The Middle East has a way of commanding our attention. At many points in history it has provided the volatile mix and flashpoints necessary to ignite a radically new phase of human and global unfoldment.

The midpoint of the Age of Aries, three thousand years ago, was such a flashpoint. Within the space of perhaps a hundred years two quite different men within two very different Middle Eastern cultures had been gifted with two aspects of the same revelation, and had acted on that revelation in their own unique ways. One of them was the songwriter/musician and shepherd who, as king, would between 1010 and 1000 BCE not only unite the northern and southern tribes to form a strong Israelite kingdom but would conquer Jerusalem and make it his political and spiritual capital. The other was brought up near what is now the border between eastern Afghanistan and Iran. A product of the ancient Indo-Iranian tradition which had its source in the Vedas, and trained as a priest of the ‘old religion’, he would, after a series of profound revelatory visions at age thirty, become a prophet with a radically new message.

Both David and Zarathustra knew, at the core of their being, not only that God was one and that his kingdom or dominion encompassed the whole world (a revolutionary concept in itself), but that men and women had been given the freedom to choose whether they would belong to that kingdom. The entry criteria they proposed were startling. They involved:

Turning to face God
Coming into a personal relationship with God, as friend, on the basis of heart and intent and not by way of external sacrifice.

And deliberately choosing to act in ways that would completely transform current existence and put in place the Kingdom of God on earth.