Epilogue

Why Now?

Some may be able to accept what is said in the text without further ado. But others who have reached the end of the text above may be dogged by the question of how our particular time in history can be so crucial in the sense that only now is Christendom able to “bear” the truth in regard to the birth of Jesus (as well as countless other truths of Biblical revelation). The seeming similarity of the developmental pattern of Christianity and the individual human being, where centuries are to the former as years are to the latter, was pointed out in the text. But that is only a single circumstance, not alone sufficient for many minds.

For many, it will suffice simply to make a study of the history of Christendom prior to our time, for that alone should show the plausibility of the two millennial scenario here suggested. Europe’s Middle Ages are called “dark” because they were, and little of spiritual light has come down to us from them. They do, in fact, span essentially the middle third of the time between Christ and the Twentieth Century. And while Aquinas searched existing written authority (and became thereby the theological anchor of Roman Catholicism to this day), and Christian mystics penetrated to divine personal experiences, nothing they handed down has brought enough new light to reverse the tendency to schism among sincerely devout persons and groups that marked the first six hundred years of Christian “brotherhood.” Indeed, since the Renaissance, division within Christendom has proceeded apace with little indication of reversal save among confessions and denominations that have themselves suffered decline.

We speak today with great reverence for the Church Fathers. It is not entirely inappropriate that we do so, for they hammered out creeds and doctrines, and persevered to the point of even taking over civil government (the Roman, and Holy Roman, Empires) so as to first create and then preserve a tradition. But when the first six hundred years of the Christian era are examined, the overwhelming impression one gets, once the Apostolic Fathers of the first century were gone, is that it can best be described as a time of “isms” and schisms, devoid of real intuitive revelation, battles largely over the nature of the Christ (human, divine, or composite) and of the relationship between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In the final analysis, the conclusions are ecclesiastically legislated doctrine, hammered out under the protection, and in many cases under the mandate, of the Roman emperor with intrigue, bloodshed, intense hostility, and at best an uneasy peace to this day. It is hard not to see at work in this process the same attitude that existed between the Sadduccees, scribes and Pharisees in regard to the Mosaic law. In the name of Christ, and with the approbation of high authority, murder has been committed within the brotherhood not only in hammering out the early creeds and doctrines, but since then in persecution of so-called heretics, inquisition, and witchcraft (not limited to colonial America). The sword has been used in the name of Christ against pagans from the time of Constantine through the crusades of the Middle Ages and down to the wars in Lebanon, Bosnia and the like. The enormous good that has resulted from true Christian service down through the centuries cannot be denied. But that cannot itself justify a continued blindness to new revelation, for who can deny the need for a massive change in human thinking, feeling and willing in the direction of far greater collective good?

Christianity has always claimed to be “a revealed faith,” and indeed it is. Christ and Paul both rejected the Judaistic idea that prophecy could be no more. Yet Christianity tends today to limit the “Word of God” to the canon and what can be gathered from a mere reading of that written word. But the nature of the revelation in that canon has yet to be understood—and for the sensitive soul the direction in which humanity is moving screams for a revelation now of what Christ and “the Mystery of Golgotha” really meant for it. One who earnestly and sincerely studies the works of Rudolf Steiner can see this revelation and feel that the time of which Jeremiah spoke, when Christ would write his law upon human hearts (Jer 31,33-34), may be approaching.

All phenomena in our sensate world are prefigured by events in the spiritual world. This relates to John’s description of the Logos, the Word, “all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made” (Jn 1,3). It is the ability, through spiritual organs in some human beings developed far beyond those of their contemporaries, to perceive these events in the spiritual world. It is this that has always made prophecy possible. There were two of this type who stood above their contemporaries in this ability in the first century of our calendar, the Evangelist John and Paul. Almost all of the New Testament was written directly or indirectly by these two (when Luke and Acts are so considered, only two Gospels and the four non-Johannine letters fall outside this group).

Creative activity in the spiritual world is entirely under the domain of what doctrine calls “the Trinity,” the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. However, between the Trinity and the four earthly kingdoms (human, animal, plant and mineral), and serving as agents of the Trinity, is what the Bible broadly calls the “heavenly host.” It too was “made” by the Logos. It comprises the nine ranks of the hierarchies (from the seraphim down to the angels) as well as discarnate spirits within the four earthly kingdoms. All of these intervening agencies include not only those who work for the purposes of the Trinity, but those fallen spirits who work for a time in opposition and whose actions are reflected on Earth in the form of evil.

An immense amount is encompassed in what has just been said, and is generally beyond the scope of this work (though considerably addressed in my longer work).

But the reader who is unable to accept these thoughts, at least tentatively, may profit little from reading on. In The Burning Bush three major circumstances are given in some detail, each a distinct topic standing alone. The confluence of all three as our century opened is of great significance.

One such circumstance has to do with the end of the “dark ages,” a far longer period of time than that associated with our own period of medieval history (the “Middle Ages”), one more nearly associated with the long period described by the Lord in answer to Isaiah’s cry, “How long, O Lord” shall the eyes not see, the ears not hear and the heart not understand? (Is 6,11-13)—the human condition echoed in every Gospel, the conclusion of Acts, and the letter to the Romans. In the Orient, that dark age is said to be five thousand years long and to be called “Kali Yuga.” The term is identical in meaning to the name “Deucalion” (hear the “calio” sound in each) found in the ancient Western myth Prometheus. The age started when the last vestige of true human communication with the spiritual world was being lost (when God was “hiding his face” to use Biblical terminology). The incredible memory of ancient times was fading, so that writing began to come into use—around 3,000 B.C. From then the five thousand years extended to the beginning of the third millennium, ending in 1899 according to Steiner. One does not have to look too hard to find evidence of the truth of this assertion and of the ancient myth.

A second one has to do with the second coming of Christ, the parousia in Greek terminology. Luke tells us (Acts 1,11) that it shall be in the same body form as was the Ascension, the latter a topic largely ignored by Christian theology, though acknowledged by it and vital to it. It is even less understood than the mysterious nature of the appearances of the risen Christ to some of his followers. Without an understanding of the three bodies of the human being, it is not possible to come to any real comprehension of either of these phenomena. According to Steiner the “second coming” of Christ is in the etheric world, having commenced there early in the twentieth century where it is already experienced by those whose organs are properly prepared, and the period will extend now for a long time while others, as suggested in John’s Apocalypse (“they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren should be complete,” Rev 6,11), develop this capacity by overcoming the veil of the flesh, the mineral/physical body. This topic (the second coming) is widely covered in the longer work, including by an entire essay. Only this brief summary can be given here.

It is the last of these three major spiritual events, all coinciding with the beginning of the twentieth century, that is of particular interest to us here. That event is the commencement of the new age (also called the “regency”) of the Archangel Michael, which Steiner placed late in the nineteenth century.

According to him, a divine law provides that the truths of real prophecy could never be truly recognized for a period of one hundred years after the life of the prophet. There is a reason for this, related to human egoism. In his provincial age, the Christ could express it more restrictively, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house” (Mt 13,57, Jn 4,44); today we must add, “or in his own time,” given our shrinking world. When this law is applied, given Steiner’s extensive revelations as our century opened, our present time takes on a significance far beyond that even normally associated with the end of a millennium.

Let us then turn our attention to Michael.