Book
Of Revelations Is A Must Read
By Gary Leupp
19 July, 2004
Counterpunch.org
Then I saw a
new heaven and a new earth; the first heaven and the first earth had
disappeared now, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the holy city,
and the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, as beautiful
as a bride all dressed for her husband.
Revelation 21:1-2
A Godsend for
the Warmongers
In my naively believing
childhood, when I eagerly devoured the whole Bible, acquiring in the
process a love of stories (if not of history), I read the Book of Revelation,
fascinated by its awe-inspiring imagery and promise of glorious punishment
and reward at the end of the human record. I later learned that Martin
Luther, puzzled and troubled by the work, doubted whether it should
ever have been included in the New Testament. (Some might conclude from
this that one can be a Christian while not accepting this particular
text.) He could "in no way detect that the Holy Spirit had produced
it."
He also doubted
whether the Epistle of St. James should be considered canonical, since
it appears to challenge the doctrine of salvation by faith so central
to Pauline theology. In the end he included both books in his German
translation of the Bible. Had he omitted James, there would have been
little impact on the subsequent Protestant movement, but had he jettisoned
Revelation, the world might be rather different now. The book is more
central to the beliefs of some churches than to others, but it has greatly
affected the way many view current events. Sixteenth century Protestant
preachers were sure that the Pope was the Antichrist, and descriptions
of the Wars of Religion draw upon its apocalyptic imagery. Even today
people draw upon it, as the War on Terrorism threatens to become a War
of Religion. Some think Revelation 18:8-10, in which Babylon is doomed
"within a single hour" and "burnt right up" refers
to the 9-11 attack on New York.
Revelation is must
reading nowadays, especially for the nonbeliever. I have returned to
it, many years after abandoning the above-mentioned childhood faith,
not because I think it is inspired prophecy, there being in my opinion
no such thing, but because many other people (including many I'd grant
are "good" people) think that it is. And because some of them
think this piece of Holy Scripture somehow justifies ongoing imperialist
war, which they (with their commander-in-chief) conceptualize religiously
as a war of Good versus Evil. And because that conviction causes believers
to support, on faith, Bush's efforts to remold the Middle East in the
way the neocons (who are overwhelmingly not fundamentalist Christians,
but who assiduously court them) want to do it. One should read Revelation
to see how it can be used, and to see what sort of worldview the book
encourages.
It is truly a godsend
to those in the administration who want to transform the Muslim world,
acquiring strategic control over Southwest Asia while enhancing Israel's
security situation, that a considerable portion of the U.S. population
consists of persons who take the book seriously. The neocons and patrons
manipulate the Christian devout who adulate Ariel Sharon like a rock
star, believe Israel (miraculously reconstituted half a century ago,
in fulfillment of Ezekiel 37:12-14) can do no wrong, have little concern
about Arabs' rights, and think Islam is a teaching of the Devil. Rev.
Jerry Falwell calls the Prophet Muhammed a "terrorist." Rev.
Franklin Graham calls Islam "a wicked, evil religion" and
says its God is not the Christians' God. These reverends' followers
are very useful supporters of the war on the human mind that is the
"war on terrorism," the focus of which shifted so swiftly
from al-Qaeda to Iraq (alike in little save their Muslimness), and could
shift to Syria or Iran or Pakistan suddenly tomorrow. When you mix the
anti-Islam pronouncements with Bush policy decisions and millenarian
faith, you have an explosive combination.
Apocalypses
But fire will
come down from heaven and consume them. Then the devil, who misled them,
will be thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and
false prophet are, and their torture will not stop, day or night, for
ever and ever.
(20:10).
This ancient, mysterious
Book of Revelation is itself incendiary. It's one example of a popular
type of literature (apocalypse in Greek) which, using richly symbolic
language encouraging multiple interpretations, reveals that which is
hidden, including events in the future. There are many other examples
of such works written between 300 BCE and 200 CE; Jewish ones include
the Book of Enoch and the Apocalypse of Ezra, Christian ones include
the Apocalypse of Paul and the Apocalypse of Peter. (For translations,
see Willis Barnstone, ed., The Other Bible.) The Apocalypse of Peter
was very popular in Rome as of the third century, but didn't make it
into the Bible; at a synod at Rome in 382, the present canon of 27 New
Testament books was fixed. The Apocalypse of Peter, and numerous gospels
and letters, were denounced as "false" and often burned.
Authorities differ
on the dating of Revelation, some favoring the late 60s (soon after
Nero's persecution of the Christians), more favoring ca. 95 (after the
dispersion of the Jews from Roman Palestine). It is of unknown authorship;
although traditionally attributed to Jesus' disciple John, its language
is so different from the Gospel of John and that of the three letters
attributed to John in the New Testament, that most serious scholars
doubt it was written by the apostle. Authored by a Jewish Christian
who had spent time on Patmos (a tiny Aegean island used as a penal colony
by the Romans), it expresses great rage at the Roman Empire, referred
to here as "Babylon," the name of the empire that had conquered
the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and dispersed their populations centuries
earlier.
Biblical prophecy,
a cousin of Zoroastrian and Buddhist and other prophecy, and harbinger
of prophetic writing from Mani to Nostradamus to Jeanne Dixon, rests
on the assumption that the future is pre-determined, as part of God's
plan, and can be foretold by those whom God decides shall do so. Some
biblical prophecy was in fact composed after the events the prophet
is purported to have predicted; the Old Testament Book of Daniel, which
predicts the fall of Babylon to the Persians, and Persia's fall to the
Greeks, was written around 167 BCE after all these things had already
happened. Unless it's demystified, prophecy is one of the spookiest
and most powerful elements in religion, and can be deftly deployed to
play upon fears and earnest expectations alike. James Warren Jones,
architect of the Jonestown Massacre, convinced his followers that he
was the Second Coming of Christ. Aum Shinrikyo guru Asahara Shoko could
persuade very sophisticated, intelligent Japanese people to randomly
gas others in the Tokyo subway by manipulating bits and pieces of Christian,
Buddhist and Hindu prophecy about the end of the world. Far more sophisticated
and well-funded religious leaders can draw upon faith in a foregone
future to get people to abet that future's fulfillment---for example,
by supporting administration actions in the Middle East believing they
portend the Second Coming.
It's easy to understand
Luther's doubts about the Book of Revelation. It is filled with kabbalism,
symbolic use of numbers, such as the number seven (as in, the seven
hills of Rome, the seven Roman emperors from Augustus, the seven churches
of Asia to whom the work is addressed); and that number striking fear
into some hearts: 666. Revelation makes no reference to the Trinity,
but rather to "seven spirits of God" and to Jesus as an emanation
of God, subordinate to him although present from the dawn of time. The
book's theology is hard to reconcile with the rest of the New Testament,
which was still taking shape; it stands apart. Jesus in Revelation is
not meek and mild but brutally vengeful upon his return---the second
earthly appearance predicted in Matthew 25, Luke 21, John 16 etc.
Summary of John's
Visions
Revelation is a
long, confusing sequence of visions, but can be summarized as follows.
John of Patmos first transmits divine wisdom to seven churches in Asia
Minor. These were not necessarily the most important Christian communities
of the time, just ones whose problems he was apparently familiar with;
and again, the number seven is special. Then John conveys the content
of a vision in which the door of Heaven opens and he sees God (who "looked
like a diamond and a ruby") surrounded by twenty-four elders in
white robes and four fantastic animals giving praise. In the right hand
of God is a scroll "sealed with seven seals." A Lamb (that
is, Jesus Christ) who appears to have been sacrificed, with seven horns
and seven eyes "which are the seven Spirits God has sent out all
over the world" steps forward to accept the scroll while the twenty-four
sing a hymn. The Lamb breaks the seals, and as he does so, a rider on
a white horse appears to accept a victor's crown; another rider, on
a red horse, comes to receive a huge sword and "set people killing
one another;" another, on a black horse, arrives with scales while
the four animals shout about daily wages, barley, oil and wine; another,
on a deathly pale horse, arrives representing Plague. These Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse are given authority over a quarter of the earth, "to
kill by the sword, by famine, by plague and wild beasts."
When the fifth seal
is broken, John sees underneath the heavenly altar the souls of all
those killed for witnessing to the word of God. They ask why God does
not immediately pass sentence and take vengeance on the inhabitants
of the earth for their deaths (6:10-11). They are given white robes
and told to wait a bit longer until the prophesized number of Christians
are killed. Then the sixth seal is broken, and the sky disappears, and
the people of the world flee to mountains and caves, begging the rocks
to fall on them to protect them from the wrath of God. Four avenging
angels appear to destroy humankind, but are restrained by another who
asks them to wait until seals have been placed on the heads of 144,000
persons "out of all the tribes of Israel" who are servants
of God. (The Jehovah's Witnesses especially emphasize this passage,
Revelation 7:4.) That's the twelve tribes of Israel times 12,000; there's
no mention here of the non-Jewish converts to Christianity.
The opening of the
seventh seal produces silence in heaven for half an hour. Thereupon
seven trumpets are given seven angels standing before God. One angel
throws fire from a golden censer to earth, and the earth shakes. One
by one the angels blow their trumpets, bringing punitive devastation
to the earth. These events do not seem to represent happenings that
chronologically succeed one another (and the whole narrative is filled
with logical puzzles); rather, the trumpet events expand upon those
events associated with the opening of the seals. Between the sixth and
seventh trumpet blasts, John is told to go to the Temple in Jerusalem
with a measuring rod, and to measure the sanctuary and altar and people
worshipping there---but not the outer court, which has been given over
to pagans for forty-two months. God sends two sackcloth-clad witnesses
with special powers, such as the ability to turn water into blood, to
prophesy in Jerusalem. But the serpent, after those forty-two months,
makes war on them and kills them. Their corpses lie in the Great City
(not Jerusalem but evil Rome), as people rejoice at the troublemakers'
deaths. But they are revived after three and a half days, while a great
earthquake occurs, killing 7000.
John meanwhile sees
a vision of a pregnant woman, "adorned with the sun, standing on
the moon" who as she gives birth is confronted by a huge red dragon
(Satan) who tries to eat the child as it is born. (Commentators differ
on whether this woman is Israel giving birth to the messiah, or the
Virgin Mary doing so. Catholic commentary favors the first interpretation.)
But God takes the baby (destined "to rule all the nations with
an iron scepter") up into heaven while the woman escapes to the
desert for 1260 days. War breaks out in Heaven between the dragon and
the archangel Michael and other angels; the dragon, defeated, is thrown
down to earth, where he unsuccessfully attacks the woman and "the
rest of her children, that is, all who obey God's commandments and bear
witness to Jesus."
The dragon delegates
his power to a seven-headed beast emerging from the sea (who appears
to be a political ruler, and is often associated with the Antichrist,
although that term does not occur in this text but only in 1 John 2:18,
4:2-3 and 2 John 1:7). Then another beast (a religious ruler, a false
prophet) emerges as slave to this beast from the sea. He makes the world
worship the first beast, and makes everyone worship his statue. The
number of the second beast is 666. (The kabbalist association of numbers
with the Roman letters "Nero Caesar" produces this figure.)
Next John in his
vision sees the Lamb standing on Mt. Zion with the 144,000, all with
the Father's name on their foreheads. These are the ones who have kept
their virginity (sexual abstinence being a requisite for membership
in some Christian Gnostic sects before the emergence of an orthodox
form of Christianity) and have never lied. No fault can be found with
them. (Notice how there is no hint of St. Paul's notion of "justification
by faith" here.) Flying overhead, angels call upon all to worship
God, and announce "Babylon has fallen!" They declare that
they will torture all who worship the statue of the beast. One of the
four animals gives the seven angels seven golden bowls filled with God's
wrath; these are emptied over the world, producing disease and turning
rivers and oceans to blood. Again, the disasters described overlap and
amplify the first two sequences of seven.
Now here is where
it starts to get especially "relevant." The sixth angel empties
his bowl over the Euphrates River (that is to say, in present day Iraq),
drying up the water so that the "kings of the East" are able
to come in. From the jaws of the dragon and two aforementioned beasts
appear three "foul spirits" looking like frogs; they are in
fact demon spirits able to work miracles. Their job is to organize the
kings of the world to war against the Almighty. They call the kings
together at Armageddon. (This refers to the Megiddo mountains, near
the modern Israeli town of Megiddo, about 15 miles from the Palestinian
town of Jenin. In the seventh century BCE King Josiah was defeated here
by the Egyptian pharaoh. The name became synonymous with military disaster.)
The seventh angel
empties his bowl into the air, producing the greatest earthquake the
world has ever known and destroying the Great City, all islands, and
all mountains. But this isn't yet the end, and the vision is not over.
One of the seven angels with a bowl shows John a "famous prostitute,"
a woman riding a scarlet beast with seven heads and ten horns (that
is, the beast from the sea, the political ruler); on her forehead is
written "Babylon the Great, the mother of all prostitutes and all
the filthy practices of the earth." (Most commentators think this
means Rome.) She is drunk with the blood of the Christian martyrs. The
heads of the beasts she rides, John learns, are "seven emperors,"
five of who have gone (the Roman emperors Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula,
Claudius, and Nero?), while one lives now (Galba?) and one is yet to
come. This last will rule for only a short time; the beast and him will
go to their destruction. (Obviously the writer thought the end of the
world was very near.)
The beast's ten
heads represent ten kings who will rule "for only an hour,"
going to war with the Lamb and meeting defeat at the hands of the faithful.
Then the prostitute will be stripped naked, the faithful will eat her
flesh and burn the remains in a fire (17:16). All the merchants, traders
and sea captains who profited from trading with her will be punished,
while victory songs resound in heaven. Another great battle begins,
between the beast and the kings of the earth and a rider called the
Word of God who rides on a white horse. The beast from the sea and the
false prophet are thrown into a fiery lake of burning sulfur, while
the dragon ("which is the devil and Satan") who had appeared
at the outset of the narrative is chained up for 1000 years. Those Christians
who died in persecutions are now resurrected, and reign with Christ
for those 1000 years. (There are different opinions as to whether these
Christians are limited to the aforementioned 144,000.)
One is tempted to
stop the summary here, since, one might expect, those who accept this
text as prophesy are just thinking about events up to this millennium
moment. But some Christian thinkers (notably St. Augustine of Hippo,
354-430) came to interpret all the foregoing as pre-fourth century,
past events, symbolically portrayed, preceding Emperor Constantine's
Edict of Toleration (313) and soon thereafter, the establishment of
Christianity as the Empire's official and only tolerated faith. Augustine
thought he lived at the inception of the 1000 years mentioned above.
There are logical problems here, since the "Great City" and
"Babylon" are Rome, and Rome didn't in fact meet with the
predicted fire and brimstone but rather become thoroughly and aggressively
Christianized. But if one says all the foregoing is a symbolic representation
of the past, what comes next (20:7 through 22:25) is of key importance.
Satan is for some
reason released from prison after 1000 years, and deceives the leaders
of all the nations, led by Gog and Magog, to attack Jerusalem, "the
camp of the saints." (Some conflate this with the Battle of Armageddon
only hinted at in 16:16.) But fire comes down from heaven to consume
them (20:9). God opens the book of life and judges all the dead; those
already in Hades, and anyone not listed in the book, are thrown into
a second death in a burning lake. A new heaven and new earth appear,
their precedents having passed away; the new Jerusalem comes down from
Heaven, and there is universal joy. Curiously, there are still pagan
nations, but they "will live by the light" of the New Jerusalem
(22:24).
Revelation and
Bush's War
This is the basic
presentation in Revelation, presented, I hope, with fairness. (The true
believer often resents dispassionate presentation of material he or
she thinks obviously holy more than the mere contemptuous dismissal
of the same.) Many supplement it with material from Old Testament prophesy
(such as Ezekiel and Daniel) and other New Testament material, such
as the Antichrist concept and the notion of the "Rapture"
(based on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). Obviously in its vagueness, it can
be applied to many times and places, rather like the dire predictions
of the (Buddhist) Lotus Sutra have been employed to explain calamities
in Asian societies over centuries. Eugene Gallagher, Professor of Religious
Studies at Connecticut College, writes that "the lush imagery and
the complicated imagery of Revelation, has been one of the things that
has kept people reading it. Because it can always be renewed. It can
always be applied to a new situation."
Indeed, surfing
the web, you find the Pope, Russian President Putin, even President
Bush, all identified as the beast/Antichrist, on sites creatively combining
New Age trends, kabbalism, astrology, Nostradamus cultism and Biblical
literalism. Don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings, but few religious
texts inspire more babble.
So how can Revelation
be politically applied today? Well, let's say we forget the scholarly
analysis that interprets the whole thing as a statement of Christian
hatred for Rome, and of passionate belief in an imminent Second Coming
that will bring ruin to the Roman Empire and glory to the Christian
oppressed. Let us say it indeed refers to the future, while noting that
there are some people out there very disappointed that the year 2000
went by with nary a trace of a Second Coming. They long for that Coming,
understandably, as we all pine for utopia, and they want to apply Revelation
to current events.
Let us say that
Babylon really means Babylon, the city along the Euphrates, in modern-day
Iraq, noting that it suffers terrible ruin at the hand of God. Let us
note that the sixth angel allows the "kings of the East" to
attack the dried-up Euphrates, and that thereafter apocalyptic battles
take place in Armageddon and Jerusalem, resulting in Christ's return
and the establishment of a new Jerusalem on earth. Let's note that earthly
rulers mentioned in general fight against God and Jerusalem, including
"ten kings" who some in the past have identified as the leaders
of the European Union. (That's gotten harder with the expansion of the
EU.) Gog and Magog have been identified in the past with the Soviet
Union, but that doesn't work well nowadays. As for the beast (Antichrist),
there have been and are many candidates, and something as random as
a U.S. political scandal could throw up more..
Well, it doesn't
take too much a stretch of the fevered imagination to see in this narrative
a divine plan for a righteous attack on Iraq, followed by continued
disorder in Iraq involving kings from the east (east from Iraq you have
Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan), triggering war in Israel, pitting the
good souls of Jerusalem (aided for a time by two divinely-sent witnesses)
against the whole world arrayed against them, including "pagans"
(Palestinians?) who occupy the outer court of the Temple in Jerusalem
for 42 months, but after fire comes down from heaven to consume armies
whose soldiers are as numerous as grains of sand, the chosen will remain,
to rule with Jesus forever, headquartered in Jerusalem. It's an affecting,
and at the end, even beautiful vision for some believing Christians,
whose view of the contemporary Middle East might be deeply influenced
by this text.
But there must be,
according to the prophecy, a war of unprecedented horror in the Middle
East before Jesus returns and renders judgment, and finally solves all
the problems of the world.
So the current war,
undertaken by godly men, might be GOOD. Forget the moral qualms of the
bleeding heart nonbelievers. If righteous cruelty is prophesied, can
we not condone it in the here and now? Have thousands of Afghans and
Iraqis died? Well, divine fire rains from the sky in Revelation. God
wills this. Torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere? Why, angels torture
in Revelation 18:7. Why should this be a problem?
Securing the
Realm
Let us say you embrace
this general Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds scenario. Do Bush's reasons
for attacking Iraq make any difference? No. The nonexistent weapons
of mass destruction aside, the unsubstantiated al-Qaeda links, all pale
against the argument that God's chosen president expressed to Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas: "God told me to strike at al-Qaeda and
I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which
I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."
The problem of the credibly of his Iraq claims recedes in importance
when you read, in Christianity Today, Bush's heartfelt statement of
political philosophy: "when you're trying to lead the world in
a war that I view as really between the forces of good and the forces
of evil, you got [sic] to speak clearly. There can't be any doubt."
Bush is working God's will, following his Plan, swaggering towards Armageddon.
It's undoubtedly as simple as Good and Evil.
One wants to think,
of course, that logical analysis and methodical exposure of the accelerated
moves towards unchallenged global control the Bush administration has
undertaken since 9-11 might slowly but surely disabuse the most benighted
of their support for continued U.S. military aggression. Skepticism
increases in the wake of disasters in Iraq, journalistic exposés,
and official investigations, but much of this flies over the heads of
those most vulnerable to a kind of neo-fascist, deliberately non-rational
appeal.
Revelation, like
most scriptures, it is what Marx said of religion in general: an expression
of, and protest against, suffering. As such it holds great appeal, and
is of interest even to the non-believer. It contains powerful images;
the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, for example, is an often-encountered
literary trope. It has a beauty analogous to a Wagnerian opera, but
just as (and I say this as a fan) such art held a particularly dangerous
content in Germany in the 1930s, so at present this text's message dovetails
so smoothly with the war plans of this administration that it may be
dangerous.
Of course Revelation
is read differently by different people. The Rastafarians believe that
the Second Coming it describes refers to Emperor Haile Selassie, and
for them, "Babylon" means any oppressive society. Bob Marley
could draw upon Revelation to write about liberation. Folksongs and
Negro spirituals pining for a "New Jerusalem" don't urge military
aggression to create it. Like so much scripture, Revelation lends itself
to interpretation. Hong Houxiu, head of the Taiping Rebellion in China
in the mid-nineteenth century, believed he was the younger brother of
Jesus Christ, sent to establish the Taiping or Kingdom of Heaven. His
fanatic followers, ruling from 1853 in Nanjing until their defeat in
1860, drew upon the Book of Revelation. In the 1890s the Paiute Indian
Wavoka, also influenced by the Book of Revelation and claiming to be
Christ, taught the Ghost Dance to his followers so that they could dance
up into the air while a new earth was being established. (Many of his
dancers perished at Wounded Knee.)
Revelation does
not instruct its believing reader to favor this or that policy option.
I assume there are believers who are thoroughly against the war on Iraq.
But believers energized by anticipation of a glorious new world on the
horizon, and by the belief that they are participating in prophesized
events, may become particularly apt to place blind faith in an aggressive
Good vs. Evil foreign policy. They should be informed that beneath the
simplistic religious justification for the "war on terrorism"
(including the war in Iraq, which the Bush administration sees as the
central battlefield of the "war on terrorism," but which many
scholars and officials regard as an entirely separate phenomenon) there
is a layer of carefully researched and presented strategy papers authored
by the prophetic neocons. These neoconservatives have led the administration
in producing regime change in Afghanistan, invading and occupying Iraq,
deferring in unprecedented fashion to Israeli policy while demanding
changes in the Palestinian Authority and severing ties with Yassir Arafat.
They have imposed
sanctions on Syria, indicated approval of an Israeli air strike on Syria,
and have been preparing a case to justify military action against Damascus.
They have stepped-up efforts to influence the unstable political situation
in Iran, with Radio Farda, and have depicted the Iranian nuclear program
currently under UN inspection as a serious threat, hinting that they
would support an Israeli strike à la Osiraq 1981. They've put
the onus for Arab backwardness on Arab culture, pronouncing the democratization
of the Middle East a U.S. policy priority. Meanwhile they've established
U.S. military bases throughout Muslim Central Asia and set up new ones
throughout the Persian Gulf region to compensate for the withdrawal
of forces from Saudi Arabia. Plainly they have big plans for the region.
You get some inkling of those plans are in the 1996 strategy paper "A
Clean Break: A New Project for Securing the Realm" , authored by
Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser and other neocons that have
shaped and articulated current U.S. Middle East policy. It was written
for the Israeli government, but the authors see the interests of Israel
and the U.S. as nearly identical and have in their capacity as American
officials pursued the goals indicated in this document. The authors
of the position papers of the unabashedly imperialist Project for a
New American Century also indicate neocon goals for the region. These
gentlemen and women by and large do not believe in the Book of Revelation,
but I'll bet they believe in its utility.
This is the problem.
Leo Strauss's thought divides humanity into three types: the wise, the
gentlemen, and the vulgar. The wise use deception (noble lies) to attain
their ends, using gentlemen (who are not wise but who are powerful)
to control the masses. Religion is a vital tool in controlling the masses
("as lambs to the slaughter"), and the non-believing wise
can also use it to manipulate "gentlemen." Revelation, at
the hands of the wise, gentle or vulgar, is among the world's most easily
manipulated of books; the wise can do it best.
Hal Lindsey, best-selling
author of The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) identified the beast of
Revelation (the Antichrist) with the Soviet Union. But later, with the
European Union. Now, perhaps, global Islam. His most recent book, The
Everlasting Hatred: The Roots of Jihad, traces Arab-Israeli enmity back
to the days of Abraham, depicts Islam itself as the problem, and concludes
with a chapter on "Armageddon: The Climax of Hate." Many are
being influenced by this book, and its association of the Muslim fighter
with the Serpent, the Beast, the False Prophet, etc. Those persuaded
by its message might be more inclined to support more troops in Iraq,
or the expansion of the war into Syria, or restoration of a draft, because
prophesy supports it. Very dangerous indeed.
* * *
Friedrich Engels
(one of the most rational and encyclopedic minds of the nineteenth century,
who had a keen interest in the history of religion) wrote in one of
his last substantial works that the Book of Revelation was both the
"most obscure book in the Bible" and "the most comprehensible
and the clearest." Drawing upon recent German scholarship, he emphasized
that the work should be clearly comprehended as an expression of rage
against Rome (that republic led by a senate that had morphed over time
into an empire oppressing people from Britain to Mesopotamia, meeting
with particularly fierce resistance in the lands of the Middle East)
and its persecution of Christians, who were overwhelmingly drawn from
the humblest classes throughout the empire. As such, it commands respect
as an expression of resistance to oppression. But in the hands of evangelical
commentators, who (thoroughly at peace with contemporary imperialism)
line up chronological charts about the near-term future, with authoritative
pomposity linking prophecy with current Middle Eastern events (much
as the astrologer casts horoscopes with pseudoscientific precision,
using snake-oil salesmanship to seduce the gullible), it becomes something
quite different: a validation for ongoing war.
Luther in no way
detected the Holy Spirit in it. But Bush, committed to an Armageddon-like
war between the forces of good and those of evil, no doubt sees forces
of good throughout this scripture, which may speak to him directly.
We should all study this particular weapon, if only to better understand
the minds of the president and his dead-ender followers.
Gary Leupp is Professor
of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative
Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands
and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan;
and Interracial
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
He can be reached
at: [email protected]