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Following Elijah's triumph at Mount Carmel, he is forced to flee Jezebel's wrath. He escapes to Mount Horeb (i.e. Mount Sinai) the scene of Moses' revelations. And here, on the mountain where the greatest revelation of all was enacted, Elijah in the grip of depression, fear, and disappointment seeks his God as had Moses had centuries before. But the scenario is entirely different. Elijah receives a frosty reception. Yahweh's first words to Elijah are "What doest thou here, Elijah?" or "What are you doing here" or more accurately, "What business do you have here?" Elijah asks to be released from his travails by being allowed to die. Yahweh then "passes" him accompanied by three phenomena: a crag-shattering wind followed by an earthquake, then a fire.

Curiously the description of each of these phenomena is qualified with the notation: "Yahweh was not in it." which are all followed by the statement: "a still small voice" or more properly, "a sound of thin hush" (1 Kings 19:12). The meaning of this statement is clear: it describes the sound of silence. Following these phenomena Yahweh again asks Elijah: "What doest thou here, Elijah?" ("What are you doing here?") To which the prophet again repeats his words as before and asks to die. Yahweh then moves the conversation onto other matters and instructs Elijah to appoint two new kings and a prophetic successor for himself, the prophet Elisha (19:15-16).

The conversation here is significant for it is the last time in the Hebrew Bible's narrative that the text reads "And the Lord said" ("And Yahweh said") for apparently Yahweh refused to directly communicate with anything or anyone after this time. Another significant critical point is encountered in the Elijah story. It is the last appearance of an angel in the Hebrew Bible (2 Kings 1:3, 15). For, the few accounts remaining of angelic hosts, in the narrative left in the Hebrew Bible until the arrival of Christ in the flesh, do not specify their manifestation or suggest that they can seen by anyone. (2 Kings 1:3, 15; 19:35).

The Elijah story, and that of his successor, Elisha, is a watershed for miraculous interventions in worldly affairs. They represent the consolidation of the personal and private miracle in the Hebrew narrative with the concomitant demise of the great public miracle that was the forte of Yahweh. By "public" we mean a miracle witnessed by all of the people of Israel, or at least a substantial proportion of the people, and which affects the historical process by its happening. By "personal" miracles we mean by which an individual employs miraculous powers to affect his own fate or that of small group of people. Moreover, the Elijah and Elisha stories are a juxtaposition of two scenes of very different character, but which are equivalent signifiers of the same phenomenon.

The event at Mount Carmel was the last great public display of the miraculous confirmation of Yahweh's presence on Earth, which was closely followed by the refusal of Yahweh to appear at Mount Horeb. Henceforth, the era of theophany (a visible, but not necessarily material, manifestation of a deity to a human person) was closed and a new mode of divine revelation was begun. The personal histories of Elijah and Elisha are indicative of the changing relationship between the Israelites and their God, Yahweh. The personal miracles of Elijah and Elisha are witnessed by relatively few people by contrast to previous miracles in the Bible and, more importantly, serve fewer people's interest. And then even these personal miracles cease.

The story of Isaiah that takes place about a century after Elijah contains the last miracle in the Old Testament narrative. In this story, Isaiah makes a prophecy but the king, Hezekiah, demands proof of Isaiah's powers. This is forthcoming when the prophet makes a shadow move against logical exceptions and "brought the shadow ten degrees backward" (2 Kings 20:8-11). After this no more miracles occur in the narrative. Furthermore, in the account of Isaiah and Hezekiah, there also occurs the last report in the Hebrew Bible of an angel acting on Earth. In this episode, an angle of Yahweh "smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses" (2 Kings 19:35). After this event angels only appear to humans in dreams or visions and not as active agents in the historical process. Thus, with still over two centuries of the story still to go, the wonders of Yahweh cease.

There are no more burning bushes, no fires in the sky, no more miracles, public or private, no more angels, seen or unseen, and, importantly, no more "And Yahweh said..." What is left is the Temple in Jerusalem holding the Ark of the Covenant, which, by this time, is the only conduit to Yahweh remaining for the Israelites. Then even this visible sign to Yahweh is destroyed in a fire during the Babylonian invasion of Israel when Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, a servant of Nebuchadnezzar (c.630-562 BC), king of Babylon, "burnt the house of the Lord" (2 Kings 25:9). And with the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians, the last visible sign of Yahweh's presence on Earth is erased.

Some commentators would argue that the Story of Daniel in his captivity in Babylon invalidates this scenario. That his testimony, after the account of Isaiah, contains miracles and thus dissolves the concrete theory of the disappearance of Yahweh and the disappearance of His miraculous interventions in the historical process. This is not so. The Book of Daniel is an enigmatic text that does contain miracles. But, these are very personal miracles and the Israelites en masse do not witness them. His survival in the lions' den, (Dan. 6) and the fingers writing on the wall a message of doom for the Babylonians (Dan. 5:5) are both miraculous, yet the only witness to them are Daniel and a few others. These miracles and the enigmatic visions he receives did not affect the history of Israel or of the world at the time, for their relevance is to a different time and place.

The prophetic content of the Book of Daniel pertains to today rather than to the Babylonian Exile period in which the narrative of the book is set. The Book of Daniel was written in a pivotal period in Judaean history, when Greek culture threatened to overwhelm Judaean culture, encouraged by the Seleucid King Antiochus Epiphanes and a sect of apostate Judaeans, the Sadducees. and other Judaeans who remained loyal to Yahweh were persecuted to the point of martyrdom and Yahwehism, the Cult of Yahweh, faced extermination. And, in one sense, the author of Daniel sought to encourage faith and perseverance among his backsliding people during that difficult era. And the character of Daniel, who endured similar tests of faith in Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian court, was a powerful poetic device in this moralising effort. Daniel faced difficult moral and religious questions, and was even threatened with death, but never flinched in the eyes of God. And, in recompense for his faith, Daniel was told to "go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days." (Dan. 12:13). The book of Daniel, like Revelation, stands out as peculiarly significant by virtue of its symbolism and prophetic content pertaining to today rather than to the period in which it was written.

The remaining books in the canon of the Hebrew Bible, dealing with the times immediately after those described in Daniel, have a distinctly different character than the preceding books. They are devoid of Yahweh's actual presence, revelations and miracles and the language used by the authors reflect this. Terms such as "Yahweh said," "in the spirit of Yahweh," "God appeared," are never used, not because alternatives of equal power are employed, nor is it a case of idiosyncrasy, terminology, metaphor or style. The books are simply different. For, they reflect the changing status of the divine-human balance but especially the fact that Yahweh had begun to remove Himself from the affairs of men. These books feel different because they are different. These later books do not convey the sense of awe and mystery, the power and the glory that their antecedents felt in their dealings with their god Yahweh and which they put unequivocally in their writings. The books dealing with the times immediately after those described in Daniel are quite mundane and describe a world absent of Yahweh's active presence: a post-revelation world in which the intimate divine presence has dissolved into nothingness.

In these late additions to the canon, no snakes talk, no sea splits and no one, literally, wrestles with the Creator. The overt markers of Yahweh's active participation in the affairs of the Israelites that is ever present in the Torah are wholly absent in these later works dealing with the return of the Exiles to Jerusalem. The widespread knowledge and empirical understanding of Yahweh at the beginning of the Hebrew Bible has become at its end a hidden thing that has thus become a matter of personal belief and hope. The authors of the texts never intimate that Yahweh has ceased to exist or ceased to care for the world, but that now, in their time, He has removed Himself out of mundane affairs and His works are now veiled from visible history. Yahweh may be discerned in the natural processes and wonders of Nature, present but undetected therein, but description of the manifest presence of Yahweh, as describe so frequently and emphatically in the earlier books, are wholly absent here, in these late additions to the canon. Thus, terms that describe Yahweh's active presence and participation in human affairs cease to be used by this point in the story.

The king of Persia, Cyrus, the great Sun-initiate, releases the Jews from their Babylonian captivity and they return to Jerusalem and build the second Temple there. However, this second Temple contains no Tabernacle, no ark, no tablet and no Nehushtan (the copper serpent Moses had made in the wilderness and to which the children of Israel burnt incense) and even on its dedication day, no glory and cloud appear to sanctify its use. The return is given in the books Ezra and Nehemiah but here the authors never employ the language of their ancestors in describing their people's relationship with Yahweh, because they cannot due to the changing nature of this relationship. There are no miracles, no divine manifestations, no angels and Yahweh is never said to have spoken to anyone. This absence of Yahweh in everyday affairs is made clear in the book of Esther, dealing with the same time period, in which Yahweh, or God, is not mentioned once. There is only one allusion to Yahweh in this book, in an enigmatic remark made by Mordecai to Esther. Here Esther is warned by the hero to warn her people of impending doom but she is afraid to do so, but Mordecai says:

"For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14).

"Who knoweth", "who knows", "from another place" are uncertainties voiced by the protagonist as to Yahweh's active presence and willingness to intervene on the part of the Jews at this sensitive time. This state of affairs is in direct contrast to a similar event in Genesis when Joseph was similarly asked to intercede for his people and thereby compromising his high social status he had earned with the Egyptians. In this story Joseph's brother who had wronged him out of jealousy now feared him for the power he possessed in Egypt. However, Joseph assures them that their wrong was part of the Divine Plan to enable him to gain the position whereby he could save them all. Thus the tenor of Joseph's words at this analogous time is so different than the ambiguity used by Mordecai:

"Fear not: for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive" (Gen. 50:19-20).

Joseph gained his position of prominence within Egypt due to miraculous intervention, he knows this, and thus speaks with complete knowledge of divine involvement not only in his own destiny but that of his people's destiny, as well. Esther gained her position using the most ancient of female skills and has slept with Xerxes (519-465 BC), King of Persia, who loves her most out of all his concubines (Esther 2:1-17). The author of Esther never intimates that this personal relationship between the heroine and Xerxes is part of a Divine Plan and neither is Mordecai truly emphatic on the point.

The Hebrew Bible is a product of many authors. This is the view of both tradition and modern critical scholarship, and the themes that run through so many stories, so many books, by so many authors, over so many centuries are many and striking in their continuity and sublime manifestation. That is, its Holy union. The leitmotifs of biblical narrative are impressive indeed and are the subject of much reverence and debate. Yet the indisputable fact that is rarely discussed is the diminishing presence of Yahweh across the entire spectrum of stories in the Hebrew Bible. Some prescient minds have commented upon the difference between the God of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament: that the God of the Israelites is very different from the God of the New Testament that they are, in effect, chalk and cheese. That the wrathful, vengeful angry God of the Israelites is not the same God in the New Testament, the forgiving, humble, redemptive God who claims to represent all of humanity. In short, the God of the Old Testament who chose the Israelites as His people is not the God of the New Testament who claims to be the Representative of humanity in its entirety. This is, of course, the case. For, the God of Genesis is Yahweh and the God of the New Testament is Christ.

Yahweh is the God who chaperoned the Jews for a very definite purpose, and thus, their claim to be a "God's Chosen People" is correct. It is a historical fact that served an occult purpose but this special preferment is at an end: it has been for two thousand years yet the Jew does not know this. Its purpose was to protect the tribe of Judah from spiritual and racial contamination so that they would eventually produce the most perfect human vessel for the Incarnation of Christ, which they did with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Yahweh shepherded the Jews through antiquity keeping them away, as much as possible, from the Luciferic Impulse that raged across the land and which manifested in the plethora of pagan religions which so horrified the Prophets.

Hereditary occultism required that the bloodline of Judah - the Judahites- to be as little contaminated with this Luciferic Consciousness that was rampant in the Near East and to do so the Jews needed to be separated from other peoples. This was the reason for Yahweh's truculent attitude towards the backsliding Israelites and the function of the chauvinistic Yahweh cult, known as Judaism. It is quite obvious to any unprejudiced reader that the two deities mentioned in Scripture are radically different from each other and the God of the Old Testament is not the God of the New Testament. Moreover, that the God of the Hebrew Bible inexorably removed Himself from participation human affairs exactly as He said He would.

In Exodus, which describes the flight of the Israelites from Egypt led by Moses into the wilderness and thence forty years later into Canaan by Joshua, is replete with miraculous interventions. Yet the plethora of miracles was evidence of some other divine process unfolding on Earth, complimenting the active presence of Yahweh. For, the miracles that give succour and guidance to the fleeing Israelites were not all the work of Yahweh, another God, long anticipated by the peoples of antiquity, was making Himself known to the world. The journey out of Egypt was not only a deliverance from bondage but also a transition from one spiritual phase into another. God was, according to biblical tradition, loath to reveal his proper name to mortals at this early stage, only divulging it, apparently, at the time of Moses (Exod. 3:13-15; 6:2-3). However, the God that revealed himself to the great prophet was not Yahweh, the old Moon God but the Sun God, Christ, who had descended from the Heavens to Earth.

Yahweh, Elohim, is the moon god that was worshipped by the Patriarchs and by the great prophet Moses, who led his people out of captivity. Moses preached to his people the moon god Yahweh because he did not know of the Sun God, the Christ, who appeared as the pillar of a cloud before the fleeing Israelites by day, and the pillar of fire by night. Thus the "power and glory" that chaperoned the Israelites from Egypt into Canaan was not a manifestation of Yahweh but of Christ, the Sun God. (Exod. 13:21-22). Moreover, when Moses, at Rephidim, strikes the rock with the rod of God causing an abundant supply of water, he failed to recognise Christ who miraculously provides the water for the people to drink.

"Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel" (Exod. 17:6).

This inability to perceive the Sun God, Christ, was the reason why the prophet of Christ, Joshua, superseded the great prophet of Yahweh, Moses. Joshua (Je-Hoshua) was originally simply called Hoshua until Moses added to his name the divine name, but Joshua, in the enigmatic way of the Hebrew language, is also a cognomen of Jesus (Num. 13:16). The surrender of the spiritual leadership of the Israelites by Moses signifies the singular transition from Yahweh to Christ. From the Moon Phase of Earth's evolution to the current phase, the Sun Phase, whose Lord is Christ.

The New Testament informs us that during the reconnaissance of Canaan, the Promised Land, ten came back and declared the land worthless and barren. Joshua however, lauded the land and brought back a large bunch of grapes as proof of its fecundity. Christ who later refers to himself as the "true vine" is thus anticipated.

"I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing" (John 15:5).

Thus, esoterically, Moses is the great moon leader of the Israelites, while Joshua, in his dual capacity as heir to Moses and the new covenant with the coming Christ, commands both the Sun and the Moon. This union of powers is depicted in the sign of the Holy Grail, that is, the Sun power penetrating the invisible disc held within the arms of the crescent moon. It is during the sensitive transition from Moses to Joshua, form the Moon to the Sun leadership of the Israelites that the Christ prophesy is made:

"I shall see him, but not now: I shall behold him, but not nigh: there shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth." (Num. 24:17-18).

Thus as the cosmic Christ descended to Earth to assume the karmic responsibility for mankind's iniquity, the great sacrifice of Yahweh was coming to an end and the Moon God could relinquish guardianship of humanity and continue his own spiritual evolution. And that is what happened: Yahweh removed Himself from the affairs of men just as He said He would. Consequently, the active presence of Yahweh (the God of the Old Testament) in human affairs was gradually reduced until it occurred no more. No other mortal could say they had seen the form of Yahweh, as Moses could claim. No subsequent generation nor group of people could claim witness to Yahweh's form nor hear His voice aloud in the sky. This is because direct encounter with Yahweh was halted by Divine Order, and Yahweh, soon after, removed Himself from active participation in human affairs.

The events around the gift to humanity of the Third Covenant, that is, the Ten Commandments, is perhaps the ultimate experience of Yahweh by a large mass of people in the entire Bible. Moreover, the revelation at Mount Sinai when Yahweh personally descends from the mountain in fire (Exod. 19:11, 18, 20) and speaks aloud so that the thousands of Israelites assembled there could bear fearful witness to the presence of their God, Yahweh, amongst them (Exod. 19:19; 20:1, 2), is a form of farewell gift. It is the great God, Yahweh's valedictory address to His people before His departure from them. And, His gift to them is profound indeed. Not only is it the moral code by which the virtue of the Israelites would be safeguarded but also the guarantee that the Judahite bloodline would be preserved as pristine as possible for its fateful duty of supplying the most perfect human vessel for the Incarnation of God.

The story of the prophet Elijah at Mount Carmel, a century after the dedication of the Temple, in the reign of King Ahab (1 Kings 18) is the last public display of Yahweh's presence on Earth. For, after this event no other communal demonstration of divinity is cited in the Hebrew Bible. And in the remaining books in the Hebrew Bible the prevailing theme is Yahweh's inexorable diminishing presence. The last time that the Hebrew Bible's text reads "And Yahweh said" occurs in the narrative involving the prophet Elijah. For, after this time, Yahweh apparently refused to directly communicate with anyone or directly make known His immediate presence, for He had removed himself from active participation in the affairs of men just as He had said He would. This phenomenon must be emphasised for it is fundamental to understanding the role of the Jew in history and the nature of the spiritual reality facing mankind today: Yahweh had removed Himself from direct intervention in the affairs of men. .