2022/01/17

22. The Earthly Warfare

"When the dragon saw that it had been thrown down to the earth, it pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child" (Revelation 12:13). This description, which follows the previous discussion, shows that the "earth" to which the dragon was thrown down is still the realm of the Apostles' brain. It is the realm of the conscious mind which governs thoughts, judgments, decisions and other things that lead to action, and it can be said to be the “earth” as a contact point at which one interacts with others. The Apostles, on the other hand, were "given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she could fly to her place in the desert" (12:14). These wings consist of "the blood of the Lamb" and "the word of their testimony."¹ Each of them represents the new covenant made through the blood of Jesus and the Apostles' words of response to his choice that bear witness to it.² "Her place in the desert" represents their seat at the table of Jesus' last supper. It is in the unconscious realm of the Apostles where the memory of Jesus who had lived with them, the worldview of Jesus Christ, is alive. The "serpent" in Revelation, in the Apostles’ realm of the conscious mind, spews a torrent of water out of his mouth and tries to sweep away their memories.³ This water represents a fiction, an illusion, which, if taken in, would create a contradiction between the realm of the unconscious mind and the realm of the conscious mind, and it would cause the Apostles to hesitate. So, the earth "opened its mouth and swallowed the flood that the dragon spewed out of its mouth" (12:16). The fact that Revelation here replaces the word "serpent" with "dragon" shows that the influence of the "serpent" grew as they interacted with other people. The "earth" which helped the Apostles is the "enmity" of which God said to the "serpent" in Genesis: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers" (Genesis 3:15). This "enmity that God has put in place", which lies deep in one's realm of the conscious mind, comes into full effect when he holds the worldview of Jesus Christ. The Apostles, amid persecution, conquered hesitation and spared their lives even unto death to distribute the Body and Blood of Christ for the community. The earthly warfare always begins in the realm of consciousness of each individual. This current that has begun can be stopped from becoming "the work of man" only when the "enmity which God has put in place" placed in the innermost sphere of human consciousness fully works. For this to happen, it is essential to have the worldview of Jesus Christ in one's unconscious realm. That is one of the reasons why God added the Book of Revelation to the New Testament, and so the unconscious realm of people can be filled with the worldview of Jesus Christ.

Reference　1. Revelation 12:11, 2. Matthew 26:35, 3. Revelation 12:15　

Maria K. M.