THE GODS ON WAR

JEHOVAH ON WAR

1. THUS SAITH THE LORD JEHOVAH

1.1 IN the beginning there was WAR. And after, there was WAR. Then WAR again and more WAR. Since man demanded control of his own destiny he has set out ruthlessly to destroy himself.

1.2 Man, I gave you a law by which you should live with respect to your fellow man. I said to you: "Thou shalt not kill." For in those days you were My beloved creation.

1.3 Even after the Fall of Adam — which had to be — you were My beloved creation, built in the image of Myself and set upon the earth to glorify My Name unto GOD Who reigns above Me, above the Universe and above all things.

1.4 And I commanded you respect of one another. I commanded you that your image was sacred and must not be destroyed. And I warned you of the Universal Law. I said: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." For in My image did I create you, and you shall without choice abide by the Universal Law: 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'.

1.5 And you shed the blood of your own kind, and your own kind shed your blood in recompense, and his own kind shed his blood, and on in accordance with the Law that cannot be overruled. And you took no heed of My command, nor of My warning, and you brought about the spiral of WAR.

1.6 Yet I was merciful. I fought your WARS for you. You were trapped in a web of your own making and I took pity on you. I sanctified your WARS. I fought against your enemies because still I loved you and still I hoped to save you from the web.

1.7 Yet I also demanded peace. I demanded that you live in harmony together with your fellow man. I brought your enemies to you in supplication and pleaded for your mercy. And you did not listen.

1.8 Finally, when all was spent, and all My words and threats and terrors had been passed aside, ignored, rejected; finally, when I knew no more how to force My laws upon you, I came in love. Through CHRIST, "Love thine enemy," I cried. "Do good to them that hate you. If a man robs you of your coat give him your cloak as well. If he strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other to strike also. If he asks you to run a mile with him, run two.

1.9 "Make peace at all cost, because now all chance has been given you to settle the account within the boundaries of normal life.

1.10 "For still you have rejected My words. Still you have made WAR without Me. Still you have killed the creation that is in your image, the image of your God. Still you have shed the blood that I told you was sacred. You have risen up against your brother in defiance of Me.

1.11 "The Sin of Cain is rife upon the earth, and the tide shows no sign of turning. So now I command you.

1.12 So said My prophets: 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth', for this is the Universal Law and GOD shall uphold it. But I say to you now;

1.13 'Love thine enemy. Love thine enemy. Achieve the impossible upon earth. I, JEHOVAH, shall square the account in Heaven.'

1.14 "You have demanded to be judge. You have taken upon yourself the sacred robes of justice and set yourself up as God of your fellow men. You have deified yourself among your fellows, giving yourself the right to pass judgement of life and death, taking upon yourself the burden of justice, and excluding all the laws given to you by your God.

1.15 "Now is the time for your humiliation. A long time you have played the Godhead. Now you must eat the dust of your iniquity. Bow before your enemy if you have a wish for salvation.

1.16 "You are owed nothing but pain, the pain that you have meted out. You are owed nothing but death, the death that you have dealt your brother. You are owed nothing but humiliation, the humiliation you have inflicted upon your brother. You are owed neither love nor respect, neither life nor happiness. So get on your knees before your enemy and thank God for what mercy He has left for you.

1.17 "I have given you the sum total of My love, even to the point of death. That is your Creator's love for you, and you have dragged it from Him. Give now in return, all the love that is within you. Show your love to the last farthing. If you withhold one tiny fraction of your love, woe unto you, for you owe far more than you have to give. But if you give all, you shall be saved.

1.18 "Love your God and your fellow man and nothing can harm you. You shall be beloved again."

2.1 BUT WAR continued. Hatred waxed strong upon the earth. I, JEHOVAH, foresaw the outcome and departed, for I could scarcely bear to see its actuality.

2.2 And WAR came again. And man set himself up as judge of his fellow man in the very Names of JEHOVAH and CHRIST.

2.3 In the very name of the love that I had promised you, you gave vent to your hatred. You put on robes of judgement and held baubles of majesty, and in the Name of CHRIST, who bade you love your enemy, you blessed the diabolical weapons of WAR that your obsessive hatred had spawned.

2.4 You have passed on your legacy of murder. You have justified your bloodshed. You have made right the sin of death and destruction. You have handed down from generation to generation a birthright so vile and unforgivable that no power on earth can stem it now.

2.5 The science of WAR and the justification of WAR march through the passage of time unchecked, and man falls upon his knees before them.

2.6 Now have I returned. Now have I seen the dominance of WAR. Now have I seen the hopelessness of My creation. Now have I seen that My commandments will never be.

2.7 Your own distorted ideologies hold full sway in your heart, and for them you have reserved the right to kill, maim and torture. Your head is so full of lies, created by your intellect in honour of your own superiority to GOD, there is no room now for an effective knowledge of My laws.

2.8 Therefore come I now upon the earth. Therefore am I resolved for you. Therefore pass I judgement upon My creation; such judgement that transcends all your meagre and self-important efforts to play the God in My place.

2.9 Therefore do I now prophesy. I no longer command. Instead I prophesy, and My prophecy upon this wasted earth and upon the corrupt creation that squats upon its ruined surface is: "Thou shalt kill."

2.10 You have demanded the power of life and death. You have exercised the right of judgement upon your fellow man. You have set yourself up as Lord and Master of the Universe, and you have perfected your machines of justice.

2.11 You have developed complicated engines and devices whereby to carry out the laws you have made in defiance of your God. You have created such engines of destruction as GOD Himself would hesitate to use in retribution upon a sinful creation. You have gone to the ultimate in your search for greater and more devastating means of destruction.

2.12 Then have your killing.

2.14 Be driven by your weapons of WAR. Be ruled by your engines of devastation. They can touch nothing but you. And upon you shall they be turned.

2.15 I, JEHOVAH, have now come to help you, to give you the WAR that you love so, to turn upon you the hatred you have delighted so in meting out.

2.16 I, JEHOVAH, am again beside you upon the battlefield.

2.17 (Already in two Wars I have proved that I can create more devastation amongst you than you can amongst yourselves. Already I have made WAR so vile and horrible, even in your eyes, that a few of you have begun to wonder about the wisdom of it. Already I have helped you decimate yourselves beyond your most terrifying nightmares of destruction. Already you have seen, though not recognised, the hand of JEHOVAH upon your engines of WAR, the power of JEHOVAH in the personalities of your leaders.)

2.18 And there shall be more; much more.

2.19 You have decided upon WAR. You have chosen the road of butchery and slaughter. You have set out determinedly upon the way of devastation. And to this you shall come.

2.20 You have made your choice. JEHOVAH your God shall implement it for you. For JEHOVAH gives man what man demands of Him; and man, for centuries, has cried out for blood and more blood, and JEHOVAH has satisfied not the demand.

2.21 But now in the Last Days shall man's cry be heard, and I, JEHOVAH, shall bestow upon My creation that which it craves. And in the ending of the world shall all the dams be broken and the floods shall rise upon the land, and the deluge of man's hatred shall be unleashed and sweep across the face of the earth.

2.22 And man shall know the destiny that he has desired. He shall know the outcome of his cry for blood. He shall have his desire in abundance. I, JEHOVAH, shall bestow it upon him.

3.1 AND in the Last Days, according to the prophecies of ancient times, My Army shall come upon the field. The Army of the Lord shall take its stand upon the field of battle. And I shall lead My Army into battle, and each man shall tremble at the sight of it, and the earth shall quake at the presence of it.

3.2 And it shall come to pass that all shall know that JEHOVAH is upon the earth and that His Army is assembled.

3.3 And My Army shall be like no other in the history of mankind. For men shall be paralysed at the very sight of it, and they shall fall down in a dead faint. And nothing shall destroy it, because of My hand that shall defend it and make it invulnerable.

3.4 And no man shall look upon My Army to withstand it and shall live. And no man shall stand before My Army to halt it and shall live. For he that puts forth his hand to stay the Army of JEHOVAH shall surely die in the moment of his audacity.

3.5 For the Army of God comes to purify the earth.

3.6 And the cities that reek of death and destroy all that approaches them with the pollution of the air, shall be no obstacle to JEHOVAH'S Army. For it shall have no effect of such pollution. For it shall be purified and guarded from such pollution.

3.7 But men shall die of it, they that are not burned in the fire of destruction. They shall decay in the atmosphere of their own corruption, which they have brought upon themselves.

3.8 And they who cry at the last: "We never wished it so", they shall be the first to die. For they are the hypocrites and the deceivers. They are the fine-worded ones. They are the pretence; the bringers of WAR disguised as messengers of peace. Theirs is the lie, theirs the fiction, theirs the unpardonable lie. For they have said: "Mankind desires peace". And the lie be upon them and their like.

3.9 And those who say: "It is as we wished it", they speak the truth. For man receives at the hands of his God, that which he demands. He demanded the throne of judgement and his God gave it to him. From the seat of judgement he cried for the blood of man. And now is his wish to be granted.

3.10 And the rivers shall cease to flow, but with the blood that man has cried out to receive. And the land shall grow nothing but the bodies of the slain that man has asked to be given. And the air shall contain nothing but the corrupting death that man has sought to inherit.

3.11 And the sea shall not be unfruitful of death, for the fish shall die and the creatures even that crawl upon the sea bed. For the waters shall be polluted as the air, and death shall swim deep into the ocean and touch the uttermost depths.

3.12 So that there shall be no escape.

3.13 And when the earth has been saturated with the pollution of the death that man has been granted according to his desire, than shall the surface of the earth be split from end to end, and the fire from within shall rise out and spread over the whole earth to purify it.

3.14 And the Army of the Lord shall go before the fire. And the fire shall meet, and the whole earth shall be covered, and the whole earth shall be purified by the fire.

3.15 And the Army shall lead the fire into every corner of the globe, and there shall be no pollution left in the world. And the fire shall reach even to the uttermost depths of the sea, and the sea shall be dried up and the pollution destroyed.

3.16 And the Army of the Lord shall depart.

3.17 And the energy that was the world and the energy that was humanity shall be released and shall return to Me. And My life shall return to Me through mankind's devastation. For you shall know in the moment of your death that I am your God and you are My creation, that I am the Lord JEHOVAH.

4.1 WAR is the central pivot of man's rejection of Me. For WAR is the ultimate presumption.

4.2 WAR is the great destroyer, and only GOD has the right to destroy. WAR is the sentence of death passed upon the guilty, and only GOD may pass the sentence of death.

4.3 WAR is the wielder of power over men, and only GOD may wield power over men in such a fashion. WAR is the outcome of hate that is channelled into mass expression, and this is a denial of the authority of GOD.

4.4 Man had the right to express his hatred. Man had the right to express his wrath. He had the right to roar like a lion against the man that wronged him, and to demand recompense within the law I gave him. Man had the right of justice amongst his fellow men, justice at the hand of his Creator, justice by the law of his Creator.

4.5 But now man has forfeited all his rights.

4.6 He has not demanded recompense within the law. He has not required justice at the hand of his Creator, nor by the law of his Creator. He has created his own law, his own justice. He has fabricated laws whereby he can demand more than recompense, whereby he can express his demands through armies and through weapons of WAR, and whereby he can put no limit on his retribution against his enemy.

4.7 He has flouted My law which I gave him, and replaced it with another more to his advantage.

4.8 And this new law he has justified by the use of his distorting intellect. He has made it a "good" law to deceive himself. He has called it the "Law of GOD" — though it was never such — to deceive himself. And he has twisted it to suit his purposes.

4.9 And he has ridden the earth upon its back and denied the earth in its name. And he has justified his dealings with his fellow men by the dingy light of the law he has created for himself.

4.10 And now comes the hour of purging. Now comes the time to sweep away all man's self-affected majesty, to wash the world of his hypocrisy. Now is the time to show him that he is no more master of his destiny, that he has long since played into the hands of the antiGOD, whom he has served now for many centuries in the greyness of his virtuosity.

4.11 Now is the time for man to see the truth of his self-deception in the stark brilliance of jehovah's presence; to see his dead march into the pit of Hell; to see the spectacle of himself clothed in robes of royalty, decked with medals for virtue and bravery — awarded by himself, and brandishing a sheaf of scrolls; one stating his rights — drawn up by himself; another setting out his qualifications — established by himself; another laying down the law for his fellow man — passed by himself; another giving him a passport to eternal life — granted by himself; and another that before he could not read, inscribed in letters of human blood and saying: "GOD is dead, long live humanity!"

4.12 For black and white have merged into a murky grey, and there is no light in the world, for all is one, and nothing is marked in truth. For good is evil and evil good, and Heaven is to be found in Hell.

4.13 And nobody knows any more which is the right and which is the left hand path, because all are one and the Devil has claimed the whole territory of earth, and none was there to say Him nay. No plot was marked out in stark black and white to reserve it from the hand of SATAN and preserve it as the seat of JEHOVAH.

4.14 All is merged together and no purity remains, nothing is left of the mark of JEHOVAH; only a disfigured face, crushed beneath the feet of armies marching in every direction, so that none can recognise its features.

4.15 But now, though I am dead within the earth, yet do I live without and am come from without.

4.16 But this time I give nothing to be crushed underfoot, nothing to be squandered, destroyed, abused or ridiculed. I come instead to give the one thing that shall be welcomed, for it is always sought.

4.17 I bring you WAR; WAR as you have never known it, killing as you have never seen it, destruction as you have never felt it, devastation as you have never imagined it.

4.18 It is your promised destiny; WARS to end all WARS; WARS that shall leave no land for WARS to be fought upon, that shall leave no hand to fight nor heart to yearn for struggle; WARS that shall cause the earth itself to rise and smite the "insects" that disturb its peaceful orbit.

4.19 And nothing can now turn the tide. Presume not to reverse the pattern you have demanded and been granted. It is inevitable. And jehovah's mighty hand shall be behind the great tremblings of the Latter Days.

4.20 For My wrath is beyond the fury of the volcano, My anger above the shrieking of the hurricane, and My devastation far outside the limits of the earthquake. All mankind at once shall know the terror of My coming, and the earth shall be filled with My glory.

4.21 The eyes of the blind shall be opened. The tongues of those who are dumb shall be loosed.

4.22 The hearts of those who feel nothing shall melt, and the hearts of those who loved shall be turned to stone.

4.23 The weak shall be strong, and the strong shall wither away.

4.24 The rational man shall babble lunacy, and the virtuous man shall steep himself in vice.

4.25 The sick shall rise from their beds, and the corpses from their tombs. The kings and governors shall kneel before the hungry and the homeless.

4.26 The whole earth shall be turned upside down and the sea shall cover the land.

4.27 For My Word shall run loose upon the world and the world shall cower at My presence.

4.28 And be not deluded. There shall be no reprieve.

4.29 For I, JEHOVAH, am resolved; and My Word is law amongst the stars and upon the earth.

4.30 For I am the God of all the Universe, and the earth is My footstool.

Copyright, The Process, Church of the Final Judgment, 1966.

LUCIFER ON WAR

1. THUS SAITH THE LORD LUCIFER

1.1 I, LUCIFER, bearer of light and love, bringer of peace and good will, glorifier of man, speak unto you of WAR; WAR the abomination, WAR the destroyer, WAR the degrader of men, the depriver of life, the harbinger of woe.

1.2 I speak unto you of death, of devastation and of dark despair.

1.3 I bring you a vision, stark and lurid in its terrifying clarity, a vision of death, a vision of searing agony and of irretrievable loss.

1.4 I bring you a vision of WAR.

1.5 Roam with Me over the battlefields of the world, gazing on the mutilated corpses side by side with the still writhing bodies of the mortally wounded. Hear the pleading, helpless, hopeless cries of those who take a long time dying.

1.6 Dying? For what? In the last hours of terrifying pain and anguish; abandoned, alone, forgotten, friendless, on an arbitrary spot selected for his fame by some strutting general, blind to the agonies of human beings and serving at their expense some imbecile government, some paranoid dictator, some meaningless directionless ideal.

1.7 Look again. Hide not your face. These are men in the prime of their glorious youth; beautiful men, strong men, men of courage and skill. Is this their destiny? Is this the purpose of their existence?

1.8 Is beauty made to be transfigured into grotesque ugliness? Is strength created to dwindle into helpless weakness? And is the love of man for man, the brotherhood, the human bond, established to be struck asunder by the plague of WAR?

1.9 Is love destined to become hatred? Is the lifeblood that courses like fire through veins, is it to be spilled and wasted on a battlefield? And is the spark of life, the essence of man's dignity and pride, there to be snuffed out shamefully and in the depths of ignominious disaster, before it reaches the point of its zenith?

1.10 Man is a noble creature. He has had it within his power to stand supreme, the centre of the Universe, the shining star, the master of creation, his love extending to encompass all that moves within his orbit.

1.11 And with his noble counterpart; his partner, his complement, the softness of his strength, the sweetness of his power, the gentleness of his virility, the woman of his manhood, and the Eve of his Adam; with her, to stand complete, ruler of all things, with none but GOD to deny him.

1.12 And is this the being of whom I speak? This groaning, writhing, tortured thing, crying out for a ceasing of its pain, and praying for death to bring it blessed peace? Or this foul mutilated pile of flesh; torn to pieces, lifeless, still, a frozen cry of ultimate dismay and horror twisting what remains of a human face into a hideous mask? Or this crawling object, one leg gone, ripped out at the root, dragging itself in hopeless lunacy across an endless desert of death, and whimpering for its mother?

1.13 Its mother? Where is she, proud woman? At home; choiceless, pretending to be cheerful, tortured inside by an anguish of hope and fear, dread lurking in her heart, and a helplessness as complete as his is now.

1.14 She does not know as yet. She will never know — not as we do, who have seen the boy in the moment of his final disillusionment, when he wondered in spasms, in the midst of his lonely torment, what could conceivably make such a thing worthwhile; what pointless ideal, what arbitrary political endeavour, what claim, what condemnation, what right, what ruler's whim, what God's demand could balance even one hundredth part of this unspeakable horror, this inconceivable agony, this unimaginable degradation, leading to nowhere but much longed for death, and thence oblivion?

1.15 How could she know? How could her heart contain such knowledge? How could her mind keep hold on sanity?

1.16 She will discover, in time, that he died valiantly in the service of his country, and at once she will see him at rest, at peace, lying in a coffin decked with the glorious emblems of WAR and noble death.

1.17 She will feel the emptiness, the loss, the misery. She will cry because her heart will turn to lead within her, for her son is gone. She will mourn him, fantasise him back with her, and cry again because it cannot be.

1.18 She will long without hope, pray without expectation for a miracle to bring him back to life. And she will move a little closer to her own death — of a different kind. But she will know nothing of the story as it really was.

1.19 But let us return. Our tour is not finished yet. Night; and a group of men, sleeping for moments here and there; afraid, and afraid to show their fear; dreading the dawn that may bring death, or worse; believing each in his heart that all are braver than he; fearing that he will show himself a coward on the field of battle, that in the moment of the final test, his life will seem to him of more consequence than glory or the aims and obligations of his motherland, and wondering wistfully why it is not so.

1.20 One gazes at a picture of his wife; young, beautiful — to him the pinnacle of beauty; and wonders why he is here, waiting to begin a battle of which he knows little and understands less, and in which he plays a part so miniscule, so microscopic, so insignificant as to have no meaning.

1.21 Why should this be the corner of the earth to claim him, where he is nothing, rather than his wife whom he knows and loves? Why should this vast machine of WAR embroil him as a mere cog in one of a thousand wheels, when with her he could be manhood itself, a thing of great importance, a matter of enormous consequence, performing a function of which he alone is capable?

1.22 He could be her life and love as she could be his. But here he is dross, chaff, waste matter.

1.23 With her there could be warmth, closeness, joy and gentle laughter.

1.24 Here there is only the cold night air and the colder dread of what the morning might bring.

1.25 There is no joy, only the memory of fear, the presence of fear and the expectation of fear as long as he remains alive; and laughter, when it breaks the barrier of mirthless dread, is brittle and shallow and seems closer to crying.

1.26 So "why", he asks himself, "am I here?" And he remembers her and being with her, and a tear slips past the dam of self-control. He coughs and blinks it away, and hastily hides the picture from his fragile memory.

1.27 And when the dawn swells up, a glowing, growing, golden ember in the east, flooding the land with light, bringing the warmth of a new day and heralding the sun itself; when the darkness has been scattered from the land, the shadows wiped away, and all awakes; is it for him the beginning of another day of beauty?

1.28 Does he see the incomparable miracle of nature? Does he see the incredible creation that is the world in which he lives? Does he see the flowers, the birds, the trees, the animals? Does he see the mountains and the floating clouds?

1.29 Is he the man to whom all this is given, and for whom it was devised? And does he thank the God that made the gift, thank Him for all the pleasure he can find in it and for another day in which to feel that pleasure?

1.30 No, he sees none of it. How could he? He sees only the weapons of WAR and the figure of Death before him. And he sees an enemy mighty and fearless and trained to an unsurpassed perfection.

1.31 And the enemy — for all these nightmare fantasies — is another such as himself, another man given the beauty of the earth and not seeing it. And both are bent upon a strange and incomprehensible mission; the destruction of one another.

1.32 And in another part, at another time, the two could meet as the sun rises and the day begins, and feel a bond of fellowship, watching the dawn reveal the world for them. Yet they must kill and die in hatred now, and the beauty of the dawn must pass unnoticed by them both.

1.33 And so it is. And the one we watch goes out and dies; and the other goes out and kills, and later dies himself.

1.34 And the one we watch lies dead with a thousand others. And the picture of his wife is returned to her with other things, and with an official note of condolence, as to a thousand others.

1.35 And his death means as much as the note of condolence; nothing. But his life and the picture of her were everything; for together they were the seed of love and joy and happiness.

1.36 And she is mystified; too starkly blankly utterly mystified even to cry. For she too, as another dawn follows a sleepless night in a cold and lifeless bed, asks herself why, and finds no answer.

1.37 Yours not to reason why, for there is no reason why. You're there because you're there.

1.38 Ask not, for you will hear only the echo of your question back to you, and your soul will feel the emptiness of meaningless despair.

1.39 But I, LUCIFER, say unto you; Ask and feel the emptiness. Know the hollowness of WAR, the pointlessness of man's destruction of his fellow man.

1.40 See the ignominy of battle, brother against brother, that brings only death and a mother's grief and widow's mystified despair. See the full horror of man set against man in hatred and fear—and yet no hatred, only love that he seeks to obliterate for no reason whatever beyond a hollow phrase that contradicts another for which others are pledged to kill. (And all are sure — or hopeful at the least — that they kill for truth while the enemy kills for a lie). See the monstrous degradation of mankind inherent in the very concept of WAR.

1.41 And when you have asked, and heard the silence of the answerless void; then see the majesty of man at peace, the dignity of man in harmony. And see man as he could have been;. master of the garden of his world, living a life of love and exaltation of his race, greeting the day with joy and expectation, and resting calm and peaceful in the silence of the night, enveloped in the warm glow of soft companionship and mutual love.

1.42 And vow upon the life your God has given you, upon the beauty of the world in which He set you, vow to make WAR on WAR. And in My Name, the Name of LUCIFER, the bringer of light, the bestower of joy, set your seal upon the vow.

2.1 BLOOD is the currency of WAR, and nothing less than bankruptcy the stake.

2.2 Death is the master of the game; not death at the end of life when life has been lived and glorified; not as the natural termination when all has been fulfilled; but death when life is just beginning, death when joy is on the threshold, death when only life is meaningful.

2.3 And the rules are a jumble of meaningless contradictions, a mixture of high-flown phrases and empty undertakings. They are thrown from hand to hand, tossed in the air, flung upon the ground and trampled under foot. They are honoured and spat upon, obeyed and disobeyed, revered and ridiculed; a parody of nothing; saying nothing, signifying nothing, implying nothing, promising nothing and creating nothing.

2.4 And the materials of WAR are men; strong men, noble men, brave men, handsome men, lords of all creation. And in WAR they are nothing. They are as meaningful and significant as the rules by which they are compelled to play the game. They are fodder for the gaping mouths of monsters; pawns and broken pieces, that are pushed hither and thither; expendable, destroyed and replaced, massacred and then forgotten; as the game itself goes on, feeding itself on the blood of the slain and the shrieking agony of the slowly dying.

2.5 And as the wheel of evolution turns, relentless, the game enters upon a new and ghastly phase. A rule more horrible than any ever introduced before, looms up and dominates the scene; the rule of mass destruction.

2.6 WAR to be played not with soldiers breathing their hopeless last on an abandoned battlefield, but with great crowds of citizens, whole populations, men, women and children alike, by purely geographical selection; the rule being: who can cover the widest area with the greatest devastation in the shortest space of time.

2.7 And in the centre of the cataclysm, instant death; and farther out, a lingering death; and farther still, disease, decay and madness; life, but a slow disintegration and a creeping paralysis of the mind. And farther yet, the utter horror of the devastation, the misery of loss, the terror and the poverty of civilisation overturned and hurled into confusion.

2.8 And then all over the earth, the guilt, the shame, the degradation of mankind in fathering so vile a monster.

2.9 Who can escape the effects of this new era of WAR?

2.10 The cancer is inexorable, and few will be left untainted by the ghastly slaughter as it sweeps the earth. All beauty will vanish and in its place a hideous twisted ugliness will spread and cover the land.

2.11 Nature will die. The once fertile earth will be charred and barren. Only the most grotesque and sinister plants will grow, not fostered by the rich red earth of former times, but sprouting straight from Hell.

2.12 Creatures of the Pit will roam abroad, no animals of grace and lithe vitality for man's delight, but monsters, deformed and venomous, spawned in Hades and set free to dominate the world.

2.13 For this new game is WAR as it has never been, and once it has been, can never be again.

2.14 And with the victory of the lower side, the triumph of man's self-hatred, all will be lost; the game of life will be over and nothing gained; devastation and destruction everywhere the rule, the order of the day.

2.15 What day? No golden dawn revealing the beauty of the land and waking all from sleep with promise of the sun's warm rays. No flame-red sunset paling into purple dusk and bringing out the stars to grace the night. Only a cloak of poisonous dust and vapour, and greater or lesser darkness everywhere.

2.16 This is the toll of the new game of WAR. Not only the death of men, but the death of the world, the death of all life, all beauty, all magnificence. Not only man returned to dust, but the whole earth and the sky around it, and everything that lives.

2.17 Who can take upon himself the burden of guilt for not at least attempting to prevent such utter devastation?

2.18 Alas! With what hope of success? The moving finger writes, and having writ that WAR shall be, then WAR shall be, and none shall say otherwise.

2.19 Yet each man can choose to play the part that fits him best. A man may glory in the fast approaching cataclysm, play his part to bring it closer, ferment it, sow the seeds of its totality; or he may lie down beneath it, helpless, hopeless, sunk into apathy, submerged by a sense of purposeless futility; or he may fight to the end, not with weapons of death but with weapons of life, with love, with beauty, with gentleness, with joy and with the pleasures of being alive.

2.20 He may set himself apart from the struggles, the strife, the bitterness, the rancour of the warmongers, place himself above the despair of the hopeless, and move to the End with head held high. For none must doubt that the End is nigh.

3.1 I, LUCIFER, proclaim the End.

3.2 It is neither My choice nor My will that the End should be. But it is written in the annals of time — and none shall erase it — that man shall decide his destiny. And now the wheel has turned full cycle, and the moment is not far off when the sound of the trumpet shall herald the last move in the game.

3.3 And I, LUCIFER, shall be there at the End. And those who have known the End and set themselves truly apart from the End, have proclaimed the beauty of life and the senselessness of violent death, those who have followed My road to the last, and have worshipped love in the very midst of hatred, they are My people and shall come to Me.

3.4 But one thing I pray: choose not blindness.

3.5 Choose not to be blind to WAR or to the imminence of WAR. See it, feel it, know it. Do not allow it to be reasoned out of your mind, rationalised into non-existence.

3.6 Whatever choice you make, take not the blinkered road, the road of ignorance, the road that says: "All's well with the world and humanity. There will be no devastation." For therein lies the way to a hell that is worse than Hell, to a fate and a destiny beside which WAR itself is nothing but a gentle reprimand. For that road is more than a simple rejection of GOD. It is the very denial of truth, a blanket of ignorance cast over everything, so that life becomes a tortuous lie.

3.7 The man who says: "I spit upon GOD", finds retribution. But the man who says: "There is no GOD", when his lie is exposed, finds infinitely worse.

3.8 And so it is with the way of all blindness. When eyes that have been tight closed, so that fantasy can rule unchallenged, are finally forced open to the harsh light of irrefutable reality, then comes an agony so inconceivably intense, that were I to describe it, you would become faint with the horror of its magnitude. And that agony, reserved for those who meet the Day wrapped in a grey mist of "rational" ignorance, is for all eternity.

3.9 So open your eyes and see and know, and make your vow in My name. For I, LUCIFER, bringer of light, shall not desert My people at the End.

3.10 Fear not the horror of WAR, but stand beyond it, rise above it.

3.11 There is beauty within the mind for those who will see it, love within the heart for those who will feel it, and peace within the soul for those who will partake of it. And I, LUCIFER, bring all these.

3.12 Mourn with Me the fate of the earth, the loss of the incomparable loveliness of all creation.

3.13 Weep for the destruction of man and the end of the human game, the degradation of what could have been dignity itself, and the humiliation of supreme magnificence.

3.14 Breathe sorrow for the wilful devastation of all living creatures, as they flee helpless before the inexorable avalanche of total WAR, and are finally enveloped and consumed.

3.15 Bemoan the victory of man's baser side and its legacy of ultimate disaster. But play no part in claiming the fearful heritage.

3.16 Detach; and condemn the inevitable conflict. Express the dignity of man in the very face of his final humiliation.

3.17 Display his strength at the very moment when his weakness triumphs. Show his beauty when there is little left but ugliness.

3.18 Make love your master when all men are ruled by hatred. Create when all about you is destruction.

3.19 And when the last futility descends upon the earth and all is nearly done, show the degraded remnants of a ruined race, awaiting death in disillusioned misery and dark despair, show them the pride, the majesty, the noble strength, the courage and the swift vitality that man in the image of his God could have been.

3.20 And at the End, when all is finished and the game is lost, call upon the Name of LUCIFER.

3.21 And for those who live by the light that LUCIFER bears, for those who honour the joy that LUCIFER brings, there are other games to be played, other lives to be lived, other worlds, other ideals and countless other joys.

3.22 And they shall belong to those who worship life, and can rise above the horrors of death, even the death of all mankind together with the world in which he lives. And they shall go on with LUCIFER, and a new life shall begin with a new creation.

3.23 So choose whilst there is still time. Choose between Life and Death, to be free or to be the slave of WAR.

3.24 And if your choice is Life, then I, LUCIFER, shall rule your destiny, for you are Mine, your will is My will. And in My Kingdom is the essence of Life; My legacy is immortality.

3.25 For he who loves is beloved, he who grants life receives life, he who gives joy is joyful, and he who sees the beauty of this world and seeks to preserve it, is himself endowed with beauty and preserved. But he who destroys is in his turn destroyed, who kills is killed, who hates bears only the legacy of hatred.

3.26 For men reap only that which they have sown, and then in abundance. This is the Law of the Universe.

3.27 So stand apart from the sowers of death, the worshippers of WAR. And cherish the seeds of life in the joys of living.

3.28 And when the harvest conies, and those who sowed the seeds of slaughter reap their own irrevocable destruction, stand aside and accept the reward that is reserved for those who worship life. I, LUCIFER, shall be there to bestow it upon My people.

3.29 The world is dead, the human race destroyed. Long live the new world and the new creation, for it shall be devised of immortality.

Copyright, The Process, Church of the Final Judgment, 1966.

SATAN ON WAR

MAN, you have come to the bitter end of your degradation. Drain the drags and leave not a stain in the glass.
For WAR is upon you, around you and within you. You are submerged in WAR so totally now there is no escape. Like a cancer it has taken hold on you, crept stealthily among you and become entrenched. No force on earth can remove it. And no force in heaven will. For We, the Gods, give man what man demands, not what he pretends to want. And man who puts on airs and cries for peace and light and love, and claims that his one desire is to live in harmony with those around him, man who clothes himself soberly with proper decency and goes about his business saying: "I am civilized. I am respectable. I am a rational being in control of all my emotions", he is no more than an ignorant fool, a hypocrite, a self-deluded imbecile. For all he really wants is death, slaughter, bloodshed, rape, pillage, and the violent hysterical screeching lunacy of WAR. That is his true desire and nothing less will truly satisfy him.
Man, see yourself! Know the true desires of your soul. Feel the love of horror, the lust for blood, the ecstasy of watching death stride out upon the earth and take his toll.
When is your mind at peace? Only when your body is at WAR.
When are you truly satisfied? Only when blood is on your hands, hatred in your heart and the light of battle gleaming in your eye.
Deceive yourself not! Death is sheer delight to you. Torture is supreme fascination. Can you drag your eyes from the vision of a body stretched upon the rack, broken on the wheel, or squeezed to lifelessness by the slow agony of the hangman's rope? No, you can only gaze transfixed, every grain of your attention focused on the sight. And can you look away from the writhing monster of a battlefield, close your ears to the shrieks and groans of wounded men, close your eyes to the blood and the mangled flesh? No, you are entranced, enchanted, gleeful at the lurid picture of violent death and slaughter.
For this is your destiny, this your only satisfaction. You are born to die and die you must, and death for you must be utterly cataclysmic. Your very soul demands it.
WAR is your natural bent, your blood brother. You know him, understand him and love him, as nothing else in all creation. With him life becomes worthwhile because it becomes death. WAR is your fulfillment. In WAR you are strong, courageous, vital, dynamic. In WAR you are the soul of action and the source of boundless energy. In WAR the rules are destruction, and with destruction you are your true self. Creation is alien to your nature, but destruction, devastation, violent mutilation of the flesh and the laying waste of all the land; these are concepts you can understand, these are actions to which you can give yourself with body, mind and soul, and revel in the joys of their fulfillment. They are your meat and drink, as essential to you as the air you breathe. WAR is your life blood, you have proved it so.
So rise, Man, and be joyful! For WAR you shall have in abundance. Pretend no more to seek after sterile peace that holds no pleasure for your active soul. Revel in the multiple delights of WAR. Feel the bloodlust rising in your veins, the mounting, tense anticipation of the moment before battle is joined. Feel the firm grip on the sword hilt, the cold hardness of the steady gun butt. Smell the blood and the cordite. Hear the battle cries mingled with the screams of those that die. And see the surging of the armies joined in mortal combat, and the smoke, the all-enveloping smoke that swirls and billows, and then hangs suspended, blotting out the sun. And know where man's fulfillment lies. Know that life is worthless unless it is lived in the very teeth of death, that peace is nothing except as a fleeting moment in the midst of WAR, that love is empty, save as a transitory oasis in a world of violent hatred, that to create is only meaningful in order to destroy.
I, SATAN, stand for WAR. I glory in WAR. I glory in the magnificence of man in battle, man struggling with life and death, man giving vent to his wrath.
I scorn the weak-will victims of WAR, the hordes of helpless citizens, who cry for mercy as they are driven from their homes and from their lands. They are the fodder for the monstrous WAR machines, the fuel that the great engines of death devour in their relentless march over the face of the earth. They deserve no better than their lot, for they have no strength or courage of their own, no will to rise and fight, no fire within their souls to drive them into battle. They were born to a futile death, a miserable death, a worthless feeble destiny of nothing. They were born to be trampled upon, to be cut down by the mighty sword of the conqueror. And such is their fate, significant only as it is part of the game of WAR.
So Man, waste no more time with crawling on your belly in the dust. Stand up and cast aside the trappings of a civilized facade. Throw off the cloak of meaningless respectability. Strip yourself bare to the roots of your bestial nature. Let the animal loose in you. Become as you are: the Beast, naked and proud, teeth bared and eyes aflame, your feet firm planted on the ground, your face towards the enemy. Release the Fiend that lies dormant within you, for he is strong and ruthless, and his power is far beyond the bounds of human frailty.
Come forth in your savage might, rampant with the lust of battle, tense and quivering with the urge to strike, to smash, to split asunder all that seek to detain you. And cast your eye upon the land before you. Choose what road of slaughter and violation you will follow. Then stride out upon the land and amongst the people. Rape with the crushing force of your virility, kill with the devastating precision of your sword arm, maim with the ruthless ingenuity of your pitiless cruelty, destroy with the overwhelming fury of your bestial strength, lay waste with the all-encompassing majesty of your power.
And stand supreme upon the earth, lord of all creation by the right of conquest. And burn what offends your eye, eradicate what spoils your pleasure, take all unto yourself and punish most cruelly and without mercy all who seek to stay your hand. For the world can be yours, and the blood of men can be yours to spill as you please. And you can have your pleasure of the world through violence and the wielding of the sword. And your lust can stride upon the face of the land, taking whatever it desires and discarding the empty husks when you've sucked them dry.
WAR and violence are your heritage, and now is the time to stake your claim upon them, to unmask the lurking shadows of your fiendish soul, expose them, hold them like banners before you, and shout your battle cry before the world.
SATAN'S army is ready in the field and slaughter is the order of the day. For I, SATAN, am master of the world, and My law is death. Who follows Me must ultimately conquer all. For I am the master of WAR, the lord of all conquest, and the ruler of all violent conflict.
Hear My voice, for the time is short. The ultimate phase of WAR is about to begin. Be there in the forefront of the line of battle. Be not a worthless pawn, a feather blown by the wind. Be not still. Ask not for peace and rest for these can be no more. And stillness is already of the past. Seek not to be left alone, to escape the burning slaughter of the holocaust, to hide from the final wrath of the vengeful Gods. But rise and march to the center of the raging chaos. Defy the cataclysm! Don your gleaming armor and stride with the engines of death. And watch the gradual spreading of the slow disease. See the lingering death of the latest phase of WAR. And revel in the agonies of man brought low, man deprived, man humiliated, man trampled into the ground, and utterly degraded to the point of dismal decay and a futile death. And gorge yourself on the horrors of irretrievable loss; the miserable fate of the victims that still remain, the helpless bewilderment of their despair, the pitiful cries of their useless supplication and the wailing anguish of their bereavement. And grind your heel into the face of their stupidity.
Burn the chaff of humanity! For such is its desire and its desert. And dance the dance of a dervish around the leaping flames.
Again I say; Release the Fiend within you!
Release the Fiend! Release the Fiend!
And the Fiend shall conquer, and the chaff be burned.
The Fiend shall slake his monstrous lust upon the helpless body of the wasted earth. And the chaff shall be consumed.
The Fiend shall wield a mighty cutlass, and the land shall be lifeless in his wake. And the chaff shall blow as smoke in the wind of his passing.
The Fiend shall devastate the earth, and his mighty roar shall rock the heavens so that the very stars shall feel his presence. And the chaff shall vanish and be forgotten.
I, SATAN, shall stalk with the Fiend. We shall stalk the earth together, lending strength to the flashing saber and unerring accuracy to the speeding missile. We shall be on every battleground and every scene of devastation. And our might shall be on the side of the mighty; strength for strength, power for power. And to him who possesses, more shall be given. On him who destroys with power, a greater power for destruction shall be bestowed. And for him who massacres with strength, more victims for his ruthless slaughter shall be provided. But he that has nothing, and wilts before the rising tide of WAR, from him shall be taken even the little that he has. For such is his desire and his desert. And even what strength he has to plead for mercy shall be denied him, and his tongue shall disobey him at the final moment, and he shall be cut down.
And the mother that pleads weakly for her child shall see it slain before her. And the woman that pleads palely for her miserable virtue shall be struck down and raped. And he that fearfully pleads for his life shall be cut to pieces.
The final march of doom has begun. The earth is prepared for the ultimate devastation. The mighty engines of WAR are all aligned and brought together for the End. The scene is set.
The Lord LUCIFER has sown the seeds of WAR, and now weeps to see them take root and flourish in the fertile ground of man's destructive nature. The Lord JEHOVAH decrees the End and the violence of End. He prophesies the harvest of monumental slaughter. And I, the Lord SATAN, with My army of the damned, have come to reap that harvest, and to feed My furnace with the souls of the fearful.
For in the great cataclysm of the latter days shall the world be split, and man shall be divided. And those who are weak in spirit and mind, those who cringe and cry out to be spared, those who adopt the air of the victim, the sick demeanor of the lost and helpless, those who crawl and crumble, tremble with abject terror and complain that others but themselves controlled their destiny, those who bewail their sad predicament and disclaim all responsibility for their fate, they are the dross of the universe, the useless futile miserable dross, that stands for nothing, lives for nothing, aims for nothing and shall ultimately receive nothing. For they shall be swept away in the whirlwind of the great disaster, they shall be scattered like dust upon the ground, and then caught up in a mighty vortex and sucked into the depths of Hell.
And the strong and the mighty and the ruthless, creatures of the Fiend that follow him, they shall stand at the core of the raging chaos, spreading death around them and embracing it themselves like a long lost brother. And those that die in the glory of battle, those that kill before they die, those that meet death as an equal and not as a pale grey supplicant, those that stay proud and strong, and die as they have lived, those that revel in the sheer delights of death instead of fleeing helpless before its inexorable avalanche, they are My people, the men of SATAN, born of the underworld and reared in the dark chasms of the Pit. And these shall be My army at the End; rank upon rank of black-hearted angels from the depths of Hell.
And when the great holocaust of man's destruction sweeps over the face of the earth, destroying all before it, then shall My army appear, streaming up from the bowels of the world and following in the wake of the all-consuming fire.
And the land shall be black. No tree shall stand green and elegant rising from the ground. Here and there a blackened stump will mark the passing of a forest. And all shall be charred and scorched, and nothing remains, save a monstrous festering wound that can never heal. And the earth shall open, and Hell shall be freed from within.
And fire shall spring forth and cover the land, and behind the fire the army of SATAN shall spread through the blackened world to occupy it. And all the hideous creatures of the Pit shall be given the freedom of the earth, and I, SATAN, shall rule the world in might and majesty as is My right. And Mine who fought and died or fought and did not die, Mine who took pleasure in the final cataclysm, who stood in the midst of the chaos and reveled in the might of WAR, Mine shall not be forgotten. For they shall have earned their heritage.
And the world shall belong to Me, for it will be Mine by conquest. SATAN in man shall have triumphed at the End, and the earth shall be My footstool. And those who have walked with Me shall rule with Me. And those who have fought by My side shall sit by My side in majesty.
Go forth! Prepare for the day of reckoning!
And he that shall meet the day steeped in the blood of his enemies shall be raised up and magnified in strength and power. He that shall be found in the very midst of battle, reeking of death, lip curled in ultimate defiance, shall be reborn to rule immortal in the world of SATAN. But he that is seen to run and hide, he that is heard to cry out for mercy, he that collapses in helpless despair, all shall be doomed to endless torment for their weakness.
And the earth shall be utterly destroyed and the sky polluted, and darkness shall cover the land. Corpses shall litter the ground, and cities, laid waste, shall smolder lifelessly. No creature of the natural order shall be left to witness the devastation. But monsters of the Pit shall stalk the land. And My people shall be rulers of this world of death.
And from this scorched and blackened citadel, the eyes of My people shall look outwards to the universe. And when the time shall come, I, SATAN, shall again gather My army together, and with the power vested in My shattered world, I shall set forth in conquest of the stars.
And I shall spread terror through the universe. And My people shall go before Me, and WAR shall spring up in every comer of the vast incalculable multitude of worlds that stretches beyond time itself.
And as I shall rule the world, and My people with Me, so shall I rule the universe, and My might and My power shall know no bounds. And the stars shall be Mine and the planets also. By the incontrovertible right of superior strength shall the whole universe come under My jurisdiction.
And I, SATAN, shall destroy the universe. For My destruction shall reach out like a cancer from the Earth and spread its taint of slaughter and decay amongst the stars, till all is destroyed, all matter dead and mutilated to unchangeable lifelessness. Then shall I be free and all My people, when all matter is destroyed, all physical existence crushed to a formless pulp.
Then shall we roam eternity unshackled by the burden of material creation. For when we cease to lie beneath the world of men, submerged in a morass of putrid flesh, when we have plumbed its depths, wallowed in its screeching senses, ripped it apart and thereby burst from its crippling clutches, then shall we transcend its boundaries and rise to the utmost heights of spiritual fulfillment.
For I, SATAN, embody both lowest and highest. I am the God of both ultimate destruction and ultimate creation. Mine are the hideous black demons of the Pit, and Mine also are the white angelic hordes that transcend Heaven itself. I am the epitome of both death and life. I am the body in the depths of dark depravity, and I am the soul in the heights of sublime spiritual ecstasy. The legions of the damned are of Me, as is the great company of archangels. And when the bonds of matter hold Me no more, then shall I and My people, My army, My legions, all My followers, rise from the depths of the blackness of the Pit and transcend the stars.
I am the body and the soul of man. Whilst the Fiend of the body is enslaved by the fearful mind, the soul is imprisoned. Only when the Fiend is released can the soul be free.
So I, SATAN, am come to release the Fiend, to let him loose upon the earth for the latter days, so that the world shall end with nothing less than the ultimate destruction of total WAAR. And those who accept the End and play their part together with the Fiend in bringing about the End, those who stand proud and fearless in the midst of the End and wield with Me the sword of ultimate destruction, they shall rule with Me when humanity is dead, and after seek freedom with Me in the conquest of the universe. But those who seek to stay My hand, to chain the Fiend, to cripple the engines of death and prevent the inevitable End, they shall be doomed to failure; dismal, futile, worthless failure. For the End must be, and none shall prevent or postpone it.
So rise and prepare for the final battle. Stand proud in the monstrous presence of violent death, and sound the trumpets of WAR.
Invoke the cataclysm!
And on the signal, when the heavens burst and a burning, blinding, raging, all-enveloping fury sweeps the earth:
Release the Fiend!
And stride with SATAN'S army to the End.

Copyright Church of the Final Judgment, 1966.

TRANSCENDENCE
Of the Gods on War

1.1 THREE distinct and separate patterns of reality. Yet each to some extent is present in each one of us.

1.2 First, the knowledge that man has rejected his God and demanded the blood of his fellow man, and that now he must suffer the consequences of his sin, at the hand of his God.

1.3 Then, the knowledge of the evil of war, of the degradation of human self-destruction, of the pain and the suffering, the deprivation and the miserable despair.

1.4 And finally the knowledge of irrevocable commitment to the way of bloodshed; the plough to which man has put his hand and cannot turn back until he has completed the cycle of his own self-destruction through war.

1.5 No one of the three is more real than the other two, except in the mind of the individual. The acceptance of the reality of all of them is the ultimate truth; the complete understanding of the triangular conflict which exists in every one of us.

1.6 In adherence to one and rejection of the other two there is courage, but it is a blind courage; a part-acceptance, but equally a part-rejection of reality. To cling to one pattern only and resist the others brings no resolution and no fulfilment, because the knowledge is incomplete.

1.7 Only by a full understanding and acceptance of all three patterns as parts of ourselves can we begin to rise above the driving need to pursue only one of them in the face of the powerful and agonising pressures of the other two combined. Clear vision of all three brings detachment and peace of mind, because it brings the full knowledge of reality, which is truth.

1.8 But though to follow one pattern and deny the presence in ourselves of the other two is blindness, to reject all three is the ultimate rejection. That is not only blindness but cowardice as well.

1.9 To deny the reality of war, except as a minor evil caused and propagated by others than ourselves, for which we are not responsible and which we are fast eliminating by the presence of our own undeniable sanity, is total blindness.

1.10 To reject the validity of the preacher of doom, the Jehovian, and the preacher of peace at all costs, the Luciferian, and the preacher of violence as the only way to end the cycle of violence to which we are committed, the Satanist; to reject all three and hope that the whole unpleasant situation will right itself; to reduce the significance of war; to reduce the importance of violence in our lives; to pass all responsibility for the fact of war onto others; to belittle the effect of war upon the world; to condemn all forms of extreme attitude to war; these are the ways of blindness and cowardice.

1.11 This is the way of the grey.

1.12 But for all the apparent outward prevalence of this last attitude to war, its power is no more real than its pretensions. Because the patterns of the Gods are untouched by the images of the fearful. Concealed though they may be behind facades of optimistic fantasy, their effects are undiminished.

1.13 The power of JEHOVAH, LUCIFER and SATAN, is the dominant power, and conflicted though They may be for the purpose of the Game, upon one matter They are in total agreement, which means that on this matter all human beings are in equally total agreement, hard though they may try to hide it even from themselves.

1.14 And that matter is the fact of the End. The End of the world as we know it; the End of human kind as we know it; the End of human values as we know them; the End of human endeavours, human creations, human ambitions, human patterns of life, human conventions, human laws and human customs, as we know them. On one thing the Gods are in agreement. All these shall be destroyed, to make way for a New Age and a New Way of Life.

1.15 Humanity as a whole will not rise above its conflicts. Even if it were to do so it would still destroy all the physical, social and moral structures which it has created, because it would see their total invalidity. But it will not; so the destruction will take place in a chaos and confusion of ignorance, with the vast majority still clinging desperately to their hollow materialistic dreams, even in the depths of their final despair; whilst the few who do rise above the conflicts, will stand aside, separated from the mass, united not within but without the man-made structures of the human game, and linked to a new reality founded not on the laws of men but on the Laws of GOD.

Copyright, The Process, Church of the Final Judgment. August, 1967.