Who Will Tame The Beast?

Historically, the world has had its share of heroes and villains. Heroes were enshrined in monuments and public altars that proclaimed what was good with the human spirit: unquestionable bravery, steadfast morality, personal sacrifices, and unselfish devotion to serve others. Villains, the world had its share too of those who caused so much anguish, cruelty, death and destruction, desolation and the indelible definition of  human suffering.

A popular quote of anonymous origin, popularized on T-shirts for merchandising, says:

"The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Pulled Was Convincing the World He Didn’t Exist."

From generations to generations the world had seen one and several versions of the likes of Atilla the Hun, Hitler and Pol Pot and many others too long to enumerate here. History as written about those men tells us of the horror of their reign that as a consequence they were and are remembered by those who survived directly from their cruelty to depict them as the worst of their nightmares - they were "beasts" that continued to haunt them for as long as they lived.  If we were to lump together everything  that had been written, told and retold in the past about the beasts referred to across centuries and many generations ago to as late as the 1970's, they will apparently pale in comparison to the beast yet to come in our future if we are to subscribe to the idea of the "ultimate destiny of humankind". 

Almost all faiths - certainly for Jews, Muslims and Christians - have their versions of the end time, defined as eschatology, the "branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind".

On one hand, we've had two major world wars and not only are we still here, the world's population has quadrupled since the last one. Could this be  justification to harbor skepticism over the end of time as depicted in both Biblical texts and messages from the Quran that are the source upon which the three major religions rely for guidance and predictions?  

Or, does  the ever increasing world population over the projected shortfall in food and water supply create the kind of turmoil for the possibility of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" in our future?  Is there a way to look at this objectively?  We can without attaching, even just a little bit, our own personal inclinations toward one or another belief system. We can, say, view current events and what can be reasonably projected into the future based on the present conditions. More on this in a bit.

There is no doubt, there had been much fascination with the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse", fearfully or as a matter of religious resignation to the eventual fulfillment of prophecies. Additionally, doomsday movies on screen and TV are feeding into the collective psyche, stoking fears with zombies, environmental disasters, and invasion by extraterrestrial beings, etc.

In the midst of WWI (1914-18), a Spanish novelist, Vicente Ibanez, wrote in 1916,  a book with the subject title,  "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse", depicting a storyline around 1914 and WWI.  It was made into  into a "blockbuster" movie in 1921 that propelled the career of Rudolph Valentino as a superstar of silent films of the time. A remake of the movie was made in 1962, updated to depict the story beginning in 1939, before and at the beginning of WWII.  It was a critical and commercial flop despite an all star cast and premier direction.  Another movie was made with the same title, different plot, in 2022, which also received  lukewarm reviews.  

The sign  The End of the World held up in caricature has also both become fodder for humor and cynicism. 

Today, "wars and rumors of war" persist but the subject of the end time is hardly a topic of regular conversation on any given day but once broached, it can be a contentious one among those who are dogmatic about their beliefs.  We can look at where this all began.

One of the Christian disciples in about 90 A.D. named John was attributed to have written the entire manuscript of the Book of Revelation while in exile on the island of Patmos (now part of Greece) although there are a few scholars who speculate that there may have been others who contributed to the writings.  At that time Patmos was under the control of the Romans who exiled John to the island.  That was ninety years after the crucifixion at Golgotha and two hundred years  before the reign of Emperor Constantine who converted the Roman empire to Christianity.

What John of Patmos (as he came to be known) wrote were about the visions shown to him supernaturally by his recollection. He described what was foretold to him that were predictions of the future state of humankind filled with detailed symbolic references about how it will happen at the end and the return of the Messiah but not specifying when.  It must be noted that all three major religions subscribe to the idea of the messiah or promised redeemer or expected savior. 

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the symbolism they represent as in the visions of John can be all too real.  Unsustainable growth in population, political instability, unpredictable resurgence of virulent microbes and resistance to antibiotics, war mongering from states with powerful weapons indeed make the scenario of the Four Horsemen to occur within the lifetimes of at least 60% of the people alive today. 

Luke Kemp, a researcher  at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge and others like him have written about past collapses of civilization regionally and by eras and the projected collapse of the entire world population in the future.   

"Our tightly-coupled, globalized economic system is, if anything, more likely to make crises spread".        

".. the world is becoming increasingly complex, and our demands on the environment are outstripping planetary carrying capacity."

 -- Luke Kemp

"Studying the demise of historic civilizations can tell us how much risk we face today", says collapse expert Luke Kemp. Worryingly, the signs are worsening".

Put another way, what researchers like Kemp and others are saying can be consistent with what John of Patmos saw in his visions.

Let's put just one present day world context to wrap around just one of those that John wrote about in Revelation, specifically in Chapter 13. Keep in mind that John wrote in symbolisms and if we allow that the visions he saw were incomprehensible to him, he was describing them with images he could only put context to  that were familiar to him as indigenous people in the American west first described the locomotive as iron horse, or guns as thunder sticks.

John wrote about the beasts (not just one but two) right at the start of the chapter in verse 1: "Then I saw a beast come out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads; on its horns were ten crowns, and on its heads names of heresy".

Did the ten crowns mean kingdoms or nations?

Verse 3: "I saw that one of its heads seemed to have been mortally wounded, but this mortal wound was healed.* Fascinated, the whole world followed after the beast".

If it were a nation, did that mean that "this mortal wound was healed" refer to one nation that earlier had suffered a serious defeat in its history but has now recovered? A past empire, or one nation like Germany after WWII, defeated, mortally wounded but now fully back as an economic power? Is it regaining military development and regional leadership?

Verse 11: "Then I saw another beast come up out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb but spoke like a dragon".

Earlier in Verse 4: "And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?"

This is where present day context will seem to be meaningful.  If the so-called beast is a group of nations, i.e. the European Union, for example, or NATO for that matter, or some yet to be named organization of nations, it would make sense that if such a group becomes a strong and cohesive military alliance, its power could be so overwhelming that no one nation can make war with it. It will also by necessity become an economic power, as in ..

 Verse16: "It forced all the people, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to be given a stamped image on their right hands or their foreheads".

Verse 17: "so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name".

During John's time, he could not have understood identification through credit card numbers or some other coding systems that would allow people to do business or engage in commerce. 

This is obviously an abbreviated contextual explanation which the reader is encouraged to further read up on and perhaps come up with other interpretations but the key is to put present day context for any of what John saw in his visions if indeed he was writing about events way, way into his future at the time.

The reader may take this with a grain of salt and that is fair and fine but let's get back to the earlier quote, "The Greatest Trick the Devil Ever Pulled Was Convincing the World He Didn’t Exist."

1. By that, if the devil were real but a deceiver then most of the atrocities and horror he wanted to do will be through "men committing them against other men, people against other people, nations against other nations, etc. and by wars and rumors of wars" only perpetuates his goal.

2. By convincing the world he does not exist is his most potent argument for God also not to exist either. 

But then ..

3. “God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials.”     ― William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist  

True to one of the goals of this musing, to put forth, "provoking issues you did not have the time to consider but now you may want to look into because you have a moment or two to spare or you just want some of your brain cells to be tickled out of slumber", I hope this is one of those. 

Now, as to the question, "Who will tame the Beast?", your answer is as good as anyone else's.

{By the way, most recently a new book just came out, which I haven't yet read, written by Randall Sullivan, "The Devil's Best Trick", with sub-heading, "How The Face of Evil Disappeared".  Looks intriguing and the good reviews, so far, makes it probably worth a look}.

The Serpent's Trail of Dan

From "Maddeningly Unthinkable Road to Megiddo", we can look into more additional history. I found the explanation of the path that the presumed lost tribes of Israel took to make good the promise of, "a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee" even more intriguing. If anything, the predictions surrounding their plight and eventual fate may have at the very least a host of circumstantial evidence or to the skeptics a bunch of coincidences.  A little more digging and I think I found both.

But first another historical example of migrations from a relatively earlier era to put some context and insight.

From 19,000 to 11,000 years ago during the last ice age, also known as the Last Glaciation Maximum (LGM),  sea levels went much lower than it is today when much of the water was frozen at both polar regions, resulting in "land bridges" that connected many island archipelagos and present day island nations from Japan to the Philippines to Indonesia.  During that time those bridges enabled ancient migration on foot from island to island.  The Philippine population today traces its roots to Indo-Malay origins. In fact, Filipinos and Indonesians even today are indistinguishable from one another in physical features and skin color.

At the end of LGM as the planet warmed up, sea levels around the world rose again (there were a total of five glacial and warming epochs in earth's history) thus isolating the present day island nations.  Not only that, but island nations like Indonesia and the Philippines presently have 11,000 and 7,000 separate islands, within each country, respectively.  People, pockets of populations, as a result were isolated from each other from island to island.  Language and culture evolved.  In the Philippines, distinct "island languages", not just  dialects, are spoken today.  For example, in one of the central islands where I grew up, we speak one particular "language" different from the other side because at one time the mountain range in between separated the people from the west to the eastern side of the island.  On the other hand, we speak the same "language" as those from the island directly across from our shores because trades existed between both sides through sea going vessels.

Today, lots of words have common etymologies between Indonesian and Philippine languages.  

That little backdrop from one side of the world gives us a comparative perspective to the plight of the Hebrews from the time of the exodus from Egypt, the exile that followed and centuries of population growth, relocations, displacements, assimilations, political and cultural, even religious turmoil that fueled conflicts only to be settled by warfare, subjugation that led to enslavement, in many cases.  Keep in mind we are talking about a time frame that took centuries of history. 

As depicted in the Biblical story, Jacob was the son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham.  Jacob's name was later changed to Israel and he had  12 sons from whom descended the 12 tribes. While Reuben was the eldest and Benjamin was the youngest, we will only focus on the fifth son named Dan and what happened to his tribe.

Dan's  lineage was a warring tribe, adventurous and prone to restless movement to other lands.  Genesis 32: prophesied that "Dan will be a serpent by the roadside, a viper along the path, that bites the horse's heels, so that its rider tumbles backward".  

One interpretation of the first half of the verse, "A serpent, when it slithers and crawls, leaves a trail or track in the sand. Even so the tribe of Dan would leave signs or "waymarks" showing where it had journeyed. They tended to leave their "name" behind as an identifying sign!" More on this in a bit.

The Danites were descendants of Dan.  For centuries that followed they ventured into lands farther away.  They, among some of the other tribes who did stray from their faith and traditions, were the most to rebel. They developed a close affinity to the Phoenicians with whom they battled against for a period of time before making peace with them.  The Phoenicians were pagans, master shipbuilders and experts at navigation.  Danites worked in shipyards and on ships, perhaps as slaves in the beginning but later acquired the skill to build their own vessels and mastery of seafaring to further their restless and adventurous nature. By that time, they had become idol worshipers and practiced paganism.

Do we see the signs and waymarks that Dan's tribe left behind?  In prophecy, the Israelites were to follow "Road Signs' and "Guideposts", to pave the way for those who were following behind. The tribe of Dan was the trailblazer and the path they took was dubbed the serpent's trail.  Now always remember the timeline to be centuries long.

{Note: "In ancient times, when the Hebrew writing system was developed, vowels were not used. Native speakers could understand the words without the use of vowels, just as you can probably make out this sentence:

Tr wrtng wtht vwls. (Try writing without vowels."}

So, the name Dan would have been written simply as DN, or its equivalent in Hebrew.  Phonetically then, Din, Den, Dan, Don, Dun would have all correspondingly represented the name Dan.

A quick look into the World Atlas will show us a possible route the Israelites took from the time of the exodus from Egypt.  They spent forty years "in the wilderness" that would have placed them in and around the area of Mt. Sinai. They could not go east from there because they would have faced hostility from the people that occupied those lands that earlier had pushed them towards Egypt in the first place. Those land areas that prevented the Israelites from going east then are the same places today occupied by Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran, just to name the major ones.

What follows are what I've read from a few sources who espouse one area of history apart from what is generally accepted.

So, they could have traveled up along the coastline to reach what is now Turkey and by sea to reach Greece.  Let's get the quote earlier: Even so the tribe of Dan would leave signs or "waymarks" showing where it had journeyed. They tended to leave their "name" behind as an identifying sign!" Along the way, territories changed hands through tribal skirmishes and all-out warfare.

A quick look at the map of the upper Middle East and Europe helps to see the trail they took and the waymarks along the way.

The Strait of Gallipoli in northwestern Turkey is also known as The Dardanelles.  Easterly, still along the coast is today the fourth largest city of Sidon in Lebanon.  By sea to Greece and from there they would have reached a place later named Macedonia.  Thus begun the naming of "waymarks and guideposts"

The island of Sardinia may have come from Shardana or Sardana. In Hebrew Shar or Sar meant princely, or chief from which the words tsar, Caesar, kaiser came from.  The Shar Danas were the prosperous Danites that occupied that island for a time.

They moved east and north reaching what is now Germany, Poland, Ukraine and Russia.  Rivers like the Danube and Dnieper are still called that today; so is Gdansk, Poland. Before the state of Israel was created, it is widely known that the known Jewish population was in all places in Europe. Hence, preceding  WWII, German and Polish Jews suffered the most from Hitler's regime.

But here is something even more intriguing. The tribe of Dan kept moving and northerly they settled in what we now know as the Scandinavian countries; most prominently, Sweden and Denmark. Today citizens of Denmark are called Danes.

From there they went down southwesterly in ships.  They reached Ireland first.  In Irish folklore we come across the "Tuatha Dé Danann".  There are many explanations for that phrase, such as to describe tuath Dé as the tribe of gods; Tuatha (plural) Dé for tribes of the gods. In Irish mythology, supernatural beings are described as well in reference to the same. On the other hand, a more natural explanation could be that Tuatha de Danann simply referred to "the tribe of Dan".

Now, there are so many places and names in Ireland and Scotland and throughout the British isles with dan, dun, din, etc. but just to name the popular ones, we see that the capital of Scotland is Edinburgh and of course we have London.  

All of these are circumstantial when taken alone or simply coincidences?

The Roman geographer Ptolemy described northern Scotland as Caledonii or Caledonia, "such as Dùn Chailleann, the Scottish Gaelic word for the town of Dunkeld meaning "fort of the Caledonii".  In Ptolemy's map was a region there called the Otadini.  Further down into the "lowlands" of Scotland we find places like Averdeen, Dundee and of course the capital named Edinburgh.

The last one geographical patch I see that was a pivotal place in English modern history was a place called Dunkirk, France, when in May, 1940 close to 350,000 British soldiers were rescued with British ships and civilian vessels who risked their small boats to cross the English Channel to ferry the survivors of a defeated British force back to England.  'Operation Dynamo' was hailed as a miracle or providential because for some reason the Germans did not pursue the British soldiers to their end as they were fleeing. Many of those soldiers went back on D-day to liberate Europe.  It was at the end of the war when the world found out about the concentration camps and the death of six million Jews.

Do these places prove the prophecy about Dan's tribe/s fulfilling their task to name "waymarks and guideposts" to pave the plight of the lost tribes of Israelites?  The reader can look up the maps, as I did, and one may take the position that these are all circumstantial or total coincidences or perhaps mere misinterpretations.  Are Biblical prophecies, such as, "for a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee"  (Genesis 35:11) to be interpreted as Great Britain and the United States just lucky guesses?  Where does that put the rest of the world? That will be for another day of discussion.

From today's headlines the world seems headed towards an unprecedented escalation of antisemitic protests as a result of Israel's push against Hamas in Gaza. Some of the chants heard were, "Go back to Europe'', a clear reference to where most of the Jewish population used to reside.   This takes us back to an Old Testament prophecy, “For I will take you from the nations, gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own land” (Ezek. 36:24), fulfilled in 1948 on the creation of the state of Israel.

Unfortunately, history has provided us, time after time, humanity's proclivity for conflict that goes back  thousands of years. However, lessons remain unlearned, forgotten and ignored. My previous musing on the road to Megiddo is not an exaggeration if only to agree with this quote, "The history of man is a history of war."

Perhaps, "wars and rumors of war" (Matthew 24:6) will finally end in that one last battle at Megiddo if only for that to be the last war man will ever have to fight. And never again because either we have at last learned our final lesson or because there is no one left  to do any more battles.