In Reply to: Re: pretty good job of outing them! posted by Coniuratio on March 20, 2006 at 11:22:53:
Coniuratio:
No, I just liked it--I heard the "slouches towards Jerusalem" line a while back, and finally looked it up. It kind of sums up the antichrist spirit of this age, to me.
It's by Irish poet William Butler Yeats, written in 1919.
To me, the “widening gyre” is about a falcon’s flight taking it higher and higher, where the falconer gradually loses contact and control; sort of an inevitable “It is impossible but that offenses should come, but woe to that man through whom they come” kind of thing—God is sovereign, but the “mystery of iniquity” is at work, and the pseudo-perfection of the AC’s rule is about to begin.
The love of many waxes cold, betrayal is the order of the day, and the flood of the opinion of sinful humanity overwhelms regard for a simple relationship with Christ, and the promise of His coming Kingdom is nearly drowned out, as “evil men and seducers wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived”.
The “antichrist ethic” comes to full power in the opinions of man’s wicked heart, and pure anarchy becomes the order of the day, the birthpangs of someone other than Christ herald the candidacy of the man of sin.
The Sphinx imagery symbolizes all the idolatry of history, and “they that make them are like unto them” becomes true of the entire human race, except for those who have known the “ceremony of innocence”; receiving Christ inrepentance for one’s own sins, as well as intercession for a world gone completely mad with the idolatry of evil fanaticism ; the very worst being religious fanaticism (like we all experienced in TF, especially its lies about true Christianity).
"A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant desert birds. "
The “slow thighs” are the drive of the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John), the pitiless and blank gaze is the nature of Satan behind idolatry, and the “shadows of indignant desert birds (carrion birds drinking blood for water)” are the proponents of the new One World Religion, indignant against the “fundamentalism" of the Christians insisting this has all been forseen, and will bring mankind to destruction at the return of Jesus. Indignation at the existence of God's own, elected by grace alone through faith alone by the truth of Scripture alone, reaches the jealous height of history; just as prophesied.
“Vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle” is the birth on earth of the one who will step into the candidacy of the Antichrist, by decisions he makes during his life, as he multiply rejects the Gospel, and becomes like the Second Pharaoh, who hardened his heart nine times, and has the strong delusion descend on him as the “… darkness drops again…”, and his heart is irretrievably hardened by God Himself, Who already gave fair warning through all the centuries, and as John said, “Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.”(1 John 2:18).
The “rough beast” was rocked in a cradle, not laid in a humble manger like the real Jesus in Bethlehem but elevated to great honor when he makes himself known in the “pleasant land” as Satan takes residence in the Antichrist, when he places the abomination of desolation in Jerusalem, as spoken by Daniel the prophet, just like the real Jesus warned.
That's how I read the poem; anyway.
Great imagery.
OT2