| II. | Introduction |
| Posted: August 22, 2003 |
| Eugen Weber, in an article entitled, "Apocalypse through History," provides interesting and useful insights into the concept of apocalypse. |
| [QUOTE] | Ends, along with beginnings, have played a large part in humanity's experience of itself-not least in the Judeo-Christian tradition that forms the backbone of Western history from Asia Minor to the Pacific’s shores...Apocalypse-the revelation or unveiling of the world’s destiny and of humankind’s fate-has fascinated Jews and their Christian offspring for at least the past 2,200 years... |
| One tends to think of Advent as leading up to the birth of Christ. But it culminates in his Second Coming, and that is what the rite, the lessons, and the sermons of the rite are about: the Judgment to come, and before it, the Son of Man coming in a cloud with great power and glory, and the terrors that precede his coming, and the magic millennial interlude between his preliminary and his final victory over Satan... |
| ...[O]ne might well wonder why a motif and motivating agency so pervasive has been so long ignored in modern times, especially by professional historians. |
| Just 30 years ago, Christopher Hill began his Riddell Lectures of 1969 with a similar remark. Historians-Hill calls us intellectual snobs-"have ignored the lunatic fringe that believed in the imminence of the end and the necessary preliminary of Antichrist," paying no heed to Milton, Cromwell, Newton, and so many others who shared a belief in the imminent end of the world. |
| Great historian of the 17th-century England that he is, Hill saw the need to attend to the beliefs of that time, because beliefs influence action-as they encouraged Cromwell to readmit Jews to England in hope of advancing the time of the Lord's return. Nevertheless, Hill's scholarship and his language characterized, hence intellectually marginalized, the believers he studied as a lunatic fringe. That was not so until the 17th century or even the 18th century; and many 18th- and 19th-century reformers would have to be counted among the lunatic fringe: Lord Shaftesbury and his friends, the supporters of Jewish emancipation and of Zionism, and abolitionists like Harriet Beecher Stowe-and scores of others-who, in Britain and North America and even in France, eventually brought the slave trade to an end... |
| In 1957, another serious scholar, Norman Cohn, memorably assigned the apocalyptic tradition to the "obscure underworld of popular religion." Christianity was being recast. It had been through the ages, but now its supernatural foundations were being meddled with, and reconstruction can shore up structures or help to weaken them. Subtract one aspect of the supernatural, and the edifice may crumble. Another few years and even such a distinguished theologian as Paul Tillich dismissed belief in the afterlife as "a corrupt form of theological expression, disseminated among the relatively poor and uneducated." If some don’t think as we, the educated think, it must be because they are uneducated, poor, or crackpots. |
| They may conversely, be sociologically all right but simply mistaken. Or they may not be mistaken at all. Condescension, at any rate, is not the right approach. History is not an exclusively rational process; nor is it about exclusively rational processes-and anyway, one man’s reason is another man’s nonsense.1[UNQUOTE] |
| In the early 1980s, an "Evaluation of the Church in the U.S.A."2 Chapter 5 of a manuscript understood the 666 Mark of the Beast, which will be needed for buying and selling, as an emerging end point of a culture in which selfish consumption eclipsed missional living for others in response to Jesus' sacrificial love for us. |
| That Chapter 5 looked at the implications of the emerging Electronic Transfer System and its relationship to both the technology for implanting newly developed chips in animals, and the 666 mark of the Beast described in the Biblical book of Revelation. |
| Chapter 5 included a quote from the Preface of John Wicklein's Electronic Nightmare (1981) work that serves to provide a bridge to the following material. Wicklein, writing from a secular point of view, stated: |
| [QUOTE] | Every technique of the communication revolution that I discuss in this book is already in place somewhere in the world. In many cases, the services are fully operational in commercial or government applications. And for almost every blessing these techniques bring, they pose a danger to our individual liberty and our privacy... |
| From studying the developments over the last ten years, and researching and reporting almost full time for two, I have come to feel the shape of things to come is quite clear. How the shape is to be filled out by new equipment is a question the development engineers are answering, and will continually reanswer, as each new discovery makes a specific technique easier and less expensive to use. Knowing the hardware is not nearly so important as knowing the techniques and what they can do for us - and to us.3[UNQUOTE] |
| What follows are, for the most part, referenced and occasionally annotated updates of the identification, development and spread of "new equipment." Where appropriate, an occasional new insight is briefly presented. |