Funny thing you should mention this, dear Brother A. The accent falls on "to be ready."
The Lord Christ had his forerunners, consecrated ones who prepared the way for His revelation to man.
Pre-eminently his brilliant cousin Saint John the Baptist "prepared the way," inaugurating the sacrament of baptism for the cleansing of sins, well before anyone then alive could have possibly imagined the spiritual significance of baptism by water, and even before there was Anyone in Whose Name anyone could have been baptized.
John constantly, faithfully proclaimed the coming of the Messiah. John ran ahead of Jesus, preparing, cultivating the human spirit to receive the Lord in common humanity, when He came.
Though there may be folks out there prepared to accuse me of blasphemy for saying it, I can't help but think of Plato as a type of forerunner of Christ in his own way, there to prepare the way of the Lord -- not in the field of spirit, but in the field of nous.
Unlike John's way -- the way of the Spirit -- Plato's way was the way of of the Mind -- of human reason. Since there is nothing "unreasonable" about the Christian faith, it's kind of nice to have had (putatively) Plato out there, effectively "preparing the Way" for the Lord, in the inimitable, uniquely Greek fashion. [Arguably, there has been no people in the history of mankind more remarkable for devotion to rational mind and its criteria than the ancient Hellenes.]
As you recall, it was the Greeks who were the most numerous early adherents of the Christian faith. And Christ's revelation was disseminated throughout the wider world via Hellenistic, not Jewish, culture.
I have to believe that God had a hand in all this. And that He chose the instruments of His purpose superlatively.
This is not to aver that one can come to the Lord via the route of reason alone, or even mainly. Faith, Hope, and Charity are the theological virtues that draw us close to God -- not our "problem-solving abilities."
Yet there seems to be nothing in Christianity that confounds or delegitimates human reason at all. Quite the contrary.
Most of the sheer irrationality I see in this world today seems to stem from implacable resistance to, even positive hatred of, the idea of reason. Probably because the apostate of God realizes, deep down in his bones, that there can be no such thing as reason, without reference to an abiding standard by which reason itself can be measured and found to be "reasonable."
But this sort of thing regularly manages to pass itself off as an "unheard-of demand" these days....
And that's why the human race seems to be in such a quandary in the present era: Irrational people constitute the socially (and politically) effective people in the present socio-political culture.
In our era, they are stacked up like cord wood in our most prestigious institutions of higher learning, the elite foundations and organs of mass communication; and in the movers and shakers of the political class.
And they seem to be dedicated to making the lives of "the rest of us" perfectly miserable.
On that happy note, I must say good-night, Arlen. Time for some sleep! Thank you so much for writing. Pleasant dreams -- Good night!
And as I was considering, behold, an he goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the goat [had] a notable horn between his eyes. And he came to the ram that had [two] horns, which I had seen standing before the river, and ran unto him in the fury of his power.
And I saw him come close unto the ram, and he was moved with choler against him, and smote the ram, and brake his two horns: and there was no power in the ram to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground, and stamped upon him: and there was none that could deliver the ram out of his hand. Therefore the he goat waxed very great: and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven….
And it came to pass, when I, [even] I Daniel, had seen the vision, and sought for the meaning, then, behold, there stood before me as the appearance of a man. And I heard a man's voice between [the banks of] Ulai, which called, and said, Gabriel, make this [man] to understand the vision. So he came near where I stood: and when he came, I was afraid, and fell upon my face: but he said unto me, Understand, O son of man: for at the time of the end [shall be] the vision.
Now as he was speaking with me, I was in a deep sleep on my face toward the ground: but he touched me, and set me upright. And he said, Behold, I will make thee know what shall be in the last end of the indignation: for at the time appointed the end [shall be].
The ram which thou sawest having [two] horns [are] the kings of Media and Persia. And the rough goat [is] the king of Grecia: and the great horn that [is] between his eyes [is] the first king. Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power….
The Qumran sect's origins are postulated by some scholars to be in the communities of the Hasidim, the pious anti-Hellenistic circles formed in the early days of the Maccabees. The Hasidim may have been the precursors of the Essenes, who were concerned about growing Hellenization and strove to abide by the Torah.
Archeological and historical evidence indicates that Qumran was founded in the second half of the second century B.C.E., during the time of the Maccabean dynasty. A hiatus in the occupation of the site is linked to evidence of a huge earthquake. Qumran was abandoned about the time of the Roman incursion of 68 C.E., two years before the collapse of Jewish self-government in Judea and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E….
The historian Josephus relates the division of the Jews of the Second Temple period into three orders: the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes. The Sadducees included mainly the priestly and aristocratic families; the Pharisees constituted the Jay circles; and the Essenes were a separatist group, part of which formed an ascetic monastic community that retreated to the wilderness. The exact political and religious affinities of each of these groups, as well as their development and interrelationships, are still relatively obscure and arc the source of widely disparate scholarly views.