{"corpus":"steiner","locus":"GA 8/l09/p005","lang":"en","edition":"RPC1961","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"text":"And when the fifth seal is opened there appear the souls of those who have already acted in the spirit of Christianity. Creative thought itself, embodied in Christianity, is manifested here. But by this Christianity is at first meant only the first community of Christians, which is transitory like other forms of creation. The sixth seal is opened (chapter 7), it is evident that the spiritual world of Christianity is an eternal world. The people seem to be permeated by that spiritual world out of which Christianity itself proceeded. What it has itself created becomes sanctified. “And I heard the number of the sealed: a hundred and forty-four thousand who were sealed of all the tribes of the children of Israel” (chapter 7, verse 4). They are those who prepared for the eternal before Christianity existed, and who were transformed by the Christ impulse. The opening of the seventh seal follows. What *true* Christianity should mean for the world becomes evident. The seven angels who “stand before God” (chapter 8, verse 2) appear. Again these angels are spirits from the ancient Mystery-conceptions transferred to Christianity. They are the spirits who lead to the vision of God in a *truly* Christian way. Therefore what is next accomplished is a leading to God; it is an “initiation” which is bestowed upon John. The announcements of the angels are accompanied by the signs necessary at initiations. “The first angel sounded and hail came out of fire mingled with blood, and it fell on the earth. And a third of the earth was burnt up, also a third of the trees was burnt up, and all the green grass was burnt up.” And similar things happen at the announcements of the other angels when they sound their trumpets. At this point we see we are not dealing with an initiation in the old sense but with a new one which should take the place of the old. Christianity should not be confined, like the ancient Mysteries, to a few elect. It should belong to the whole of humanity. It should be a religion of the people; the truth should be given to each one who “has ears to hear.” The ancient mystics were singled out from a great number; the trumpets of Christianity sound for every one who is willing to hear them. Whether or not he draws near, depends upon himself. This is why the terrors accompanying this initiation of humanity are so enormously enhanced. What is to become of the earth and its inhabitants in a distant future is revealed to John at his initiation. Underlying this is the thought that initiates are able to foresee in the higher worlds what is realized only in the future for the lower world. The seven messages represent the meaning of Christianity for the present age; the seven seals represent what is now being prepared for the future through Christianity. The future is veiled, sealed to the uninitiated; in initiation it is unsealed. When the earthly period is over, during which the seven messages hold good, a more spiritual time will begin. Then life will no longer flow on as it appears in physical shapes, but even outwardly it will be a copy of its supersensible forms. These latter are represented by the four animals and the other images contained in the seals. In a yet more distant future appears that form of the earth which the initiate experiences through the trumpets. Thus the initiate prophetically experiences what is to happen. And one who is initiated in the Christian sense experiences how the Christ impulse penetrates and continues to work in earthly life. And after it has been shown how everything that clings too closely to the transitory to attain true Christianity has met with death, there appears the mighty angel with a little scroll open in his hand, and which he gives to John (chapter 10, verse 9): “And he said to me Take it, and eat: it will be bitter to your stomach but sweet in your mouth like honey.” John was not only to *read* the little scroll; he was to absorb it, letting its contents permeate him. What avails any cognition unless man is vitally and thoroughly permeated by it? Wisdom should become *life*; man should not merely perceive the divine, but become divine himself. Such wisdom as is written in the scroll no doubt causes pain to the transitory nature: “it will be bitter to your stomach;” but so much the more does it make the eternal part happy: “but it will be sweet in your mouth like honey.”—Only through such an initiation can Christianity become actual on the earth. It kills everything belonging to the lower nature. “And their dead bodies will lie in the square of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Christ was crucified.” This refers to the believers in Christ. They will be mistreated by the powers of the transitory world. But it is only the transitory members of human nature that will be ill treated, which the true essence will then have conquered. Thereby their destiny is a copy of the exemplary fate of Christ Jesus. “Spiritually Sodom and Egypt” is the symbol of a life which clings to the external and does not change itself through the Christ impulse. Christ is *everywhere* crucified in the lower nature. Where this lower nature conquers, everything remains dead. Human corpses cover the squares of the cities. Those who overcome the lower nature and bring about an awakening of the crucified Christ, hear the trumpet of the seventh angel: “The kingdoms of the world have become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ; and he shall reign from cosmic age to cosmic age” (chapter 11, verse 15). “And the temple of God in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple” (verse 9). In the conception of these events the initiate sees the old struggle between the lower and higher nature renewed. For everything the neophyte formerly had to go through must be repeated in the one who follows the Christian path. As once Osiris was threatened by the evil Typhon, so now the “great Dragon, the old Serpent” (chapter 12, verse 9) must be overcome. The woman, the human soul, gives birth to lower knowledge, which is an adverse power if it does not raise itself to wisdom. Man must pass through that lower knowledge. Here in the Apocalypse it appears as the “old Serpent.” In all mystical wisdom from the remotest times the serpent has been the symbol of cognition. Man may be led astray by this serpent, by cognition, if he does not bring to life in him the Son of God who crushes the serpents head. “And the great Dragon was thrown out, that old Serpent, whose name is Devil, and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world: he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (chapter 12, verse 9). In these words one can read what Christianity would be. A new method of initiation. In a new form was to be attained what had been attained in the Mysteries. In them also the serpent had to be overcome. But this was no longer to take place in the same way. The one, the archetypal Mystery, the Christian Mystery, was to replace the many Mysteries of antiquity. Jesus, in whom the Logos became flesh, was to become the Initiator of the whole of humanity. And this humanity was to become his own community of mystics. Not a separation of the elect but a linking together of all is to occur. Each is to be able to become a mystic according to his maturity. The message sounds forth to all; he who has an ear, hastens to learn the secrets. The voice of the heart is to decide in each individual case. This or that person is not to be introduced individually into the Mystery temples, but the word is to be spoken to all; then some will be able to hear it more clearly than others. It will be left to the daemon, the angel within each human breast, to decide how far he can be initiated. The whole world is a Mystery temple. Blessing is not only to come to those who *see* the wonderful processes in the special temples for initiation, processes which give them a guarantee of the eternal, but “Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet *believe*.” Even if at first they grope in the dark, nevertheless the light may come to them later. Nothing is to be withheld from anyone; the way is to be open to all. The latter part of the Apocalypse describes graphically the dangers threatening Christianity through Antichristian powers, and how the Christian powers must be victorious nevertheless. All other gods are united in the One Christian Divinity: “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it: for the revelation of God lights it, and its light is the Lamb” (chapter 21, verse 23). The mystery of the “Revelation of Saint John” is that the Mysteries shall no longer be kept hidden. “And he said to me: Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the Godhead is near.”—The author of the Apocalypse has set forth what he believes to be the relationship of his church to the churches of antiquity. He wished to express what he thought about the Mysteries in the form of a spiritual Mystery. He wrote his Mystery on the island of Patmos. He is said to have received the “Revelation” in a *grotto*. These details indicate that the revelation was of the character of a Mystery. Thus Christianity emerged from the Mysteries. In the Apocalypse its wisdom is itself born as a Mystery, but as a Mystery which transcends the frame of the old Mystery world. The unique Mystery is to become the universal Mystery. It may appear contradictory to say that the secrets of the Mysteries became revealed through Christianity, and that nevertheless a Christian Mystery is to be seen again in the experience of the spiritual visions of the writer of the Apocalypse. The contradiction disappears at once when we reflect that the secrets of the ancient Mysteries were revealed through the events in Palestine. Through these events was laid bare what previously had been veiled in the Mysteries. A new Mystery has been introduced into the evolution of the world through the appearance of the Christ. The initiate of ancient times experienced, in the spiritual world, how evolution points the way to the as yet “hidden Christ;” the Christian initiate experiences the hidden effects of the “revealed Christ.”","text_trust":"verbatim","quote_safe":true,"title":"8. The Apocalypse of John","site_heading":null,"date":null,"location":null,"word_count":1805,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/8/l09/p005?edition=RPC1961","alignment_confidence":"low","alignment_reason":"count_diverges","two_voice_volume":false,"translation_credit":null,"edition_coverage":{"de":["original"],"en":["AP1947","RPC1961"]},"available_versions":[{"lang":"en","edition":"AP1947","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":true,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/8/l09/p005"},{"lang":"en","edition":"RPC1961","edition_basis":null,"is_original":false,"is_default_edition":false,"url":"https://anthroposophy.ai/v1/steiner/en/ga/8/l09/p005?edition=RPC1961"}],"witness_completeness":{"ratio":5.18,"band":"fuller_than_original","note":"This witness is longer than the original — paraphrastic or padded. That makes it a less faithful witness to wording, not a more complete one. Verify quotations against the original.","word_count":4198,"original_word_count":811,"may_be_abridged":false},"witness_quality":{"translator":{"status":"unknown","warning":"No translator is recorded for this edition. An unattributed translation cannot be weighed as a witness: you cannot tell which hand made the choices in it. Cite the German for anything load-bearing."},"entity_parity":{"status":"not_checkable","note":"No verified paragraph alignment covers this passage, so its names cannot be compared with the German."},"note":"quote_safe certifies the bytes of this text. This block is about the translation as a WITNESS: who made it, and whether it carries the same names as the original. See witness_completeness for how much of the original this witness holds."}}