The names of those followers, who fell away in persecution, are much as given in Paul’s letters and early church history—Judas, Simon, Levi, Hymenæus, Demas—of the riots in Asia Minor. The Book of the Bee says Philip had three daughters, who were see-ers, or prophetesses; the Acts say four. The Book of the Bee says each of the Twelve and of the Seventy jotted down memories of Christ, but to avoid confusion, confided their memories—the Twelve to Matthew and John; the Seventy to Luke and Mark—and this, too, sustains the shots in the dark of the higher critics.
The child, of whom Christ said, “except ye become as children,” the Book of the Bee says, grew up to be Ignatius. The children on whom Christ laid his hands were Timothy and Titus. The Marys of the Gospel were—Mary, the Mother of the Messiah; Mary, the mother of Cleopas; Mary, the wife of Peter and mother of Mark; Mary, the sister of Lazarus. Was Mary, the sinner, the Mary of Magdala out of whom were cast the demons? The Book of the Bee says frankly the early church did not know. They know she was healed and became a holy woman. Thecla, the Book of the Bee refers to as “the Blessed”; so that I cannot regard the legend as a fiction.
I cannot close better than to quote the prophecies of the old sage of 1200 A.D. Keep in mind exactly what has happened in Asia Minor between 1914 and 1924, and then decide for yourself whether all see-ers are “self-hypnotized fakirs,” or “deluded epileptics having fits”—which I have heard them called by teachers of youth. At all events, give this old seer the same fair hearing you do to the prophecies of Roger Bacon, the friar, who was almost contemporary, imprisoned in another part of the world for predicting what science would accomplish; and when you have done that fairly and squarely, lay the book down and ask yourself what you believe. As the prophecies cover nearly twenty pages, I condense: “the children of Ishmael will go forth from this wilderness . . . and the fat ones of the kingdom of the Greeks . . . shall be destroyed by Ishmael, the wild ass of the desert . . . it shall be a merciless chastisement . . . for the sin of the Christians . . . mad with drunkenness, anger, shameless lasciviousness . . . hence God will deliver them over to the impurity of the Barbarians.” There follows just what happened in the late War, the murder of men, the pollution of women, the death of the children, the robbery of all property, the sale into slavery of harem and desert bandit, the oppression of the poor. “They will mock at those who frame laws. The little shall be esteemed as the great, the despised as the honorable, from sea to sea, from east to west, from north to south . . . hungering and thirsting and torture in bonds . . . infants torn from their mothers’ bosoms . . . priests and deacons slain . . . clothes for their horses out of holy vestments . . . cattle in the churches . . . famine . . . dead bodies without any to bury them . . . while the tyrants shall boast—‘the Christians have neither a God, nor a deliverer.’ ” There follows the victory of the Greeks and a terrible slaughter. “Egypt ravaged, Arabia burnt, Hebron laid waste.” . . . Then shall follow “a great peace . . . joy on earth . . . churches reopened . . . great cities rebuilt . . . for the gates of the North” shall be opened. Twenty-two kingdoms shall come through the gates of the North. In the plains of Joppa, the great battle will be fought. The leader of destruction will fight there and be overthrown by a leader of the cross from the land of Ethiopia. The leader of destruction will delude many with “phantoms.” Hosts of the Indians will ally themselves with him. Then will come a second Elijah (or Elias) and lead to the great victory of the cross.
There follows the passing of the Old Order like a garment discarded for the New when a light shall burst over humanity with the effulgent radiance of the very heavens; when those, who are asleep shall awake clothed in light, eternally young; when each shall treasure his eternal light and fire in his own spirit; when the only grief shall be the grief for transgression of laws man can never break, but which break man; when the love of God shall extend to the meanest and poorest of all creatures; when justice will exact “to the uttermost farthing” of repentance for sin; when those barred from light will be those only who persist in barring light from their spirit.
Here, let us close the old seer’s prophecy, be it trance or dream; for his hope is the hope of all humanity with all its creeds for all time, now as then.
THE END
BOOKS OF SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE
THE TRUTHS WE LIVE BY
By Jay William Hudson