Chaos and Karma

Matt Palmer

Part 1: Chaos

When Israel’s descendants found themselves numerous and forceful in ancient Egypt, their king plotted to enslave them. The Egyptians “set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they build for Pharoah treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.” Exodus 1:11. When the Israelites continued to grow under these burdens, “the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor: and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: and all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigor.” Exodus 1:13-14.

Of course, Pharoah had no intentions of letting this labor force go when their God insisted. Jehovah disrupted Pharoah’s kingdom with a series of plagues, increasing in intensity until Pharoah relented. Rabbi Jason Sobel described the Egyptian beliefs coming into contact with Jehovah’s power this way:

While the [Egyptian] gods kept order in the cosmic realm, Pharoah helped to keep order in the earthly realm. All ten plagues were meant to discredit the false gods of Egypt and Pharoah’s fallacious claim to govern creation as a semi-god. The plagues brought chaos out of order and exposed Pharoah and the gods of Egypt as powerless before the Lord, the true Creator of heaven and earth.

Mysteries of the Messiah: Unveiling Divine Connections from Genesis to Today by Rabbi Jason Sobel at 96

In this realm, it was Pharoah who created order. Chaos is introduced by Jehovah. This is an inversion of how we typically see Jehovah, as the God who defeated chaos in creation as recorded in Genesis 1. We see Him as the God of “order” described in 1 Corinthians 14:33: “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.”  But we consistently see Jehovah reduce order to chaos in this world.

The tower of Babel was a place of perfect, global order and coordination. “The whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.” Genesis 11:1. “And the Lord came down to see the city and tower which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” 11:6. Unity of speech, mind, purpose, and labor. How should God react?

“Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.” Genesis 11:7-8. The Lord (and those He addresses as his companions) introduced chaos into the perfect order established at Babel.

Other times, the Lord takes credit for the brutal actions of wicked kings who destroy and consume their fellow man. When the Nephite armies made the fatal error of fighting outside their own territory, Mormon declared, “it was because the armies of the Nephites went up unto the Lamanties that they began to be smitten; for were it not for that, the Lamanites could have no power over them. But, behold, the judgments of God will overtake the wicked; and it is by the wicked that the wicked are punished; for it is the wicked that stir up the hearts of the children of men to bloodshed.” Mormon 4:4-5. Through Isaiah, the Lord: “O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.” Isaiah 10:5-6.

At other times, the Lord is more direct in using angelic force to mete out punishment to those who become ripe, as I’ve noted elsewhere in 4+1 Revisited: The Wrecking Crew and A Heavy Heart, Light as a Feather.

Whatever the means, God has not been shy about taking credit for introducing chaos in the well ordered and best made plans of men. Moroni explained the stakes of inhabiting the choice land of the Nephites and Jaredites: “whatsoever nation shall possess it shall serve God, or they shall be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come upon them. And the fulness of his wrath cometh upon them when they are ripened in iniquity.” Ether 2:9. The wrath is God’s. Looking forward to one such instance, Christ said Himself:

wo be unto the Gentiles except they repent; for it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Father, that I will cut off thy horses out of the midst of thee, and I will destroy thy chariots; and I will cut off the cities of thy land, and throw down all they strongholds; and I will cut off witchcrafts out of thy land, and thou shalt have no more soothsayers; thy graven images I will also cut off, and thy standing images out of the midst of thee, and thou shalt no more worship the works of thy hands; and I will pluck up thy groves out of the midst of thee; so will I destroy thy cities.

3 Nephi 21:14-18

Whatever mechanism the Lord employs to complete this destruction of the gentiles, it doesn’t matter. It is His work, and He is not bashful about accepting the credit. Indeed, there is much more to our Lord Jesus Christ than warm hugs and nice feelings.

Part Two: Karma

Why, then, in this world, do we see Lucifer so often as the author of order and Jehovah as the author of chaos? Lucifer loves order. He craves it. But it is a certain type of order. Order, to Lucifer, is a machine to maximize efficiency and to exploit man. His is the order of the plantation, of the feedlot. Lucifer’s order is the order of Babel, Egypt, Babylon, the East India Company, the Aztec empire, compulsory public schooling, and the corporate workplace with its attending corrupted state power. It is the drive to beat out of men their will for independence and to corral them together for a slaughter with sharp knives and minimal offal. 

Our culture loves this order. It builds a kind of wealth that we adore. “Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and when we did eat bread to the full . . .” Exodus 16:3. In our day, actual happiness is a kind of insanity, any permissible form of it must be found in consumption, whether of corporate baubles or in the attention of others, or under the ever watchful eye of a so-called religious authority.

The fruits of Lucifer’s order are real, and we gorge ourselves on them. So are the costs. In this realm, we exist to sustain the top of the social pyramid, whether in the market or in government, it’s the same. We are no different than the Israelites building Pharoah’s treasure cities, except they acknowledged themselves as slaves in need of deliverance. Our forms of order grow ever larger, seeking to envelope all of mankind, like their ideal of Babel, which sought to tear open the barriers God placed between the realms.

In other realms, it is much the same. They feast on your loosh just like your labor. You have been fooled into offering your creative essence for Lucifer and his minions. Consider carefully what Lehi says here:

And now, my sons, I would that ye should look to the great Mediator, and hearken unto his great commandments; and be faithful unto his words, and choose eternal life, according to the will of his Holy Spirit; and not choose eternal death, according to the will of the flesh and the evil which is therein, which giveth the spirit of the devil power to captivate you, to bring you down to hell, that he may reign over you in his kingdom.

2 Nephi 2:28-29

We literally give power to “the spirit of the devil,” for him to enslave us in his kingdom. Or we can choose life. God does not need our power. He has His own power, unlimited amounts of it, and life entirely in Himself as the great I AM. God’s way is the Garden of Eden, a gift of endless abundance and flourishing. God uses His power to our benefit. Lucifer’s way is endless exploitation at our expense.

Why does a just God send chaos to destroy order built with man’s hands? Is God the aggressor? How are His hands clean? God does not create our wickedness. That is entirely our purview. Luciferian controls systems create negative karma like a form of industrial waste. The Lord could destroy the earth by a flood in Noah’s day because the entities that inhabited it created the karma that would justify their own destruction: “and God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Genesis 6:5. At the tower of Babel, humanity united itself in global service to the rebellious ends of an antichrist. Genesis 11:4. Pharoah built a pitiless empire on slave labor and demanded worship as a deity. Exactly when a people reaches a state of ripeness is for God to decide. But all God has to do is return to us the very karma we have created. That karma comes in the form of deadly chaos. But God is not creating wickedness. He only gives us what we have created for ourselves and then finds a way to bring righteousness out of our wickedness.

Christ never seemed to define things the way people expected Him to. His relation to the things of this world still is not easy to grasp. When questioned by Pilate, Jesus had the exchange recorded in John 18:33-37:

Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again, and called Jesus, and said unto him, Art though the King of the Jews?

 Jesus answered him, Sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did other tell it thee of me?

Pilate answered him, Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief priests have delivered thee unto me: what hast thou done?

Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then?

Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

At times, Christ sounded much like the bearer of chaos:

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loved son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth not after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

Matthew 10:34-39

On another occasion, He said: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” John 14:27.

 I imagine that to whatever extent we ever confuse stability, peace, and material prosperity with God’s purpose and pleasure in this world, we have failed to understand the mind of Christ. Wealth and comfort do not seem to register with Him, and neither do our traditional and instinctual thoughts about morality and proper religious behavior. For example: John 5:10, Matthew 12:2, John 8:59, John 4:9, John 8:5, Matthew 21:13, Matthew 15:26-28, Matthew 8:3, Matthew 15:12.

When His disciples came and told Him, “knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard [your] saying?,” Jesus told them, “every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.” Matthew 15:12-13. It should be no surprise that Christ is willing to bring chaos and destruction to wicked systems built by wicked men, even, and especially, when men’s hearts are turned toward them.

I have always been struck by the peculiar commission the Lord gave the prophet Jeremiah: “See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build and to plant.” Jeremiah 1:10. Here is one person who seems to have an intimate relationship to the karmic return to wicked nations and the righteous building of others, and this commission seems deeply related to what Christ said in Matthew 15. Jeremiah appeared at a time where the southern kingdom’s karma returned to it in full force, a time of unrestrained brutality and chaos. I wonder at times if Jeremiah was the steward over his nation’s karma, if perhaps he personally brought it to them on behalf of his God, if perhaps God send that karma back into this realm with a member of His council. I likewise wonder if Noah, Moses, Nephi (Helaman 10) and Mormon carried similar burdens.

There is a side of God that much of Christianity has forgotten. The Lord’s called prophets will deliver His word, no more, no less. The churchmen of our day are wholly vested into the luciferian system of control and exploitation. They promise we can worship Christ without compromising the cold order of Satan’s kingdom and its attempts to bribe and control us. Like the false prophets of Jeremiah’s day, they make the people to trust in lies by preaching peace when there is no peace, only a pot to our north, boiling over a fire that we kindled.