THE DARK TIME
(CA. 2300 A.D.—CA. 2400’s A.D.)
(A continuation of a lecture by a fictional “history professor” to a class of young adults, sometime in the 32nd century.)
“We ended our last class session as one of the most gruesome and evil episodes in mankind’s history—“The Nationality Wars”—began to run down, leaving those who survived to face an even more terrible scenario. During the period of these “Nationality Wars” (ca. late 2100s A.D. – early 2300s A.D.), another religious group was attacked by the mostly Christian, or pseudo-Christian, survivors or descendants of those who had lived in the Old United States.
“People of the “Moslemist Faith” were hunted down and killed or driven into exile into Old Mamoda. This conflict appears to have begun during the early decades of The Nationality Wars, and may have been precipitated by the violence between the Chin Empire and the New Euro “Inshalists” (a Euro sect of the Moslemists of the Great Northern Continent, or GNC). By the mid point of The Nationality Wars most of the Moslemists of the GNC had escaped into what was known then as The Mamooden Protectorate, taking their faith with them. This religious tradition became the dominant (and only) religious belief allowed in Old Mamooda, and was known as “Mamoodism”, or “The Mamooden Faith” by the early 2500’s A.D.
“Christians, or “The Jesus Sect”, as they were referred to by their persecutors (and as they began to refer to themselves in those years), experienced increasingly fierce opposition and maltreatment during The Nationality Wars (some ancient sources blamed “Christians” for those wars), especially as The Dark Time approached. To their credit, Christians managed to hide, and to save, small numbers of their Negro, or Black, fellow citizens and fellow Jesus Sect members, often at great risk to themselves. We have found no historical evidence that Christians, or their allies, had any sympathy for the persecution of the Moslemists among them at this time, or gave them any aid. This surely must have caused an intensification of the bad feelings—even hatred—that had been building between the two ancient faiths, apparently for centuries.
“Modern historians, including myself, have pinpointed this failure by The Jesus Sect to help their Moslemist fellow citizens escape persecution as the main cause of the intense hatred for all Christians, and later for the hatred directed at the mostly Christian nation of The Republic of Gorga-Caro by the government of the nation of Old Mamooda. We know that Moslemist people despised The Jesus Sect, and that these feelings appear to have been reciprocated against the Moslemists. We also know now, from the oral histories that have been written down by our Jewish citizens, that close to 95% of all members of their faith were captured and killed during these Nationality Wars, and that virtually 100% of those of the Jewish Faith were killed in Old Mamooda.
“It is quite difficult to speak of this time of disease, brutishness, and very short lives, for there are, in actuality, virtually NO surviving records of the existence of humanity for this hundred or so year period known as “The Dark Time”—this century--probably longer--when history vanished, when learning was forbidden, and all records of the past, and all of the accomplishments and beauty of Western and Christian civilization, were deliberately purged from human memory! We of the 32nd century know of this destruction through oral traditions passed down the centuries from our ancestors who lived through the darkness. Today we know not all we have lost, but as a people we do grieve for that which we will never know.
“If ever there could be called a ‘time of darkness’, these years were its epitome. The hatred for, and the destruction of, ALL history and ALL knowledge appears to have begun as early as the 22nd century, when political and pseudo-religious demagogues began to equate knowledge, and educated people, as the root cause of all of the trouble that was being experienced on the Great Northern Continent (GNC). The worse things became, the more intense was the hatred, until a time came when the abhorrence of the past, and of educated people, took on a “life” of its own, and they became demonized by unscrupulous leaders of “the mob of humanity”—THE PURE DEMOCRACY OF TYRANNY—in which the remnants of the children of a once-great civilization had allowed themselves to become ensnared.
“By that time it became too late to turn back! ALL written records of the past were searched out and destroyed as the darkness descended on the continent—ALL computer records were burned and melted. ALL computers, ALL libraries, ALL books, ALL publishing companies, ALL schools and universities—ALL of the old and ancient manuscripts and audio/visual histories—ALL WERE DESTROYED over a few decades. May God forgive us, for EVERYTHING that contained knowledge of the past, including people with any education—any ability to read and write—EVERYTHING was destroyed over this time in an induced collectivist frenzy of hatred. Knowledge, and the people of the past, became the “scapegoats” for this destruction of civilization as it had been painfully built for the previous two millennia, and the death penalty was carried out against all who refused to cooperate in this “sacred duty” of saving what then rudely passed as humanity from the “corruption” and the “vileness” of the past. Even the dead bodies of any people who had been identified as being “educated” or as “educators”, etc. in their lives were disinterred and their bodies desecrated and burned, or their cremated ashes were unceremoniously dumped out of their destroyed urns and fed to farm animals.
“A brave few saved what scraps of history they could, but the risk to their own lives in doing so was so great that virtually all history and knowledge were erased. Thus, the human race succumbed to darkness and “humanity” ceased to exist, being replaced by mindless slaves who looked to whoever was the despot of the day for their subsistence and for what to think. But there were always a few, mostly members of the forbidden Jesus Sect, who refused to bow their knees to the tyrant of the moment, and did what little they could to resist the madness that had destroyed western culture.
“It took only a generation or two of this self-administered insanity for even the rulers, such as they were, to succumb to this hatred of knowledge, and soon even their children and grandchildren were as deliberately dumbed-down as was the slowly growing peasant class. Only a very few willing servants of whoever passed as rulers were allowed a rudimentary knowledge of how to read and write, and it appears that even they were sometimes killed if they offended their momentary ruler in some manner.
“It is to their eternal credit that some members of The Jesus Sect refused to relinquish learning, and some of them spread a bit of knowledge of what had gone before them; and some of them taught their brethren how to read and write, and remember the greatness that had been. But some of them were discovered and exposed as “traitors” to the collective will of their fellows, captured by the brutish beasts and martyred by being stoned to death, or drowned or burned to death. It has come down over time that some members of The Jesus Sect were caught with actual old printed Bibles in their possession. Sadly, it has been passed down in our oral history that their punishment was the worst of all possible cruel deaths, and many were burned alive in their own homes!
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NEXT TIME: We begin an inter-related 12-part story of a small group of Jesus Sect members in their small and decimated village named ANDRIA, as they struggle to survive on the banks of the TOMAK RIVER in the Dark Time; of their determination to worship and love their Savior, Jesus the Messiah at a time when this was forbidden and very dangerous; of their struggles against the political tyranny under which they lived, and their ultimate destiny. (Then we’ll conclude with Part #21 of CIVILIZATION’S INTERREGNUM).
