temptations

THE EXISTENTIAL GAMBLE OF HUMAN FREEDOM

In the image you see the evil presence, as a powerful shadow influencing the greed of humanity, opposite to them there is a golden divine figure, whose presence is observing and witnessing.  

We're given agency in a cosmos where divine power could override us at any moment but chooses not to. Because we are tested. Life on Earth is a continuous test. 

The challenge isn't whether we can recognize obvious evil—that's easy. The test is whether we can recognize corruption when it wears the mask of necessity, efficiency, pragmatism, or even compassion. Can we refuse power when it makes strategic sense? 

Yes, the demon offers earthly power—control over nations, but also the ability to feed multitudes, the leverage to enforce justice, the platform to spread truth. These aren't obviously evil offerings. They look like strategic advantages for accomplishing good. 

The challenge is whether we understand that some means corrupt any end; that certain tools transform the use;, that you cannot touch certain types of power without being changed, and corrupted at the same time by them.

The divine watches. We are granted the freedom to decide, it is our choice to make. Which side do we stand on? Not in abstract reflections and theology, but in the specific moment when the demon's offer actually makes sense, when refusing power means watching preventable suffering continue, when taking the compromise could save lives or advance justice or protect the innocent. The test is most real, precisely when the answer is ambiguous.

In the image you see the moment before the choice, when both paths are still open. The divine presence doesn't make the choice easier—it makes it weightier. 

We're not choosing in a void where no one will know. We're choosing while being fully seen, with full knowledge that this moment matters, that our freedom is real, and that we alone must decide whether to grasp what's offered or turn away from it.

The greed of earthly powers isn't just about accumulation. It's about the seduction of believing we can master these tools without being mastered by them, that our initial intentions will protect us from the inevitable gravitational pull of power that usually, at the end, results capturing us into its dangerous web.

But now I want to go even further and take the Book of Revelation. 

The Beast's Authority Problem

In the Book of Revelation the core tension is the Beast given power (Revelation 13:2, 13:5). Not seized, not stolen—given. By whom? By the ones who accept or even welcome it. The Beast's authority works because people grant it legitimacy.

Going back to the first part of this post: the test isn't resisting an obvious monster. It's recognising the corruption within the system we are embedded in—when opting out means we can't buy or sell, can't satisfy our needs, can't participate in society.

Revelation 13:10 is brutal in its simplicity: "Here is the patience and faith of the saints." Not "here's how to overthrow the Beast" or "here's the strategy for resistance." Just: endure. Refuse the mark. Accept the consequences.

This is exactly the test I have described: can you refuse power/participation when the compromise makes strategic sense? Or even worse, when the refusal has real costs? The Beast's genius isn't force—it's making complicity seem reasonable, necessary, inevitable.

End of Cycle as Revelation of What Was Always There

I have always been irritated by the numerous scholars who wrote about this symbolic book, treating it like a puzzle to decode for future events. But "apocalypse" (greek etymology for "revelation") refers to the act of unveiling. The end times don't introduce something new: in fact they reveal what was always operating beneath the surface as a continuous present. 

In my image I tried to capture this: the demonic intermediary, the test, the divine watching—this isn't happening in some future tribulation. It's the permanent structure of power. 

The "end of cycle", or the "end of innocence (i.e. ingenuity)" is when this becomes undeniable, when the masks come off, when you can no longer pretend the system is neutral or that your participation in it is innocent. 

Babylon

The mark on the forehead or hand (Revelation 13:16)—this isn't about literal tattoos. It's about what you think (forehead) and what you do (hand). Do your thoughts and actions align with the Beast's logic, or do you stand outside it?

The greed of earthly powers, in Revelation's terms, is Babylon—the seductive city, the economic system, the web of comfortable complicity. And the call isn't to reform it or capture it for good purposes. The call is: "Come out of her, my people" (Revelation 18:4).

That's the test. Can you come out when coming out seems to cost everything?

Seeing clearly 

This is the illusion the Beast depends on: that compliance is survival, that the mark is necessity. But those who've actually walked away from the system—who've chosen the moral over the convenient—discover something the Beast cannot advertise: what you lose was already worthless. What looked like everything was a gilded cage.

Yes, at first there's loss. Disorientation. The ground feels desolated. "Now what?" you wonder, standing in the ruins of the life you dismantled by refusing to compromise.

But then—timidly, almost invisibly—something new emerges from that scorched earth. Delicate, genuine, pure in its simplicity. And you realize: this is what you were actually seeking all along. Not the power, not the security, not the position within the system. This fragile, authentic thing growing in the wreckage is worth more than everything you surrendered.

Christ's words cut through the existential anxiety: "Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them" (Matthew 6:26). This isn't naive optimism. It's a direct challenge to the Beast's core claim—that you need the mark to survive, that you must participate in the system to eat.

The way of the spirit operates on different economics. When you stop grasping for earthly power, when you refuse the demon's leverage, when you step outside Babylon's web—you discover you're not abandoned.

 The loss was never what you thought you were losing. And what emerges in its place is the most precious thing: the possibility to express your truest, most fulfilling self.

This is what the Beast cannot tolerate being known. That freedom costs everything you don't actually need, and gains everything you didn't know was possible.