Auteur/autrice : É-tienne Chauds-mets

The Bible teaches us that the light of Truth and Love prevails over the Forces of Evil like the dawn: a gentle daybreak dispelling the darkness, without fighting, without noise, humbly AND at the same time irresistibly, in the quiet strength of righteous power. This is recounted in the very last book of the Bible. Cf. my article: Revelation reveals the radical asymmetry of ends and means between the God of Jesus Christ and the Prince of this world. Excerpt:

‘The ‘last of the last’ of wars will resemble the implosion of a house of cards. The last book of the Bible, the Apocalypse of Saint John, speaks of the battle of Armageddon at the end of time. Spontaneously, our imaginations expect this final battle between the Forces of Good and Evil to be grandiose, on a par with the bloodiest mythological tales. The seventh art has made a spectacle of it, and the special effects of the most recent films add to the horror. Yet the biblical text tells a sobering tale of a non-battle: ‘The spirits of the demons gathered them to Armageddon. Out of the temple came a loud voice from the throne: it is done! The great city was broken into 3 parts and the cities of the nations collapsed’ (Rev 16:16-19). The loud voice signals the coming of God, before whom everything that has no eternal value crumbles like a house of cards, fragile on the inside. It implodes from its hollow belly, from its inanity.

Here’s what Wilbert Kreiss had to say: ‘Strange! We’re witnessing a general mobilisation and we’re expecting a terrible confrontation, a truly apocalyptic war, and nothing happens! There’s no fighting. There is no eschatological war between Christ surrounded by his angels and the infernal hordes mobilised by Satan. There has never been and there never will be a battle on the mountain of Megiddo. The battle of Armageddon, the millenarian’s violin d’Ingres, is not an event, but a non-event, and that is why it is not recounted in the text. Nor is the simulacrum of war mentioned in Revelation 20:7-10, which is nothing but a farce”

In the chapters preceding this bizarre war, the Johannine Letter plunged us into an appalling outburst of violence, with its attendant suffering and oppression. But their frenzied rage, enacted to its climax, is the very harbinger of their imminent self-destruction, like a fire dying of starvation. Finding nothing left to burn, it burns itself out at the end of its mad race. At the end of time, Evil will no longer find the answer it needs to survive. Throughout history, it has succeeded in inflaming the hearts and minds that have fuelled its infernal inferno. He has seduced the world, and he has also led the forces of the Church astray, dragging them along in this race to his doom. In the same apocalyptic vein, the Book of Daniel also warned of this fury linked to the end of the world, of these final jolts of a beast that dies after spitting out its venom. After the gesticulations of its last-ditch struggle, evil will no longer be able to achieve its goal, which is to generate evil. It will find itself alone, in the prison it has built for itself. […] The Prince of Darkness and his emissaries can give nothing but things that they have received from their Creator and perverted. Satan would so much like us to take him for the Saviour of the world, but he is the wolf in the clothing of Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother… Revelation warns us by revealing the inconsistency and evil of his anti-creation project. His works are antics and deception. They are a sham. He will be like a beast that dies after spitting its venom’.