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CounterPunch
January
4, 2003
Mine Eyes Have
Seen the Glory
Bush's Armageddon Obsession,
Revisited
by MICHAEL ORTIZ HILL
"We are lived by forces we scarcely
understand," wrote W.H. Auden. What forces live us now as
America again torques toward war?
George W. Bush is certainly the plaything
of such forces as the geopolitics of oil but it seems that he
is susceptible to other even darker archetypal concerns. Let
me be blunt. The man is delusional and the shape of his delusion
is specifically apocalyptic in belief and intent. That Bush would
attack so many vital systems on so many fronts from foreign policy
to the environment may seem confusing from the point of view
of realpolitik but becomes transparent in terms of the apocalyptic
worldview to which he subscribes. All systems are supposed to
go down so the Messiah can come and Bush, seemingly, has taken
on the role of the one who brings this to pass.
The Reverend Billy Graham taught Bush
to live in anticipation of the Second Coming but it was his friendship
with Dr. Tony Evans that shaped  Bush's political understanding
of how to deport himself in an apocalyptic era. Dr. Evans, the
pastor of a large Dallas church and a founder of the Promise
Keepers movement taught Bush about "how the world should
be seen from a divine viewpoint," according to Dr. Martin
Hawkins, Evans assistant pastor.
S.R. Shearer of Antipas Ministries writes,
"Most of the leaders of the Promise Keepers embrace a doctrine
of 'end time' (eschatology), known as 'dominionim.' Dominionism
pictures the seizure of earthly (temporal) power by the 'people
of God' as the only means through which the world can be rescued....
It is the eschatology that Bush has imbibed; an eschatology through
which he has gradually (and easily) come to see himself as an
agent of God who has been called by him to 'restore the earth
to God's control', a 'chosen vessel', so to speak, to bring in
the Restoration of All Thingss." Shearer calls this delusion,
"Messianic leadership"-- that is to say usurping the
role usually ascribed to the Messiah.
In Bush at War Bob Woodward writes, "Most
presidents have high hopes. Some have grandiose visions of what
they will achieve, and he was firmly in that camp."
"To answer these attacks and rid
the world of evil," says Bush. And again, "We will
export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in
defense of this great nation." Grandiose visions. Woodward
comments, "The president was casting his mission and that
of the country in the grand vision of Gods Master Plan."
In dominionism we can see the theological
source of Bush's monomania. Not to be distracted by the fact
that he lost the popular election by a half a million votes,
that the Joint Chief of Staff at the Pentagon were so concerned
about his plans to invade Iraq that they leaked their unanimous
objection, that he has systematically alienated much of the world,
that roughly seventy percent of Americans remain unconvinced
of the imminent threat of Saddam Hussein and the same percentage
object to war if there will be significant American casualties--none
of this is in the least relevant. He believes his mandate toward
action is from God.
As humans we live within stories. Some
stories, like apocalypse are thousands of years old. The scriptured
text that informs Bush understanding of and enactment of the
End of Days (Revelations 19) depicts Christ returning as the
Heavenly Avenger. Revelations is the only New Testament book
that justifies violence of any kind, and this it takes to the
limit: Christ himself the agent of mass murder.
"I saw heaven open and there before
me was a white horse who is called Faithful and True. With justice
he judges and makes war...He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood
and his name is the word of God...Out of his mouth comes a sharp
sword with which to strike down the Nations. And I saw an angel
standing in the sun who cried in a low voice to all the birds
flying in midair--come gather together for the great supper of
God, so you may eat the flesh of kings, generals and mighty men,
of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free
and slave, small and great."
Such is "the glory of the coming
of the Lord." Truth, carnage, and the ecstasy of vultures.
In a ruined world the Messiah slays the antichrist and creates
"a new heaven and a new earth." The dead are judged,
the Christians saved and the rest damned to eternal torment.
The New Jerusalem is established and the Lord rules it "with
an iron scepter."
It is not inconceivable that Bush is
literally and determinedly drawn, consciously and unconsciously,
toward the enactment of such a scenario, as he believes, for
God's sake. Indeed the stark relentlessness of his policy in
the Middle East suggests as much.
It dishonors the profundity of the Christian
tradition if one doesn't note that Revelations has always been
a rogue text. Because of its association with the Montanist heresy
(which like contemporary fundamentalists took it to be literal
rather than allegorical) it was with great reluctance that it
was made scripture three centuries after the death of Christ.
Traditionally attributed to St. John, most Biblical scholars
now recognize its literary style and its theology has little
in common with John's gospel or his epistles and was likely written
after his death. Martin Luther found the vindictive God of Revelations
incompatible with the gospels and relegated it to the appendix
of his German translation of the New Testament instead of the
body of scripture. All the Protestant reformers except Calvin
regarded apocalyptic millenialism to be heresy.
But Revelations is also a rogue text
because it is unmoored from its origins, which are far from Christian.
It is a late variant on a story that was pervasive in the ancient
world: the defeat of the wild and the uncivilized by a superior
order upon which a New World would be established. Two thousand
years before Revelations depicted Christ slaying the antichrist
and laying out the New Jerusalem, Marduk slayed Tiamat and founded
Babylon.
This pagan myth recycled as a suspiciously
unchristian Biblical test found new credence in the 19th century
when John Darby virtually revived the Montanist heresy of investing
it with a passionate literalism. Given to visions (he saw the
British as one of the ten tribes of Israel) Darby left the priesthood
of the Church of Ireland and preached Revelations as both prophecy
and imminent history. In this he inaugurated a lineage in which
Bush's mentors, the Reverend Billy Graham and Dr. Tony Evans
are recent heirs. Revelations is much beloved by Muslim fundamentalists
and like their Christian compatriots they also thrill to redemption
through apocalypse. Jewish fundamentalists of course do not believe
in Revelations but have nonetheless made common cause with the
Christian Right. "It's a very tragic situation in which
Christian fundamentalists, certain groups of them that focus
on Armageddon and the Rapture and the role of a war between Muslims
and Jews in bringing about the Second Coming, are involved in
a folie a deux with extremist Jews," said Ian Lustick, the
author of For the Land and the Lord: Jewish Fundamentalism in
Israel. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition (and yes it is
a single tradition) is being led by its fringe into the abyss
and the rest of us with it.
The world has been readied for the fire
but the critical element is the Bush Administration. Never in
the history of Christendom has there been a moment when this
rogue element has carried anything like the credibility and political
power that it carries now.
Michael Ortiz Hill is the author of Dreaming
the End of the World (Spring 1994) and, (with Augustine
Kandemwa) Gathering
in the Names (Spring Journal books, 2002). The companion
to this essay, The Looking Glass War, is posted at http://www.gatheringin.com/.
He can be reached at michaelortizhill@earthlink.net.
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