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}.