Okay. Der Fuehrer orders archaeologists to find lotsa religious relics. His orders are carried out–the Nazi party and the Third Reich are now in possession of enough shards of the Cross to build a yacht, Jesus’ pinky finger and most of all… THE ARK OF THE COVENANT. Assuming God doesn’t smite them for being evil and using a relic of His to wreak havoc on His world, what strategies would we use against such an attack?
Let’s make a few assumptions. Let’s assume the Ark acts like an enormous laser with infinite charge and no warm-up time. Thus, it works on line-of-sight only. It’s a Holy Laser, so no armor can defend against it, and it has some super holy consciousness and senses to match, so simply arranging a massive artillery barrage from beyond the horizon will not swamp it and not destroy it–it will simply laser off the shells as they pop up.
Sort of like an AEGIS system of the Covenant. Or Missile Command.
How would WWII work out if the Nazis tortured war prisoners with the boatload of splinters of the Cross, flipped off Churchill with the pinky and used the Ark for important battlefield objectives? We obviously would topple before the Nazis on a tactical, line-of-sight level, but how would we work on a strategic level to conquer the threat?
Again, assuming God went off to lunch while this whole fracas is going on. Have fun.
We’re assuming that the Ark exists and God decides to take a spell of noninterventionism. I’m not a Christian myself; heck, I don’t even believe in divine intervention or that God communicates directly to us. But I am wondering how we could possibly defeat a holy superweapon wielded by the wrong hands and without God’s direct help. I admit I’m trampling on (very) sensitive ground when I assume things about holy relics, but I’m just curious. While I don’t think it says ‘laser beam’ in the Bible, the Sunday schools I went to gave me images of a big, ornate box with lots of light-beams coming out of it, striking enemies dead.
Aw, heck, cast a logic and reason on me. I could use it.
It wouldn’t matter how many superpowers you attributed to the Ark, it would still be “holy”, and so it would not allow itself to be used as a weapon.
Ditto the splinters of the True Cross and Jesus’ pinky.
And actually, it’s not Jesus’ pinky, because He went back up to Heaven, remember? So they’d have to use someone else’s finger, either the Index Finger of St. John or the Finger of St. Thomas, which are the biggies, but there are others out there.
Your Sunday School images were of the Glory of God shining out of the box, not of “laser beams”. You saw pictures of angels with halos around their heads, too, didn’t you? And you didn’t think that those angels were all wearing circular laser beams on their heads, did you?
And the bit about the Ark striking enemies dead was totally made up for Raiders of the Lost Ark. The only time the Ark killed anyone in the Bible was I Chronicles 13, when they were moving the Ark to a new location on an oxcart, and the oxen stumbled, and someone named Uzzah put out his hand to steady it and was struck dead on the spot. However, this was not because the Ark itself is intrinsically lethal–it was his punishment from God for not having faith that God would look after his Ark.
No wait, the Holy Laser opens up a wormhole, which transports a US aircraft carrier back from 1984 to 1943. The carrier crew win the war in Pacific in a week, but when they try to advance into the European sphere, shards of the cross get sucked into the carrier’s cooling system, causing…
That was covered in pure gold inside and out, with a lid of pure gold with winged creatures of hammered gold on each end of the lid, facing each other with wings outstretched towards each other to cover the lid.
Also killed were 70 men of Beth Shemesh because they looked into the Covenant Box, book of Samuel.
The Philistines were also plagued with tumors in each city that the ark was kept after they captured it, until they returned it.
OK so the Nasi’s got the HSMD (Holy superweapon of mass destruction). They convincingly win battles so well that no country stands against them in their area (europe/ Russa) and it falls to Germany.
US being protected somewhat by oceans will have to decide to surrender or try to prevent the HSMS from crossing the oceans. If they surrender I could see rebel groups forming to disrupt the German empire. If they fight I can see a massive air and see defence buildup. Eventually we would have the AWMD (Atomic weapon of mass distruction) which could very well level the playing field. The advantage of the AWMD over the HSMD would be we can make more.
Germany would eventually develope it’s own MWMD if the war wasn’t setteled by then which would again sway the banance of power.
Well, in point of fact the initial assumptions are simple fantasy, combining D&D-style gaming, the Indiana Jones oeuvre, a dualistic theology, and pseudo-realpolitik strategy.
Which would imply that the chief value of the Third Reich recovering the Ark of the Covenant would be for its tourist-attraction value. (Though I doubt that many Jews would go to the Berlin Historical Museum to visit it, in that case!)
As for Jesus’s finger, as commented above, if you hold with His deity and hence holiness, you assume with Scripture that He has ascended into Heaven bodily in some way or other that would make His body parts unavailable for this little game, while if He did not, then His finger would not be a holy object. However, I do have a finger that I’m tempted to contribute to this discussion!
Actually, it all balanced out. The USA ended up with the Ark of the Covenant, Germany had the Spear of Destiny, and England had the Holy Grail AND Excalibur. So everything was even and the war was decided by conventional means.
All this fails to take into account the weather. When it started to rain heavily, if Hitler had the Ark, he could hop inside with Noah of Ark and two of every kind of Nazi-loving animal, and remain dry and preserved. This is what Jonah of Ark tried, but wound up being eaten by a great fish, and his cousin Joan of Ark was burned to a steak.
