A "New Age" or "Messianic Age": How to Bring It Into Being

A New Age or Messianic Age:

How to Bring It Into Being

Eric Heubeck

Copyright © 2018 by Eric Heubeck. Some rights reserved.

Permission is freely granted to readers to reproduce and distribute this book or portions thereof, as well as to create and distribute derivative works, provided that you include attribution and a hyperlink directing persons to my book in its entirety, and that the book, book portion, or derivative work is not offered for sale and users are not otherwise charged to access the material. If you do make the book, a book portion, or a derivative work publicly available, please be sure to include with it a copy of this copyright and license notice, which also requires that all subsequent reproductions and derivative works carry the same copyright and license notice.

Permissions beyond the scope of this license can be requested by contacting me at https://AgainstTheLie.com/contact.

Smashwords edition. Last revised July 16, 2019.

Please note that if you are reading this book in the form of an ebook, it is best viewed on a device or application that is able to display colors other than only black and white. The book contains many passages from the Bible, and all of the text from the Bible contained in block quotations has been colored red, in order to create visual contrast between the Bible text and my own bracketed insertions (which have been colored black) within those block quotations. It is not strictly impossible to read the book in black and white only, but — as you will quickly discover for yourself once you start reading some of the block quotations in Part 3 of the book — the reading is made considerably more difficult.

Contents

Part 1 of 12: The impossibility of any New Age or Messianic Age ever arriving before humanity has already defeated the Lie

Rational thought demands complete honesty in society

And the prophets of the traditional religions have predicted the eventual arrival of that very thing

Concerning predictions about a resurrection of the dead

Part 2 of 12: The evils of religious esotericism; and the hidden anti-esotericist message of the Bible

The fundamental moral defectiveness of the traditional religions

The great paradox of the Bible; and how that paradox points to the possibility of non-human influence in its writing

The Bible: Two books, not just one

The importance of Christians accepting the non-historicity of Jesus

Why would the anti-esotericist message in the Bible be hidden?

Do the Lord of the Rings movies also contain a hidden anti-esotericist message?

Part 3 of 12: Getting started with anti-esotericist Bible interpretation: The crucially important symbol of Babel or Babylon, and the crucially important theme of a primordial confusing of language

Babel or Babylon: A symbol for religious esotericism

The obscurity and darkness of symbolic Babel or Babylon; and the clarity and brightness of the symbolic new Jerusalem

Part 4 of 12: The recurring theme in the Bible of two sides or two parts; and its relation to scripture and language

Two heavens and two earths — and two scrolls

The two sides: here OR there versus here AND there

The fulfilling of prophecy through the hearing of prophecy

Part 5 of 12: The recurring theme in the Bible of two sides or two parts; and its relation to scripture and language (cont’d)

Parts and portions and shares: The use of the Greek word meros in the New Testament

The episode in the Book of Acts involving Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch

The wholeness of the inner garment

The outer darkness

The Parable of the Prodigal Son

The holy scriptures: A book of divorce?

Symbolic Babel or Babylon: A kingdom divided against itself

Part 6 of 12: The symbolic image of throwing stones into water: What does it mean?

Moses’s breaking of the first two stone tablets from Mount Sinai — and its significance

Jeremiah’s message to symbolic Babel or Babylon

Symbolic Babel or Babylon: A very large stone to be thrown into the sea

Mount Sinai: Yet another very large stone to be thrown into the sea

Part 7 of 12: The symbolic image of throwing stones into water: What does it mean? (cont’d)

Throwing stumbling blocks into the sea or the lake of the fire

The symbol of the large millstone compared to the symbol of the large round stone covering the entrance to Jesus’s tomb

Part 8 of 12: The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ: The completion of the first sabbath week of creation, and the inauguration of a new sabbath week of creation

The opening of the tomb and the opening of the scroll

From sabbath to sabbath

Part 9 of 12: Veiling and covering — and unveiling and uncovering

The veil that now covers all the earth

A choice between two high mountains: The Tower of Babel and Mount Zion

The recurring association in the Bible between the idea of the Lie and the idea of death

The sweeping away of the Lie, and the bringing of the mystery of God to an end

The darkness over all the earth created by the veil of the temple; and this darkness being brought to an end by the Crucifixion of Christ

The putting on and putting off of symbolic garments, symbolic bodies, and symbolic men

The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ regarded as a symbol signifying the ending of communicatory barriers among human beings

Part 10 of 12: Veiling and covering — and unveiling and uncovering (cont’d)

Not turning back to the things behind: The significance of symbolic Sodom and its relation to the idea of the Apocalypse

Faces, veils, mirrors — and recognition

The Red Sea: The veil of Jesus’s flesh?

What exactly is being done away with (Greek katargeō) by Christ?

Part 11 of 12: Jesus Christ: The Final Prophet

The role (or roles) of the figures of John the Baptist and Elijah

Corpses, birds, and feeding upon flesh

The piercing of the prophets

Correspondences between the figures of Jesus Christ and Elijah

The Crucifixion of Christ understood as signifying the death of prophecy

Part 12 of 12: So where do we go from here?

Where to find other writings of mine

Part 1 of 12: The impossibility of any New Age or Messianic Age ever arriving before humanity has already defeated the Lie

In this series of articles, I will explain to you how — according to both rational thought and the Bible — our present age must come to an end, in order to make it possible for a New Age or Messianic Age to come into being.

The present age cannot end, and a New Age or Messianic Age cannot begin, until all people, around the world, learn to regard honesty as the most important virtue, in which all other virtues, and all other good things in life, ultimately find their source. In other words, a New Age will come into being only if the Lie has been eliminated once and for all as an active force in the world — and not before then. (Since the elimination of the Lie is not something that would occur overnight, we can expect that the transition from the present age to a New Age would be a somewhat gradual one. But even so, I think that once it got underway, the transition would occur more quickly than some people might suppose.)

To put it as simply as possible, a New Age or Messianic Age cannot come into being unless a sufficient number of people agree to stop lying, to stop tolerating lying, and to stop tolerating people who tolerate lying (as I explain in more detail in my introduction to the honesty culture strategy). That’s really all it boils down to. It’s not especially complicated (that is, unless you wish to make it complicated). The word intolerance has gotten a bad name in recent times; but when it comes to promoting honesty, being intolerant is nothing to be ashamed of — since a society’s very cohesion and survival depends upon it.

But if your reflexive response to my proposal that we all work together to eliminate the Lie was to frantically think to yourself, "But that’s so … unrealistic! — well then, you can say good-bye to any possibility of a Messianic Age or a New Age or a Second Coming of Christ or a day of the Lord (or whatever equivalent name you choose to give it) ever arriving. If saying good-bye to that possibility troubles you in the least, then you may want to start rethinking your assumptions about what is and is not truly realistic — since, if people are not genuinely willing to oppose dishonesty with all of their heart and might, then the simple fact is that all of the wishing and hoping and praying in the world won’t bring that glorious Messianic Age or New Age" into existence. It can’t. You have free will, you’ve made your choice, and God and his angels are perfectly willing to respect that choice. Will human beings need yet another 2,000 years to finally figure that out? Or maybe 4,000? Or 6,000? God can wait.

So I wish to strongly emphasize that I am NOT announcing that any New Age or Messianic Age or Golden Age is now upon us. Whether or not we enter into such an age, and when, depends entirely upon the choices that individual persons freely make. I cannot predict when this New Age will arrive — only that when it finally does arrive, it will only be because human beings around the world have collectively made the decision to thoroughly eliminate dishonesty from their lives and affairs.

Rational thought demands complete honesty in society

Now, is my description of what would be required in order to bring a future New Age into existence solely a product on my own personal proclivities? In other words, do I just have a special thing for honesty that leads me to assign a higher importance to it than other values? Do I just happen to find honesty more to my liking than some other persons happen to find it? I say no. My insistence upon the extreme importance and centrality of thoroughgoing honesty in any future New Age is demanded by rational thought and by the very nature of things.

It is a sign of the perversity of humanity’s current collective thinking that it is even necessary for me to explain why thoroughgoing honesty is so essential to the successful functioning of a society — when it should really be quite obvious. The solving of problems in society — any problems — requires that there be communication between persons. But for communication to be helpful and productive, instead of harmful and destructive, it must be honest and non-misleading. Dishonest communication cannot be effective at solving problems; it can only create additional problems. So whatever you think is the biggest problem currently facing society, if you are thinking rationally, you should be even more concerned about addressing the more fundamental problem of dishonesty than you are about addressing that other problem, whatever it may be. Honest communication is the prerequisite to the solving of any social problem.

The reason for the perversity of humanity’s current collective thinking that I just mentioned is that humanity is currently caught in a kind of vicious circle, in that a general tolerance of dishonesty interferes with a society’s collective ability to think rationally; and so humanity, taken as a whole, is currently incapable of recognizing the sheer irrationality of continuing to tolerate dishonesty. There is simply no reason why any clear-thinking person would wish for society to continue tolerating the existence of dishonesty. Collectively speaking, we in no way benefit from doing so — and yet we do it anyway. It is because of the existence of the Lie that we are not able to think straight, and so we are not able to make the best decisions to advance our own true welfare.

And the prophets of the traditional religions have predicted the eventual arrival of that very thing

It is fortunate that the elimination of dishonesty in society is something not only called for by rational thought; the creation of completely honest human societies has also been predicted by many of the traditional world religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and Mahayana Buddhism. All of these religions profess belief in a future New Age, or Golden Age, or Messianic Age, or Age of Renewal, or Age of Restoration, or Age to Come, in which human beings would no longer lie to one another. So really, I am only reminding members of these and other traditional religions how their own conception of a New Age would have to be realized.

Since I mostly focus in this series of articles on examining writings from the Bible in particular, let me provide some evidence just from the Bible showing that the Messianic Age or Age to Come or New Age was understood by the authors of the Bible to be an age in which dishonesty and deception would no longer be practiced among human beings. There are many possible examples I could give, but I’ll give just a few. Starting with the Old Testament, Zephaniah 3:8-10,13, speaking of the day of the Lord, says,

Therefore wait for me, declares the Lord, until the day when I rise up to (seize) the prey. For my determination is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out upon them my rage, all my burning anger; for in the fire of my zeal all the earth will be consumed. For at that time I will return to the peoples a purified [or clarified, or brightened, or cleansed, or purged, or polished, or sincere: Hebrew barar] language, that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with a single accord. From beyond the rivers of Cush [or Ethiopia, or Sudan] my worshipers, the daughter of my scattered ones, shall bring my offering. … [T]hey shall do no injustice and speak no lies, nor shall there be found in their mouth a deceitful speech.

And Zechariah 8:14-17,19, also speaking of the Messianic Age that would follow upon the day of the Lord, says,

For thus says the Lord of hosts: As I purposed to bring disaster to you when your fathers provoked me to wrath, and I did not relent, says the Lord of hosts, so again have I purposed in these days to bring good to Jerusalem and to the house of Judah; fear not. These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace; do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the Lord. … Therefore love truth and peace.

As for the New Testament, let’s take a look at Revelation 21:7-8 — describing the appearance of the new Jerusalem or heavenly Jerusalem on earth, and the beginning of a New Age after the final defeat of the Devil — in which Jesus says,

The one who overcomes will inherit (all things), and I will be God to him and he will be a son to me. But to the cowardly, and the faithless [or untrustworthy: Greek apistos], and the detestable, and murderers, and the sexually immoral, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their share (will be) in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

Notice how the enumeration of types of sinful persons ends with "and all liars, indicating that the word liars" was being given special rhetorical emphasis by being set apart from all of the preceding words in the sentence — which may suggest that the author did not regard lying as merely one type of sin among many, but as the primary type of sin (perhaps because all other types of sin find their ultimate source in it).

We see the same method of rhetorical emphasis being used in Revelation 22:15 to highlight the crucial importance of falsehood:

Outside (of the new Jerusalem) (are) the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the sexually immoral, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and everyone loving and practicing falsehood.

And we again find the same focus on falsehood in Revelation 21:27, which says,

And nothing profane shall enter into (the new Jerusalem), nor those practicing abomination and falsehood; but only those having been written in the book of the life of the Lamb.

I think the Bible passages I’ve just quoted alone ought to be sufficient to satisfy Christians and Jews of the correctness of my claim that if any Messianic Age or New Age is to come into being at all, it will have to be an age in which, for all practical purposes, dishonesty and falsehood no longer exist.

I wish to make clear that I do not personally consider myself to be a Christian or a Jew or an adherent of any of the other traditional religions. But at the same time, I am not advocating the formation of any new super-religion (or anti-religion) that would incorporate and replace all of the existing, traditional religions. As I explain in the next installment in this series of articles, I do believe that all of the traditional religions need to be radically reformed; but it will have to be the members of those religions who do the reforming.

But if I am not a member of any of the traditional religions, then why do I care what they have to say about some future New Age? The answer is that the kind of future New Age that I personally foresee is substantially equivalent in its essence to the future New Age that religious prophets from all around the world have predicted for thousands of years. If those prophets have all defined that New Age as an age in which human beings would no longer lie to each other, and if the kind of society that I am envisioning meets that definition, then it must be acknowledged that — whatever name each of us chooses to give it — we are all actually talking about the same thing.

One of the primary arguments I wish to advance is that it is realistically possible for human beings to eliminate virtually all lying from human affairs — entirely through intelligently directed human effort. And that means I am also claiming that no New Age or Messianic Age can ever arrive if human beings fail to first eliminate the Lie — and eliminate it entirely through intelligently directed human effort.

If you are a member of one of the traditional religions, I wish to emphasize that embracing a willingness to work on bringing a New Age or Messianic Age into being by first eliminating the Lie entirely through human effort, does not imply unbelief in the existence of a supernatural realm, or a spirit realm, or divine providence. IF what I am saying is correct about the realistic possibility of eliminating the Lie solely through human effort and through the intelligent application of own native, God-given reason, then people can sit around and wait until the end of time for supernatural beings or angelic beings to bring the Messianic Age or Second Coming into existence on our behalf — and it will never, ever happen. That is because angelic beings are never going to force us to do something that we human beings could do ourselves — namely, eliminate the Lie — but simply choose not to do. In order for them to do that, they would have to completely override our free will — and if that were a live option for them, then they surely would have forced us to become their very well-behaved mind slaves a long, long time ago.

Members of traditional religions will need to make a very careful and thoughtful decision about whether or not I am correct when I claim that human beings have the realistic ability to eliminate virtually all lying among human beings even without the assistance (at least not the direct assistance) of any non-human supernatural beings — because whether or not the day of the Lord will ever arrive depends upon whether or not my claim is correct. Christians and Jews and members of other traditional religions thus have a very big personal stake in determining whether or not my claim is correct; because if they decide that my claim IS correct, and if they cannot think of any good reason why human beings could not eliminate virtually all dishonesty from human affairs if enough people decided to do so — and no, the mere fact that they have never seen it done before does not qualify as a good reason — then they would have to conclude that the only way in which the the day of the Lord or the New Age or the Messianic Age or the Second Coming could possibly arrive would be if they and other human beings made active efforts to make it arrive — specifically, by working to gradually eliminate the Lie from human affairs.

Those persons who are not actively trying to eliminate dishonesty in human society, but who at the same time accept their own religion’s teachings about a future New Age or Golden Age or Messianic Age that will someday arrive in which there will be no dishonesty, are effectively assuming that it is not possible for human beings to eliminate dishonesty without (direct) divine intervention. But I am arguing that that is simply not true — that human beings can indeed eliminate dishonesty solely through intelligently directed human effort. What specifically is stopping us? Is there some particular obstacle that stands in our way, one which only mighty angels supposedly have the ability to remove? If so, please identify it for me — since I can’t imagine what it might be.

However, if it is indeed realistically possible for human beings to eliminate dishonesty, but many people simply choose not to do so because doing so would require too much time and effort on their part, then those people are effectively hoping that God will make them honest against their will, since they are hoping to continue lying and tolerating lying as long as they possibly can (given how realistic and pragmatic they think they are being). But, once again, if God and his angels were willing to do that, then they surely would have done it long before now. (And do people really wish to believe that God and his angels would be willing to override our free will in that way?)

As I already indicated, Revelation 21:7-8 says that all liars would be kept out of the new Jerusalem. Are Christians assuming that they will be able to continue lying and tolerating lying until the new Jerusalem comes into being — at which point they will all be offered the chance to suddenly stop all lying and all tolerating of lying and then be admitted into the new Jerusalem? But if that is something that they were all able to do all along, then why hadn’t they done it sooner? Wouldn’t every person just choose to wait until everyone else had stopped lying before he himself would do so? Do human beings have absolutely no role to play in the creation of a future New Age by the exercise of their own free will? Do they see themselves as nothing more than passive, helpless observers? Do they wish to think of the virtue of honesty, and the happiness that universal honesty would make possible, as some gift that will simply be bestowed upon us from the supernatural realm at some point in the future — while we sit idly by until then?

Again, my goal is only to inform people that the elimination of the Lie purely through human effort — thus leading to the future dawning of a New Age or Messianic Age — is only a realistic possibility. It is not a certainty (at least not in the short run). People have their free will, and they can always choose (foolishly, in my view) not to defeat the Lie if that is their preference. And in practice, people do often make that choice, mainly by rushing — almost in a kind of panic — to insist upon the impossibility of eliminating lying even before they’ve given the matter any careful thought, because they feel so certain that human beings (when what they’re really thinking about here is themselves) could simply never keep up in a dog-eat-dog world if they had to give up their lying ways and their willingness to tolerate the lying ways of others.

Such people are effectively addicted to the Lie in a manner comparable to someone with a gambling addiction. On average and over time, the house always wins. And in the same way, the average person is not benefited by permitting any unjustifiable lying to exist in his society. But those times when a particular lie, just like a particular gambling bet, does pay off for a person makes such a big impression on his unconscious memory that he loses sight of the big picture; and the result is that he is unable to realize that, on the whole and in the long run, permitting the practice of lying in his society actually makes him worse off. And when lots of people are thinking in this same way at the same time, it makes it considerably easier for those people to convince themselves, and each other, that lying really does work — when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

Concerning predictions about a resurrection of the dead

It must be noted that some of the traditional religions, such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Zoroastrianism, claim that the advent of their conception of a future New Age would, in addition to the elimination of the Lie, also involve a resurrection of the dead. And I must admit that I personally have a hard time believing that any literal resurrection of the dead will occur, at least while we are still in this particular mode of life or on this particular plane of existence. I suspect that talk about a resurrection of the dead was originally meant to be understood in a figurative or poetic or metaphorical sense, and gradually, as time went on, its meaning became misunderstood. And I think my suspicious attitude is forgivable, given the existence of passages in the Bible such as Matthew 8:21-22:

And another of (Jesus’s) disciples said to him, Lord, first allow me to go off and bury my father. And Jesus said to him, Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.

I think everyone can agree that literal dead people can’t literally do things like literally burying other literal dead people. So this passage must be read figuratively — which leads me to be inclined to interpret the idea of a resurrection of the dead figuratively as well.

If I am wrong, however, and the advent of a future New Age would involve a very literal resurrection of the dead (in this mode of life, that is), then in that case it would of course be true that no New Age could be brought into existence solely through human effort. But the fact still remains (according to my argument) that it is realistically possible to create a world virtually free of lying solely through intelligently directed human effort. So even if human effort alone is not sufficient to bring a New Age (as some religious people might conceive of a New Age) into existence, it will at least be a necessary factor in bringing it into existence. Therefore we should all begin by devoting ourselves to creating a world free of lying and dishonesty; and then we will be in a much better position to learn whether the resurrection of the dead spoken of by some of the traditional religions was meant to be understood literally or figuratively after all. In either case, we will all have made our world a much better place in which to live than it currently is.

Finally, some readers might be thinking: If what you’re saying about eliminating the Lie is actually realistically possible, then why didn’t people just do it a long time ago? The answer, I believe, is that the traditional religions — the very religions that predicted that the Lie would someday be eliminated — have themselves always been standing in the way of that happening.

In the next installment in this series of articles, I will explain why I believe the world’s traditional religions are the ultimate source of the dishonesty in the world — but also why I believe they have provided us with a potentially powerful solution to the very problem that they have created and been sustaining.

Part 2 of 12: The evils of religious esotericism; and the hidden anti-esotericist message of the Bible

The fundamental moral defectiveness of the traditional religions

In the previous installment in this series of articles, I mentioned that I was not a member of any of the world’s traditional religions. You may be wondering why that is.

I oppose all traditional religions in their current forms because they are all esoteric. That means that the sacred and authoritative writings of these religions involve a splitting of meaning in the language that they use, into inner meanings (i.e., "esoteric meanings") and outer meanings (i.e., "exoteric meanings"). The outer meanings usually have the effect (and often the purpose as well) of deceiving or misleading the average reader of these writings by concealing the true inner meanings from them. And so, by the traditional religions having established writings of this kind as their sacred scriptures, if any of these religions were to choose to strenuously oppose the existence of dishonesty and insincerity among its own members, the end result would be the religion’s own self-annihilation — which is why none of them has ever chosen to strenuously oppose dishonesty and insincerity among its own members — and also why none of them ever will.

It is of course true that all of the traditional religions denounce dishonesty in their scriptures. But the problem is that none of them is consistently opposed to it — partly due to their esoteric nature, and partly for other reasons. (As far as I have been able to determine, the religion that comes closest to consistent opposition to lying and dishonesty is Zoroastrianism. But alas, it too is an esoteric religion, which makes it fundamentally defective along with the others.) Honesty is seen by these religions as being just one positive value among many — one which the other values can be balanced against whenever it is deemed to be prudent to do so. Honesty is not considered to be an absolute value, one which can never be compromised.

I explain my position with regard to the moral defectiveness of esoteric religion in somewhat more depth in my article "How religious esotericism is really just a form of lying." I cannot stress enough how important the argument is that I make in that article. It is the axiomatic starting point for all of the other arguments that I make and the positions that I take with regard to the Bible-based religions and all of the other traditional, esoteric religions. My entire thesis presented in this series of articles hinges on the validity of the argument that I make in that writing — so please take the time to read it carefully before going any further with reading the articles in this series. If you are at all inclined to doubt or disagree with my claim that religious esotericism is intrinsically deceptive and misleading (and therefore deserving of being opposed and rejected), then I strongly urge you to read that article as many times as you need to until you are convinced that I am correct about that claim; because I feel certain that the argument I make in that writing is definitive and irrefutable: The Bible (at the very least, the Christian Bible) openly endorses the use of deceptive and misleading ways of communicating. That is simply a fact. The only question remaining to Christians (and others) is whether or not they will choose to find that fact objectionable.

Everyone assumes that it’s the job of the traditional religions to fight against the Lie as part of their more general mission to fight against immorality — because they have worked so very hard to convince people that it’s their exclusive task, and so they’ll take care of it — but it’s a task that they, by their very nature, are simply not equipped to carry out. That is the reason why humanity has so far never been able to bring a full and final end to the Lie. It is not — as the leaders of the traditional religions would like people to believe — because of original sin, or because there are just so many people in the world who viscerally hate God, or who refuse to submit to God’s will. The leaders of those religions are just making excuses for their own failures by casting the blame for those failures on the very people they are supposed to be serving. (Cf. Jeremiah 50:6-7.) Esoteric religious discourse is not merely one kind of deceptive or misleading communication; it is the most dangerous kind, because it is what prevents humanity from eliminating all of the other kinds. So long as religions remain esoteric in nature, the Lie simply cannot be defeated.

It is my own personal belief that the existence of the Lie is ultimately what makes all human evil possible (which is not to say that if the Lie ceased to exist tomorrow,