Apocalypse and Empire
By Marcus O'Donnell • Sep 23rd, 2004 • Category: Apocalypse mythAnother great article and setr of links from The Revealer. This time about metaphors of Empire in political and religious rhetoric. I have been thinking that Empire has to be a key part of my apocalyptic typology.
What does a list of dropped clichés like this mean, besides that “The Fall (Decay, Decline) of the Roman Empire” has joined “Orwellian” and “apocalyptic” in the ranks of grossly overused political and cultural metaphors? Maybe just that we have a proclivity for drastic analogies. Or a general cultural discomfort — uneasy about the news, undecided about the government, suffering from a post-binge, guilty conscience. Or maybe it’s an indication that, several years after the question was raised — Are we an empire? — and answered — Yes. — we’re coming to a consensus about what kind of empire we are. And, to our increasingly unhappy suspicion, we don’t seem to be what apologists like Niall Ferguson, British author of Colossus: the Rise and Fall of the American Empire, promised us we were — that is, the good kind.
Marcus O'Donnell is a journalist, and academic, after years in the inner city he now lives by the sea
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I happened across your weblog and thought you’d be interested on my thoughts (beginning at age 9 in 1963) and conclusions on End Times prophecy based on certain details of the Olivet Discourse (Luke 21:25a and Matthew 24:29-30a) and three 1999 celestial events that I have been aware of since 1990. This can be found through the following link:
http://www.writers.net/writers/gregjarboe
This has been known to those in the highest positions of power and authority through my letter-writing effort to such since 1991.
Greg Jarboe
Hannibal, MO USA