Letter to a Student who inquired about an apocalyptic video.

Hey Paul,

I finally watched the video. Just the Age of Deceit one. [I’ll look at the other one later and write again.] I must say that I am inclined to agree with your brother. Here’s why:

1.   I reject the video’s whole approach to Holy Scripture. Genuine fidelity to the Word is loving God with all our mind, which means distinguishing between metaphor, symbol, myth and literal fact. 

2.   There is a basic error in confusing apocalyptic and prophetic scripture.

3.   There is a strong admixture of dualism in the demonology.

4.    The video proposes a systematic theology the organizing principle of which is the fall of Lucifer. In so doing, it proposes a kind of unified field theory of theology and history, including all the popular conspiracy theories and up-to-date, right-wing political fears.

Let me expand these points.

1.   Faithful interpretation, I believe, requires careful distinction among these kinds of literature.  It is a mistake to interpret apocalyptic speculation as historical prediction – like the predictions of Nostradamus or Edgar Cayce. The underlying meaning of apocalyptic scripture (Daniel, Ezekiel, Revelation, certain passages in the Gospels, Thesssalonians) is that God is in control, no matter what evidence there may be to the contrary. The outcome is not in question. (See below, #3.) The people inspired to write what became the books of the Bible had to write from within their own culture and consciousness, which was very different from ours. We need to use all our minds to sift through what they experienced and what they were trying to communicate. Christians do not – and never have – believed that the words of Holy Scripture were dictated by God, as Muslims say of the Qu’ran. That means that we are obliged to dig deeply to find the meaning. It is a big mistake to read scripture as we would read a modern newspaper or weather report.

2.   Apocalyptic literature was in vogue in the 1^st century. Writings like Enoch were widespread and popular. Some such writings found their way into the New Testament Canon. This literature was, I think, both entertaining and encouraging. It was (in my opinion) the sci-fi of its time, but it also expressed the ultimate powerlessness of evil in the world. Satan has been defeated, the strong man bound and his house plundered. He may still do damage (persecutions) but his doom is sealed. That is the underlying message of apocalyptic literature. It is not to be taken as a blueprint or prediction of actual events.

Apocalyptic writing was unknown to the Hebrew tradition before the Babylonian exile. Before the 6^th century BC, Hebrew scriptures contains no mention of such apocalyptic themes as the end of the world, the Last Judgment, resurrection, or the fall of angels (Lucifer/Satan).  When angels are mentioned at all in the Pentateuch and prophetic literature it is in the sense of divine emissaries – sometimes a way of referring to God Himself (as in the “Men” who visited Lot and Abraham in the Genesis account.) BTW: note that the account of the Fall refers to a serpent not to an angel, fallen or otherwise. The identification of the serpent with satan is later.

It is thought that the educated classes of the Israelites, in exile in Babylon, encountered Persian religion (Zoroastrianism) there. That ancient religious system is characterized by a strong dualism: light v. darkness, good v. evil, Satan v. God. Angels and demons are really prominent in this mythology, described in a way that is much more detailed and substantial than the mere emissaries of the Pentateuch, carrying messages from God to people. The Zoroastrian angels have their own lives and histories, and many of them defected, producing our own difficulties here on earth. At the end of time, there would be a great battle and lots of woes, but the Light would defeat the Darkness.

This Persian worldview deeply influenced the writing of the time (Daniel, Ezekiel). Much was also written around the 1^st century by diaspora Jews in Greek, which came to be known as the Apocrypha. These books, not canonical, were nevertheless held by the Church to contain useful moral guidance. They were used and even read in church by Roman Catholics, Orthodox,, and Anglicans. There were still more writings in circulation – like Enoch – that the Church rejected (called the pseudepigrapha, because many of them were falsely attributed to important figures, such as Moses). In general, the canonical books are the least fantastic of what was out there. Anyway, the issue of Persian influence was lively in Jesus’s own time; the Saducees (the Temple party) rejected angels and resurrection; the Pharisees accepted them. In this Jesus clearly sided with the Pharisees.

By contrast, the pre-exilic prophetic tradition Israel had to do with God’s message to Israel regarding holiness and justice. God’s people were to be holy in two ways: separate from the pagans and their abominable practices having to do with idol-worship (human sacrifice, ritual homosexual coupling with temple priests for purposes of invoking fertility [that’s where the Levitical prohibitions come from]. An abomination was an act of idolatrous worship, in the language of the time). The prophets railed against these things, especially social injustice, which was the main way the Israelites offended God, in the prophetic literature.

Social criticism was the prophets’ main calling (cf: Amos) – most of them unwilling messengers, because it was personally costly. They spoke the truth to power and often suffered the consequences. When they spoke of the future, it was not to predict specific events, but to warn that doom lay in the direction society was heading (cf: Jeremiah). Prophecy does not, however, mean prediction. This is an important distinction, because we confuse them in our modern speech. Prophets did not so much predict the future as interpret the significance of current events in religious terms: God’s judgment would fall upon the merciless and unjust. That was also, clearly the message of Jesus.

While there is some similarity in the Age of Deceit’s interpretations, the latter are based entirely on the notion that ancient apocalyptic writing refers to actual history, namely the history of our own period. Over the centuries, people have repeatedly bemused themselves this way, convinced that their own period was the End-time. Beginning with the Thessalonians, to whom Paul wrote mostly to cool their speculative fantasy. Needless to say, there is a certain vanity in this outlook.

Part of the problem is what is called the “delay of the Parousia” (return of Christ in Glory). It seems that the 1^st Century Christians commonly believed that the Last Judgment would come in their own lifetime.  When that didn’t happen, there had to be a revision in interpretation. That’s about when the Revelation of St. John the Divine, and many other non-canonical writings appeared. Paul actually begins that revision in the letter to the Thessalonians. The evangelical warnings not to speculate on the day and the hour is also part of the growing sense that eschatology may occur on a vaster scale in history. Theologians still wrestle with this.

3.   Zoroastrian dualism is clearly evident in the Age of Deceit.  Good angels/bad angels, light/dark, &c. Furthermore, the myth – taken literally – leads to absurd speculations such as God’s having to retreat since one third of His forces defected! Why couldn’t He just create a whole bunch more angels, then? Or indeed, why not just zap all the bad ones and have done with it?

In my opinion, this kind of thinking ascribes altogether too much reality to evil. This is a philosophical point. St. Augustine and the Fathers and Mothers of the Church emphasized that evil has no reality of its own. Evil has no essence. That is, no being in itself. Evil is only a privation of good – like a parasite feeding off the being of creatures. Think of a rotting apple. The apple has being. That is good. The being is under attack by the rot, which we call bad, but the rot has no independent principle of its own. When the process is complete, there is no rot anymore. No apple either – just nothing. This is why it is a mistake to imagine a principle of darkness or evil, as though there were anything capable of really challenging God.

The Persian metaphor of cosmic battle is really about the propensity of human beings to turn from God – and thus from life itself. We can do that because God has made us free. All the great religions acknowledge some kind of struggle of this kind. As Mohammed said, the true Jihad is within. Human existence seems to involve a struggle between ego and community, between selfishness and love, between idolatry of self and worship of the One. I think that is what the scriptural images are about. They are projections of our common experience onto the Cosmos.

In a way, the mistake of the Age of Deceit is the same as the mistake of the Taliban or the Islamic Caliphate: the war is not against other people, but against my own ego. The true Jihad is within.

4.   Another mistake is ironic: the video proposes a grand theory of history, into which everything fits. Aside from the breathtaking paranoia of this kind of thinking, it is EXACTLY what it claims to oppose: the misuse of the intellect to uncover hidden truths by a small class of cognoscenti  - initiates who know what is really going on, because Age of Deceit has delivered the secret key. This seems to me to have more in common with Mme. Blavatsky than it has with faithful biblical scholarship.

So, Paul, my advice is to stay away – far away – from this kind of thing. Not that there is no truth to it. Elaborate, unified systematic theories can’t help but have some ground in reality  rather like a Michael Crichton novel, or The DaVinci Code. But bits of the truth do not make the whole system true.

          For example, there may be something in UFOs. As the late Harvard professor put it – either it is a psychological phenomenon or there is something else, heretofore unknown, going on. But there IS a worldwide, cross-cultural phenomenon. But there is a big jump between that and the notion that UFOs are demons!

          Yes Mme. Blavatksy and Mrs. Bailey, and many others thought Christianity had gone wrong. So did Luther and Calvin. The whole occult, theosophical, spiritualist movement of a hundred years ago had to do with an ongoing crisis in Western European consciousness that culminated in the horrors of the first half of the last century.

          One could go on and on about the comical ascription of such sinister power to the Freemasons and Skull & Bones. Secret societies are fertile ground for conspiracy theory, because they are secret: one can imagine anything at all about them. This may be the grain of truth: any society, secret or not, will tend to support and benefit its own members. The present economic system – like those before it – benefits those with the most power. Networks help individuals to rise in the system and hold on to power. To the powerless, it seems as though the game is rigged. It is. But one need not postulate a unified conspiracy deliberately manipulated by a tiny minority to explain this phenomenon.

          BTW, I find it interesting that Jews are left out of the picture. A hundred years ago, this kind of unified historical conspiracy theory would have included them, along with the Freemasons and Bolsheviks. Modern right-wing evangelicalism has revised this older approach, though, having concluded that the establishment of the modern state of Israel is a welcome sign of the imminent End. So, it won’t do to number the Jews among the wicked!

          And how do the Mormons fit in?

          Horror of the United Nations is another bugaboo of the American political right: Congress wouldn’t go along with the League of Nations in 1919, and the far right has always hated the UN. This goes back to another political/theological undercurrent in American intellectual history: we are the New Promised Land. America is chosen by God to lead the world into the paradise of democracy. The video quotes the Freemasonic theorist, Albert Pike, about this. That is what novus ordo saeclorum (new world order) in the US motto is about – the 18^th C. idea that our experiment with democracy was God’s gift to the world. Many Americans still believe this, and so any hint of international co-operation (usually characterized as giving up sovereignty) is a betrayal of our manifest destiny.

Well, enough for now. This subject is a kind of tar-baby that can easily mesmerize a person and take up way too much time. My advice to you is to spend what little free time you have for this important subject on something more basic and less far-out: the history of the Church and the development of doctrine. I will be happy to make further suggestions, if you wish. I will write again about the perennialism video.

          One more thought about a truth that I acknowledge in the video: the Holy Name of Jesus is all the defense one needs against the shadowy, frightening, and largely mythological forces of evil. Whether Satan and all the other fallen angles are out there trying to get us or whether that is all horror-flick fantasy, the Name of Jesus is sufficient protection – invincible.