the most ferocious of all conflicts.
This comes at a time when we see that world-wide RELIGIOUS OPINIONS are becoming more entrenched: people are becoming more fanatic and less accommodating.
So, yes, I see a fitting parallel with Cain and Abel, with 1914 and Sarajevo, an unfortunate murder which made the 20th Century the bloodiest epoch ever, with 100 million people dying in or because of war. I believe that the murder of Jamal Khashoggi will unleash an even greater fury, unparalleled in human history.
Why?
At stake is the fate of the world, because the world’s fuel is in danger. Once the globe’s population is deprived of the billions of barrels of Saudi oil, the West will starve in a matter of months.
Combine that with CREATION lacking its POLLINATORS, and thus preventing fruits and grains from forming, together with abrupt warming from exploding Arctic methane, and the doom of society is certain.
God’s Providence.
The Lord, in his wisdom, after the FLOOD, foresaw all this. He solemnly promised never to destroy the earth again. That doesn’t mean that the earth is now safe. No, as Bonhoeffer writes in CREATION AND FALL, “The extent of the (human) fall is such that it affects the whole created world.”
God voluntarily surrendered his ownership of the earth and let humanity have its way. As Roman 6: 23 tells us that “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” These wages include the death of creation, for which we are responsible.
MURDER
In the Beginning: Cain murders Abel.
Sarajevo 1914: Murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Istanbul 2018: Murder of Journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
GLOBE, Twenty First Century: Murder of CREATION.
The world is a wicked place. Its wickedness will cause it to be destroyed. “Stronger than Lover’s Love is Lover’s Hate: incurable, in each, the wounds they make”, wrote Poet Euripides 2400 years ago. The love so evident in the Garden of Eden turned into hate for God, for humanity and creation. The unfortunate consequence of sin is death. Fortunately God has made exceptions: “the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
By the grace of God the incurable becomes curable. The wounds we make and have made throughout the ages in ourselves, in others and in creation can be healed when we turn to Jesus, the Redeemer.
That’s what makes John 3: 16 such an important text in the Bible. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”.