A Critique of Wesley Swift

A Critique of Wesley Swift, and why we must preserve his work: so first we explain our motives and methods at Christogenea.

I want to give people the opportunity to understand some of the logic behind Christogenea and how it evolved, so I have to sort of start from the beginning. Everything we do is carefully considered, whether we succeed or we fail. I remember telling Clifton Emahiser in a phone conversation, perhaps as early as 2005 or 2006, that one day I would put all of his material on a website of his own. At that time I wanted to call it john844.org. Of course, I was still in prison. There is currently a john844.org website which I created, but I did not use it for the purposes I had originally intended and in its current state it is still not complete. Then a short time later I thought of what I thought was a better term, and, so far as I remember, I kept it to myself.

When I was released from prison in December of 2008, I had a concept for a website for my own writing that I was going to call either Christogenea or Christogenos. I eventually settled on the former because I thought it better resembled its meaning in English, but I still like Christogenos a little more. I continue to retain ownership of both domain names.

I really thought that Christogenea would just be a small blog and a place for my essays and translations, and that I would keep my promise to Clifton. I never had any idea that it would grow into a collection of websites with over 12,000 pages, not counting the forum. I never imagined there would be a forum. By the end of April of 2009, I accomplished those things which I originally set out to do.

But things were moving very quickly. I had begun doing twice-weekly podcasts with Eli James, and quickly expanded those to four times a week, one alone and one with Sword Brethren, as well as a European fellowship forum every other week. So I had a lot of new things that I wanted to share each week, that I never imagined having. I had to rebuild my first websites from old-fashioned static sites into dynamic content management systems, to make it easier to post new material. That was done by September of 2009. In the meantime, I had made a completely new site for Eli James, even if I did not like a lot of his material, such as things like the Why 2012? article which he still has posted.

At that time, I had the understanding that Christians should tolerate one another, even if they don’t necessarily agree with one another. I had already decided that the grounds for Christian fellowship were the recognition of Jesus Christ as God, the acceptance that only people of our White race were within the covenants of God, the rejection of all Jews as evil, and the exclusion of Jews and of all other races from fellowship and communion. If we can agree on those things, then we can disagree on anything else, and we should still be able to get along with one another. So on those grounds, I tolerated Eli James, in spite of his reluctance on some points, and worked with him in spite of whatever we had disagreed on at that time.

In July of 2009 I started a forum, and my forum management philosophy has been based on those same principles, even though many former forum members are butt-hurt because I or others would not accept some of their silly ideas. By then I was beginning to realize, after being isolated for so long, that Christian Identity also attracted every form of disaffected quack, and all sorts of people with underlying agendas, for various reasons which are beyond the scope of this current discussion.

My interest in more recent history, and especially the plight of Germany and how it has suffered over the past few centuries by the treachery of Jewry, began to surface in weekly podcasts with Sword Brethren, and I created the Mein Kampf Project, in September 2009, because the material had to have a home separate from my Bible and ancient history studies. Many supposed Identity Christians, especially in England, began to despise me for that website. Even Eli James admitted behind my back that he hated my “Hitler site”, as he called it.

Then in 2010, I got around to considering a collection of Bertrand Comparet’s work which Clifton had put together, and we decided that it really needed a separate home from Clifton’s own work. So at that time I established the Comparet archive, and the owner of israelect.com, which had digitized tapes of Comparet’s sermons which Clifton provided him, encouraged me to include them in the archive. One of our listeners, a very kind woman in Ohio, posted the documents for us.

Early that same year (or perhaps late in 2009), I obtained a CD containing all of the writings of Wesley Swift which, so far as I know, had been digitized by Ella Rose Mast. Of course, the CD also contained many of her writings as well, which mostly consisted of notes which she took from Swift. The CD came to me through a mutual friend who had spent much time with Lorraine in the last year of her life, and I felt a responsibility to preserve it and make it publicly available on another archive website. Having Lorraine Swift as a friend and correspondent for five years, I know she would have wanted that, and I felt that it was my obligation because I had the ability to do it. So a good friend, a woman in California, volunteered to post the documents, I did the technical work, and the Wesley Swift archive at Christogenea was created the same year as the Comparet archive, in 2010.

Also that year, I made another new website for Eli James, based on the same content management software I was using at Christogenea. Since then, someone else has updated that to his current site. We split in early 2011 because Eli began openly teaching things which violated those grounds for Christian fellowship which have been my philosophy from the beginning. When Eli and I split, in spite of all the drama he caused, I could have pressed a button and deleted his entire, in a single minute. Instead, I quietly handed control of his site over to a mutual friend. I am not a spiteful man, regardless of many ridiculous slanders which are made against me.

With the addition of a half dozen other sites which are hosted at Christogenea, of which I will spare us an explanation here, in 2012 the control of israelect.com fell into my hands, and I possess it to this day. At israelect.com one may find a lot of the work of Swift, Comparet and Emahiser, and even myself, but most of that I now redirect to Christogenea because the user interface is far superior to the old technology.

However at israelect.com there is also much of the work of Sheldon Emry, Jack Mohr, Arnold Kennedy, W. G. Finlay, Roger Hathaway and other Identity writers. All of these men were early Christian Identity teachers of one sort or another. But with all of these men, I have some degree or another of disagreement. I believe that I can point out at least some faults with all of their teachings. Whether it be something really serious, such as the Paul-bashing of W. G. Finlay, or some error that is found much more commonly, such as the lack of a clear understanding of Satan found in some of the work of Sheldon Emry, or the dominion theology which was espoused by most early Identity writers.

To put things in perspective, this month all of the Christogenea websites combined are getting on average nearly 2000 visitors each day. The Swift and Comparet sites combined only get about 10 percent of that traffic, and the forum accounts for another 15 percent. Israelect.com is getting about 500 visitors each day. So I host Christian Identity websites which get about 650 visits each day, but which also have a lot of material that I myself do not entirely agree with. In fact, a small percentage of that material I actually despise.

Right now, I can press a proverbial button, and make everything that I have posted but don’t agree with disappear in just a few minutes. Perhaps someone else may be able to recover some of it and post it elsewhere, and perhaps not. But to me, that would be an abrogation of responsibility, so I could never voluntarily do such a thing. I sincerely feel that these things have come into my possession for a reason, and that since I have the ability to maintain them, there must be a purpose which is greater than my own personal feelings or my own ego.

I say all this tonight, because over the past few years there are people, both friendly and unfriendly, with both good intentions and evil contentions, who ask me why I host a Swift archive, or a Comparet archive, if I do not agree with everything that they taught. There are several reasons why I do this. Firstly, I have been blessed with the friendships, the connections, the material, and the ability. Secondly, I have learned from these men, and even though now I can identify mistakes that they have made, their work is worth preserving for what we have all learned from them. Thirdly, if I did not use the ability I have been blessed with to share what I have learned, and not merely what I think I know, then I am fruitless, because I would only be exalting myself and diminishing the men I have learned from. True Christians should want to exalt their brethren, and not themselves. True Christians should not tear their brethren down simply because they made a mistake, or did not properly understand something. So I endeavor to practice my Christian beliefs, rather than simply give them lip service. And my fourth reason is this: that we as Identity Christians should seek to maintain our history: the record of how we got to where we are. How we became awakened to the wonderful truths of our history and the revelations of Scripture.

So to me, the Swift and Comparet archives, among some of the other things at Christogenea, are an important part of that record, and are also the fulfillment of my own obligations to help edify my brethren and to honor my predecessors, the men that I learned from when I first started down this path. Even where I no longer agree with them. The maintenance of the israelect.com website also falls under that obligation. Yahweh did not put it into my hands in order to destroy it. So not only will I continue to maintain these works, but, Yahweh willing, I also have plans to improve all of them.

And this is where I differ from many of my critics. I do not fear scrutiny, and I am willing to talk about any of my work with anyone else who desires an honest discussion. I am confident that the people that have met me in person all know that, except that one clown that I used to work with who has an agenda that has to be exposed. And many fools still give him a credibility which he does not deserve.

But I do not fear scrutiny, and neither will I fail to scrutinize others. As Paul of Tarsus said in his first epistle to the Thessalonians, as the King James Version has it, “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” Perhaps the meaning is clearer in the Christogenea New Testament, and I will read the prior verse as well: “Do not despise expounding of scripture, but scrutinize all things. Hold fast that which is right.”

This is how we must treat the work of all of our teachers, not to mention our own work as well, So we must seek to preserve the records of where we came from and how we got to where we are, but we must also correct the errors of our teachers and build upon what they have left us. That is how I look at Swift, Comparet, and those others whose works I also endeavor to preserve. And if we have to preserve some things which are bad along with what is good, we can only pray that our own work will help others make the same determinations which we ourselves have made.

My position is one of humility. Can I go through all of Wesley Swift’s work and delete everything that I think might be wrong? Doing so, I myself may make a mistake and delete something that is actually correct. But even if I made no mistakes, I would be destroying that record of our history which I seek to preserve. So what we do instead, is preserve the original and attempt to improve on it in our own work. “Do not despise expounding of scripture, but scrutinize all things. Hold fast that which is right.”

So that is a brief and partial history of the development of Christogenea, most of which is extraneous to my own work. And with this I am going to offer a general criticism of the work of Wesley Swift, because while Swift blazed a trail and left us many good things, he also made many mistakes.

First let me say this, to the best of my knowledge, neither Wesley Swift nor Bertrand Comparet are cited in any of the essays, articles, Bible studies which I have produced, except for where I have criticized them on occasion, or in Comparet’s case, have offered critical presentations of some of his papers. This is not because I despise these men. I have worked closely with Clifton Emahiser for many years, and I do not remember more than a couple of occasions where I have cited him. Rather, this is because I have a different approach to my studies than most other Identity writers. Early on, I decided to lay aside the work of all others, and only read, study and cite original sources in my own work. So I very rarely even cite any Bible commentaries or recently-written histories, and because I want to prove the truth of Christian Identity independently, I do not quote from other Identity writers. While I proofread for Clifton, I only read any of the work of friends such as Mark Downey or Sven Longshanks when I want to publish an article in the Saxon Messenger, because that is all that I honestly have time to read. But this too is a digression.

As Christians, we do not need teachers in the sense that teachers should be our masters and that we should put them on pedestals. It is in that sense that Christ used the Hebrew term of respect for their teachers and He said “But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.” So in like manner, we do not put any man on a pedestal, since no man is above criticism. Those who criticize me most vocally for my critiques of Swift and Comparet are doing that very thing. And as teachers, we do not seek students or subordinates. Rather, we seek fellow-workers and we seek to help our brethren rather than to rule over them. In that sense, Christ had said “Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.”

These are my methods and my motives, as candidly as I can express them, and if I have omitted anything of significance, I apologize for the oversight, but I have omitted nothing by design. So with that understanding here I will offer a general critique of some of the work of Wesley Swift. I do this, because not only do I receive frequent inquiries as to why I preserve Wesley Swift’s work, but also as to whether or not I agree with certain things that Wesley Swift taught. So while Wesley Swift taught many things that I have learned from, and many things that I can agree with, here I will discuss only those things which I cannot agree with.

But first I must make another admission. Before I was released from prison in December of 2008, I was only familiar with Wesley Swift through five years of correspondence with his wife, Lorraine, who first wrote to me after she received my address from another mutual friend, some time in late 1999 or early 2000, and through the three or four dozen booklets of his sermons which I had obtained during those years, either from Lorraine or from others. Since creating the Wesley Swift archive at Christogenea, I have only had time to read a portion of what is posted there, and there are over 1200 pages of material.

But before I begin, let me say this. Wesley Swift did not really give many sermons. Neither was he a proper lecturer. In my opinion, a lecturer should at least give his sources where information not expected to be generally known by his audience is being transmitted. But Wesley Swift very rarely gave his sources. So neither was he a true scholar. What Wesley Swift was, though, is a storyteller, and he did that very well. He was a storyteller not necessarily because the stories were not true, most of them were. But he was a storyteller because he would move on from one element to the next without taking the time to explain how he arrived at many of his conclusions, or from where he got much of his information.

One example is his frequent assertion that Negros were brought to this planet by Satan from some place in outer space, when Satan lost a great spaceship battle in space against the archangel Michael. Here is an example of this aspect of Swift’s story telling, from a sermon called From Horizons Beyond, which he had given on July 3rd, 1960:

Daniel the prophet was told concerning your nation ahead of time [an arguable claim], and he was told that Michael would come in with his fleet [Swift conjectures the part about the fleet]. Do you know when Michael the Prince fought for you the last time? I can give you proof that you were with the Father in the heavens before the world was framed. [We do not believe Swift proves his claims of pre-existence, which are refuted by Scripture.] Because Michael the Prince has not fought for you before on earth. [Daniel 10:13 says otherwise, so Swift is not doing well here.] Then this must have been while you were in the spirit. [Paul says the fleshly comes first, then the spiritual.] But when Lucifer took one third of the planets, and the peoples of the Milky Way and tried to make a tremendous army, using the technology of God which he had been using for years in the heavens, when Lucifer tried then to take over the throne of God, the whole dimensions of the creations of the Universe, then Michael the Prince of heaven, distributed his army and broke the power of Lucifer and most of his broken space craft landed in the earth. [Here Swift is weaving an elaborate tale out of the simple and poetic allegory of the Revelation. The Revelation is true, but Swift’s tale is not true, because he made it all up. How can we teach conjecture in place of Scripture?] And this is where Lucifer has been ever since - right here. [This part is true, depending on how we define “Lucifer”.] This is what upset the ancient civilization in South America. [Conjecture.] This is what upset the nation of Africa and turned it into darkness, for some of the warriors of Lucifer’s fleet were now in earth. [Conjecture.] This is what started Voodooism and the degeneration of the Negroes. [Conjecture.] It is what started the great battles of the Matavaras of history, with the ancient people of India and China. [Conjecture.] And in the panorama of those events, it effected whole continents and they sank beneath the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific. [Absolute conjecture.] The mighty battles in the sky are now a matter of history. [Conjecture.] And the Matavaras of India and the battle of the gods in the sky, and the dragon god of Asia, now come to earth, to try to stop His Kingdom. [Conjecture.] It is all there. And what has transpired in the ancient past is thus told. [Conjecture.]

Aside from his tendency to weave tales, Swift was also a syncretist, which is fully evident here, meaning that he borrowed ideas from many different sources found among the traditions of many different peoples, and he gave them all credibility, attempting to interpret them so that they compliment one another and thereby he wove together tales from sources such as Chinese, Negro and Hindu mythology and presented them as a historical narrative. Swifts narrative is like a cloth woven from diverse threads, which the Scripture and the Laws of Yahweh prohibits.

Almost everything which Wesley Swift said in this paragraph should not be repeated. Rather, it should all be taken with a grain of salt, and less. The Word of Yahweh God in our Bibles tells us not to respect the gods of the heathen. As it says in Exodus chapter 23: “Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images.” When we adopt the myths of the heathen and attempt to incorporate them into our own worldview, how are we not accepting their gods? We can take note of what the heathen believe, and we can even understand why they believe what they do, but we cannot weave their narratives into our own worldview. That is stepping over the barrier into idolatry.

The Vedic literature, which many Identity Christians and especially many Christ-rejecting White Nationalists love to promote, is another example. There are claims that the Vedas are at least three thousand, and perhaps as much as nearly four thousand years old. For that I say “Bullshit”. All of the supposed proof is only conjecture on the part of certain linguists with fanciful imaginations. The oldest written records of the Vedas are not even a thousand years old, and no one can confidently attest to the development of either the language or the literature up until that time. So we have little knowledge of the true origins of the Vedas, and even less knowledge about the circumstances or motivations behind their creation. Therefore, while they certainly may arouse our curiosity, we cannot accept them as any historical or religious authority whatsoever.

Yet Wesley Swift made this error with remarkable consistency. I too could have followed down this path. I also read at least many of the things which Swift had read. But I made a conscious decision to disregard them, because either their provenance and antiquity was unknown, or it was known to be from an uninspired and uncorroborated source. When I say uncorroborated in this context, I mean that there is no firm scriptural support, and no reliable historical or archaeological support. We should accept things only by the mouth of two or three dependable witnesses.

And I say that not only in reference to the Vedas, but also to a lot of Western apocryphal literature (by which I also mean to include Biblical apocryphal literature).

Here is another example, from a Bible Study Question and Answer session of December 9th, 1964 [we will correct a few minor typographical errors].

Along with this is all the comings and goings thru out the universe as we see from the book of Enoch, and from the writings of Paul - millions of people, probably multiple millions, even billions, and these are the offspring of God. Paul was told these are your kinsmen, relatives of yours in the Celestial plains, they may not have a physical body, they may never have a physical body, or they may have a physical body whose wave length has been absorbed by higher acceleration into a Celestial plain capable of residing on any planet, although probably forbidden to enter this one except under specific command. Therefore then the Apostle Paul and Enoch both saw people coming and going, saw great ships, crafts, whole fleets coming and going from the areas where the administration of the kingdom is located. From planet to planet, from one area to another they move. Then there are great areas where there is spheres of command. One particular area of the Pleaides, the largest area of the Pleaides is reserved apparently as an administration center of YAHWEH'S kingdom, where as the family of god has an ancestral family center in the Universe. There exists also a great floating sphere which may be almost symbolic to an asteroid going around Al Cyone in the Pleiades, which is almost as though made out of carbon diamonds. It is so clear that it radiates with beautiful color. It is shimmering with Light because of the very Deity of YAHWEH shining out of it, which makes it sparkle with all colors. It is the most beautiful in color of a mansion in the Universe, and both Enoch and Paul saw it. There is where we get the words;---"OUT of the Ivory Palaces", or "out of the Crystal Palaces", and they talk about the patterns of it. This is so high in this tremendous castle that there are clouds of radiant vapor, effulgent glory, between the roof and the floor. And virtually all had to ascend to even approach this floating throne surrounded with glory, where Christ was reviewing, as the Eternal YAHWEH - messengers of his household from all over the Universe. This particular plane of course was the same plane in which they were coming and going where they traveled in ships. So therefore this would be a third plane, but they were perfectly capable of going from one spot to another and moving from one place to another, and they were coming into to the center from all over the Universe.

There is no evidence that Paul saw any of these things, and I do not know from where Swift has gotten any of this concerning Paul, unless he just made it up. All we have from Paul that is remotely similar to any of this is a short description of a vision in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 where Paul was not even sure of whether what he saw was real, or a vision. And not only that, but Paul was actually speaking of another man, not of himself, and he said that this other man “was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words”. So Swift seems to have invented this entire story about Paul.

Moreover, the Enoch which Swift speaks of here does not seem to be the Enoch known to us from Hebrew or Aramaic sources, but rather seems to be the pseudepigraphal Secrets of Enoch (2 Enoch), which only survives in Slavonic manuscripts that date to no earlier than the 14th century AD, so they are only about 700 years old. There are, however, some older Coptic fragments which have been found recently and are believed to be from an early copy of a short version of 2 Enoch. However even with these, the earliest known copy of the book may have dated anywhere from the 5th to the 14th centuries AD, and their existence hardly proves that it was legitimate.

Furthermore, 2 Enoch does not contain any of the graphic detail which Swift provides here. He just made it all up, taking a few astronomical references from the Old Testament and extrapolating them into a Christian Identity Star Wars that is a product of his own imagination. Fascinating? Yes. True Bible scholarship? No way.

Swift rather consistently taught that negroes had been brought here from some other planet by Satan. The following is from a Bible Study Question and Answer session from May 11th, 1966:

QUESTION:--Will you please explain where the Negro came from? Do we have any evidence that they were pre-Adamic?

ANSWER:--This is an interesting question. And we do have evidence that they are pre-Adamic. In the book of Seth, and as Enoch wrote, he referred to them as the ‘dark skinned people’ having come in with Lucifer in the days of this rebellion on the part of Lucifer….

In this instance Lucifer rebelled, and went out into the Universe, in that area which he controlled, and got axemen and swordsmen. These were Negroes who came out of one part of the Milky Way. Lucifer you see controlled 1/4 of the Universe, under YAHWEH and had been a good cooperating Angel until this rebellion rose up in him. So these were Negroes he gathered up out of the Milky Way and he taught to battle, and they were on his ships in the first recorded battle of this ancient war. Of course Michael was given command of the Hosts of the Most High. These chariots under his command were out of God’s Universe and there was of course lots of room for this battle because of the immensity of hundreds and thousands of trillions of solar systems and stars thru out space….

Now here Swift gets off on an even greater tangent which opens up several other cans of worms, but we will discuss what we see in this text which we have chosen to address. He had actually repeated things very similar to this in several of his Bible Studies and sermons. For instance, in Thou Art A Holy People, a sermon from May 25th, 1965, Swift said:

In the course of the ages, the earth went thru chaos, and thru wars, and troubles and bloodshed. From the Asiatic Kingdoms to the isles of the sea, the mongrelization program continued. This was the time of the Negroes coming to the earth. They came on the ships of Lucifer, and they were the axmen, and the swordsmen from a fallen society, and a fallen generation. The coming of the Negro and the sowing of the Negro into as many as possible of the children on earth has brought the changes among the people on the faces of the earth today. The created people had recognized Lucifer as the Son of the Morning, prior to his fall. He had proclaimed that he was deity, now above all. But he promoted religions that from their very beginnings were idolatry and paganism. And VooDoos the fallen Angel and consort of Lucifer established Voodooism over the Africans and over the Negroes of the sea.

In the Bible, there were no “created people” outside of the Adamic race, so Swift does not do well in making such an assertion. However it can be established from Scripture, with a little historical knowledge, that Negros are indeed among the enemies of Yahweh God. One example is found in Isaiah 43:3. However that does not necessarily mean that Satan brought them here in spaceships.

Ella Rose Mast says of these books which Swift cites that “Dr. Swift had in his library the translation by Dr. Budge of the old books of what is known as 'The Cave of the Treasures'. The British Museum has some of the fragments of these old books. These included the writings of Adam, the Book of Seth, and the Book of 'The Bee' as well as many records and scrolls telling the things YAHWEH had told Adam and Seth.” I am familiar with all of these books, and I read them back around 1998 or 1999, but never bothered to obtain my own copy. While it is unclear exactly what Swift meant by the book he refers to as the “Towers of Enoch”, which seems to refer to either the Secrets of Enoch or the part of the Cave of Treasures which relates to Enoch, he certainly refers to the Cave of Treasures where he mentions the “Book of Seth”.

The Cave of Treasures was one of those many early pseudo-Christian works which were written anonymously and originally attributed to the famous Christian writer, Ephraim the Syrian. However it is esteemed to date no earlier than the 6th century AD, and perhaps was written even later than that. This book and the Book of the Bee were evidently written as Christian apologies by the Jacobites, and Monophysite sect in Syria. Wallis Budge did not discover these books, but only translated them from texts stored in the British Museum. The Cave of Treasures has sections which are said to be identical with parts of another spurious work in Ethiopic known as the Conflict of Adam and Eve. These late books should not be taken seriously by Biblical scholars. There are many statements in these books which are not only patently ridiculous, but are found to be directly contrary to Scripture. Moreover, Swift seems to be confounding elements of the story from the Cave of Treasures with the notes which Wallis Budge supplied from his own translation of another work, a 15th-century Ethiopic book called The Book of the Mysteries of Heaven and Earth. I cannot begin to cover Swift’s errors in quoting these works in a single evening, so I will only provide a link to an online version of The Book of the Cave of Treasures with my notes to this podcast.

These writings, so far as we have seen, do not explicitly inform us that the imagined foot-soldiers of Satan were negroes, although they do mention “the hosts of darkness” and similar epithets that do not necessarily refer to physical characteristics. However it is true, and even well documented, that early Ethiopian Christians portrayed Christ and other good Biblical figures as light-skinned, and Satan and other wicked figures as dark-skinned. But that does not mean that we can write our own Biblical narrative concerning the fall of Satan and the origin of negroes from these late non-Biblical sources.

Aside from the origin of negroes, Wesley Swift also taught a pending event with something that we can only call Planet X. We cannot call it Nibiru, because Zechariah Sitchin’s first novel did not appear until 1976, six years after Swift had died. Here is what Swift said in Stars of God, a sermon of December 2nd, 1966:

I tell you tonight, that cruising thru space is a great measuring symbol. There is involved here, an astronomical measure which soon shall be declared from observatories all over the Universe. They are going to tell you that a great bright star is coming in, that something tremendous is about to take place. You will hear them say, ‘We don’t know what is coming in, but the Light is getting brighter and growing close. It looks as though it is on a collision course with earth.’ But I tell you that this is the STAR OF THE MOST HIGH GOD. Not, my friends, like the sun or the moon. But it is like that Star of illumination like none other than HE, Himself.

However of the return of Christ, Christians are told something quite different in Scripture, that He would come without warning, as a “thief in the night”, and that “this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.” It is therefore quite unlikely that there will be dramatic astronomical events announced on television in the weeks and months preceding the Second Advent. Since we do not know from where Swift could have gotten this information, we will also have to assume that he himself had fabricated it.

Wesley Swift also endorsed the narrative presented by the Jew, Immanuel Velikovsky, in his book Worlds in Collision. Of course, Swift did recognize that Velikovsky was a Jew, and disparaged him for that, but he still accepted the narrative he presented. Here is what Swift said in a Bible Study Question and Answer session from June 24th, 1964, where Swift was making claims concerning an absence of the planet Venus in some supposed records of the Mayans and the ancient Egyptians:

This is the reason why when Velikovsky plagiarized the knowledge of modern astronomy in the 'Worlds in Collision'… this is how he knew that Venus came into our solar system, and he incorporated it into our solar system. This is a good book to read but remember all the time that the Jews stole it… for he is a true blooded Jew, but Donnelly did the original work….

We did not make a long citation because Swift was digressing on a multitude of topics. However Ella Rose Mast also endorsed Velikovsky’s book in some of her later notes. But the Donnelly which Swift referred to here is apparently Ignatius Donnelly, a late 19th century populist politician and Congressman from Minnesota. Donnelly wrote a book which Velikovsky’s own work seems to follow, called Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel. The book was published in 1883. Donnelly had a better-known book called Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. He is remembered today as a pseudo-scientist and pseudo-historian, and considering his opinion on Atlantis alone, we would certainly agree. With a precursory investigation, we did not find any reference to Venus in connection with his writing, so we can only imagine that Swift nevertheless was following Velikovsky more closely than he was following Donnelly. In any event, we esteem that embracing these things represents a lack of good judgment on the part of Wesley Swift.

Swift may have referred to one or more of the apparently Gnostic texts which he called the “Book of Seth”, but here he certainly seems to be referring to the chapters referring to Seth in the Cave of Treasures. He also referred to something he had called the “Star Bible”, by which he also really seems to be referring to some of the writings which were much later attributed to Enoch, most likely to the spurious Secrets of Enoch.

But worst of all, Wesley Swift accepted the Zohar as legitimate Scripure. Perhaps he did this because, like so many other seemingly good-intentioned men, Swift thought that aspects of Freemasonry were good, and had evolved apart from Jewry. In a December 24th, 1961 sermon titled The Star of Destiny Swift said “Masonry of today has two pillars and two words, and they have two significances. And they got those words out of the city of On. For that is where masonry was born. Masonry - the master builders of Yahweh's race, which carried forward his wisdom. Today there has been many changes made in Masonry but that is where it began.” Swift assigned this ancient origin to Freemasonry, something that can not be established historically or Scripturally, and gives it the same origins and history which has always been claimed for it by the Jews, or by those writers who have admitted the Jewish origins of Freeemasonry. [We have discussed this at length in our recent Jews in Europe: the Mask of Freemasonry series, a part of our larger series titles The Protocols of Satan.] However Swift insists that its origin is independent of the Jews, and that Jews only infiltrated and corrupted it. However we have recently seen here, with copious documentation, that the origin of modern Freemasonry is Jewish from the beginning, and that it was founded coincident with an unseemly interest among Christians in the Jewish Kabbalah.

In a June 2nd, 1965 Bible Study, Swift said “There is nothing wrong with the Junior Order of the Blue Lodge in Masonry, but this fellow is not the one to lead it. For instance you spoke of this fellow Pike who wrote "Morals and Dogma". He went out and brought in Hinduism and Buddhism and tried to run it into the Mystery Schools… one of the strong pillars of Israel. And this is the same thing which is wrong with the church today, the same thing that is wrong with Masonry. They let the pagans into Masonry first, and now the church is mixing in paganism, the world, and everything else into the church.” We can point out instances where Swift himself relied on ideas from Hinduism to make some of his own points. In a quite ridiculous line that Swift could only have gotten from the Zohar, he said “Well, Eve fell for this and Cain is the offspring. Then Eve came to Adam and introduced the serpent woman Lilith who happened to be Kali, and the wife of Lucifer. And from Adam and Lilith came most of the people of Kali in India and the people of the Ganges.” (Bible Study, November 15th, 1967)

Swift spoke well of Freemasonry, thinking it had legitimate Christian beginnings, even though we have seen evidence of its Jewish origination which predates the time of the Jacobins. This may be forgiven as ignorance since the foundation of modern Freemasonry has been purposely obfuscated by those responsible for it. But the embrace of the Zohar cannot be forgiven so quickly. It is a tremendous mistake, in our humble opinion.

In an explanation of the results of race-mixing that is actually filled with Jewish reasoning and sophistry, in a June 24th, 1964 Bible Study session Swift had said: “So strict was God in this matter that he said that no one could ever enter in to the social, religious, economic and political order of the Kingdom unless they had been absorbed back by ten whole generations of our breeding. And those families up to the 7th generation who had been contaminated by the attempt to inbreed back a person from this situation could hold no office in any of that time which related to the Sanctuary. This is what the Zohar was so strict about, this is why in the Old Testament that this was made clear in the Hebrew. The center of perception is mutated in getting thru consciousness which does not have the wavelength of receiving it, for this is not the issue, for it does not carry the Holy Seed.” So he uses the Jewish Zohar, a mystical book of the Talmud, as an example of upholding Yahweh’s law. Even worse, he uses Jewish reasoning which implies that the descendants of someone of mixed race could be rehabilitated after 10 generations. Could an 8th generation bastard really hold office in the sanctuary? Certainly not!

From the sermon, Adamic Race Becomes Nations, given on July 31st, 1961: “This Adamic race, the White race, this was known in the ancient Zohar, and in all of the ancient Patriarchal discussions, in the days of Adam and of Seth and of Enoch and of Job. They knew that the Adamic race was the White race.” And this is fine, but we do not need the book of the Jews to tell us the truth.

From the sermon, Ark Of The Covenant - And Its Reappearance, given on February 25th, 1962: “Thus these of our Race took that 'Ark of the Covenant' and they marched around Jericho, and there was more power in... the Box... than out in front of it. The Zohar tells us that as these Israelites marched around that city that Light and Glory emanated from the Box.” And this is nice, but it is all Jewish conjecture.

From the sermon, When Mortal Puts On Immortality, given on June 30th, 1960: “And it becomes essential for this premise that I laid for you which is outlined in the 82nd Psalm. Because the 82nd Psalm conforms to the ancient documents such as the Zohar and they understood this as we have related it to you this afternoon, that ‘God stands in the congregations of the mighty and judges among the gods.’” And there are two major faults here. First, Swift asserted that the Psalm conforms to the Zohar. That would be the position of the Rabbis, that their word is superior to the Word of God in Scripture. That is a fatal lapse on Swift’s part. Second, as the Psalm describes, when God stood in the congregation of the gods (the children of Israel), He was rebuking them for accepting the ungodly! That is what Swift did every time he cited the Zohar as an authority.

From the sermon, Star Of Destiny, given December 24th, 1961: “In fact Job is one of the oldest books in the Bible, although correlated at the time of the other books. However the fact remains that the records of Job are older than the writings of Moses. The ancient Zohar which had the compilations of all the revelations which had been given in all times, to your race, by arch Angels, and by Messengers and by Yahweh himself - and the Zohar refers to the things which Yahweh had told Job and also to the antiquity of the book of Job and it speaks of being long before the records of the early Pentateuch, and as existing long before any of the Pentateuch was written, And it carries forward the story of measures and of wisdom. And for this purpose the book of Job was one of the outstanding books. The book of Zohar also had all the books of Enoch and referred to the writings of Enoch many times.” Now we have already proven that the Book of Job was not written until after the Israelite conquest of Canaan, which is established from its internal context. However I also once took it for granted that Swift was correct in that manner. But he is wrong. And if the Zohar cites all of the spurious writings of Enoch, as well as the legitimate ones, that does not mean that the spurious books of Enoch are legitimate. Rather, it helps to establish that the Zohar is not nearly as early as Wesley Swift imagined.

In a sermon from January 15th, 1962, titled Bible And The Race Of Destiny, Swift said “The Dead Sea Scrolls also contained the books of Enoch and also had within it, the ‘battle of the sons of light and the sons of darkness,’ whose foundations reached back into the history and the foundation of our race. And in the records which were given in the ancient Zohar, which was the quotations of the philosophy and the quotations of every word out of the mouth of God, which were quoted by the Patriarchs and the people of your race. So with this record in mind, we are told what is was.” And there are two great errors here. The first, of course, is the esteem for the Zohar, which only consists of perversions from the mouth of the devils that created it. But in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the War Scroll, as it is called, is only a prayer depicting a hoped-for battle between Judaean patriots of Qumran sect and the Romans, who were called the “empire of the Kittim”. It has nothing at all to do with the Adamic race fighting against the children of the devil. Evidently, Wesley Swift never even read it before he made his comments.

Even by Jewish admission, the Zohar first appeared in Spain in the 13th century, where it was first published by a Jew named Moses de León. The Kabbalah was developed after the publication of the Zohar. This de León character claimed that it was a 2nd century AD rabbi named Shimon bar Yochai who hid in a cave for thirteen years during the wars with Rome, and while studying the Torah and was inspired by the Prophet Elijah to write the Zohar. The Jews also claim that the Kabbalah, a part of the Zohar, was based on oral tradition even older than Shimon bar Yochai. The entire story is pure bullshit, and none of this existed in any writings older than the 13th century, even if large portions are based on scripture or on some earlier Jewish fables.

Wesley Swift made a fatal mistake to accept the Zohar and the writings of the Jews, and Identity Christians can only fix that mistake by acknowledging it. We can more than sufficiently prove our Scriptural positions without these Jewish fables, without all the spurious pseudepigraphal literature, and without the extraneous tales have come out of Ethiopia.

There is one other error of Wesley Swift’s which I would like to discuss this evening, and that is in relation to the account of Barabbas, the figure from the Gospel whom the Jews wanted Pilate to set free rather than Christ.

We read in Luke chapter 23: “18 But the whole multitude cried out saying “Kill Him! And release Barabbas for us!” 19 (Whom was because of a certain sedition which happened in the city, and a murder, cast into prison.)” Matthew states merely that Barabbas was “a notorious prisoner”, and Mark states that he was “bound with those rebels who in the sedition committed a murder.” Likewise, in John chapter 18 merely says “Now Barabbas was a robber.” In every manuscript of Scripture we find these assessments of Barabbas which were made by the apostles, and there is absolutely no reason that we should doubt them.

This is what we said presenting our Luke commentary several years ago, in part: “There was a fascinating story told by Wesley Swift in relation to this Barabbas, which must be addressed here. The story is found under the title of The Blue Tunic Army Of Christ and it is found in most of the archives of Swift's papers, including the one at Christogenea. I do not know if Swift originated the story or not, however I do know this: there is absolutely not one shred of Biblical or historical evidence in support of that story. In the story, Swift claims that Barabbas was the leader of an organized resistance movement which had the blessings of Christ and which served to protect Him, sort of like the National-Socialist Brownshirts of the 1920's…. There is no reason to doubt the Gospel accounts, and there is no indication that Barabbas was anything more than a common robber involved in sedition and murder, none of which Christ had anything to do with. Wesley Swift pointed out many good things concerning Scripture, and for that reason his work is worth preserving. However his many innovations, and additionally his tendency towards syncretism, allow for the propagation of a lot of error if his work is not treated with care.”

Here is what Swift said, in part, about Barabbas:

The Jews said, "His blood be upon us and our children." After all, that is where the blood belongs. That is where the blood of all the righteous slain, of all the prophets of truth from Abel to Zacharias, belonged, as Jesus had declared. And so Pilate thought, "Well now, I know one thing they will not do. Surely they will not ask for the death of this Man, about whom I have heard so many rumors and about whom my wife has told me so much, who has done so much good, who has raised the dead, who has healed the sick, who has proclaimed words of life, and who has not uttered a single word of insurrection. Surely, when I place this information before them, I know what they will do." So he came before them and said, "There is a custom that at the Passover we release unto you a man. Now I happen to have a man named Barabbas. This man is a robber and a thief" (which he might have been to Pilate, but to Israel he was a patriot). Pilate said, "I have this man in jail, and he has raided your caravans and he has taken your goods and stolen from you. Whom would you have me release, Barabbas or Christ?" Of course the mob of Jews said, "Release Barabbas, release Barabbas."

Barabbas was an amazed patriot. Barabbas was the man who was released then, as Christ was led forth to crucifixion. But Barabbas was heartbroken, to think that the Messiah was going to take his place. The strange situation was that Barabbas, upon being loosed, immediately went to the company, and the Essenes were worried lest the Jews would take after Barabbas again, the very moment that Christ was crucified. So Barabbas was hidden by the Essenes, out in the caves, and a man named Rufus was given command of the Blue Tunic Army of Christ.

Now, there is absolutely no historical validity for any of Swift’s account concerning a Blue Tunic Army. Not in Josephus, not in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and certainly not in the Scriptures. And to support his story, Swift took the words of the apostles of Christ concerning Barabbas, that he was a thief and a robber, and he conveniently attributed them to Pontius Pilate! Here, Wesley Swift had created a blatant lie, and a complete fairy tale which is actually contrary to all Scripture. This is inexcusable.

So far as I know, Wesley Swift was never taken into account for any of this. However for me, because I have also followed the man’s teachings, and keep an archive of his work, I have a responsibility to bring all of these things to light. That has been my only purpose here tonight. This is only a beginning, and other things which Swift said may be criticized, but this is a necessary first step, and should hopefully be a lesson to Identity Christians in general, that God does not need our help. His truth stands on its own. As Paul of Tarsus said in chapter 3 of his epistle to the Romans: “Indeed if the truth of Yahweh were increased by my lie for His honor, why then am I still judged as a wrongdoer?”