Doomsday 2010

I cannot honestly recall how many times throughout my life I’ve heard that the end of the world was imminent (though I’m certain I never heard it in such terms until I was sixteen years old).  The first two were on separate occasions in 1999, the earlier of which revolved around the predictions of a man called Nostradamus.  I don’t quite recall the details, but the point was still the same – the world was ending.

The later of the two came to my attention in September of that year – the Y2K problem – the world would end when the clock struck midnight and the year 2000 began.  All of our modern technology would fail, satellites would fall from the sky, anything with a computer chip in it would either stop functioning or turn against humanity (the best example that I can think of for this would be the Y2K episode of “Family Guy”).  A further derivation of this would have us believing that commerce would cease to function, that the world as we know it (that is, one built up on the premises and functioning of capitalism) would cease to exist and barcodes would become useless.

There was a definite, tangible fear in the air – I could see it in the adults around me (I was 10 years old at the time), could sense it in their attitudes towards the coming year.  I never really felt fear – I thought that what was coming would be interesting, at the very least, and at the very worst I wouldn’t be around to see the destruction if it really was the end of the world.  So really, not that bad.  Perhaps I would have felt a much greater fear, and, subsequently, a much greater sense of relief when, hour after hour, the new year was rung in around the world, and we were still alive, had I known more about the Book of Revelation, or at the very least if I had been as well-versed in the imagery that has no doubt been drilled into the collective American mindset for centuries; I would have felt a greater sense of fear and subsequent relief, had I known that the things people feared would happen were sure signs of the Apocalypse.

1. One of John of Patmos’ key signs of the apocalypse is the falling of stars from the skies.  True, satellites are not stars, per se, but the effect would have been the same, given that satellites are meant to sail amongst the stars, as it were.  To have these celestial (albeit man-made) objects begin to fall to the earth could no doubt be seen as a sign of the coming end of days.
2. Technology failing / turning against humanity.  All of our best practices, that we claim have brought us to the forefront of modernity (not meant, of course, in the philosophical sense of the word that has arisen since the early 18th century) can be equated to the armies of earthen kings turning against the armies of Christ.  That is, if one is willing to accept the notion that technology is the highest manifestation of human endeavors, and humanity is, in this case, the stand-in for Christ’s army of risen saints.
3. The aforementioned barcodes could be seen as the proverbial “mark of the beast.”  Granted, their ceasing to function would have been a byproduct of the wider failure of technology.  However, consider the fact that items with barcodes would no longer be able to be sold, therefore bringing commerce and capitalism to a screeching halt.  Then consider that those handling the mark of the beast, and their wares sold, would be destroyed (and thus be made useless).  Barcodes, then, become the mark of the beast.

So, yes, if I were the person then that I am today, I probably would have been terrified at the dawn of the new millennium. Such fears, according to Kirsch, seem to be entirely legitimate.  Or if not legitimate, then understandable, given that such imagery has played a huge part in the history of Western civilization since the first century of the Common Era.

Kirsch believes that it is very important to identify who John the Revelator actually was, that that will have some significant relevance to a modern citizen of the world.  I beg to differ, however.  The fact of the matter is that the imagery remains the same, even if you change the author from one “John” to another.  That being said, it’s entirely possible that it wasn’t even a man named John that wrote this particular book of the Bible.  It could be that someone was telling the story from a fictional point of view, strictly for entertainment value.  I realize how unpopular that view may be, and I don’t necessarily espouse it, but I do recognize that such a possibility must exist, given the lack of conclusive evidence that we’ve been provided with thus far.

My parting thought will be a theory I’d like to present.  Namely, that the Book of Revelation was not meant to be a predictor of the end of the world, but merely a story based in morals that played on the fears of those that would have been the primary listeners/readers.  The evidence here may be slim, but I will present it here for debate regardless.  Consider Revelation 10:1-11.  Here we find John having to eat a book which tastes like honey in his mouth but turns bitter in his stomach.  This book is full of what? It doesn’t say, though I feel we are led to believe that the book is of knowledge of God’s plan and of what people have done, what they will do, and what is to become of them and of the earth.  The changing taste of the book is purely symbolic: it feels good to gain such knowledge, but the dissemination of said knowledge (in this case, the transfer of the book from his mouth to his stomach) brings bitterness that one would hope to avoid.  Could this not be a stand-in lesson for not spreading lies about people? Or, perhaps, for not attempting to gain the knowledge of the Lord?