Wiley
From CleanPosts
WILEY
Binah was a nerd among gods. When Bat-El saw that her Church had become infected with religious pride and overly puffed up with the knowledge of a divine origin and a supposed monopoly on truth, she asked Binah for help. Binah's solution involved, naturally, a gadget.
Binah noted that Catholicism had become, like Judaism and Islam, a religion of the Book. Unlike relics, which aged or were lost, the Word of God propagated like a living thing, with copies made to hand down to the next generation. This was safe for The Powers That Be. Bibles were copied by hand and cost more than a house. So they tended to be found only in the cathedrals, where they were physically chained to the lectern to prevent theft. Intellectually, the Bible was chained to the authority of the bishops who reserved to themselves the sole power to interpret it.
Binah fixed that in 1455 by introducing to Earth a simple invention that had existed for centuries on Gorpai: The printing press.
Now cheap copies of the Bible, translated from Latin to the local vernacular, began to flood the market. This made a clean break from the monolithic Church possible. Christianity was democratized. On Halloween in 1517 Martin Luthor nailed his 95 Theses to a church door in Germany and got the revolution started.
In 1521 the Papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem (It Pleases the Roman Pontiff) excommunicated Luther, who had attempted to reform Catholicism while remaining within the boundaries and sanction of the Church. Now he had no choice but to repent or go rogue. He decided not to repent.
There were growing pains as the Reformation opened the way for parts of Europe to break free from Vatican control. Many “heretics” were burned alive at the stake. When Belial heard of this he told the other elohim, “I considered burning as a death penalty once but I rejected it. Too quick.”
Bat-El and Binah took his point. Still, the thing had to proceed at its own pace. Erasmus wrote The Freedom of the Will and this was countered by Luther writing On the Bondage of the Will.
King Henry VIII grew tired of his wife and asked Rome to release him from the marriage. When the Pope refused, he took the whole country of England out of the Church and started his own national Church. Thomas Cranmer, the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, duly announced King Henry's divorce to Catherine of Aragon. This established the central feature of the Reformation, that human will is ascendant over divine will.
After that it was like a dam had burst. John Knox founded the Scottish Presbyterian Church after a disagreement with Lutherans over the sacraments and church government. John Smyth founded the Baptist Church over the issue of infant baptism and church-state separation. English translations of the Bible appeared, and the new Church of England, controlled now by Parliament, rejected certain books of the Old Testament that had been accepted by Rome and the Eastern Church for centuries.
After the Church divided, it began to sub-divide again and again, over the smallest issues, such as whether women could wear slacks, or whether playing cards was a sin, or what color the hymnal had to be. Every new sect had their own doctrinal hobby horse to ride. For the Five Corners Free Congregation, it was cousin marriage.
El doesn't have a problem with cousins getting hitched. Milcah was married to her cousin, Nahor. They had a granddaughter named Rebekkah., who later married Isaac, her first cousin once removed. Isaac instructed Jacob to marry a daughter of Rebekkah's brother. Jacob ended up marrying two of them, both first cousins, Rachel and Leah. Eleazar's daughters married their first cousins. El even commanded Zelophehad's five daughters to marry their cousins so their inheritance would remain in the family.
It is precisely to prevent the accumulation of wealth in families (and thus threaten the temporal power of the Papacy) that Pope Gregory I made cousin-marriage forbidden for all Roman Catholics.
Before the Civil War, no American state banned cousin marriage. In the years following the war thirteen states did make it illegal. A map of the United States highlighting the states which ban cousin marriage looks like a map of the late 1860's journey of the Five Corners Free Congregation from Pennsylvania to the far Northwest.
US prohibitions against cousin marriages predate modern genetics. The USA is the only western country with cousin marriage restrictions. About twenty percent of all couples worldwide are first cousins. About eighty percent of all marriages historically have been between first cousins.
The incest taboo actually has an internal basis, many animals including humans have evolved an aversion to mating very close within the bloodlines, like between brother and sister, or son and mother. But the further away a potential mate is from your own genetic inheritance, the less likely you will run across them in everyday life and have the opportunity to get with them. First cousins represent a sort of optimum point between genetic diversity and sexual availability.
All of these defenses (scriptural, historical, and anthropological) were first compiled in 1864 by Elder Mark Lange of Five Corners Free Congregation, who was deeply in love with his cousin-wife Joanna Lange.
Elder Mark's Church was mostly made up of “Pennsylvania Dutch”, which was a local corruption of Pennsylvania “Deutsch”. They were therefore German, and the assembly had roots in the Old German Baptist Brethren. These folks were pacifist farmers who dressed and lived simply, though not to the extremes of the Amish. They were called “Dunkers” because they baptized by dunking the convert in a local stream with complete immersion, three times just like Jesus did, in contrast to the “sprinkling” Lutherans, their “pouring” Mennonites, and even the “single dunk” Baptists.
All of those other congregations were of course damned to eternal hell fire for their apostasy.
Before Mark Lange became the Pastor of his own church, he was a simple parishioner in a Dunker church in Sharpsburg, Maryland, along Antietam Creek close to the place where it flows into the Potomac River.
In September, 1862 General Robert E. Lee decided to invade the Union for the first time. A copy of his Special Order Number 191 outlining his projected movements in Maryland and Pennsylvania was intercepted and placed in the hands of General McClellan, who rushed to intercept him at South Mountain on the 14th when three passes fell to the men in blue after a day of fierce fighting. Lee was forced to withdraw back to the Potomac River at Sharpsburg.
Both armies concentrated their forces here over the next two days, exchanging occasional volleys of artillery fire. What followed on the 17th was the bloodiest single day of battle in American history, all of it happening within earshot of the Dunker Church.
Eight thousand men died in a cornfield across the road from the church. Four thousand men died in the woods behind the church. Twelve thousand men died in front of the church itself. Three thousand men died at Burnside's Bridge on Antietam Creek, whose clean water had been used by the Dunkers to bring converts to the Banquet of God, but now ran red with human blood.
A half mile from the church five thousand men died in the sunken road, or so-called “Bloody Lane” which the Rebels had occupied and fortified, but which became a giant open grave filed to the brim with bodies after the Union won through to one end of it.
Tactically the battle was a draw. Strategically it was a clear victory for the North when Lee withdrew his forces into Virginia.
The pretty whitewashed little Dunker Church was riddled with bullet and shell holes, and had become structurally unsound. The Union Army turned it into a field hospital after the battle, and the Church filled with the screams and amputated limbs of wounded men. Blood smeared the interior walls.
Horrified by the battle, four of the families who formed the membership of the Dunker Church fled to the farms of their relatives near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where they had sent their horses when they first heard artillery two days before, knowing the Confederate Army had an insatiable penchant for stealing horses. Other families remained behind and wintered over at their relatives farms around Sharpsburg. Eventually the Dunker Church collapsed under all its damage, and a new one was rebuilt.
In Gettysburg Mark Lange stepped up, and became the pastor of a new church which retained most of the doctrines of the Dunkers, but only performed marriages between first cousins (or second cousins in a pinch).
Nine months later Marse Robert invaded the North again, and the horrible experience of the former Dunkers at Antietam repeated itself with a vast three day battle that proved the turning point of the war. The parishioners began to think themselves cursed. Certainly they were unpopular with the rest of the people in Gettysburg. The cousin-marriage thing was considered outlandish. Before they could be driven out of town, the members of the church volunteered to leave. They were anxious to get far away from the contending armies, and it was thought neighboring Ohio was safe.
Soon after that, Pennsylvania made marriages between first cousins illegal, and after Mark Lange's church started making many new converts Ohio followed suit. They were becoming as unpopular as Mormons. The church pulled up stakes and crossed over into Kentucky.
Lather, rinse, repeat. The end of the war saw them crossing the Big Muddy. By 1866 they were moving into the Great Plains of the Nebraska Territory, and by 1867 they were over the Great Divide. They made the Pandemonium Pass crossing of the Enfilade Range in the summer of 1868.
Soon after Mark Lange's wagon train started down the west side of the pass they encountered a blond male and female arrayed in strange clothing who were the tallest people they had ever seen. They did not give a surname, but the male, who was extremely hairy, called himself Kokabiel and the female called herself Nilaihah.
They came bearing sacks of fresh fruit in several varieties, and this astonished Elder Mark Lange on two important points. One, he could not imagine where they had obtained the fruit in this wilderness, where only sour little salmonberries and huckleberries grew. Two, the fruit were unlike anything he or anyone in the wagon train had seen before. Still, the gifts were tasty, and more important, they were a source of vitamin C which was sorely lacking in their diet of stringy wild game and plant roots. Already some of the people were losing teeth from scurvy and the fruit came just in time.
In return, Mark Lange offered his two visitors a venison soup and homemade beer, which they accepted with gratitude. They gave thanks to El in the name of Yeshua his only begotten offspring, and Lange discerned they were fellow Christians of some sort, but he could not place their accent, and they did not reveal their country of origin.
The two nephilim then walked with the wagon train as it made its treacherous way down the upper vales of the Black River, where it was only a small wild stream. As they descended, the Black River doubled and redoubled in size as other streams joined it. The stream plunged over a staircase of innumerable cataracts and divided into islands as it formed stretches of white rapids alternating with deep quiet pools.
"This place is beautiful, Lady Nilaihah," Elder Mark said after many minutes of contemplative silence. "I find myself deeply moved."
"Why do you find it so beautiful, Pastor Mark,” she asked him.
"I think it is perhaps the simplicity of the water's purpose, always seeking the lowest place."
"What if you saw it raining on the ocean? Surely, as the simplest case, you would find that exceedingly beautiful."
"No, m'Lady, it would seem such a waste of fresh water. Maybe I'm thinking of the complexity of this landscape along the valley floor, of the cliffs and hillsides and gravel bars."
"Then what of that recent rock slide two miles back? Surely you found the jumbled, random complexity of the boulder field gorgeous beyond compare."
"No, I found it to be an ugly scar on the land. I'm sorry, I have failed you, m'Lady. I cannot tell you why this place is so beautiful."
"You have not failed me. Words have failed you."
"Perhaps my words defy reason."
Kokabiel spoke up at this. "Reason is for cutting away truths and filtering out truths, so as to arrive at the truth you are looking for. Reason is useless for growing and nourishing truths."
"But Master Kokabiel," Mark Lange objected, "reason is the foundation of our system of justice!"
"Exactly," the nephilim replied. "That is why your society's righteousness is based on cutting and filtering, on refraining from doing evil things instead of accomplishing good things."
"What about when there is a tragedy, such as a typhoon or an earthquake, and the people are blamed for somehow offending God?"
Kokabiel said, "Those who worship at the altar of reason cannot accept the capriciousness of nature. They must have an explanation for everything. So they say God is angry and sit in moral judgment of the people."
"So do you hold the supernatural is not real, Master Kokabiel?"
"Rather, your world contains infinite complexities. To harness it is to spoil it. The days are bright, the night is dark. Winds blow, floods come. The seasons are hot and cold. These things unfold beyond man's puny attempts to control them."
"Still, Master Kokabiel, men often succeed in their way, and take pride in their cleverness."
Kokabiel replied, "Nature abhors monuments to man's cleverness, attacking his walls with moss and erosion and crumbling his cities to dust. Only the ever-renewing patterns of life are permanent."
Mark Lange fell silent as he pondered these words.
After another mile Nilaihah spoke up and said, “This stream will grow and become a large river the further down you go. At the foot of this valley you will come to a large hill, and there it will be possible to cross. Near that hill you will find a small village of Original Inhabitants who seek a place at the Lord's table, if someone will show them the way.”
And with that, Kokabiel and Nilaihah, both of the House of Sala, took their leave of Elder Mark and went their own way. In the days afterward, Pastor Lange often thought of the scripture in the letter to the Hebrews that said, Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
It was getting on to late afternoon of the following day when the wagon train reached the river crossing at the base of End Dome hill. Elder Mark Lange got out and decided to camp there for the night. There was no sign of the Indians Nilaihah spoke of. Lange told the party they would stay here a day or two to rest before trying to ford the river.
In the early evening as the wagon train prepared supper, Elder Mark Lange retired to the interior of his wagon and went over his calculations once again. They were correct, 1838 was the year in question, but he didn't know what the message was.
In the 1800's it was common for religious leaders to pour over genealogies and other numerical figures given in the Bible to decode exactly when the end of the world was going to be. The most famous was William Miller, who interpreted various numbers in the book of Daniel (such as 2300 days) as years, picked a good anchor point in pre-Christian history, and came up with October 1843 for the end. When no fireworks materialized, he went back to the drawing board and eventually realized that since there was no year zero (the year 1 B.C. went straight on to the year 1 A.D.), he was off by exactly twelve months.
The following October nothing happened and his flock was let down again. It was the end of Miller's career as a prognosticator, although a number of denominations, notably the Seventh Day Adventists, were spun off by various Millerites after the "Great Disappointment"
When Mark Lange set his own mind to the task he went about navigating a course through the Bible as surefooted as his chosen path for their wagon train across the Territories. He started with a date known from archeology and secular history of 587 B.C. for the destruction of Jerusalem, and worked backward.
From the sack of Jerusalem he added the reigns of sixteen kings of Judah back to King Jehoram and came up with 894 B.C. Then, knowing that Jehoram became King of Judah in the fifth year of the reign of King Joram of Israel, he jumped horses mid-stream and started tracking back through nine kings of Israel to Joroboam in 980 BC, when the two kingdoms were split north and south.
Then Pastor Lange added 40 years for the reign of King Solomon, and subtracted four years because the Temple was built in the fourth year of his reign. This gave him 1017 B.C.
Now the numbers really started to pile up. Using the bible's own figures, it was 480 years from the beginning of the construction of the temple back to the Exodus and 430 years from the Exodus back to the migration of the house of Jacob to Egypt, when he was 130 years old. Going back to Jacob's birth gave a date of 2057 B.C.
Finally it was straight path following the genealogies from Jacob back to Adam, who Lange determined was created in 4163 B.C. As a side benefit, Mark Lange discovered the exact year of the worldwide flood was 2507 B.C.
The idea that Pastor Lange had was that since according to the bible a thousand years are a day to God, then a week for God was 7,000 years. The first 6,000 years would be for human history to play out, like a work week but on a longer time scale. But the last 1,000 years would be a "Sabbath" millennium devoted purely to God. Then the end would come.
Now that he had his starting point, Pastor Lange added 7,000 years to 4,163 (careful to mind the year zero problem) and came up with the year 2838 A.D. for the end of the world...much too far away in the future to suit most prophets, who needed a date closer at hand to stir up the faithful and get those offerings rolling in. Even adding just 6,000 years to Adam's birth year was no good, because 1838 A.D. had already passed by.
But Mark Lange was so sure of his figures and of his scheme in general that he made an extremely controversial statement: "If God did not make a big move in 1838, I'll tell him to go to hell!"
That kind of talk was called burning bridges before coming to them.
The purpose of the long journey of Five Corners Free Congregation was only partly to find a land where they could freely practice cousin marriage. The other purpose was to find out what "big move" Lange insisted God made in 1838, and to be part of it.
The next morning Mark Lange caught the first glimpse of the Indians their strange visitors had spoke of when about forty of them splashed across the ford with their horses on their way up the river, but none of them paused when they passed his party.
Shortly afterwards, Captain Smalley of the US Army came calling, asking if they had seen them, and Pastor Mark told them what he knew. And some time after that, Chief Malekwa and a few other Indians returned to humbly lay the Golden Gift at the feet of Mark Lange.
Lange saw only an ingot of gold, and considered it tribute, a payoff to buy an escape. He passed the Golden Gift to Alfred Porter, then hid Malekwa and his handful of warriors in his own wagon.
Presently Lieutenant Lambert Wells rode up and greeted Rev. Lange with a tip of his hat. He said, "We're looking for a few wayward Indians."
"We saw six of them ride through here on their way up the river. If you hurry you can overtake them."
"Sir, we are much obliged."
Lt. Wells sped off to pursue this lie, riding his men and horses to exhaustion as they pushed up the banks of the Black River at the foot of the gorge, or more often than not, trotting through the water itself. Always, Wells thought he was drawing nearer and nearer to his prey. But they were chasing a phantom, and in the end as dusk settled in the cavalry itself became the prey of the Northern Raiders.
A rock slide of curious origins cut off their advance, and another rock slide cut off any escape. Then arrows sang out from hidden places along the cliffs, answered by gunfire as the Calvary shot wildly at anything they thought was moving. The battle seemed to be too easy to the Northern Raiders, and they suspected treachery, but they were fighting in land they knew intimately, while Wells and his other men and their horses were in no condition to put up much of a fight.
No report ever made it to the War Department. A few weeks later Fort Shiprock was broken up by another Cavalry and carted away by army draft horses.
During the night Malekwa related as much as he could of the People's story to Reverend Mark, using Shy Bear as an interpreter. In the morning Malekwa arranged for a ceremony on top of the Island in the Sky, which was known also to the whites as End Dome.
His fallen warriors were lying on a bier of alder branches. With permission, Malekwa borrowed the Golden Gift back from Porter for a few moments and made the bodies of his dead men disappear.
Mark Lange and the other whites were struck speechless. Coming as they did from a religious background, such a display could be nothing other than the power of God made manifest.
"This is a sign!"
The mind of Mark Lange began churning, and he cooked up the foundation of End Dome Church theology right there on the spot. "God has brought us together, white man and red man alike, in this land of His choosing, flowing with milk and honey. Here we shall remain!"
Lange couldn't just take the weapon outright, for it was holy, a godly gift, and so it could never be defiled by base theft. Obviously the People of Malekwa and the remnant of the Five Corners Free Congregation would have to be permanent and equal (but separate) partners. The doctrine of matrimonial consanguinity would prevent any joining between the two sides, thus salving the other settlers' horror at any race-mixing.
The first order of the day was a mass baptism of the People in the cold silty waters of the Black River, three times using total immersion, since they were at heart still Dunkers. So a new assembly was born, with a White Wing and a Red Wing, "Two lungs by which the united people of the Creator draw new breath," was the official line.
After more questions to Chief Malekwa through his interpreter Shy Bear, and some quick calculations, Mark Lange realized Malekwa was given the Golden Gift in 1838. Lange's quest was over. It all fit.
Malekwa's People returned to their encampment near the summit of End Dome, and aided by the whites they began to turn it into a permanent village.
Gary Bergin, his wife Marge, and their three children crossed the Black River and began pulling up stumps to establish a farm, aided by the eager labor of some of Malekwa's men, once it was explained what they were trying to do. The whites proposed a life free of any reliance on roaming herds of animals. It would not be imposed on the Indians, but it was available to any who came freely.
Porter, his wife Caroline, and their four children established their farm near the place where Malekwa slew Smalley, Morrison, and the others.
Thomas Henry, his wife Melanie, and their five children chose a spot for their homestead on the bank of the river opposite the village of the People.
The rest of the whites platted out the town of Wiley on both sides of the river crossing. These were Harry and Ida Hilling, with a single child, Paul and Pamela Hurst with their three children, and Ivor and Anna Lokken with two children. The Lokkens were of Norwegian extract, but had been accepted by the rest of the assembly. They were the ancestors of Kimberly Lokken who united with Binah to become Round Robyn.
Mark Lange and his wife were childless, but not for much longer. He built a tabernacle on the summit of End Dome, and established the altar over the place where Malekwa came face-to-face with God. The empty black clam shell thing, which the WDF would later call the Artifact, was a relic to be hidden and protected by the altar. Lange declared himself the first Prophet of End Dome, and his growing family dwelt in an annex to the tabernacle. Malekwa lived also on End Dome Hill, for he remained the Chief Elder of the original inhabitants. End Dome's tabernacle was the gathering places for all the people, red and white, every Wednesday morning. With each homily, the Prophet and the Chief established the wall of Church dogma steadily, like laying bricks. And these sermons, together with stories from the People, were compiled into the Book of Endomion. In time, the new religion itself would be called the Endomion Church.
The Indians were introduced to the Western concept of given names and surnames. The boy Shy Bear (who had been taken to the Land We Know to be educated in his role as translator) became the head of the Shy Bear family, which later included such luminaries as Jerry Shy Bear and Joy Shy Bear.
No "boot hill" type cemetery was ever established in Wiley. Funerals were always conducted in the tabernacle, and the corpses were send directly back to the Creator who made them using the Golden Gift.
In following years the rumor of gold was heard tell in the Black River Gorge, and Wiley swelled with the influx of prospectors hungry for the shiny yellow stuff. Many of the prospectors struck out, and some of these stayed in Wiley as converts to the Church. When the rail line went in through town, connecting Amnesty to the territorial capital at Langton, it was easy for cousins of the new converts to make their way west to new lives as wives of the former prospectors. When the territory entered the Union as a state in 1889, the Endomion Church had grown large enough and influential enough to ensure the state government did not outlaw cousin-marriage for many decades.
Gradually the tabernacle on End Dome was expanded into the vast wooden and whitewashed edifice of the End Dome Temple. When it was completed the Prophet Mark Lange was fifty-three years of age. Secondary tabernacles had been established throughout the United States but all Endomion funerals still took place here at the original site.
When Chief Malekwa died in 1906 at the age of 84 he lay in state in the temple sanctuary for fourteen days. Many Endomites scattered across the country journeyed by train and even by the newfangled horseless carriages to pay their last respects. When the Prophet Lange committed the Chief's body directly into the hands of God it was a sight that few but the oldest members present had ever seen, for the Church had grown beyond the dreams of her founders.
Most members of the Church of Endomion lived far from Wiley. The Endomion Assembly performed all the funerals of Endomites at the Temple, but only the very closest kin of the deceased were allowed to attend. For most of them it was a ceremony they would not witness until they were well into middle-age when their parents died, and of course everyone prayed they would never have to attend. But the Endomion Church had grown so large that every day except Worship Wednesday the Temple was booked for farewell Rites.
Not everything was so grim. During the fair held in honor of the Prophet's 65th birthday, a barnstormer came to town, offering rides in his biplane. Fearless, Mark Lange stepped up to be the first, to the delight of everyone present. Few religious leaders have been so beloved, at least among his own faithful. Outsiders, however, considered Endomism to be a dangerous cult.
Two years later the Great War broke out in Europe, and many End Dome tabernacles in France and the Low Countries were destroyed by stray shells, or even deliberately perhaps. At the bidding of the Prophet, a special collection was taken up to bring succor to the wartime mission field. With these funds in hand, Prophet Lange boarded the steam liner Reina Regenta in River City with about a million dollars in gold bullion to aid the faithful in nations torn by the conflict, the first truly industrial war on Earth, which had grown to rage across much of the world.
Survivors of the voyage through the new Panama Canal and across the Atlantic tell of the implacable patience of Prophet Lange as he was dogged day and night by a newspaper reporter on board named Rupert Keller, who obviously had a beef with the Endomion "cult".
When the ship was in the frigid waters almost precisely in the center of the Atlantic Ocean far from any help, she took two torpedoes from a German U-boat. The Reina Regenta listed sharply to the side, drowning half of her lifeboats. Frantically, the lifeboats on her port side were laden with passengers and released but there were not enough for everyone and no chance of raising the floundering ones on the starboard side.
Women and children went first, and then old men were allowed to board. The Prophet Lange was placed in the last lifeboat, but before it was lowered to the sea he spied Rupert Keller standing on the deck of the doomed ship. The Prophet bounded out of his place and offered his seat to the reporter. "Happy birthday, son," he said with a gentle smile.
Lange was not without fear, for all living things fear death as part of their natural defense mechanism, but he was encouraged by his memories of the Golden Gift, physical evidence of the existence of God which he had been so fortunate to witness. And he spread his encouragement around to the rest of the doomed passengers. In this way he made their passing a little bit easier.
There was just enough time for the last lifeboat to get away before the ship rolled completely over and took everyone aboard down to the uncharted and murky depths of the ocean, not be be found again until the sea was drained.
The Prophet's kind gesture was totally wasted on Keller. He proceeded to give a newspaper account of the disaster which included the Prophet kicking little girls off a lifeboat to make room for his gold bullion, resulting in the sinking of the lifeboat, the death of Lange, and the death of everyone with him. Indeed, Keller said the presence of the gold was the reason the ship was torpedoed by the Central Powers in the first place, lest it aid the cause of the Triple Entente.
Only a handful of survivors brought the true tale to the Church elders in Wiley, but Keller's widely published lies did their damage to the popular imagination of the American people. Many of them soured on the religion, and the growth of the Endomion Church slowed to a crawl. Shortly after that, by popular referendum, the state banned marriages between first cousins and the first persecutions began.
