Christianity
God’s Visitation
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, November 30, 1998
Eschatology
Eschatology is the study of final things—what happens at the end of the world. Jewish eschatology is the idea that God, having created the world, has been faced with various evil forces trying to subvert his purpose. At some point he would intervene decisively on the side of good, overthrow the evil forces in a cosmic battle and inaugurate a kingdom on earth true to his original purpose—the kingdom of God.
The Qumran Community was an apocalyptic sect. They were expecting the end of the world. When this happened those who had been true to God’s commandments, His chosen ones or the elect, would be ressurected into God’s presence to enjoy a messianic banquet and blissful eternal life. The Qumran library proves that apocalypticism was an ample movement in Judaism, not merely a fringe interest. It arose from Persian religion when the Jews were brought from Babylon as colonists to set up a temple state in the reign of Darius II. Apocalypticism was central to Persian religion on Judaism stems partly from the apocalyptic writers.
In Persian religion, the devil (Ahriman), called by the Essenes Belial, and his angels rose out of the abyss to attack the good spirit and the angels of light. Neither good nor evil was victorious and the battle between good and evil continues, but eventually Belial will be defeated. God will send a deliverer, the Saoshyant, to herald the end of evil and a new age. The Jewish messianic ideal of a saviour was Persian. There follows a day of the Lord and trial by ordeal for mankind when the earth will be flooded with molten metal which burns up the wicked but is like warm milk for the righteous. Micah 1:4 says the mountains shall be molten. A thanksgiving hymn in the Hymn Scroll describes it in detail. The earth would be levelled into a great plain just as it is in Isaiah 40. Finally, Belial will be cast back into the abyss and mankind will ascend to the realm of light to dwell with God.
Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin in the Encyclopaedia Iranica writes of the spirit of Zoroastrianism, particularly pertaining to dualism, in the Qumran sectarian documents. In the Judaism of the Jewish scriptures, God is not perfectly good. Judaism has no wicked spirit, Satan being a servant of God Himself, the angel whose duty was to try humanity. So God was sometimes the author of evil. He put an evil spirit between Abimelech and the people of the city of Shechem. Saul was troubled by an “evil spirit” when the “spirit of God” departed from him. These hint at a suppressed dualism in Judaism. Christianity has the two spirits idea much more openly, albeit denied by the theologians, who want to stick to the Jewish origins of Christianity rather than to acknowledge any other. Gnostic Christianity, possibly the more original form of it, was centrally dualist, but like the Jews, the Christians have tried to make God all mighty, when He plainly is not. Good and the evil spirits are opposed to each other. In the apocryphal Gospel of Judas (second century AD) the spirits of truth and error that serve men are mentioned. But “in the midst is the spirit of intelligence, who is able to turn wherever he chooses”. It closely approaches the Zoroastrian teaching that the two spirits have to be chosen by human beings, who are either for the Good or for the Evil, and will be judged on the basis of the thoughts and the words and deeds they produce. Christian passages like this get close to the Zoroastrian adage:
My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.1 John 3:18
Good and evil spirits are mentioned in the John, and in the early Christian work Hermas the holy spirit and the evil spirit dwell together in man.
Essenes, like Zoroaster, believed that all men walk in two spirits appointed by God, the spirits of truth and falsehood. The scrolls speak of good and evil, light and dark, the way of darkness and the way of light, the spirit of darkness and the spirit of light, the children of darkness and the children of light, truth is light but falsehood is darkness. The teacher of righteousness is opposed by Belial, the demon of evil. The way of good leads to salvation, the way of evil leads to torment. The cosmic balance between the spirits is equal until the final age and God has set an everlasting hatred between them. The Community Rule (1QS) at Qumran has a short account of the two spirits which recognizes that God alone is the author of both spirits.
He created man to have dominion over the world and made for him two spirits, that he might walk by them until the appointed time of his visitation. They are the spirits of truth and error. In the abode of light are the origins of truth, and from the source of darkness are the origins of error. In the hand of the prince of lights is dominion over all sons of righteousness—in the ways of light they walk. And in the hand of the angel of darkness is all dominion over the sons of error—and in the ways of darkness they walk. And by the angel of darkness is the straying of all the sons of righteousness, and all their sin and their iniquities and their guilt, and the transgressions of their works in his dominion… In these two spirits are the origins of all the sons of man and in their divisions all the hosts of men have their inheritance in all the generations. In the ways of the two spirits men walk. And all the performance of their works is in their two divisions, according to each man's inheritance, whether much ot little for all the periods of etyernity, for God has established the two spirits in equal measure until the last period, and has put eternal enmity between the two divisions… God in the mysteries of his understanding and in his glorious wisdom has ordained a period for the rule of error…Millar Burrows, (Trans) The Dead Sea Scrolls
What seems uncomfortable here for a Zoroastrian connexion is the belief in fate—predestination, revived in Calvinism, whither it arrived having been transmitted through the Paulicians and Bogomiles. The Zoroastrian Gathas seem to indicate that human beings freely choose the one or the other of the two spirits. Duchesne-Guillemin points out that predestination opposed to free choice, the spirits identified as light and dark, and the creation of the two spirits by God are features of Zurvan—as a god of time or destiny—being the father of Ahuramazda (light) and Ahriman (dark). Though modern Zoroastrians and many scholars consider this to have been a heresy of the Persian religion, it is likely to have been the original teaching, nevertheless. The desire to eliminate Evil as an independent force has meant that the original view has been pushed to one side in history. S F G Brandon sees signs of Zurvan going back into the second millennium, and he certainly goes back a long way in Greece and Phœnicia as Chronos. The scholars agree, though, that Zurvanism enjoyed a revival after the Achaemenids, under the Parthians and the Sassanids. So, it was popular at the time of Christ when the Qumran sectarian documents were hidden in their caves. Flavius Josephus wrote, concerning the Essenes:
The sect of the Essenes holds that Destiny is master of all things and that nothing happens to men but what has been decreed by it.
The above passage is clearly fatalistic, and the Dead Sea scrolls also refer to the role of chance on the affairs of humanity:
According to each man’s inheritance in truth he does right, and so he hates error; but according to his possession in the lot of error he does wickedly in it, and so he abhors truth.
Thou has cast for man an eternal lot.
It is possible, and perhaps probable that Zurvanism might have had an influence on Judaism when Babylon was the important Jewish center. The Middle Persian word “menog” means much the same as the Hebrew word “ruach”. At Qumran “ruach” means the two spirits, the two opposing qualities in anyone’s nature, and everyone’s many personal faculties and qualities. Ahuramazda differs from the opposing spirit, Ahriman only in that Ahriman has no foreknowledge. Modern Zoroastrians like to make out that Ahriman is ignorant whereas Ahuramazda is the God of Knowledge, and inasmuch as foreknowledge is the most valuable of knowledge, it is true, but Ahriman is scarcely ignorant if the Good God cannot dispose of Him forthwith. In the Scrolls, God is “El de’oth”, “the God of knowledge”. In an Armenian fifth century creation myth, Zurvan says to Ahriman, “I have made Ohrmazd reign above thee”. It is read as meaning that Ohrmuzd reigns in the “menog”, the spirit, but Ahriman in this world. Persian religion has a coherent set of ideas of the spirit (menog) standing against the material world (getig). Such a coherent outlook is missing in Judaism and even in Christianity, although Gnostic Christianity had the coherent system it adapted from Iranian theology. The essence of Gnosticism appeared already at Qumran where the present age is said to be dominated by the evil spirit:
So shall they do year by year all the days of the dominion of Belial… And [the world] has wallowed in the ways of wickedness in the dominion of error until the appointed time of judgment which has been decreed.
In the Hymn Scroll (1QH), hymn 17 (Vermes 21), is an allusion to belief in physical resurrection, a Zoroastrian doctrine:
For the sake of Thy glory Thou hast purified man of sin… that… he may partake of the lot of Thy Holy Ones; bodies gnawed by worms may be raised from the dust to the counsel [of Thy truth]… that he may stand before Thee with the everlasting host.
God’s Appointed Time
All of this was prescribed in God’s design. Everything that ever happened had its appointed time. God knew the years of their comings and the length and exact duration of their times for all ages to come throughout eternity, says the Damascus Rule. They were fatalists. That is why they thought it essential to keep accurate dates and times. At the end time the Essenes expected a visitation by God and his holy angels to punish the wicked and to save the righteous. They hoped to be able to work out God’s plan so as to predict God’s visitation. These expectations are recorded in the Community Rule:
But god, in the mysteries of his understanding and in his glorious wisdom, has ordained a time for the end of deceit and in the appointed time of the visitation he will destroy it forever. Then truth, which has wallowed in the ways of wickedness during the dominion of falsehood until the appointed time of judgement, shall arise in the world forever.
Then God will refine in his truth all a man’s deeds, and will purify for himself a man’s body, consuming every spirit of deceit hidden in his flesh, and cleansing him with the holy spirit from all wicked deeds. And he will sprinkle upon him a spirit of truth, like holy water cleansing him from all abominations of deceit and impure habits, to make he who is upright perceive the knowledge of the most high and the wisdom of the sons of heaven, to show those whose way is perfect, for whom God has chosen an everlasting Covenant, that theirs is all the glory of Adam. And there shall be no deceit, to the shame of all works of lies.
At the visitation, for all who walk by the spirit of truth: healing and abundance of peace in length of days and fruitfulness; everlasting blessings and everlasting joy in a life without end; a crown of glory and raiment of majesty in everlasting light.
At the visitation, for all who walk by the spirit of deceit: abundance of afflictions by the destroying angels; everlasting damnation in the wrath of the vengeance of God and everlasting torment and everlasting destruction in disgrace and dishonour in the fire of dark places. And for all time their generations will be in sorrowful mourning and bitter misery, in disasters of Darkness until they are destroyed, with no remnant or any that escape.
God’s prophets had written down the signs of the appointed time of the visitation, the End Time. As the possessors of the Holy Spirit, the Essenes had the power to understand these writings. They scoured the Scriptures for these signs, indications that the wicked would be destroyed and they, God’s elect upon earth, would be chosen to rule. They wrote pesharim or interpretations of the scriptures in terms of the events of the End Time. To see the signs the interpreter—the pesharist—would used puns, word association, variant readings, and re-readings of a scriptural text to extract its hidden meaning. Fragments of a letter in the Qumran caves describe how the end time can be foreseen by a particular concatenation of events. They discovered the End Time was their own time because the signs were appearing.
With the visitation the kingdom of God would dawn when mankind will be purged of falsehood, individual humans being judged on the balance of the spirits within them. A cosmic battle would be fought between the forces of Light and Good and the forces of Darkness and Evil; between Truth and Lies; between God and Belial. Good men would be saved and the wicked condemned. The Essenes were God’s New Covenant ready to join battle against the forces of Evil at any moment.
They were in a perpetual state of readiness. They were spiritually and ritually pure through repentance and baptism. They practised the messianic meal every evening. They had the Holy Spirit with them. Armageddon had begun, the devout were being oppressed by The Lie. The End Time was nigh. God would soon intervene on their behalf.
The Last Battle
The Day of Vengeance will include the total defeat of the gentiles. At God’s Appointed Time the War Scroll, which is markedly apocalyptic, anticipates a battle between the Kittim, the sons of darkness and the sons of light, the familiar expression for the members of the community. There will be a preliminary battle between the Righteous and the armies of the Kittim allied with the ”Ungodly of the Covenant” in some specific place which cannot be identified because of scroll damage. Then the ”Exiles of the Desert” would move to Jerusalem for the final battle of the first week of years. Note that, following victory over the Romans, “the Temple would be cleansed and correct Temple worship would be restored”. The war would continue for another 33 years before final victory. While the Righteous pitted themselves against the Ungodly on earth the heavens would be echoing to a mighty conflict between the archangel Michael, the Prince of Light and Belial, the prince of Darkness and their hosts of ”gods” (Angels and Demons).
On the day when the kittim fall there shall be battle and terrible carnage before the God of Israel, for that shall be the day appointed from ancient times for the battle of the destruction of the sons of Darkness. At that time the assembly of gods and the hosts of men shall battle with the company of Darkness amid the shouts of a mighty multitude and the clamour of gods and men to make manifest the might of God. And it shall be a time of great tribulation for the people which God shall redeem; of all its afflictions none shall be as this, from its sudden beginning until its end in eternal redemption.
There seems to be no role for the leader of the elect except simply to lead out his forces—which is perhaps reason to believe that having done so he is transformed into another protagonist. Beyond that victory is assured by God. The battle is indecisive because the forces of good and evil are evenly matched and victory is given to the Righteous and the Angels through God’s intervention.
On the first day the Essenes had to pitch their camp before the king of the Romans. The officers spoke to all those ready for battle, strengthening the resolve of the brave and making those lacking courage withdraw. In the victory hymn of the War Scroll, God has to stiffen the resolve of the Essene army:
He has taught war to the hand of the feeble and steadied the trembling knee; he has braced the back of the smitten. He has given authority over the hard of heart to the poor in spirit.
Note here the use of the same curious expression—“the poor in spirit”—that Jesus the Nazarene uses in the sermon on the mount (Mt 5:3) but which has never before been found in any ancient work and was long thought to have been a mistranslation. It is not a negative concept as we might think. It does not mean the dispirited, or people of poor spirit. For Essenes it is wholly positive, meaning those having the spirit of poorness—those who appreciate the blessings of a state of poverty and humility and and live accordingly.
They believed Moses had taught them what to do when battle drew nigh. The priest appointed for the day of vengeance had to rise and address God, saying:
Thou art in the midst of us, a mighty God and terrible, causing all our enemies to flee before us.
Then he had to turn to the armies of the elect and give a stirring address to his soldiers. He begins:
Hear, O Israel! You draw near to battle this day against your enemies. Do not fear. Do not let your hearts be afraid. Your God goes with you to fight for you against your enemies that He may deliver you.
And he ends:
The hosts of conquering angels gird themselves for battle and prepare for the day of vengeance. For the God of Israel has called out the sword against all nations, and He will do mighty deeds by the saints of His people.
The saints of His people are, of course, the Essenes. It is not hard to imagine how such sentiments could stir passionate but ill-armed men to great deeds. Further sorties followed, each accompanied by a stirring speech by the priest. The battle continues for the first week of years in seven sorties. Then, having secured victory in the land, for another 33 years the elect fight and conquer all the gentile races of earth.
While the righteous pitted themselves against the ungodly on earth the heavens would be echoing to a mighty conflict between the archangel Michael, the prince of light, and Belial, the prince of darkness, and their hosts of gods (angels and demons). The battle hymn of the War Scroll tells the priest again to make a speech to the sons of light. It refers to a spiritual kingdom led by the archangel Michael and an earthly kingdom of Israel led by the nasi. The battle is indecisive because the forces of good and evil are evenly matched and victory is given to the righteous and the angels only through God’s intervention.
The Messiah and the Eternal Kingdom
The reward for the Righteous is explained in the Community Rule:
…eternal joy in life without end, a crown of glory and a garment of majesty in unending light.
This unending light and eternal joy were simply a continuation of life on earth whereas the punishment for sinners was:
eternal torment and endless disgrace together with shameful extinction in the fire of the dark regions.
In Daniel 2:44 the prophet says that God will set up a kingdom which will last forever. The battle hymn in the War Scroll tells us that the outcome the Essenes were expecting was the establishment of: everlasting dominion to Israel, God’s earthly kingdom. The Community Rule, quoted above, explains the reward for the righteous as everlasting joy in life without end, a crown of glory and a raiment of majesty in unending light, a continuation of life in the midst of all flesh—in other words on earth. The punishment for sinners was: eternal torment and endless disgrace together with shameful extinction in the fire of the dark regions.
Other scroll fragments also speak of a kingdom ruled by a messiah, the Son of God or the Son of the Most High, whose rule will be an everlasting rule but nonetheless an earthly one. Compare this with Luke 1:32-35:
He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give him the Throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
Luke has told us that he who receives the throne of David is the Son of the Most High but at this point he breaks the flow of the argument by inserting a conversation between Mary and an angel before returning to conclude…
…for that reason the holy child will be called the Son of God.
Omitting the misleading interjection, Luke says that the ruler of the House of Jacob, an eternal kingdom, is a Son of God, as he is in the scrolls, and he will judge the earth (2 Esdras 7) bringing peace by subjugating all other kingdoms and peoples.
Christian theologians used to believe that the anticipation of God’s kingdom to come was uniquely Jesus’s message. Now we see it was hundreds of years old, had come out of Persia with the exiles and had been perpetuated by the Essenes.
The literature of Qumran describes a messianic elite who have chosen to follow the command of Isaiah 40:3 to ”make a straight Way in the wilderness for our God”. They lived in desert camps waiting to be joined by a Heavenly Host of Angels to engage in a Holy War against their enemies. They are preparing themselves for ”the End Times” by living a life of extreme purity. They sought The Way of Perfect Righteousness, The Work of the Law, and The Way in which the Law works. Acts 9:2 calls members of the early church the followers of The Way. The scroll of the Habakkuk Commentary tells us that the Council of the Community was located in Jerusalem, offering a potential link with the Jerusalem Church.
The importance of the Essenes in New Testament studies is that they, like Jesus, were convinced that the end time was nigh. The devout were being oppressed by falsehood. God’s visitation was imminent. God would soon intervene on their behalf.
The Punishment of the Wicked
With the visitation of God, Armageddon would begin. A cosmic battle would be fought between the forces of light and good and the forces of darkness and evil; between truth and lies; between God and Belial. Mankind would be purged of deceit and individual humans would be judged on the balance of the spirits within them. By then there would be no repentance or pardon. In life, evil deeds could only be cancelled out by good deeds, and judgement was on this balance (the message of the Epistle of James the Just, the brother of Jesus). The people of Israel had to return to the law never to turn back if they were to be judged as righteous or just at the day of judgement. Good men would be saved and the wicked condemned. Belial would be cast down and the kingdom of God would dawn.
The Commentary on Habakkuk predicts that, at God’s appointed time, the last priests of Jerusalem who had amassed a fortune from donations to the temple, particularly from diaspora Jews, would be destroyed by the Kittim, meaning the Romans. It says that the Jewish enemies of the Essenes were the wicked of Ephraim and Manasseh, meaning the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
Describing the punishment of the wicked, the Damascus Rule summarizes Essene expectations regarding the visitation in the form of these pesharim. It furnishes the pesher of Zechariah 13:7 as:
the humble of the flock are those who watch for him. They shall be saved whereas the others shall be delivered up to the sword when the Messiah of Aaron and Israel shall come, as it came to pass at the former visitation concerning which God said by the hand of Ezekiel: They shall put a mark on the foreheads of those who sigh and decry abominations. But the others were delivered up to the avenging sword of the Covenant.
The humble of the flock and those who watch are again references to the Essenes. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus kept urging his disciples to watch and does so elsewhere in the gospels. Watchers for the kingdom, Nozrim or Zophim were Essenes. The former visitation was that celebrated at the Jewish feast of Passover when, on the eve of the escape from bondage in Egypt, God visited death on the firstborn of those who were not identified by a covenant of lambs blood on the lintel of each home. Ezekiel describes the return of the angels of death to punish the apostate Jews of Jerusalem. Either the Essenes believed this to have been true history or they believed that Ezekiel prescribed the proper means of identification—the righteous were marked, not with blood but with the mark of the cross made in water on their foreheads so that it could be seen by God and His seven avenging angels but not by men. The reference is to Ezekiel 9:4, the prophet’s vision of the destruction of the sinners of Jerusalem—those not marked. The sprinkling of water mentioned in the quotation above from the Community Rule probably means the making of this sign. The same is the practice of the clergymen when baptizing.
The sword of the covenant is an expression that recalls Jesus saying in Matthew, “I come not to send peace but a sword”. He obviously meant the sword of the covenant. The sword of God is a phrase met in the War Scroll where it is a sword of war. In this quotation from the Damascus Rule it is plainly the sword of judgement. The sword of war is necessary to initiate the kingdom of Israel on earth which then brings the sword of judgement and finally peace. Thus the people of God, the Jews, will make everyone to rest from the sword so there will be peace on earth. The origin of this sword metaphor—and that of the refiner’s fire—is Genesis 3:24 where God leaves a sword of flame to prevent fallen man from re-entering the Garden of Eden. The righteous have to run the gauntlet of the sword of fire to prove, being free of sin, they are worthy of re-entering the Garden of Eden, which is—the kingdom of God.
The Essenes were God’s new covenant perpetually ready to face the sword of flame, to join battle against the forces of evil—spiritually and ritually pure through repentance and baptism. They practised the messianic meal every evening. They had the holy spirit with them. Their reward, according to the Damascus Rule, was everlasting life:
Those who hold fast to it are destined to live forever and all the glory of Adam shall be theirs.
Elsewhere (VER-DSSE 132), it quotes Deuteronomy 7:9:
God keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love Him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations,
as proof that all who walk in perfect holiness according to His Covenant shall live forever—the meaning to an Essene of “to a thousand generations”. Those not of the covenant could have their sins forgiven by God (with sincere repentance) until the age is completed but thereafter there is no more forgiveness.
Recollections of this version of eternal life existed after the beliefs of the Essenes had been taken into the Empire by the Hellenists and gives us the present Christian idea of “the millenium”. The millenium only occurs in Christian writing in Revelation 20:1-10 when Satan is shut up in a pit for a thousand years and Christ and the saints rule in the first resurrection. Eusebius in Ecclesiastical History informs us:
Papias adduces strange parables and teachings of the saviour, and other more mystical things. Among them he says there will be a millennium after the resurrection of the dead, when the kingdom of the messiah will be set up in material form on earth. (GP-TNGR 37)
Eusebius concludes that Papias misunderstood that the gospels were figurative only, him being “a man of very little intelligence”. It is odd that Eusebius seems not to know of the passage in Revelation, supposedly one of the earliest New Testament books and thinks Papias is a fool. Papias was truly relating what he understood of the original Essenian beliefs but properly the reference is to the “thousand generations” of the Damascus Rule and Deuteronomy. Each millenium Christians expect Satan to be released, though why they should think Christ and the saints have been ruling is anybody’s guess. It’s a poor reign, if they have.
