Some Watchman ! Why is the Universe so big, and we are so small?

 

Franck Muller: Great Complications Giga Tourbillon watch

Modern physicists have been amazed when they calculated how a tiny change in the fundamental constants of physics will alter the possibility that a viable universe could ever arrive. For example the gravitational constant G determines the force of attraction F of two bodies M and m and the distance d between them according to a formula published by Isaac Newton.

F = G x M x m / d². Where d² is the square of the distance.

If G was anything other than what we observe today, then the likelihood of the universe ever existing is reduced to near zero. In the case of G, the universe would not exist in a theoretical physical environment where G differed from what we know it by one part in 10³⁴ or one followed by 34 noughts, written also as 10^34.

This is not, by far, the only physical constant that must be extraordinarily exact to allow our existence to happen. Without exact gravity, electric, magnetic, nuclear and other constants we would not exist because our universe would not exist. It would be physically impossible. That is like a skyscraper building made out of jelly sticks; it does not have the elemental characteristics and strength to sustain it before it collapsed. 

Praise be for Precision!

The exactness that fundamental constants must be determined is as follows:

• Gravitational constant: 1 part in 10³⁴
• Electromagnetic force versus force of gravity: 1 part in 10³⁷
• Cosmological constant: 1 part in 10¹²⁰
• Mass density of universe:  1 part in 10⁵⁹
• Expansion rate of universe: 1 part in 10⁵⁵
• Dark energy:  1 part in 10¹²³

If we consider the universe running true as present as having all its mechanics such as the cog-wheels absolutely correct, we might gain some understanding of what this means. The gravitational cog has 10³⁴ teeth. 

Think of it as getting the shape of each cog exactly right. So if there is one part mistake in the Gravitational constant it is not 10³⁴  a number like
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 

but a number like

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001 

that creates such an error that the universe becomes unstable and inoperative for required stability of planet Earth not to mention how life on the planet and how intelligence and even more how consciousness arose.

That last digit really makes that much of a difference.

So it is like betting on a horse, not with one chance in ten to win, but one in that number,  10³⁴ 

But the same can be said for all the other constants. So the probability of getting Earth just right from the above must meet the requirement of all the constants. Hence to get all the cogs and their accuracy in line the probability involves:

10³⁴ X 10³⁷ X10¹²⁰ X  10⁵⁹ X 10⁵⁵  X10¹²³ =  10⁴²⁸ .

This number is many times the total number of atoms in the universe -- which is a mere 10⁸⁰, one followed by 80 zeroes.

Brilliant Beginning or Big Bang?

The term Big Bang was thrown out by the then atheist astrophysicist Fred Hoyle in a 1949 BBC debate. Hoyle was a proponent of the eternal, steady state universe. He refused to recognise a definite moment of creation. Why? Because that would imply logically a biblical Creator by the laws of physics and cause and effect. He said he did not believe in a Big Bang or Genesis. Why use that term? It obscures real facts.

A Bang or explosion implies bits and pieces just happened without saying the word Creator. It tries to avoid the cause and effect dilemma. It is dishonest.

It wasn't a chaotic explosion that made the universe, its galaxies, stars, planets revolving around them. It was not an explosion that spit out material to create the most complex feature of that universe. What is that? The human brain -- including Hoyle's which was not functioning well on this question. 

It takes massive organisation to proceed from the creation of light, particles and matter to a living planet like Earth. In other words, it wasn't a Big Bang, it was a Brainy Beginning, a Brilliant Beginning anticipating in advance effects billions of our years in advance. A Bang Bang would never have produced astrophysicist Hoyle with free will to deny evidence. 

Before an assembly of a complex entity such as a satellite with solar panels, all the pieces have to be conceived, constructed to exact standards, set and packed in order, like a folded tent, to use the biblical analogy. Hence the pre-Beginning organisation and planning has to contain far more information than at a later stage when they start to function to support life. Life decays and dies. So do stars. So what was the Brainy Beginning like? The chronological cycle has to be planned to work.

Physicists call this extremely low entropy, S. It means high information content, high organisation. Is it conceivable that everything in our universe today with billions of humans and untold numbers of animals, bacteria and a sky-full of trillions of stars was foreseen?

We should maybe call it the Universal Begettal. It was like a newly fertilised ovum. It was tiny. It starts with just one cell. Biologists consider all the information for growth is contained in code in the chromosomes. It has information far beyond the covers of a multivolume encyclopaedia to accomplish such a task. It has to build the greatest computer in the universe, the human brain. There are more neural connections in the brain, 100 trillion, than all the known stars in the universe.

What happened at the begettal of the universe was far beyond the miracle of human life. This universal begettal had the potential to shape everything that happened subsequently. It spread the material infrastructure, liker the erection of a tent. It included spawning elements for engineering life on Earth (Terrestial Begettal) with the first cell. All other forms of life we see today are so different from a single cell of a bacterium.  We should contemplate multiple generational events and not assume they are evolved because that is the last gasp of some unproven anti-theistic method. 

At the begettal between an ovum and a sperm a mighty electric current happens. Similarly the extraordinarily powerful energy of the early expansion is no indication of a randomness. An event of such huge proportions of energy and matter (that at some later stage produced complex beings like humans) should tell us that huge magnitudes of organisation are involved. The scientific approach should be to detect this information about organisation, not dismiss it by calling it randomness. That merely reflects human astonishment at our puniness and the size and dimensions of the event, not its engineering design. 

It had to be super-exact, far beyond any watchmaker or instrument today. Each step of the expansionary process followed the laws of physics. Nothing in the evolution of the universe was chaotic or random because chaotic means something that does not obey the laws of physics. It's a wrong starting point. The Big Beginning was therefore the most highly organised and well-thought out part of the universe because it had to encapsulate all possible actions and reactions of subsequent particles and elements that brought the Earth into existence. It placed us on a special planet with what is an essential twin called the moon. A special solar system was also necessary to sustain life. 

Other solar systems are apparently outside our reach of ever getting there. They are beyond our malevolent hands that fabricate recurrent evil and destruction. We should contemplate on the eternal natural laws of justice, morality and ethics, before attempting even to envisage man's steps off his own planet.  

Witness of Science

Another witness proves the deep design of our universe. Mathematics and physics had to exist BEFORE the Big Beginning. The Designer created these plus the logic in our brains required to use them, if only we would.

All these three laws, physics and the material world, natural justice and the laws of mathematics show the scientific design of the universe and our part and destiny in it.

Random means without law according to observation and human discernment. Scientific means establishing the laws by which the universe works. The two concepts are opposites. 

The estimate of the probability of the constants of the Universe arising as haphazard values from an explosion of parts is one in 10⁴²⁸ according to the above calculation. Those odds are so small that chance is ruled out. That sort of result is so unlikely that another solution or another process has to be sought to explain the experiment: right by design. Not just any design but design that dealt with the factors involved in the most intricate way possible, engineering far beyond human powers. 

But this huge number 10⁴²⁸ is still a woeful underestimate. Nobel laureate for Physics Roger Penrose estimates the real number as  10^{10 itself raised to the 123 power}  (10^10^123).  (See New Proofs of the Existence of God from Physics by Robert J Spitzer SJ)

These numbers showing this extraordinary amount of precision and organisation flummox those who claim to be scientists but are not willing to concede that a Great Designer must have been involved in the process of our creation and that of the Universe.

It is irrational to say: 'I believe in science but the Universe must have arisen by randomness.'  It is not scientific.

So those that have a visceral, non-mathematical, non-scientific reaction to the conclusion of human physical existence, will have to deal with the consequences. What about multiple universes where only ours is successful? Even if such a number of universes were possible, just about all would be none-working, imploding or exploding failures. 

Warning! According to the multiverse philosophy these other failures as universes actually interact with our own. So stand by, something worse is going to happen as an almost infinite number of failed, renegade universes crashing through ours!!! Please prepare a shelter! 

But that's not all. There is no proof that even if all the physical constants are just right, that life, as distinct from chemical elements, will suddenly appear. Atheists generally work on the unproven assumption (in fact an assumption that has been proved wrong centuries ago) that life comes from raw elements spontaneously. Life comes only from life.

So even if some other universe does not collapse then there is no certainty of life -- in fact an assurance from science that life will not arise by itself.

No Darwin Fairies in Physics

Physics is called a hard science, meaning there is little room for fudging by the use of unproven theories. Theories are built on logic. Conclusions are reached from facts by a mathematical process. The conclusions must conform to observed results. These can be repeated to be sure of the accuracy. 

Biology also can produce scientific results but at a lower certainty. But then its grand and obsolete theory of Evolution requires replacement; its obsolescent theory has become dogma. It fails when absolute proof is required. Ask a biologist to demonstrate practically in a laboratory how a bacterium  transforms itself into an elephant. Or on being given just elementary chemicals, make the request to create life. 

Darwinists say the process of transformation took time. But time is relative. Bacteria can double in population in as little as four minutes. But they still remain bacteria for as long as humans observe them. They have been tracked in laboratories over decades and therefore millions of generations. None has changed into an amoeba, let alone a baby elephant. 

Animals have the chance to live through a fewer number of generations in earth's epochs. Yet evolutionists expect in these fewer generations for a fish to change into a land animal or a mouse-size creature to burst into a dinosaur. 

Fairy-talk. Unreal. Impossible. 

Biological creatures do not naturally create more complex, working animals. Structures including lifeforms decay and disintegrate to dust. Biological structures based on DNA fall apart after a few generations. Modern genetic research shows that in such animals each generation of reproduction loses its DNA telomeres so specie death is inevitable. Extinction does not have to wait for a meteorite bombardment. 

The difference in physics is qualitative. Time is a measured feature which helps define interactions of matter, which are also observed, measured and calculated. They are compared with mathematical calculations based on a theory and formulas. Different results would appear from the mathematics if the starting assumptions are different. 

So as William Paley pointed out in his Natural Theology in 1802, the world is as surprisingly well designed for humans like a watch with a perfect mechanism. In fact infinitely more. It has esthetics and lessons to teach humans on morality. A watch found in a field indicates that it was made with an intelligent designer and fabricator. He chose the exact materials for the brass cogs and steel spring so that it worked best and lasted longer. A glass face allowed the movement of the hands to be observed without opening the case. A further cover with a central hole allows the hands to be observed while the glass is protected.

It is no argument to say that individual components reflect the laws of metallic nature (whatever may be meant by that). It requires an agent. It requires intelligent choice from an extensive knowledge of elements and their properties. So do the 'laws of vegetable nature' and the 'laws of animal nature.' We might add the laws of human nature, which writers affirm are too often opposed to moral laws, and require choice. 

Astronomy shows, says Paley, beyond all other sciences the magnificence of the Creator's operations. The real subject of admiration is that we understand so much of astronomy as we do, so we can make this judgement.

The Truth -- Man is of small brain

Returning to the man's reaction to the watch he found in the field. This finder does not have to be a farmer. It may be an intelligent, well-read gentleman on his country stroll. What is he confronted with? 

He first sees an object that it is obviously man-made. How does he know? it has geometrical design. It has artistic features that show regularity, repetition and variation that are pleasing to the senses. These 'intuitions' or artistic rules are in some ways similar to mathematics.With the latter the rules are paramount. But whatever the rules of art are, they are recognised universally to some extent across mankind. In the case of mathematics the premises and the logic are essential for human agreement on their validity.

A man can imagine things that are false but he can only understand things that are true. If the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding. Isaac Newton.

The same goes for a watch in a field. We know at first glance it is of human production without anyone saying. To say it arrived by random forces is the nonsense, the material counterpart of reductio ad absurdam.

But there are logical deductions that the finder does not necessarily take to heart and brain. This shows how little is man's brain and how egocentric and self-serving he is. While man may not object to a mathematical reductio ad absurdam, his human nature objects to his acknowledging a Maker who clearly provides laws and instructions about how he should run his life. Too often he would prefer to hurt himself rather than be wise. False gods, lying, cheating, drug addiction, promiscuity may be his preferred choice and the consequences come from his decisions. 

This is why Paley's watch argument is resisted. But every element shows that a Designer is active. He is confronted with a product that has capitalized on the intrinsic characteristics of chemical elements, all of them different, metals of various sorts, precious gems and glass. It is easy for modern unthinking man to brush these facts away. But for the watch even to exist, there has to be a means and a designer to produce such varied characteristics and in more than a hundred elements, with untold numbers of alloys and compounds. 

In some cases, many cases, only one metal or alloy is suitable for the purpose of the watch. As scientists do not believe in randomness or any result without a cause following physical law, we are led to conclude that these results giving the curious characteristics of the elements arise from the Big Beginning of the universe with its ultimate knowledge and Wisdom. The Earth is the only planet were life has been found. It would be frustrating for a would-be watchmaker if the very element he needed for one cog was not present here but found on some far-off star! 

The elements are all here, at hand, however unlikely that may appear to be as our major planetary neighbours are gas-filled giants. This little planet has all that it takes. The necessary metals are part of the Universe, its design, development in its expansion phase and then comes their accumulation on earth, its discovery by man when he arrives and application into a watch! Without that engineering specification at the start, there would be no watch. 

But there is more to it than first meets the eye. 

Let's start with the glass cover. It is a product of silicon, made heating sand to a high temperature. But a gentleman of the time, as of ours, would know that that is not the sum total of the process. To obtain such high quality glass a stupendous amount of knowledge and experience of glass-making has to be accumulated. The Phoenicians were making glassware thousands of years ago but they could not fabricate such an object, as far as we know. Technology and artistic refinement takes generations upon generations to make improvement on improvement. And not by random processes but by application of intelligent analysis, research experimentation and ever-more careful production.

The watch glass has not only to be perfectly transparent without distortion but tough enough to withstand everyday usages. The watch found in a field shows that this purpose is intrinsically a part of the type and specifications of the glass. A random pile of silicon sand heated by whatever means would under no circumstances produce such an artefact.

We have only just got started with the glass. A half hunter pocket watch has an outer hinged metal and small central glass cover, so the hands can be seen partially without opening the cover fully. 

How would such sophistication come about from random? The cover opened reveals the second glass and the hands.

This shows that thought and purpose is involved in at least two contradicting ideas: protecting the internal mechanism and the internal glass, and secondly making the hands visible as they show something that is the ultimate purpose of the watch -- the time.

The central glass of the half hunter is small. It is just big enough to see the central parts of the hands and therefore the hour, minute and second. 

Then we see the purpose of the watch is to reflect the time sequence on an earth day or half day. That is obviously not a coincidence. it is a purpose. 

To do this there may be 26 moving parts, such as cogs, springs and an escapement mechanism. All have to be finely accurate in size, shape and design for the mechanism to have any sense and purpose. Any variation in their production would mean the watch fails as a timepiece, which we infer is the purpose. So we can judge whether it is fit for that purpose: if it keeps good time. If we find something is defective, we may infer that the owner has rejected it because it does not fulfil its purpose. 

What happens when we pick it up. What happens when we put it in our pocket, or even swing it around on its chain? Does it still keep good time if we lay it on its side or stand it upright? Those possibilities have obviously been thought of in advance. It is even certified to correct from 'positional errors'. That shows the instrument or previous versions of it have been tested and such a phenomenon noticed, analysed and corrected in a mechanical way. Then it has been synchronized against a master clock.

The inside cover tells us where it was made and how it was certified. How do we know that? Because it is in writing. And of itself the writing should prove to us if nothing else existed that it was made by a human and had a purpose and cause. The circle of the dial is marked off with Roman numerals. These show a progression I to II to II and so on. Then there are also figures like 1, 2, 3 and even 13 to 24. 

The figures reveal an intimate connection with the laws of mathematics, something that had to exist before the creation of the Universe. 

The Writing of Life

Writing implies a whole culture and civilization. First there is the language. Then the codification in a way that others can understand it. But we do not even have to assume that we can hear the language spoken or understand the symbols of the script.

Humans recognize written script as a uniquely human achievement. It has purpose. It has much more than that. It represents both individual and collective intelligence.

When Westerners saw Egyptian hieroglyphics they knew it was writing. They realized it was probably about kings emphasizing their acts and genealogy. But until the recent centuries they could not translate the symbols. They had the Rosetta Stone with what appeared to all to be an inscription in three languages with three different scripts. Even if you did not understand any of the languages you could still see that three languages were written.

As one of them was ancient Greek the Egyptian scripts could, by careful application of human intelligence, be eventually understood as a translation made at the same time.

The inescapable conclusion is that three scripts are all products of humans and human activities. They show design and order. It is not credible to argue that all these letters and styles as well as the cut rock itself was the result of 'random' events of pebbles crashing against a big cliff face until this stone fell out replete with the script.  

All that sounds reasonable. No one in their right mind would doubt archaeologists now can understand and translate all the other hieroglyphic inscriptions based on this knowledge. Each addition site with hieroglyphics can be understood and put into a larger context and framework of history. The whole of ancient Egyptian civilization is thus opened.

It is also important to say that if this were not so we would draw conclusions that would shake the basis of the science. A hieroglyphic inscription that could not be understood as Egyptian would cast doubts on the conclusions from the Rosetta Stone. The further identity of words in the Rosetta Stone with similar symbols in other inscriptions show consistency. And this is an important attribute of science to show the conclusion is correct.

Atheists refuse to read the Book of Life

 What if God wrote an inscription just like the Rosetta Stone? Would all the atheists of the world suddenly change their tune? 

Let's say God wrote a book the size of an encyclopedia, would they then believe or still say the Universe came about by random?

The book I am thinking about is long, very long. To type it out would take about 50 years, non stop, at eight hours a day. 

That is what the coded message of DNA is telling us. It is:

a. recognisable as a message because of its form.

b. it uses the equivalent of letters in an alphabet.

c. the separate parts can be decrypted to reveal the message about the human body.

d. altering the DNA message shows changes in outcome; and that a designer must have created the original DNA message to make a perfect, well-thought result.

e. the total message can not yet be decoded, showing the original writer of the DNA is far cleverer than us.

f. the conception and construction of DNA as a coded double helix is far beyond human ability when a human would be given as a starting point the constituent chemical elements in labelled boxes.

g. some of the chemicals required are so rare, humans are at a loss how our small planet had collected any quantity of them at all.  

The Enigma Riddle

Cast your mind back to the dark days of World War Two. The Allies spent a huge effort and built some of the first computers. Their purpose was to decipher the radio messages from Germany and from submarines.

The messages looked like gibberish. They were just a string of letters and numbers. But thousands of people laboured day and night to make sense of them.

Eventually they 'cracked' the code, a first only in a few words, then sentences. 

Then the meaning of the messages became clear. It was about attack plans and various military secrets. They proved essential for Allied victory.

But what if at the start, those who received the radio messages declared that they were just random electrical noises? What if no one collected the signals? What if no one researched them? The first efforts would seem to show that they were not understandable at all.

And then when some of the analysts said the signals were of vital military importance, the political leaders said: "I don't believe the Germans are sending these signals. In fact I don't believe in there is any connection between the ships that are being sunk in the Atlantic and the radio signals (that may be just random noise)."

That politician would be assumed to be working for the Nazis as his reaction was so illogical to the obvious design and vital information content of the decrypts.

Yet this is exactly what atheists do when the DNA decrypts are revealed with a far greater message than any military could devise. They bring a message from the Great Designer and Creator.

It is time we say loud and clear that if scientists do not believe in the decrypts of Nature as God's creation, then they are working for the enemy.

Radio vacuum

Now that Earthlings have assembled such a powerful means to decrypt coded messages, they have the means to apply to a much wider operation. 

The earth receives light from far-off suns and galaxies. Physicists know how to analyse this light. Each beam of this far-distant solar light can be split into the wavelengths and for visible light the constituent colours. It affords massive amounts of information. 

As the light is spread out by wavelength, it is seen that dark lines appear at certain distinct places. These Fraunhofer lines are very valuable. They tell the astrophysicist about the chemical composition of the material emitting the light and the absorption of elements that the light travels through.

From this meagre indications much of astrophysics can come to surprising conclusions. Among these is the conclusion that the universe is expanding and more recently that this expansion is accelerating.

And so much more. But earth scientists have not detected any signal that shows intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. There is  no equivalent to the signals of the Nazis that tells of messages, about what they are doing for good or ill. 

For the present humans are faced with the conclusion that all our efforts using massive radio telescopes show that we are alone in the universe.

If we look impartially at the facts, the outcome is shocking. Not only is the chance of the existence of Earth astronomically unlikely but our best efforts to detect other life shows no results.

Yet some scientists, abandoning the scientific method, believe, or want to believe, that all the universe arose by a random process called Evolution. 

   

The Evolution cop out

Today, the forbidden word is Designer. A century ago when atheists became more militant and theists more passive, words like God and Designer were avoided in scientific discourse. Instead the word Nature was used. This contrasts with the early days of modern science where such words as Designer and God were commonplace.

'Nature has provided such a wonderful design here etc.'

With further indoctrination in schools and universities and especially the media where many of journalists do not have a technical background, the predominant word is now 'Evolution'.

They do not seem to think when they say such things as 'Evolution has thought out and developed an intelligent system to counter this animal's foes.'

The lack of logic does not seem to bother them. Evolution implies random processes that self-destruct leaving only the survival of those that survive. Remember Solomon's word: 

'I saw under the sun, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong... ' The survivors may be the weak and the fearful who hide!

Evolution does not provide the means for in-depth analysis of design, except by dogmatic assertion that highly sophisticated and advanced design must have arisen by lawless processes. 

Evolution has grown from an analysis of the beaks of Galapagos finches to a religion. The bible of that religion, the evolutionary tree, has since been cut down by further research over the past two centuries. Evolutionists persist. The Emperor has no clothes but it is the Evolutionist that does not realise it, not the public that cries 'He has no clothes'.

For the present, I deem it better to analyse design (present day perceived order and intelligence) in terms of a designer, not random processes. 

   

Physicists, Biologists and Logicians

The most brilliant physicists often make poor biologists.  The noted Stanford physicist Professor Leonard Susskind somehow believes that the bat developed the most brilliant sonar guidance system over generations without one of the generations of intermediates dying of hunger! Hunting moths in the dark is not easy! Any generation without sonar would be littering the caves, dead with their feet up in the air because they starved. No chance to breed.

There are many models of eyes, but no explanation how or why different animals have different types of eyes, some with multiple lenses, fish eyes with no irises, eel eyes with an extra cover that protects them from grime and sand they bury themselves in. 

How did these organic cogs arise? Just the Darwin fairy? Prof Susskind admits he is biased and not an impartial scientist. 

Here's a page from his book on The Cosmic Landscape.

Confounding Science with False Faith

Susskind is a clear writer when it comes to physics. When you add a false faith not based on science but wishful thinking he commits the fault that he accuses his enemy of. Who is Susskind's enemy? Should a scientist have enemies? Shouldn't they be looking for facts?

Susskind says that he is against what he calls 'supernatural agents.' In other words God as a designer. Here he makes a logical error. He is biting his tail. He is trying to understand the laws of science, it originating forces, its mathematics, its sequential events, without a lawgiver.

Darwin is no use here. Even if it shows some aspects of micro-evolution of species, it has nothing to say about the origin of life, as Darwin said. It also has even less to say about the physical universe. Rocks do not think they will improve. Nor is there any teleology (purpose-driven will) when they collide.

Mixing error and science is no way to seek out the origin of the universe before it existed. The only honest way for scientists is to stick to the principles of science and physics.

 

Failing Mechanisms

The human body has about 37 trillion cells with 200 different cell types. A human functions with the aid of microbes in his gut mainly and elsewhere. These amount to an additional ten to 100 trillion cells in order to function and remain alive. Getting this all together is no easy task either. How animals moved from a single cell (wherever that came from) to such a complex mechanism is another puzzle of gigantic proportions. It is a question of design, not only of the human cellular structure, the biology of the gut, but the entire ecology of the surroundings, and ultimately the solar system in which humans live. That is design on some large scale.  

To change one organic form to another is no simple task. David Berlinski is one mathematical physicist that tackled the nonsense of evolutionary biology. He shows how many variations have to take place simultaneously in bones and nerves and other organs to change a living creature into another supposed link. Failure means death, even if some of the changes could be made. You need 100 % to  make a creature fit for its environment and survival.

Changing life forms is not a simplistic process, millions of changes need to be done simultaneously. 

Creating life requires an exact process of highly unusual chemicals to be present in the right concentration at the right time and in the right order. No Chemist store is available once one step fails! You start again. You cannot bake a cake by throwing all the ingredients together and hope the cream will come on top. 

Big Picture

  

What's it all about? Why is the universe so big and we are so small and insignificant in size but humungous in pride? If you wish to polish a diamond you need vast industries to dig them out of the ground in deep mines and powerful instruments to separate and polish them.  One of the reasons the universe is so big is that our ego is also so big. We have to look at the atoms to get an understanding of real design from the bottom up and what is involved.

That brings us to the laws of justice and morality and character. As sentient beings we can understand that humility is a positive trait in human society and before the immensity of the Universe and its creator. Why are humans on earth? God-like Character is the end product, but it requires a lot of machinery to get us there.

The Apostle Peter said in an early Nazarene document:

'All evil springs from ignorance, and ignorance herself, the mother of all evils, is sprung from carelessness and sloth, and is nourished, and increased, and rooted in the senses of men by negligence. ... Nothing is worse than for one to believe what he is ignorant of, and to maintain as true what is false .. as a drunk man maintaining he is sober. 

Ignorance is not knowing what is good for us. Once we know this our ignorance perishes. Therefore the knowledge of truth should be eagerly sought after; and no one can confer it except the True Prophet. ... We have free will.'

The 'logic' of atheism

 Tiresome Tyson

Let's start a logical deduction with an obvious non-scientific axiom: Everything arose by random, without a Designer which humans call God.

Isaac Newton started all his discoveries with a declaration of his axioms or Lemmas as they are known in science and mathematics. 

Take this axiom: The universe arose by random processes. Random means without physical law, without design, without purpose. For a start that means that logic itself cannot exist because all the universe is random, including the human brain. Logic is random. Absurd, therefore false!

The wings of a butterfly are blue not because they are colored but because they are made up of a diffraction grating that splits up light. Is this a random construction of chemicals?

Did the butterfly invent this when it was a pin-sized tiny grub, an instar, chewing leaves? Did it come to him as a caterpillar? Or was it in the crysalis as it re-arranged the whole of its metabolism into a magnificent inspiration for mankind on a summer's day? It was all unseen by human eye. Humans could not help as, until recently, they knew nothing of light diffraction grids.

If anyone, whether he calls himself a scientist or not, believes that:

The Universe, the galaxy, the solar system, the world, life on this planet, the human body, animals down to the smallest bacteria, bacteriophages, and viruses have:

• No design
• No purpose
• No logic

 

• That all the universe is material and made of chemical elements only
• and therefore as chemicals can have no life or consciousness, 
• that DNA is just a bunch of random chemicals that fell together,

then we end up with a nonsense conclusion.

You make yourself look like an idiot if you believe as your axiom or lemma that the universe arrived by random and chaotic processes. You start with unreason.

Compare this to what the great scientist said:

In default of any other proof, the thumb would convince me of the existence of a God.        Isaac Newton

 God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them.         Isaac Newton

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.      Isaac Newton

As a blind man has no idea of colors, so we have no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.    Isaac Newton

 

Isaac Newton's conclusion is what many who declare themselves 'ungodly' and randomists wish to avoid:

First was the Religion of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ & all the saints. It consists of two parts: our duty towards God & our duty towards man or piety & righteousness, piety which I will here call Godliness & Humanity.    

Isaac Newton

 

What makes Luke's Gospel unique? Caligula and the authenticated Temple archives!

Luke's Gospel is a record addressed to the High Priest in Jerusalem. It can be shown that it was the time when Gaius Caligula was the emperor. He wanted to destroy all Jews and followers of Christ. 

The book was designed to provide undeniable facts to a political and religious leader of the Jews. The high priest was a pawn of Rome, chosen by Rome to act in Rome's interests to control the Jews. Luke's book, however, provided fact after fact, known to all Jews and believers, that showed why Rome's policy was dead wrong. Furthermore, it showed why the high priest in this case should be acting against the well-known misdeeds of his priestly father and brother, also recorded in the gospels.  

The book is addressed to “Most Excellent Theophilus” chapter 1:3. He was the ethnarch (Roman designated high priest and native ruler). He  ruled as high priest from 37 to 41 CE. He is mentioned in Josephus as the son of Annas of the NT.

This title (kratiste) shows the book was written in this period of intense persecution. The evangelisation of the world had started with force. Areas like Britain outside the empire became a safe haven. 

Emperor Tiberius had recognized that Christ must be a god as he had reports and dispatches showing that the Resurrection had taken place. The Senate objected to this divine status. They said that in Roman law the Senate alone had the legal right to define who was a god. So Tiberius forbade anyone to persecute believers while he lived.

Caligula, the would-be 'god'

Then Caligula had Tiberius killed in 37 CE and became Emperor Gaius. Caligula saw the danger to the whole infrastructure of Rome. It was based on paganism. Paganism was based on the whim of men in the Senate. Its fall was inevitable. It was only a question of time, not logic. 

Romans were confronted with genuine miracles and a genuine resurrection from the dead, followed by many others, Matt 27:52.

And the tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep arose, and came out of their graves after his resurrection and went into the holy city, and appeared to many.  

Caligula's single-mindedness to act is described as madness. Flavius Josephus, a eye witness of events, says the emperor had a madness of hubris, an overpowering insolent pride, Antiquities 19,1. Its malevolent power 'extended through all the earth and sea.' It 'filled the empire with more evil than history has ever known.' 

Among all the earth, Caligula said, 'the Jews and their institutions are my worst enemies.' Leg, 256. Why?

Philo, the Jew of Alexandria, says Caligula was 'beside himself with vanity, not only saying but thinking he was god. He then found among the Greeks or the outside world no people fitted better than the Alexandrians to confirm this unmeasured passion craving for what was beyond mankind's nature.' (Leg 162.) 

What motivated such extremism? Why did the Alexandrian Greeks act so enthusiastically? The core of this madness was a desire for absolute autocracy. That reflected his ancestor, dictator Julius Caesar. 

Caligula wanted to set himself up as the indisputable political and religious head of the entire empire. He drank precious pearls dissolved in his drinks; he ate golden bread and golden meat. He had sex with everyone from the prostitute Pyrallis to almost every woman of rank in Rome. They were all his sex slaves. He had homosexual relations with many men. He had incest with his sisters. (Suetonius: Gaius 36.)

Note: his contemporaries considered he increasingly developed his character of inordinate pride, hubris. It was applauded by some groups and nations. It was not seen as a clinical or medical conditions as recently some writers diagnose centuries after the event to explain it away: glandular disorder, hyperthyroidism, interictal temporal lobe epilepsy, encephalitis, schizoid illness etc.

What was his motivation for all this?

Despot or Absolute Sovereign?

Caligula's dilemma may be summed up in one Greek word. That word is Despotes. It means Absolute Sovereign. It is used of a head of a household which had slaves. The slaves' lives and treatment including torture and death were totally in his hands. Roman law gave a master of slaves absolute control as objects and possessions.

The term was not used between freemen. The officers of Caesar might be addressed as lord, kurios in Greek, but not despotes. That term was reserved to the Caesar Gaius, the only one in this period. Why only one? Because the word despotes was usually confined to the supreme god of the universe, the Creator of all.

To call someone despotes implied that all other creatures were his slaves, obedient subjects, bought and owned by him. 

Augustus then Tiberius simply called themselves first citizen, princeps. They said they were chief priest of religion (Pontifex Maximus) or recalled they had been consul, the chief magistrate. That was not enough for Caligula. He insisted he be referred to as despotes, Absolute Master, by Romans, his officers and even his friends, like king Herod Agrippa.

Jews avoided the term despotes whenever they could. That would be confounding the power and dignity of Almighty God with a pagan.

There was one major exception. Jews applied the title despotes to one of their own. Inside the Temple of Jerusalem, the chief priest (not the high priest) was referred to as despotes or oikodespotes (Absolute Sovereign of the House). The Temple was a City-State and the person in control of all its thousands of guards and the high priests was the Chief Priest. He was Teacher of the high priests and Levites. All had to obey him as he spoke the oracles of the living God.

Jesus, the Anointed Chief Priest, was addressed by these titles and he  refers to himself as oikodespotes, Luke 13:25, Matt 10:25, Luke 14:21. Peter and Jude in the NT refer to him as despotes, Absolute Master (2Pet 2:1 and Jude 4). Gentile converts also in Rome referred to Jesus as Despotes (1 Clement 40). In history the larger family of Jesus and his brothers and sisters is referred to as the desposyni, blood relatives of Jesus, the despotes. 

When a Jew or Nazarene or a gentile convert referred to Jesus, he said despotes. They had been bought back, redeemed from their sins, by the Master. Sinners are bought at a price, 1Cor 6:20, 2Peter 2:1. They considered themselves willingly slaves (doulos) of all that is good. Even James the brother of Christ refers to himself as a slave of Jesus the Anointed, James 1:1.  

But the pagans in Rome and elsewhere, cheek by jowl with Jews and Nazarenes, were forced to call Caligula despotes. The implication was that he ruled by crude muscular power of his will and his depraved sexual whims the entire world, reduced to utter slavery. His sense of power was that of a tyrant, who could disregard all law and abrogated all power and decision-making to himself.    

When Caligula was claiming the title of Despotes, he was confronted with Jews and Gentiles for whom the only person deserving of the title was the resurrected Jesus who redeemed them. Caligula had redeemed basically no one. He had saved no one from sin. He had no future to offer them. He was the creator of no one. 

The confrontation of a divine Sovereign and a man wanting to be the despot on earth led to an inevitable confrontation of authority. Who would win: the emperor with his mighty legions and his brutality or Jesus of Nazareth? 

The crux of it was either servile adherence to brute force or conscientious resolve to adhere to the good and become obedient to the proven God of the Universe. 

Attack on Rome's foundations

Gaius Caligula was clear-sighted about the danger for the Roman constitution. He had his ego-centric, personal solution to prevent Rome's collapse. Absolute divine power. It was his response to a legal and theological threat posed by the resurrected Christ to the continued existence of Roman power. He foresaw its possible fall or even immediate collapse. He acted in the only way he knew.

His childhood and youth of abuse and disdain emboldened him to fear no one in accomplishing his goal of unique power. He wanted everyone to fear and venerate him, even when he put on a show. When he was 7 years, his father, the war hero Germanicus, was poisoned, to remove him from succeeding Tiberius. He learned the lesson: be strong and resolute in desires and selfish conviction. Trust no one. Use every means to control or eliminate enemies.

Germanicus

Caligula, as emperor, collected a chest of so much poison to deal with his senatorial and other enemies, that, when it was later thrown in the sea, a huge quantity of fish was killed (Suetonius, Gaius 49). He denounced the whole Senate as agents of Sejanus, the would-be overthrower of Tiberius. The plot was exposed at the last minute. Caligula was also on his death list. 

He learned introspection. He remained silent when his mother, Agrippina, was exiled, and when his elder brothers disappeared.  Who could he trust but himself? His character was revealed as emperor. He exercised brutality, forcing many of Rome's elites to fight as gladiators, and relishing the bloodshed. He would stop at nothing.  

From whence could he assure his power? What could he do to save his Rome against the rising tide of Jews and non-Jews believing in Christ, a god totally excluded from pagan pantheism? It was undermining the pagan system on which the whole Roman constitutional structure and authority was built. 

The logic was undeniable. Educated people and even common people, as Tertullian later records, began to question and then mock the pagan gods. These Roman 'gods' had to have the approval of the Senate to be 'official'. And then they could be worshipped. It was an ancient legal privilege that could override even an emperor's wish, they told Tiberius, who favored Christ. 

Poor gods! They had to pray to the Senate to get approval! 

The followers of Christ and his resurrection had their own independent proof. The followers were everywhere and where themselves performing miracles of healing and even raising the dead to life. So say the Roman public records and petitions to the later emperors. 

They were unstoppable ... or were they? Caligula spent all his energy to stop them, with his plan. 

Julius Caesar wanted to be emperor-dictator and simultaneously high priest (Pontifex Maximus) of the pagan gods. He fused the two previously separate offices of State. 

Caligula went further; he wanted to be god, not just a priest of god, an absolute theocrat of the world, free of all restraint, custom and law. He set up his own mystery cult of worship, hymns, prayers and subservience. He impersonated the gods. At night it culminated in the veneration and adoration of the emperor-god. His child, he declared, putting her on the lap of the idol Jupiter, was the incarnate offspring of both the god Gaius and the god Jupiter. 

He acted like a god of the legends. He restrained himself from no sexual desire; no act of sadism was beyond his command; all despoiling of wealth, all denigration of rich and helpless, all desecration of the beautiful,  all humiliation of persons provoking jealousy were at the command of his hand.  

The Roman Senate was reluctant to declare him a god with godlike power despite his dramatic impersonations talking as a brother to god-idols in the pagan temples. 

The Senate saw the danger again. Assent would wipe out their power of nominating gods forever, at least while the obviously mortal Gaius lived. As absolute god, only Gaius's voice and actions would matter for all the inhabitants of the world.  The senators would become an absolute irrelevance. What would happen when he died? Would it be possible to regain their authority they had abdicated? How would they ever say again that their assent mattered when it came to defining the gods? Without Senate-defined gods how would the Roman Empire survive?

Global Gamble

How could Caligula become the god of the Empire if the Senate refused to recognize him as such? He first set about bringing the Senate to heel. He humiliated them. He brought them to their lowest political ebb, openly sleeping with their wives and deriding them in public. But still they did not agree to this final step. That would have been an act of suicide.

How could Caligula save the Empire if the Senate did not comply? 

He had to act in two directions: 

• make everyone accept him as a god and 
• secondly destroy the Jews and Nazarenes.

He wanted to set up a gigantic statue of himself as Jupiter at first in Rome and then inside the Jerusalem Temple. The latter would have led to a full-scale Jewish revolt. That would be good grounds for the destruction of the population by his legions.

This was a monumental gamble. It would be like setting off a world war as the Jews had allies and lived throughout the Roman Empire, in every town and country. Josephus describes in detail the consternation of the population when this lethal decision was announced. Much of the population felt that they had no real means of defense. Any protest would be met with slaughter. 

The future of pagan Rome seemingly rested on one man who had an impossible puzzle to solve, how to save the foundations of empire. How can Rome stay pagan? How can Rome kill off the anti-pagan opposition?

The Greek Egyptian Slave

We know of one person who had Caligula's ear from morning to night.  That was Helicon, formerly an Egyptian slave, given to Tiberius. 

He became Caligula's chamberlain. These eastern slaves were much treasured in Rome for their corruption, their craftiness, and their knowledge of mysteries and magic arts. Helicon had received a golden education, a skilful use of language and expertise in word play. He knew how to make himself indispensable and welcome. 

He never left his side.

When Caligula awoke, who was there? Helicon.

When he went to the baths, who was there? Helicon.

When he went for  walk, who accompanied him? Helicon.

At the gymnasium, Helicon was his assistant. 

He was always there to amuse, to show off his inventive mind.

In Alexandria of Hellenistic Egypt, Helicon had drunk deeply from the well of anti-semitism. He knew how to revile them, turn their customs to ribaldry, and mock their religious fanaticism. This interaction was also the occasion to flatter Caligula's obsession with his own divinity.

Philo the Jew calls Helicon a scorpion. He was aided in this theocratic flattery by two other Alexandrians of the same ilk.

How would Caligula solve his dilemma of becoming fully a god, if the Senate still refused? 

Helicon had the solution. No people knew more about divinities and deification than the Egyptian priests. They were fully indoctrinated in the process. They held the mysteries.

All that was required was for the emperor to go there to their sacred temples, and the priests would perform the act.

Caligula prepared for his voyage to Alexandria in his fleet. Once fully recognized as divine, he would undertake the journey on to Jerusalem. There he would see his giant likeness in the Temple's Holy of Holies with the words:

To Gaius, the new Jupiter, god manifest (epiphanes).  

The year was 41 CE. The ground for this great sanctification had already been prepared in the years previously. (Philo Leg 250)

Egyptian deaths

Egypt had a large colony of Jews. It was also one of the first areas that had a large group of believers in Christ in the early years after the Resurrection. 

In 38 CE, Flaccus, Rome's prefect in Egypt, ordered that Jews make statues of Gaius to be set up in all synagogues, Antiq 18.8.1 (258). That caused a riot. The extensive Jewish and Nazarene population of Alexandria were deprived of their citizenship that they held since Alexander the Great. They became Untermensch. Property was pillaged and ransacked. Men were slaughtered in the streets, some torn limb from limb, some burned. A famine was induced so that their Jewish families perished. 

Flaccus, whom Caligula disliked, had been appointed under Tiberius, five years earlier, possibly under the influence of Sejanus an arch-antisemite. Tiberius being dead, Flaccus used oily flattery and acts he thought would anticipate Caligula's own plans. He may have thought this attack on Jews, who he knew to be opponents of Caligula's theocratic ambitions, would curry him favor. 

Flaccus turned out to be one of the greatest persecutors of the Jews including the believers in Christ. Mark is considered the evangelist to the Alexandrian Jews. Philo also writes about the Jewish Therapeutae, those who could heal, much like the early believers' miracles elsewhere. Philo does not call them 'Christians' for the simple reason that this term had not yet been invented. 

It would not take Flaccus much reflection to realise such people were enemies of Caesar Gaius.

Flaccus Avillius succeeded Sejanus in his hatred of and hostile designs against the Jewish nation. Philo: Flaccus 1.

It was eventually more than persecution.

He had determined to destroy {the Jews} utterly in his desire for glory. Flaccus 116.

But  Emperor Caligula liked neither the worshippers of the true God, nor Flaccus. He was removed and died in disgrace.

As for the idolatry, Caligula ordered his statue and image to fill every synagogue, everywhere in the Empire. It was intolerable to Jews to have an idol there in their own sacred buildings where idolatry was utterly forbidden. This decree was enforced with deadly strength. Jews everywhere were humiliated and scorned. It was that or death.

A delegation of Alexandrian Jews led by Philo went to Rome. They soon realized that nothing would stop Caligula. He mocked them about not eating pork. They saw he was determined to destroy all Judaism and Christianity. Caligula asked Philo and his delegation:

Are you the god-haters who do not believe me to be a god, a god acknowledged among all other nations but not to named by you? Leg 353. 

I have got the nature of a god. Leg 367. 

Philo concluded: 'He has set himself against God.' 

He challenged the very existence and right for any trace of the Creator God to remain in his all-pagan world.

Caligula ordered that the huge, 40 foot (12 meter) statue of Zeus, the father of the gods, built by Phidas around 400 BCE at Olympia in Greece, be moved to Rome.  Caligula's face would be substituted so all could see him as the god of gods. 

That extraordinary action would involve opposition from worshippers of Zeus/ Jupiter around Greece and the empire. Many called the awe-inspiring idol 'god' and worshipped it. They stood in fear of their god of gods, Zeus, their god of lightning bolts. It inspired them to war and valor. 

When Caesar's workmen came, some said the god laughed. Some warned that it prophesied the deadly fate of anyone who tried to move it. Then Caligula's ship to bring the idol to Rome was destroyed by thunderbolts.  Meanwhile Caligula looted all Greece of its rich and ancient treasures saying they belonged with him as a god. (Dio LIX, 28.)

He was told this giant idol could not be moved without destroying it. 

Violating the Sanctuary

As for Israel, he then ordered Petronius, his Viceroy and powerful commander in the provinces of the East to build a similar statue of himself. With massive military force, and an exterminatory war against Jews if necessary, he must set up this image of Caligula as god in the Temple in Jerusalem.

This was an extraordinary act of desperation and Roman anarchy. 

The Temple in Jerusalem was not under Roman law. It was an autonomous City-State. It had thousands of its own armed guards. Its legal status was so defined by Julius Caesar himself when he made a treaty with the Maccabees. They had saved him from defeat in the civil war against Pompey and Crassus, both profaners of the Temple. It was perhaps the only morsel of territory, and only some 200 meters square, within the confines of the Roman Empire where Roman law and military might did not apply.

The Temple complex was built like a four-square fortress rising steeply from the Kidron valley ravine. No gentile was ever allowed to enter into its walls. The holy House had further multiple layers of protection. Those who could prove by genealogy that they were Israelites and had purified themselves ritually were allowed inside the outer Court of Israel. No one else, whatever their status. Priests who could prove that their ancestors held hereditary rights to perform specific Temple duties were allowed into the Court of Priests. Any Israelite who was not a priest who ventured there was liable to be put to death. 

At the center of the Court of Priests lay the Holy Temple itself. This was a long room divided into two sections. The first was called the Holy Place. Only specially chosen priests were allowed in there for the rituals. Further inside, another room was separated off by a thick curtain. This was the Holy of Holies. Only the High priest was allowed to enter and then only on one day of the year: the Day of Atonement.  

All around these courts, affixed every few meters to the chest-high barriers, were multilingual warning notices, 90 by 60 cm. In red letters they alerted any unauthorized person who dared entered into a court where he was not permitted that he would be responsible for his own death. 

Because of this holiness, the Temple was cherished and protected by the huge Jewish and Israelite Diaspora as well as all the inhabitants of the Land. The Maccabees had fought many bloody battles to free it from gentiles like the Syrian dictator, Antiochus Epiphanes. They purified it, rebuilt and rededicated it. The Israelites intended to keep it holy.

King Herod himself was not allowed to enter the Temple, even the outer court. He was not Jewish. When Roman legions were stationed at their Fort Antonia just a few hundred meters away, they were never allowed into the Temple. In 70 CE, when Roman legions under Titus surrounded the Temple, Titus called upon the besieged Jews to surrender. He said that in all the years of Roman control, Romans had never violated the Decree of Caesar and the laws of Rome. They had always allowed the high priests to govern. They had authority to forbid by force strangers and foreigners from entering. Even Roman citizens would be killed for violation of the rule. Wars 6.2.4 (124).

But Caligula some three decades earlier, in his desperate attempt to assert his planetary godhead, was determined to abolish this Roman law. He made himself  out to be greater than Julius Caesar. Caligula was prepared to break all Roman laws and customs when he insisted that an idol of himself as Jupiter be displayed inside the Temple. 

For the Jews from the time of the restitution of the Temple to its destruction in 70CE, the sanctity of the House was something to be be defended with the very life and breath of the nation. 

The sole Roman emperor who ruthlessly planned and attempted to violate it was Caligula. He must have concluded that the action was essential to his own existence and that of the Empire.

He wished to turn the Temple of God to his own temple as god. It would conform as all the synagogues in the empire and display his image. He would rule the world from Jerusalem. The richest building in the world would would be his own capital. There was no construction in Rome or the empire that was comparable with it. Titus was later to confess:

This holy building is the most beautiful structure ever built by the hand of man.  

                                                                                (Jesus, James, Joseph, p viii.)

Caligula's motive was not one of mere avarice. His long-term strategy was to defile it, and its God, who opposed the gods of the pantheon. The Jerusalem God and his castle, a furlong square, threatened the destruction of his plan for worldwide divine domination. Thus a square section of land, 185 meters by 185meters, perched above a perilous ravine was the focus of attention of the Emperor who saw it as the sole threat to his theocratic mastery. 

Philo of Alexandria, who around 39 CE led the Jewish delegation of Alexandria to speak to Caligula in Rome, was aghast that, after defiling all synagogues, only one building was left.

The Temple in the Holy City, which alone was left untouched being judged to have rights of sanctuary, he was proceeding to convert and transmogrify into a temple of his own to bear the name of Gaius, the new Zeus. 

Lack of law was leading the world into dark evil.

Do you deem God worthy of nothing in our world here below, no country, no city, but even this tiny area hallowed for Him and sanctified by oracles an divine messages you propose to take away, so that in the circumference of the great earth no trace or reminder should be left of the reverence and honour due to the truly existing veritable God? ... Don't you know that you are opening the springs of a flood of evil, in these strange and monstrous actions which it is unlawful either to do or conceive? (Philo, Leg 347.) 

 

Another witness, Flavius Josephus says Caligula's eventual death saved his country and nation from extermination and genocide:

...our own nation was brought to the very verge of ruin, and would have been destroyed but for his sudden death. .. the story provides good evidence of God's power. Antiq 19,1, 1, (16).

Motivation

The logical conclusion is that Caligula could have ruled his empire by terror, bloodshed and with extreme brutality. That rule by fear had succeeded in his early years. That terror did not involve defiling the Temple. But it is obvious that far more than rule by terror motivated Caligula. He did not want just power, utter obedience and mindless subservience. 

He was on a mission: to destroy Christianity and Judaism. Proof? There was no reason to insist on the desecration of the Temple if all that Caligula wanted was to be an emperor who was feared and obeyed. God was his target.

His plan to desecrate the Temple with the Abomination of Jupiter was to assert his divinity. He had to prove that he was greater than Christ and specifically the prophecy of Christ. In fact he wanted to prove he was greater than God Almighty. He was more than a ruler. He was an ideologue with the aim of destroying the God of the Bible and facts about Christ.

He failed.

What he actually proved was that God Almighty of the Bible rules the universe and this planet Earth. 

The Abomination

In the century after Caligula, the writer Pausanias described the great idol of Zeus at Olympia at Elis.

The god sits on a throne, and he is made of gold and ivory. On his head lies a garland which is a copy of olive shoots. In his right hand he carries a Victory, which, like the statue, is of ivory and gold; she wears a ribbon and—on her head—a garland. In the left hand of the god is a scepter, ornamented with every kind of metal, and the bird sitting on the scepter is the eagle. The sandals also of the god are of gold, as is likewise his robe. On the robe are embroidered figures of animals and the flowers of the lily. 

The position and monstrous-size throne made the idol even more impressive to the pagan worshippers who entered. It included scenes of violence and rape that pagans took as a natural attributes of gods.

The throne is adorned with gold and with jewels, to say nothing of ebony and ivory. Upon it are painted figures and wrought images. There are four Victories, represented as dancing women, one at each foot of the throne, and two others at the base of each foot. On each of the two front feet are set Theban children ravished by sphinxes, while under the sphinxes Apollo and Artemis are shooting down the children of Niobe.

So was this the end of his fanatical venture? Not in the least. Caligula doubled down everywhere, provoking even more violence and raising the stakes to say in effect, 'Accept me as God or accept the destruction of the known world'.

World War

His policy affected not only the Jews in Israel, nor only the millions of Jews scattered throughout the Roman Empire, but much more.  Petronius, Rome's commander in the eastern provinces of Israel and Syria, knew that greater dangers would be ignited. 

Parthia was a huge empire to the east that had defeated Rome and decimated its legions many times previously. Moreover Parthia was favourable to the Jews and the Temple because many Jews and Israelites lived there and had transferred vast amounts of wealth to rebuild the Temple.

Parthian Jews every year dispatched envoys ... conveying to the Temple a great quantity of gold and silver amassed from the first fruits. (Philo Leg 216)

Petronius divided his armies into two sections. One was to deal with the Jews and their expected national revolt. The other half would defend the frontier with Parthia. In Egypt the populous Jewish colony of Alexandria was already defending itself, as best it could, against this rabid antisemitic persecution. 

In the West, Britain was showing its support against the tyrant. In 39 CE Caligula sent his legions there against the Kelts and Germans. His armies massed on the Channel coast. He made a show of preparing an invasion against Britain, a stronghold of early Christianity and resistance to Roman paganism. (Christianity and Celtic Druidism that focused on ultimate truth were the only religions banned in the Roman Empire.) 

The leader of the small tribe of the Canninefates at the mouth of the Rhine derided Caligula's military arrogance at even thinking of invasion. Why was Britain so important to him? He wasn't known as a great, battle-hardened war leader.

Yet now, due to him alone, the civilized world was about to explode into war and violence everywhere. Why? It was all based on Caligula's decision to deify himself and erect statues of himself as almighty god of the world. 

Why would Caligula do this? Why cause world war on all fronts? For what advantage? 

The prophecy of Christ

Caligula wanted to show he was greater than Christ who prophesied in 30 CE that he would destroy an abomination of desolation if it was put in the Temple, Matt 24:15. Caligula wanted to be greater and attempted to prove the prophecy wrong.

When you therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, ... the let those in Judea flee to the mountains... As the lightning comes out of the east, and shines as far as the west, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

Then the legions suddenly left Britain alone. The conquest was off. Why? The public secretly mocked him for this decision to reverse his invasion plans. Did Caligula realise it was more strategic to attack Israel and crush the anti-pagans at their source in Jerusalem? He would need all his troops there rather than set off wars in both east and west. 

He planned to be declared a god in Egypt according to ancient rites. Then he would rule as god of all the world from Jerusalem. There his goal was genocidal to all who would not believe him and deicidal of the Sovereign Authority of the Temple.

But as Philo wrote:

It is easier for God to change into a man than for a man to become God. Leg118.

Expedition

Caligula made great preparations for this event. He would not take his fleet of ships directly to Egypt. Only the grain cargo ships did that. He would make a procession around the coast of the Mediterranean and be acclaimed in each port and feted as divine. 

For Egypt he had prepared in secret a huge idol of himself as Jupiter. This would be taken with him.

Nothing seemed able to stop his plans. 

But then a dagger did. He was assassinated in 41 just before he could travel there. 

Training a high priest

Some commentators speculate that Theophilus was some unknown Christian convert. Not so. The Bible shows he was high priest and trained by a Temple Teacher to follow the rituals with exactness and purity. Luke does not say anywhere that he was a Christian. But he does say that he had this training.

Luke uses a word that shows Theophilus had priestly training: catechetized, 1:4. 

A high priest had to maintain a difficult balance between the orders of Rome, the instructions of Caligula's friend and deputy King Agrippa, and the survival of the Jewish people. He learned his metier by repetition under a Teacher.

The expert teacher had to be sure he managed the operations in the Temple in a way that conformed to the precise instruction of the Torah and the Hebrew Scriptures. Disobedience to God would endanger the whole people. 

In this fight with a would-be Jupiter, attention to detailed obedience was essential. 

Who was Theophilus?

What happened when Annas and Caiaphas were sacked by the Romans or retired as priests or died? The Romans wanted a high priest who acted as ruler of the people for them who conformed to Roman policy and that included not demolishing the pantheon by confirming the divinity of Christ.

It is not sure that Caiaphas was of real priestly stock. Caiaphas is always mentioned in conjunction with Annas who was the retired high priest. He was very rich and had married the daughter of Annas. In 30 CE he was acting as a substitute for Annas whom Romans had deposed in 15 CE. 

After Annas was sacked in 15 CE, his son, Eleazar, lasted only a year as high priest. The high priesthood was hereditary according to Jewish law, even though Annas might not have been the most legitimate office holder. The Romans wanted someone who was subservient. The next high priest was equally short in office before Caiaphas, known more as businessman than priest, temporarily re-established the Annas family line. His background is obscure but he had good relations with the Romans. Whatever the evidence he tried to deny that Jesus the Christ rose from the dead and was the true priest. What is known is that his father-in-law, Annas, expected him to produce a male child that would become priest by virtue of Annas's bloodline. There is no indication that Caiaphas produced a male child. He was deposed under Tiberius in early 37, around the time Pilate was recalled for trial. Caiaphas's policy of denial failed. 

So what would happen to the high priesthood? The family held on to the various offices of high priests. It would fall back to the other sons of Annas, who seem to have been much younger. They were now adults.

The first son, Jonathan, was nominated high priest. This hothead who tried to deny Christ lasted for only a few weeks in early 37 CE. The outcry of the public was so strong he had to be removed. Theophilus, perhaps ill- prepared for the post but clearly less of an anti-Christian ideologue was put into the office of high priest. 

Thus Luke stresses that Theophilus had to be trained to be acceptable to the public who knew the resurrection was a fact. He had to be sure of the facts of the Messiah, if he were to stand up against Roman propaganda and attack. Who was his teacher? James the brother of Jesus had taken over the post during his work in Galilee. He stayed in the Temple until his death in the 60s. He was of the special lineage of chief priest, a royal line of teachers, stemming from David and his son Nathan. James may have been one of the teachers or Theophilus, who was installed as high priest by Roman power.

Luke reminds Theophilus of the details of the miraculous birth of Jesus to the aged Mariam, a daughter of Aaron, the truest line. He produces the priest-list that shows Jesus taking office 'as he was beginning to be about thirty' -- the official age to become Chief Priest according to Hebrew reckoning. He lists the miracles. He describes the Council of 70 Elders that Jesus set up, Luke 10. And he provides proof of the resurrection according to Hebrew records and detailed Roman legal procedures. He finishes with the witness of believers in the Temple, giving absolute proof of the events.  

Luke writes to Theophilus as if he were a State librarian accepting a valuable artefact. The Temple held the archives of the nation. So at least we know that high priest Theophilus did not refuse to admit authenticated, witnessed records, either during the reign of Gaius Caligula or later when it came to the books of Acts of the Apostles.  Theophilus may therefore have had and retained an office of chief archivist in the Temple both before and after his years as high priest.

The later Theophilus 

Proof that this Theophilus was the high priest is shown when Luke wrote Acts. There Theophilus is not called Most Excellent (kratiste). Why? Because he was no longer high priest in the 60s.

Calling someone by such a title would be considered illegal, even treasonous, to the political leader and high priest in office. He only could carry this honorific title. Paul addresses the Roman governors by this title kratiste in Acts. That shows it was a political form of address of the highest order. The ethnarch of the Jews held such an office but with the Roman conquest was subservient to Rome. But he still retained the political title -- while in office.

Luke's Gospel carried the facts that everyone knew to be true. Truth was victorious. There were many records, many eye-witnesses, as well as Luke himself, who was acquainted with all the facts from the beginning, Luke 1:1-. Their belief and conviction in them was tried in the fire of utmost danger when the whole nation was on the verge of Caligula's genocide.

This word kratiste is living proof that Luke’s Gospel was written as an authentic record, sent to the high priest personally, to be kept in the Temple archives as proof of events. 

As required by Hebrew law, the gospel is authenticated by multiple honest witnesses. It is a record of the history of Israel, validated by Jews, the high priest, imperial Roman authorities and undeniable events of history such as Caligula’s planned extermination of the Jews. It explains the otherwise unexplainable behavior and extremely costly strategy of Caligula. 

Caligula's great gamble would make no sense UNLESS he was scared about losing his throne and empire because of the prophesied Return of Christ, recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke: to destroy the Abomination of Desolation. Luke wrote to Theophilus the words of Christ:

Settle therefore in your hearts not before what you shall answer: for I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries will not be able to gainsay, nor resist. You shall be betrayed and hated of all men ... but a hair of your head shall not perish. Luke 21:14ff. 

Nazarenes in the Temple

In the first seven years after his father, Annas, who had been a principal agent in having Christ crucified, the priesthood was unable to persecute the Nazarenes. In this period, Tiberius decreed that they should not be killed.

We know from Luke that the disciples were continuously in the Temple.  So under the high priesthood of Theophilus they were not banned. 

They were continually in the Temple, praising God. ch24:53.

Was Theophilus popular with the people of Israel? No. We have good evidence that he did not stand firm with the Nazarenes against the theocratic attack of Gaius. 

But first what happened to Caligula? Did he reach Egypt?

Parthian signals

Gaius was anxious to reach Egypt as soon as possible. This can be seen from the urgency of his orders to Petronius his Commander in Syria to complete the giant idol of himself and erect it in the Temple, regardless of the cost in lives and the danger of war with Parthia and other countries.

Were events in Parthia signalling success or danger? Caligula had benefited from the Parthian Peace process of Tiberius until his death in 37 CE. A mutually beneficial truce had been forged with Artabanus II but then a war over the buffer State of Armenia took place. Decades of dispute followed. 

Artabanus seized the country when Artaxias died, the nominee of Germanicus, Gaius's father. Then Artabanus was forced to concede it as the Roman general Vitellius marched towards the Euphrates. Rome sowed discord and revolt among the cities and tribal adversaries of Artabanus and tried to replace him by a Roman puppet, Tiridates. Artabanus fled to the court of King Izates at Adiabene, who together with his mother Queen Helena had converted to Judaism. Artabanus, however, fought back and regained his throne.

Then in the autumn of 40, events seem to favor Gaius, the Roman 'god'. The Parthian emperor Artabanus was again deposed, this time by the Megistanes, bicameral body of the Assembly and Senate of Magi and Wise Men. Who would rule? Rivalry between his sons presaged a civil war. Seleucia and other cities wanted independence. 

Was this the divine moment to act?

Caligula took major risks to achieve a tight timetable. What was the deadline? Why was he in such a hurry at the start of year 41? Was it to coincide with an Egyptian festival of deification? Was his Temple glorification planned for a Jewish festival like Passover, the time when Jesus died and rose again?

To fit in with a timetable where he would present himself in Jerusalem in the Spring after visiting Egypt would mean setting out from Rome months before. He planned a glorious itinerary where at every step, every port, the crowds and authorities would worship him with pomp.

The Rome-built idol was ready in January. But to travel directly across to Egypt in winter was not only dangerous but foolish. Ships were often lost in storms. So Caligula planned to take his fleet around the coast of the Mediterranean. 

Plans were set to leave on 25 January. Then Caligula was slain by his guards. So ended the life of the would-be God of the World.