Second Coming, Page 3

While the 1930s were indeed singled out by Steiner as highly significant to the Second Coming, the likelihood that he himself witnessed Christ in the etheric world around 1909, and was himself the Bodhisattva, seems well supported.² Whether it was in the etheric world, or approaching it from higher worlds, may be taken for our present purposes as too strenuous a refinement. We know from Steiner’s deathbed autobiography that not long before the turn of the century, he “had stood in spirit before the Mystery of Golgotha in most inward, most earnest solemnity of knowledge,” The Course of My Life (CML), Chap. 26. And on June 17, 1908, in a lecture at Nuremberg, Spiritual Science, Christianity and the Future of Mankind (SSCFM) pregnant with the approaching revelation of the Second Coming in the etheric world he had said, “And if man gives himself up to this Power [the Christ “I Am”], then he will grow again into the Spiritual World from out of which he has descended. He will rise again into that region, whereinto the Initiate can already see today.”

Perhaps too much has already been said about whether it was around 1909 or 1933 that the Second Coming commenced. Sooner or later, the serious student will come upon this question, but for now, the distinction is academic, not sufficiently important to dwell further upon. That we are by now generations into that time frame is the significant point. The materialistic Ahrimanic powers have dominated the secular, and obscured the spiritual (2 Th 2,11), developments of the century, providing Christ a setting not unlike that two millennia earlier. That he has come, as yet almost universally undetected, like a “Thief in the Night” is indicated.

Presently we shall look at what Steiner said about the Second Coming, then into the nature of the etheric state, and finally at the relevant scriptures. However, let us first reflect upon the possible reconciliation of some passages and concepts that tend to raise conflicting images in our minds, and see how these relate to the Second Coming. Consider, for instance, the following:

a) Ascension—e.g. Mk 16,19; Lk 24,51; Jn 20,17; Acts 1,9; 1 ABD 472.

b) “I go to prepare a place for you [in his Father’s house where there are many rooms, and from whence] I will come again and will take you to myself”—Jn 14,2-3.

c) “I go away, and I will come to you .. . I go to the Father”—Jn 14,28.

d) The “Counselor” and the “Holy Spirit” will be sent by the Father— Jn 14,26.

e) “I am with you always, to the close of the age”—Mt 28,20.

f) He appeared to the apostles alive “during forty days”— Acts 1,3.

g) To Paul, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” appearing long after his Ascension—Acts 9,5; 1 Cor 15,8.

h) “Christ Jesus . . . who is at the right hand of God”—Rom 8,34.

i) “Not I, but Christ liveth in me”—Gal 2,20.

Must we not admit that the whereabouts of the Christ after the Resurrection is problematical, and variously presented by the above passages when understood in an ordinary way? We are told that he ascended and was going to the Father, but that he would always still be here with us, and he appeared here on Earth after the Ascension, yet he is sitting at the right hand of God; and still he dwells within us, even though there is an implication that the Counselor or Holy Spirit is standing in for him during his absence. And if he is always with us, how is it that he can “come again,” presumably never having left? The concept of the Holy Spirit as necessarily both distinct from and yet one with the Father and Son has, from its inception, always been called upon semantically to fill the interstices between our images.

We raise these seeming discrepancies only to point out the limitations of our level of understanding. So long as we deal, as is our custom, only with the physical and the spiritual, the harmonizing of all these concepts is indeed a challenge. They are raised here so as to get them all on the table, as being related to the “Second Coming,” and so that we not be blindsided, from a literal standpoint, by their oversight.

If we try to storm our way to comprehension, “taking it by force” (Mt 11,12), so to speak, rather than meditating upon and letting our angel help us come to an understanding in heart and mind, we shall find ourselves in the arid terrain of the Ahrimanic “Written Word” (2 Cor 3). To assist us in coming to an anthroposophic understanding of these matters, let us contemplate charts I-9 and I-18. From the latter the levels of “descent” the Christ had to go through to incarnate in the flesh become apparent. Likewise, one sees that the lowest of his components before the descent was “Life Spirit,” which sheds light upon his claim to be “the Life” (Jn 14,6), and that no one can get to the Father above the chart (I-18) without going through him, the Son, who stands at its top. If this was the Descent, then perhaps one can come to some idea of what the corresponding Ascent means. But we must recognize that the Christ, in such descent is the one and only spiritual being who has experienced all the twelve levels—the sevens have become the twelves only in him (cf. Rev). And when he took upon himself the lowliest forms, having done so free from sin and the taint of the Fall, he purified each of them (Heb 2) and, in accordance with the principle of “Spiritual Economy,” left multiple copies of each so that one is abundantly available for every human soul who submits to its Christ-like nature.