Chapter 17

On the morning of the 22nd of September, 1827, the Angel of the Lord delivered unto Joseph Smith, Jr., an ignorant farmer-youth in a "backwoods" part of New York State, some plates which had "the appearance of gold". As we know from the scriptures, it is the habit of the Angel of the Lord to appear in unexpected places and to make miraculous revelations to men in humble walks of life; so, as devout believers, we hold ourselves in readiness. In this case the plates were written in "reformed Egyptian"; but the Angel thoughtfully provided Joseph Smith, Jr., with Urim and Thummim, two magic stones with which to read the records. They proved to deal with a mystery which has haunted the minds of Bible students for centuries--the fate of the "lost ten tribes of Israel", who were now revealed to have been the ancestors of the American Indians. The Angel told Smith to found a new religion, and gave him prophecies concerning things in general; so, on the 6th of April, 1830, in the town of Manchester, N.Y., there was formally launched the "Church of the Latter Day Saints." Smith turned over to his followers his translation of the miraculous plates, called "The Book of Mormon"; obviously genuine, for it read precisely like the books which we already know are the revealed word of God. But, on chance that this might not be sufficient, we were offered in the preface two documents, the "Testimony of Three Witnesses", and the "Further Testimony of Eight Witnesses". The latter being the shorter, may be quoted:

Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues and people, unto whom this work shall come: That Joseph Smith Jr., the translator of this work, has shewn unto us the plates of which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and as many of the leaves as the said Smith hath translated, we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings there-on, all of which has the appearance of ancient work and of curious workmanship. And this we bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shewn unto us, for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith hath got the plates of which we have spoken. And we give our names unto the world, to witness that which we have seen, and we lie not, God bearing witness of it.

Christian Whitmer Jacob Whitmer Peter Whitmer, Jr. John Whitmer Hiram Page Joseph Smith, Sr. Hyrum Smith Saml. H. Smith

The subsequent career of the Church of the Latter Day Saints bore out the Angel's prophesies and proved conclusively its divine origin; it was persecuted as the saints of old were persecuted, and its followers proceeded to massacre the nearby unbelieving populations, just as the divinely guided Hebrews had done. Driven from place to place, they built at Nauvoo, Ill., a beautiful temple, according to plans revealed in a vision, exactly like Solomon. Finally they settled in Utah, where they have a magnificent marble tabernacle, and some 300,000 followers. The United States government, not being entirely Biblical, objected to their practice of allowing the patriarchs of the tribe to have as many wives as they could support; the government confiscated the church's property, and forced it to conceal the practice of polygamy, as is done by elderly church members in other parts of the country. Recently the head of the church, who bears the title of "Prophet, Seer and Revelator", was persuaded to permit an examination of one of its secret plates, the "Book of Abraham", by egyptologists, who found that it was ordinary Egyptian hieroglyphics, not "reformed", but containing prayers to the sun-god. But this will of course make no difference to the devout followers of Joseph--any more than it has made to devout Catholics and Episcopalians that German scholars have proven that the Bible legends and ritual have come from the Babylonians, and that the four gospels date from the second and third centuries after Christ.

#Holy Rolling#

All over America you will find these weird Bible-cults, some of them pathetic, some of them dangerous, some of them merely grotesque. Thus, for example, there was John Alexander Dowie, who founded the "Christian Catholic Church in Zion" and dressed himself up in scarlet and purple robes with stars on. Through his Zion City Bank and Zion City Realty Company he became enormously wealthy; he finally announced himself as "Elijah the Restorer." I remember as a boy how he brought his gospel to New York, and P.T. Barnum with Tom Thumb and the white elephant never made such a sensation. The ridicule of the metropolis overwhelmed the old prophet, and he died and passed on his robes and his tabernacle and his bank to his son; straightway, according to the rule of all religions, the followers fell to quarrelling and splitting up, and suing one another in the law-courts.

Also there are the "Holy Rollers" and "Holy Jumpers", ghastly sects which cultivate the religious hysterias, and have spread like a plague among the women of our lonely prairie farms and desert ranches. The "Holy Rollers", who call themselves the "Apostolic Church", have a meeting place here in Pasadena, and any Sunday evening at nine o'clock you may see the Spirit of the Lord taking possession of the worshippers, causing moans and shrieks and convulsions; you may see a woman holding her hands aloft for seventeen minutes by the watch, making chattering sounds like an ape. This is called "talking in tongues" and is a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit. If you come back at eleven in the evening, you will find the entire congregation, men and women, prostrate on the floor, or hanging over the benches; and maybe a child moaning in terror, having a devil cast out.

You may be interested, perhaps, to know how to throw yourself into these convulsions. Here is a paper called "Trust", which is "published Monthly (D.V.) in the interests of Elim Faith Work and Bible Training School." Elizabeth Sisson writes on "The Pentecostal Baptism", and tells the story of her experiences. She "camped on the Word of God," she declares.

I went up to Calgary in Canada, and the leader of the mission told me, "You can go down to the mission and stay there all day. There is plenty of wood, and you can stay there all night." I went down, and there was plenty of "let go" in me. I cried, and prayed all I knew, and got wonderfully loosed....

Then the Lord said to me, "Now, no more praying!" God told me it was mine. What was there left for me to pray about. He spoiled my praying and I took up praising. I praised God that He who worked in the Upper Room was working the same in me. I praised, and I praised, and I praised. The devil said to me, "That's mechanical." I said, "I'll praise You Lord, and if You want real praise, You'll have to put the wind in the sails."

That's the way I came through. One morning I was just getting out of bed, "this gibberish, this jargon" as the enemy likes to call it, began to come. The Lord said, "Let it babble!" I let. The babble increased, and by night I was up to my neck. I let. I still let. That's all. Someone else does the work, and it does not tire you.

And here is another paper. "Meat in Due Season: published monthly, or as often as the Lord leads." The editor quotes the Bible, "Call upon the name of the Lord," and explains that "Call means #call#." The word appears to have a special meaning to these pentecostal persons--it means working yourself into a frenzy of agitation; as the editor puts it, "you must #lay# hold of the #horns# of the #altar#." He goes on to exhort--the bold face being his:

Pray as if your very life depended upon it! The first few minutes seemingly all the powers of hell will contend every word, the next few, relief in a measure will come, more liberty in calling. In a very little while you will be #dead to the room, dead to the chair#, dead to everyone around you, dead to all and tremendously alive to your desperate need and emptyness; this conviction will grow as you increase calling upon Him. It maybe you'll weep, it maybe you'll perspire, it maybe your clothing will be deranged, it maybe your throat will get sore. Never for a moment let your mind rest on the condition of your person. Open your mouth and God has promised to fill it. Ask persistently until the very floor seems to sink beneath you and the fountains of the deep, of your heart let loose. Like David, "pour out your soul" like one would pour water out of a bucket. I have seen hundreds get through right at this point. When #self-thought, reticence, decorum, reserve, propriety and dignity# had all been thrown to the four winds of heaven. Self was then obliterated and consciousness of person gone. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you saith the scripture, but you must draw near to Him first.

These enthusiasts derive their practices from the Shakers, a sect which originated in England, but was driven by persecution to the New World. The Shakers call themselves the "United Society of True Believers in Christ's Second Coming," and were founded by Ann Lee, who variously termed herself the "Female Christ", the "Holy Comforter", and the "God-anointed Woman". They might be termed the suffragettes of religion, for they pray always to "Our Father and Mother, which are in heaven." They were taught the convenient doctrine that their Founder had "spiritual illumination", so that any evidence of the senses used against her might deceive. She governed through terror, holding that by her mental powers she could inflict torment upon any of her followers. Fortunately she taught absolute celibacy, and so there are now only about a thousand of her disciples.

Bible Prophecy

This far western country swarms with those fanatics who await the return of Christ, and find in Bible chronology positive evidence that he is coming on a specified day. Seldom do I give a lecture on Socialism that some eager old lady does not come up to me and point out how futile are my hopes, because the Millenium will come before the Revolution. Several times I have come on an item in the newspapers, telling of a group of people, sometimes whole villages, selling their goods and going out into the fields to shout and sing and pray, expecting the vision of the Lord and His Angels in the skies. I have in my hand a pamphlet entitled "Shekineh: The Glory of God in Israel, Facts Mathematically Foretold, of the Soon Coming of Our Blessed Lord." It is earnestly, yearningly written, in that spirit of feeble-minded affectionateness which the Bible-sects seem to encourage:

Now dear reader you see that these problems tell a wonderful story which I know are the Eternal Truths of God. Jesus is soon coming. I believe that from now on we can say, next; week perhaps our blessed Lord will return. Yet the time may not end till the close of the A.M. year, which will be March 20th, 1897. But let us take up the sickle of God, etc. Oh, my Christian friends, live near the Blessed Christ, and gain eternal life through Jesus Our Lord!

In the public library I find another pamphlet, entitled "The Our Race," which proves that the "lost ten tribes of Israel" are not the American Indians, but the Irish! And here is a publication of the "Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society," declaring:

The great pyramid in Egypt is a witness to all the events of the ages and of our day. The pyramid's downward passage under "a Draconis" symbolizes the course of Sin. Its first ascending passage symbolizes the Jewish Age. Its Grand Gallery symbolizes the Gospel Age. Its upper step symbolizes the approaching period of tribulation and anarchy, "Judgment" upon Christendom.

It is a Sunday morning, and I sit in the California sunshine revising this manuscript, when a decorous-looking young man approaches, having a sack over his shoulder. "From the Bible-students," he says politely, and hands me a little paper, "The Bible Students' Monthly: an Independent, Unsectarian Religious Newspaper, Specially devoted to the Forwarding of the Lay-men's Home Missionary Movement for the Glory of God and Good of Humanity." The leading article is headed "The Fall of Babylon: Ancient Babylon a Type--Mystic Babylon the Antitype: Why Christendom must Suffer--the Final Outcome." A note explains:

The following article is extracted from Pastor Russell's posthumous volume entitled "The Finished Mystery," the 7th in the series of his Studies in the Scriptures and published subsequent to his death. Pastor Russell held the distinction of being the most fearless and powerful writer of modern times on ecclesiastical subjects. In this posthumous volume, which is called "his last legacy to the Christians on earth," is found a thorough exposition of every verse in the entire book of Revelation and also an elucidation of the obscure prophecy of Ezekiel. The book contains 608 pages, handsomely bound in embossed cloth.

Pastor Russell used to publish a two-column sermon in some hundreds of Sunday newspapers, together with a presentment of his features--solemn, stiff, white-whiskered, set off with a "choker" and a black broadcloth coat. There are five million such faces in America, but if you have an impulse to despair for your country, remember that it produced Mark Twain and Artemus Ward, as well as Pastor Russell and the Moody and Sankey hymn-book. I quote one passage from "The Finished Mystery", in order that the reader may know what it means to "hold the distinction of being the most fearless and powerful writer of modern times on ecclesiastical subjects." Pastor Russell does not approve of the Methodists, and he quotes twelve verses of Revelation, line by line and phrase by phrase, showing how the evil course and downfall of the Wesleyan system were divinely foretold. Thus:

"But that they should be tormented five months."--In symbolic time, 150 years--5x30=150. (Ezek. 4:6.) Wesley became the first Methodist in 1728. (Rev. 9: 1.) When the Methodist denomination, with all the others, was cast off from favor in 1878 (Rev. 3:14) its powers to torment men by preaching what Presbyterians describe as "Conscious misery, eternal in duration" came to an end legally, and to a large extent actually.--Rev. 9:10.

P.S. A few months pass, and while this book is going to press, "The Finished Mystery" is suppressed by the government and several score "Bible Students" are landed in jail for sedition.

#Koreshanity#

Such are the beliefs built on the Bible. But there are other ancient writings with strange nomenclature and ritual and symbolism, calculated to impress the unlettered; also our prophets have imaginations of their own, and can invent nomenclature and ritual and symbolism never seen in heaven nor on earth before. Thus there is Dr. Newo Newi New, who called himself "Archbishop of the Newthot Church," and gathered about him a harem of devoted females in San Francisco, and was landed in jail for using the mails to defraud. Or there is "Oahspe, the Cosmic Bible," a work of brand-new revelation with a brand-new view of the universe and all things therein:

The reader soon discovers that he must radically revise not only his ideas of celestial Cosmogony, but the order and significance of names and titles commonly applied to the Transcendental Brethren. The great provinces of Etheria are presided over by chiefs, chosen for their superior development in wisdom and love. For our solar system to cross one of these provinces requires about 3,000 years, and between them are belts of high Etherian light which take several years to pass over. The passage of each province is a cycle of earthly history, and the crossings are called Dawns of Dan.

And here is Koreshanity, a revelation vouchsafed by the Lord to Dr. C.R. Teed of Chicago in the year 1889. This new seer took the name of Koresh, which is Hebrew for Cyrus, "the Shepherd from Joseph, the Stone of Israel, the Sun-Man; the illuminating center of the Son of man", and went out on the streets of the city to preach that the earth is a hollow sphere with the stars inside. The street urchins of the pork-packing metropolis threw stones at him, and the irreverent newspapers took up his adventures, with the result that followers gathered, and now there is a flourishing colony in Florida, with a dignified magazine called "The Flaming Sword", and a collection of propaganda volumes: "The Cellular Cosmogony, an Exposition of Koreshan Universology and the New Geodesy"; "The Immortal Manhood, the Laws and Processes of its Attainment in the Flesh"; "The Great Red Dragon, by Lord Chester"; "The Coming of the Shepherd from Joseph, The Standing of the Great Ensign, by Koresh." The "Religio-science" of this Chicago revelator is based, first upon some precise measurements of the earth which prove that its surface is concave; and second upon some philological discoveries very much resembling puns. Thus the "cross of Christ" is explained in a sense of the word more common among horse-breeders than among theologians:

The highest characteristic of the alchemical law is the cross of Christ with sensual man. The cross means that the Lord God, in order to perpetuate his own being, descends into the race of sensuality.

And again, when someone asks about meteors:

The word Heaven means things heaved up, that is, heaved up from their material basis, the earth; thus, the meteors which fall to the earth are composed of metallic, mineral, and geological substances, being materialized or actually created in the atmosphere by an alchemico-organic process from zones or belts periodically open, which precipitate their contents in the form or shape of meteors."

And perhaps I ought also to quote the "Indicia of Human Progress", by "Berthaldine, Matrona". I don't know what a "Matrona" is--unless it is a female matron. This female matron tells me that now is the "Time of Restitution", and explains that "the prolification of the human race has reached a fruition of the adultery of the truth and good of the Lord with the fallacies and evils of the mortal hells" ...We have come, it seems, to the "age of Pisces", which is "one of the greatest radical prolification"; and what we now need is the "power of polarization", so that we may join the "White Horse Army of the Most High", which is the organization of the "Aquarian age", proclaimed by Koresh on January 15th, 1891.

#Mazdaznan#

And here is another and even more startling revelation from Chicago, given to a seer by the name of Dr. Otoman Prince of Adusht Ha'nish, prophet of the Sun God, Prince of Peace, Manthra Magi of Temple El Katman, Kalantar of Zoroastrian Breathing and Envoy of Mazdaznan living, Viceroy-Elect and International Head of Master-Thot. If you had happened to live near the town of Mendota, Illinois, and had known the German grocer-boy named Otto Hanisch, you might at first have trouble in recognizing him through this transmogrification. I have traced his career in the files of the Chicago newspapers, and find him herding sheep, setting type, preaching prestidigitation, mesmerism, and fake spiritualism, joining the Mormon Church, then the "Christian Catholic Church in Zion", and then the cult of Brighouse, who claimed to be Christ returned.

Finally he sets himself up in Chicago as a Persian Magus, teaching Yogi breathing exercises and occult sex-lore to the elegant society ladies of the pork-packing metropolis. The Sun God, worshipped for two score centuries in India, Egypt, Greece and Rome, has a new shrine on Lake Park Avenue, and the prophet gives tea-parties at which his disciples are fed on lilac-blossoms--"the white and pinkish for males, the blue-tinted for females". He wears a long flowing robe of pale grey cashmere, faced with white, and flexible white kid shoes, and he sells his lady adorers a book called "Inner Studies", price five dollars per volume, with information on such subjects as:

The Immaculate Conception and its Repetition; The Secrets of Lovers Unveiled; Our Ideals and Soul Mates; Magnetic Attraction and Electric Mating.

A Grand Jury intervenes, and the Prophet goes to jail for six months; but that does not harm his cult, which now has a temple in Chicago, presided over by a lady called Kalantress and Evangelist; also a "Northern Stronghold" in Montreal, an "Embassy" in London, an "International Aryana" in Switzerland, and "Centers" all over America. At the moment of going to press, the prophet himself is in flight, pursued by a warrant charging him with improper conduct with a number of young boys in a Los Angeles hotel.

I have dipped into Ha'nish's revelations, which are a farrago of every kind of ancient mysticism--paper and binding from the Bible, illustrations from the Egyptian, names from the Zoroastrian, health rules from the Hindoos, laws from the Confucians--price ten dollars per volume. Would you like to discover your seventeen senses, to develop them according to the Ga-Llama principle, and to share the "expansion of the magnetic circles"? Here is the way to do it:

Inhale through nostrils for four seconds, and upon one exhalation, speak slowly:

Open, O thou world-sustaining Sun, the entrance unto Truth hidden by the vase of dazzling light.

Again inhale for four seconds, and breathe out the following sentence upon one exhalation as before:

Soften the radiation of Thy Illuminating Splendor, that I may behold Thy True Being.

I have a clipping from a Los Angeles newspaper telling of the prophet's arriving there. He takes the front page with the captivating headline: "Women Didn't Think Till They Put On Corsets". The interview tells about his mysteriousness, his aloofness, his bird-like-diet, and his personal beauty. "Despite his seventy-three years, Ha'nish evidences no sign of age. His keen blue eyes showed no sign of wavering. There were no wrinkles on his face, and his walk was that of a man of forty." The humor of this becomes apparent when we mention that at Ha'nish's trial, three or four years ago, he was proven to be thirty-five years old!

Being thus warned as to the accuracy of American journalism, we shall not be taken in by the repeated statements that the Mazdaznan prophet is a millionaire. But there is no doubt that he is wealthy; and as all Americans wish to be wealthy, I will quote his formula of prosperity, his method of accomplishing what might be called the Individual Revolution:

When hungry and you do not know where to get your next piece of bread, do not despair. Thy Father, all-loving, has provided, you with everything that will meet all cases of emergency.