PROPHECY

The Parable of Sodom and Gomorrah

Twenty years ago, for no particular reason, while living in Hollywood, my consciousness was invaded by the biblical parable of Sodom and Gomorrah. In a strange way I felt as though I was Lot, and that God was warning me to get out of the life I was living , take my family and go and find a more wholesome life far away from the maddening crowd. And, just like Lot, I argued with God that people are intrinsically good and that abandoning them was tantamount to admitting that humankind was more evil than godly. Despite my objections the sense of impending disaster would not go away and the feeling that I must leave remained. We had four small children at that time and the periodic reminders of the earth shuddering beneath us that we lived right on top of the San Andreas fault line did little to relieve me of concern.

I spent many months waking up every morning with the sense of impending dread, trying to analyzing and shake off the oppressive feeling. I worked hard on deciphering the inner meaning of the parable. I eventually concluded that Sodom represented the glut of our fleshy appetites and that Gomorrah represented our national preoccupation with gambling with money and trying to get rich quick by gouging a profit out of every transaction. The inference of the warning was that if these two social addictions consumed us to the exclusion of allowing the cautionary hand of God into our lives, mass dysfunction would set in and they would eventually spell the destruction of our modern culture.

In effect my own consciousness was warning me and asking me to stand back from the mass indoctrination and try to deprogram myself and my family from their insidious influences. Having thus satisfied myself as to what was causing the inner sense of unease, the larger question of Lot remained. What was the purpose of saving myself if the rest of humanity was to be left behind? A life without extended social interaction was no life at all.. Surely the rest of humanity could be made to see the danger in the same way that I did. So, like Lot, with great earnestness, I made a deal with God to find ten good family men. I began warning friends, family and strangers alike that if we did not make significant alterations in the way we lived our lives, our civilization would crumble to dust. I suggested that we begin to wean ourselves off a money-based capitalistic economic system and start cleaning up our act by paying more attention to our spirituality. My urging, just as the parable predicted, was laughed at and derided. I could not find a single person to agree with me.

So I packed up my family, left Hollywood and settled on a farm far away in a lonely desert. I knew my wife was not totally happy with my decision. I warned her that the parable predicted that Lot’s wife would look back and turn into a pillar of salt. She laughed at that and vehemently denied that she would ever leave her children. Her chuckles at my silliness were stilled when the apartment we had left just two weeks earlier, collapsed on its foundations during the North Ridge Earthquake.

Over the next few years I wrote and published a book that outlined the gradual evolution of human consciousness all the way from Stone Age family values to the Present international tensions. The book provided a graphic illustration of the logical progression of social and spiritual survival imperatives that have taken place over four past Ages of human development and how that has led us to our present condition. I argued that we were at the end of a Technological Age of over-intensive mass production and environmental exploitation and that the exponential pressures of our populations on an over-burdened planet demanded a far more ethical attitude as regards the meaning of life and purpose of mankind’s lethal domination of the home planet. Once again I naively expected that the progressive logic of the argument would immediately influence readers and make them find ways and means to change their life style. It never happened. Psyche-Genetics became an instant non-seller. Not a soul responded to it. No book in the history of publication has sold less.

That failure succeeded in shutting down my objections against God. I could not find one person in either Sodom or Gomorrah to listen, let alone the ten God had agreed to in the parable. The failure to communicate allowed my wife’s grumbling to resume. Her discontent was once again stilled temporally when she saw the eerie sight of the twin towers of World Trade crumbled to dust. I then got on a dozen internet forums, (just like this one) and began broadcasting thousands of posts related to the need for a mass change of consciousness. And again got back nothing but derision from all. God had been right all along.

Three years ago my wife found the desert solitude oppressive. She left a loving husband and loving children in preference for a life back Sodom and Gomorrah and has subsequently turned into a pillar of salt.

In September of this year, the whole edifice of Sodom and Gomorrah, as predicted in the ancient parable, has begun to collapse. The walls are falling across the length and breadth of the planet.