my apocalyptic summer: note one, the two kingdoms

last summer, i was walking about downtown victoria and in a little esoteric bookstore found zachary f. landsdowne's the revelation of saint john:  the path to soul initiation (san francisco, ca/newburyport, ma:  weiser books, 2006).  it was the shape and format of its pages, actually, that made me handle it for a few minutes.  it felt good.  i thought to myself, hmmm, self.  you're about old enough to try to read john's vision with perhaps some understanding. why don't you buy this book, and spend the fall reading the apocalypse?  besides, it was only about $3.98 canadian, two doonies and some change.  but i didn't read it last fall.  instead, over the fall and winter i gathered translations and commentaries of the last book in the bible, and have been working through them this summer.

it's been a wowser experience.  i've avoided as much as possible the obvious lunatic fringe stuff (please read 'lunatic' with the accent on the second syllable, and consider that by it i mean those folks whose understanding is limited by the lunar sphere in the classical understanding of the cosmos.); so, no left behind or late great planet earth.  what i have read has been very interesting.  much of it has mostly brought together some vague understandings i had had over the years but never considered together.  one of the first is that john of the revelation is a prophet.  by that i mean, as walter harrelson, in whose seminar i studied old testament prophets, would always insist, that john describes what will be because it what always is.  when he says these are ' the things which must shortly come to pass', they are the things which always must shortly come to pass.  the interpreters who say that john is writing about his own generation and the mysterious beast whose number is 666 is nero, the interpreters who say that john is writing about some specific time in the future and the mysterious beast whose number is 666 was napoleon or is whoever, and those who say that the situations john described are always coming to pass and the beast is within each of us, are all correct.

the kingdom of our god and of his christ is, as jesus said, at hand, here among us.  it is not out there in the future, only.  like the lord whose presence creates that kingdom, it is and was and is to come.  but the other kingdom, the one in which only those who serve the beast can trade in the great city of babylon, is also here.  and it was.  but it is not, in john's vision, to come.  the knowledge that it cannot last is what makes its citizens most desperate.  we must drill, drill, drill, because we know that in a day, it will all be gone.

i have been impressed how much contemporary art is influenced by the imagery of john's vision.  i knew of course that it had had a huge influence over the years.  some of the most beautiful illuminated manuscripts from the middle ages are of the apocalypse,  and especially of manuscripts of the commentaries of beatus of liebana, an eighth century spanish monk.  but the images remain influential.  one of the more interesting one i found was a work by the rock band aphrodite's child, called 666.  lead by vangelis parathanssiou, it is a fairly straightforward representation of the revelation in song and word.   track 13, 'do it', as good a theme song for the kingdom of the beast as one might find.