Having seen some posts on the nature of the last days well from the
Messainic Legacy is a rather good summary of the Last Days with its
genesis etc, so starting at the beginning these guys have an agenda of
the Prieure De Sion.
THE LAST DAYS
During childhood, one is often encouraged to believe that Christianity
appeared suddenly, as a coherent, comprehensive, fully developed and
immutable edifice of thought, issuing directly from Jesus and
organised around him by his associates. One is encouraged to imagine
that Christian doctrine was formulated as neatly, as definitively and
as unimpugnably as a Newtonian law. Indeed, one is encouraged to think
of the world - at least the world of the Middle East - as having
discovered an entirely new religion all at once, in a single moment of
awareness, rather as Newton is depicted discovering the law of gravity
through an apple falling on his head. And one is encouraged to imagine
Paul disseminating the new religion rather as Coke or Pepsi might be
marketed to the Third World - a single swig, and the natives are
hooked. Many people, if they think about the matter at all, continue
to carry such ideas into their adult lives.
Certainly, there have been schools of thought and systems of belief
which arose, to some extent at least, in such a fashion. Specific
schools of Islam, for example, are largely the same today as when they
were first promulgated. Specific schools of Buddhism descend in a
somewhat similar fashion from the first-hand teachings of the Buddha.
in our own age, there are individuals who revere and evangelise Marx
and/or Lenin as if their teachings were immutable, as if the world had
not changed since they lived - and as if it had indeed been accurately
reflected in their doctrines.
But no one at all conversant with the historical facts would dream of
making such a claim on behalf of Christianity. No one would dispute
that what we today call Christianity - in all its manifold and often
irreconcilable forms - is the result of a prolonged, gradual, often
haphazard process involving much trial and error, much uncertainty,
much schism, much compromise, much improvisation, much a posteriori
accretion - and a great deal of historical accident. At every turn in
the coalescence of Christianity, there are random factors, arbitrary
elements, distortions and modifications dictated by chance or by
simple social and political expediency.
Some pious Christians, no doubt, would assert that this process
nevertheless reflects a divine plan - a pattern designed and shaped by
some hand greater than man's. And indeed, the very vagaries.
vicissitudes, false starts, cul-de-sacs and erratic progressions can
be interpreted as testimony to such a plan. It might even be argued
that only a superhuman power could have extracted anything approaching
coherence from the welter of human confusion.
We do not presume either to endorse or to repudiate such assertions.
We claim no such insight into the designs of Providence, or the
cosmos, or whatever other principle might be responsible for shaping
the course of human history. But we remain acutely aware of how much
an historical accident Christianity actually is, of how easily chance
or circumstance could have altered its development, or even have
thwarted it completely. Had things fallen out only slightly
differently, the edifice now called Christianity would never have
mutated beyond a particular school of Judaism. Had things fallen out
only slightly differently in another direction, there might have been
two or more millennia based on the teachings of Pythagoras, or Plato,
or Hillel, or Apollonius of Tyana, or any of the other wise men,
prophets, sages and teachers of the ancient world. The balance was
always a precarious one. It could have been tipped in any of a number
of alternative ways by the historical equivalent of a feather, and
what we now call Christianity could well have evolved along, say,
Arian lines, or Manichaean lines, or Nestorian lines, or the lines of
various other 'heresies' - or even not at all. The triumph of Roman
Christianity was as much a'near-run thing'as Wellington, in that
famous phrase, described his victory at Waterloo.
Of all the numerous factors which converged to ensure the coalescence,
development and survival of Christianity, there is one which, in our
opinion, is absolutely crucial. This factor is the psychological
climate, the ambience or milieu from which Jesus arose, and which
enabled him to make the impact he did during his lifetime. For Jesus
was very much the product of a specific epoch in his people's history.
We have alluded to that epoch before, if only in passing. To Jesus and
his contemporaries, it was known as the Last Days, or the Last Times.
Messiahs had been predicted, and had appeared, prior to Jesus. As we
noted, David was a Messiah. So was Solomon. So were the descendants of
their line who subsequently occupied the throne of Israel down to the
Maccabees. So, too, were members of the priestly line of Zadok
claiming descent from Aaron. What made the Messianic expectation of
Jesus's time unique was that it became inextricably linked with a form
of apocalyptic hysteria.
The Holy Land in Jesus's time was passing through an acute crisis of
meaning. Existing repositories of faith were being challenged and
proving invalid, in adequate, untrustworthy. John the Baptist was
exhorting men to repent because the day of judgment was imminent, and
across the Judaic world men were convinced that indeed it was. There
was a concurrent mood of fear, both for the world and for oneself, and
a concurrent desire to save, if not the world generally, then at least
oneself. There was a concurrent anguish of guilt, of breast-beating
for past mistakes. There was disillusion with the prevailing material
values imported from Greece and Rome. Accusations of decadence, of
immorality, of corruption, of moral lassitude and depravity were
broadcast wholesale, together with threats of divine wrath and divine
retribution. Latterday prophets appeared, repeating the pronouncements
of earlier prophets whose words, dating from centuries before, were
interpreted as having contemporary relevance. Amidst this dire
rhetoric, a general sense of collapse obtained - prevailing laws,
prevailing codes, prevailing hierarchies of value seemed to be in a
state of disintegration. Social and political institutions were in
disarray. Terrorism was gaining a more and more frightening momentum.
And beneath the surface of increasing turbulence there was a desperate
quest for meaning, which led to a renewed longing for the spiritual.
How could God be made to keep His promise and send a Messiah to
deliver His people?
Capitalising on the renewed longing for the spiritual, religious
fundamentalism reasserted its uncompromising claims, aligned with
powerful social and political forces. A new premium was set on the
ancient Mosaic Law - not only as a religious principle, but also as an
adhesive, binding the social fabric into a coherent order. Along with
such fundamentalism, there was a proliferation of mysticism. New ways
of establishing contact with God were desperately sought. Sects and
cults of a bewildering spectrum and diversity appeared, often as if
overnight, and flourished. Esoterica - magic, astrology,
divination,other forms of the 'occult' - enjoyed a booming business,
generally on the most superficial of levels. Miracles were routinely
expected from magi, prophets and religious teachers. Humanity lived in
the ever darkening shadow of an impending, climactic, millennial
event. And, increasingly, humanity longed for a genuine spiritual
leader, embodying some divine mandate or sanction, to guide it and
ensure salvation.
The mechanisms underlying the situation were simple enough. For Jesus
and his contemporaries, God was assumed not only to possess the
attributes of goodness, omnipotence, omniscience and jealousy, as
described in the Old Testament. He was also assumed to be especially
disposed towards the people of Israel - to regard them with a very
particular favour. They, after all, were His chosen people. He had
made a unique covenant with them. Their exalted status in His eyes was
beyond question. And yet it was increasingly impossible to ignore the
fact that the people of Israel were in a wretched situation, bereft of
their rightful monarchy, saddled with a tyrannical usurper. They had
been subjected to the hardship and humiliation of an alien occupying
army and administration riding roughshod over their country, their
values, their culture, their religion, their heritage.
If God were indeed all-powerful, how could one make sense of Israel's
misfortune? If God were indeed all-powerful, how could one explain His
permitting His Temple to be defiled? How could one explain His letting
His own authority be challenged by a secular ruler in Rome who
presumed to arrogate divinity to himself? There were ultimately only
two possible explanations. Either God was not all-powerful after all -
a suggestion which would have been not only inadmissible, but also
unthinkable. Or Israel's misfortune was occurring, if not through
God's active will, at least with His tacit consent. It seemed obvious
at the time that, whatever God's favour towards His people,this favour
was being withheld or withdrawn. Israel, in short, was being abandoned
by her God.
Why? It was inconceivable that God would have broken his covenant. If
the covenant had been broken, the fault could only be man's. The
logical conclusions were inescapable. Man had transgressed. Man had
incurred God's displeasure. God, in His wrath, was punishing man
accordingly.
This was not, in the context of the time, a matter of complicated
theology. One had only to look around to see the state of the world in
which one lived. It remained only for religious teachers to draw the
obvious parallels with ancient prophecies. The general situation
conformed to the prophet's accounts of the period just prior to the
end of the world. It seemed obvious, therefore, that God was preparing
to end the world - either in exasperation at a failed experiment, or
in order to create a new and better world for those who had remained
loyal to Him.
Such conclusions brought overwhelming emotional forces to the surface.
There was, of course, fear - fear both for the future of the world and
for oneself. A sense of guilt was also, of course, fostered, for
wrongs both real and imagined. Guilt in turn engendered a longing to
atone, to repent - either to avert the general cataclysm or, if that
were not possible, at least to save oneself, to ensure one's own
salvation.
It was from this turbulent welter of emotions that the Messianic
movement of Jesus's time derived its impetus. And this impetus
invested the movement with an element of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Belief in the imminent end of the world helped to provoke the revolt
of A.D.66. And with the revolt of A.D. 66, with the destruction of the
Temple, the sacking of Jerusalem, the dispersal of the city's populace
and the near extermination of Judaism in the Holy Land, the world did
indeed end - at least so far as Jews at the time were concerned.
On the other hand, the survival of a small and loyal elect had been
forecast. By shifting their original ground and embracing the idea of
a purely spiritual Messiah, Paul and his adherents were able to see
themselves as this elect. And by seeing themselves as an elect whose
survival had been promised by God, they proceeded, over the subsequent
centuries, to transform themselves into what they imagined themselves
to be.
THE ACTIVATION OF SYMBOL
Different as our modern world may be from the world of two thousand
years ago, it is astonishing how much our own epoch has in common with
what Jesus and his contemporaries regarded as the Last Times. We may,
today, be technologically more adept and endowed with considerably
more knowledge. But, regrettably, we do not appear to be any wiser,
any more intelligent or any closer to our gods. Indeed, we no longer
even know their names.
We are once again living through an acute crisis of meaning, an
uncertainty about our direction and our goals. The various systems,
programmes and ideologies which, less than a century ago, seemed to
promise so much have all, to one degree or another, proved hollow. As
in Jesus's time, there is a pervasive awareness that something is
disastrously wrong. Each new terrorist outrage, each new air crash,
each new natural disaster produces a frisson of panic. The profound
and rapid changes in our civilisation, the dissatisfaction with our
systems of government, the increasing use of indiscriminate murder and
terrorism as a means of political protest - all have fostered a sense
of general collapse, a wholesale disintegration of values. Society
feels itself 'held to ransom'. Often and increasingly, by the bomber
and the hijacker, it is.What does it all mean?' we ask. And,
disillusioned by materialism's failure to answer the question, we
seek, as in Jesus's time, a response in another dimension - a
spiritual one.
In Islam, in Judaism, in other religions as well as Christianity, a
new fundamentalism is flourishing. Prophets and preachers inveigh
against decadence, immorality, corruption, moral dereliction. On the
one hand, there are calls for renewed discipline and a return to the
more rigorous codes of the past. On the other hand, mysticism is once
again a booming business. Sects, cults, disciplines and therapies
proliferate, command immense followings, draw in staggering sums of
money and enjoy the support of powerful political interests.
As in Jesus's time, we live, quite palpably, in the shadow of an
impending apocalyptic event. Militant fundamentalists can proclaim
that the end of the world is imminent. Even for people who have no
personal reason to anticipate the intervenion of divine wrath, the
threat of a semi-senile finger on the nuclear button is quite real. We
are all helpless hostages to a reality we no longer fully control, to
the spectre of a destruction we are individually powerless to avert.
And beneath the general anxiety, the maddening sense of impotence, the
disillusionment, with inept or irresponsible politicians, there is a
profound longing for a genuine spiritual leader, an 'all-wise' and
'all-gentle' figure who will understand, will take charge and -
without of course violating established democratic freedoms assume the
role of guide, conferring meaning once again on lives which have grown
increasingly empty.
There have been, of course, other such periods in Western history, not
to mention world history, during the last two millennia. The
characteristics of the Last Times might seem equally applicable to the
eleventh century, when Western Europe seethed on the eve of the
Crusades, or to the early sixteenth century, when a conjunction of
constellations in the heavens was held to portend an imminent
apocalypse and, though the world itself remained more or less intact,
the Catholic hegemony of Europe gave way to the Protestant
Reformation. A century later, as the year 1666 approached, there was
another wave of hysteria. Christians anticipated the imminent arrival
of the Antichrist, who was presumed to measure time in strict
accordance with the Gregorian calendar. Concurrent with this, Jews
from Russia, the Ukraine, Persia and the Ottoman Empire to Holland and
the Atlantic coast sought to see the prophesied Messiah in the
self-styled prophet Sabbatai Zevi - now held to be one of the greatest
embarrassments in Judaic history. Nor are these the only instances of
Messianic hysteria in Western history. Very often, millennial thinking
has gone hand in hand with revolution. In both the French and Russian
Revolutions, many people, on both sides, contrived to see an
apocalypse of cosmic, as well as social, proportions. Upheaval in the
social order was interpreted, depending on one's politics and caste,
as either a blessing or a curse bearing God's signature.
In certain respects, then, our age is not unique in its parallels to
the Last Times of the first century. But in other respects it is. Mass
movements based on selfproclaimed prophecy tend, with disquieting
consistency, to become self-fulfilling prophecy. As we have seen,
Jesus's contemporaries were convinced that the end of the world was at
hand. Acting on this conviction, they inadvertently proceeded to bring
about the end of the world - if not of the world in toto, at least of
their world. In similar fashion, the apocalyptic hysteria of the early
sixteenth century precipitated the end of a world. So, too, did the
movements culminating in the French and Russian revolutions. What
distinguishes our culture from such antecedents is that we possess the
power, quite literally, to bring about the end of the world - not
justa metaphorical world, nor a world confined to a specific region or
group of people, but the world as a physical whole. When an American
president begins to think in terms of Armageddon, one is obliged to
take the matter seriously. Not, certainly, because the president in
question is endowed with an insight that the rest of us lack. Nor
because he is any more privy than the rest of us to divine plans or
blueprints of Providence. Nor because his idiosyncratic religious
views warrant respect. But simply because we are humiliatingly at his
mercy; and it is perfectly possible, technologically, for him to
precipitate an Armageddon, while fobbing responsibility for it on to
God.
The Last Times, or the apocalypse, can function as an immensely potent
symbol, striking some of the deepest chords in the human psyche,
eliciting a response on a massive scale. But such symbols, precisely
because of the power inherent in them, will often be appropriated by
small groups of people, deliberately manipulated and used to exploit
others. What is more, such symbols, all through history, have
displayed a disquieting tendency to break free from those who seek to
control them and to run amok, becoming what the French writer Michel
Tournier calls 'diabols'. According to Tournier, a'diabol'is a symbol
which has become autonomous, a law or a principle unto itself, a
Frankenstein's monster on the loose, enslaving - if not destroying -
the very people it was meant to serve. Symbols can be dangerous; and,
as Tournier says, he who sins by symbols will often be punished by
symbols.
It is in this sobering context that today's Messianic religion, with
its doctrine of a new Last Days, must be placed. It is to this context
that twenty centuries of Messianic expectation, however erratic and/or
diluted, have led. For Messianic religion works primarily through the
activation and utilisation of symbols. Sodo many other individuals,
groups and institutions. So, too, if we understand it correctly, does
that elusive semi-secret society which figured so prominently in our
previous book, the Prieur6 de Sion.
The crucial question, of course, is what kind of meaning is being
conferred by the use of certain symbols - what stands to be gained,
what lost, and by whom. What, for example, might be the repercussions
of a proved blood descent from Jesus or his family, and how might
these repercussions be turned to account? How have other principles,
invested with a potent symbolic import, been utilised and made to
function earlier in our century? In order to do justice to the matter,
it is worth surveying the connections, during the last hundred years
or so, between the quest for meaning, the religious impulse, the
shaping of values, and political power.
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