The Mark of the Beast in Our Times
A reader with the bluish-grey but divine name of Cassious Dio writes:
And, for the first time, in 2000 years, public mass has been suspended over the WHOLE EARTH. I think this is bigger than we realize if we consider the economy of grace.
Are the Last Days nigh?
In every generation it seems that they are, but only one generation will have the dubious privilege of being right.
And yet, and yet, I cannot shake the suspicion that it is our generation.
I am sure those living during the Black Death felt the same way, or the scattered Englishmen of Alfred the Great’s day when the Dane was invading.
And yet…
Even Sodom and Gomorrah did not have gay marriage. Even the Romans at their most decayed, did not actively hate Rome and tear her statues down. The temple prostitutes and pederasts of Babylon, the torture-cannibal priests of Aztec lands, neither killed their unborn in numbers like ours, nor sought to abolish masculinity, virginity, family as we so diligently do.
Our is a nihilist age. Nihilism is a halt state.
It is the position that all thought is in vain, for there is no truth. It is a position which, once adopted, one cannot by clarity of thought nor by love of truth recover again, because these are the very tools nihilism breaks. It is the thought that stops thought.
So I see no lower we can go. Either we return to God, or we see civilization collapse in fire and terror.
Western Man is in his sick bed. Will it be his death bed?
I cannot say.
Allow me to mention that I have been reading and re reading the Book of the Apocalypse over and over again. There is a blessing for those who hear the words of the prophecy.
One of the prophecies is of a the beast of the earth that had two horns as a lamb, and spoke as a dragon, of which it is said “He had power to give life unto the image of the beast [of the sea], that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.”
“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name …”
At first, I imagined something like a 40-story giant statue erected in the center of Jerusalem, which could move and talk like Disney’s Meet Mr. Lincoln exhibit at the World’s Fair, maybe with camera behind its eyes and flamethrowers hidden in its muzzle, so it could smite people with fire.
But looking around me now, I notice that the television box and the computer screen are nonliving things that mimic the faces and voices of people far away. They are also images, merely graven with electrons rather than with wood or stone.
I have seen when this image, in the form of Patreon or social media, suddenly makes it so that Stefan Molyneux or Alex Jones “could not buy nor sell” because they did not have the Mark of the Beast on brow or hand, that is, neither in thought nor deed were they political correct.
Coincidence? I hope so. I wish the Millennium to hasten, but I fear the Tribulations.
*** *** ***
The apocalyptic writings of St. John, however, hold out this firm hope: we win in the end.
The dry trek through the wildness ends in the Holy Land. After Good Friday, comes Easter. Our weeping will be turned to dancing. The dry bones seen by Ezekiel will live again.
The New Jerusalem will descend like a bride adorned for her wedding.
(As generous victors whose triumph is assured, we can, even beforehand, afford to have some pity for the losers, who rage and riot about us now, imagining that they rule the earth. Poor souls!)
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
