Looking for signposts

We live in a world that resigns anything that happened a second ago (and everything earlier) to the "History" bin.

The human History bin is filled with a number of failed experiments, aborted ideas, scraps of yellowed paper and mutated ventures. Dust-caked, sand-blown and windswept rubble from ages gone by, from fallen empires and ancient pyres. A mighty throng of the slain - all victims of empire, conquest, conflict, extermination, annihilation, also lie there.

The human History bin also contains the glories of our more lucid moments as a race - the times we got it right. Relentless battles (not all of them victorious) against disease, warriors fighting justly against the enemy, the laying down of lives for others - the highest friendships ever known. Love conquering all odds.

Time and again, someone rummages through the History bin, searching. Hoping to find something everyone missed - and typically, hoping to use it myopically and selfishly, as a lever to determine our todays, and more so, our tomorrows.

Mostly, however, we are a race of what I call FBNOs - Fly-By-Night Operators. We neither know nor care what's in the History bin; our todays are always more important than our tomorrows. Some care about Today, Tomorrow and then, if there's time and inclination, Yesterday - in that order. Most care about Today and Tomorrow, and think Yesterday is dead. Some of us care only about Today. All of us, essentially, are in Today. Tomorrow is not a certainty, while Yesterday, though a certainty, is a past and defanged certainty which has no bearing on Today.

Mostly, of course, on a personal level, and in a certain sense, it's always good to consign Yesterday to a trash basket. Every day is a new day, and each day's choices determine our future. It's best not to let Yesterday colour our todays so that our tomorrows become hopeless - let failure not be final, but a stepping stone to success. But even that, is a two-edged thing - Yesterday, in one sense, propels one Today, to one's Tomorrow.

On a personal level. But what about us as a race? Have our yesterdays anything to do with our todays? And what can we do about our tomorrows, today? Has History any bearing on the current age? And can the current age prepare us for the future?

Are there any 'signposts' in our world today?

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He stood on a hill about fifty-five miles north of the City.

He'd been doing this for years - digging up ancient sites. And this one - it had been the 'city on the hill' that marauding conquerors lusted after, century after century. It was an artery, a feed-pipe - the life-blood of many an empire and trade-route had coursed through it through the ages. Riders carried cargo of all kinds, armies encamped, potentates met, accords were struck. Soldiers fell in battle, kings received death-wounds, conquerors planted banners, unfurled standards. It had been the site of the earliest recorded battle, in the fifteenth BC. About three thousand or so years later, another battle here ended 400 years of Ottoman rule.

They'd uncovered an ancient 'church' here over the last few days. Everyone wanted to claim it was the oldest Christian Church - from the third or fourth AD. A beautiful mosaic with the Icthyus at its centre. Everyone wanted to believe that it had indeed been a church. However, Christians were not known to build churches (as recognizable stone edifices) till the fifth AD. So this must have been only a meeting place.

(Source : National Geographic News)

But he wasn't thinking what everyone thought - he had been strangely disturbed over the past few months. He'd taken on this assignment to be closer to a place he had strangely felt drawn to these past few years - this all-important patch of ground that all nations seemed to think was so all-important. And everything he was seeing here brought more than a flutter - an impending, ominous dread. Where was he standing? He couldn't suppress these dread thoughts.

Something had drawn him, some strange sense of destiny. He had always wondered, for all the digging he'd done in his life, whether History really had something relevant to say about today and tomorrow. He was looking, he realized, for clues.....to solve something that was whirling about in his head. He was looking for signposts - to point him in the direction he needed to go.

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After all this, when Josiah had prepared the temple, Necho king of Egypt came up to fight against Charchemish by Euphrates: and Josiah went out against him.
But he sent ambassadors to him, saying, What have I to do with thee, thou king of Judah? I come not against thee this day, but against the house wherewith I have war: for God commanded me to make haste: forbear thee from meddling with God, who is with me, that he destroy thee not.
Nevertheless Josiah would not turn his face from him, but disguised himself, that he might fight with him, and hearkened not unto the words of Necho from the mouth of God, and came to fight in the valley of Megiddo.
And the archers shot at king Josiah; and the king said to his servants, Have me away; for I am sore wounded.
His servants therefore took him out of that chariot, and put him in the second chariot that he had; and they brought him to Jerusalem, and he died, and was buried in one of the sepulchres of his fathers. And all Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah.

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(Source : ABR)

History revealed that Josiah, king of Judah, was wounded here, in 609 BC, in a battle of his own choosing, with Pharaoh Necho of Egypt. He had later died of his wounds when he was brought back to Jerusalem. Barely twenty years later, in 586 BC, Judah ceased to be a nation. It was an interesting age of history; Pharoah Necho, having subdued Josiah, then met his defeat at Carchemish in 605 BC. Egypt was then trying to assert control over the Jordan valley and then-known Babylon; Carchemish changed the power equations in that part of the world quite unalterably in favour of the emerging Babylonian kingdom - the most iridiscent empire of the ancient world. The later kings of Judah (Josiah's successors) vainly allied themselves with Egypt against Babylon - a disastrous decision for which the nation of Judah paid with its nationhood.

Why was King Josiah struck down in his prime? And why did he choose to fight at Megiddo? What has this to do with me anyway, he thought. It's lore..... just something I dug up. And I'm always digging up things; that's what I do. I discover History, I don't interpret it.

Let Yesterday be Yesterday.....true or not. But his heart wouldn't let him let it go....... somehow, he felt within himself, it isn't over. This place isn't over yet.

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And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.
And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet.
For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.
Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.
And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.

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Prophecy. It wasn't his comfort zone. Still, his mind raced, not letting him put it down.

'Why should I know this?' he thought. Of course, I could always choose to dig up an Inca mummy or carve out more Nazca lines. But why do I feel so thrilled about coming here, finding this....... Then he realised, calmly, what had led him here - the disturbances within his soul that would not quieten; that would not let him put history down as no longer relevant for today. He had dug up an invisible cord that stretched from the beginning of time - to the end of the age; and he had to decide what to do with it. Like it or not, his destiny was tied up with the destiny of a people and a place chosen, apparently, by the Almighty. Not only his; everyone that ever lived as well. All people would have to know what he knew now, and make the choice.

In days to come, armies will again march here, he mused. This hill overlooking the Jezreel valley. This place where a righteous king was felled at an evil moment by the evil powers of the age. Not very far from Elijah's pitched battle with the prophets of Baal. This place will again be a gathering place for the sounds of battle. And what a battle it will be!!! Earth's most important one, perhaps; the true battle between good and evil. A conclusive battle, unlike all other battles that raged on earth. A battle, it seems, to end all battles. A battle where everyone has to choose a side - there will be no fence-sitters here!!!! Those who rationalise will be on the evil side, actually....the side they've actually picked all their lives when they rationalised the choice.

He had come to that point in his destiny - where he had to choose. He could no longer pretend that there were no opposing sides in this world - and that rationalising the choice would invalidate it. Today was the day of choosing....for an eternal Tomorrow, in the light of Yesterday.

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Rummage in the human History bin if you like. See what you come up with. Is History really a true thing of the past? Is History truly only History or is it tied up with Tomorrow? And where are you, at present, with all this?