The Isaiah Effect

February 28, 2000
Braden, author of Walking Between the Worlds and Awakening to Zero Point, examines one of the ancient texts found in the 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Nag Hammadi. Braden contends that scholars have misinterpreted the Isaiah Scroll, which opens with apocalyptic visions of massive global destruction followed by a time of peace. The author claims that the scroll contains the key to a lost scientific tradition that promises to end war and heal our bodies. Indeed, he contends, Isaiah's prophecies can help us make sense of recent changes in climate and weather, changes that, according to Braden, have perplexed Western scientists untutored in the ancient prophecies. He suggests that we may be living in the era that precedes the destruction Isaiah predicted. But we are not destined to fulfill the prophecies: prayer, writes Braden, "allows us to choose which future prophecy we live." Not just any prayer, of course: Braden finds traditional Western prayer inadequate to the task, so he introduces readers to a (somewhat garbled) lost mode of prayer where the supplicant does not ask for something but acknowledges that somehow the prayer has already been fulfilled. Spiritual seekers in America have long and venerable traditions of trying to match up the general prophecies in ancient texts with specific contemporary events; Braden's bizarre attempt may not, in the end, prove to be more accurate than those that identified Gorbachev as the Antichrist.