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Just a few days ago our denomination, The Presbyterian Church in Canada, released the following statement by means of social media responding to the rather strange relationship between politics and religion that’s exhibiting these days. We said: “In response to claims made by the President of the United States of America and his administration, the Presbyterian Church in Canada reaffirms its rejection of the sinful use and misuse of the church’s scriptures, language, symbols, and theology to condone or justify violence, killing, and the shame and inhumanity of war. The PCC also rejects anything that destroys life and diminishes our ability to fight hunger, poverty and disease, and to seek justice in the world.”
If you have been doing nothing besides binge watching baking shoes the last little bit and have to ask why such a statement was made or had to be made, well here’s just a bit of what’s been going on. The relationship between the American President and the American Vice-President (who is a Catholic) and Pope Leo XIV has begun to resemble the relationship that the ancient king of Israel, Ahab and his wife, Jezebel had with the prophet Elijah. Elijah kept holding them to account for their idolatry, immorality, and abuse of power until they finally sought to kill him and he had to flee. I’m not saying that the American President, Vice-President, or the Pentagon have put a hit out on the Pope, but in response to the Pope’s critique of Israel and the US attacking Iran the three have definitely told the Pope to stick to religion and stay out of politics, on the one hand, and to bring his theology in line with the administration’s war policy, on the other, with an implied “or else” attached to it. All the while, the current administration has no problem invoking the faith of American Evangelicalism to serve their own political interests. This is a far cry from the relationship that Ronald Reagan had with Pope John Paul II. Those two actually teamed up to help with the freeing of Poland and hastening the end of the Cold War.
Then there’s the bizarre stuff. The American President in the middle of the night posted a picture of himself wearing a white robe and flowing red stole. He had healing orbs of light in his hands and was healing a man while surrounded by distraught looking people who were praying to…. This AI-generated picture proved quite offensive to even his Christian nationalist supporters because he looked a little too much like Jesus. The President took the post down and tried to excuse it by saying he thought it made him look like a doctor. He soon replaced it with another late-night AI-generated picture of Jesus embracing him. In the caption he called his opponents a child sacrificing cult and said that he is God’s Trump card against them. Strange stuff. Oh, and I forgot to mention the threat he made to completely annihilate Iranian/Persian civilization if they didn’t open the Strait of Hormuz by 8:00PM ET on Tuesday, April 7.
I was glad to see a few days ago that the Presbyterian Church in Canada released its brief statement on these matters. When the national leader and ruling party of the world’s largest economy and strongest military coopts a faith system and uses it as a means to obtain and consolidate political power and then tries to say God is on his/their side to excuse the misuse of that power in ways that affect global security and the global economy, well the church world-over should rightfully address it. This unholy relationship between political power and religious faith is, I believe, exactly what the 13th chapter of the Book of Revelation addresses.
The Book of Revelation is not a roadmap to the end of time. It’s the Apostle John’s Holy Spirit inspired attempt to explain to the churches of Western Turkey in the 90’s AD in apocalyptic coded language why they were being persecuted and to assure them that in the end, whenever that may be (God only knows), Jesus will reign victorious. It needs to be said that there was no official Roman edict to round up Christians at that time. Persecution happened because Christians, as did the Jews, worshipped only the God of Israel and this made them “different”. They would not worship or feast the Roman gods like everybody else did throughout the Roman Empire. When trade guilds and civic activities revolved around such feasting, that could cost you your job and make you a target for thuggery. Christian fellowship was uniquely open to and inclusive of all peoples regardless of ethnicity, race, and social status and thus it threatened to destabilize the social order of Greco-Roman society. Finally, the Christian claim that Jesus was Lord and Saviour and Son of God, titles which were all validated by his resurrection from the dead, was treated as treasonous because these were titles reserved for the emperors.
These claims about Jesus conflicted to varying degrees of severity with the Roman Imperial cult which was the state religion that people of the empire were required to participate in. In its most benign form people came to the imperial temples to burn incense and offer prayers on behalf of the empire and the emperor and to offer worship to dead emperors who had ascended to Olympus as lesser gods. But, at least two maybe three of the emperors of the first century demanded to be worshipped as a living god. These were Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. Are you ready for some bizarre stuff?
Caligula became emperor at age 20 in 37 AD and was an absolute menace for four years. This was during the first decade of the church when it was primarily seen as a Jerusalem-based sect of Judaism. Caligula was sick. He behaved like he was extravagantly rich and he just liked to be cruel to people. He wore masks of the gods and pretended to be them in public. He made the Senate behave subservient to him and humiliated them by making them worship him in public. He even pretended that his horse was his chief advisor to make the point that he didn’t see anyone in the Senate capable or worthy of doing that. He was known for standing naked in water and making young boys swim between his legs. Christianity wasn’t really a thing yet, but he had it in for the Jews because they wouldn’t worship him so much so that he ordered a brass statue of himself be erected in the Jewish Temple. This caused a non-violent revolt among peasant Jews but fortunately, the Praetorian Guard and a number of senators assassinated Caligula before the statue could be built. The Christian claims of Jesus being Lord would have only made things worse in their relationship with Jews because it would lead to more Roman mistreatment of the Jews which led to Jewish persecution of the early church. It was about this time that the Apostle Paul was making his name as a persecutor of the church.
Nero became Emperor at age 17 and reigned from 54-68 AD. He was a violent man with a love for Greek theatre. He liked acting on stage and playing his lyre and singing for the public and competing in athletic games. Early in his reign, he was very popular with the common people and had a gift for knowing what would make them like him. He liked to wear clever disguises and go party with the common folk and get into fist fights. He had his “interfering” mother and his two wives murdered. He gifted the head of his first wife to his second whom he later killed in a violent outburst with a kick to the stomach while she was pregnant. Her death fed his insanity for he had one of his young male slaves who bore a resemblance to her castrated and he married him. His popularity faded after the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD which he likely had started in the area of the shops so that he could rebuild the area in the style of Greek architecture including a massive golden mansion for himself. He blamed the fire of the Christians in Rome who were growing ever more popular in the city and ordered they be put to death. Peter and likely Paul died as a result. He died by suicide and after his death, three impostors arose creating the myth that he had risen from the dead. He is the first Beast that our reading refers to.
Domitian became emperor in 81 AD and reigned for 15 years. Prior to his reign there was a Jewish revolt in 70 AD in which Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed. Mt. Etna erupted in 79 AD destroying four Roman cities. There were earthquakes and darkened skies and the moon turned orange; all that end of the world stuff. Domitian was the Roman emperor at the time the Revelation started to circulate. He was a strong, authoritarian micromanager remembered for being a cruel, paranoid bully with a sadistic bent. Like Caligula, he liked to humiliate the Senators and have them worship him in public. He wanted to make Rome great again and liked to build, build, build. He also wrote a book on the subject of hair care. He died by assassination. It is not clear who orchestrated it but it was for sure that everyone wanted him gone.
Domitian knew that emphasizing his own divine status would help unify the empire. So, he pushed the expansion of the Imperial Cult throughout the empire by building temples which resulted in Christians being persecuted. He made no edict requiring the persecution of Christians. It was patriotism, one could say, that led to persecution. He had a very large Imperial Temple built in Ephesus in honor of his family line, the Flavians. A very elderly Apostle John was arrested there and imprisoned on the island of Patmos as a consequence of not participating in all the patriotic fervor.
Fearing a repeat of what happened under Nero, John compiled the Revelation from prison and sent it seven times over to the seven churches of Western Turkey to explain why they were facing persecution. Chapters 12 and 13 explain that it is Satan who has given authority to the insane emperors who demand to be worshipped as gods. It is Satan who has raised up the false faith that causes people to worship these emperors. John encourages his brothers and sisters in Christ to patiently endure by remaining faithful to Jesus Christ. Worship him alone.
In the fourth century that unholy marriage between imperial power and religious power began to hide under a Christian umbrella when Christianity became "the" religion of the Empire. Since, emperors, kings, and priests and presidents and preachers have declared that God is on the side of our nation and Western culture. It has resulted in much war, poverty, abuse of women and children, and genocide of indigenous cultures. It has a strong foothold among American Evangelicals at present. People waking up from it is the primary reason why the Church has declined in Western culture. There have been men over the centuries who have risen up with inexplicable power who have sought to be emperor over the world claiming Almighty God is on their side. They have become something the world has had to momentarily patiently endure. Faithful Christians have suffered for not following them but it is important that the church catholic take its stand when the beasts obviously rear their heads as the Pope has been doing and the PCC did earlier this week. Amen.
