 On Wednesday's video regarding the Sons of Light, we left off with the Greek Empire ruling the land of Israel. The Sons of Light, or the Essenes, formed their sect as a way to rebel against the Greeks. Now, before we move into part two of our story, I would suggest go back and watch part one if you haven't already. I will include a link to part one in the description box below for your convenience. And as always, please remember to hit that subscription button and give us a like. Again, thank you so much to my dear friend Tiffany Monroe for helping us produce this video. A link to Tiffany's contact is also below in the description box. She is a Reiki master. She's an incredible teacher. If you want to get more information on her services or a chance to use her as your healer, then go ahead and shoot her an email. And if you want to join our awesome list of patrons, there's also a link down in the description box that just helps us support this channel so we can bring you more stories. All right, let's get started. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta. My name is Bryce, and today we're going to be covering part two on our story on the Sons of Light. So yes, as we left off on Wednesday, Alexander the Great came in and conquered this area around 330 BC. And then again by 323 BC, Alexander had died without leaving an heir or a successor to this empire. This of course caused about 20 years of war between his generals. Well, of course, the Greek culture and customs had rubbed off on the Jewish people. And then again, of course, the Sons of Light or the Essenes were sect of Jewish people that formed to rebel against the Greeks. However, by 198 BC, one of Alexander's generals' descendants was governing the land. And this empire was a relatively peaceful one. In fact, this empire allowed for people to practice whatever faith they wanted to practice. And so the traditional Jewish faith was restored for a very brief moment in time. Because by 175 BC, Antiochus the Fourth was in power. Antiochus the Fourth was just cruel and wicked and evil and every part the psychopath. Antiochus the Fourth decided that the traditional Jewish rituals and culture would be restricted. He wanted all the Jewish people to convert to a Greek pagan faith. However, in wanting to do this, he didn't go about it peacefully, slowly trying to teach the people about this Greek faith. He implemented it right away. In fact, he had a lot of the Greek gods put into Jewish temples. Of course, this really pissed a lot of people off. Now, many of the Jewish priests or rabbis went along with Antiochus. And in some ways, I don't blame them because Antiochus was a very, very vile and violent man. At some point, people just are trying to survive. For example, at this point, the Jewish people had to start sacrificing animals to the Greek gods in their temples, in the Jewish temples that are now being changed to Greek temples. Of course, many of the citizens protested. Unfortunately, those that protested were put to death. However, around 167 BC, one family led a revolt against the Greeks. These were the Maccabees or Maccabees family. This revolt lasted for about seven years. Massive war broke out all over the land. The father, the leader, the patriarch of this family ended up dying. But it was one of his sons, his son, Judah, that saved the day. Judah was known as the hammer and he came in and he just kicked butt. Well, after the revolt was won by Judah, Judah became the leader of the land. And this brought us into the Hasmonean dynasty. Now, on paper, it looks like the Hasmonean dynasty would have been awesome for the people of Israel. However, the Essenes did not get along with or like the people of this dynasty. Well, after Judah ruled, it then went to his brother, Jonathan, Jonathan Maccabee. And Jonathan did something that wasn't common at that time. When he became the ruler of this area, he also made himself the High Priest. And you know what they say? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Jonathan Maccabee developed the nickname The Wicked Priest. It was around this time too that this dynasty started to take on the characteristics of the Hellenistic dynasty or the Greeks. They even started to change their names to sound more Greek. I mean, these were the people they revolted against. And now they're turning into them. But things would get a lot worse with Alexander. Alexander ruled from 103 to 76 BC and he was extremely brutal. The Pharisees, another sect of the Jewish faith, which we'll get into in a minute, openly opposed Alexander. Now, because they openly opposed Alexander, Alexander had them all crucified. And while they were dying a slow, brutal death, he ate dinner and watched them die for entertainment. A bit like Vlad the Impaler that we spoke about in our vampire episode. Now after Alexander passed away, that's when Herod the Great came in and took over the area. We know from the Bible and from other works that Herod was not a saint. In fact, in the Bible, he is famous for killing all the little babies that were born. But we do know that Herod and the Essenes had a good relationship, as I spoke about in our previous episode, which is quite interesting, since we are now led to believe that the Essenes or the Sons of Light were the original Christians. Now at this time, there were three sects of Judaism. It's just like in the Christian world. We have like Catholics and Protestants and Orthodox. The two sects that are most commonly spoken about in the Bible are the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees, they were people that believed the teachings of the temple could be moved into the home. They also believed in a communal reading of the Torah. I take that to mean they believed anybody could touch or read the Torah. You have to remember at this time in history, in some religions, women weren't allowed to touch the holy books or certain cast of society itself were not allowed to touch the holy books. So it seems like the Pharisees were a little bit more open, a little bit more liberal, with who was allowed to actually read God's word. They also believed in communal prayer. Now the Sadducees, they were different. They were the aristocratic sect of society, your elites, if you will. And they believed that the priest was the only person in a temple who could do things like sacrifice or read the Torah or be like important in their religion. Because the Sadducees were mostly aristocratic, they held a lot of the religious power for the day. Something interesting about the Sadducees too is they didn't believe in like French topics. Like they didn't believe in angels, or the fact that the soul was immortal. They also did not believe in an afterlife. And we possibly believe this was because the Hebrew Bible didn't really speak much about afterlife. That really comes in with the New Testament. Well the third sect of the Jewish faith was, you guessed it, the Essenes. The Essenes were the outcast of the Jewish society. They were in opposition to both the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And in fact, it is believed that John the Baptist was an Essenes. Because we see throughout his story that he's often seen criticizing the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Essenes were very strict in the law of Moses. They really took the Sabbath very seriously, even down to the point that one could not go to the bathroom on the Sabbath. This means that they probably fasted on Friday. In fact, it is believed that the Essenes fasted a lot for their own spiritual growth and practice. The Essenes had very strict hygiene rules. We know from archaeological digs that it appears that each member of the community had their own plate. Again, this was odd back in those times. They were known to take really good care of elderly people. In fact, they would even take in orphans and train orphans to be priests. Now the priests of the Essenes, they remained celibate. They weren't opposed to procreation. But they just felt like if you were a priest, you needed to focus all of your energy on God. Now there were people who were married within the Essenes and had children. And it appears that people that had families that had children, it wasn't the parents that raised the child. It was the whole community that raised the child. It appears that many of the Essenes lived well past the age of 100. We believe this was because of the healthy lifestyle they lived. Again, they kept themselves very, very clean. They kept themselves kind of outside of the community and their own little communal living. It is also rumored that they were vegetarian. So they were very, very aware of what they were eating and the energy they were putting into their bodies. And as I said, they also appear to fast a lot. And if you've studied any type of spiritual practice, fasting is always encouraged. In fact, Jesus fast. They were also mystics. That's right. They practiced divination and they interpreted dreams. And it is written that a lot of the Essenes that prophesized got all of their prophecies right. They allegedly read astrology. They followed the stars. And unlike the Sadducees, they believed that the soul was immortal. As I said, it is believed that John the Baptist was in fact an Essen. And we know Jesus's relationship with John the Baptist. And it is believed that Jesus himself at least lived with the Essenes for a little while, studied under them. Many people believe that it was the Essenes that taught Jesus how to turn water into wine. Yes, Jesus was the Son of God, and he probably could have done that anyway. But we also have to remember that Jesus was born into a human body with a human mind. And with a human mind comes human doubt. And so even though these abilities already lied within Jesus, it was the Essenes that helped him harness his powers. The Essenes were pacifists. They did not believe in even making weapons or anything to have to do with war. Now it's interesting because throughout all of my research, not once did the word cult come up. Even though the Essenes lived in communal living, and even though they raised each other's children, and even though they appeared not to use any type of money, it seems that they didn't have a specific leader. Again, in most cults, there's a leader. The Essenes were all just very much trying to find and follow God. We also know from excavations that there have been jars of money found in the caves. It appears that when a person became an Essen, they would give up all of their worldly possessions. Now, most cults will take those worldly possessions and give them over to the leaders, but not the Essenes. They just stored it in a cave. Every jar seemed to carry each person's worldly possessions, and they didn't seem to be touched by anybody else. The Essenes lived a very disciplined life, and in order for a person to become an Essen, they had to go through an extremely challenging initiation process. Now, I say that the Essenes called themselves the Sons of Light. Well, we see this in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and in a future video, we will start to go through some of those scrolls. Many people believe that the Essenes were very apocalyptic. However, some scholars don't think that's quite accurate because you see a lot of the Jewish sects, regardless of what they thought about a manuscript or a testament, they would save it anyway. They weren't known to censor things like the Christian faith today tends to do. They would take these scrolls and they would keep them in the jars for safekeeping for a future generation. Now, one thing the Sons of Light wrote about was the Sons of Darkness, an opposing group of people that weren't here to do good, but to do evil. A few months ago, Archbishop Vigno wrote an open letter to the President of the United States. In this letter, he spoke about Children of Darkness and Children of Light. Yes, in the Bible, it does also refer to Children of Darkness and Children of Light, but I find it really fascinating that the Dead Sea Scrolls also mention this as well. Now, many people believe the darkness the Essenes were writing about was the coming Jewish war where a lot of them were killed off. However, other people are not so sure. Instead, they might have been writing about a future plan thousands of years away from their own existence. I believe the Essenes were the original Christians. History supports that. They actually knew Jesus, not just like his apostles, but like they lived with him. John the Baptist was one of them. And if you know your Bible, you know that in the Old Testament, in the original Jewish faith, there is a promise of a coming Messiah. Now, the only difference between the Jewish people today and the Christians, besides the fact that the Christian church and faith has been hijacked, but really the only difference is that the Christians believe that the Messiah has come. And the prophecy was fulfilled with Jesus 2,000 years ago. After the Jewish war ended in the first century AD, there were only two sects of Judaism left, the Pharisees and the Christians. The Pharisees are the modern day traditional Jewish faith we see. Yes, I know there's an umbrella of all sorts of different sects of Judaism, just like Christianity, but for generalization, those are the Pharisees. And the Christians today were the Essenes back then, or the sons of light. In my opinion, it makes perfect sense that the Vatican tried to step in and derail this excavation of Qumran, where the Essenes live. They don't want people waking up and knowing the truth of who the original Christians were and that our whole church system is based off of a Canaanite faith called Mithraism, Constantine never adapted to the sons of light. Now, again, in a future video, as we dive deeper into the Dead Sea Scrolls, we will talk more about the Sons of Darkness and this battle between the two of them. I do highly suggest that if you haven't read Fikano's letter, Archbishop Fikano's letter, go ahead and do so because it's very, very poignant of what is written in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And I for one am super excited to see just how mystical and cool the original Christians actually were. Alright guys, thank you so much again for sitting through another video. Again, tomorrow we're going to be releasing a bonus episode with Tiffany Monroe over Reiki and what Reiki really is for all of you who have had questions about that. Thank you again to Josh McKay for doing the music. If you want to purchase the song, there's a link down below. And thank you to Dod for helping me put this video together. Alright guys, I will talk to you soon. I hope you have a wonderful day. Bye.