In the autumn fruit trees stand ripe for harvest. With its fruit the tree offers its own living substance to the earth. It makes this sacrifice so that new life, so that new trees, so that more fruit can grow and develop. That fruit surrounds an inner kernel, a seed. When the fruit falls, the kernel, the seed, is born. Life continues and metamorphoses. God made the tree’s fruit so abundant that when cared for by humans, the fruit is harvested so that the tree’s abundant life can feed others.

This week we watched in horror as malignant forces harvested human lives. We struggle to make sense of such madness, for we know that a human life is not fruit for the taking. Human lives are not food for some malignant appetite.

We have been shown, again and again, pictures of overwhelming destruction. And in our proper horror before the face of evil, we may ask ourselves how a good God could allow such things to happen. The answer is that the capacity for evil is the shadow side of God’s gift of free will. God values our freedom of choice. He values it perhaps more than we do. Our freedon has such an enormous value because it is the only way we will learn to develop his creative love. God has taken an enormous risk in creating human beings free to choose. We are free to develop ourselves toward good or towards evil. God allows evil to exist. The function of evil is to rouse us, to stimulate us to develop our true, higher humanity.

We are beginning to awaken after the shock and daze of this week. We are beginning to come to ourselves again. We are beginning to react. But we are also beginning to realize that our very natural reactions, reactions of fear, of anger, are perhaps not the best that we can do. For it is very clear: evil attempts to disable the best of the human spirit.

One of the ways evil tries to disable us is through fascination. We have found ourselves gazing in horror at images of destruction and suffering, repeated over and over, until we realize that now it is our souls that are now being invaded. We need to practice soul hygiene. We need to keep ourselves informed, but not overtaken; open, but not overwhelmed. We need to do this because we must control our arousal. We need to find and maintain our calm, upright human center.

In 1910 Rudolf Steiner said:

We must root out of the soul all fear and horror of that which is approaching mankind from the future. How fearful and anxious we make ourselves today before that which lies in the future, and especially before the hour of death! Human beings must make their own a calm composure in connection with all feelings and sensations directed toward the future, behold with absolute equanimity everything that may come, and think only that no matter what comes, it comes to us out of the wisdom-filled guidance of the world. This must be placed ever and again before the soul.

When preparing for the festival of Michael, we looked at the way our human role in the world is highlighted in the call of the archangel, as heard in the prayers of this festival time.² After the Creed has described Christ’s resurrection it speaks of the way Christ, since his ascension, lives as “the fulfiller of the fatherly deeds of the ground of the world”. But he does not only fulfill those fatherly deeds which keep the world as it is in good shape, but he, the Son will, “for the advancement of the world”, unite with all those whom he, through their bearing, can wrest from the death of matter. Thus Christ’s resurrection becomes world-scale resurrection. But this will only become possible when human beings heed that call of Michael, heard in the prayers of his festival. Only when we come to a deeper, a higher awareness, a new grasp of this deed of life and death on Golgotha, will Christ’s forces of resurrection work in us, human beings on earth. To become a creative force, a light-carrying force which will keep alive heavenly light in the darkness of our earthly existence.

The Creed actually introduces Christ by first stating his human connection: “through whom human beings attain the re-enlivening of the dying earth-existence”; then, he is also introduced as “the Son born in eternity”. “The helper of the souls of the dead”, he in future will ally himself with those whom he can wrest from the death of matter. Truly he is the “God of Man”, as is said in the prayers which describe Michael as the countenance of this god. Christ has become the helper of all human beings, both the living and the dead, of all those who have taken his transubstantiating power into their thinking.

With Michael, we are moving into an apocalyptic world, into a world turning more and more apocalyptic. Recently, the line between the physical and the spiritual has become diffuse, the threshold between the world of earth and the world of spirit having shifted. Not only are nowadays human beings able to reach out across the threshold, the threshold as such is “moving down” into the human being itself. This creates a totally new situation, putting human beings into their role of actually becoming co-actors, “players”, becoming directly, actively engaged in the eschatological drama which begins when the world slowly prepares for its “last stage” of death and judgment, of new heaven and new earth. In the book of the Apocalypse, the “Apocalypse to John”, we can perceive how humanity becomes more and more engaged in this process, both while on earth as well as in heaven. It shows how the Christ mystery, encompassing both earth and heaven, is becoming more powerful within a Christian humanity on its way to maturity.³

“With Michael”, I said, meaning on the one hand that Michael, who is the archangel specifically active in our times, presents us with a unique opportunity to become conscious of how to cross that line between the physical and spiritual, at least in intention (see the talk titled Michael’s Call). On the other hand, in the course of the Christian year, from the festival of Michael onwards through Advent, our Christian Community gospel readings carry this apocalyptical signature, first during Michaelmas in the sense that for us living on earth this line between the physical and the spiritual has already shifted with many consequences in our personal sphere. In November we look more at the apocalyptical process on a world-scale, as mirrored in the last book of the Bible. Advent heightens our apocalyptical awareness for the “second coming” of Christ in an apocalyptical setting, until at Christmas the fact that Christ appears on earth can be grasped as an historical and at the same time continuing reality. . At least half the gospel readings of those 12 to 13 weeks are taken from the Apocalypse, the Revelation to John. Here, we’ll focus on this aspect. By the way, this is the great yearly recurring example of the “the hour iscoming and is now” of John’s gospel (4:23 and 5:25), of which Christ’s “second coming” is the prime example. He hás come, he hás risen – but between him and our conscious perception the distance has grown which his disciples experienced as his ascension. Christ’s presence has become obscured to our perceptions; hence for ús he needs to “come again”, needs a “second coming”.

The word “apocalyptic” is often used rather loosely, when we speak about catastrophic or overwhelming events which might remind us of things described in the last book of the Bible. In fact, hardly anything which happens to us today has this apocalyptic signature – what (forcefully) disrupts our more or less placid life is hardly “apocalyptic”, even if nowadays we use the word for such events. When we look more precisely, we must acknowledge that only what happens when the heavens begin to make their presence felt can be called “apocalyptic”, that is: when our own human world and our world of earth is being shaken up by as yet unknown, “revealing” forces.

This is what the “Apocalypse to John” is about, when after an introduction and a first vision it describes a series of events triggered off by the opening of seven seals, by the sounding of seven trumpets and the pouring out of seven bowls of wrath. We have already looked at this apocalyptic process by focusing on the Writer, on the Book and on the so-called “Second Coming”. Let’s here look at what we can find out about the process itself.

An important moment in the course of the unfolding apocalypse has come when the 24 elders who sit on their thrones before God, at the beginning of the Third Throne Vision, when the 7th Trumpet has sounded, state that He “has begun to reign” (11:17). Now, the forces of adversary in earnest show themselves in battles of various kinds: the heavenly dragon and the beast rising out of the sea as well as the beast rising out of the land. Another such moment comes when, after the pouring out of the seven bowls and the sacking of Babylon, at the beginning of the Sixth Throne Vision, the voice of a great multitude resumes with another Hallelujah, crying that “The Lord our God the Almighty reigns” (19:6). Now the die is really cast, and the White Rider and his armies begin to mop up the forces of evil, who with Death and Hades eventually all end up in the “lake of fire that burns with sulphur” (19:20, 20:2, 10 and 14).

Decisive moments of the apocalyptic process happen when the Godhead takes steps to overcome the forces of evil, of adversary, which have taken over parts of the world. What goes before, through seals and early trumpets, is all in preparation of such final apocalyptic confrontations.

We can look at one of Rudolf Steiner’s “Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts”² for help, to understand more about the stages of overcoming cosmic adversaries. In the aphorism numbered 112 in this series, he states that the Divine Spiritual in cosmos manifests itself in the following stages:

1. By way of its innate, very own, Being;

2. By way of the Revelation of its Being;

3. By way of Activity, when the Being has drawn back from revealing;

4. By its manifestations itself, when the Divine is not anymore present in the “universe of manifestations”, but only in its forms.

“We shall now survey the Apocalypse in an endeavor to see what it has to say concerning mankind’s Christian progress” (writes Rudolf Frieling). “This continually changes the scene of its realization between earth and heaven. Christianity – on the one side embodied on earth, on the other existing in heaven – increasingly develops into an important factor working in the eschatological drama. At the end, upper and lower world penetrate each other. A ‘new earth’, made new by what has come from above, joins a ‘new heaven’, which itself has been rejuvenated by what happened through Christ on earth. Out of this merging of the two there comes the New Jerusalem, which is both ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’. The Christ-Mystery, unifying heaven and earth, has become powerful within a Christendom now ripe for it. John’s Apocalypse shows in the sequence of its visions this process of ripening.” (p 90-91) Frieling adds that “from that survey we shall return once more to reincarnation” – the subject of the book of which “Human Evolution in the Apocalypse of John” is the last chapter.

Here, giving a short impression of this chapter, I will also [in square brackets] refer to the “Structure” of the Revelation to John” by Christoph Rau, which has been added to the second contribution in this series. This overview, far from able to recreate the depth and profound scholarship of Rudolf Frieling in his essay, is here made in the hope that you will, somehow, later, acquire his original text.

The image of the throne in the last of the Seven Letters (3:21) opens the great vision of Chapters 4 and 5, in the midst of which stands the divine throne. [First Throne Vision] John is drawn into the upper world by the voice speaking to him: “Come up hither” (4:1). Here, the Lamb of sacrifice brings his own deed before the Father’s throne. This is echoed in the “New Song” which is added to the “Sanctus” of the four cherubim “living creatures” of the innermost circle, in which the twenty-four elders join. This contains an ingredient coming from human beings on earth, in whose midst the sacrifice of the Lamb took place: “the prayers of the saints” (5:8); that is, of Christians living on earth. Even when these can’t join the song directly, impulses from their souls are received in the heavens, becoming visible as the smoke of incense, rising up from the golden bowls of the elders together with the New Song.

After the opening of the seals has begun, Christians who have gone through martyrdom on earth now themselves appear in the upper world, seen under the heavenly altar (6:9). “Souls” as they are (“psychai” in Greek), in their disembodied, conscious state after death they are not satisfied with their new form of existence, having not yet fully grasped the redeeming consequences of Christ’s death. The “not yet” implicit in the answer they receive, “to rest a little longer”, shows that there will be a further development of their existence after death as a result of their martyrdom. They “were each given a white robe” (6:11), that they may become more active and responsible citizens of the higher world.

When in the pause between the sixth and the seventh seal the 144,000 are sealed, we are again looking at the earthly scene. The figure, “heard” in the spirit (7:4) is of course not an “arithmetical” figure but, with its 12 times 12 (thousand), in a divine order showing the sum total of all the nuances possible of “being human”. Standing in the catastrophic and apocalyptic storms which began with the opening of the seals, in a moment of profound divine calm they are sealed on their foreheads by an angel ascending from the rising of the sun. This sealing marks a stage of development towards the resurrection body, to which Christ refers when he speaks about the food the Son of Man will give, food “which remains as life throughout the ages”, because he himself is the one sealed by the Father God (Jn 6:27).² On those devoted to Christ, the sealing begins to work as a preparation for the resurrection of the Last Day.

The next vision [beginning the Second Throne Vision] shows Christians in the other world as “a great multitude which no man could number” (7:9) – “after this”. Here, the Greek plural for “this” indicates that a greater interval of time may in the meantime have happened, the time of “the great tribulation” out of which these Christians have come (7:14). It’s a great change from the first vision of the dead souls under the heavenly altar; now the dead are privileged to become active in the upper world in the way described to John by one of the elders (7:15-17), singing the great hymn, “Salvation to our God … and to the Lamb” (7:10). Now that the deliverance brought by Christ has arrived on the earth, has really “come” to human beings, it begins to radiate from truly Christian souls as thanks, returning “to” God in the higher world. When the Lamb “guides them” on their paths, their inner reconciliation with the terrible things they endured on earth can come about (7:17).