This is the name that launched the idea for this blog. I've lost count of how many times when we've sung 179 someone will ask "Who was Apollyon?" So here it is:
The reference is to Revelation 9:11
And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon. (KJV)
The "they" over whom he is king is a vast horde of supernaturally nasty locusts (see the description Rev.9:3-10) With the opening of the 5th seal the bottomless pit is opened and they are released to torment people for 5 months.
So this is a good occasion to make a few very short observations about the book of Revelation, perhaps the most misunderstood and misused book of the Bible.
First: Don't read it as a code to reveal events of the end times. Folks have been trying this for about 1900 years now, with predictions of the date of the second coming beyond counting. No one's been right yet. This is not what it's given to us for.
Second: It is full of dazzling, splendid poetic imagery. Let yourself be carried away by both the terrifying and beautiful pictures it paints. If your life is pretty good, pretty easy, you might as well just stop here with Revelation, because...
Third: It was written by and for people who were struggling just to survive under terrible persecution. The existing order (the Roman Empire) was crushing them. Justice and hope looked to them like standing the existing order on its head. Revelation depicts this on a cosmic scale. Perhap, perhaps, try reading it in this light when you've lost your job, when your family turns against you, when you deeply come to grips with our complicity in war in Iraq, genocide in Darfur, ecological catastrophe around the world.
Okay, out of the pulpit.
1 comment:
Predictably enough, I would say that the answer is "none of the above", or perhaps, "all of the above plus this as well", because the interpretation of scripture is multivalent and reflects the spiritual evolution of the reader.
I believe that the Apocalypse is, in fact, a description of the inner experience of an initiate, specifically the raising of Kundilini, as it is called in the east. The opening of the seven seals corresponds to the opening of the seven chakras, and the characters in the narrative, including Appolyon, are inner demons and processes confronted during the course of purification. Like Jungian archetypes. Antichrist is the egoic consciousness, and Christ the true spiritual Self.
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