Palinurus
The Living Force
Alana said:Exactly. And add to that the catastrophic earth changes that are not even under their control: earthquakes, volcanoes, sinkholes, droughts, floods, extreme weather patterns all around that people are noticing more and more, and which destroy the crops, and will lead to famine. And what about all the fireball sightings and those who enter the atmosphere? By the time people start asking questions (and they already have started to pay attention because it is starting to affect everyone) the guns and the tanks and the police force will be ready to give the answers, because that's the only answer the psychos on top have to give!
Or they will provide convenient scapegoats to be sacrificed to appease the masses a little while longer.
Having read your post this afternoon, I was reminded of it just now while reading a poignant passage in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews pointing in that specific direction. It's about king David shortly after he overcame a revolt against his regime by firstly one of his sons, Absalom, and soon thereafter by a certain Sheba, the son of Bichri of the tribe of Benjamin. It seems very likely that the famine was at least initiated by those troubles, although Josephus doesn't make that connection in his narrative.
In Book VII, Chapter XII, § 1 (Loeb 7, 294-297) we read:
294 1. After this, when the country was greatly afflicted with a famine, David besought God to have mercy on the people, and to discover to him what was the cause of it, and how a remedy might be found for that distemper. And when the prophets answered, that God would have the Gibeonites avenged whom Saul the king was so wicked as to betray to slaughter, and had not observed the oath which Joshua the general and the senate had sworn to them: 295 If, therefore, said God, the king would permit such vengeance to be taken for those that were slain as the Gibeonites should desire, he promised that he would be reconciled to them, and free the multitude from their miseries. 296 As soon therefore as the king understood that this it was which God sought, he sent for the Gibeonites, and asked them what it was they should have; and when they desired to have seven sons of Saul delivered to them to be punished, he delivered them up, but spared Mephibosheth the son of Jonathan. 297 So when the Gibeonites had received the men, they punished them as they pleased; upon which God began to send rain, and to recover the earth to bring forth its fruits as usual, and to free it from the foregoing drought, so that the country of the Hebrews flourished again.
So, actually very little of anything new under the sun, really. This just demonstrates again how much psychopathy went into the God of Israel in order for him to serve as a holy legitimizer of deviant acts. OSIT.