Nebuchadnezzar and the Golden Image – Size matters

Mine is bigger than yours . . .

Nebuchadnezzar must have been insecure on some level because one day he developed a plan to prove to everyone that he was the richest, baddest, mo-fo on the planet. He had a gold image made and placed in the middle of a huge field. This image was 70 feet tall and six and a half feet thick. He then commanded everyone with even a little bit of authority in his empire to attend the dedication ceremony for this image. At the ceremony the king’s herald announced that from that time forth, any time music was heard anywhere in the kingdom, everyone was to drop to the ground and worship this giant golden image.

If anyone chose to abstain from worship they were to be thrown immediately into a fiery furnace where they would die, consumed by the flames. Naturally the good little Jehovah lovers, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego did not worship the gold image as required and a group of Chaldeans ratted them out to the King.

Nebuchadnezzar was furious. He immediately had Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego brought before him and demanded to know if it was true they were refusing to worship the image.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego were honest Jehovah lovers so they truthfully told the king they would never serve any other god or image, no matter who told them to.

This made Nebuchadnezzar even more upset. He commanded the fiery furnace be heated to seven times the normal level. He had the strongest men in his army tie up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego and throw them into the furnace. Due to a lack of proper foresight, and the haste required by the king, the furnace was so hot that the people who threw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego in were overcome by the heat and died.

The king watched all this and was looking into the furnace. However, he didn’t see Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego get all crispy like he expected. Instead he saw four people walking around in there, looking just as happy as you can imagine.

Here’s the part I don’t believe: Nebuchadnezzar was astonished to see the Hebrews walking around in the furnace unharmed with what looked like an angel of God. He walked over to the furnace to talk to them, AND SOMEHOW WAS NOT INJURED BY THE HEAT THAT KILLED HIS BEST AND BRAVEST SOLDIERS. Yeah right! In any case, Nebuchadnezzar said to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, “Ye servants of the most high God, come forth and come hither.”

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego left the fire and Neduchanezzar made a royal decree right then and there. He commanded that from that time forth anyone who ever said anything bad about Jehovah would be cut into tiny pieces and their house would be demolished. Then the King promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego to even higher ranking positions in the province of Babylon.

Moral: Jehovah used to help his believers. Either He no longer feels like helping people, or nobody actually believes in Him anymore.

Ref: Daniel 3

Genocide – Ensuring that man does not exercise his agency

Why does Elohim have to be so damn inconsistent?

Revelation chapter 12 talks about a great war in heaven wherein Michael and his Angels fight against a dragon and its angels and cast them out of heaven. That dragon is identified as Satan.

The Mormons teach that everyone who is ever born was first born spiritually in heaven to our heavenly father and one of his polygamous wives. This includes Lucifer and Jesus (who in Mormon lore is the actual son of God in the flesh just like Hercules is the son of Zeus). There was a big council before the world was formed to decide how best to get all God’s spirit children back to heaven. Lucifer proposed a world without choice so everyone could get a body, never sin, then die and be resurrected. That wasn’t what Elohim wanted. Jesus was a good little boy and put forward a plan that worked for Elohim. Everyone would be able to sin but because no unclean thing can enter the presence of God, Jesus would go be the literal son of God, choose to never sin, and then pay for everyone else’s sins so they could go to heaven.

There was a big fight after that where the forces of Jesus and the Forces of Lucifer had it out. Of course Lucifer lost but he took 1/3^rd of the host of heaven with him when he was cast out (hence the 1/3^rd of the stars thing).

Michael and the Dragon

Point of the above story: Elohim wants people to make their own decisions about whether or not to sin. Then they can choose to either repent and take advantage of Jesus’ atonement or go to hell with Lucifer and his 1/3^rd.  I’m not an expert on every religion, but I’m pretty sure the idea that people need to choose for themselves to go to heaven is pretty much true across the board, at least for the Christians anyway.

Problem: In the bible, Elohim works to make it so people don’t choose the bad.

For example: in Exodus chapter 23, Elohim reveals his laws to Moses. This is largely a reiteration of the 10 commandments as found in Exodus 20, but it includes a couple of additional instructions. It’s not good enough to avoid serving different gods, you have to destroy the people who follow those gods. In verses 29-33 Elohim promises to help the Hebrews destroy all the idol worshipers in the Promised Land, and commands them to do it so they can avoid the temptation of idol worship.

Yep, that’s right. God commanded the Israelites to commit genocide so they would not face temptation. So much for allowing people to choose for themselves which gods to serve. Sounds like Elohim and the Mormon version of Lucifer have a lot in common.

Phinehas Kills the Adulterers – How killing people stops God from killing other people

Holy crap, could Jehovah be any more of a prick?

After Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt but before they made it to the “promised land” they had a lot of contact with different groups of people. When they were in Shittim (no, I did not make up that name) they started to do some really crazy stuff like have sex with the local women, eat their food, and worship their gods.

As you might expect, Jehovah was not pleased. He told Moses to take the heads off his people and hang them in the sun so He wouldn’t be mad anymore. Since this made perfect sense to Moses, he gave the order that every man who participated in the worship of local gods should be executed. Just the men though. You have to be careful to always kill more men than women so polygamy works out better.

After the whole worshiping the wrong gods thing was sorted through the use of capital punishment, things managed to get even crazier. This Hebrew guy named Zimri had the audacity to hook up with a Midianitish woman named Cozbi (remember that Moses’ wife was from Midian, damn hippocrate) and actually bring her around so the other Hebrews could see that a Hebrew man and Midianitish women were together and not ashamed of it. Well, this level of audacity got Jehovah so worked up that he started killing random Israelites using disease (one of God’s favorite toys).

Fortunately for the Lord’s people, a discerning gentleman named Phinehas worked out that Zimri’s relationship with Cozbi was the cause for the plague. Phinehas grabbed a Javelin, walked into their tent, and killed both of them, making sure he stabbed Cozbi through the stomach just in case she was pregnant. Of course this stopped God from killing random bystanders, but not before 24,000 of them died.  --  I learned in church the reason Zimri and Cozbi had to die to stop the plague was because they were committing adultery. It turns out that was about 2,000% bullshit. Nowhere in the biblical account is adultery mentioned. They totally had to die because Cozbi was from a different cultural background: God is such a racist bastard.  --

After God called off his bacteria that had been killing the Israelites he had a little chat with Moses: “Well, you’re sure lucky that Phinehas killed Zimri and Cozbi; otherwise I was going to completely wipe out the Hebrew race. Now you’re going to have to make war against the Midianites and wipe them off the face of the earth because it’s totally their fault I had to kill so many of my people using plague.”

When I read these stories, I can’t help but think it’s usually much better to not be part of God’s chosen people. It seems the more attention God gives you, the greater his need to fuck with you.

Ref: Numbers 25