“The Beast”

October 28, 2019

By Jim Culp

“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.”

-The Revelation of Saint John the Divine, Chapter 13, Verse 1

When I was a kid growing up, my family lived in El Paso, Texas for the first 12 years of my life, and then my step-father transferred with the Santa Fe railroad to Hurley, New Mexico; and we made our home 15 miles northwest in Silver City, New Mexico. It was a wonderful time for my brother Dave and I; we were thrilled to have miles of woodland hills as our new playground and shooting range.

As in El Paso, my family attended a church three times per week; following a flavor of Christianity that sets itself apart from the Church of Rome and does not follow its doctrine other than a few areas.

When I was 9, I heard a missionary talk about the Book of Revelation, a 22 Chapter manuscript that is regarded as the revelation of Jesus the Christ to a man named John. It is still argued whether this John was one of the four disciples of the Christ, or another John that followed Christianity and could write a large manuscript in Greek. Either way, this man had not been killed by the Romans, and instead was exiled to the island of Patmos, a small land mass off the coast of Greece in the Icarian Sea. No one knows how long of a period it took this man to write this book, but it became part of the Holy Bible sometime in the 200’s.

This part of the bible intrigued me as a young person, and by the time I was 14, I had memorized over half of it. Revelation was the story of “good” in victory over “evil,” and the followers of Jesus the Christ being transported to a home in the heavens. The 13^th chapter (that I opened with) was my favorite, and since I could never find a photo of the beast, I created an image of him in my mind, and never forgot it; even to this day.

In 2004, I converted to Druidism, and cast the cloak of Christianity and organized religion to the wind. There was never a bigger feeling of freedom in my 53 years. I was free to do as I wish, and there was no god to punish me for living my life as I see fit.

But the one thing that has never left me is the Beast; it still visits me once or twice a year in my dreams and scares the hell out of me. Is the Beast real?

That’s for you to decide.

-Jim 

Follow me at jimculp.blogspot.com, or Facebook.