Riffin' On Matthew 24 (the End of an Era/Cycle)

24 Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2 “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

4 Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. 6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.

Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

Heavy stuff… Jesus looks at Jerusalem as he is leaving the temple and comments from a cryptic state of being (and I’d assume it’s a “mystical” state of being in the sense of being utterly communed with Source), while probably lost in a sort of whimsy that inexplicably explains away the sheer horror of what he’s realizing, that… “not one stone here will be left on another…”

When, you ask? That’s certainly what the disciples did…after some time. And this really should be noted… it’s easy to overlook. Whatever was happening with Christ when He spoke these words, the editing seems to suggest that his disciples were in the throes of it, likewise… the vision Christ relayed was dark and a non-sequitar…absolutely batshit by normal standards of behavior…and yet was entirely unquestioned in the moment, taken whole as absolute fact… plainly evident.

To be a bit of a squirrely, crazy new agey person… I love that Jesus is on the “Mount of Olives” when the disciples come to ask him about this great, possible devastation…it seems like it’s a prophecy of a future devastation… “Olive”…I’ll live… it’s like the death card in like Tarot man, it doesn’t mean like a literal death, always, man, but is moreso talking about the end of a cycle… man…

Jesus gets really vague/weird with his timeline. He goes on to say that there will be wars in his name, false prophets in his name… that nation will rise against nation in the world after His literal time (whether in His name or not), that “kingdom” will “rise against” “kingdom”. To some, it’s no surprise that there will be “famine” and “earthquakes”… after all, we see that those who are spiritually compassionate also tend to be pretty sharp… some would say there is a trend in effective intelligence which is correlated to one’s engagement of spiritual discourse/compassionate doctrine… the spiritually balanced people outwit the famine crises their countries face, generally, if we look at the numbers across human history…that sort of notion.

Jesus calls these greatest of sins “the beginnings of birth pains”. The birth of what? Of rampant spiritual insight/epiphany? Of the transformation of the template of civilization itself to be inherently more spiritual? The birth of the kingdom of heaven?

Jesus goes on to say some very bleak things…he mentions that this specific audience, his disciples, will be “persecuted and put to death” “because of” Jesus. Because this happens people on both sides of every dividing line of every potential vantage point will “turn away” from faith, and be provoked to “betray” and “hate each other” in the name of what seems to be appropriate for both their survival as well as that of the mission of Christ.

Along these newfound “party” lines “false prophets” will appear, making fantastic sense permitting the larger game is spy vs spy but too few will realize that this isn't an adequate foundation for salvation, ever.

It’s no surprise in a world that truly is acting dog eat dog in a fashion which we must admit somehow perverts the innocence of youth, pervasively, for like…the entire population for the most part…we do our best Roger Waters and build the wall. “…The love of most will grow cold.”

Apparently it’s the “one who stands firm” “to the end” who has somehow ensured that “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations”. By standing firm and ensuring such happens, “the end” comes… When the Christians reference the second coming, this is that moment.

Do you think that this is the apocalypse, brought on by great spiritual action (righteous action)? Or do you moreso think that the second coming references when an individual effectively roots the foundation of their being in Christ like behavior, and that this brings about their personal end in the sense that it ushers in an instant experience of salvation/bliss/happiness/contentment for them? They become eternal while still mortal… actualized.

15 “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’[a] spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house.18 Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. 19 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 20 Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.

Chill. This sounds like a terrible mass migration, but really it’s just a perpetual trend of the need to flee for the sake of spiritual fulfillment/survival that is created by a world that is not unilaterally loving/holy/righteous. When there are tyrants and inequities thrown into the mix, stuff gets petty.

“When there are tyrants and inequities thrown into the mix, stuff gets petty.”- Human history.

You’ll have to like get up and flee your home because of the color of your skin, or because of a difference in laws or because of this or that and… because of this all we will have the “disenfranchised” and this become a manifest destiny thing and it just gets absurd.

Christ notes, in what I gather is a teaching through performance, a melodramatic performance in this instance, that suffering is experienced as “unequal” but truly is uniform and arising from a singular cause…lack of the perspective that is synonymous with/appears to cause salvation. The Buddhists call it “ignorance”. The “end” Christ has been speaking of apparently is the end of this “great distress” which has been present since “the beginning of the world.”

“If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.23 At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it.24 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you ahead of time.

If the days of the “false” vision…the days where there isn’t a uniform vision in congruence or compliance with what Christ taught as the truth of reality (the Hindus and the Buddhists too, just fyi) “had not been cut short” “no one would survive”. It’s “for the sake of the elect” that “those days” “will be shortened”.

Being of the school of the Yoga of the Supreme Person… sometimes my rabidly optimistic tone fails to capture the sheer amount of suffering that truly is out there in the world. People, and it seems young people in particular, really struggle with their existence, comprehensively. And while I’ve learned to really romance the “dynamics of life” and believe that this truly is a loving and sentient universe, people clearly get consumed whole by their ignorance at times, losing themselves and sometimes even their lives outright to their own behaviors.

Proper conception is necessary for, and flows seamlessly into proper action… and in this schism it’s left unspoken that we’re after what is “proper” so that we don’t fall prey to illness or utter destitution. Ideally, it’s a love thing, but for many it is clearly a survival thing.

In addition to yesterdays comment on this section/passage, I’d like to note that it’s after people are saved…after their days of ignorance are “shortened” that they are advised to not follow the direction of “false” teachers. From this approach, it becomes apparent that Christ is posturing himself as the intuition within the body itself. He ends by juxtaposing the atypical astonishment at the notion of prophecy relative to with how little regard adults treat intuition… “See, I have told you ahead of time”. The subtext is is that he’ll always be there to also tell you in the moment, and that’s equally profound, dummy.

26 “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. 27 For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.28 Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.

See yesterday’s blog entry.

“Immediately after the distress of those days

“‘the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[b]

Clearly, the affairs of society/mankind impact the cycles of natural phenomena such as the weather. We’re all One.

30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth[c] will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.[d] 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.

Just to sorta zoom out and re-contextualize how we got to this dark green, calm before the storm moment… the kind of storm which naturally inspires likening it to an act of God…as storms are sometimes referred to as…

People were confused about the vision of Christ, and because there wasn’t comprehensive saturation of spiritual enlightenment in the human family, suffering continued to exist pervasively. Although across time we can see things grow more progressive socially in regards to holy values with the right set of eyes, a good number of people simply didn’t have that sort of perspective and when they looked out and ran the probabilities, and for them it seems inevitable that some great God-born devastation is coming, much like the dark storm being referred to in this passage of the prophecy.

The biggest thing of all is that this group simply didn’t know how to be here now…how to be in the moment effectively…because they didn’t have a vision in which human action was ultimately enough…to satiate our survival needs and ensure the continued success of the species…which is delusional, because it really is enough. There worldview was contingent on some dark storm which would bring the necessary change. They hadn’t glimpsed that the change could be broken down into mechanics, and captured neatly in discourse, to be implemented in one’s day to day life.

You don’t necessarily want to “see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven” “with power and great glory” as badass as that is…because as much as we make fun of it, we like Florida. You want to “see” the “Son of Man” in a little kid enjoying ice cream after a baseball game or something wholesome/more sustainable.

You need to see God in all. Christ is honestly making fun of those awaiting a dark cataclysm here. The cataclysm these types are actually going to encounter which will actually transform the foundation of their Being comprehensively and will entail angels gathering the “elect” is their personal death. And even then, it’s for the living… why wait until death to experience heaven/the eternal?

32 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it[e] is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

Ultimately, “heaven” and “Earth” are ideas/concepts…they are made of material stuff, and are bound to the human form. We know from the sacraments (marriage particularly) that aspects of the identity truly are eternal… still, what that existence is like is probably beyond human conception. Eventually even “heaven” and “Earth” “will pass away” but Christ’s language, which is driven entirely by concepts, somehow “will never pass away”.

The word of Christ is the Father. And while the concepts are words…vehicles…the energy which gives them impact/meaning is eternal, and is a direct experience of the Source of Life itself. Language… is a spiritual tool gifted to help us come to understand and resonate with Source in some crazy fashion…the energy behind it is a direct experience of the Eternal.

The generation which comes to see the world in such crazy, nuanced terms, in transcendental terms, is the “generation” which will see the second coming of Christ, as well as the “end” of suffering in a meaningful way at the social level. This is the world in which peace will be very possible/sustainable…

And I believe it’s the world we are spiraling towards in 2023. We are moving out of nationalism into globalism. Before too long, because of the advent of technology, it will be far more feasible that we exist effectively as one human family.

The Day and Hour Unknown

36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[f] but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

Do you really think that’s “how it will be” at “the coming of the Son of Man”? Do you really think that “two men will be in the field” and that only “one will be taken” and the “other left”? Do you think it’ll be like “Noah” who bit his tongue regarding his project and let the world die? Will it continue to be kingdom vs kingdom; heaven vs hell?

Do you think that the Son couldn’t access this info? Do you think we can predetermine tragedy, tell human faculties about that tragedy, and then not prevent that tragedy?

Do you actually have faith in the Son? In the Father?

42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

Is this devotion? Looking out for God as if he was a “thief” who “will come at an hour when you do not expect him”? What if God was our friend in this situation… would an unexpected visit really be so awful?

45 “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? 46 It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. 47 Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 48 But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ 49 and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. 50 The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. 51 He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Thereeee it is. The good servant is the servant who follows his master’s orders, relegating the necessities equally to all. This is the servant that realizes that at the hour of the Son of Man, both men in the field get fed.

The false prophet is the one who says stuff like “one will be taken and the other left”. And this one will face cosmic retribution for his ways, truly.

This is a prophecy of the end of great irreligiosity in the Church, or on the precipice of, amongst other things. And it’s compassionate ultimately… these things happen. But across time, there comes a clear “end” to it both at the psychological level (individual) and the social level. In 2023 we are in one of the times of great social transition.

I have most definitely ruptured the central finite curve...