Beyond The Walls

One of my more open, and vulnerable episodes. Just talking through some moments and numbers that have floated around my mind for the past 30+ years. Hope that this helps someone to know, in a greater way, the words recorded in 1 Peter 5:6-7

Those things we all enjoy in our lives... even if we shouldn't.

Like a photo negative in a dark room, sometimes the most trying times in our lives serve to develop us into what God has designed us.

Galatians 2:20

How different do you think our days would be if we set aside moments to be thankful. And not just a cursory, quick, half-hearted, "thank ya!" But, to truly recognize, and be grateful for what God has done for us, is doing, and will continue to do in the future.

Early in 1939, the world's scientific community discovered that German physicists had learned the secrets of splitting a uranium atom. Fears soon spread over the possibility of Nazi scientists utilizing that energy to produce a bomb capable of unspeakable destruction.

Scientists ALBERT EINSTEIN, who fled Nazi persecution, and ENRICO FERMI, who escaped Fascist Italy, were now living in the United States. They agreed that the President must be informed of the dangers of atomic technology in the hands of the Axis powers. Fermi traveled to Washington in March to express his concerns to government officials. But few shared his uneasiness.

Einstein penned a letter to President Roosevelt urging the development of an atomic research program later that year. Roosevelt saw neither the necessity nor the utility for such a project, but agreed to proceed slowly. In late 1941, the American effort to design and build an ATOMIC BOMB received its code name — the MANHATTAN PROJECT.

At first the research was based at only a few universities — Columbia University, the University of Chicago and the University of California at Berkeley. A breakthrough occurred in December 1942 when Fermi led a group of physicists to produce the first controlled NUCLEAR CHAIN REACTION under the grandstands of STAGG FIELD at the University of Chicago.

After this milestone, funds were allocated more freely, and the project advanced at breakneck speed. Nuclear facilities were built at Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Hanford, Washington. The main assembly plant was built at LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER was put in charge of putting the pieces together at Los Alamos. After the final bill was tallied, nearly $2 billion had been spent on research and development of the atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project employed over 120,000 Americans.

Secrecy was paramount. Neither the Germans nor the Japanese could learn of the project. Roosevelt and Churchill also agreed that Stalin would be kept in the dark. Consequently, there was no public awareness or debate. Keeping 120,000 people quiet would be impossible; therefore only a small privileged cadre of inner scientists and officials knew about the atomic bomb's development. In fact, Vice-President Truman had never heard of the Manhattan Project until he became President Truman.

Although the Axis powers remained unaware of the efforts at Los Alamos, American leaders later learned that a Soviet spy named KLAUS FUCHS had penetrated the inner circle of scientists.

By the summer of 1945, Oppenheimer was ready to test the first bomb. On July 16, 1945, at TRINITY SITE near ALAMOGORDO, NEW MEXICO, scientists of the Manhattan Project readied themselves to watch the detonation of the world's first atomic bomb. The device was affixed to a 100-foot tower and discha

Nowadays, browsing the aisles of candy corn and plastic bats, it’s hard to imagine that Halloween was ever an article of controversy. But the history of Halloween in America was surprisingly contentious. It took a long time to become established as a mainstream holiday and was resisted, perhaps not so surprisingly, by religious authorities.

Halloween has its origins in the Celtic holiday of Samhain. It was a druidic festival held between the evening of October 31 and sunset of the following day. The ancient Druids believed that during this night, the separation between the worlds of the living and the dead softened. Ghosts, they believed, roamed the countryside, damaging crops and meddling in human affairs. And it was also a time when divination was thought to be more powerful.

After the Celts were conquered by the Romans, Samhain underwent a series of revisions. Over the course of the four-hundred-year Roman governorship, Samhain blended with two similar Roman holidays – Feralia, a day to honor the dead, and a holiday to celebrate Pomona, the Roman goddess of trees and fruit. Samhain was later suppressed by the Roman Church and replaced with All Souls’ Day, which incorporated many of the Samhain traditions such as costume-wearing and bonfires.

All Souls’ Day, alternatively called All Hallow’s Eve and eventually Halloween, had trouble establishing itself as a mainstream holiday in America. It was vigorously resisted by the Puritans in the New England colonies, but had an easier time winning hearts and minds in Maryland and other southern states.

It wasn’t until the huge influx of Irish and Scottish immigrants in the later part of the 19th Century that Halloween in America became nationally popular. It was then that Halloween really started to take shape into the form that’s most familiar to us. Celebrants would dress in costumes and go from door to door asking for money or food, the origin of the modern trick-or-treat. People also told ghost stories, played pranks, and raised hell.The holiday’s raucous character elicited pushback from some concerned parties, who moved to domesticate the holiday into something more focused on community than the occult. Newspapers and community figureheads discouraged parents from including anything phantasmagorical from their parties and instead focus on games and food. By the early 20th Century, Halloween had been largely gutted of its death and mayhem overtones.

Halloween, though sanitized, still carried (and carries) with it an attendant spike in property destruction. And religious groups continued (and continue) to protest the holiday’s aesthetics and Pagan origins. Many Christians consider the holiday a benign occasion, or even a religiously relevant one, considering Halloween’s close historical ties with the faith. Others, though, denounce loudly.

It had a rocky first few centuries, but Halloween is now entrenched as one of the most popular holidays in the country. Halloween in America has undergone many transformations, but as it stands now, it is an almost entirely secular affair, split evenly between children playing dress-up and adult revelers.

Samhain being the feast of fire, has also held a place in some minds as the feast of the dead as well.

With some holding that it is seen as incorporating the cult of Donn (Lord of the Dead we referenced in Part 1) into its celebrations but whether this is accurate, or how they did so remains uncertain.

The idea that Samhain is a juncture between the two halves of the year placed it in the unusual realm of being suspended in time - it did not belong to the old year not the new.

We view the year in modern times as being comprised of four parts, Spring, Summer, Autumn & Winter. While, for the ancient Celts, it was primarily viewed as two seasons; winter and summer.

So, the night of Samhain held a weird place of not being part of summer…. But, it had yet to become winter.

Many believed that It could be said that time stood still on this night and the implications of this could be, and were in some cases, terrifying.

During this night and the limbo that it was believed to represent, the natural order of life, nature, time and the spiritual realm was thrown into chaos and the earthly world of the living (not only humans, but livestock, plants, nature itself was all dangerously threatened by “death” moving its way into their reality during this day).

To put it simply it was believed that the world of everything living, became hopelessly entangled with the world of the dead.

As millions of children and adults participate in the fun of Halloween on the night of October 31st, few will be aware of its ancient Celtic roots in the Samhain festival. In Celtic Ireland about 2,000 years ago, Samhain was the division of the year between the lighter half (summer) and the darker half (winter). At Samhain the division between this world and the otherworld was at its thinnest, allowing spirits to pass through.

The family's ancestors were honored and invited home whilst harmful spirits were warded off. People wore costumes and masks to disguise themselves as harmful spirits and thus avoid harm. Bonfires and food played a large part in the festivities. The bones of slaughtered livestock were cast into a communal fire, household fires were extinguished and started again from the bonfire. Food was prepared for the living and the dead, food for the ancestors who were in no position it eat it, was ritually shared with the less well off.

Christianity incorporated the honoring of the dead into the Christian calendar with All Saints (All Hallows) on November 1st, followed by All Souls on November 2nd. The wearing of costumes and masks to ward off harmful spirits survived as Halloween customs. The Irish emigrated to America in great numbers during the 19th century especially around the time of famine in Ireland during the 1840's. The Irish carried their Halloween traditions to America, where today it is one of the major holidays of the year. Through time other traditions have blended into Halloween, for example the American harvest time tradition of carving pumpkins.

The Letters of Hus have long been recognised by the best judges as one of the world’s spiritual treasures. The discovery of Hus, if we may so express it, forms more than once a landmark in the spiritual development of Luther.

‘When I was a tyro at Erfurt,’ we read, ‘I found in the library of the convent a volume of The Sermons of John Hus. When I read the title I had a great curiosity to know what doctrines that heresiarch had propagated, since a volume like this in a public library had been saved from the fire. On reading I was overwhelmed with astonishment. I could not understand for what cause they had burnt so great a man, who explained the Scriptures with so much gravity and skill. But as the very name of Hus was held in so great abomination that I imagined the sky would fall and the sun be darkened if I made honourable mention of him, I shut the book and went away with no little indignation. This, however, was my comfort, that perhaps Hus had written these things before he fell into heresy. For as yet I knew not what was done at the Council of Constance’ (Mon. Hus. vol. i. Preface).

Some years later, in February 1529, after pondering the matter over with Melancthon, Luther was driven to write to Spalatin: ‘I have hitherto taught [2] and held all the opinions of Hus without knowing it. With a like unconsciousness has Staupitz taught them. We are all of us Hussites without knowing it. I do not know what to think for amazement.’ In this letter Luther was probably referring to his reading of the controversial works of Hus, especially his De Ecclesia. Shortly afterwards, however, he came across a copy of the Letters. At once he perceived their value, not merely in their bearing on the expected Council convoked for Mantua, which subsequently met at Trent in 1542, but for the larger outlook of spiritual life. He took immediate steps for bringing them before the German public. In 1536 and 1537 no less than three different editions in Latin and three editions in German, each of them with a preface by Luther, issued from the presses of Wittenberg and Leipzig. The most important of these editions is that entitled Epistolæ Quædam Piissimæ et Eruditissimæ, printed at Wittenberg by John Lufft in 1537, an edition which now forms the sole extant source of many of the letters of Hus. In his preface to this volume Luther is not backward in his praises of the Letters. ‘Observe,’ he writes, ‘how firmly Hus clung in his writings and words to the doctrines of Christ; with what courage he struggled against the agonies of death; with what patience and humility he suffered every indignity, and with what greatness of soul he at last confronted a cruel death in defence of the truth; doing all these things alone before an imposing assembly of the great ones of the earth, like a lamb in the midst of lions and wolves. If such a man is to be regarded as a heretic, no person under the sun can be looked [3] on as a true Christian. By what fruits then shall we recognise the truth, if it is not manifest by those with which John Hus was so richly adorned?’

Luther is not alone in his judgment. The Letters of Hus, in the verdict of Bishop Creighton, “give us a touching picture of simple, earnest piety rooted on a deep consciousness of God’s abiding presence. These letters show us neither a fanatic nor a passionate party leader, but a man of childlike spirit, whose one desire was to discharge faithfully his pastoral duties, and to do all things as in the sight of God and no

Whether code breaker or spiritualist or amateur historian, the Voynich speculators are linked by their common interest in the past, in this quasi-occult mystery, and the insoluble problems of authenticity. 

It has been said that it is “for a mysterious but learned reference to past mysteries that somehow hold important meaning for the present.”

We will probably never stop forming communities based on the manuscript’s secrets. 

We are fond of weaving narratives like doilies around gaping holes, so that the holes won’t scare them. And objects from premodern history—like medieval manuscripts—are the perfect canvas on which to project our worries about the difficult, the frightening and the arcane, because these objects come from a time outside culture as we conceive of it. This single, original manuscript encourages us to sit with the concept of truth and to remember that there are mysteries at the bottom of things whose meanings we will never know.

First part in a two episode look at the "popular culture" theories as to the location/destination of the Ark. 

In this episode we discuss Egypt and are quickly on our way to discussing multiple places it could be... until, we run into the Knights Templar and Oak Island and we completely derail!

We have titled this episode 3 in our Ark series, but, it could just as easily be titled "History of Knights Templar", or "Oak Island."

The greatest and most sought after treasure of all time is what we are tackling in this episode of beyond the walls... Join us as we take a Biblical look at the Ark of the Covenant as well as theories as to it disappearance from searching the scripture.

We are privileged to be joined by writer, speaker & author Tammy Nischan on this episode.

Tammy talks to us about her journey, and how her faith met an adversary in the form of loss.