The first cathedrals were built in Britain between 600 and 680 AD. With the arrival of the Normans in the conquest of 1066, came their skills with stone. Soon the Norman cathedrals were rising across Britain. Unlike with Blair and Thatcher, some of the changes the Normans brought to Britain were for the better. (NORMAN !!!) The second Lincoln Cathedral was rendered rubble by an earthquake on 15th April 1186. But a new one arose. It reached its peak with the completion of the great spire in the central tower in 1311. 10.35.40.

According to conventional dating, the Great Pyramid was completed in 2580 BC, although I suspect the correct dating is the alternative hypothesis of c.10,500 BC. So for the first time in at least four millennia, the tallest building on earth was not the Great Pyramid at 495 feet, but the top of the spire of Lincoln Cathedral, now at 525 feet. But those two buildings had much in common. Both owed a lot to God’s inspiration. They were symbols of man’s concern for his Maker and his hope for an existence beyond the grave. Lincoln Cathedral, on its mound, soared above the town of Lincoln, just as did the towers and spires of Durham Cathedral far to the north.

For two centuries that central wooden spire stood, sheathed in lead. But to the years of increasing neglect were added the stress of a storm in 1549 which brought the spire crashing down. The cathedrals were all falling into disrepair. Fewer people cared about the reality of God. The rich especially found other outlets for their resources. They began to build palaces for themselves. The Church of England had come into existence only sixteen years before the great spire fell at Lincoln. The churches were corrupt. Everyone knew that. So Henry VIII used that excuse to plunder the monasteries and reward his cronies with plate and lands.

But the new Church, although enlivened by Tyndale’s Bible and Cranmer’s Prayer Book, still retained too much of its past corruption. Now the bishops, no longer celibate, cared for their sons’ needs and the dowries of their daughters with church money. One by one the spires came down, because of neglect, some by act of God, others demolished by the hand of man.

With the Reformation came the new thinking, the Enlightenment. Science was making rapid headway. Soon men began to understand much about their world and the worlds which travelled slowly across the heavens. Galileo built on the work of Copernicus and declared that the sun was the focus of our part of the universe, not the Earth. Our planet was just one of six which revolved around the great star. The Church was affronted and forced his recanting.

But the damage was done. More and more questions were being asked which religions could not answer. Man’s scientific observations began to contradict the Bible. Although poetically beautiful, those opening verses of Genesis could not be literally true. And if that was not true, how much else of the Bible could not be literally true? So much of the Old Testament was in great doubt, scientifically speaking, much more morally speaking.

There was a crisis of faith which affected men like Frederick Myers and Professor Henry Sidgwick. They were walking in the Fellows’ Garden at Trinity College, Cambridge in December 1869. Looking up at the clear stars, they could not somehow believe that it was just a machine, that there was no Mind behind it all. Both men were interested in Psychical Research. Perhaps in that field lay answers which might restore faith. And they were right.

It was only fifty years since the spires on the towers on the great west face of Lincoln Cathedral had been taken down. In a way, it was almost an admission of defeat. In 1882, with others, they founded the Society for Psychical Research and attempted to introduce the methods of science to the study of paranormal phenomena. William Crookes, like me a chemical physicist, was another man notable in this field of research, as was the physicist Oliver Lodge.

But the SPR never really made headway with the skeptics, and most scientists are numbered amongst the latter. Now the SPR is run by them. Seven years after the SPR was founded, the world’s tallest building title passed for the first time to an edifice which relied on the technology of the industrial age. The Eiffel Tower was made of iron and in 1887 rose to a height of ……. feet.

Then came the era of the high rise concrete and steel buildings, the skyscrapers of the New World. In 1930, the Empire State Building was topped out at 1250 feet.

Remember Galileo and his primitive telescopes, through which he could not resolve the rings of Saturn. He postulated that Saturn had a near neighbour which mysteriously vanished and reappeared. Only in 1655 was Huygens able to explain the disappearing neighbour. His superior telescope enabled him to postulate the rings which he first reported in coded form in case he was wrong. (Britannica - Saturn, Volume 20, 1963)

In 1933, a great white spot appeared on Saturn. In that ancient Encyclopaedia Britannica, the images are shown. The peak image is for September 11th, 1933. Was this a sign of the ‘target’ linking to the inspiration in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel, 2001 - A Space Odyssey? Four other dates are shown, all of great importance in our Codes - August 9th, August 31st and September 6th.

The Empire State Building held the title of the world’s tallest building for almost 40 years, until the two new towers rose on the World Trade Centre. That building was completed on 14th December 1970, having reached 1353 feet. It was those two towers that were brought down by a Hammer of God in the form of Mohamed Atta and his small squadron of two planes, on 11th September 2001.

The Eiffel Tower and the skyscrapers symbolised the New Order. Technology was king, but money was god. What need was there of spiritual matters when all the pleasures of the flesh were there for the taking for those who had money? The poor flocked from Europe to experience the American dream, where opportunity was open to all. The poorest beggar could become the wealthiest man, if he would but work for it - or so the myth goes. There was no mention that one of the first requirements to get rich in America was to sell your soul. Now the life of idle luxury is peddled worldwide with all the crap which comes out of Hollywood in film, TV, DVDs…..The Indians, the Chinese, the Egyptians, and even the Iranians want to live like them. They imagine that all this nonsense is reality. The crime programmes hint at the dark underbelly of American society and the school shootings giving a tiny glimpse how sick that society really is, not to mention the vicious attitude of the American military in Iraq to ‘lower forms of life’ than Americans.

But Europe is little better. The main difference is that there are many fewer guns. Although a significant majority profess a belief in God, few show that belief has any reality in the way they live their lives. Ironically, the Americans are the loudest and most numerous in proclaiming their Christian beliefs and the first to send bombers to get revenge. They seem to have forgotten they were supposed to be Christians, not Jews. The Old Testament reeks of revenge. It is echoed in the tale of modern Israel. But the New Testament talks of forgiveness. That is not a feature of America at any time in its existence.

America behaves as though God is not real, despite the high church attendance. In fact, it is the rabid church-goers who support the most warmongering president in US history. So, is it any wonder that the skeptics, men like Richard Dawkins, point to religion and say that religion is the cause of more wars than anything else?

But the corruption of religion by man does not prove the absence of God. It merely indicates how little hope there is for man. God has inspired men throughout the millennia. A relative few have seen and understood. Most have not cared.

As man’s material wealth in this world has increased, his concern for his Maker has diminished. Mediaeval societies were poor, the houses often hovels. Yet the cathedrals were magnificent. Men really could stand in awe of their Maker.

Now everyone seeks a grand house for himself - or herself, especially, a sign of their own personal greatness. What need have they of something greater beyond? And if they do feel a real need to worship, there are the Posh & Becks, Brangelina, the Cruises, or even the dead gods. Only a few days ago, the pilgrims were at the shrine, with candle-lit vigils, to mark 30 years of Elvis’ passing.

Science has committed the ultimate folly of discrediting God and overcoming the natural controls by which god has regulated men for millennia. Disease and pregnancy kept the desires and the life spans, both of men and women, in check. What is more, men and women feared that at the end of life came the Judgement. The mediaeval morality plays were not called morality plays for nothing.

Science has helped eliminate morality by denying the existence of God. Now it is all a matter of what you can get away with. The many varieties of criminal gangs do less harm than the close-to-the-wind businessmen forever exploiting loopholes in the laws, changing laws to suit, all with the help of morality-free politicians, lawyers and accountants. The philosophy of the free marketers has made greed good, almost a duty. Now investors are portrayed almost as saints, instead of the greedy people they really are. We even have the concept of ‘angel’ investors!! Companies become ever bigger and inhuman in scale and purpose. It is all signs of the End Times in which we live. All the little cogs go about their business ‘helping’. “It is my duty….for my family.”

Science has done well. By eradicating disease, it has allowed populations to multiply, effort to be avoided by all in the rich societies of the west, thanks to labour-saving devices produced more and more in the poor societies of the east. But this is an utterly immoral and unjust world, and there is no free lunch. In the end, all the chickens come home to roost. Science has created this ‘heaven’ which will soon turn into the hell it really is.

Talking of chickens coming home to roost, remember the exhibition of Freedom in America when Professor Ward Churchill was sacked from his post at the University of Colorado for not thinking correctly. He wrote an essay entitled ‘Some People Push Back: On the justice of roosting chickens’ and a follow-up book saying that the September 11th terrorist attacks were a response to a long history of US abuses. Churchill said that those killed in the WTC collapse were a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global empire…. Clearly the freedoms American soldiers are dying for in Iraq don’t include freedom of speech or thought!

It is the biologists following Darwin who had done the most to damage conventional religion. According to them, we are not the products of some Great Mind, just the products of ‘chance evolution’. However far you go back, there is only ‘chance’. Darwin’s proponents have been very vocal in recent years, most notably Richard Dawkins, but he has been very much assisted by others in a related field.

The ‘science’ which has done most to attack religion is the ‘science’ which is not science at all. Psychology has done much to claim that all human experience can be explained away in artefacts or malfunction of the mind. Many of the explanations of psychologists, their classification of ‘mental illnesses’ are more accurately labelled in mediaeval terms. For the soul is real and so is the phenomenon of possession, where one external soul somehow controls the behaviour of the ‘indigenous’ soul. Yes, drugs can depress the behaviour, by depressing all mind functions. But it is hardly a cure, barely a treatment. But since psychologists give it a fancy name, it sounds to the uneducated masses as though they know what they are talking about.

Psychology is no more than an alternative theology. Psychology has done nothing but harm to society. It has paraded itself as a science when it is anything but. It has enabled control of the many by the few. Every day, all are subjected to attempts at mind control, through advertising, columnists, salesman and women of every hue. And they all employ the techniques carefully elucidated by the efforts of psychologists. They are key members of the police crime teams too, such is the power of their con. Others are there for grief counselling when another major disaster strikes, even if it is only the product of the sickness of society.

But the psychologists’ worst crime is their attempt to destroy God. Jung postulated his ‘universal consciousness’ as his man-centred attempt to explain away God’s inspiration. But what evidence is there for this ‘explanation’? Jung was also fascinated by the phenomenon of meaningful coincidence. He classified it as ‘synchronicity’. He gave it a name, but could not explain its source. For its Source lies beyond man, beyond the human mind, and beyond all the theories of the psychologists.

The study of the paranormal is not parapsychology, but paraphysics. It is concerned with matters beyond any theories of space and time. There is a great reality, not subject to the laws which govern us. This is the reality which the cathedrals recognised before science, real or spoof, rendered such beliefs to be nonsensical.

So think about the parable of the Towers. An item on Prime TV last night, 19th August 2007, was particularly significant. It was a controlled demolition of a large, 2-storey skyscraper in Utah. The clouds of dust reminded me strongly of 9-11. Yesterday was Day 231/7….11.17, linking to The Madeleine and my reading of the Lesson warning of the signs of the End of the World.

Now, thanks to a false belief in science and the comforts of consuming materialism, most people in the west can enjoy the fruits of other people’s labour. But what is the purpose of most lives in the west? Did God put us here just to be PC robots or con merchants, striving to get others to buy what they do not need or provide entertainment to ‘keep the masses happy’. Do you not think that there is a real purpose to existence? Do you not think it matters?  Or do you not think at all?

One exasperated relative said to me a few years ago “You are always looking for meaning.” Why not? It is there. If there is no real meaning in your life, perhaps you should try to find one in the seven years you MAY have left.

The Panzer Pope did get one thing right. He said “Hell is real and eternal.” God is real too. It is a pity Pope Benedict didn’t suggest you try to listen to the Voice of God in your own life, if it is there, that is, if you are not too busy being rich and successful.

Seven years is 2557 days. Think about it…… 11.57.30….11.57.39

19th -20th August 2007  Typed  30/08/2007 17:09:14