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Welcome to the Mockalypse!
They say that “The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” but what if he’s got something even better up his sleeve? Jeremy explores exactly this idea in a recent post, The Slippery Slope of the Apocalypse.
Jeremy’s logic goes something like this:
- Christians say the Devil is the Prince of Lies, and he’s at his most effective when he’s confusing or deluding people, and that this is his primary super-power.
- The Book of Revelation describes the end of the Devil’s power over the earth, and the coming of God’s Heavenly Kingdom on earth.
- If we have this information, then certainly the Devil is aware of it as well.
- If the Devil’s power is threatened by these End-Times events, then he would do his damndest to hold them off as long as possible.
- If his power consists mainly of lies, then it follows that he would use precisely that power to hold off the Apocalypse.
Jeremy explains:
The Devil is known as the Ape of God, because he’s an imitator. He tries to “ape” what God has done in order to fool humanity into accepting him. So, perhaps, since he’s the “Ape of God,” it would be to his benefit to “ape” the events in Revelations in order to fool people into thinking they’ve already come to pass!
Imagine if you will then the following scenario - the Mock Apocalypse, the Mockalypse: The Devil causes events on earth to come to pass which match the prophetic visions of the Book of Revelation. The Devil’s worst enemies are ardent Christians - and these are precisely the people who are the most drawn into the game the Devil is playing.
The notion of the Rapture becomes extremely popular, and the Devil uses this to his advantage. He sets up a kind of “holding cell” in one of the lower astral realms. And he engineers a full-scale Rapture Event with all the bells and whistles. He singles out the people who are the most serious Christians, and sucks them right out of their clothes cars and houses, floating them up into his diabolical prison. He then has killed two birds with one stone: gotten rid of his worst enemies, and is using their life-essence to power his infernal machinations.
Meanwhile, the world below is plunged into absolute chaos. Plagues are unleashed. Various things turn to blood. Annoying songs are repeated endlessly on the radio. The devil feeds on the suffering and grows more and more powerful as he cycles through all the nastiest events described for the Apocalypse. And then when things can’t get any worse, he stages an elaborate (but fake) defeat at the hands of a phony Second Coming of Christ, played by one of his actor friends.
After that is ushered in a new Golden Age of peace and prosperity, a Paradise on Earth. By this time everybody knows the Bible events were true, because they lived through them word for word (well, most people are probably dead by now, actually). So they more or less unflinchingly accept this Paradise as the Coming of God’s Heavenly Kingdom on Earth. They even get to sit at the feet of God’s throne and worship Him, because God has come down to live amongst the people in the New Jerusalem.
Except… it’s all a sham. God is the Devil. The New Jerusalem is another prison illusion. But that doesn’t matter, because everybody forgot. People are content with what they’ve got, and happy the suffering is over. Maybe the Devil even treats them really well, really does provide for them. Maybe he finally realizes that you really do catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.
But something happens. One day somebody realizes something isn’t quite right. They catch a glimpse of a cloven hoof under a divine garment. And something sparks in their memory. An old story they’ve mostly forgotten. They tell a friend to see if they can remember anything more. That night the friend dreams of another God - a god different and above the one who sits on the thrown in the New Jerusalem. The friends tell their friends, and the circle widens. Soon, there is a small sect teaching that God isn’t actually God, that he’s the devil, and that this is all an illusion. Satan-in-disguise then begins a systematic persecution and annihilation of this tiny sect.
But the sect has help. The Christians who were taken up in the original Rapture begin to come back to Earth to aid them. Though they long ago lost their earthly bodies, they begin to beam messages down to the members of the secret sect. Some even begin to simultaneously incarnate into the bodies and minds of the citizens of New Jerusalem. The cycle begins again….
The greatest part of all this is that it seems like you might actually be able to make an argument that this is totally theologically sound - even from a Fundamentalist Christian perspective. And all of a sudden, you’ve turned the Left Behind saga into a bit of Phildickian gnostic mayhem. Voila!
November 7th, 2005 at 5:02 pm
“wildy entertaining a spark of genius.”
November 7th, 2005 at 5:31 pm
[…] as the Demiurge’s terrorist. UPDATE: Tim also posted an excellent follow-up on the Mockalypse! Related Articles:The “Universal Adversary”Running Towards th […]
November 7th, 2005 at 6:10 pm
Annoying songs are repeated endlessly on the radio……my god man, that`s what`s happening now. is nickleback the anti-christ?
November 7th, 2005 at 6:26 pm
from the persepctive of steiner this is exactly what lucifer is doing. particularly the idea of the false heaven in the lower astral. he blocks a true apocalyptic catharsis by creating a forgery of one that fits our exact image of what it ought to be.
ahriman on the other would block any apocalyse whatsoever. no catharsis or transcendance of the material plane would be permitted. so blatantly stupid ‘left behind’ type media would feed the hysteria of the luciferian beleivers, but harden the mentality of the unbelievers against the concept even more.
November 7th, 2005 at 6:40 pm
That’s cool about Steiner. Do you know where he talks about the whole false lower heaven thing?
November 7th, 2005 at 6:46 pm
o, here’s more from an old post of mine:
http://www.snant.com/fp/archives/there...-the-gnostic-demiurges-sham-paradise/
November 7th, 2005 at 6:51 pm
and more from an old project of mine that i never finished:
November 7th, 2005 at 7:15 pm
Oh cool, I forgot all about that “sham heaven” post…
November 7th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
I’m not too well educated in all of this stuff (i would call myself “familiar” with the material at best, mostly thru PKD) - I realize that it is not the point of this site that I should be - so I am throwing this out there as a possible twist: what about the False prophet of the NT Revelations, who would come as saviour and offer the world peace, but who - if we are one who has heard and received the message of Christ - should not be believed…
In the Mockalypse scenario, wouldn’t he then be the actual true messiah???
Not sure I thought the logic thru completely but it would fulfill the Jesus thing where he gets rejected as messiah if that scenario was already played out in Biblical times.
November 7th, 2005 at 9:22 pm
or make that the False Prophet and the Ant-christ, maybe John the Baptist was the Mockalypse FP and Jesus the Mockalypse Anti-Christ…
November 7th, 2005 at 9:36 pm
Actually your scenario holds true except the peace part. Satan wishes to be worshipped so egotistically as the only god that old slew foot can’t help but to oppress the memory of the true God Almighty. So it is really not a cycle but the beginning of the end of Satan’s greedy agenda to supercede God Almighty and become Number One. Self-indulgent egotism will always fail and so will Satan.
November 7th, 2005 at 11:22 pm
sounds like a movie i watched recently……….what was it called. oh, yeah, the matrix. here`s a twist. what if the world is a totally interactive hologram whereby everthing that we picture clearly enough comes true. wouldn`t that be something for the archons to keep a secret. could get you crucified if you say it too loudly.
November 8th, 2005 at 6:29 am
Very interesting alistair. So everything could be a manifestation of just knowing it’s a manifestation of something else. Once the idea is planted or the algorithm uploaded, it just works itself out throughout the processing facilities of the collective consciousness.
My question is: could the concept of the archons as well, only have been recently “uploaded” — at least as far we’re concerned? Why should I immediately find an enemy the moment I learn of this new explanatory paradigm that we call “the archons”? I’m not saying it doesn’t work. And I’m not saying I don’t see signs of what would have to be archons, at work. But what is at work here? What is happening? Why now? How come everything is coming to a head — if not downright synchronizing?
Mockalypse indeed! It all is too fucking “prepackaged”. Who ever thought the end would feel so phony?
November 8th, 2005 at 8:34 am
it`s happening now because we are here to observe it ….now. the past and present are illusions created from memories and hopes that we hold in our internal representational system. these are natural processes and we are bound to create traps for ourselves by putting energy into memories from the past and concepts of outcomes in the future. archons? who knows….. i use the term as a device to relate to the gnostic amongst us. maybe is shouldn`t use a term i`m uncertain about. in the metrics of consciousness we need, at times, a place holder for things that seem to be happening but we are unsure about the nature of. like the function of zero in mathematics. sometimes it is important to measure nothing. or, at least, indicate it`s position in a calculation. therefore, it seems as if there is a malevelent agent at work in some of our calculations regarding consciousness. but maybe it`s our mind playing tricks. my experience has been that in any given now point there have never been any archons, devils, demons or other agents of the negative. just other humans. any characterisation has been after the fact.
November 8th, 2005 at 9:01 am
I’m reassured to know that political bloggers won’t inherit the earth after all…
November 8th, 2005 at 12:36 pm
the only thing we know to be valid and true is what we project onto what we call reality. this process happens so rapidly and seamlessly and has been going on for most of our lives that we`ve gotten used to it and point to it`s solid materiality and say that it`s real. this of course includes all the good, bad and ugly stuff whistling about around us. it`s taken us all our lives to build this reality and we share in this game with so many around us that it seems as if there couldn`t be anything else behind the screen. yet here we are, looking.
November 8th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
oh and regarding politics……if one insists on sitting in front of cnn or reading newspapers all day and grinding one`s colon over who`s hegemony is bigger than the other then of course your reality will begin to feed back grim tales of tyranny and destruction. try not reading the newspaper and watching t.v. for a while, say a year, you`ll notice that eventually your mind starts looking for other games to play, any one of which is better than sitting at the bottom of a reality well filled with political crap.
look, it`s pretty simple. garbage in- garbage out. like the little old lady describing the universe as a turtle standing on another turtle`s back. it`s turtles all the way. if you are so creatively stunted that your only form of entertainment is politics, then you deserve what you get.
November 8th, 2005 at 2:23 pm
I was thinking about writing something along those lines, but less cosmic.
The actual God behind it. A megamallchurch, the pastor (standard predatory tele-evangelist) suddenly lifted through the ceiling. All hail the apparent rapture - until he gets sucked into a jet engine. A few supporting members of his cast go along, escaping the jet engine only to discover that nude space flight is not fun.
The ground rumbles with a great “ha, ha” that somehow lacks divine merciful compassion.
Not part of The End, just a little housecleaning.
November 8th, 2005 at 6:32 pm
Christian, gnostic and Jewish eschatology are based on that of the ol’ time Persian religion. ‘Cept, the key difference (well, one of many, aside of their being a wholly benevolent god who is only omnipotent within the confines of positive energy, limited by a wholly evil bad-guy god, ahriman, who is only omnipotent within the realm of negative energy and entropy, limited by the good): in the Avesta, everybody gets saved at the end of the world. For the people of the light there is a lake of fire, which to them, feels like warm honey and milk. For those who’ve done too much bad shit, well–it feels like a river of fire–and it is, but it is burns away all their negativity, all their sin, if you will, all the shit they accrued on top of their essence which occluded them. In the end, everybody comes out as clean as a whistle and gets to sing and dance and be happy as Time ends. (That is, unless, you believe that Zurvan or Eternal Time, recreates the twin gods and gets the whole wheel turnin’ again…)
Eye totally agree with the macolypse theory myself and used to hypothesize about it with my ex-roomie back when I used to smoke. I mean, there were just too many wonky things about the so-called Christian Right, one being the ties of LeHay and Falwell and quite a number of the other most prominent and rich Bor(n) Agains with a certain Korean far-right businessman and Messiah named Rev. Sun Moon. He’s one of quite a few guys I think could be sitting in the wings waiting to play either the part of the fake Anti-Christ or fake-Christ, depending on what the conditions are like when the intelligence agencies get around to implementing the plan.
But that’s just one other take. Mostly, I tend to feel that this apocalypse stuff is goin’ down now because billions of people have subconsciously willed it to go down. The death and doom and destruction as necessary before peace and rebirth archetype is so powerful and so alluring and needed by so many people, especially in the West (shit, Marxism and Nazism both had the same story implanted as a fundamental part of their doctrines, if in secularized or quasi-paganized forms). If enough people subconsciously need and want a thing to happen, their subconscious desires will find a way to make it happen for them, insofar as it ain’t thwarted by other factors (like a competing powerful myth being enacted subconsciously by another, more powerful group of people).
We need a new story! And we need to be bold about living it. Burn the eschaton trip and bathe in some warm milk and honey!
Or whatever.
November 8th, 2005 at 10:38 pm
there are other stories being told. the voice is quiet though and not so overbought in ego as to need to be heard by so many. it is wispered in quiet and comforting tones for those who are looking for peace. now. it is a personal thing made of smiles and the recognition of each moment as the truth. it is so small as to be virtually insignificant compared to crystal cathederals and the wealth of the vatican or the tears of the media whore evangelist after the pin money of the widows and spinsters. yet it is the only thing. the recognition and existance in the moment. now.
there is no preparing because by then it`s too late. there are no clothes to wear specially for the occasion, no mat to sit on, no book to read obsessively, no direction to face. just recognising that you can smile. now. and each time you do it you feel good as a result. this good feeling replaces any other feeling that might have occured and it makes decisions easier to make or not to make, as the case may be.
and then you recognise that other people are smiling too. the smile right at you and it increases the feeling you had inside when you smiled. and things get easier.
imagine if a whole bunch of people spent a bit more time smiling each day.
pretty soon a bunch of good things are bound to happen. when we`re ready.now.