A Modern Apsethus

 

One of my favorite stories of the religion-crazy times in which Christianity developed involves the remarkable Apsethus of Libya.  He was one of many men who wandered about in the first two centuries of the Common Era (AD) declaring themselves gods or being declared gods by others.

Most of them did what was usually done to earn this designation--heal the sick, drive out demons, raise the dead, etc.  The ancients believed in magic of this kind.  Even early Christians did.  Some of the earliest images of Jesus show him using a magic wand while performing miracles. Initially, Christians welcomed comparisons of Jesus with pagan wonder workers like Apollonius of Tyana.  They thought it would mitigate pagan criticism of Christianity to point out pagans believed in miracles as well.  They insisted, however, that the miracles performed by pagans were the work of demons. Later, they decided only Jesus worked real miracles.

Apsethus was compared with Simon Magus, also a contemporary of Jesus. Apsethus, though, was more inventive than other holy magicians.  Rather than performing the same miracles, he trained parrots common to the area to cry out "Apsethus is God!" The parrots were believed by many.

Unfortunately for Apsethus, someone, "a Greek" (Greeks apparently being less gullible than Libyans), trained other parrots to cry out "Apsethus isn't God! He captured us and made us call him God!"  The Greek-trained parrots were more persuasive.  Apsethus' followers turned on him and he met a bad end.

This history lesson teaches us something about how incredibly stupid we can be when we're desparate to believe something that we find agreeable to us, particularly when it promises us success or salvation in this world or the next.  It also teaches us something about parrots and their trainers.

It's not difficult to find amenable parrots, and parrot-trainers, in these times. Oddly enough there's little to distinguish us from those poor dupes of antiquity who listened to parrots.  It seems we're fated to be fools, and not merely in matters of religion.

Many of our politicians are parrots, trained to praise one person in particular as a god or god-like or, at best, simply repeat whatever they've learned from someone who has given them money enough to buy them.  It should be embarrassing to us all, but it isn't as they're mere parrots and no longer have the capacity to be embarassed, and we listen to them and believe them without question.

Who's worse, the parrot-trainers, the parrots or those who listen to the parrots?

About the Antichrist

 

The Antichrist is an interesting figure.  It or he is referred in the New Testament of the Bible, but not in the Old Testament.  This shouldn't be surprising as there is no Christ in the Old Testament, though over the years those books of the Bible have been searched for references to Jesus which were duly found, but were less than clear and required inventive explanation.  The same may be said of the Antichrist.

The Antichrist is also mentioned by Paul of Tarsus and several of the Church Fathers, who found it necessary  or useful to describe it or him in more detail than appears in the Bible.  I don't know if the Antichrist is referred to in the many gospels which were excluded from the Bible, some of which refer to Jesus using his divine powers to kill those who annoy him and decribe him as quite different from the Jesus we know through those authors known as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

As only makes sense, the Antichrist denies Christ, and works to induce others to do so as well.  It's unclear whether the Antichrist is to be a single individual or if there's to be more than one.  Many have been called the Antichrist over the centuries.  Nero was one of those named. So we're various Popes or the very office of the Papacy (by Protestants).  Mohammed was called the Antichrist, and so were some heretics like Arian.

Some have claimed the Antichrist is among those false prophets and wonder-workers we were warned of in Scripture. There were quite a few of those wandering around the Mediterranean while Jesus is claimed to have lived, like Simon Magus and Appollonius of Tyana. Appollonius' story is similar to that of Jesus in many respects--each performed the same kind of miracles, for example, like raising the dead.

The Antichrist is described as having various characteristics, some of which have a certain, or in some cases uncertain, basis in Scripture.  Others have been added over time.  Among other things the Antichrist is charismatic, a deceiver, considers himself divine, is worshipped as a god, controls the economy, and rules the world from Jerusalem of all places.  Various figures have been thought to to qualify over the centuries given this description; some are considered the Antichrist even now (I need not name them). But after a relatively short period of time the Antichrist is destroyed by Jesus.

Among the problems I have with the Antichrist is the fact that his death and defeat is inevitable according to all sources.  It may be that the Antichrist's followers would be stupid or ignorant enough to disregard the many prophecies of their leader's ruin, but presumably, the Antichrist would be aware of these sources, and know his fate.  Who or what would want to be the Antichrist given the destruction which awaits?

Difficulties arise when we believe that accounts which were intended to address contemporary or imminent events apply thousands of years later. So the end times, preceding the Second Coming of Jesus, which he himself said would take place in the lifetimes of his disciples according to the Gospel of Matthew, are still awaited by the credulous, although believers predicted they would take place many times already and have been disappointed as many times in the past.

So it should be no great surprise that we're so gullible, so easily misled, so completely bovine when those who wish to take advantage of us do so in these New Dark Ages.  We've been dupes for millenia.