The Illusion of Sacred Immunity

Joab, Rome, and the Illusion of Sacred Immunity

The death of Joab (2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 1 Chronicles) at the altar is one of Scripture’s most unsettling judgments precisely because it dismantles a lie so many powers come to trust: that closeness to God’s symbols can substitute for submission to God’s justice.

Joab did not stumble into bloodshed. He lived by it.

He murdered Abner under the pretense of reconciliation, avenging a private grievance while exploiting public trust. He later executed Amasa, again under the guise of loyalty to the throne, grasping the beard of peace while driving the blade of ambition. These were not acts of war in the heat of battle; they were calculated killings, committed during peace, against men who posed political; not moral; threats.

Scripture is careful here. It does not describe Joab as ignorant or impulsive. It describes him as effective.

Joab was indispensable. He won David’s wars. He crushed rebellions. He stabilized the kingdom through force. And because the kingdom benefited, Joab learned a dangerous lesson: that success could mute judgment.

David knew Joab’s guilt and delayed reckoning; not because Joab was innocent, but because Joab was useful. Justice was postponed for political stability. The blood remained unresolved.

Joab mistook delay for immunity.

False security formed over time

By the time Solomon ascended the throne, Joab had internalized a theology without words. He had come to believe that the kingdom depended on him, that his past service outweighed his crimes, that judgment could always be deferred to a more convenient time, and that proximity to the sacred would ultimately function as protection.

When Adonijah’s rebellion failed and Solomon consolidated power, Joab sensed the shift. Peace had arrived. And peace is dangerous for men with blood on their hands.

Joab did not flee to exile. He did not flee to repentance.

He fled to the altar.

He grasped the horns not as a penitent, but as a strategist; invoking sanctuary law as a shield against moral reckoning. He appealed not to mercy, but to jurisdiction.

This is crucial.

Joab did not say, “I have sinned.” He said, in effect, “You cannot touch me here.”

He believed the altar could restrain God.

But Scripture responds with devastating clarity:

“Take him from My altar, that he may die.”

The altar was never meant to shield deliberate, unrepentant bloodshed. It was not a loophole. It was a witness.

Joab died not because the altar failed, but because he misunderstood its purpose.

Rome’s crimes: from persecution to sanctification of violence

What Joab enacted personally, Rome would later enact structurally.

Rome’s early record is soaked in blood: crucifixions lining roads, mass executions, enslavement of conquered peoples, public spectacles of death designed to terrorize populations into submission. This violence was not accidental; it was pedagogical. Rome taught obedience through fear.

When Christians emerged, Rome treated them as a destabilizing force. They were executed not primarily for theology, but for refusal; refusal to worship the emperor, refusal to sacralize the state, refusal to blend allegiance.

Thousands were burned, fed to beasts, crucified, or exiled. The blood of the martyrs soaked the empire long before Constantine ever claimed a vision.

But persecution did not end when Christianity rose to power. It inverted.

Once the Church became allied with imperial power, cruelty was no longer an aberration; it became policy. What had once been the faith of martyrs was reorganized into an apparatus of control, and the Roman instinct for domination was not dismantled but absorbed. Will Durant documents this transition with unsettling consistency. He shows that Christianity, once persecuted by the state, gradually adopted the state’s methods, its legal frameworks, and its appetite for coercion. The moral transformation was not sudden, but it was decisive. The Church did not merely inherit Rome’s authority; it inherited Rome’s willingness to use force to preserve it .

Under the Roman papacy, violence was not exercised impulsively but systematically. Councils legislated belief, courts enforced it, and punishment followed deviation. Durant records that heresy came to be treated as a capital crime, not because heretics posed physical danger, but because dissent threatened institutional unity. Torture was authorized as a legitimate means of extracting confession. Execution was justified as a spiritual mercy, the destruction of the body framed as the salvation of the soul. This was not peripheral behavior; it was embedded in ecclesial law and defended by theologians, bishops, and popes.

The Inquisition stands as one of the clearest examples of this cruelty. Durant describes how suspicion alone could ruin lives, how accusations required little evidence, how confessions were coerced under physical torment, and how entire families were destroyed to maintain doctrinal conformity. Property was seized, reputations erased, and executions carried out publicly to instill fear. These acts were not committed in secret shame but in full confidence that they served God. The machinery of terror was baptized, and the altar stood nearby.

Violence against Jewish communities was similarly sanctioned. Durant recounts how expulsions, forced conversions, massacres, and confiscations were repeatedly justified by papal authority. Jews were blamed for social unrest, economic hardship, and theological offense. They were compelled to wear identifying marks, restricted to ghettos, and subjected to periodic slaughter. These actions were not the excesses of mobs alone; they were encouraged, tolerated, or ratified by ecclesial power. Blood was shed not in defiance of the Church, but often with its blessing.

Reformers and rival Christians fared no better. Those who questioned papal authority, challenged doctrine, or appealed directly to Scripture were imprisoned, burned alive, or hunted down. Durant notes that the Church repeatedly chose force over persuasion, punishment over debate. The preservation of authority mattered more than the correction of error. Truth became subordinate to control. Conscience was treated as rebellion.

What makes this record especially damning is that it was not carried out in ignorance. The leaders who authorized these acts knew the teachings of Christ. They knew His refusal of coercion, His rebuke of violence, His submission to unjust power rather than alliance with it. And yet they ruled through fear because fear worked. Order was maintained. Dissent was suppressed. Power endured.

Psalm 94:20–21

“Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with You, which devises evil by law?They gather together against the life of the righteous, and condemn innocent blood.”

Proverbs 24:11–12

“Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, ‘Behold, we did not know this,’ does not He who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not He who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will He not repay man according to his work?”

This is where the parallel with Joab becomes exact, not symbolic. Like Joab, the Roman papacy justified bloodshed by appealing to necessity. Like Joab, it claimed that stability required violence. Like Joab, it believed that past service, institutional continuity, and proximity to sacred authority would outweigh the blood it had spilled. And like Joab, it assumed that the altar would shield it from judgment.

But Scripture does not allow this logic. The altar was never designed to protect those who shed innocent blood in the name of order. It was never intended to excuse cruelty because it was effective. Joab discovered this when he was seized at the altar and executed despite his service to the kingdom. His usefulness did not save him. His proximity did not protect him. His appeal to sacred space did not restrain justice.

Durant’s work makes clear that the Roman Church repeated this error on a vast scale. It accumulated centuries of blood while assuming that divine authority. "Apostolic succession" was claimed as a defense, even though the pope is not an apostle, was not appointed by Christ, and possesses no biblical mandate to exercise apostolic authority. Office was substituted for faithfulness, and lineage was allowed to override obedience, and the supposed preservation of civilization was invoked as a permanent defense against judgment. But history, like Scripture, does not forget blood. It records it. It preserves it. And it eventually demands reckoning.

The cruelty exercised under the Roman papacy cannot be erased by time, ritual, or institutional survival. The altar does not grant immunity. It does not sanctify violence after the fact. It does not absolve power that refuses repentance, or power that offers apologies while carefully avoiding the naming, confession, and full reckoning of the crimes committed. To believe otherwise is to repeat Joab’s fatal mistake: to trust sacred authority as a shield rather than submitting to the judgment it invokes.

The blood was real.The cruelty was deliberate. And the altar does not hide it.

The Messiah murdered, then invoked

The central irony is almost unbearable because it is not accidental; it is structural.

Rome executed Jesus precisely because He threatened order. He refused to sanctify power, refused to flatter authority, refused to moderate truth for stability. His kingdom did not align with imperial logic. His authority did not flow through institutions. His allegiance could not be managed. And so Rome did what Rome always did to unmanageable truth: it destroyed it. This execution did not occur in isolation. It required religious cooperation, legal framing, public spectacle, and moral justification. The state carried out the sentence. Religious authority consented to it. Order was preserved.

Later, Rome venerated the same man it had executed, but it did so without abandoning the instincts that required His death in the first place. The crucified Messiah was elevated symbolically while His way of being in the world was systematically neutralized. What was embraced was not Christ as He was, but Christ as He could be managed.

The cross, which originally stood as a public exposure of unjust power, was transformed into an emblem of authority. What had once indicted empire was absorbed into it. The victim became a banner under which power marched. The image of suffering was retained, but the demand it made upon those who wield power was removed. The methods that crucified Him; coercion, threat, force, and legal domination; remained intact, now draped in sacred language.

Obedience was replaced with representation. Statues stood where submission should have been. Ritual replaced repentance because ritual could be regulated, while repentance could not. Sacred time was altered to align with imperial convenience, not divine command. Commandments were reinterpreted to accommodate continuity rather than faithfulness. What Christ required of His followers was gradually subordinated to what empire required of religion.

Christ was honored ceremonially while His ethic was rendered institutionally harmless. His refusal to coerce was replaced with enforced conformity. His insistence on truth was replaced with managed doctrine. His warnings of judgment were redirected away from power and toward the powerless. The very teachings that had placed Him at odds with empire were preserved in text while being denied in practice.

This is not mere hypocrisy, which would imply inconsistency or weakness. It is theological inversion. It is the reversal of meaning itself. What was meant to judge power was used to protect it. What was meant to free conscience was used to bind it. What was meant to expose violence was used to justify it.

To murder the Messiah as a threat to order and then invoke His name as a guarantee of immunity is not misunderstanding; it is presumption of the highest order. It assumes that Christ’s authority can be detached from His character, that His name can be wielded without submission to His judgment, and that His sacrifice absolves those who replicate the very logic that put Him on the cross.

The result is a faith that venerates Christ while remaining structurally opposed to Him, a religion that speaks His name fluently while continuing to act in the manner of those who condemned Him.

And Scripture offers no indication that such a contradiction escapes judgment.

History does not forget blood simply because institutions endure.

Scripture insists that blood has memory.

“The blood of your brother cries out to Me from the ground.”

That cry does not decay. It accumulates.

Joab assumed time would dull the accusation.Rome assumed centuries would sanctify it.

But God’s judgments often arrive not during instability, but during consolidation; when peace exposes unresolved guilt.

Joab fell when Solomon’s reign stabilized. Empires fall when moral debt matures.

The longer judgment is delayed, the heavier it becomes.

The altar stands as one of Scripture’s most misunderstood symbols.

It is not a hiding place for the powerful. It is not an insurance policy for institutions. It is not a mechanism for evading consequence.

It is a place where truth is brought into God’s presence.

Joab approached it without truth. Rome clings to it without repentance.

The altar does not shield blood. It reveals it.

Evidence, Judgment, and the Fear of Awakening

Empires do not fear disbelief as much as they fear recognition.

Throughout history, power has tolerated skepticism, debate, even mockery; but it has consistently resisted moments when judgment becomes concrete, visible, and undeniable. When divine accountability moves from abstraction to evidence, authority trembles.

This is why the question of Sodom and Gomorrah still unsettles.

Sulfur at Sodom: judgment with residue

The biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah is not merely moral; it is geological.

Scripture describes fire and brimstone falling from heaven; sulfur igniting cities in an event so complete that the land itself became a testimony. What is striking is not the narrative alone, but the claim that physical remnants of that judgment remain embedded in the earth.

Sulfur nodules; chemically pure, unlike surrounding formations; have been reported at sites identified by many researchers as the biblical cities. Sulfur does not naturally occur in that form on the surface. It requires conditions of extreme heat and rapid ignition.

For those who accept Scripture, this aligns seamlessly. For those who reject it, this creates discomfort.

Because if judgment leaves residue, then history is not sealed. And if history is not sealed, then neither is accountability.

Ron Wyatt and the problem of forbidden discovery

Ron Wyatt did not emerge from the academic world, and that fact alone shaped everything that followed. He was not trained by universities, did not publish through sanctioned archaeological institutions, and was never welcomed into the professional guilds that determine which discoveries are worthy of serious consideration. By profession, he was a nurse anesthetist. By conviction, he was a biblical literalist who believed that Scripture described real events that occurred in real places and that those places could still bear physical witness to what God had done.

Wyatt claimed to have identified multiple biblical sites, including locations associated with Sodom and Gomorrah. He pointed to sulfur deposits, burn layers, and geographic features that he believed aligned with the Genesis account of judgment by fire and brimstone. Whether one accepts his conclusions or not, what followed is revealing. The response to Wyatt was not primarily an engagement with the evidence itself. It was not a sustained refutation based on competing data or alternative explanations. Instead, it was a dismissal rooted in identity.

Wyatt was labeled a Seventh-day Adventist, and that label effectively became the argument against him.

Seventh-day Adventism is a Christian tradition that emphasizes strict adherence to Scripture, including observance of the seventh-day Sabbath, a literal reading of biblical history, and a strong emphasis on divine judgment, moral accountability, and end-time reckoning. Historically, Adventists have been deeply suspicious of Christianity when it aligns itself with political power, viewing such alliances as spiritually corrupting and dangerous. Their theology consistently warns against religious systems that merge with empire, especially when those systems claim divine authority while exercising coercive control.

Whether one agrees with Adventist theology or not is beside the point. What matters is that this framework directly challenges institutional Christianity’s long-standing relationship with state power. It questions inherited authority, resists imperial continuity, and insists that judgment applies to institutions as much as individuals.

By labeling Wyatt an Adventist, two things were accomplished simultaneously. First, his claims were reframed as sectarian rather than evidentiary. The focus shifted from what was found to who was making the claim. Second, institutions were granted permission to avoid examining the data at all. Once categorized, the material no longer required engagement. It could be dismissed without investigation.

The message was never stated outright, but it was clear: this does not need to be examined; it can be managed by classification.

This is not a new strategy. Joab was not confronted while he was useful; he was dealt with only when stability demanded reckoning. Rome, likewise, has never felt compelled to refute threats it can marginalize. Power prefers containment over confrontation, dismissal over exposure.

This leads to a deeper question: why would evidence of biblical judgment be so threatening?

Empires survive not by eliminating belief, but by regulating it. They can tolerate symbolic religion, ceremonial devotion, and abstract moral language. These can be integrated, supervised, and neutralized. What they cannot tolerate is immediate accountability; especially accountability that does not require institutional permission.

If judgment were visible in the soil, if divine wrath were not merely preached but physically demonstrable, then interpretive control would be weakened. People would no longer depend entirely on institutions to tell them what Scripture means. They would see that God has acted decisively in history, that judgment is not theoretical, and that consequences are not endlessly deferred.

And once that realization takes hold, power loses its greatest advantage: the ability to position itself as mediator, protector, and interpreter of divine reality.

Empires do not fear faith.They fear evidence that faith has teeth.

Labels are not neutral descriptors when they are assigned by powerful institutions; they are instruments of control. Institutions use labels to define the boundaries of legitimacy, not to clarify truth but to regulate attention. Once a person or claim is labeled, it no longer has to be answered on its own terms. The label does the work that evidence would otherwise be required to do.

This is especially true when the label signals deviation from institutional authority. Words like sectarian, fringe, fundamentalist, or Adventist function as warnings rather than explanations. They tell the audience how to feel before they have examined anything for themselves. The label quietly instructs the listener that engagement is unnecessary, that curiosity would be naïve, and that dismissal is prudent.

Powerful institutions rely on this mechanism because direct refutation is risky. Evidence can be debated, but debate invites scrutiny. Scrutiny invites independent judgment. Labels short-circuit that process. They collapse complex claims into identity categories and shift the discussion from what is being shown to who is doing the showing. Once identity replaces evidence, the institution retains control without having to expose itself to challenge.

This is why labels are often applied most aggressively when claims touch nerve centers of authority; judgment, legitimacy, origins, and accountability. Evidence that merely adds detail can be absorbed. Evidence that threatens narrative control must be contained. Categorization becomes containment.

In the case of Ron Wyatt, the label did not simply describe his beliefs; it neutralized his claims. It framed his work as the product of a religious subculture rather than as material requiring examination. The institution did not need to prove him wrong; it only needed to ensure he was not taken seriously.

This pattern is consistent across history. Those who expose uncomfortable truths are rarely answered first; they are named first. Only when naming fails does confrontation follow. Joab was tolerated until his bloodshed could no longer be ignored. Empires prefer marginalization to reckoning because reckoning redistributes authority.

Labels preserve hierarchy. They protect continuity. They keep judgment abstract and distant.

And that is precisely why evidence of judgment; physical, historical, and visible; is so destabilizing. It speaks for itself.

Because then the question is no longer:

“What does the institution say God is like?”

But:

“What has God already done?”

And that question terrifies empire.

Babylon 2.0 and the suppression of immediacy

Babylon has always survived by distance. Not distance of geography, but distance of consequence. Distance between sin and its cost. Distance between bloodshed and judgment. Distance between God and the people who claim His name. As long as that distance can be maintained, power remains stable. Guilt can be managed. Authority can continue uninterrupted.

This pattern has never required the denial of God. Babylon does not need atheism. It only needs God to remain abstract, deferred, safely theological rather than immediate. A God who judges eventually but never decisively. A God whose wrath is always symbolic, whose warnings are always postponed, whose justice is always mediated through institutions that promise protection rather than repentance.

Modern empire; Babylon in its present form; understands this well. God may be spoken of freely, invoked ceremonially, even honored publicly, so long as He remains theoretical. Judgment postponed indefinitely becomes irrelevant to daily life. Judgment reduced to metaphor becomes manageable. Judgment buried under credentials, committees, and sanctioned expertise becomes ignorable. When accountability is endlessly delayed, power feels secure.

But physical evidence disrupts that distance.

Sulfur embedded in the ground is not a metaphor. It does not require interpretation to exist. It does not depend on credentials to burn. An altar stained with blood is not symbolic. It does not become clean through time, ritual, or explanation. These things collapse distance. They force judgment out of abstraction and into history.

This is why Joab remains central.

Joab believed judgment could always be delayed until it no longer mattered. He mistook patience for permission. He interpreted God’s restraint as approval. Years passed, victories accumulated, and consequences did not come. From this he concluded that they would not come at all. When danger finally approached, he did not repent; he calculated. He assumed the altar could mediate consequence, that sacred proximity could restrain justice.

Empire thinks the same way.

As long as judgment remains theoretical, institutions can position themselves as safe intermediaries. As long as Scripture remains purely textual and history remains interpretive, power retains control. But if evidence of biblical judgment were undeniable; if Sodom were not merely a story but a site, if divine wrath were not only proclaimed but visible; then Joab’s error would no longer belong to one man. It would be exposed as a universal lie.

People would realize that sacred systems do not cancel divine reckoning. That altars do not protect unrepentant power. That continuity does not erase blood. And once that realization takes hold, empire loses its greatest defense: the illusion of immunity.

This brings us to the deeper question, which has never been primarily about Ron Wyatt, nor sulfur, nor archaeology. Those are only the surface tensions. Beneath them lies fear.

Would empire lose power if people believed judgment was real?

History suggests that it would.

When people believe God acts decisively in history, they stop mistaking institutions for refuge. They stop confusing sacred authority with safety. They stop clinging to altars for protection and begin seeking repentance instead. They no longer assume that power speaks for God simply because it has endured.

Joab did not fear God’s justice until peace arrived and reckoning became possible. Empire does not fear judgment until evidence threatens abstraction and collapses distance.

Whether one accepts Ron Wyatt’s claims or not, the reaction to them remains revealing. Not everything that is dismissed is false. Some things are dismissed because they are destabilizing. Some claims are dangerous not because they lack evidence, but because they threaten the structures that rely on uncertainty and delay.

The altar still stands.The ground still remembers.

And judgment; contrary to empire’s hope; is not imaginary, endlessly postponed, or safely symbolic. It leaves residue. It marks history. It surfaces when distance fails.

And residue has a way of resurfacing.

For those who struggle with questions of faith and history, evidence that invites investigation can serve as a threshold; not for blind belief, but for sober consideration.

Below is a video that presents what some claim to be physical evidence of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the sulfur described in Genesis 19: the “fire and brimstone” raining down on those cities. Regardless of one’s opinion about the conclusions, this footage brings the biblical narrative into the realm of observable phenomenon rather than abstract text.

God's Final Judgement

Repent and believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ

https://youtu.be/PIpvIVLQ2Dk?si=GXc6c96KCQzJ4MSN