|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Earlier this month, Opelika pastor Dean Odle became the first person to announce a campaign for lieutenant governor in the upcoming Republican primary. “I really do believe that we need a new kind of leader that’s going to be moral, have some moral character, and do what’s right even if it’s detrimental to me,” he told the media.
Odle first ran for public office in 2022, when he tried to primary Governor Kay Ivey and received almost 12,000 votes. He also believes that the Earth is flat and all evidence to the contrary is the work of Satan and his minions.
While Odle’s conspiratorial views are quite public—they were the subject of an op-ed for Yellowhammer News back in 2021—the specifics have not been reported on. So APR acquired a copy of his 2019 self-published book, “Like Clay Under the Seal,” which Odle has promoted on social media as recently as October 2023.
A highlights reel of Odle’s Facebook posts, scripture, and assorted out-of-context quotes, “Like Clay Under the Seal” is thoroughly unlike any politician’s book you may have read before.
Odle opens the book by discussing his experience at the inaugural Flat Earth International Conference in 2017. He titles chapters things like “The Circular Path of the Near-Sun” and “Space, the Aether & the Power of God.” And at one point, Odle declares that a Hennessy ad based on the true story of Auguste Piccard and his son Jacques Piccard was really the “Illuminati-controlled media … tipping their hand as they do.”
It’s not all walls of mostly recycled text though. Odle also saw fit to include black-and-white screenshots of the 2015 Syfy adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s novel “Childhood’s End,” clips from Tucker Carlson’s show, and comments on his own YouTube videos.
In the book, Odle describes his 2015 conversion to belief in a flat Earth as a “spiritual download from the Holy Spirit.” Early on he says “there is no doubt in my mind that this revelation of flat earth and true Biblical cosmology is a sovereign move of God to combat the unbelief and Bible skepticism created by the many deceptions of Satan on this last generation.”
Troublingly, this intermixing of religion and conspiracy leads Odle to accuse “the Vatican, Islam, and Judaism” of being controlled by Satan’s agents, along with, of course, the United Nations and various government agencies. Citing the Greek word chloros in Revelation being translated as pale instead of as green, he states that the “pale horse” of Revelation 6:8 really represents Islam. And at one point he offhandedly refers to “Satanic Jewish Kabbalah.”
Despite the scope of Odle’s conspiratorial beliefs, he does still dislike Alex Jones and believe the “wicked Nazi Party” was evil, albeit not for the same reasons as most Americans. Even Jones, Odle writes, “is part of the Satanic cabal’s ‘alien’ deception.” Odle also believes Joe Rogan mentioned him in an episode of Rogan’s podcast that Alex Jones was a guest on.
In the process of tying the Nazis to the purported conspiracy to convince everyone the world is round, Odle mixes real facts about rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and Operation Paperclip, the government program that hired former Nazis and moved them to America, with conspiracy theories about devil-worshipping secret societies who supposedly worked in the shadows to hide the nature of the flat Earth.
All in all, the cast of villains featured in “Like Clay Under the Seal” is quite extensive. Odle helpfully explains that the “cult of Copernicus has been carried on not only by the sun-god worshipping Jesuit priests, but also modern Freemasons, former Nazi Vril/Thule Society members, and high-level deep state, New World Order Satanists/Luciferians in various governments and ‘space’ agencies.” Amongst the ranks of the New World Order Satanists, he repeatedly singles out the Bush family. And yes, Odle does write that he has “known the truth about 9/11.”
Besides lists and biographies of alleged round Earth propagandists, the over 470 page book also details fascinating religious arguments like Odle’s belief that “the lights in the sky that are called comets, meteors, falling or shooting stars are angelic activity being witness [sic] (some good and some bad).”
In addition to these musings and what he characterizes as his own “extensive research and several earth curvature tests across Mobile Bay with high zoom cameras and telescopes,” Odle tosses at the reader a veritable smorgasbord of sources, mostly Biblical in origin, in defense of a flat Earth. The title of the book, “Like Clay Under the Seal,” comes from a verse in the Book of Job where God is asking Job if he has “ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place.”
In Chapter 11, Odle seemingly misunderstands the Mercator projection used by flight tracking website Flightradar24 and says the coastline of Antarctica is “at least 24,901 miles, not 11,165 like we are told.” It’s a well-established fact that, as two-dimensional projections of a spherical body, maps made using Mercator projections significantly exaggerate the size of landmasses near the north and south poles, like Greenland and Antarctica. In Chapter 15, he says Hillary Clinton talking about breaking the glass ceiling is the disclosure of the Satanic globalist agenda he believes has been mandated by Jesus, as is the “Satanic rock group” Red Hot Chili Peppers’ song “Californication.”
It remains unclear how exactly Odle’s belief in a flat Earth would affect his ability to serve as Alabama’s next lieutenant governor if elected. His campaign website does not mention the topic, but does state that Odle has “in-depth knowledge of the methods and plans that the political elite are using to establish their tyrannical ‘New World Order.’”
Odle did not respond to APR’s requests for comment on this story.
