The sons of Javan

This article is the sixth in a series meditating on the spiritual significance of the sons of Japheth, son of Noah. It is also the second in a sub-series of articles on the sons of Javan, son of Japheth.

Who is Tarshish?

"And the sons of Javan; Elishah, and Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim" (Genesis 10:4)

As we have shared in this series, Javan is the father of the "Latin" racial group in Europe. We saw in the previous posting that Elishah refers to the Portuguese people. The question then becomes, what European "Latin" people does Tarshish refer to? To answer that, we must consider the usage of the name "Tarshish" throughout Scripture.

Unlike the name "Elishah", the name "Tarshish" is used in many passages of Scripture. Interestingly enough, out of the 24 verses where "Tarshish" appears, the word "ship" appears 14 times in 11 of those verses, as in the following verse:

"For the king's ships went to Tarshish with the servants of Huram: every three years once came the ships of Tarshish bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks" (2 Chronicles 9:21)

This means that there is a strong connection between the descendants of Tarshish and ships. We must therefore consider what "Latin" peoples in Europe have shown a strong historical linkage to ships.

Is it the Greeks?

As we have said before, the Greeks are part of what we call the "Latin" group in Europe. Therefore, it is worth asking: How strong is the linkage between the Greeks and ships? As indicated on ancientgreekfacts.com, the Greeks are considered by many to have had the strongest navy in ancient times, not only in terms of strength and numbers but in terms of technology and skill. Even so, as indicated on wikipedia.org, the ancient Greeks flowed naturally between land fighting and water fighting, meaning that they did not specialise in maritime warfare and actually used their naval skills to support their land efforts. This is why the greatest military conquests that the Greeks are known for are the victories by Alexander the Great as he marched east with his land army across Asia all the way to India. And, once the Greeks' military power declined in ancient times, it was never again known for its navy's prowess.

The idea that Tarshish does not refer to the Greeks is further emphasised by the fact that Scripture never makes an effort to link the Greeks to them, either before Christ's arrival on Earth or afterwards. In the so-called "Old Testament", for example, it is believed that the Greeks were referred to by the generic name "Javan", in Daniel 8:21, Daniel 10:20, Daniel 11:2, and Zechariah 9:13 (the reason for the Greeks being called "Javan" is beyond the scope of this posting, but, God willing, we shall study it in a future posting). It could be argued that the Spirit of God may have referred to the Greeks by more than one name, yet this is unlikely, especially because of how the names "Javan" and "Tarshish" appear in the books of Isaiah and Ezekiel. In Isaiah, for example, the name "Tarshish" appears in 7 verses, with a reference to the "ships of Tarshish" all the way into Isaiah 60:9. However, in the last chapter, Isaiah is inspired by the Spirit of God to use both the names "Tarshish" and "Javan" in the same verse, in Isaiah 66:19, when listing a group of nations, and it would be rather difficult to argue that both names refer to the same peoples in that verse:

"And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal, and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles" (Isaiah 66:19)

Also, in the book of Ezekiel, the name "Tarshish" is mentioned in Ezekiel 27:12, and the name "Javan" is mentioned in the very next verse. Even if it could be argued that the Spirit of God was referring to the same people by two names in consecutive verses, the context again makes it difficult to defend such an argument, since the passage seems to indicate that Tarshish and Javan traded with different kinds of "currency":

"12 Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs. 13 Javan, Tubal, and Meshech, they were thy merchants: they traded the persons of men and vessels of brass in thy market." (Ezekiel 27:12-13)

From all of the above, we can safely conclude that Tarshish does not refer to the Greeks and that the "Latin" peoples whose ships are so relevant to their spiritual DNA must be a different people.

Is it the Romans?

Because of films like Ben Hur, some might be tempted to argue that the "ships of Tarshish" might be a reference to Roman ships. However, as is indicated on wikipedia.org, the Romans were never too reliant on their navy for their military success. They were, for the most part, an army-based military, using their ships only as secondary support and relying on other peoples such as the Greeks and the Egyptians to build their ships.

The unlikelihood of the Romans being Tarshish is increased by the fact that the ships of Tarshish were already "internationally relevant" by the time of king Solomon:

"21 And all king Solomon's drinking vessels were of gold, and all the vessels of the house of the forest of Lebanon were of pure gold; none were of silver: it was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon. 22 For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks. 23 So king Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom." (1 Kings 10:21-23)

As indicated on wikipedia.org, king Solomon reigned in Israel for some 39 years in the 10th century B.C. However, as is also indicated on wikipedia.org, Rome was not founded until the middle of the 8th century B.C., with the Italic peoples remaining relatively "anonymous" until then. Therefore, it would be very difficult to argue that the Romans (or any Italic peoples) were internationally renowned for their ships during Solomon's days or that they had the resources (or even the interest) to supply Solomon with gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks.

Hence, we can conclude from the above that Tarshish cannot possibly refer to the Romans or to the Italic peoples in general.

And then there was one

Now that we have eliminated the Greeks and the Romans (i.e. Italians) as candidates for Tarshish, we are basically left with 2 groups of European "Latins": the Portuguese and the Spaniards. Given that we have already seen that the Portuguese are derived from Tarshish's brother Elishah, we are left with only one viable option: the Spaniards. We must now determine whether this linkage makes sense.

The Spanish Armada and Colombo

As indicated on wikipedia.org, the Spanish navy was the world's most powerful maritime force on Earth in the 16th and 17th centuries, and possibly the largest navy on Earth between the end of the 16th century and the early part of the 17th. Some might say, "Well, the Greeks had the most powerful navy in the world in ancient times. Why, then, is it so important that the Spaniards had the most powerful navy during the 16th and 17th centuries?". The answer to this is that the relevance of Spain's navy to its identity is much greater than the Greek navy's is to Greek identity. When people think of the Greeks, for example, they are likely to think about famous Greek philosophers such as Plato or Aristotle or about the exploits of Alexander the Great. By contrast, when people think of the Spaniards, one of the first things that immediately comes to mind is Christopher Columbus and his discovery of the Americas in the name of Spain. Columbus' discovery is so linked to ships that most people can quickly name the 3 ships that he led (the Nina, the Pinta, and the santa maria). English-speaking people would also be prone to mentioning the fearsome "Spanish Armada" and how the course of modern history was changed when the British were able to defeat the Armada at sea as the Spaniards tried to invade Britain in 1588. It can be said that that naval battle ended the unquestioned hegemony of Spain over the seas of the world and inaugurated the rise of Britain as a world empire.

Even though most who study history are aware that the Spanish Armada was a naval force, many are not aware that the name "Spanish Armada" (or "Armada Española" in Spanish) literally means "Spanish Armed [Forces]". In other words, Spanish military power was so linked to its ships that, when they spoke of their "Armada" (or "armed forces"), they were referring to their navy, not their army. A sceptic might want to argue that the British defeat of the Armada in 1588 actually debunks the idea that the "ships of Tarshish" are truly the "ships of Spain". However, such an argument would ignore both the relative relevance of ships to Spain's overall history and the absolute relevance of the Spanish navy in world events prior to the defeat of 1588 (and even after that). Consider, for example, that it was the Spaniards, not the British, whose ships travelled across the vast Atlantic Ocean to "discover" the Americas, beginning the wide-scale "modernisation" of the long backward Amerindians. And, even though Columbus was an Italian (married to a Portuguese woman), he was only enabled to discover the Americas when he came under the flag and backing of the Spaniards. As indicated on wikipedia.org, Colombo, who had married in Portugal and was living there at the time, first attempted to get support from the king of Portugal. And, even though the king seemed interested in helping him, he was turned down both times on the word of the king's advisors. Being an Italian, Colombo then tried to get support from Genoa and Venice, but neither was willing to help him. He then tried (through his brother Bartholomew) to get the support of king Henry VII of England, but he was again turned down. Colombo then turned to the Spaniards, who also turned him down because their advisors agreed with the Portuguese advisors that Colombo was grossly underestimating the length of the trip. However, the Spaniards did something that none of the others had done. They saw something in Colombo and valued his far-fetched idea enough to keep him "on retainer", giving him a generous yearly allowance and ordering all the cities and towns under the Spaniards' domain to provide Colombo with free food and clothing.

Being a determined fellow, Colombo continued to insist on his idea before the Spanish crown, and, as we all know, his voyage was finally approved. Spanish ships then began to travel to and fro between Europe and the Americas, and the Europeanisation of the Americas was underway. Thus, it is evident that it was Spain and its ships that were destined by God to find the New World so that its march towards its full destiny could finally get underway.

As a side note, the fact that the Spanish Armada's full domination was broken in 1588 actually reinforces the Spaniards' linkage to Tarshish, given that the Spirit of God prophesies His breaking of the ships of Tarshish:

Magellan's voyage around the world

The relevance of ships in Spanish history is also evident from Magellan's voyage around the world. As you may know, Magellan led the first expedition to ever circumnavigate the Earth. Even though Magellan was Portuguese, his trip was financed by the Spanish crown and was carried out in 5 Spanish ships, departing from Cádiz, Spain on 20 September 1519 (as described on wikipedia.org). He was able to make it all the way around South America and onto the Philippines, but he died there in a battle with a local leader. The Spaniard Sebastian Elcano took over from there, and he decided to continue westward back towards Spain. The expedition's original intent had been to find a westward route to the Spice Islands in Indonesia (in order to avoid conflict with the Portuguese, who had the rights to the eastward route), but, after Magellan's death, Elcano decided that the voyage, along with all the heartaches incurred along the way, would only be worthwhile if it culminated with the first circumnavigation of the Earth, which he completed with the single surviving ship when they arrived back at Cádiz on 6 September 1522.

It must be stated that, in a sense, it can be argued that Magellan had already become the first man to circumnavigate the Earth before dying. This is because, many years earlier, he had travelled east from Portugal to the Malay Archipelago (on Portuguese ships) and then west back towards Portugal, eventually continuing his travel west from Spain back to the Malay Archipelago on his final, historic voyage. Even so, it is as if God denied him the privilege of performing this feat on a single voyage because such a voyage was destined to be done on Spanish ships. And, not only was it to be done on Spanish ships, it was to be started and finished by a Spaniard, in this case, Sebastian Elcano. Interestingly, out of the 18 men on the one ship that survived the full trip, 13 were Spaniards, 2 Italian, 1 Portuguese, 1 Greek, and 1 German (according to wikipedia.org). This means that the crew was predominantly Spaniard, but with at least 1 representative from each of the other 3 "Latin" groups in Europe.

{The spiritual reason for the German's presence in the ship that made it back to Spain is related to the spiritual connection between Tarshish and Tubal (i.e. the Germanics), a connection that is subtly established in Ezekiel 27, as we shared in the previous posting. This connection is confirmed by the fact that Spain was, at the height of its world power, ruled by kings from the Germanic House of Hapsburg, as indicated on wikipedia.org. Thus, Germanic Tubal's connection to Spain is "more obvious" from a historical standpoint than Tubal's connection to Portuguese Elisha, even if the connection to Elisha is spiritually deeper. There is more to this connection between Spain and the Germanics, but it currently lies beyond this writer's understanding.}

From all of the above, we can plainly see that the Spaniards have a strong spiritual linkage to ships, thereby confirming that they are the natural descendants of Tarshish on Earth. Even though historians do not know for sure what place or peoples "Tarshish" referred to in the Bible, many do believe that it was indeed Spain. As indicated on wikipedia.org, the 4th century AD Latin writer Rufus Festus Avenius identified Tarshish as Cádiz in Spain.

Tartessos

There are some who associate Tarshish specifically with the city of Tartessos in ancient Hispania, which stood on what is modern-day Andalusia in Spain. Interestingly, Andalusia is the most populous autonomous community and the second largest in Spain (Spain is divided into 17 "autonomous communities", as explained on wikipedia.org). This means that Andalusia can be taken as the autonomous community that best represents the nation of Spain.

It is worth noting that Andalusia is also Spain's southernmost autonomous community, including provinces such as Cádiz, Huelva, Seville, and Málaga. The vast majority of the 13 Spaniards who circumnavigated the world in Magellan's journey were actually from the north, especially the Basque country, but there were 2 who hailed from Andalusia, and it was Andalusia (Cádiz in particular) where their journey began and ended, all of which reinforces the spiritual relevance of Tarshish in the first ship to circle the globe.

Tarshish's connection to Tartessos and Spain is also certified by the fact that Tartessos was a city rich in metals, as indicated on wikipedia.org. This correlates with how Scripture refers to Tarshish as a place from which metals would come:

"Surely the isles shall wait for me, and the ships of Tarshish first, to bring thy sons from far, their silver and their gold with them, unto the name of the LORD thy God, and to the Holy One of Israel, because he hath glorified thee." (Isaiah 60:9)

"Tarshish was thy merchant by reason of the multitude of all kind of riches; with silver, iron, tin, and lead, they traded in thy fairs." (Ezekiel 27:12)

"Sheba, and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof, shall say unto thee, Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?" (Ezekiel 38:13)

Not Sardinia

As a parenthesis, it must be mentioned that some people believe that Tarshish referred to the island of Sardinia, a large island to the east of Italy on the Mediterranean Sea. This is because of the discovery of an ancient stone known as the "Nora Stone", which has a Phoenician inscription that explicitly mentions Tarshish. As indicated on wikipedia.org, the Nora Stone was found in 1773 on the south coast of Sardinia and is believed to be from the 9th to 8th Century BC, which would mean that it was inscribed 100 to 200 years after king Solomon. However, a close analysis of the words on the stone would lead any objective person to conclude that it refers to a person who fought with (or against) the Sardinians after being driven out of Tarshish. Therefore, it actually implies that Tarshish and Sardinia are two different places and that Sardinia was a place somewhere between Tarshish and the person's place of origin. Since it is believed that the stone refers to Pygmalion of Tyre, we would have to conclude that Sardinia was some sort of "pit stop" between Tarshish and Tyre, which would make perfect sense if Tarshish was centred in southern Spain. Sardinia is around 900 miles to the east of Cádiz, and 1500 miles to the west of Tyre in Lebanon (according to distancefromto.net ), and it is the first big island that one would encounter on a trip by ship from Cádiz to Tyre. Even if Sardinia is not Tarshish, it is still interesting to consider that Sardinia was under the Spaniards' rule between 1324 and 1708 (as indicated on wikipedia.org), which includes the period of Spain's greatest maritime dominance. After being under Spanish control, Sardinia briefly came under the control of the Austrians before eventually coming under the control of the neighbouring Italians. Therefore, even though Sardinia was not the actual Tarshish, it is interesting that people linked Sardinia to Tarshish as a result of a stone that was found a few decades after Sardinia had been under Spaniard control for 4 centuries.

The encounters anointing

Now that we have established that Tarshish refers to the Spaniards, we must consider what that implies about the spiritual nature and calling of the Spanish people. This can be done by first considering their connection to ships in general.

The word "ship" used throughout Scripture, especially when referring to the "ships of Tarshish", is the Hebrew word oniyah, which is derived from the verb anah meaning "to meet, encounter, approach". This correlates with something that we shared years ago on Twitter regarding the "Latin" racial group: that they are strongly related to encounters with greatness or encounters of a close and personal nature. All of this clarifies even further why it was the Spaniards who were destined by God to discover the Americas, since their discovery led to the encounter of two civilisations: the thriving European civilisation of the sons of Japheth and the backward and decayed civilisation of the Amerindians, sons of Ham. Even when the Vikings, sons of Gomer, may have reached the Americas some centuries before the Spaniards, and even though the British were much better suited to "Europeanise" the Americas, they had to wait for the Spaniards to initiate the encounter. After this, other sons of Japheth were then free to colonise the Americas.

Because of their spiritual role as "encounter brokers", it is not a coincidence that Spain became the site of the first serious clash between the European and Muslim cultures when the Moors invaded Spain in 711 AD. To Spain's shame, this encounter led to the Spaniards remaining under Arab control until January 1492, when Granada fell and they were able to reconquer all of Spain. Unfortunately, the consequences of this "cultural encounter" were not the intended ones. Instead of turning into an opportunity for the invading Muslims to absorb Japhethite values, this 7-to-8 centuries encounter only served to convince the Muslims that they were superior to the Europeans and that they had nothing to gain from being around Europeans except dominating them. It is also interesting that this encounter ended on the exact same year as Colombo's discovery (which happened in October of that year), meaning that the Spaniards' second major modern encounter started 9 months after the end of the first one. This writer believes that God would not have allowed the Spaniards to discover America until they were able to drive the Arabs/Muslims out of their land. Having proved themselves incapable of regenerating or influencing the Muslim world in any meaningful way, they were ordered to serve out a long punishment that, in a sense, served as a semi-sacrificial seed that allowed them to harvest the conquest and domination of a large portion of the Americas.

Apes and peacocks

It is interesting that the first verse that mentions Tarshish in Scripture after Genesis 10:4 refers to what the ships of Tarshish brought to Solomon:

"For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks." (1 Kings 10:22)

Notice that the Spirit of God mentions a list of 5 and that the first 3 are "materials" whilst the last 2 are animals. This has spiritual significance. As you may imagine, a list of 5 items such as the one above points to the 5 ministerial endowments of Ephesians 4:11. The question then becomes, what item in the list goes with what ministry? As we have shared before, ivory is strongly related to the teacher endowment and silver is related to mental purity and, hence, to the apostolic judgements that foster that purity. As we have also shared before, gold is spiritually related to resurrection glory and hence to the prophetic endowment, since that is the endowment that prompts us to die in sacrifice so as to be resurrected by the Lord in glory.

The word "apes" in 1 Kings 10:22 above was translated from the Hebrew word qowph, which only appears one other time in Scripture, in 2 Chronicles 9:21, a verse that is almost identical to 1 Kings 10:22. As you may know, apes are known for their promiscuous behaviour and are therefore spiritually related to the Canaanite spirit of lowly passions and deviancy. Given that the Canaanite spirit results from the distortion of the pastoral endowment, we can conclude that the apes point to the pastoral endowment, but in a very negative way. Since apes are not native to the region of Israel, it is clear that, by bringing apes to Solomon, the sons of Tarshish were fostering a cultural encounter between Israelites and animals from Africa, but it was an encounter that promoted the Canaanite spirit, all of which correlates with how Solomon embraced strange women and surrendered to their gods just to please them (since Canaanites are unrighteous pleasers).

The word "peacocks" in 1 Kings 10:22 was translated from the Hebrew word tukkiy. And, just like qowph, it only appears twice in Scripture, in the same verses as qowph. As you may know, peacocks are known for their colourful plumage, which the males expand and parade around to win the females over. When you consider the size of the peacock's expanded colourful plumage in proportion to its body size, you can argue that it carries with it a measure of "exaggeration" and is therefore indicative of "unrighteous braggadocio". Therefore, it points to Amorite pride. As we have shared before, the Amorite spirit is derived from the corruption of the evangelistic endowment of conquest and expansion, all of which correlates with the size of the male peacock's plumage and the amount of space it takes up all around the peacock, along with the fact that the plumage is intended to conquer the "hearts" of female peacocks. Just as with apes, peacocks are not native to the region of Israel, meaning that the sons of Tarshish were again fostering a cultural encounter between the Israelites and animals from Africa and southeast Asia. However, this encounter was a negative one, promoting the spirit of Amorite pride and fornication, which correlates with how Solomon built a large harem of hundreds and hundreds of women, using them as a way to boost his Amorite pride and flaunt his "greatness" to everyone in sight (just like a peacock).

Based on the above, we can summarise the spiritual relevance of the 5 items listed in 1 Kings 10:22 in the following way:

Notice that the 3 positive items are inanimate materials whilst the 2 negative items are "unruly" animals. This means that the positive prophetic, apostolic, and teacherly contributions that may come from the sons of Tarshish tend to emanate from the spiritual material that God put in them, like a football player who is good by the mere virtue of his natural abilities without a need to make any type of special effort. When they "put their soul into it", however, they tend to distort any pastoral contribution into Canaanite, ape-like manifestations and any evangelistic contribution into Amorite, peacock-like manifestations. This explains why, when the Spaniards were finally allowed to establish a large empire, they quickly used it to commit Amorite fornication with the Amerindians, leading to a mongrel race of people that took the worst from the Spaniards whilst retaining much of the Amerindians' culture's evil, even if, on the surface, the Amerindians had become "modernised", having on them some of the prophetic, apostolic, and teacherly material from the European sons of Japheth.

During their interaction with the Amerindians, the Spaniards also showed a ready willingness to compromise their catholic faith to please and win the Amerindians over more easily. As some of you may be aware, the hispanic version of catholicism in the Americas is littered with localised versions of "Jesus" and "Mary" that are a mere renaming of some previously worshipped Amerindian daemon or spirit, and many pagan rituals were simply renamed with a "Christian" name by the Spaniards in order to make "Christianity" more palatable to the savage, daemon-enthralled Amerindians (just like Aaron when he shaped a golden calf to the people's liking). Thus, the Spaniards' conquest of the Americas became engrossed in a strange combination of "peacocky" Amorite fornication and "apey" Canaanite adultery. Amorite fornicators use people and drop them like a hot potato once they are done with them, and Canaanite adulterers cling to people that do not rightfully belong to them and refuse to let them go. The Spaniards raped the Americas and the Amerindians to extract gold and silver from them, along with some temporary "pleasures", but they still communed with them enough to give the Amerindians a sense of personal identification with Spain, to the point that the otherwise rebellious and defiant Amerindians conquered by Spain proudly call themselves "hispanics" to this day (the ignorant white American liberals do not realise that they hate Columbus far more than the latin americans conquered and raped by Spain ever will).

Before proceeding, we can begin to discern from all of the above that Tarshish is related to "encounters", especially encounters between spiritually distant cultures where one of the cultures is clearly superior to the other and where the superior culture is to deal with the other culture's inferiority. As we continue, you will see how this is clearly at the heart of the Tarshish anointing.

The missing Spaniard backbone

The third time that the name Tarshish appears in Scripture (after Genesis 10:4 and 1 Kings 10:22) is in verse 48 of the following passage:

"48 Jehoshaphat made ships of Tharshish to go to Ophir for gold: but they went not; for the ships were broken at Eziongeber. 49 Then said Ahaziah the son of Ahab unto Jehoshaphat, Let my servants go with thy servants in the ships. But Jehoshaphat would not." (1 Kings 22:48-49)

As is further explained in the parallel passage of 2 Chronicles 20:35-37, the Lord broke Jehoshaphat's ships because he happily engaged in soul communion with Ahab, the evil king of Israel, instead of acting as God's judge against him. Thus, Tarshish is spoken of here in the context of a man who knew the right thing to do when it came to other people but refused to carry it out due to family and emotional attachments (Jehoshaphat had given his son in marriage to Ahab's daughter, meaning that he saw Ahab as "family"). Even though he eventually refused to continue partnering with Ahab in this ship endeavour (v49), he did so only after God had broken the ships, meaning that it was done more out of fear of greater damages than over an awakening to Ahab's evil. This is proved by the fact that Jehoshaphat did not judge Ahab in any direct way (before or after the ships were broken). Not only did he ever kneel before God to seek forgiveness over his indifference to Ahab's evil, but he never publicly denounced Ahab's and Jezebel's evil before the people of Judah or Israel.

The word "broken" in 1 Kings 22:48 above was translated from the Hebrew verb shabar, which, interestingly enough, appears for the first time in the following verse (translated as "break"), in the context of how the people of Sodom wanted to treat the 2 angels of the Lord who had arrived at Lot's house to judge them:

"And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door." (Genesis 19:9)

As we have shared before, "doors" or "gates" are spiritually related to apostolic judgements. Thus, we can see that the Sodomites' reaction described above betrays a people who were very antagonistic towards righteous judgements and who were willing to break anything or anyone that dared to exercise judgements against them. Because of this determined hard-heartedness, they could not be dealt with without being broken. They could not be bargained with. There was no room for a "middle ground" that does not sacrifice righteousness completely. If you open the door to "negotiate" with such people, you will find that they will simply break the door, storm in, and mercilessly ravage any manifestation of righteousness. It seems, however, as if the sons of Tarshish are generally not too willing to accept this truth, for which reason God has had to "break their ships". This is why their Armada was broken in 1588 by England, a nation with apostolic inclinations that was more willing to apply righteous judgements without so much bargaining or compromising (it must be said, however, that, even though Britain is far better at this than the literal sons of Tarshish, they still leave much to be desired in God's eyes, as shown by their half-hearted approach towards India, where they stopped making righteous judgements after they were able to lower unrighteousness below a certain level).

The second time that shabar is used in Scripture is in the following verse, in the context of the "hail plague" that God unleashed on Egypt to get them to let His people go:

"And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field" (Exodus 9:25)

The word "tree" near the end of the verse was translated from the Hebrew word ets, which has the connotation of something that is hard and firm, as well as something that is thin and lengthy, for which reason it is translated as "staff (of a spear)" in verses such as 1 Samuel 17:7 and 1 Chronicles 20:5. Therefore, it can be safely said that the word ets is strongly related to the concept of a "backbone". Through the hail, therefore, God was working to break Egypt's backbone in order to force it to free His people. God was not negotiating with Pharaoh. Either they would comply with His judgement (on the right for Israel to be free) or they would suffer the consequences.

This implicit connection between shabar and "breaking backbones" is reinforced by the 3rd appearance of shabar in Scripture, in verse 46 of the following passage:

"43 And the LORD said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the ordinance of the passover: There shall no stranger eat thereof: 44 But every man's servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof. 45 A foreigner and an hired servant shall not eat thereof. 46 In one house shall it be eaten; thou shalt not carry forth ought of the flesh abroad out of the house; neither shall ye break a bone thereof. 47 All the congregation of Israel shall keep it." (Exodus 12:43-47)

Notice that the Lord declared that no "stranger" could eat of the Passover sacrifice. This once again emphasises the determination not to compromise or to allow soul communion with anyone of a perspective that is "strange" or "different to" the one expected by God. Notice also that the Lord instructs His people not to break any bone in the Passover sacrifice, which spiritually refers to a determination that does not allow one's (back)bone to be broken by the determined unrighteousness of others.

The willingness in the sons of Tarshish to have their (back)bone broken has been manifested in many moments throughout Spain's history. A recent example is 11 March 2004, when worthless terrorists launched multiple bombings against Madrid's train system, killing 193 people and injuring around 2,000. As mentioned on wikipedia.org, these attacks happened 3 days before Spain's general elections and were intended to persuade the Spaniards to vote against politicians who would continue Spain's participation in the U.S.-led coalition that had invaded Iraq to depose the worthless bastard saddam hussein. This writer must share that it was a "pleasant" surprise to see Spain participating in this effort due to Spain's propensity for cowardice in matters of principle, and it was my belief that their efforts in Iraq would lead to great blessings for Spain if they were sustained. Sadly, however, the Spaniards allowed this one barrage of attacks to break their backbone, and they immediately voted for the party that was promising to get Tarshish troops out of Iraq. This angered me immensely, for it showed a blatant lack of character and principle. Even if you were originally against the Iraq war (out of spiritual ignorance over its importance in God's eyes), an attack like the one perpetrated on 11 March 2004 would normally drive you to an awareness of who the "good guys" and the "bad guys" really were. Clearly, terrorist animals that were willing to murder and injure thousands of innocent civilians just to "get their way" and intimidate you out of their way are people that must be fought and destroyed. Any people with a semblance of character and integrity would have risen up in determination to wipe the terrorist bastards off the face of the Earth. Any people with some backbone would have quickly said, "We may not have been sure whether we should be in Iraq, but what you have just done has helped to make up our minds. We shall not be intimidated, and you will now suffer the wrath of our much vaunted 'furia española'". Instead, the Spaniards promptly capitulated, like a witness no longer willing to testify against the mafia because of death threats from it. By contrast, their Latin cousins the Italians, who have always had a much stronger backbone than the sons of Tarshish, were not intimidated, and they continued to fight in Iraq along with the coalition despite what had just happened in Spain.

This unwillingness to fight for principles is also evident in Spain's efforts (or lack thereof) in both World Wars. In World War I, for example, Spain immediately declared itself neutral a mere 9 days after the start of the war. Some might want to argue that this was the right position to take, especially because of how pointless World War I seems to have been. However, regardless of what you may think about the validity of World War I, the argument that Spain's neutrality was justified by the pointlessness of the war becomes weak when one considers the fact that Spain's ships were constantly attacked by German U-boats, to the point that Spain lost 100 lives and 56 ships to German attacks (as mentioned on wikipedia.org). As some of you may recall, it took the sinking of a single American ship, the Lusitania, to draw the ire of America and cause it to enter the war against Germany. By contrast, the sons of Tarshish had 56 different "Lusitanias" and 100 of their sons killed, but Tarshish remained yellow throughout the entire war, without ever showing the Germans any type of backbone. Interestingly enough, Tarshish's navy suffered greatly as a result of the war. Due to material shortages from Britain (which had a backbone and was busy fighting the Germans), it took the Spaniards the entire decade of the 1910s to build two big battleships that they had planned at the start of the decade, and other ships that they had planned to build were cancelled outright because the British could not provide the materials. Even so, Spain the yellow one never had the guts to act in favour of their friends Britain or against the Germans who were killing their people and sinking their ships.

Even if you continue to insist that the "prudent" thing was to remain neutral in such a senseless war, regardless of how many ships the Germans destroyed or how many Spaniards they killed, Spain's lack of a backbone cannot be excused by "senselessness" in World War II. Even though there were a few Spaniard volunteers fighting in the war (on both sides), Spain remained out of the war. As explained on wikipedia.org, Francisco Franco, Spain's fascist-leaning dictator, was sympathetic to Hitler and Mussolini and provided some help to the Axis in small ways, but he never committed to truly joining the fight on either side. The Spanish government was itself divided between Anglophiles who supported the Allies and Germanophiles who supported the Axis, and even Franco himself displayed this dichotomy, but only in the context of his personal convenience. When the war started, for example, the Minister of Foreign Affairs was an Anglophile, but, when Franco saw that the Germans were quickly dominating most of Continental Europe, Franco replaced him with a Germanophile in late 1940. However, when the Allies began to have significant victories in North Africa, Franco (being the yellow Spaniard that he was) replaced the Germanophile with an Anglophile in late 1942. Despite allowing volunteers to fight in the Eastern Front on the side of the Germans, Franco eventually stationed troops in the Pyrenees to deter a German incursion into Spain after it had conquered France with great ease. In other words, Franco the Yellow made a concerted effort to play on both sides as convenience dictated it, and Spain, a major country in Western Europe, was able to skate through the war without committing to or fighting for any side. As much as people (including this writer) may mock France for surrendering so easily to the Germans, it can at least be said that France took a side and made an effort (weak as it was) to oppose Hitler, and it paid the consequences by remaining occupied by the Nazis for almost 5 years. And, even during the German occupation, a significant group (known as La Résistance) remained opposed to the Nazi occupation, never willing to concede France to the Nazis. This is why God had mercy on France and sent the Allies on D-Day to rescue them from German oppression. France at least showed some backbone, whereas Spain skated through the most relevant wars in European history without ever showing one.

The decrepitude-ending process

After 1 Kings 22:48, the next appearance of "Tarshish" in Scripture (its 4th) is in 1 Chronicles 1:7, which is, in essence, a repeat of Genesis 10:4, mentioning Tarshish in the list of sons of Javan. After that, the next appearance of "Tarshish" is in the following verse:

"The sons also of Jediael; Bilhan: and the sons of Bilhan; Jeush, and Benjamin, and Ehud, and Chenaanah, and Zethan, and Tharshish, and Ahishahar" (1 Chronicles 7:10)

Interestingly, the above verse is the first of only 2 times in Scripture where the name "Tarshish" is used to refer to an individual person other than the direct son of Javan or that son's descendants. In the verse above, the name "Tarshish" refers to a son of Bilhan, who was in turn a son of Jediael, a Benjamite. As we have shared before, the 12 tribes of Israel correspond to the 12 "racial groups" that humanity can be divided into, with the tribe of Benjamin representing the "wildcard" group of the peoples in the Americas. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the Spirit of God chose to inject the "non-Hebrew" name of "Tarshish" in a list of Israelite descendants of Benjamin, since the impact of Spain on the Americas and its "Europeanisation" is undeniable.

To better understand the spiritual message behind 1 Chronicles 7:10 and its connection to the sons of Tarshish, we must consider the meaning of each of the names in the verse. The first name, "Jediael", means "God makes known", and the name of the only direct son of Jediael mentioned in the verse, "Bilhan", means "their decrepitude". Hence, the first 2 names, when put together, say "God makes known their decrepitude". Therefore, we can conclude that the names that follow (all of whom are sons of Bilhan) delineate a process by which God makes someone's decrepitude known.

Jeush

The name of the first son of Bilhan mentioned in 1 Chronicles 7:10 is "Jeush", which means "assembler". This correlates with what we have said above regarding Tarshish's "encounters anointing", meaning that Tarshish has a calling to produce encounters between different peoples, causing them to "assemble together". Interestingly, the name Jeush is derived from the verb uwsh, which is only used once in all of Scripture, in verse 11 of the following passage, where it is translated as "assemble":

"11 Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O LORD. 12 Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. 13 Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. 14 Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision." (Joel 3:11-14)

Notice how the passage above speaks of peoples from different nations being assembled for a moment of judgement where their strongholds are torn down (v11) and their wickedness is exposed (v13). Notice also that this passage speaks of the "valley of Jehoshaphat", which points to what we said above regarding Jehoshaphat and the lack of backbone that he showed towards Ahab and Jezebel, a lack that was made evident by the Tarshish ships that he tried to put together but were broken. During the encounter between the more-righteous ways of Judah and the less-righteous ways of Israel, Jehoshaphat was supposed to take Ahab and his followers to a decisive "valley of Jehoshaphat", but he never had the courage or the interest to do so.

Given that the passage above is the only place where the Spirit of God chose to use the verb uwsh, we can safely conclude that the assembling that "Jeush" (the "assembler") is called to make is not a "festive gathering" but, rather, a gathering of judgement to expose cultural evils and force peoples to show a backbone and choose one side or the other (i.e. the "valley of decision").

Benjamin

The second son of Bilhan mentioned in 1 Chronicles 7:10 above is Benjamin. It is interesting to consider that a descendant named "Benjamin" is mentioned inside a genealogy of the tribe of Benjamin (that starts in 1 Chronicles 7:6). This emphasis of the name Benjamin is intended by the Spirit of God to point out the spiritual relevance of 1 Chronicles 7:10 in the destiny of the branch of humanity represented by the tribe of Benjamin, i.e. the peoples in the Americas.

Given that the name "Benjamin" means "son of the right hand", the inclusion of Benjamin in 1 Chronicles 7:10 also points to the following verse:

"The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool" (Psalm 110:1)

As we have shared before, the "right" side refers to law and judgements, and, as revealed by verses such as Matthew 19:28 and Luke 22:30, "sitting" can point to someone who sits as a judge before an audience in order to judge it. Therefore, the Spirit of God is declaring that the assembling represented by the name "Jeush" is to initiate a judgement process during which the enemies of God and His Righteousness are to be made to submit to Him. This reinforces what we shared above on the word uwsh and the valley of decision.

Ehud

The third son of Bilhan mentioned by the Spirit of God in 1 Chronicles 7:10 is Ehud, whose name means "union". Therefore, it has the connotation of two parties coming together to become one. As Scripture points out once and again, when God speaks of "becoming one" (in righteousness, as emphasised by the preceding name, Benjamin), He is speaking of both parties aligning themselves with an objective, independent Truth. This is contrary to the matriarchal understanding that equates "oneness" with people relinquishing one judgement after another until the other person becomes "acceptable". Said another way, the "unity" espoused by God is one where both parties submit to the judgements emanating from an independent truth, whereas the soul promotes a unity where the judgements must submit to the parties' emotions and interests until people no longer feel "condemned". Therefore, we can conclude that the presence of the name "Ehud" in 1 Chronicles 7:10 means that the assembling ("Jeush") and judging of Truth's enemies ("Benjamin") is for the purpose of forging a unity of those assembled to the Truth, and, when all involved are united to the Truth, they can be harmoniously united amongst themselves.

It is interesting to note that the Spirit of God uses the name "Ehud" to refer to one other person in Scripture, another Benjamite, a left-handed man who was raised up by God to take down Moabite dominion in the land of Israel. As we studied before, Ehud's actions speak of the hidden, undercover work that must be done in the prophetic anointing. And, as we have shared before, Moab refers to the people who never want to admit that they are wrong, regardless of the evidence. Therefore, the Lord is declaring that, as the inferior culture digs in and refuses to admit its evident failings during a Tarshish encounter with a superior culture, Tarshish must be willing to operate in the prophetic, at times performing "underhanded" operations (just as Ehud did when he killed Eglon) because the traditional, "by-the-book" route is useless when dealing with self-righteous Moab, who is Jebusite-Amorite (i.e. legalistic and proud). Even though the inferior culture may cry "Foul" and hypocritically decry these left-handed, undercover actions as "illegal", these actions will continue to be righteous in the eyes of the Lord if they are done from a "Benjamin" foundation, i.e. from a foundation that recognises right-handed justice (since "Benjamin" means "son of my right hand"). It must be emphasised that the above is not to be an excuse to condone outright unrighteousness or an "ends-justify-the-means" attitude. However, the clear linkage that God makes between Ehud and Tarshish indicates that, at times, Tarshish will be required to operate in "grey areas" that the inferior culture will (hypocritically) label as "unethical" but which are in fact areas of righteousness, that is, if the operations are done under a prophetic anointing (not in Canaanite/Hivite trickery) and with an awareness that righteousness must always be upheld, no matter the cost or consequences.

Chenaanah

The fourth son of Bilhan mentioned in 1 Chronicles 7:10 is Chenaanah, whose name means "trader". This points to a subtle reality that soulish man always fails to understand. Once two parties have submitted themselves to the judgements of God's independent truth and have become one with that Truth, they can begin to "trade" or exchange their unique characteristics and talents so that each party can benefit and grow from the other party's qualities. In other words, the left-handed communion must be founded on right-handed truth and judgements so as to prevent it becoming corrupted and destructive.

Hence, it is no spiritual coincidence that the only other "Chenaanah" mentioned by the Spirit of God in Scripture is the father of Zedekiah, a false prophet mentioned both in 1 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 18 that encouraged Ahab to go against the Syrians (in front of Jehoshaphat). As we have studied before, Zedekiah was being moved by Hittite spirits operating through his emotions, and those emotions were so "real" and powerful that they easily convinced him that he was indeed giving a message from God. He was easily deceived because he did not start from a foundation of righteousness, and, as we have studied before, false prophets do not start from a foundation of righteousness because they prioritise power and emotions over truth. Thus, when Tarshish goes into the "Chenaanah" trading stage, he must be careful not to fall into Hittite deceit that eventually justifies unrighteousness in the inferior culture because of deceptive, powerful emotions. By the way, if you want to see what a person operating under such emotions looks like, you only need to look at stupid white American liberals when they fervently defend the unrighteous behaviour in "minority" cultures with a sincere but spiritually misinformed heart.

Zethan

The fifth son of Bilhan mentioned in 1 Chronicles 7:10 is Zethan, whose name means "olive" and only appears once in all of Scripture. Zethan is derived from the Hebrew word zayith meaning "olive, olive tree, oliveyard". Interestingly, the first appearance of zayith is in verse 11 of the following passage, translated as "olive":

"7 And he sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. 8 Also he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground; 9 But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto him into the ark. 10 And he stayed yet other seven days; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark; 11 And the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth. 12 And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the dove; which returned not again unto him any more." (Genesis 8:7-12)

Notice that the above passage is in the context of the "restoration" or "healing" process that the Earth went through after the judgement of Noah's flood. At first, the raven was sent forth, and he flew back and forth until the waters dried up and he could rest. This means that the raven waited and waited until he could finally have a re-encounter with the Earth, and he did not rest (i.e. was not satisfied) until the Earth was dry again and suitable to live in. This speaks of God applying judgements and not resting until those judgements finish producing the desired result (in the passage above, the desired result was an Earth cleansed of its extreme level of unrighteousness so that it could be inhabited again). During this "waitin' raven" time, Noah sent out a dove, which at first did not see a sign of the "desired result", so she was forced to return. The second time that she went out, she still did not see the desired result, but, this time, there was a sign of hope that the desired result was on its way, and that sign was in the form of a plucked-off olive leaf. Therefore, we can conclude that the name Zethan in 1 Chronicles 7:10 refers to maintaining an attitude of waiting where the necessary judgements are applied and we wait for the fullness of the desired result, relishing every olive leaf that we find that indicates that the desired result is gradually being reached, but not relaxing until the full result is achieved.

Tarshish

The sixth son of Bilhan mentioned in 1 Chronicles 7:10 is Tarshish. The fact that "Tarshish" appears this late in the list means that Tarshish cannot claim that it is succeeding in its calling until it has been able to go through the first 5 stages delineated above. In other words, if the process (that Tarshish is to initiate through his encounters) is stopped along the way because of complacency or deliberate compromise by Tarshish, then Tarshish cannot claim to be fulfilling his calling. He must have arrived at the stage where he is like the "waitin' raven" of Genesis 8:7, waiting for the inferior culture's unrighteousness to be cleaned off the Earth, and he must have reached the point where he is looking for the "plucked off olive leaves" that indicate that souls are being rescued from the inferior culture and into a new way of being. Otherwise, Tarshish has no right to call himself a true "Tarshish" in the eyes of the Lord.

Ahishahar

The seventh and last son of Bilhan mentioned in 1 Chronicles 7:10 is Ahishahar, whose name means "my brother is dawn" and is the combination of the words ah meaning "brother", i meaning "my", and shachar meaning "dawn". To understand the spiritual meaning behind this name, we must first consider the spiritual meaning behind the word shachar.

Ahishahar and the dawn of a new day

The first time that the Hebrew word shachar appears in Scripture is in verse 15 of the following passage, translated as "morning":

"14 And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons in law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons in law. 15 And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city." (Genesis 19:14-15)

Notice how the Spirit of God is once again taking us back to Genesis 19 and the uncompromising destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah when God's 2 angels had a direct encounter with the Sodomite culture. The next 2 times that shachar appears in Scripture are in verses 24 and 26 of the following passage, where it is translated as "day":

"22 And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok. 23 And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over that he had. 24 And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. 25 And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. 26 And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. 27 And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. 28 And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. 29 And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. 30 And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved." (Genesis 32:22-30)

Notice how shachar is once again used in the context of an encounter with an angel. Here, it is Jacob who had an overdue one-on-one encounter with the angel of the Lord, an encounter during which Jacob needed to die in order to rise up as a new man with a new name. Thus, we can see how shachar refers to encounters where unrighteousness is annihilated and a righteous new nature can arise from the ashes.

The next time that shachar appears in Scripture is in the following verse, translated as "day" (in the phrase "dawning of the day") in the context of the Joshua army getting ready to storm and annihilate Jericho:

"And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they rose early about the dawning of the day, and compassed the city after the same manner seven times: only on that day they compassed the city seven times." (Joshua 6:15)

Notice how shachar dawns refer to an encounter between 2 "cultures" (the Israelites and the Jerichoans), encounters during which unrighteousness is judged in an uncompromising way so that a new, more righteous nature could be established. After the wicked Jericho populated by corrupt Canaanites was obliterated, a new Jericho populated by faithful sons of Abraham arose (these were faithful Israelites because they were the generation that believed God enough to conquer much of the Promised Land and establish the new nation of Israel).

The corrupt Benjamites

The next time that shachar appears in Scripture is in verse 25 of the following passage, translated again as "day" in the phrase "when the day":

"16 And, behold, there came an old man from his work out of the field at even, which was also of mount Ephraim; and he sojourned in Gibeah: but the men of the place were Benjamites. 17 And when he had lifted up his eyes, he saw a wayfaring man in the street of the city: and the old man said, Whither goest thou? and whence comest thou? 18 And he said unto him, We are passing from Bethlehemjudah toward the side of mount Ephraim; from thence am I: and I went to Bethlehemjudah, but I am now going to the house of the LORD; and there is no man that receiveth me to house. 19 Yet there is both straw and provender for our asses; and there is bread and wine also for me, and for thy handmaid, and for the young man which is with thy servants: there is no want of any thing. 20 And the old man said, Peace be with thee; howsoever let all thy wants lie upon me; only lodge not in the street. 21 So he brought him into his house, and gave provender unto the asses: and they washed their feet, and did eat and drink. 22 Now as they were making their hearts merry, behold, the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door, and spake to the master of the house, the old man, saying, Bring forth the man that came into thine house, that we may know him. 23 And the man, the master of the house, went out unto them, and said unto them, Nay, my brethren, nay, I pray you, do not so wickedly; seeing that this man is come into mine house, do not this folly. 24 Behold, here is my daughter a maiden, and his concubine; them I will bring out now, and humble ye them, and do with them what seemeth good unto you: but unto this man do not so vile a thing. 25 But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go." (Judges 19:16-25)

Notice how shachar is once again used in the context of an encounter between people of different "cultures". In this case, the clashing cultures were the culture in the Benjamite city of Gibeah and the culture in the rest of Israel (mainly the Ephraimite, Levite, and Judah-ite cultures). Notice also how Benjamin is prominent in the passage above, which correlates with what we have shared above on how the sons of Tarshish were called to broker the cultural encounter between the isolated and corrupt Americas (the spiritual tribe of Benjamin in the human race) and the more advanced rest of the world. During this encounter, Tarshish was to enable the thorough judgement of the evil Amerindian culture so that Americas with a new, righteous nature could arise.

To be frank, this writer has little understanding of the spiritual meaning behind what is described in Judges 19 and 20. If you read the verses immediately preceding the passage above, you will see that the whole incident that unfolded in Judges 19, 20, and 21 stemmed from some immorality committed by the concubine and her decision to separate herself from her husband to live in her father's house. The Levite husband then went after her to win her back, which led to his eventual journey through Gibeah as he returned with her after a long delay. Considering how much effort the husband went through to win her back, it is a bit perplexing to this writer how he chose to simply offer her up to the Sodomite crowd of Benjamites (which is what Lot almost did with her daughters before Sodom's destruction). The next morning, the husband found her dead at the door, killed by the horrific gang rape she was subjected to during the night. Instead of crying over her death, the husband simply took her body and cut it up into pieces, sending the pieces throughout Israel so that everyone would know the level of evil that had crept into the Benjamite culture. The rest of Israel was then so horrified by the Benjamites' corruption that the various tribes joined forces to attack Benjamin and punish it, to the point that Benjamin, as a tribe, was almost exterminated. When the Israelites saw that they were on the verge of annihilating the entire tribe of Benjamin, they had a change of heart and endeavoured to provide women for them so that the tribe could repopulate itself.

As we have already shared, the tribe of Benjamin points to the people of the Americas. Therefore, the incidents narrated by the Spirit of God in Judges 19 through 21 refer to the spiritual corruption that permeated the Amerindians who inhabited the Americas before the arrival of Columbus and the sons of Tarshish. This corruption reached such deep and irremediable levels that it required an act of spiritual extermination so that a new, more fundamentally righteous people could arise in the Americas. Unfortunately, the sons of Tarshish saw their encounter with the New World and its peoples more as an opportunity to derive personal and national benefit than to carry out a transformation of the region so that they could later rejoice over the work they had accomplished with the lands and peoples that had been handed over to them. Because of this selfish attitude, the sons of Tarshish only used enough force so as to subjugate the Amerindians, which took very little manpower and effort due to the utter backwardness of the Amerindians (their vicious savagery notwithstanding). After subjugating them, they proceeded to mingle the Amerindians' religious practices with their version of "Christianity", thereby forging a mongrel religion that allowed many of the daemons that ruled the Americas to remain in power, only that they were now safely hidden behind "Christian" veneers of "righteousness". On top of this, the sons of Tarshish began to mingle with the daughters of the Amerindians for the sake of perverse pleasure, which led to a mongrel race of people that housed both the pre-Columbian daemons and the little Japhethite blessing that the Spaniards had, which is equivalent to giving wealth and power to a poor criminal, which, instead of making him righteous, only empowers him to commit more and greater crimes.

When the sons of Tarshish arrived in the Americas on their ships and beheld the great evil carried out by the Amerindians, they should have been as appalled and horrified as the Israelites were when they beheld the evil of the Benjamites. Emboldened by this sense of horror, they should have vowed to exterminate that evil and replace it with a more righteous culture. This would then have led them to confront the Amerindians on their evil and to persuade them to assimilate to righteousness, making sure to isolate those who refused to embrace righteousness and warring to the (literal) death against the Amerindians who rose up against them to defend their disappearing, corrupt culture. Instead of this, the sons of Tarshish went for a very compromised option where they could subjugate the Amerindians to derive benefits from their land without going through the "additional effort" of exterminating their evil and forging a new, more righteous race of people in the Americas.

Saul, the corrupted Benjamite

The next time after Judges 19:25 that shachar appears in Scripture is in verse 26 of the following passage, translated as "day":

"25 And when they were come down from the high place into the city, Samuel communed with Saul upon the top of the house. 26 And they arose early: and it came to pass about the spring of the day, that Samuel called Saul to the top of the house, saying, Up, that I may send thee away. And Saul arose, and they went out both of them, he and Samuel, abroad." (1 Samuel 9:25-26)

As you may know, Samuel encountered Saul as he was heading to the high place. Saul wrought this encounter with Samuel because he needed the seer's help to find his father's lost asses. Samuel knew that this encounter was to happen so that Saul would become the king of Israel that the people were clamouring for. As you may know, Saul's downfall happened when he was called to go against the Amalekites and fulfil God's decree against them, a decree of total destruction that the Amalekites had earned by their treacherous actions against the Israelites in the wilderness. Even though Saul obeyed the command to against the Amalekites and did defeat them, killing all the men, women, and children (as God had decreed), he only killed part of their livestock, keeping the best of the sheep, oxen, fattened calves, and lambs, and he also spared the life of Agag, king of the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:9). It is interesting to consider that the Spirit of God sends Samuel to have an encounter with Saul in order to make it known to Saul that he had been discarded as king of Israel (1 Samuel 15:12), after which the Spirit of God declares that Samuel never met with Saul again, thereby ending their encounters. When Saul was confronted about his disobedience in utterly destroying everything from Amalek, his excuse was that the people had taken the best of the livestock "to make sacrifices to the Lord your God in Gilgal" (1 Samuel 15:21), meaning that Saul was trying to garner favour with the Israelite people by giving them things that their souls craved in exchange for their loyalty. Considering that Saul was from the tribe of Benjamin, we can see that all of this clearly points to how the sons of Tarshish began to compromise on their mission to cleanse the Americas (the land of the human tribe of Benjamin). Yes, they did fulfil their calling by forging the encounter between the Europeans and the Amerindians, and they did defeat them and subjugate them, just as Saul had done with the Amalekites, but they failed to utterly destroy everything that was evil with the Amerindian culture, choosing instead to grant them many of the things that they wanted, mixing Christianity with daemonic Amerindian practices in order to gain their loyalty. And, just as Saul did with Agag, the Spaniards failed to kill off the spirit heads that the Amerindians followed, allowing them to stay in many of their corrupt moral and ethical patterns without ever having to admit in the open that their culture was decrepit and unworthy of preservation. After the sons of Tarshish failed on their encounter with the evil Benjamites of the Americas, their conquest anointing was taken away from them (just as Saul had been demoted from his kingship), and the Spaniards never had any major achievements after that, slowly turning from a world superpower and a major player in the world stage to a weak and irrelevant has-been nation, which is the status they have remained in to this day.

Mantle from Saul to David

As you may recall, we were led to meditate on the word shachar due to the name of the seventh and last son of Bilhan listed in 1 Chronicles 7:10, Ahishahar. As we have shared above, the name "Ahishahar" means "my brother is dawn" and is formed by ah meaning "brother", i meaning "my", and shachar meaning "dawn, daybreak". Therefore, based on what we have shared above on shachar, we can say that the name "Ahishahar" points to the ultimate purpose of Tarshish's calling. Tarshish was called to spawn encounters with differing cultures that required a deep and painful transformation in order to forge a new day in them, turning them from creatures made inferior by their own cultural corruption to spiritual equals, to "brothers" for whom a righteous new day is born because of their encounter with Tarshish and their eventual encounter with his God. This was the original calling on the Spaniards, but the sons of Tarshish chose to go the route of Saul, for which reason the brunt of their calling was taken away from them and given to another, to a Davidic nation called Britain.

The fact that it was Britain to whom Tarshish's calling was given is evident in how it was the nation that broke the power of the ships of Tarshish (i.e. the Spanish Armada) in 1588, becoming from then on the dominant maritime power on Earth. Britain's replacement of Spain is also evident in its subsequent colonisation of the Americas. For example, even though a significant majority of the countries in the Americas are Spanish-speaking, and even though Spain is considered as the main coloniser of the Americas (having discovered and colonised it way before any other European power), it is interesting to note that, when you compare the area eventually colonised and controlled by Britain versus the area controlled and colonised by Spain in the mainland of the Americas (excluding the Caribbean), it is Britain that wins out by a significant margin. The areas occupied by the United States, Canada, Belize, Guyana add up to 7.744 million square miles, whereas the area occupied by the 16 Spanish-speaking nations in the mainland adds up to only 4.376 million square miles, which is 43% lower. Whereas Spain spawned a plethora of midget nations plagued by corruption and poverty, Britain spawned a few countries that, when combined, represent around 27% of the world's economy, exercising a combined cultural influence over the rest of the world that Spain's children will never achieve.

Even in the Caribbean, Britain has managed to outnumber Spain in the number of territories it colonised. According to wikipedia.org, 18 Caribbean territories are English-speaking, whereas only 3 territories (Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and puerto rico) are Spanish-speaking. It is true that those 3 territories outnumber the English-speaking territories by 4 to 1 in terms of population, yet their high level of failure when compared to the relative peace, prosperity, and stability of the English-speaking territories makes their larger populations irrelevant. Cuba, for example, is a pit of poverty and backwardness where the "lucky" ones get to drive cars that are over 60 years old; puerto rico, though privileged to be a U.S. territory, is proof that lipstick on a pig does not turn it human. Despite having full access to America's economy and resources in a way that other countries can only dream of having, it is a region with 45% poverty and one of the highest public debts, percentage-wise, in all the world, to the point that Standard & Poor's downgraded its debt to junk status, as indicated on wikipedia.org. The only "exception" to this blatant hispanic failure is the Dominican Republic, which has the largest economy in the Caribbean; even so, 31% of its population lives below the poverty line, according to wikipedia.org, evidencing once again that countries that inherited from Tarshish are cursed to underachieve. A quick observation of the Dominican Republic's history shows that it has been aided by periods of U.S. occupation (as indicated on wikipedia.org) that have imbued it with enough "English anointing" to make it prosper beyond its neighbours.

This writer also believes that the Dominican Republic's success relative to its neighbours is also related to God honouring Christopher Columbus' obedience. As indicated on wikipedia.org, it was in the island occupied by the Dominican Republic that Columbus established the first permanent European settlement after he discovered the Americas. Thus, allowing that island to have the largest economy in the Caribbean is not only an indication of the spiritual influence that Columbus left behind when he landed there, but is also a tribute from God to the magnitude of what the Italian Cristoforo Colombo accomplished when he sailed from the land of Tarshish and journeyed for 40 nerve-wracking days until he forged the largest encounter that the sons of Tarshish were destined to have. As indicated on thoughtco.com and christianitytoday.com, Colombo was a dedicated Christian who (despite being a sailor) rarely swore, attended church regularly, took Scripture very seriously, and often dedicated his entire Sundays to prayer. In his later years, his piety increased even more, meaning that his success as an explorer never led him to forget the God who had made it all possible.

Even though Colombo is always thought of as a promoter of catholicism in the Americas, it must be remembered that he was born before the Protestant Reformation, and he died some 11 years before another man with an apostolic anointing, Martin Luther, nailed his 95 theses on a church door to trigger the Reformation. Therefore, it is more accurate to consider Colombo a promoter of Christianity, at least at the level that he understood it, especially since he often went beyond the level of personal devotion exhibited by most of the people around him who considered themselves "Christian". It is also worth noting that, to Colombo, the voyages to the lands he was discovering was always much more than a "business venture", for he placed primary importance on evangelising the natives he encountered. Various reports state that Colombo was at times tyrannically savage when dealing with the natives (and even with some of the Spaniards). Since these reports were used by the Spanish crown to discredit him and to rob him of the profits he had been promised prior to his voyage, it is difficult for this writer to ascertain how valid these accusations were (the Lord knows, but I have been unable to discern the exact details in my spirit). Whether these reports are accurate or not, they do reveal that Colombo had a "Phinehas" zeal for righteousness that was not present in the people around him, and it shows that he had a basic understanding that his encounter with the Amerindians was to be followed by an uncompromising judgement of everything that was wrong and corrupt with their culture, as opposed to the "let's get as much as we can from these people and compromise with them whenever convenient" attitude that the sons of Tarshish quickly adopted after they took over from Colombo. In other words, Colombo understood the Tarshish-encounter calling much better than the sons of Tarshish themselves. It is because of all of this that Colombo is so hated by the matriarchal world, and it is why liberals in America are so vitriolically determined to obliterate Columbus Day from the official list of American bank holidays.

One of the greatest signs of Britain being given Spain's calling (just as David was given Saul's) is Gibraltar. As you may know, Gibraltar lies at the southern tip of Spain and is as far away from the British Isles as any part of Spain can be. Even so, Britain has control of it and is a permanent source of embarrassment to the yellow sons of Tarshish. Despite its diminutive size, Gibraltar is a crucial port. As indicated on wikipedia.org, half of the world's maritime trade passes through the Strait of Gibraltar, thus certifying how the land of Tarshish, known for its ships, had surrendered its naval supremacy to Britannia and her Royal Navy.

Britain has shown itself much more faithful than Spain in performing the purging cultural judgements that must follow Tarshish encounters. This has been shown by the significant dwindling of the Amerindian cultures wherever Britain has dominated in the Americas. Instead of coddling the Amerindians' traditions by blending them with theirs, and instead of intermingling with Amerindian women in Amorite fornication (as the Spaniards had done), the British tended to marginalise those cultures, forcing them to either assimilate the new and higher cultural values of Britain or isolate themselves. This is why the places colonised by the British were able to prosper, whilst the places colonised by the Spaniards always stagnated and eventually decayed. The matriarchal soul has always resented the fact that the British chose to minimise the Amerindians' cultures instead of exalting them, especially since those under the spirit of Ham resent the judgement of God that declares that the Japhethites' culture is inherently superior to the Hamites'. To them, God's judgement is tantamount to "racism" and is a reflection of how "evil" Japhethites are, which ironically leads matriarchal souls to decree that the "imperialistic" culture of white Japheth is inferior to the "kinder and gentler" cultures of the "darker-skinned" sons of Ham. Thus, those who decry God for declaring that one race's culture is superior to another's ironically end up declaring that the culture of one race, the "white race", is indeed inferior to other races' cultures. In other words, those who claim that there is no correlation between race and the value of a culture end up proclaiming an "undeniable linkage" between evil patterns of behaviour and one specific race: the white European race. By doing so, matriarchals once again reveal the hypocrisy and inherent falsehood of their value system. Whenever matriarchals decry "white privilege", they are declaring that it is right to judge a race, thereby exposing how invalid it is for them to condemn anyone who claims that the Amerindians' cultures are morally and spiritually inferior to the Europeans'.

Even deep into the 15th Century, Amerindians were still practising human sacrifices and witchcraft, oppressing their own populations through rigid hierarchies, massacring other Amerindian tribes through vicious warfare, and living in the Stone Age. Even so, it is "racist" to the matriarchal soul for anyone to point this out and to conclude that there was -- and is -- something wrong with the cultures that the Amerindians have cultivated. To this day, the decay of the Amerindian cultures is evident to anyone one with intellectual honesty, as shown by the fact that 25 of the 50 cities with the highest murder rates in the world (listed on wikipedia.org) are hispanic cities, i.e. cities in countries where the sons of Tarshish allowed the Amerindian cultures to remain vibrant (which they are, to this day). Interestingly, only 8 of the 50 cities are English-speaking, and the other 17 are all Brazilian, which reveals the destructive influence that Brazil's hispanic neighbours have had on it (along with the Portuguese's tendency to emulate the Spaniards in many of their colonising ways).

{As an important parenthesis, it is worth noting that the apostle Paul had the same name as king Saul the Benjamite before he was transformed by the Lord into Paul. It is also worth noting that he was known as "Saul of Tarsus" and that the name "Tarsus" is very similar to "Tarshish" and has an almost identical pronunciation in several languages, to the point that some historians in the past actually thought that the city of Tarsus was the Biblical "Tarshish". Besides this, the city of Tarsus stood (and still stands) in what is now Turkey, a country whose name in English is very similar to the Hebrew word tukkiy meaning "peacock" that we saw above (in fact, tukkiy may be the historical origin of the name of the turkey bird, which is indigenous to the Americas and which is linked to India in many cultures, according to wikipedia.org). It is also worth noting that Saul (later Paul) was from the tribe of Benjamin, which, as we have seen, is deeply related to Tarshish. Besides this, Saul of Tarsus had to be transformed and be given the mantle of Stephen before he could fulfil his calling, just as the mantle had to be passed from the Saul-ish Spaniards to the British. Thus, it is no coincidence that Paul is considered the "patron saint" of London, the capital of Britannia and that London is known for its "St. Paul Cathedral". Therefore, it is also no coincidence that Paul is the only person in Scripture that refers to Spain by its modern name and that he expressed an intention to go to Spain (Romans 15:24, 28). Additional understanding on the connection between Paul and Tarshish (and between Spain and Turkey) goes beyond the scope of this article.}

The new Tarshish's failings

Despite the clear superiority of Britain's colonisations over Spain's, there are still some things that God holds against the British and their descendants in how they went about fulfilling the encounter calling that was handed to them from Tarshish. For one, the sons of Britain failed at times to understand that their encounters with the "natives", in this case the Amerindians, were intended to forge a full (but uncompromised) merging of the Amerindians into the new, more civilised societies that would eventually emerge. However, as the natives showed resistance to this merging, the sons of Britain generally chose to look away and simply isolate themselves from the natives. The sons of Britain in America, for example, chose to create the concept of "sub-nations", i.e. Indian nations that were allowed to exist with a certain level of sovereignty within the larger American nation. Even when this seemed like the "compassionate" and "respectful" decision, it actually placed a permanent curse on subsequent generations of Amerindians who were forced to grow up in these artificial sub-nations that retained the destructive Amerindian traditions but without the "freedoms" of the past. This is why alcoholism and life-draining poverty are so rampant in these artificially-created "Indian reservations". Instead of enjoying the advantages of being Americans and growing up as citizens of a nation that so many foreigners long to be a part of, young men and women in these reservations grow up feeling like foreigners in their own land, like P.O.W.'s with a limited future. So, what seemed like an "act of mercy" that allowed Amerindians to "preserve their culture and traditions" was actually a death sentence on Amerindians for generations to come.

Even though the above may seem more like an indictment against America than against Britain proper, this tendency not to follow through completely can also be seen directly in the British in various scenarios, the clearest one being the way they handled the colonisation of another group of "Indians", in this case the actual Indians from India. Many, especially Ham-loving and Japheth-loathing white liberals , would argue that Britain's occupation was "wrong", it takes intellectual dishonesty to deny the fact that India is a much better place because of the British presence there. Even at a very superficial level, it is clear that the Indians' ability to speak English has opened doors for them throughout the world that would have otherwise been completely inaccessible. Indian computer programmers, for example, have been able to flood the American and British IT landscape because they have been exposed to English from an early age and have been exposed to British culture and values enough to function adequately in societies with British origins such as America's. At a deeper level, their exposure to the British education system has allowed them to develop some of their God-given intellectual skills, skills that would otherwise have been lost in the quagmire of Indian mysticism and maniacal paganism. Can you imagine what type of technological development India would have if it had remained in an isolated world where it is OK to let cows lie in the middle of crowded streets because they are perceived to have "mystical qualities", or where it is OK to have festivals to worship snakes and where people walk around with multiple snakes on them? Being such a large place with such a large population and a long-standing cultural history, India would have certainly been able to remain in a bubble of cultural, technological, and moral retardation were it not for the long-lasting incursion of the British into their universe.

Having said the above, the fact that all of the above needs to be explained despite being so obvious is part of why it can be said that Britain failed in the way that it handled its "Tarshish cultural encounters" with places such as India. Despite introducing many positive values and principles into the Indian culture, Britain at some point decided to accept and "live with" some Indian "idiosyncrasies" that it seemed unable to purge from Indian culture. This is when Britain's occupation of India became unproductive in the eyes of God, and the time came for the British to let India be its own country. However, as is typical of situations where evil attitudes have been rationalised into "normality", people tend to be very slow to realise that certain rights and authority that have been granted to them have already been revoked (as what happened with the American South and slavery). Because of this, Britain overstayed its time in India, and it took a person like Gandhi to finally drive the British out of the land. Had Britain understood that it was being called by God to expose the idiocy and savagery in the Indian culture, the Indians' veneration of cows, snakes, and black rats (along with its animal-glorifying vegetarianism) would not be seen around the world as "curious cultural quirks" but would instead be a source of great shame to Indian people, to the point that they may have eventually decided on their own to terminate these daemon-inspired practises. Unfortunately, these practises continue in India, even after 2 full decades into the 21st century and even after heavy exposure from Britain (and from the world in general through television, films, and even the Internet). Contrary to what Girgashite-Canaanites might think, these practises are more than "unattractive but harmless" eccentricities that "our judgemental Western minds reject simply because they are different". These practises are, in truth, entry points for daemonic activity that enslave people and yield massive corruption and poverty, both in the spiritual and the literal realm. This is why a nation of people who are clearly very intelligent can have so many pockets of profound poverty and backwardness. Unfortunately, the consequences of these evil practises can even be seen in those who , on the surface, appear to have escaped from its grip. This writer can testify from first-hand experience that certain destructive spirits are very deeply embedded even in Indian people who seem westernised and above these evil practises. In particular, this writer has seen a very exaggerated presence of the Jebusite spirit, which makes sense since it requires a great deal of Jebusite legalism to pry yourself (in the flesh) out of the full grip of the Canaanite spirits that permeate the Indian atmosphere as a result of these vile practises.

vicky the terrible

It must be said that the main spiritual reason for Britain's great failure in India is the reign of one of the most passively destructive monarchical reigns in British history, the reign of queen victoria (who ruled during the last 6 decades of the 19th century). As indicated on wikipedia.org, it was victoria who, from the very start of British rule, proclaimed that Britain should exude "generosity, benevolence, and religious toleration". In fact, as indicated in the book "The Literary World, Volume 19" (pg. 310, available at books.google.com), the original proclamation spoke of the British Government's power "for the undermining of native religions and customs", and it was vicky who insisted that this phrase be replaced with a call for "toleration". She then went on to declare herself "Empress of India", thereby proving that her apparent "open-mindedness" was, at the end of the day, a way to buy approval from Indians in order to possess them in a deeper way. This is a tactic that pastoral matriarchs always use: compromising on principles and judgements to buy loyalty and possess more souls. Said another way, vicky's effort to claim ownership of Indians (by calling herself their empress) was not to exercise a change-inducing authority that would bless the Indian people, but was, instead, an attempt to serve herself. Notice also that she had no qualms about calling herself the "empress" of the Indians, even though she only called herself a "queen" over British subjects, meaning that, despite her "egalitarian" talk, she did see Indian subjects as slightly inferior to native British subjects. This hypocritical preaching of equality is typical in matriarchal souls in positions of power.

It is true that there was a strong move towards morality and "Christian values" during vicky's time on the throne, but there were two problems with that movement. First, it was a movement independent of vicky. In other words, vicky was little more than a passive bystander as this movement progressed. Yes, she did make public shows of support of this movement, but her emphasis was always on morality, not on the God behind that morality. Unlike Queen Elizabeth I, vicky did not have a living, breathing relationship with God. She was not a heart longing for the manifestation of God's Glory in Britannia or any of the lands dominated by Britain. She simply wanted an orderly society that would give her little turmoil to rule over, like a mother who wants a nice and obedient child that gives her no trouble, with no real sacrificial concern over that child's future or calling. Yes, Britain did have a significant period of economic prosperity and imperial expansion during her time, but this prosperity and power was more the overflow of what Britain had sown so many centuries ago. God did allow her to sit on the throne during this time of harvest, but He forced her to pay a price for the privilege. This is why God killed off so many of the people around her that were dear and near to her heart.

For example, her husband Prince Albert died on 14 December 1861, when she and he were 42 years old, after which she plunged into a deep depression and many years of seclusion that made her very unpopular in Britain. Earlier that same year, in March, her mother died. As indicated on wikipedia.org, she was estranged from her mother but found after her death that, contrary to her belief, her mother had always loved her deeply, which broke her heart since she realised that she had no way to make up for the lost time and opportunity. On 14 December 1878, the 17th anniversary of Albert's death, vicky's second daughter Alice died at age 35 (5 years earlier, Alice's own son Friedrich, her favourite, died after falling 20 feet from a window, which became a permanent source of sorrow for her). On St. Patrick's Day 1883, vicky fell down some stairs, leaving her lame for some 4 months. Oddly enough, 10 days after her fall, her faithful attendant John Brown died. She had become very close to him after the death of her husband, which led to widespread rumours that she was having an affair with him. "Coincidentally", her youngest son Leopold died in France on the 1st anniversary of John Brown's death. In July 1900, her second son Alfred (known to all as "Alfie") died at the age of 55. Six months later, vicky herself was dead as well, meaning that God allowed her to live long enough to see the death of her 3rd son.

Albert and the slavery fiasco

All the tragedy described above is full of spiritual significance. The fact that her husband died in 1861, for example, is no coincidence, for that is the year when America's Civil War started. Some 6 weeks before Albert's death, God forced vicky and Albert to focus on America through the Trent Affair, an international incident in which Albert eventually intervened to help prevent war between America and Britain. Even though Albert's participation was "helpful", it was merely to prevent further tensions and never to speak out against the evil of the Confederacy's rebellion and its slavery. It seems as if Albert contracted the typhoid that would eventually kill him a few days after the Trent Affair began, meaning that the Trent Affair was, in truth, a spiritual test from God to Albert that would decide his destiny. Had Albert been spiritually awake, he would have immediately turned his spiritual eyes west towards America at the first news of the Trent incident, and he would have perceived the need to support the North and condemn the South for its refusal to end slavery (which the UK had abolished some 27 years earlier, around the same time when God had decreed the end of slavery in America through the state of Georgia). Unfortunately, both Albert and vicky chose to remain on the sidelines. Having the opportunity to use the symbolism of their royalty status to promote God's will, they remained relatively indifferent. And that is why God immediately struck Albert dead and left vicky to wallow in a sea of self-pity for years. Because vicky never allowed Albert's death to become a teachable moment, an opportunity to lift her eyes up towards the Lord, she remained focused on herself, thereby exposing her spiritual shallowness to the British people, for which reason her popularity dropped for many years. In a sense, it can be said that vicky's spiritual calling died when Albert died, when she was 42 years old. The 39 years that she lived beyond that were spiritually dead years that only caused eternal damage to herself and to all of Britain.

The death of Alice Philadelphia

The fact that God took her daughter Alice on the 17th anniversary of Albert's death is no spiritual coincidence. As we have shared before, the number "17" refers to a manifested remnant. Therefore, the fact that God took her offspring 17 years after taking Albert points to how vicky's reign (after her calling died) dealt a terrible blow to the manifestation of remnant nature in future generations in the UK. The fact that the daughter's name was "Alice" is, again, no spiritual coincidence. As we have shared in detail before, the name Alice points to people who can enter into the realm of the spirit and engage in spiritual warfare to manifest God's Kingdom, and it also points to people with the Spirit of Philadelphia, people who appear "small" on the outside but who are aware of their spiritual "nobility" on the inside. This is what vicky killed in generations of Britons because of her time on Earth. The fact that Alice died at the age of 35 points to the death of the promise of restoration in Isaiah 35 for generations of Britons.

The crippling 4-month delay

The fact that vicky had a serious fall on 17 March, St. Patrick's Day, 1883 also points to the damage that she inflicted on God's righteous manifestation in the UK. As we have shared before, St. Patrick's Day is a day very strongly related to the green horse of the Apocalypse. Therefore, her fall and her subsequent 4-month lameness points to how she incapacitated the manifestation of the green-horse anointing in Britannia. A full explanation of the significance of the 4-month period of lameness goes beyond the scope of this posting; suffice it to say that it points to the 4-year revival delay between 11 May 2005 and 11 May 2009 and how the destructive work of people like vicky prevented a greater blessing on Britannia during this period.

vicky hezekiah

The fact that John Brown died 10 days after her fall also has great spiritual significance. For one, the 10 days points to the "10 regression" that king Hezekiah experienced when he chose temporal longevity over eternal inheritance and life for his descendants (as explained in an early article). To vicky, longevity was more important than eternal fruit. This is why she had such a long time on the throne, even if it was at the expense of eternal loss for herself and generations after her. The fact that her faithful attendant was named "John Brown" is again no spiritual coincidence. As you may know, John Brown is the name of a famous abolitionist who was very relevant in the events leading to the American Civil War. The fact that the emotional place once occupied by Albert was taken by a man with the name of a very militant abolitionist is an indictment against Albert and vicky's passivity leading up to the American Civil War (the passivity that led directly to Albert's death). The fact that John Brown died so shortly after her fall was to evidence the "deal" that vicky had made: she was willing to trade the spiritual future of others in return for a longer life and a longer time on the throne.

The fact that her youngest son Leopold died on the 1st anniversary of John Brown's death, just as her daughter Alice had died on the 17th anniversary of Albert's death, was God's way of emphasising how vicky had been willing to sacrifice future generations by deliberately suppressing active, "male" spirit behaviour in favour of passive, "female" soulish behaviour (hence the death of the two most important men in her life followed by the death of her children on the same dates). The fact that the name of the dying son was Leopold is also significant. As indicated on behindthename.com, the name "Leopold" literally means "brave people". Hence, the death of Leopold points to how vicky's life hindered the rise of a bold army of young green-horse warriors, i.e. Joel's army, in the land of Britannia.

vicky the not-so-great

The fact that vicky's son Alfred died shortly before her death was God's way of sealing the irrelevance of vicky's reign. As you may know, Alfred is the name of the first great king of England, Alfred the Great, a man who was instrumental in establishing Anglo-Saxon England and promoting many educational and legal reforms. In other words, Alfred the Great was by no means a "glider" but was instead a true reformer, a forger of important change. Even though vicky is idiotically considered one of the greatest monarchs in English history, God's judgement of Alfred was His proof that vicky was not an "Alfred" by any stretch of the imagination and that her time on the throne will be known for all of eternity as a time of shame and spiritual destruction for England and Britain. The fact that vicky's son Alfred died at age 55 was God's way of declaring that the offer in Isaiah 55 had been removed from vicky and those under her. That is when Britain entered into an age of darkness that began to dissipate around the year 2000 but which still lingers and will only disappear as the remnant is finally manifested in the upcoming years.

"1 Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2 Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. 3 Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. 4 Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people. 5 Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of the LORD thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee. 6 Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: 7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: 11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. 12 For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off." (Isaiah 55)

Edward the delayed

As a final note on vicky's failures, it must be said that her successor, son Edward Albert who became Edward VII, exhibited many of the qualities that vicky lacked throughout her reign. Instead of sitting back and acting on convenience only, Edward VII actively endeavoured to participate in the things going on around him, and he had the courage to at least voice unsolicited moral judgements. For example, as indicated on wikipedia.org, he once declared that the "n" word was "disgraceful" despite its common usage at the time. He also involved himself in army reform to address issues exposed in previous wars, and he was interested in reforming the Royal Navy, especially for fear of Germany's rising naval power. Even as Prince of Wales in 1884, he had to be convinced not to openly vote for the Representation of the People Bill, which increased political suffrage in Britain. Because of this more proactive behaviour, he is considered the first "truly constitutional" British monarch, as well as the last sovereign to wield actual political power in the British landscape. Even though he was clearly flawed as well, he was significantly less destructive than vicky, but he was only allowed to exercise his attributes as king until he was 59 years old because vicky simply refused to get out of the way. As mentioned on wikipedia.org, vicky did not allow Edward an active role in the running of the government until 1898, less than 2 years before her physical death (she was spiritually dead since 1861). Because he was clearly interested in being involved, he was sent summaries of important government documents, but vicky denied him access to the original documents from which those summaries were drafted.

As indicated on wikipedia.org, when Edward finally ascended to the throne, he held the record for the longest stint as "heir apparent" in British history, a record that was only surpassed by Prince Charles on 20 April 2011. Edward also had the longest stint as "Prince of Wales" in British history, and was only surpassed by Charles on 9 September 2017. All of this reveals how the current queen, elizabeth II, is a spiritual "repeat" of the vicky spirit. In fact, betty the second has turned herself into a spiritual body-bag, a roadblock that has ensured the spiritual death of the entire royal family in Britain. She is a major hindrance to God's flow in the United Kingdom, and her physical passing will be a source of great joy for those in the spirit realm who are awaiting the manifestation of God's Glory in Britannia.

The Egyptian Di-saster

As a side note, it is worth mentioning that Lady Diana illustrated how betty the second has turned into a second, shameful version of 19th-century vicky. As you may know, Lady Diana was different from the rest of the royal family in that she believed that British royalty were supposed to effect change in society and the world. She knew that this change was not necessarily meant to be in the political arena but rather through concrete actions and words that would galvanise society towards or away from certain ideas and behaviour. By contrast, the rest of the royal family believed that their role in life was to watch passively from a safe distance, enjoying their inherited wealth in Hivite fashion. Clearly, betty the second and the rest of the royal family were fully committed to vicky's paradigm of remaining behind the scenes without caring about the state of the spiritual atmosphere around them, especially if caring meant sacrificing something from within. This is the spiritual reason why Diana felt so isolated and rejected.

The emergence of Diana at the beginning of the 1980s was no coincidence. A kairos door of opportunity was opening at that time, a door through which God meant to effect much spiritual change on Earth. This is why Ronald Reagan emerged as President of the United States right around the same time, as well as Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in the United Kingdom. God killed off the little monster leonid brezhnev shortly afterwards, quickly killing off the 2 men that the Soviets tried to replace him with (over a short 2 ⅓ years, after brezhnev had lasted for 18 disastrous years) so that a more pliable vessel, Mikhail Gorbachev, could arise. In the midst of this (and many other things too long to describe here), the British royal family remained in languid passivity, oblivious to the spiritual role they were called to play. Even after God injected Lady Diana in their midst, like a Tarshish amongst foreigners that was calling out the decrepitude of the royal culture, they remained unwilling to participate. Unfortunately, because the American Church and its "great leaders" mistook the kairos door of the 1980s as an opportunity to flow in Balaamite prosperity, and because the English Church was dead due to all that vicky had (silently) done to her, Lady Diana had no one who could speak to her about the role that she and the royal family were supposed to play. Therefore, she turned to Girgashite works and well-intentioned (but fruitless) pastoral service. As time went on, the emptiness within her grew, and, though it was easily attributable to her failing marriage, the root went much deeper than that. This became clearer to her after she was finally set free from the royal family in 1996 but remained empty inside.

Deep within her, Diana knew that she was operating in the soul and that she needed something in the Spirit. In her mind, she would occasionally turn towards Christianity for help, but all that her natural mind could see was the staleness of the Anglican Church. Her soul then began to turn towards the Middle East, and it slowly became drawn to the pseudo-spirituality that the muslim religion offered. That is when her soul began to look for someone who could provide her with a taste of the muslim religion without a full-blown commitment to its rigid brutality. This led to her becoming attracted to men who were mildly connected to islamism but who still seemed well-adapted to the ways of the West. She first tried to connect with a muslim British Pakistani, but she quickly encountered the hatred of his muslim family and the indifference of a selfish man who was never willing to pay too much of a price for her. This writer believes that God was involved in blocking this relationship, just as when the Lord intervened to protect Sarah from Gerar in Egypt (Genesis 20). After that relationship fell apart, Diana had a golden opportunity to stop turning her head sideways and to finally turn her eyes up towards God. Unfortunately for her, she refused to do so, and she turned towards Egypt (literally), hoping that a muslim from there could help her fill her spiritual emptiness. Instead of embracing the exodus from the Egypt she had been trapped in (for the British royal family lives in spiritual Egypt), she tried to go deeper into it, thinking that she knew the way to make Egypt "work". This is why she turned towards Egypt and went full throttle towards a "mohammed", a son of a rich Egyptian. And this is why God let her life be taken as she sped inside a car with her Egyptian "saviour" whilst they travelled in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris, France less than 400 days after she had been set free from the ("Egyptian") royal family.

"1 [[A Song of degrees.]] I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. 2 My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth. 3 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. 4 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. 5 The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand. 6 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. 7 The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. 8 The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore." (Psalm 121)

[Because Diana refused to lift her eyes up towards Mount Zion and the Lord above, verse 8 was not fulfilled in her life (neither literally nor spiritually).]

As explained on wikipedia.org, the Pont de l'Alma tunnel (as well as the nearby Pont de l'Alma bridge) that crosses the River Seine, was named in honour of the 1854 Battle of Alma during the Crimean War, a battle that was fought near the city of the Alma Heights, near the River Alma, in modern-day Ukraine. Interestingly, the name "Alma" is the Crimean Tatar word for "apple" (as indicated on wikipedia.org). It is no coincidence that the name comes from the "Tatar", given that the word "Tatar" is similar to the name "Tartessos", a name for the city of Tarshish in Andalusia, Spain. It is also no coincidence that "alma", a word that means "apple" in Tatar, actually means "soul" if read by a Spaniard, a literal son of Tarshish. Hence, Diana's death inside the Pont de l'Alma tunnel is God's way of showing that Diana chose to stay in the soul and continued her efforts in the soul to build a bridge to reach out to the foreign cultures during her Tarshish encounters with them. However, that bridge is impossible to complete and will always be destroyed by the evil elements in those foreign cultures that the unrighteous Tarshish refuses to judge.

The Gibraltar testimony

As a final note on Britannia and her replacement of Spain in the fulfilment of the "Tarshish encounter" calling, it is worth noting that Britain's takeover of Gibraltar not only points to that replacement but also points to Britain's incompleteness in fulfilling that role. As you may know, Gibraltar is "famous" for its macaques. As indicated on wikipedia.org, it is believed that these monkeys, which are native to Morocco, were introduced by the Muslims when they invaded and conquered yellow Spain. As shared above, monkeys point to the Canaanite spirit, and their presence in Gibraltar is a physical manifestation of how Britain's incompleteness in fulfilling Tarshish's role has been tainted by the Canaanite pastoral-matriarchy spirit, a spirit that promotes the intolerant "toleration" of unrighteousness. Unfortunately, these Canaanite macaques are not only tolerated, they are celebrated, to the point that they are a source of British "pride", just as India's froggy filthiness was celebrated by vicky (and even by her better son Edward). In fact, Britain has gone so far as to promote the idea that the monkeys' presence in Gibraltar must be preserved to ensure the British presence in Gibraltar, just as it is believed that the United Kingdom will fall the day that the ravens disappear from the Tower of London. In 1942 or 1944, in the middle of the gruelling war against the Nazis, Winston Churchill actually became so concerned about the dwindling macaque population that he sent a message to the Colonial Secretary to request that action be taken to preserve them. The fact that these Canaanite monkeys have been equated with the more noble and prophetic ravens in the Tower of London reveals the degradation in judgement that the Canaanite tolerance of unrighteousness causes in man's soul, to the point that outright and clear evil is suddenly equated with true righteousness.

The fact that Winston Churchill made such a ludicrous request during World War II is somewhat ironic, given that Churchill is known to have had little sympathy for Indian customs. As indicated on wikipedia.org, Churchill described India as a "godless land of snobs and bores" when living there between 1896 and 1898, and, in the early 1930s, he expressed his opposition to granting dominion status because it increased the odds of the Hindu Brahmin caste further oppressing the "untouchables" as well as Christians and Muslims. Even though Churchill was not aware that it was time to let India return to its own vomit (due to vicky's inactions), his comments reflect an awareness of the corruption in the Indian culture and Britain's responsibility to deal with it in some way. Interestingly, when the Bengal famine broke out in 1943 (due to the Japanese's capture of Burma, an exporter of food to India), Churchill opposed diverting food towards India for several reasons:

It is worth noting that (as indicated on wikipedia.org) another big factor were the natural disasters that God sent against that region in 1942, including a fungal "brown spot disease" that rivalled the potato blight of the Irish Great Famine and that is considered by some as one of the most destructive plant pathological incidents in recorded history. This was God's way of doing some of the "cultural encounter" judgement that vicky and her subjects had failed to do. As much as man may want to blame Churchill for this famine, it was, at the end of the day, a judgement from God that the Indian people had brought on themselves for their stubborn refusal to let go of their evil, daemonic traditions.

Thus, we can say from the above that Churchill's impulse to save the Gibraltar macaques was more out of an incomplete understanding of their spiritual significance than out of a zeal to defend what they represented. We can say that Churchill was fooled by the claim that they actually represented Britain's hold on Gibraltar just as the ravens in the Tower of London signify the United Kingdom. Therefore, in his mistake, Churchill actually revealed a respect for prophetic figures and a desire not to relinquish Britain's gain over Spain. Had he had a closer relationship with the Lord, he would have understood that the macaques needed to die off and disappear from Gibraltar forever. The fact that the Bengal famine happened around the same time as the dwindling of the macaque population in Gibraltar was no coincidence. Unfortunately, Churchill was unable to make the connection, and Britain, as a whole, has yet to understand what it did wrong in India, in the American Civil War, and in their overall takeover (as a David) of Saul's (i.e. Spain's) cultural encounter Tarshish anointing. The connection between India, Spain, and Britain is further certified by the fact that Cristoforo Colombo thought that he was heading towards India when he encountered the Amerindians in 1492.

The hindering cultures

As a parenthesis, it is worth mentioning here that the name "Bilhan" in 1 Chronicles 7:10 above is derived from the verb balahh meaning "to trouble", which only appears once in all of Scripture, in Ezra 4:4, translated as "troubled":

"1 Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity builded the temple unto the LORD God of Israel; 2 Then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the fathers, and said unto them, Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assur, which brought us up hither. 3 But Zerubbabel, and Jeshua, and the rest of the chief of the fathers of Israel, said unto them, Ye have nothing to do with us to build an house unto our God; but we ourselves together will build unto the LORD God of Israel, as king Cyrus the king of Persia hath commanded us. 4 Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building, 5 And hired counsellors against them, to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia." (Ezra 4:1-5)

Notice how the returning Israelites were now as foreigners in their own land and how those in the land at the time began to hinder God's planned construction work. The newcomers were trying to build a house for God so that He would dwell and reign there, but they were in the midst of a culture that found this work threatening to their current value system, for which reason they did all they could to hinder it. This is what Tarshish experiences when he has an encounter with an inferior culture that he is called to transform and eliminate. Therefore, when the sons of Tarshish lack a backbone, they begin to compromise, and their only incentive to continue fighting through the troubling experience becomes self-benefit.

{As a parenthesis, notice how the Spirit of God mentions "Benjamin" along with Judah at the beginning of Ezra 4, which points to all the references to Benjamin that we have made in this article as we have been meditating on Tarshish. It is also worth noting that Benjamin is not mentioned again in the rest of the chapter, even though Judah is mentioned two more times. This means that the "Benjamin" mentioned in verse 1 refers to the part of Benjamin that chooses to side with "Judah", i.e. those coming with a new, superior culture, as opposed to the part of Benjamin that corresponds with the "people of the land" who want to hinder the demise of their corrupt culture.}

It is also interesting to note that there is one other "Bilhan" mentioned in Scripture. He is a descendant of Esau who is mentioned in both Genesis 36:27 and 1 Chronicles 1:42:

"The sons of Ezer; Bilhan, and Zavan, and Jakan. The sons of Dishan; Uz, and Aran." (1 Chronicles 1:42)

The name "Ezer" means treasure, which points to the treasures that Tarshish is called to release through his encounters with inferior cultures. These treasures are the spiritual potential that remains kidnapped by the inferior culture and that can only be released when the inferior culture is weakened and destroyed. The name of Bilhan's brother "Zaavan" (spelled as "Zavan" in 1 Chronicles 1:42 for some odd reason) means "troubled", which points once again to the balahh troubles that those from the inferior culture will generate to hinder the demise of their evil culture.

{As another parenthesis, this connection between the Tarshish calling and troubles is emphasised by the appearance of shachar, a word we studied above, in Nehemiah 4:21, where it is used to speak of those who laboured in the rebuilding of the wall in Jerusalem, with half of them holding spears from the rising of the morning (shachar) till the stars appeared due to the opposition of the people in the land who did not want to see the dawn of a new day where their inferior cultures no longer ruled. Thus, it is no coincidence that the next appearance of shachar after Nehemiah 4:21 is in Job 3:9, where Job declares a deep sense of despair, cursing the day that he was born and hoping that the day after that day had never materialised. This is the type of (Hittite) sorrow that those defending the inferior culture will inflict upon the righteous Tarshish to prevent God's new day. However, as shown by God's later usage of shachar in Job 38:12, Isaiah 47:11, Isaiah 58:8, Hosea 6:3, Hosea 10:15, Joel 2:2, and Amos 4:13, God has prophesied from the whirlwind that He shall take revenge against these inferior tormentors of His remnant, especially as the latter rain begins to fall.}

For some reason, the name of Bilhan's other brother is spelled differently in the 2 verses above, with an extra letter yod (the Hebrew equivalent of an "i", "y", or "j") at the beginning of the name in 1 Chronicles 1:42. The name "Akan", as spelled in Genesis 36:27, means "sharp-sighted" and is derived from a Hebrew word (unused in Scripture) meaning "to twist". By contrast, the name "Jakan", as spelled in 1 Chronicles 1:42, means "let him oppress them". Thus, the Lord is saying that, for Tarshish to overcome the troubles imposed on him, he must remain sharp-sighted, focused on God's long-term goal of destroying the inferior culture so that a new day may rise over the land. The road to that goal has many twists and turns, many places for confusion and compromise, especially as those defending the inferior culture try to muddle the differences between right and wrong. Tarshish must also remember that, at times, the accusation of "ruthless oppressor" will be levied against him, especially as those from the inferior culture play the Canaanite, anti-judgement card. Therefore, Tarshish must be willing to heed the Spirit of God's words when He declares,

"Let him oppress them, for they are quick to oppress My people and they are oppressing the release of My freedom and My treasures, which they cling to only to neuter and misuse them"

The 7-level expulsion of Vashti

After 1 Chronicles 7:10 studied above, the next time that Tarshish is mentioned in Scripture is in 2 Chronicles 9:21, which is the parallel verse in the books of Chronicles of 1 Kings 10:22, which we have studied above. After that, Tarshish is mentioned in 2 Chronicles 20:36-37, which are the parallel verses in Chronicles of 1 Kings 22:48-49, which we have also studied above. The next time after that where the Spirit of God mentions the name Tarshish is in verse 14 of the following passage:

"10 On the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine, he commanded Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, and Abagtha, Zethar, and Carcas, the seven chamberlains that served in the presence of Ahasuerus the king, 11 To bring Vashti the queen before the king with the crown royal, to shew the people and the princes her beauty: for she was fair to look on. 12 But the queen Vashti refused to come at the king's commandment by his chamberlains: therefore was the king very wroth, and his anger burned in him. 13 Then the king said to the wise men, which knew the times, (for so was the king's manner toward all that knew law and judgment: 14 And the next unto him was Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena, and Memucan, the seven princes of Persia and Media, which saw the king's face, and which sat the first in the kingdom;) 15 What shall we do unto the queen Vashti according to law, because she hath not performed the commandment of the king Ahasuerus by the chamberlains? 16 And Memucan answered before the king and the princes, Vashti the queen hath not done wrong to the king only, but also to all the princes, and to all the people that are in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus. 17 For this deed of the queen shall come abroad unto all women, so that they shall despise their husbands in their eyes, when it shall be reported, The king Ahasuerus commanded Vashti the queen to be brought in before him, but she came not. 18 Likewise shall the ladies of Persia and Media say this day unto all the king's princes, which have heard of the deed of the queen. Thus shall there arise too much contempt and wrath. 19 If it please the king, let there go a royal commandment from him, and let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes, that it be not altered, That Vashti come no more before king Ahasuerus; and let the king give her royal estate unto another that is better than she. 20 And when the king's decree which he shall make shall be published throughout all his empire, (for it is great,) all the wives shall give to their husbands honour, both to great and small. 21 And the saying pleased the king and the princes; and the king did according to the word of Memucan:" (Esther 1:10-21)

As we mentioned earlier, there are only 2 verses in Scripture where the name Tarshish is not used to explicitly refer to the nation or the people of Tarshish, referring instead to a specific individual; the first of these verses is 1 Chronicles 7:10, and the second verse is Esther 1:14 above. Notice also that the name Tarshish appears exactly in the middle of a list of 7 names. It is worth noting that Tarshish is the only name out of the 7 that appears in Scripture outside of Esther chapter 1; in fact, out of the other 6 names, only Memucan appears outside of verse 14 in Esther 1, appearing a total of 3 times in the chapter. Thus, the fact that the other 6 names do not appear elsewhere in Scripture and that Tarshish was placed right in the middle of the list means that this list is literally and spiritually centred around Tarshish and is intended to illustrate the spiritual work that Tarshish is called to carry out.

To understand the spiritual message behind the list in Esther 1:14, we must first consider the meaning of each name on the list:

Name	Meaning (as per Strong's Concordance)	Meaning (as per sheknows.com)
Carshena	Illustrious	A lamb, sleeping
Shethar	A star	Putrefied, searching
Admatha	A testimony to them	A cloud of death, a mortal vapour
Tarshish	Yellow jasper	Contemplation, examination
Meres	Lofty	Defluxion
Marsena	Worthy	Bitterness of a bramble
Memucan	Dignified	Impoverished, to prepare, certain, true

As you can imagine, the fact that this list consists of 7 names means that it is more than likely related to the 7 Spirits of God. The question then becomes, What name corresponds with what Spirit? A way to answer this is by associating the names that are the most obvious first so as to reduce the list of possible options for the remaining names.

Shethar the shining star

The name "Shethar" means "a star", which points to the evangelistic endowment that turns us into stars whose names shine in the spiritual atmosphere and exert the dominion of God on Earth. It is no coincidence, therefore, that "stardom" is synonymous with "fame" in English and many languages, since fame is intricately related to evangelists, whose names exert authority over the spiritual atmosphere around them. Thus, we can safely conclude that the name Shethar corresponds to the Spirit of Pergamos, the Spirit of Head Authority, the Spirit of God from Whom the evangelist endowment emanates. The meaning for "Shethar" in sheknows.com may seem unrelated, but a closer look into the possible reason for this translation reveals that it also points to the evangelistic endowment. According to sites such as biblestudytools.com, the name Shethar-Boznai, which appears in Ezra 5, means "that makes to rot, that seeks those who despise me". Thus, "Shethar" in Shethar-Boznai is related to the notion of a hunter who tracks down prey to conquer it unto himself, which, as we have shared before, points to the evangelistic endowment. Just as the "searching [to hunt down]" part of the meaning in sheknows.com points to the evangelistic endowment, the "rotting" part of the meaning also points to evangelists since, as shown in the meaning offered for Shethar-Boznai, it refers to someone who causes the "rotting away" or "extermination" of his enemies, which speaks of evangelists (or Amorites, when evil) who endeavour to cause the disappearance of all opposition to the dominion they are fighting to establish.

Admatha the sacrificial witness

The name "Admatha" meaning "a testimony to them" clearly points to the prophetic endowment, since that is the endowment most directly related to "witnessing". The meaning suggested in sheknows.com ("a cloud of death, a mortal vapour") also points to the prophetic endowment, since prophets are willing to die in sacrifice and are more interested in the "gaseous, invisible" things of the spirit than in the more tangible things of the natural realm such as "solids" (things for the body) and "liquids" (things to please the natural soul). Therefore, we can conclude that the name Admatha points to the Spirit of Smyrna, the Spirit of Sacrifice, the Spirit of God from Whom the prophetic endowment emanates.

Memucan the preparer

The meaning of the name "Memucan", "dignified", that is offered in Strong's Concordance is not as easy to discern as the meanings for "Shethar" and "Admatha", but a look at the meaning offered in sheknows.com makes the meaning in Strong's Concordance clearer. According to sheknows.com, Memucan means "impoverished, to prepare, certain, true". The words "certain" and "true" clearly point to the apostolic endowment, since that is the endowment most directly related to laws and judgements, and judgements are inextricably intertwined with truth. As we have shared before, the apostolic endowment is also the endowment most directly related to the laying down of foundations, meaning that apostles help to establish a foundation of spiritual certainty upon which to build. Apostles are also "trailblazers", meaning that, as they lay down a truth foundation, they prepare the way for others, impoverishing themselves (1 Corinthians 4:6-13), paying a price so that others may have a clearer path and thrive more easily than they did.

Thus, it is clear that the meaning for Memucan offered in sheknows.com clearly points to the apostolic endowment. How does that relate to the meaning "dignified" offered in Strong's Concordance? To answer that, we must consider the context of Esther 1:14. As indicated in the preceding verse, the 7 men in verse 14 were "wise men", men who "knew law and judgement", meaning that the list is inherently a list of "apostles". Thus, it makes sense that the name most directly related to the apostolic on this list would mean "dignified", since the entire list is a reflection of how much the king dignified the apostolic endowment. Having the most "apostolic" of the apostles appear last on the list also makes sense, since apostles are always placing themselves in "last place" (1 Corinthians 4:9) so that others may be "first" and have an easier trail to walk on.

The exalted Meres

The names "Meres" and "Marsena" are a little more difficult to discern than "Shethar", "Admatha", and "Memucan", but their strong similarity means that they need to be discerned together. In a sense, it is as if both names stem from the same root, for which reason their meanings in Strong's Concordance, "lofty" and "worthy" are quite similar, denoting something or someone held in high esteem. Given that we have already "mapped" 3 Spirits of God, there are 4 Spirits remaining, and these 4 Spirits can be paired into 2 "logical" pairs; one pair are the Spirits from whom the 2 "female" ministries emanate (the pastoral Spirit of Service and the teacherly Spirit of Perfection), and the other pair are the "village" spirits of Philadelphia (the "poor villager") and Laodicea (the "rich villager"). However, it is rather difficult to consider the 2 "female" ministries Spirits as "similar"; aside from being related to "female" ministries, They are rather different in their behaviour and functionality. The pastoral endowment is more emotional, and the teacher endowment is more mental; the pastoral endowment is more "personal", and the teacher endowment is more "impersonal". Also, it is difficult to intrinsically associate both endowments with the concepts of "loftiness" and "worthiness", even more so if we consider that the names "Meres" and "Marsena" are mentioned in the context of a female (i.e. Vashti) who was unwilling to submit to the male king, meaning that the exaltation of the 2 "female" endowments as being "lofty" and "worthy" does not appear to fit the spiritual narrative of Esther 1. Thus, we can conclude that "Meres" and "Marsena" must point to the 2 "village" Spirits of God, the Philadelphia Spirit of Dreams and Visions and the Laodicea Spirit of Prosperity, and a closer look at the nature of these Spirits makes it evident why the words "lofty" and "worthy" apply to them so well.

Revelation 3:7-11 shows how those with the Spirit of Philadelphia are constantly exalted by God despite man's constant belittling of them. Not a single negative thing is said about them, and the Spirit of God ends by saying that they shall be made a pillar in the Temple of my God and be given a new name. Thus, it is evident that the word "lofty" is very fitting of how God views those with the Spirit of Philadelphia. As the "poor villagers", Philadelphians start with a lowly position, but they are exalted to a lofty position due to their faithfulness (Luke 14:7-11 -- notice how the verse numbers "coincidentally" match those of Revelation 3).

The connection between "Meres" (i.e. "lofty") and the Spirit of Philadelphia is evident even in the oddly different meaning offered in sheknows.com, where "Meres" is translated as "defluxion, imposthume". As indicated on wiktionary.org, the word "defluxion" means "a flowing down, a discharge or flowing down of fluid matter, as from the nose in catarrh"; thus it speaks of someone who has "flowed down" to a lowly, unsightly place of poverty. And, according to wiktionary.org, the word "imposthume" means "an abscess" or "a person suffering from an abscess", which points to the "sores" in the beggar Lazarus that are mentioned in Luke 16:20, thereby certifying the connection to poverty and the "poor villager" Spirit of Philadelphia. As a side note, it is worth noting that the rich man in Luke 16:14-31 has to lift up his eyes (v23) to behold Abraham and Lazarus, meaning that Lazarus had been lifted up to a "lofty" place after his death and the rich man, who was once in an exalted place, was now in a low place.

The high-worth Marsena

Since "Meres" corresponds with the "poor villager" Spirit of Philadelphia, it is safe to conclude that "Marsena" corresponds with the "rich villager" Spirit of Laodicea. This is certified by considering the word "worthy" itself, which denotes something of high value, something that only a rich person can afford. Also, a person is considered "rich" if he or she has a high "net worth". Because a rich person is already rich, he does not need to be "exalted" to a "lofty" position the way a poor person would. Hence, even though both have a rich Laodicean and a poor Philadelphian have a high value, the high worth is evident in one and hidden in the other.

The illustrating Carshena

Notice that the 2 Spirits of God whom we have yet to associate to a name are the 2 Spirits associated with the "female" ministries: the Pastoral Spirit of Thyatira and the Teacherly Spirit of Sardis. The question then becomes, which of the 2 remaining names, Carshena and Tarshish corresponds with which of these 2 Spirits of God.

As mentioned above, the name Carshena is translated as "illustrious" in Strong's Concordance. The word "illustrious" points more towards the teacher endowment than to the pastoral endowment. This is because it is associated with the act of "illustrating" something. As indicated on dictionary.com, one of the meanings of the verb "illustrate" is "to make clear or intelligible, as by examples or analogies; to exemplify", which is what good teachers do, breaking complex material down so that the students can comprehend it more easily. Some could argue that this connection between "illustrious" and the teacher endowment is more of an English language accident than an actual connection, given that "illustrious" actually means "renowned, highly distinguished" (according to dictionary.com). However, this writer believes that this is not a linguistic accident. One reason is that this linguistic connection exists in many languages, meaning that, if it really was an accident, it would have to be an accident in many languages. Another reason is that "illustrious" has the connotation of something that can be "exhibited" or "illustrated" to others because it exhibits propriety and perfection, all of which points to the teacher endowment, since teachers are prone to following protocol and pursuing perfection. A third reason that confirms the connection between "Carshena", "illustrious", and the teacher endowment is the peculiar translation that is given for "Carshena" at sheknows.com: "a lamb, sleeping". Because of its innate tendency to follow procedures, the teacher endowment is by far the most "boring" of all the ministerial endowments, meaning that it is the "sleepiest" and the least "exciting" of all the ministerial endowments; thus, it is no spiritual coincidence that the translators who produced the translation posted on sheknows.com saw a connection between the name "Carshena" and sleepiness. Because of all of the above, this writer believes that it is safe to declare that the name "Carshena" in Esther 1:14 points to the Spirit of Sardis, the Teacherly Spirit of Perfection.

Tarshish the pastor

By a process of elimination, we can conclude that the remaining name in Esther 1:14, "Tarshish" corresponds to the remaining Spirit of God: the Pastoral Spirit of Service, the Spirit of Thyatira. This makes sense if we consider how the literal sons of Tarshish, the Spaniards, have shown themselves to be easily influenced by the Canaanite spirit, which is the spirit that surfaces when the pastoral endowment is corrupted. It is the Canaanite spirit that prompts people to compromise principles in order to please others and forge a false unity, which, as we have shared above, is what the Spaniards did once and again in the Americas. Also, it is rather unlikely to think that Tarshish and the Spaniards would correspond with the teacher endowment (the only other option that remained) since Spaniards have never been known as "great teachers" but have been known for their many priests in the catholic sect (i.e. the equivalent of "pastors" in Christianity).

The 7 Vashti-banning steps

Based on all of the above, we can now expand the previous table with the Spirits of God and ministries that each name corresponds to:

Name	Meaning (Strong's Concordance)	Meaning (sheknows.com)	Spirit of God	Ministry
Carshena	Illustrious	A lamb, sleeping	Sardis (Perfection)	Teacher
Shethar	A star	Putrefied, searching	Pergamos (Head Authority)	Evangelist
Admatha	A testimony to them	A cloud of death, a mortal vapour	Smyrna (Sacrifice)	Prophet
Tarshish	Yellow jasper	Contemplation, examination	Thyatira (Service)	Pastor
Meres	Lofty	Defluxion	Philadelphia (Dreams & Visions)	---
Marsena	Worthy	Bitterness of a bramble	Laodicea (Prosperity)	---
Memucan	Dignified	Impoverished, to prepare, certain, true	Ephesus (Judgements)	Apostle

Notice that the names for the 3 "male" ministry endowments were the most obvious to associate (Shethar, Admatha, and Memucan), followed by the names for 2 "village" Spirits (Meres and Marsena), followed by the names for the 2 "female" ministries (Carshena and Tarshish). This correlates with the context of Esther 1, which deals with judging the insurrection of the female Vashti against the male king, since the names for the "male" ministries are the first that can be discerned and the names for the "female" ministries are the last.

Teaching, dazzling, and sacrificing

However, now that we know what name goes with what Spirit and ministry, what is the message behind the list? In essence, the list details the steps that a Tarshish encounter is supposed to have when it is done in the Spirit. When a superior culture has an encounter with an inferior culture, the first step is the "teaching" stage, one in which those from the superior culture send "illustrious" Carshena teachers (not just ordinary teachers) to acquaint those from the inferior culture with the values and practices from the superior culture, highlighting the benefits and advantages of these new values and practices. This teaching stage is to be accompanied by an evangelising stage in which "star" Shethar evangelists "dazzle" those from the inferior culture with the greatness and authority of the superior culture so as to convince them to have faith in those from the superior culture.

The third stage is one of prophetic sacrifice, one in which "Admatha" prophets sincerely show those from the inferior culture that they are willing to pay a sacrificial price on their behalf and that they are not merely interested in getting selfish benefits from them. It is during this stage that those from the superior culture show themselves as living, prophetic testimonies unto those of the inferior culture that their values are so true that they are willing to pay a death price to uphold those values and see them manifested in those of the inferior culture so that they will be blessed and prospered.

Understanding the why of the encounter

After these 3 teaching, evangelising, and sacrificial stages have progressed for a while, the decisive stage comes to the fore, the "Tarshish" stage in which the superior culture makes it clear to the inferior culture that what is happening is a "Tarshish" encounter of a superior culture with an inferior culture where the morally inferior culture is supposed to be exterminated so that the morally superior culture may flourish.

As we shared above, the name "Tarshish" is translated as "contemplation, examination" at sheknows.com. This is no spiritual coincidence. During this "Tarshish" stage, those from the inferior culture are given the opportunity to contemplate on the teachings from the superior culture, the dazzling achievements and authority of the superior culture, and the sacrifices that those from the new culture may have made on their behalf. This is so that they can examine themselves and judge themselves as living under an inferior culture that is not worth upholding.

The exodus of Philadelphians & their confirmatory success

As it becomes clear to those from the inferior culture that their culture has been sentenced to death by God, those trapped in the inferior culture but who are willing to embrace the Philadelphia Spirit will start to break away from the rest of the group. They will be vilified and driven to poverty and isolation, but God will uphold them and exalt them in due time.

As more and more join the "Meres" Philadelphians, God will begin to visibly prosper them, which will serve as a testimony to those in the inferior culture that it is worthwhile to embrace the superior culture and kill off the inferior one. This is the "Marsena" stage.

As we shared above, "Marsena" is translated as "bitterness of a bramble" at sheknows.com. This seemingly unrelated translation actually has spiritual significance, for it points to the Canaanite bitterness that the "female" souls of those who remain in the inferior culture will have for the prosperity of the Philadelphians who leave them and the prosperity of the superior culture in general, for that prosperity is a constant reminder of their moral inferiority, a constant judgement that embitters their soul more and more until they turn to Korah Marx to "resolve" the inequality brought on by their wilful cultural inferiority. The "bramble" per se points to the "man face" (i.e. the pastor and teacher), which fallen souls always want as "king" (actually, queen) over them (Judges 9:8-15), for that man face allows them to justify their cultural inferiority at the price of their eternal spirit calling.

The annihilating judgement

As the Philadelphians who have escaped from the inferior culture are prospered more and more during the "Marsena" stage, the testimony against the inferior culture becomes complete, and the deep-judgement Memucan stage begins. At the beginning of this stage, God declares these Philadelphians as "spiritually dignified" (as per the meaning of the name "Memucan"). This means that these men and women who have been willing to recognise God's judgement against their former inferior culture are no longer to be considered as inferior human beings. An inferior culture makes people inferior, and this inferiority is by choice, not an inherent inferiority, as Jebusite racists imply when they deem someone "inferior". It is this Jebusite concept of inferiority that causes easily-deceived souls to condemn any righteous declaration of a culture as "inferior", and it also leads them to condemn the valid declaration that those who follow these cultures by choice have made themselves into inferior sub-humans.

As the Memucan stage progresses, those from the superior culture, i.e. those who were originally in it and the brave Philadelphians who broke away from the inferior culture (for they are now one in God's eyes) will begin to declare judgements to eradicate those who chose to continue embracing the inferior culture. This is shown by the fact that Memucan is shown declaring judgements against Vashti in Esther 1 (being the only one of the 7 who is ascribed words in the chapter):

"15 What shall we do unto the queen Vashti according to law, because she hath not performed the commandment of the king Ahasuerus by the chamberlains? 16 And Memucan answered before the king and the princes, Vashti the queen hath not done wrong to the king only, but also to all the princes, and to all the people that are in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus. 17 For this deed of the queen shall come abroad unto all women, so that they shall despise their husbands in their eyes, when it shall be reported, The king Ahasuerus commanded Vashti the queen to be brought in before him, but she came not. 18 Likewise shall the ladies of Persia and Media say this day unto all the king's princes, which have heard of the deed of the queen. Thus shall there arise too much contempt and wrath. 19 If it please the king, let there go a royal commandment from him, and let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes, that it be not altered, That Vashti come no more before king Ahasuerus; and let the king give her royal estate unto another that is better than she. 20 And when the king's decree which he shall make shall be published throughout all his empire, (for it is great,) all the wives shall give to their husbands honour, both to great and small. 21 And the saying pleased the king and the princes; and the king did according to the word of Memucan:" (Esther 1:15-21)

Notice that the gist of Memucan's apostolic word of judgement was related to the spread of Vashti's behaviour. This is why those who defend and promote the inferior culture must be neutralised, for they defy the reality of their inferiority and declare their inferiority as acceptable, swaying those who may be rightly persuaded by the evidence produced by the "Tarshish encounter" with the superior culture. It is no coincidence that the word "culture" is used in many languages to refer to "colonies" of bacteria that tend to grow when left to themselves. If the colony of spiritual bacteria (i.e. the inferior culture) is not annihilated, it is only certain to grow and destroy all the benefits of the encounter with a superior way of life. Vashti refused to accept the reality of the king's higher authority, and she refused the call to encounter the king and thereby rise to the king's higher level. Instead, she chose to stay at her inferior level and became a motivation for others to do the same.

Some could argue that the king's command to Vashti was "demeaning" and was little more than a way for the king to prove how much control he had over her. However, the king's behaviour described in the book of Esther contradicts this. Notice, for example, how verse 21 declares that "the king did according to the word of Memucan", which is almost equivalent to saying "the king obeyed Memucan's decree", meaning that, at that moment, Ahasuerus allowed Memucan to act with kingly authority. As you may know, Ahasuerus did the same thing with Esther (the one who replaced Vashti), giving her the authority to decide the judgement against the enemies of the Jewish people (as if Esther herself were the king). In other words, Ahasuerus was an "elevator" of people, not a "demeaner". When he asked Vashti to humble herself and come up to him, it was to then exalt her. Those who, like Vashti, become offended by those who correctly call their culture "inferior" do not understand that they are not being "put" down. They are already down, and they are being called to rise up to the superior culture that they have been exposed to so that they can be "dignified" ("Memucan") by it. Every Tarshish encounter between cultures will have to deal with these Vashtis, and only those who are willing to follow through with the encounter as per God will be able to nullify these Vashtis and complete the purpose of the encounter: the exaltation of those who were once mired in a lower level of life and the destruction of those who choose to remain in that lower level.

As shown by Esther 1:15-21, it is during the "Memucan" stage that those from the superior culture (which includes those who joined it from the inferior culture) will have their apostolic authority combined with a strong evangelistic authority. In other words, they will be able to declare their judgements and to have those judgements quickly and very visibly converted into evangelistic, kingly decrees that carry out a tangible annihilation of the inferior culture. Without going into much detail, this is the spiritual message behind the feast of Purim, and this is why the name "Tarshish" appears, of all places, in the book of Esther, a book that does not even explicitly mention God by name. This is also why Esther is the only book in Scripture where Tarshish is used to refer to a specific, historical individual and not to a nation in general.

Tarshish amongst foreigners

There are two final notes that we would like to share on Tarshish and its appearance in the book of Esther. One is that Tarshish is the only "recognisable" name from the 7 names listed in Esther 1:14. This emphasises the verse's spiritual connection to encounters between cultures that are unfamiliar with each other. The fact that the other 6 names are inherently difficult to translate and could arguably be translated in different ways (as shown by the translations offered in sheknows.com) illustrates the "translation difficulties" that arise from the Tarshish encounter between unfamiliar encounters, which leads to many potential misinterpretations and misunderstandings that can only be clarified if people are willing to rise above the understanding of the "female" soul and seek the understanding of the "male" spirit. The fact that Tarshish is literally placed in the middle of 6 "foreign" names also highlights how Tarshish is literally thrust in the middle of other cultures when it encounters them in order to effect change in them.

Both weak and strong

Another important thing to note about the appearance of Tarshish in Esther 1:14 is that the first two names on the list, Carshena and Shethar, "coincidentally" point to the "weakest" and the "strongest" ministerial endowments. As we shared above, Carshena points to the teacher endowment, which, as we have shared before, is the weakest of all the ministries in terms of authority and strength, given that it is the most "earthly" and least "supernatural" of all the ministerial endowments. By contrast, the evangelist endowment, which is the endowment that the name "Shethar" points to, is the "strongest" of all the ministries, being the one associated with kingly authority, conquest, and dominion. The fact that the weakest and the strongest endowments appear in the first stages of the Tarshish encounter is to illustrate that the encounter involves the superior culture showing itself as both vulnerable and strong at the same time. This is so that those in the inferior culture cannot complain that they were simply "subjugated" and "taken advantage of", and it is so that they cannot claim that they were not shown the superiority of those whom they encountered. The presence of the "strong" Shethar stage immediately after the "weak" Carshena teacher stage is also so that those from the superior culture do not forget that they are there to take down the inferior culture and not simply "blend in" with it through a "cultural exchange" of (teacherly) traditions.

The two 7s

You may have noticed that Scripture associates Tarshish with 2 different 7-stage processes, the one delineated in 1 Chronicles 7:10 and the one delineated in Esther 1:14. The question then becomes, What is the difference between the two? In short, it can be said that 1 Chronicles 7:10 delineates the mindset that those from the superior culture are to have as they interact with the inferior culture. By contrast, Esther 1:14 delineates concrete actions or steps to take during that interaction. Even so, the stages in both match up exactly, dissimilar as they may seem.

As we saw earlier, the 7 Tarshish stages delineated by the Spirit of God in Esther 1:14 correlate with the 7 Spirits of God and to the 5 ministerial endowments. If you look carefully, you will see that the 7 stages in Esther 1:14 have a perfect 1-1 match with the stages in 1 Chronicles 7:10:

Esther 1:14 name	Mindset	1 Chronicles 7:10 name	Action	Spirit of God	Ministry	Combined meaning
Carshena	Illustrate a new culture	Jeush	Assemble at the valley of decision	Sardis (Perfection)	Teacher	Assemble to teach new ways
Shethar	Dazzle and dominate	Benjamin	Allow justice to set up kingship	Pergamos (Head Authority)	Evangelist	Exercise dominion until unrighteousness is subdued
Admatha	Testify	Ehud	Aim for their unity with God	Smyrna (Sacrifice)	Prophet	Sacrifice and impart the unifying anointing
Tarshish	Help them to contemplate on themselves	Chenaanah	Engage in righteous "cultural commerce"	Thyatira (Service)	Pastor	Exchange, relate, and help them contemplate
Meres	See value in selves and exit the inferior	Zethan	Keep looking for signs of peace with God and wait out the judgement	Philadelphia (Dreams & Visions)	---	Snatch the olive branches and help them to dream
Marsena	See the prosperity of the Philadelphians	Tarshish	Certify that the mission of the encounter is succeeding	Laodicea (Prosperity)	---	Certify the success of the encounter and see the willing prosper
Memucan	Judge the inferior culture to extinction	Ahishahar	Initiate the dawn of a new day for them	Ephesus (Judgements)	Apostle	Release obliterating judgements on the inferior so that a new day may arise

Tarshish and the east wind

After Esther 1:14, the Spirit of God mentions "Tarshish" again in verse 7 of Psalm 48:

"1 A Song and Psalm for the sons of Korah. Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness. 2 Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King. 3 God is known in her palaces for a refuge. 4 For, lo, the kings were assembled, they passed by together. 5 They saw it, and so they marvelled; they were troubled, and hasted away. 6 Fear took hold upon them there, and pain, as of a woman in travail. 7 Thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind. 8 As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God: God will establish it for ever. Selah. 9 We have thought of thy lovingkindness, O God, in the midst of thy temple. 10 According to thy name, O God, so is thy praise unto the ends of the earth: thy right hand is full of righteousness. 11 Let mount Zion rejoice, let the daughters of Judah be glad, because of thy judgments." (Psalm 48:1-11)

Notice that Tarshish is spoken in the context of God breaking his ships, which points to what God did to Jehoshaphat's ships (1 Kings 22:48, 2 Chronicles 20:37) because of his spirit of compromise. When, as the king of the southern kingdom of Judah, Jehoshaphat encountered Ahab, the king of the northern kingdom of Israel, he chose to "work with" him instead of confronting the evil that was growing in the culture of Israel, thereby destroying any usefulness the encounter may have had. Even when Jehoshaphat beheld the troop of Hittite prophets that were surrounding Ahab and what Ahab did to the one righteous prophet Micaiah (2 Chronicles 20), he continued to "work with" Ahab, for which reason God came against Jehoshaphat's "ships of Tarshish" and broke them.

Therefore, when the Spirit of God speaks of breaking the ships of Tarshish in Psalm 48, He is speaking of how He will deal with the incomplete work done by Tarshish because of his disinterest in following through with his calling. As He establishes "Mount Zion", the "city of our God", on Earth through His remnant, the inferior cultures left behind by Tarshish's incomplete work will be broken by the judgements (v11) that were left undone by Tarshish. Notice also that verse 9 speaks of God's "lovingkindness"; the word "lovingkindness" was translated from checed meaning "mercy". Hence, Psalm 48 speaks of harsh judgements that cause "trouble" (v5), "fear" (v6), intense "pain" (v6), and the "breaking" of great projects (v7). This "mixture" of "mercy" and "judgements" is completely incompatible in the mind of the matriarchal believers in the Church, for which reason psalms such as Psalm 48 go in most believers' one eye and out the other. Their selective minds may be quick to catch the word "lovingkindness" in verse 9, but, because their minds have a self-imposed veil on them, all the surrounding words of judgement are filtered out, leaving them with absolutely no understanding of what God wanted to say to them. By contrast, the spirit-centric mind has no need to filter out the judgements around the checed mercy spoken of in verse 9, for it knows that, in God's eyes, justice (i.e. the application of judgements) must come before mercy. The mercy in verse 9 and the refuge in verse 3 are for His remnant, and mercy on His remnant requires judgement on the surrounding matriarchal system, for which reason matriarchal believers never show mercy to the remnant and are instead constant co-participants in the building of ships of Tarshish that God will break when the judgements impeded by the matriarchal hearts are finally released.

The phrase "east wind" in verse 7 above was translated from the Hebrew word qadiym meaning "east" and the word ruwach meaning "wind" or "spirit". The word qadiym appears for the first 3 times in Genesis 41, in verses 6, 23, and 27 to describe what brought on the 7 years of famine in Egypt right before Joseph was set free from prison. This points to the famine-inducing black-horse judgements released by the remnant, and it points to the Cana-wedding "preliminary manifestation" of the green horse that we shared on many years ago. Interestingly enough, qadiym does not appear with the word ruwach , i.e. "wind", in Genesis 41 (even though the KJV translators added it every time in Genesis 41). This is because these preliminary judgements happen during a time when the Spirit (i.e. ruwach) is not yet the manifested king. There is more to discern here, but it is currently beyond this writer's understanding.

It is interesting to note that the words qadiym and ruwach appear together for the first time in Exodus 10:13, which describes how the east wind brought the plague of locusts on Egypt (plague number 8). They then appear together again in Exodus 14:21 to describe the strong east wind that blew all night to part the Reed Sea so that the Israelites could be free. Thus, the "east wind" (qadiym ruwach) speaks of judgements that enable the exodus of the willing Philadelphians from the corrupt, inferior culture being judged. The east wind that brings the locusts initiates the Meres exodus of the first brave Philadelphians, an exodus that begins to make visible God's intended regeneration. The second east wind that opens the Reed Sea enables the mass exodus of the remaining who are willing, a Marsena exodus where those who exit carry a prosperous loot as they depart the inferior culture (Exodus 12:36).

The pampered ones

After Psalm 48:7, the next appearance of the name Tarshish is in verse 10 of Psalm 72:

"7 In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. 8 He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. 9 They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; and his enemies shall lick the dust. 10 The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. 11 Yea, all kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall serve him. 12 For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper." (Psalm 72:7-12)

Notice how the passage above emphasises the humbling of kings before God's remnant, including the kings of Tarshish. The reason why Tarshish is mentioned by name here is to emphasise the amount of stubborn arrogance required by the "Vashti"s to continue defending and taking pride in their inferior cultures, refusing to submit to the superior culture despite all the clear evidence of their own inferiority after their Tarshish encounters. This stubborn arrogance also creeps into Tarshish himself when he refuses to follow through with the Memucan judgements against the inferior culture that they were led to encounter (and confront). Because Tarshish must, like Vashti, deny the evidence before all, they are forced to derive strength from Vashti's pride to continue with their posture of compromise with her.

Notice that the only other kings mentioned by name in the passage above (and all of psalm 72) are the kings of "Sheba" and "Seba". The name "Sheba" is used to refer to 3 different persons in Scripture:

Little is known about Keturah, Abraham's wife after Sarah. However, as indicated on wikipedia.org, it is believed that Keturah's descendants with Abraham are either African or Arabic. On the other hand, Cush is, as we have shared before, the main "father" of black people, and Shem is the son of Noah from whom the Jews and the Arabs emerged. Hence, despite the lack of detailed information on who the 3 Sheba's above refer to today, we can at least conclude with confidence that the name Sheba points to blacks and Arabs and to the qualities in them that creates a strong sense of kinship between the two. As is very evident in America, black people who reject Christ but are still hungry for some sort of "spirituality" gravitate towards the Arab-born muslim religion, feeling very comfortable adopting Arabic names and attire, finding them very compatible with their "blackness".

Whereas Sheba points to both Arabs and blacks, the similar name "Seba" that is also mentioned in Psalm 72:10 points directly to blacks, as shown by the fact that, in the other 3 appearances of "Seba" (as it is written in the original Hebrew text), Seba is referred to as the son of Cush in 2 verses and together with Cush (translated as "Ethiopia") in the other. Thus, the fact that Sheba and Seba are mentioned with Tarshish in Psalm 72 means that Tarshish and those who took the mantle of Tarshish after he dropped it have also failed in their "Tarshish encounters" with the corrupt black and Arab cultures. Anglo-Saxons did expose black people to severe judgement and were able to pluck them away from many destructive influences from the African culture. However, Anglo-Saxons went into Jebusite excesses, which have been used by the enemy to create permanent shame in Anglo-Saxons, leading them to compromise on the final judgement phase that could have ensured the full assimilation of black people into the culture of Japheth, which would have then ensured blacks' long-term prosperity. Instead of distinguishing between Jebusite judgements and righteous judgements and completing their assigned task, Anglo-Saxons now bend over backwards once and again to justify and rationalise the abhorrent behaviour of the descendants of Cush in their midst, always blaming themselves for the disproportionate murder of blacks by other blacks, the exaggerated acceptance of crime and a drug lifestyle in the black culture, as well as the demeaning of women, who are considered in the black culture as objects of animal gratification (dear reader, if you doubt any of this, just listen to the lyrics of the rap "music" that black youth so heartily embrace and claim as a true representative of "blackness").

The same can be said about Anglo-Saxon and European treatment of the Arab culture, and, in particular, the muslim religion (the element of Arab culture that blacks are most attracted to). As an example, consider what George W. Bush said shortly after muslim Arabs had brought down the Twin Towers in New York and massacred 3,000 innocent humans. Even though he was incensed by the evil act, he still went out of his way to immediately emphasise how islam was a "religion of peace" and that 9/11 was nothing more than the actions of a few bad people who were distorting a beautiful religion (as recorded in this government website). Even though it is understandable that, as President, he could not launch an all-out verbal assault against the muslim religion, he had no need to go out of his way to claim something that is so clearly false, as if 9/11 (one in a series of many, many, many deliberate acts of brutal aggression) had never happened. Instead of asking within himself whether there is something about the muslim religion that cultivates so many terrorists and mutilating murderers, and, instead of at least allowing 9/11 to act as a source of shame and self-reflection amongst muslims (and amongst those who observe it from the outside), he effectively placed a pastoral shield over the whole incident and allowed muslims to continue justifying their satanic, murderer-begetting religion, and it allowed non-muslims to continue believing that what their very eyes behold constantly is not really happening. What makes Bush's remarks even sadder is that his sincere but stupid words did nothing to gain him any sympathy from those who viciously hate him. If you asked one of the many, many idiot white liberals that litter the American landscape whether Bush ever went out of his way to emphasise that islam is a "good religion" and a "religion of peace", the overwhelming majority would categorically state that, as an "evil white Christian", Bush could never say such a thing. And, when confronted with the speech, they would retort, "Well, he did not really mean it!!". A similar response would come from most muslims in America and around the world. Therefore, by defending muslims immediately after 9/11, Bush not only did not gain any allies, he effectively prevented millions of muslims meditating about the evil spirits embedded in their religion's foundation, especially the muslims in America who have had a "Tarshish encounter" with the culture of Japheth and would be more prone to admitting that their muslim cultural values were inferior and needed to be judged with severity.

Having said the above, it is worth noting that Psalm 72:10 says that the kings of Tarshish and the kings of Sheba and Seba shall bring presents and offer gifts unto the righteous remnant. This means that a remnant of blacks, Arabs, and muslims shall (belatedly) recognise the inferiority of their cultures and honour the culture of God. It also means that blacks, Arabs, and muslims will have to collectively admit, despite their current stubbornness, that they were wrong in resisting the Memucan judgements against them, and they will have to forcibly submit to the dominion of God's superior culture, a culture that will be established by His remnant on Earth.

Tarshish and the 4 prophets

After Psalm 72, Tarshish appears again in the so-called "major prophet books", appearing in 7 verses of Isaiah, 1 verse of Jeremiah, and 3 verses of Ezekiel. The spiritual message behind the appearance of Tarshish in these 11 "major-prophet" verses goes beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to note here that the sole appearance of Tarshish in Jeremiah (10:9) associates silver with Tarshish, which emphasises the linkage between judgements and a properly executed Tarshish encounter, since, as we have said before, silver points to pure judgements and Jeremiah is the most apostolic, Lion-Faced of the 4 "major prophet" books. It is also interesting to consider that Tarshish is not mentioned in the book of Daniel, which is the "Man-Face book" amongst the 4 books (Isaiah is Ox-Faced and Ezekiel is Eagle-Faced). The reason why Tarshish does not appear in Daniel, the Man-Face book, despite Tarshish's connection to the pastoral endowment (a Man-Face ministry) is beyond this writer's understanding.

The Jonah connection

After the 4 "major prophetic books", Tarshish appears (for the last time) in the following 2 verses in the book of Jonah:

"But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD." (Jonah 1:3)

"And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee, O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil." (Jonah 4:2)

Notice that Tarshish is mentioned yet again in the context of a "cultural encounter". In this case, it was the encounter between the Israelite prophet Jonah and the Assyrian city of Nineveh. God wanted to send Jonah the Israelite to confront the corrupt Assyrian culture in Nineveh and to judge it unto restoration (or destruction, depending on their choice). Jonah did not want to go because, as an Israelite, he despised the Assyrians and did not want them to be restored. His hatred of Assyria was not motivated by a zeal for God's righteousness but rather by soulish parameters of superiority and rivalry. The reference to Joppa in Jonah 1:3 points directly to Simon Peter's experience with Cornelius. As mentioned in Acts 10:5, Peter, a Jew, was in Joppa when God sent for him to speak to the Gentile Cornelius. The name Joppa literally means "beautiful", and it points to the grace that the Jewish people perceived about themselves for being "God's chosen people". This led to a sense of soulish superiority over other people, for which reason Peter's soul was initially reluctant to eat of the "unholy food" on the sheet (Acts 10:9-16), which speaks of his natural inclination to stay away from the "unclean and inferior Gentiles" and their culture.

The fact that Jonah took a ship to Tarshish from Joppa certifies that he had indeed been endowed with a "Tarshish anointing" to go encounter the Ninevites (this is why he felt drawn to Tarshish). However, the fact that he wanted to go to Tarshish (another foreign land) from Joppa (i.e. "beautiful") also points to the fact that he wanted the type of cultural Tarshish encounter where he would remain superior, the type of encounter where he would make enough compromises so as to benefit himself without really effecting transformative change in those he encountered. This is why he fell asleep on the ship. He wanted a pleasant, restful encounter during which he could sleep to his spiritual responsibilities of apostolic judgement and prophetic exhortation.

When God sent the storm against the ship, the sons of Tarshish on it became aware that God was confronting them for not performing the types of cultural encounters that He had equipped them to do. They then realised that they needed to confront the foreigner Jonah who was in their midst. They went down to the sides of the ship to have an encounter with him and question him on what he was doing wrong. If you read Jonah 1:8-9, you will notice that the main question on the mariners' minds when confronting Jonah was, "Where and what people are you from?", meaning that they wanted to examine the foreign culture he was from. This forced Jonah to identify himself as a "Hebrew" and to admit that he was acting in an inferior way and needed to be judged by them in order to complete this "Tarshish encounter" in the proper way. Painful as it was to them, the men of Tarshish agreed to judge Jonah and throw him off the ship, showing no "mercy" on the inferior attitude that he was exhibiting by being on that ship. This is when God replaced the physical, compromised ship of Tarshish with a spiritual, purified ship of Tarshish that had the form of a great fish. This new "ship" then took Jonah on his way towards his appointed "Tarshish encounter" with Nineveh.

The new "ship of Tarshish" that God prepared for Jonah reveals the component that is required to complete a "Tarshish encounter" in the Spirit. As we have shared before, Jonah's fish experience is a figure of green-horse death and 5th-seal Sheol, and Jonah's preaching in Nineveh after emerging from the great fish was done under a resurrection anointing. This illustrates why Spain failed so drastically in completing their Tarshish calling, since they chose to become a nation of cowards and opportunists who would rather sell out than die for the sake of a higher purpose in the lives of others.

A meditation on Jonah's brief message to the Ninevites reveals that it was completely lacking in any sort of diplomacy or compromise. One must remember that, as Jonah engaged in this type of preaching, he was walking as a lone foreigner (from an enemy nation) in the midst of a large, large city that was also one of the most powerful cities in the world at the time. Had Jonah behaved like a Spaniard, he would have quickly turned yellow and modified his message to make it more palatable. Yet, Jonah spoke with boldness, unafraid of the consequences of his judgement-laden words. Jonah would rather have died than avoid confronting the unrighteousness of the Ninevite culture with the necessary level of uncompromising intensity.

A brief meditation on Jonah's message to the Ninevites also reveals that it was laden with what a matriarchal soul would label as "arrogant superiority". Jonah, the "better-than-thou" foreigner, had entered the Ninevites' city to announce that the God of his culture was greater than any of the gods that the Assyrians could muster and would destroy their city. Through his words, Jonah was, as a representative of the Jewish culture, also stating (in their "house") that their culture was corrupt and worthy of annihilation. As we all know, the Ninevites recognised the inferiority of their culture and submitted to the foreign Jewish preacher and his God. Therefore, for a season, the Ninevite culture embraced the values of the God of Israel and was restored. Unfortunately, this repentance did not last for long. A few decades later, Sennacherib, king of Nineveh and the Assyrians, launched an attack against Hezekiah and the kingdom of Judah (when Hezekiah was still righteous), as if to say, "We no longer embrace the God of Jonah; we no longer embrace the God of the Israelites or believe that our culture should submit its values to the values of the Jewish culture or its God." As a result, a few decades later, God sent the Medes against Nineveh, causing such a profound destruction upon it that it was wiped off the face of the Earth, prompting God-hating archaeologists to mock the Bible for its "mythical" claims about the existence of such a powerful ancient city (that is, until God finally allowed them to stumble upon Nineveh in the 19th-century during excavations around the modern-day city of Mosul in Iraq, as indicated on wikipedia.org). Thus, the judgement of destruction declared by Jonah against the corrupt Ninevite culture, a judgement declared during his true "Tarshish encounter" with them, was unavoidably fulfilled.

{God willing, we shall share more on the sons of Javan (and Japheth) in a future posting.}

The sons of Javan - Tarshish