Foreword
EARLY
in the year 1910 Rudolf Steiner is believed to have
spoken for the first time on the mystery of the true nature of the
Second Coming. Throughout that year he gave a number of lectures on
the subject and continued his teaching during the following year. The
importance of these lectures cannot be exaggerated: their study
is essential to an understanding of the meaning and purpose of the
Anthroposophical Movement. In the whole body of teaching that was
given out, the two lectures which are now reprinted in a new
translation, under the title of
The True Nature of the Second Coming,
form an indispensable part. Many salient points appear,
and explanations are made of the connections between past,
present and future.
Rudolf Steiner's
interpretation of that apocalyptic event described in the New
Testament as the coming of the Son of Man “in the clouds with
great power and glory” demands for its apprehension
knowledge of his teaching on the evolution of man's consciousness,
particularly on the development of the ego-consciousness in relation
to the Christ Impulse. The incarnation of the Christ took place in an
epoch when the soul-faculties of men were best adapted to receive Him
manifest in the flesh. But now new faculties of perception are
awakening, and men will become capable of receiving Him in a
different way. From the third decade of this century onwards, Rudolf
Steiner said, the Christ would be visible in etheric form to those
possessing these new faculties. At first He will be seen by a
few, but during the next three thousand years by greater and yet
greater numbers. In a lecture given at Basle on I st October, 1911,
Dr. Steiner spoke of the fact that in the future the presence of
Christ would be felt amongst those who were gathered together waiting
in expectation to receive Him. And for those who are alone, he
said, “many a one will experience, when sitting silent in his
room, his heart sad and oppressed, not knowing which way to turn,
that the etheric Christ will appear and will speak comforting words
to him. The Christ will become a living Comforter to
men!”
To
attempt to master and to expound the content of this revelation given
by Rudolf Steiner becomes the particular task of those who count themselves
among his followers. He believed that the Christian evangel would develop
further and further in time to come, bringing ever new gifts and
revelations to the souls of men in their own evolutionary progress
from one incarnation to another. And, speaking two years before his
death, he said: “Anthroposophy would wish its destiny to be one
with the destiny of Christianity.”
When he gave his
lecture-cycle on the Gospel of St. Matthew he described in detail the
preparation that took place for the coming of Christ in a
physical body, with an account of the special mission of Jeshu ben
Pandira; in 1911, in the first of two lectures entitled
Jeshu ben Pandira,
he gave the explicit message that it is in order to
prepare humanity for the Second Coming of Christ that Spiritual
Science exists. “Everyone,” he said, “who works at
the task of Spiritual Science shares in making this
preparation.”
MILDRED
KIRKCALDY
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