Knights Templar in 250 Facts

[RolandVT]

To understand the drama of Knights Templar, you must understand the drama of the Ark of the Covenant. To understand the drama of the Ark of the Covenant, you have to understand the drama of Jewish people – and of the whole human history.

Starting, of course, with the drama (grandiose drama, as it turned out) of Fall from Grace. The fall that became (almost) suicidal for human race.

Fall from Grace (Fall of Man, Fall of Adam, or simply The Fall) refers to a genuinely catastrophic (and almost instant) transition – “negative quantum leap” – of the whole human race (God simultaneously created many thousands of human beings) from the State of Grace to (almost) complete lack of thereof.

At first (right after their creation by God), Adam and Eve – in reality many thousands of human beings lived in what the Bible calls Garden of Eden in the fullness of Divine Grace (spiritual energy vital for very survival of a human being).

Apparently, they succumbed to some temptation (portrayed in Genesis as a proverbial serpent) and were expelled from the Garden of Eden… and thus from Divine Grace.

In practical terms, it meant that with each consecutive generation, the “energy channel” of Divine Grace that connected humans to God gradually became weaker and weaker and weaker (which in Genesis is reflected by every next life being shorter than the previous).

Until this (original) energy channel got so weak that the amount of Divine Grace received by every human on Earth got critically low. Which brought the whole humankind dangerously close to extinction. Self-inflicted extinction, to be honest.

God was committed to prevent it from happening (i.e., to save humankind – it would not be the last time) … so He had to create the “replacement energy channel” of Divine Grace.

Apparently, at the time it was possible only by making a certain nation (tribe, actually) His Chosen People – and use them as the conduit of Divine Grace. For reasons still unknown, he chose the tribe led by chieftain by the name of Abram.

Who subsequently became Abraham – patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and the founding father of the special relationship between God and the Jews.

God’s Chosen People.

[RolandVT]

God did not bother to explain to us why He chose Abram to make him patriarch of Jewish nation and of three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and the founder of the special relationship between God and the Jews.

All we know that one day, completely out of the blue,

“… the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation…” (Genesis 12: 1-2, Didache Bible)

Abram obliged (did he have a choice???) … and the rest is history. I personally believe (as it is God’s Standard Operating Procedure) that God specifically created (and groomed) Abram for this very purpose.

However, before He could make Abram patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (three monotheistic religions), He had to convert the latter from religion that Abram (like everyone else in that land) was worshipping.

Cult of Baal. Moloch. The Devil.

[RolandVT]

Biblical account in Genesis 22: 1-2 is straightforward:

“God called to him, “Abraham!” And Abraham said, “Here am I.” God said, “Take your son, your only-begotten son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you”

To properly understand this passage and the whole story of “burnt offering” of Isaac (thankfully, it never took place), you must understand that the Old Testament is NOT a history textbook.

In reality, it is a book of historical (and religious) fiction based on true stories. In other words, a collection of fictionalized (often heavily fictionalized) true stories. Which means that in order to extract truth from these stories, you need to use scientific approach of history, psychology, theology, etc.

The sad truth is that at the time Abraham was a pagan. A polytheist who worshipped a whole pantheon of gods… including Baal (Moloch). One really horrible dogma of cult of Baal/Moloch was that at the time of crisis the chieftain of the tribe (in this case, Abraham) had to sacrifice his firstborn child (not necessarily male) to Moloch. By burning him alive (hence “burnt offering”).

Abraham was talking to a different god – Jehovah (the chief god of the tribe that he belonged to). Those days it was normal for such a god to command the chieftain of the tribe to perform a human sacrifice to a somewhat higher god (Baal/Moloch) … and for the chieftain to oblige. Hence, Abraham offered no resistance.

Abraham prepared the sacrifice according to “Baal/Moloch Rite” (Genesis 22: 9-10)

“When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. Then Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son”

Author(s) of Old Testament for obvious reasons (not to inflict severe psychological trauma on women and children who would listen to public readings of Torah in the synagogues) deliberately softened the narrative. The “Baal/Moloch Rite” required the child to be burned alive during the ceremony of human sacrifice.

But then something very, very unexpected happened (Genesis 22: 11-13):

“But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And Abraham said, “Here am I.” Angel said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now, I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only-begotten son, from me.”

And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son”

And that was the end of human sacrifice in Abraham’s tribe – which immediately made him and his tribe different from every nation in the land who continued to perform human sacrifice for centuries (until Romans and other progressors did away with this genuinely diabolical practice).

Then Jehovah (via His angel) made a solemn promise (Genesis 22:17-18)

“I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore… and by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves”

In practice, it meant that the descendants of Abraham (i.e., Jews) will become a conduit of Divine Grace for the whole mankind – and thus genuine saviors of the latter (which makes anti-Semites very, very wrong). However, to make it happen, God had to make them ones – and take care of a genuinely existential problem.

The problem of the Church of Moloch.

[RolandVT]

On the surface, Old Testament is mostly the history of a millennia-long struggle (practically, a religious war) between Jewish monotheists (who worshipped Jehovah) and Jewish pagans – who worshipped a whole pantheon of gods.

Reality, however, was much worse – it was a religious war between monotheists and devil-worshippers; between those who worshipped God and those who (often unconsciously, but it did not matter) worshipped Devil.

After God converted Abraham to monotheism, the latter converted his whole tribe… or so it seemed. Because some of his tribesmen only pretended to convert to monotheism – in reality they continued to worship Baal. Moloch. The Devil.

And ultimately created the secret Church of Moloch (that’s the way I called it – I have no idea how it was… and possibly still is called). Religious organization that became the curse of Jewish people for millennia.

Another sad truth is that blood libel – the antisemitic belief that Jews murder Christians (mostly Christian children) in order to use their blood in the performance of religious rituals is (hopefully, was) partially true.

It is a sad truth that a very, very small number of individuals of Jewish blood have been performing human sacrifice – murdering Christian children (rarely adults) for religious reasons.

However, they were not Jews by religion; they were not members of Jewish communities or the Jewish nation… in fact, they were the sworn, existential enemies of all of the above – as well as of the whole mankind.

They were the members of secret (underground) Church of Moloch that had been in existence for millennia – till mid-1940’s, most likely. It never had more than a few dozen members worldwide (a hundred or so at most) – and some of these members did perform human sacrifice for Baal. Moloch. The Devil.

But their ambitions went far, far further. They wanted to either convert Jews back to the cult of Baal/Moloch (in that they failed miserably, thank God) or highjack Jewish religion (the jury is still out on this one – although they most likely failed as well) to use God’s Chosen People for exactly the opposite purpose.

Take control of the whole world – and deliver it to their master the Devil. To transform our planet into a genuine Hell on Earth. God could not allow that – so he create two very powerful weapons for saving the Jews and the world.

Mosaic Law and the Ark of the Covenant.

[RolandVT]

Due to diabolical activities of Church of Moloch and many other factors (the most important one being probably occupation by pagan Romans), power of “Jewish channel of Divine Grace” had been gradually declining and by 4 BC or so decreased to a critically low level.

So, God had no other choice to send His only Son – Jesus Christ – to fix this channel. Unfortunately, He wanted to achieve fart more than that – He wanted to transform the whole Earth into a “New Eden” (sort of Kingdom of Heaven on Earth) using Jewish nation as His primary tool (weapon, actually).

To His great surprise, Jews rejected His idea – together with His Son. In other words, they flatly refused to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Messiah – and to become the major tool of transforming (reengineering) the world into a New Eden.

True, diabolical (serpent-style) propaganda of the Church of Moloch (which at that time essentially controlled Jewish secular and religious authorities) did play a major part in this decision… but the primary reason was that Jews had a very simple, primitive and down-to-earth desire – obtain freedom from Rome.

And when they finally understood that Jesus would not give them that, they overwhelmingly supported (practically 100% of them) the decision of their secular and religious leaders to convince Roman governor to murder Jesus on the cross (let’s call a spade a spade).

However, by rejecting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Messiah, Jews automatically shut down the “energy channel” of Divine Grace (and thus made the Ark of the Covenant totally useless for them).

Worse, they lost God’s protection from their own catastrophic mistakes. Not surprisingly, they quickly made one – launched the Great Jewish Revolt (which became known as First Jewish-Roman war). It was a genuinely disastrous blunder as in the flat terrain of Palestine even the most dedicated, fierce and skilled Jewish warriors were no match for the murderous military machine of Rome.

Not surprisingly, the result was… essentially the First Holocaust of the Jews (out of three committed by Romans). About 200,000 Jews died (almost half of Jewish population of Palestine) and 100,000 or so were sold into Roman slavery.

Jerusalem was razed to the ground – and so was the Second Temple. Jewish elite collapsed and Sadducees and Essenes (two major Jewish religious sects) disappeared entirely.

And the Jews lost the Ark of the Covenant for good…

[RolandVT]

In Old Testament (pre-Christian) times, Divine Grace flowed from God via Ark of the Covenant to Jewish High Priest; from Jewish High Priest to the Levites (priestly tribe); from Levites to Jews (Jewish nation) and, finally, from Jews to entire world. Thus, Jews were genuine saviors of mankind so anti-Semites are dead wrong.

By rejecting Christ in 30 AD, Jews shut down this channel; worse (stirred by the Church of Moloch in their midst), Jewish radicals launched the “Christian Holocaust” project aimed at a total destruction of fledgling Christian Church – and thus transforming our world into a genuine Hell of Earth.

Transforming into Hell because the “Jewish channel” of Divine Grace was replaced by “Christian channel”. Now Divine Grace flowed from God the Heavenly Father via Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to Christian Church (priests, monks, nuns, etc.); from the Church to Christians (“New Israelites”) – and from Christians to the whole world (whole mankind).

Destruction of Christian Church (the #1 objective of devil-worshippers of the Church of Moloch) would have shut down this channel for good. Mankind would die spiritually from “spiritual suffocation” and thus would not be able to resist Devil and his servants. With obvious consequences.

Thus, Jewish radicals and the Church of Moloch were a genuinely existential threat to the whole mankind… and to the Jewish people. Fortunately, they failed in their endeavor; the Christian Church survived, took over the Western civilization (and subsequently of the Americas and other nations) and worked just fine as the channel of Divine Grace for two millennia.

Unfortunately, by the first decades of XXI century the Christian Church got so fragmented, corrupt and so “thiswordly” that it no longer can serve as a sufficiently powerful channel of Divine Grace. So, we, indeed, live in a post-Christian era – in terms of Divine Grace.

It appears that in order to our world from becoming a genuine Hell on Earth, a new channel of Divine Grace is needed. And thus, a new religion – and a new Church.

Ark- and Third Temple – centered religion based upon something like the Third Testament/Covenant between God and “New Israelites” – the group of individuals who found and acquired the Ark of the Covenant – appears to be the solution.

Hence, the Ark of the Covenant – very possibly a living, intelligent being – is waiting to be discovered and acquired by these “New Israelites”. In other words, is up for grabs by the latter.

[RolandVT]

To save our world from becoming Hell on Earth with “Jewish channel” of Divine Grace, God had to save the Jews (genuine saviors of mankind) first. To save the Jews, God had to (1) make sure that Jewish people stick to the right behavior; and (2) supply the Jews with the necessary amount of Divine Grace per second.

And the whole world – via the Jews. The first objective was accomplished with Mosaic Law (God’s Laws imposed on the Jews via Moses); the second one – with the Ark of the Covenant (built by the Jews on God’s orders).

Mosaic Law is spread among the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, and then reiterated and added to in Deuteronomy. It is quite comprehensive – it includes Ten Commandments followed by moral laws (on murder, theft, honesty, adultery, homosexuality, etc.); social laws (on property, inheritance, marriage, and divorce); food laws (on what is clean and unclean, on cooking and storing food); purity laws; religious feasts; instructions for the priesthood and the high priest and some other instructions.

The Ark of the Covenant (also known as the Ark of the Testimony or the Ark of God) was a large (3.75 x 2.25 x 2.25 feet) and heavy (about 200 pounds or 90 kg) wooden box (storage chest) decorated in solid gold accompanied by an ornamental lid known as the Seat of Mercy.

The ark contained three items: (1) Tablets of the Law – two stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments; (2) Aaron’s rod and (3) a pot of manna. However, it was not that important what the Ark was physically and what it contained – what was important was what it was.

The Ark of the Covenant was an integral part; a central component of the “Jewish channel” of Divine Grace. Which flowed from God the Heavenly Father via the Ark, Jewish High Priest and the Levites (Jewish priestly tribe) to the Jewish people and via Jewish people to the whole world – the whole mankind.

Thus, the Ark of the Covenant was, indeed, vitally, salvifically important to both the Jewish people and to the whole human civilization (even to diehard anti-Semites).

[RolandVT]

To understand the drama of Knights Templar, you must understand the drama of the Ark of the Covenant (yes, it was quite a dramatic story). To understand the drama of the Ark of the Covenant, you must understand the drama of Moses.

Just as with Patriarch Abram/Abraham, God did not bother to explain to us why He chose Moses to become his tool to dictate The Law to God’s Chosen People (the Jews) and to order the construction of the Ark of the Covenant. In other words, why He chose Moses to be His… I do not really like to call Moses a prophet.

For two reasons mostly; first, in a generally accepted meaning, “prophet” refers to an individual who makes highly important, global predictions of the future. Moses was nothing of the sort.

Second, even in a biblical sense, a prophet is someone who is regarded as being in contact with a divine being and is said to speak on behalf of that being, serving as an intermediary with humanity by delivering messages or teachings from the supernatural source to other people. The messenger, not the leader – and Moses was a leader… essentially the ruler of the Jewish people. Dictator, even.

Just as with Patriarch Abraham, I believe that God created Moses to be His tool for all of the above. In other words, Moses was born to be Moses… although initially it did not look like that at all. In fact, I was a miracle that he survived.

Moses’ mother hid him when Pharaoh ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed in order to reduce the population of the Israelites. Through Pharaoh’s daughter, the child was adopted as a foundling from the Nile and grew up with the Egyptian royal family.

After killing an Egyptian slave-master who was beating a Hebrew, Moses fled across the Red Sea to Midian, where he encountered the Angel of the Lord, speaking to him from within a burning bush on Mount Horeb.

God sent Moses back to Egypt to demand the release of the Israelites from slavery. After the Ten Plagues, Moses led the Exodus of the Israelites out of Egypt and across the Red Sea, after which they based themselves at Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments and the whole Mosaic Law.

After years of wandering in the desert (no, it was no 40 years, that number is allegorical), Moses died on Mount Nebo at the age of 120, within sight of the Promised Land.

But not before giving the Jews the whole body of Mosaic Law… and the order to build the Ark of the Covenant.

[RolandVT]

Except the one that places the Ark of the Covenant in underground chapel on Temple Mount in 587 BC – 1118 AD; in Templar headquarters in Jerusalem in 1118 – 1187 AD and in an underground chapel in Paris since then.

There is no shortage of theories of current whereabouts of the Ark of the Covenant; the four most prominent place it in Ethiopia, Zimbabwe (!), Rome or inside the Hill of Tara in Ireland.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (the largest of the Oriental Orthodox Churches) claims to possess the Ark of the Covenant in Axum (city in Northern Ethiopia). The Ark is allegedly kept under guard in a treasury near the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion and (of course) no one is allowed to see it.

How it ended up in Ethiopia? Tewahedo Church claims that the Ark was… well, stolen from the Jews (a replica was left in Solomon’s Temple) by allegedly first Ethiopian Emperor Menelik I and then brought to Ethiopia (after spending some time in Egypt). It was allegedly kept on the islands of Lake Tana in Ethiopia for about four hundred years and finally taken to Axum.

The Lemba tribe have claimed that their ancestors carried the Ark south, calling it the “voice of God”, eventually hiding it in a deep cave in the Dumghe mountains (in Zimbabwe) – their spiritual home.

How it ended up in Zimbabwe? It is alleged that the Ark was taken to Arabia following the destruction of Solomon’s Temple by Babylonians in 587 BC, and then brought to Yemen. Later, it was taken across the sea to East Africa and had been taken inland at the time of Great Zimbabwe.

Another tale claims that the Ark was kept within the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, surviving the pillages of Rome by Alaric I Gaiseric but was eventually lost when the basilica burned in the 5th century. How it ended up in Rome? It was brought there by Romans who found the Ark of the Covenant in the Second Temple before razing it to the ground in 70 AD.

None of the above is true because there is not even a shred of even a shred of a circumstantial evidence that something like that ever happened (the Irish theory is a total fairy tale).

The Book of 2 Maccabees 2:4–10, written around 100 B.C. claims that the prophet Jeremiah, following “being warned by God” before the Babylonian invasion, took the Ark, the Tabernacle, and the Altar of Incense, and buried them in a cave, informing those of his followers who wished to find the place that it should remain unknown “until the time that God should gather His people again together, and receive them unto mercy.”

Now this appears to be exactly what happened… only the authors of this book forgot to mention a little detail: the Ark of the Covenant was so vitally important that the High Priest of Jewish religion had been conducting rituals with the Ark of the Covenant non-stop even during Babylonian captivity of the Jews.

These rituals were so vitally important that stopping them (let alone moving the Ark of the Covenant from the territory of the Second Temple was out of the question completely).

Right until Roman legions stormed Jerusalem – and the Second Temple – on September 8th, 70 AD. Right before that date, the High Priest and his trusted associates sealed and disguised the entrance to the “Second Holy of Holies” under the Second Temple… and never returned.

No Jew returned, actually – the Ark was found by the ragtag team of knights-turned-archaeologists led by Hughes de Payens in 1118. It was held in a temporary hiding place until 1120 when Knights Templar got their permanent headquarters on Temple Mount.

The Ark of the Covenant was kept there (and used in the rituals of Ark Templar religion) until 1187 when the inevitable fall of Jerusalem to Saladin and his troops forced the templars to move it to their European headquarters in Paris.

There it was briefly used in Ark Templar rituals in the first nine months of 1307 – and after just about all Templars in France were arrested by the henchmen of King Philip IV, its location was lost… possibly forever.

Or until someone figures out the way to find and extract it.

[RolandVT]

As I have already said earlier, the Old Testament is a book of historical fiction inspired by true events. Or a collection of heavily fictionalized true stories, if you prefer (I do). And the Exodus from Egypt is a prime example.

The Exodus is the founding myth of the Israelites – cut and dry, plain and simple. The scholarly consensus is that the Exodus, as described in the Old Testament, is not historical, even though there may be a historical core behind the Biblical narrative… unfortunately, no one knows exactly what it was.

Modern archaeologists believe that the Israelites were indigenous to Canaan and were never in ancient Egypt, and if there is any historical basis to the Exodus it can apply only to a small segment of the population of Israelites at large.

Nevertheless, there is also a consensus that some historical event may have inspired these traditions, even if the Exodus narrative belongs to the collective cultural memory of the Jews rather than history.

Most scholars agree that the narrative has a historical core, and that some of the Jews came, one way or another, from Egypt. There is no indication that the Jews ever lived in Ancient Egypt, and the Sinai Peninsula shows almost no sign of occupation for the entire 2nd millennium BC.

In contrast to the absence of evidence for the Egyptian captivity and wilderness wanderings, there are ample signs of Israel’s Canaanite roots. While a few scholars continue to discuss the plausibility, of the Exodus story, the majority of archaeologists have abandoned it as a fruitless pursuit.

The biblical narrative contains some details which are authentically Egyptian, but such details are scant, and the story frequently does not reflect Egypt of the Late Bronze Age or even Egypt at all (it is unlikely, for example, that a mother would place a baby in the reeds of the Nile, where it would be in danger from crocodiles).

A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness.

Archaeologists generally agree that the Israelites had Canaanite origins. The culture of the earliest Israelite settlements is Canaanite, their cult-objects are those of the Canaanite gods, the pottery remains are in the Canaanite tradition, and the alphabet used is early Canaanite.