Saint John or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Apocalypse
Confessions of a wannabe cult leader
Growing up, I was never much interested in the Bible. We weren’t really a church-going family. As far as I recall, the book that put me on the road that would eventually lead to the Bible was Strange Stories, Amazing Facts from Reader’s Digest Books. Published in 1976, this was a collection of supposedly strange but true stories that (I assume) had been featured in Reader’s Digest magazine over the years.
I was around twelve or so when I became fascinated with the story about Nostradamus and his predictions.
The year 1999, the seventh month, From the sky shall descend a great King of Terror, To revive the great King of the East, Before and after, Mars shall reign for the good cause. (Century X, Number 72)
I am not sure how the book interpreted the prophecy, but know that World War Three was mentioned. I interpreted it as basically a death sentence for myself. I remember whining to my mother how unfair it was that I was going to die in 1999 when I would only be thirty-three years old. She agreed that it was totally unfair.
Later I would manage to watch the horror film, The Omen (1976) when it appeared on HBO. I also read the paperback. The significance of 666 became deeply imprinted in my psyche.
The Late Great Planet Earth
Around this time I got ahold of my babysitter’s copy of Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth (1970), which explained in detail the meaning of Revelations with the Great Beast, the four horsemen, and the seven vials. Everything a growing boy needs in his reading diet.
For an example of the level of Biblical exegesis found within The Late Great Planet Earth consider the following:
“I have a Christian friend who was a Green Beret in Viet Nam. When he first read this chapter he said, ‘I know what those are. I’ve seen hundreds of them in Viet Nam. They’re Cobra helicopters!’
That may be conjecture, but it does give you something to think about! A Cobra helicopter does fit the sound of ‘many chariots.’ My friend believes that the means of torment will be a kind of nerve gas sprayed from its tail.”¹
Lindsey and his ‘friend’ were referring to the verses below:
The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the thundering of many horses and chariots rushing into battle. They had tails and stings like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months. (Rev 9:7–10 NIV)
I returned to Strange Stories, Amazing Facts. The book included, almost certainly (I no longer have access to the text so I shall remember things in a manner that best serves the narrative), a quatrain that dealt directly with the Antichrist:
The Antichrist very soon annihilates the three, twenty-seven years his war will last. The unbelievers are dead, captive, exiled; with blood, human bodies, water, and red hail covering the earth. (Century VIII, Number 77)
Here, so many different pieces of my culture: Reader’s Digest, HBO, and paperback novels, The Bible, and Hal Lindsey, were all pointing to the same future. The Antichrist is going to come and a merry time will be had by all.
The Number of the Beast
This was before the entire End Times industry had really gotten going. The first book in the Left Behind series wouldn’t be published until 1995. The apocalypse market was starved for more Antichrist-themed content. I remember when Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast came out in 1982. The opening verses of the song were lifted directly from the Bible.
Woe to you, oh earth and sea For the Devil sends the beast with wrath Because he knows the time is short. (Revelation 12:12)
Let him who hath understanding Reckon the number of the beast For it is a human number Its number is six hundred and sixty-six (Revelation 13:18)
Still, I felt that the rest of the song was a shallow examination of the significance of the number of the Beast. To truly know the Antichrist was to live in terror of the Antichrist.
My teachers were always, “He’s very intelligent if he would just apply himself,” but what is the point when in July 1999 a great king of terror is going to come out of the sky?
Instead of schoolwork, I studied astrology, magick, tarot cards, and various related topics. As I delved deeper into the more esoteric texts I found the occasional mention of the Revelation of St. John, but usually with the subtle suggestion that the Gospels are more suitable for esoteric study.
In his book, A New Model of the Universe (1931), P. D. Ouspensky writes:
The idea of esotericism occupies a very important place in Christian teaching and in the New Testament if these are properly understood.
In the New Testament, the esoteric idea occupies the chief place in the four Gospels. The same can be said of the Revelation of St. John. But, with the exception of several passages, the esoteric ideas in the Apocalypse are “enciphered” still more than in the Gospels and in their ciphered parts they do not enter into the following examination.
The four Gospels are written for the few, for the very few, for the pupils of esoteric schools. However intelligent and educated in the ordinary sense a man may be, he will not understand the Gospels without Special indications and without special esoteric knowledge.
In each of the four Gospels, there are many things consciously thought out and based on great knowledge and deep understanding of the human soul. Certain passages are written with the definite calculation that one man should understand them in one way, another in another way, and a third in a third way and that these men should never be able to agree as to the interpretation and understanding of what they had read; and that at the same time all of them should be equally wrong, and the true meaning consists of something which would never even occur to them of themselves.²
So, according to Ouspensky, there are esoteric secrets hidden within the Gospels. There are also some deeper and more encrypted secrets hidden with the Revelation of St. John, but those are for the more advanced decryptologist.
As to Ouspensky’s claim that one needed special esoteric knowledge before one could hope to understand the true meaning of the Gospels, I had no doubt that my studies in esoteric divinatory systems and ritual magick had more than prepared me for the task.
Actually, I had no appreciation of the risk I was taking. I was still laboring under the mistaken perception that reading the Bible with the intention of finding hidden interpretations of dusty old prophecies and parables was a harmless game.
I was wrong.
I’ll tell you just how wrong in my next article.
- Hal Lindsey, There’s a New World Coming: A Prophetic Odyssey (Santa Ana, CA: Vision House Publishers, 1973), 138–139.
- Ouspensky, P. D. (1931). A New Model of the Universe: Principles of the psychological method in its application to problems of science, religion, and art.