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[ by Charles Cameron — fear, hope, the Egyptian military, the Supreme Court, the Muslim Brotherhood, certainty and roulette ]
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The Apocalypse is a trump card — the Final Trump card if you will.

And because we so often associate “apocalyptic” with devastation and “post-apocalyptic” with a glowing nuclear waste-land, I’d like to establish first the joyous feelings the word “apocalypse” can also evoke. From Handel‘s Messiah, then, the glorious sound of the apocalyptic trumpet:

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That sounds pretty terrific, granted, but as we all know, apocalypse also has a darker side — in fact it is a two-sided business, offering both maximal terror and optimal hope.

On the one hand, as Yeats puts it:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

While on the other, as John of Patmos says, “I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”

Utmost disintegration and devastation — and the immaculate hope of a new heaven and a new earth.

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As we watch events unfolding in Egypt, then, there are some specifically apocalyptic themes in the air, both on the Egyptian Islamic side…

… where a vision-swept crowd can chant for the triumph of Islam in Jerusalem … and on the Christian side, where an apocalyptic writer such as Joel Richardson can use that same clip to reinforce a message of the lateness of the hour from the other side of the apocalyptic coin:

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We can, it seems to me, react to the clip of the TV preacher Safwat Hijazi in at least four ways — with jubilation, as the crowd in the video does; with quiet satisfaction, as the politicians of the MB who stand to gain from his support presumably do; with fear, as those of us roused by the video to a vision of the Middle East plunging headlong, unavoidably, into war are likely to do; or with concern — a more temperate approach, and one that await further details, further indicators, further events unfolding.

I don’t think it’s time, yet, to place any bets. Dr. Hegazi’s statement, and the crowd’s response, certainly concern me. The motif of a victorious march of Islam to retake Jerusalem is and end times motif, and I can think of few things more terrifying than a Mahdist army on the march.

But we are not there yet, Dr Hegazi is articulating a dream, not a party political program. And between that dream — a powerful one, to which many Egyptians are clearly susceptible — and its realization we have the moderating factors of realpolitik, of the Supreme Court rulings just a day or two ago — and of the power and entrenched financial interests of the Egyptian military.

In watching the video of Dr Hegazi it is possible to forget all this and be swept up by fear, just as the crowd was swept up by hope of conquest.

And as I’ve said before, I take comfort also in the fact that Joel Richardson is at pains not only to argue, from his own perspective, for the conversion of Muslims — but also to renounce the use of explicitly Christian force until that Trumpet sounds:

I explained to my host that unless a supernatural man bursts forth from the sky in glory, there is absolutely nothing that the world needs to worry about with regard to Christian end-time beliefs. Christians are called to passively await their defender. They are not attempting to usher in His return. Muslims, on the other hand, are actively pursuing the day when their militaristic leader comes to lead them on into victory. Many believe that they can usher in his coming.

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From my point of view, then, we should be cautious, informed and deliberative. This is not the time to be leaping to conclusions.

I am no expert on Egypt. What I am attempting here is to be aware of the apocalyptic current that was stirring in that Egyptian crowd — and of the apocalyptic currents stirring here, also, in the United States — with calm, with moderation, with an eye to the other influences, some of them both powerful and entrenched, which will themselves tend to divert, moderate, arouse or inflame the situation.

The Supreme Court. The election and whatever comes of it in terms of both power and backlash. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. American dollars. Israeli nukes. The inevitable ebbing away at some point of heightened emotions. The economics of tourism…

The unknowns…

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 16th, 2012 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Apocalyptic, Charles Cameron, egypt, Mahdist, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.