 |
These are all very horrific and mystifying symbols, in fact
the Bible is mystifying, and especially so are the apocalyptic
books like Daniel and Revelation. Let me give you a quick
tour of how Biblical scholars (and this includes religious
believers) view these texts, particularly the last book of the
New Testament authored by John, known as Revelation.
There are four primary views here, four “lenses” if you will,
that are employed in looking at this body of writing -- and
this includes the prophetic elements as well.
The first is known as historicism; many Protestant groups
embrace this approach which sees the book of Revelation as
a record of the course of world history from the time of the
apostles to the end of the world. Fulfillment of the
prophecies has been taking place for the last 2,000 years.
The preterist approach holds that most or all events
described in Revelation have already occurred, that some of
these events may have been in the future of John (the
writer) but are now, from our point of view rooted in the
ancient past. Some preterists believe that certain elements
of Revelation have yet to be fulfilled, but for the most part is
a retrospective history from our point of view. I think that
the Preterist view would hold that John was writing in a kind
of metaphorical code about events in his own time... where,
for instance, the emperor Nero may be described as the
Antichrist.
The futurists believe that the prophecies in Revelations
have yet to be fulfilled, and that most of the events
described in Revelation will occur in a relatively brief period
prior to the Second Coming. So, the bulk of the prophecies
are in the future. And of course there is great debate in
religious circles whether that future is unfolding now in our
time.
Finally, there is a spiritual or symbolic approach which
holds that all of these events described in Revelation are
metaphorical. Here is how Steven Gregg, the editor of a
parallel commentary on Revelation describes this symbolic
approach: he says that “Revelation is to be a great drama
depicting transcendent spiritual realities, such as the
spiritual conflict between Christ and Satan, between the
saints and the antichristian world powers, and depicting the
heavenly vindication and final victory of Christ and his
saints.”
What we’re concerned about today, really, are the futurists
-- because these are the people who claim that the
prophecies in Revelation are unfolding now, in our time, that
there are signs that this occurring, and that we are in the
midst (or commencing) an apocalyptic timetable. And
often, as confirmation of this claim, they point to “signs.”
Now, it also need to be said that just as religious groups
do not agree on how Revelation, or apocalyptic texts, or
even the rest of the Bible is to be interpreted, those who
hold to a literal interpretation of these books do not agree
on the sequence of events -- the timeline, so to speak, of
how prophecy is to unfold. For instance, take the notion of
the millennium, the 1,000 year period when Christ and the
Saints are to rule on earth and establish a kind of theocracy.
Premillennialism, also known as chiliasm, holds that the
Second Coming will preceed the millennium. In other
words, Christ arrives and sets up this heavenly kingdom on
earth, and after ten centuries (for some unfathomable
reason), Satan is given one last crack at winning the game,
he’s freed to put humanity to one final test before the final
judgment.
The postmillenialists believe that it is the duty of the godly
to establish a perfect society on earth, and then Jesus
arrives. This view appeals to Christian Reconstructionists or
other “dominionist” groups who basically feel that it is the
task of Christians to seize control of all of the institutions of
society, cleanse it of sin and prepare the way for Jesus.
Finally, there are is Amillennialism. This is a very complex
doctrine which sees most of the Revelation in symbolic
terms, they believe that we are in a period known as the
Reign of the Saints, but that there is a time in the future
when Satan will be loosed for one final attempt to control
the world. Augustine was an Amillennialism, and I think
that the essence of this position is a belief in some of the
events described in Revelation, but a kind of caution
whenever apocalyptic groups or ideologies assert
themselves. Amillennialism is a good position to have if
you’re an established religion, because that way you can
always defer things to some vague future and concentrate
on the task of building an institutionalized church.
Now, there are still further splits and distinctions...
Which leads me to the what I call The Apocalypse Bestiary.
This is really a way of trying to understand how different
groups, including religious denominations and believers,
react to the whole notion of the apocalypse, and the credit
for this little conceptual framework must go to Richard
Landes at the Center for Millennial Studies in Boston; that is
clearinghouse for information about millennialist movements
throughout history and in our own time as well.
The loudest group of animals in the bestiary are Roosters.
Roosters wake up everyone, they announce their presence,
they try to spur others to action. Here’s what Landes wrote
in his essay which introduced this bestiary...
“Roosters crow about the imminent dawn. Apocalyptic
prophets, messianic pretenders, chronologists calculating an
imminent doomsday -- they all want to rouse the courtyard,
stir the other animals into action, shatter the quiet
complacency of a sleeping community.”
People or groups who warn of an impending apocalypse
are Roosters. They may disagree over the precise sequence
of events, they may interpret books like Revelation in
different ways, but they all embrace a sense of immanence,
they feel a need to warn others, frequently they make
predictions or set dates about when certain events are going
to happen.
Then there are the Owls. Again, Landes:
“Owls are night animals; they dislike both noise and light;
they want to hush the roosters, insisting that it is still night,
that the dawn is far away, that the roosters are not only
incorrect, but dangerous...”
Most institutional religions are Owlish; One reason is that
emphasizing this idea of a church as a physical institution
with rules, hierarchy and dogma -- this is something that is
inherently at odds with the chaotic, fast-moving events of
an apocalypse. The Owls may agree that someday there
will be an apocalypse -- but it’s not now. Tithe, pray, wait.
Those are the watchwords of the Owls.
Videos by Jack Van Impe |
Right now, we’re in a period when the Roosters are active.
They’re running around the cultural barnyard screeching
their heads off, trying to warn everyone that the Second
Coming is at hand. So let’s take a look at what they have to
say.
Last month there was this full page ad in USA TODAY
urging everyone to celebrate the 2000th birthday of Jesus
Christ. It was sponsored by a Bible Studies group in
Michigan, and it presented a number of claims that are
repeated by other Roosters as well. Take the quote from
Luke 20:11:
“And great earthquakes shall be in diverse places, and
famines and pestilences, and fearful sights and great signs
shall there be from heaven.”
The ad goes on to warn:
“Clearly all the signs are there. Earthquakes in China,
Turkey, and Japan; famine in Africa, Asia and Russia;
pestilences in the form of AIDS are now worldwide, fearful
sights all over the world brought into our living rooms every
night via TV; and continuous signs from heaven in the form
of eclipses, constellation alignments, meteorites and
comets.”
Now, here’s a similar claim by one of the premier “signs
and wonders” televaneglists, Jack Van Impe.
“Earthquakes, Plagues and Famine ... All this is only the tip
of the apocalyptic iceberg... To the list of doom-and-gloom
we can add increasingly strange, new weather patterns
which are playing havoc with our world... We are poised at
the very threshold of cataclysmic change...We’re told to
continue to watch for certain signs of the times -- the
advent of false prophets, widespread religious deception,
international upheaval, an increase in great earthquakes, an
even greater onslaught of devastating plagues, famines ,
and strange phenomenon in the heavens, along with
changing global weather patterns... World events declare
that Jesus Chris is coming soon.”
And here’s a warning from David Allen Lewis who publishes
a newsletter called Prophecy Watch International. He warns
of
Signs! Distress! Confusion! Commotion!
And in a one-sentence list, compiles 34 different indicators
that we’re entering the End Times. Some of them are
clearly wrong... he’s worse than Allan Greenspan when he
says that we live with rampant inflation and taxation. He
mentions other items which don’t fit anywhere in Daniel or
Revelation -- things like the Mars rocks and the government
sponsored Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, or the
World Wide Web. But he does mention: “weird weather,
increased earthquake activity, AIDS and pestilence.”
Or take Hal Lindsey who has become the godfather of
modern pop-culture apocalyptic prediction. He claimed that
the 1970s’ “experienced the largest increase in the number
of quakes known in history.” David Lewis in his book SIGNS
OF HIS COMING, claims “there have been more earthquakes
in the last 50 years than in the previous 1,500 years.” Jack
Van Impe says, “History shows that the number of killer
quakes remained fairly constant until the 1950s -- averaging
between two to four per decade. In the 1960s there were
13. In the 1970s, there were 51. In the 1980s,there 86.
From 1990 through 1996, there have been more than
150...”
Let’s look at these claims.
Richard Abanes, who is the author of END TIME VISIONS,
The Road to Armageddon? noted in 1998 that claims of
increasing seismic activity have little basis in face. One
example: back in 1986, Charles Richter, who invented the
Richter scale which measures the intensity of quakes, noted
that modern seismographs could record quakes that
previously were unnoticed... so there is the perception that
more quakes may be occurring. But what about the major
quakes?
Even with secondary evidence of seismic activity, there is
good reason to suggest that claims of heightened
earthquake rates are unfounded.
Here are some quotes:
Wilbur Rinehard of the World Data Center in Boulder
Colorado: “There has been no significant increase in the
numbers of earthquakes during this or any other century...”
Waverly Person, of the U.S. Department of the Interior:
“Our records do not show any significant increase in great
earthquakes...”
And major earthquakes are nothing new -- they’ve been
taking place for centuries and millennia. The oldest
recorded quake was in China in 1851 BC; in 7 AD a monster
quake destroyed the entire city of Hsien, China. And the
Roman philosopher and writer Seneca in the first century,
AD lamented the destruction of towns in Syria, Macedonia,
Cyprus and elsewhere all by earthquake.
Claims of recent monster earthquakes have to put into
context. In many cases these quakes are calamitous not
just because of their intensity but due to the fact that more
people are living, and more people happen to be building --
foolishly -- in quake prone regions. But look at history:
between AD 10 and 1699, there were over 3,000
earthquakes in the area of the Eastern Mediterranean. One
study, and this was done by Robert Mallet in the Reports of
the British Association for the years 1852-54, indicated
references to nearly 7,000 earthquakes between 1606 BC
and 1850 AD. But the granddaddy of them all is a story
done by the Count F. Montessus de Ballore, who from 1885
to 1922 combed the historical record, and catalogued a total
of 171,434 quakes in all parts of the world... the report, now
in the library of the Geographical Society in Paris, occupies
84-feet of bookshelf space.
Some of the more interesting work regarding these claims
of heightened seismic activity has been made by religious
researchers like Houglast Harris of Reachout Ministries in
England. He contacted a number of professional academic
groups and provided them with a quote that appeared in a
Jehovah’s Witness publication in 1982 titled YOU CAN LIVE
FOREVER IN PARADISE ON EARTH. As you probably know,
the Witnesses are notorious for predicting the apocalypse,
and here’s a quote from that booklet. “From 1914 until
now, there have been many more major earthquakes than
in other like periods in recorded history. For over 1,000
years, from the year 856 CE (AD) to 1914, there were only
24 major earthquakes causing some 1,973,000 deaths. But
in the 63 years from 1915 to 1978, a total of some
1,600,000 persons died in 43 earthquakes...”
Abanes notes that Harris received information from the
Earthquake Research Unit at Tokyo University Japan, and
the International Seismological Center in Newbury, England.
And here’s the gist of it... Both of these groups said that
there was no evidence that seismic activity has been
increasing; the ISC suggested that the death counts were
badly off, it pointed to a quake in China in 1556 that
reported had 885,000 fatalities. And the Tokyo group said
“Records of earthquakes have increased but we cannot say
that earthquake activity has increased.”
Another interesting curiosity is that in the short run, for
about the last 100 years between 1897 and 1997, the
number of major tremors (7.0 magnitude or greater)
decreased worldwide, as did the number of “great” tremors
(magnitude 8.0 or more). You shouldn’t take this as seismic
“gospel” because the comparison here is just as unreliable
as those made by doomsayers, but it is an interesting
statistical burp.
Similar claims are made regarding hurricanes and
tornadoes. We’re familiar with the hyperbole and media
report earlier this month about Hurricane Floyd, you
probably recall Pat Robertson trying to pray Hurricane
Andrew away from Virginia Beach, and Abanes notes that
after earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes are the most
frequently mentioned disasters cited by Roosters as
evidence of a forthcoming apocalypse. Again, you have
people like Hal Lindsey making a lot of muddled and
inaccurate statements; here’s one he made on a television
program called THIS WEEK IN BIBLE PROPHECY. He said:
“The oceans of the equatorial part of the earth are really
warming up and this is the place where this Super Storm
Phenomenon is being generated. So I think that when you
look back at the past year (1992) we had Hurricane Andrew
which was the most powerful hurricane ever that hit this
coast.”
Lindsey is wrong on several counts. Andrew was a
Category 4 hurricane, and it was NOT the most powerful to
hit the U.S. coast.. Andrew ranks third behind the 1935
hurricane and Camille, the 1969 hurricane that was a
Category 5 and hit Mississippi, Louisiana and Virginia.
Abanes notes that of the fourth through tenth most powerful
storms, none took place later than 1961.
And part of that is because hurricane activity seems to be
cyclical, the 1950s and 1960s was a period of intense
development which then subsided.
What about claims that hurricane intensity or frequency is
rising? Once again, the evidence here is wanting. A couple
of different studies have examined this claim. One
conducted a “meticulous inspection of historical materials,
such as newspapers,old books and journal publications” and
concluded that there were 216 major storms between 1851
and 1900, but noted that this figure was still “a significant
underestimate of the actual storm totals for this time, due
to the much poorer system of communication and sparser
population at that time.”
Now, a similar phenomena exists regarding claims that
tornadoes are increasing in number and intensity. It wasn’t
until 1953 when the U.S. Department of Commerce began
forecasting efforts and a systematic accumulation of
records. In climatology that is a very brief period in terms
of looking for cycles and patterns. I haven’t been able to
locate any studies which show statistical evidence to support
the claim that there are more and bigger tornadoes. What
there is, though, is much better tracking, and reporting, and
spotting; there are more people around to visually sight
tornadoes, we have better Doppler radar, we have teams
out chasing them. Let me read you a quote made by Joe
Schaeffer, director of the Storm Prediction Center in
Norman, Oklahoma -- and this appeared just recently in the
September 17, 1999 issue of USA TODAY, ironically, in an
article titled “Storming Ahead: TV’s Mixed Message...” He
said:
“Twenty years ago, you’re driving through western South
Dakota, you see a little bitty tornado, you keep going. Now
you pick up your cell phone and it’s a free phone call to
some media outlet that’ll put it on the air.”
I want to briefly enumerate what I think are some of the
reasons for why so many people are susceptible to claims
about natural calamities, especially floods, hurricane, and
tornadoes.
The first is what I call the “action cam” phenomenon. I
remember in the mid-1970s when I was freelancing as a
print journalism reporter, people especially in the local TV
news outlets were enchanted by the possibilities of both
videotape (as opposed to film which you had to develop, so
there was more lead time in getting a story to camera) as
well as live remote news broadcasting. It used to be that
newscasts focused mainly in a news room, but with the
advent of so-called “action cams” and more remote units,
even helicopter platforms, you have more possibilities, and
sometimes you have to find something to cover. And the
weather has become a live event. You can report a flood by
having a talking head, or maybe a still photo of a river in
the background, but it’s a lot more dramatic if you have
some reporter “on the scene.” This is very much a
ratings-driven type of situation.
The second factor is a variation of the principle of “if it
bleeds, it leads.” Study after study shows that local news
especially dwells on disasters, emergencies and catastrophe.
Sometimes, these stories are easier to cover than an
investigative piece, it’s almost point and shoot. There is a
lot of critical discussion inside the news gathering business
about this; but the point is that images of these disasters
are now beamed into our homes on a regular basis. Last
summer for several weeks, CBS news and Dan Rather
seemed fixated on El Nino, which is a warming pattern in
the Pacific, we got over that and he started talking about La
Nina.
Now, a third factor is hot-dogging. And an example of this is
when you see a reporter standing on a beach yelling into a
microphone, the rain is blowing, the wind is up to 70 miles
per hour. We saw a lot of that in the media coverage of
Floyd. This is done for dramatic effect, and I like what Bryan
Norcross of a Miami TV station says about this. He says,
“I’m just waiting for the day when somebody does that and
something flies off a power pole and decapitates him on
television.” It’s worth noting that Dan Rather was also out
there with a rain soaked look; he got his first network job
after he reported on a hurricane back in 1961 down in the
Texas Gulf, when he chained himself to a tree during
Hurricane Carla. In 1995, he covered Hurricane Opal down
in Panama City, Fla. while hanging on to a pole in 140-mph
winds. A producer was right out of camera range hanging on
to Rather’s legs so he would stay in place and not blow
away! That’s hot-dogging. I’m just waiting for some
reporter to use a tactic like this when covering an air crash
or a drug OD, that should be interesting...
The final factor I want to mention is “spectacle.” I think
that reporting and packaging events, especially with
dramatic animation and special effect as spectacles renders
us immune to a more sober and objective perspective. It’s
no good for audience ratings for a news anchor to tell you
that the disaster that’s being covered is relatively run-of-the
mill. Now, obviously, there are outstanding and calamitous
events, but just like every drug bust you hear about is
seemingly “the biggest” (ever wondered about that), a lot of
reporting on natural disasters I think has the effect --
whether it’s deliberate or not -- of over-reporting or
over-estimating what’s going on. One way you detect the
“spectacle” factor is to see whether or not any mention is
made of past floods, or hurricanes or events which were on
a comparable scale, and see how much time is spent
discussing that previous event.
Now, another apocalyptic claim involves plagues and
famines. Hal Lindsay writes: “Jesus said plagues would
sweep the world prior to his return ... In just the past few
years great epidemics have killed millions.” AIDS has
become a favorite example of an apocalyptic plague. A
number of fundamentalists like Noah Hutchings of
Southwest Radio Church have described AIDS as the “worst
plague in history,” and you have misinformation peddlers
like Jack Van Impe who claim that there are up to thirty new
strains of the AIDS virus killing so many people that if left
unstopped, the last human being on earth would expire from
the disease in the year 2020. Van Impe is also typical of
those who exaggerate the extent of HIV infection; in 1996
he claimed that 120 million people on earth would have the
virus by the year 2000, but the World Health Organization
figure is about 35% of that number. Hal Lindsey predicted
that by the mid 1990’s , 75% of those living in the
sub-Sahara section of Africa would have the virus. Now,
AIDS rates are high, they are a matter of concern, but they
are often nowhere near the types of worst-case scenario
predictions you see being made by religious apocalyptics.
These sorts of apocalyptic claims mirror statements that
some religious leaders made earlier about the virus. In
Russell Chandler’s book “Doomsday,” for instance, Jerry
Falwell is quoted is saying that “AIDS is God’s judgment on
a society that does not live by his rules.” Jack Van Impe has
tried to connect AIDS with bestiality.
The fact is that there have been terrible epidemics all
throughout history, some of them much more devastating
than the HIV virus. And like talking about hurricanes, or
floods, or tornadoes, I think that you have to put these
claims in the larger context of the historical record. During
World War I more than 3 million people in Russia died from
typhus. In 1918 there was a terrible influenza epidemic that
killed at least 20 million.
The most devastating epidemic in history was clearly the
black plague; Isaac Asimov noted that it was “the most
lethal disaster of recorded history.” George Deaux in his
book titled The Black Death, said that the plague, “was an
unprecedented catastrophe for which the only parallels are
the Biblical story of the Flood and the 20th century
predictions of the effects of an all-out nuclear war.” And the
historical records confirms this, and it gives us plenty of
evidence of earlier plagues which devastated whole
populations. Let me just give you a few examples...
* From AD 165-180, a small pox epidemic killed up to 1/3
of the population within affected regions of the Roman
Empire.
* From 310-312, Nearly 99% of the population in the
northwestern provinces of China was wiped out by
pestilence.
* For 23 years, beginning in 542 AD, the Plague of
Justinian occurred throughout Asia, Europe and the Middle
East, and killed more than 100 million people. Now, you
may wonder why it isn’t considered more deadly than the
Bubonic plague, and that’s because this was actually a
series of different plague outbreaks.
* And just for the record, it is estimated that the conquest
of the “new world” by Cortez introduced diseases that
reduced the indigenous Mexican population from 30 million
to just 3 million. Other diseases like Malaria and yellow
fever reduced the populations of indigenous people in North,
central and South America from more than 100 million to
about 5 million.
* 1817-1896, five separate outbreaks of cholera take an
estimated 100 million lives worldwide.
There are similar statistics for famine. The great Irish
potato famine in 1846 took at least one and a half million
lives, half the population of England perished in the
extended famine of 1004-1016. In Russia in 1600, 500,000
die from famine and plague. In Egypt, from 1200-1202,
over 110,000 people died from starvation, cannibalism and
disease. Closer to our time, between 1959 and 1961, as
many as 30 million people died in what has been described
as the deadliest famine, this one in China. Drought led to
crop failure, starvation, disease, cannibalism, and word
about this really didn’t surface until 1981.
Famine, like hurricanes and other disasters, has always
been with us, but I think that unlike past periods of history,
today we probably can do more about plagues and famines
than at any other time.
In addition to pointing to the “signs and wonders” that
allegedly confirm the onset of the End Times, many
apocalyptics feel compelled to engage in a malady known as
“date-setting,” which involves providing a timetable for
great eschatological events, including Second Coming of
Jesus and Final Judgment. These dates are based on
decoding or finding some kind of mathematical code in the
Bible, although some date-setters have claimed that the
Great Pyramid at Gizah, or even Solomon’s Temple contains
this information. Most Christian apocalyptics have used the
Bible, but in the 19th century there was a movement known
as British-Israelism which taught that the Anglo Saxon race
had descended from the lost tribes of Israel. Many British
Israel theorists felt that the measurements of the Great
Pyramid encoded both the history and the future of
humanity. The Scottish engineer David Davidson used what
became known as “Pyramidism” to predict a number of
events including the Great Tribulation which said would last
from 1928 to 1936. What’s really fascinating is that many
of the predictions of the British-Israel Movement naturally
involved the fate of the British empire, and events like
Hitler’s foray into Egypt and the strike at the Suez canal was
seen as the Battle of Armageddon.
Isaac Newton |
Isaac Newton was also a date-setter. Newton is regarded
as a rationalist genius who discovered important laws of
motion and he was also a Puritan, but he dabbled in
occultism and sorcery. He shared the Puritan teaching that
the Roman Catholic Church was the beast of Revelation; at
one point most Puritans believed that the world would end
no later than 1700. Newton also believed that religious edifices of ancient civilizations
concealed an eschatological code; he spent considerable time studying King
Solomon and his temple, the latter constructed around 1,000 BC, and from he
derived a whole time line that had Christ returning in 1948. The “cleansing
of the Sanctuary” would take place sometime between 2370 and 2436, to be
followed by a 1,000 year millennium period of peace. Following this, Christ
was to preside over the Final Judgment, leading to the end of the Christian
era.
Bishop James Ussher |
The Bible has been the inspiration for most date-setters.
Perhaps the most notable was the Irish prelate and biblical
scholar Bishop James Ussher who lived from 1581-1656. He
is best known for a two volume work called “Annals of the
World” where he fixed the date of creation at 4004 BC in the
afternoon of October 23 (?), and that date was widely
accepted and included in margin notation of many of the
editions of the King James version of the Bible. Even before
Ussher, many Christians believed that the world was
relatively “young,” having been created sometime between
6000 and 4000 BC, and this is derived from 2 Peter 3:8
which states, “One day is with the Lord as a thousand
years.’ Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius and others
were convinced that since Adam was created on the sixth
day, Jesus would come into the world in its 6,000th year.
The Eastern Orthodox Church fixed the year of creation at
5,500 BC and stuck with that date until the 18th century.
The Protestant scholar and historian DeVignolles declared in
1738 that he had found nearly 200
computations in trying to divine the date of creation, and
that no two of them were alike.
William Miller |
William Miller is perhaps the best example of this tradition
of date-setting United States. Miller was a 19th century
farmer who actually flirted with deism and freethought in his
youth but later became a devout Baptist. He spent several
years in an intense examination of the Bible, especially the
Book of Daniel, and he constructed a timeline using Ussher’s
chronology, but he came to the conclusion that the world
would sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21,
1844. When this prophecy failed, he recalculated and
arrived at the date of October 22, 1844. Miller attracted as
many as 500,000 followers in the United States which is a
fair number for that time, there were Millerite temples and
newspapers. Some of the Millerites sold or gave away their
possessions in anticipation of the Rapture, they gathered on
mountaintops. But the real interesting sociological message
here is what happens when the prophecy fails. In Miller’s
case, this became known as “The Great Disappointment,”
and the failure of this predicted timeline or sequence of
events simply resulted in this movement re-forming. So, out
of the Millerite movement you can trace what became the
Seventh-day Adventist sect, from that you can also follow
the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and in an article which I did in the
American Atheist Magazine a couple of years ago, you can
actually trace the Branch Davidian Movement back to the
Millerites as well. The Jehovah’s Witnesses became
notorious date setters; for the last century they have been
assigning dates for the alleged return of Jesus, including
1874, 1914; I think that last prediction was for around
1979. But there is this sense in apocalyptic belief that
sacred documents like the Bible, or ancient buildings, or the
prophecies of Nostradamus are a kind of “key” or “code” and
if you can interpret this correctly, you can predict these
great eschatological events.
Then there is the Biblical character known as the
Anti-Christ. You have probably heard his name, and you’ve
also likely heard claims that a particular person was or is the
Anti Christ. Just as apocalyptics have usually pointed to
prophecies to explain certain events in their own time, the
identity of the Anti Christ has often been linked to a
contemporaneous figure. I’ve counted literally dozens of
Anti Christs throughout history, the list if just endless and
like the malady of date-setting, the hunt for a suitable
candidate becomes a fervent pursuit with many
apocalyptics. At one time or another, Hitler, Stalin, Henry
Kissinger, many of the Popes (including the current one),
Mikhail Gorbachev, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill
Gates, Oliver Cromwell, all of these and many more have at
one time or another been identified with this label. Pat
Robertson announced in 1980 that the Anti Christ was alive
and well, and was -- then -- 27 years old. I believe that an
End Times writer named Constance Cumbey even accused
Pat Robertson of being the Anti Christ.
It’s worth noting that St. Martin of Tours who lived in the
fourth century claimed that the Anti Christ was alive in his
period of time. Writers made similar claims and predicted
the arrival or rise to power of the Anti Christ for a number of
different dates... just to give you a rough idea, 1184, 1186,
1385, 1516. So, this game of “pin the tail on the Anti
Christ” is really nothing new to our period in history.
The term Anti Christ appears only in the Epistles of St.
John who is probably NOT the John who wrote the Book of
Revelation. In addition, it was used especially by the early
Church to describe anyone who was considered an opponent
or antagonist of Christ. Many of the symbolists -- and
remember, these are people who consider Revelation and
other apocalyptic books to be metaphorical or symbolic
narratives -- suggest that Nero or Diocletian or some other
historical figure who was an active persecutor of the early
church, is likely the real Anti Christ. I suspect that
preterists and historicists would conclude this as well.
I want to close by briefly suggesting a few reasons for
why people engage in date setting, or feverishly seek to
identify the Anti Christ in their own period, or interpret the
events of their own time as confirmation of Biblical
prophecy. One reason, of course, is that in a sense, history
begins the day we are born. Events in our own time seem
to overwhelm events that we did not experience because of
time or geography.
Millennialist movements are often linked to periods in
history where there are significant social stresses and
dislocations. The Millerite movement, for instance, arose at
a time in American history when the incursions of the
industrial revolution were being felt, when an
agrarian-based economy was giving way to a new industrial
order. The perception that the deep-rooted and reliable
rhythms of life are being disrupted by unseen or
little-understood forces often results in a hunt for
explanations --an attempt to make sense, somehow, of a
chaotic or changing world. Millennialism or this sense of
apocalyptic foreboding isn’t the only way these anxieties
express themselves, but it is certainly one that has
appeared many times throughout history. It’s likely that
even well after the year 2000 or 2001, it will appear in some
new form once again.
In a peculiar way, the story of the most dreadful and
chaotic set of events predicted in the Bible -- Armageddon
and Final Judgment -- actually can become a form of solace,
an anchor for certain people whose lives otherwise lack
purpose, meaning and direction. The point is that people
join apocalyptic movements because they provide
something! You can feel empowered because you can claim
to have a select knowledge, you’re one of the enlightened or
blessed few who will survive or be raptured, you’re going to
be an important player in this great eschatological drama.
And when you enter this apocalyptic mindset, when you are
on this mental trajectory, all of the other problems of
everyday life suddenly become manageable or insignificant.
There’s an excellent book on this which I recommend, it’s
titled “Apocalypse: On the psychology of fundamentalism in
America” by Charles Strozier, who is a psychotherapist and
professor at John Jay College. He studied apocalyptic sects
in New York City, and one of the things he found is that
many of these people who embrace a fundamentalist
interpretation of the Bible have actually arrived at a kind of
“blissed out” level where they feel they have solved many
problems in their life.
But the real lesson here that I hope I’ve conveyed to you
today, is that when you look closely and critically at these
claims about natural disasters, or the Anti-Christ or other
elements in the apocalyptic narrative, they can really fit any
period of time in history. They are malleable, plastic, they
can be hammered to match the circumstances, events and
people of any era. That is one reason why millennialist
movements have thrived in the past, and why long after
we’re gone, they are sure to thrive in the distant future.
Thank you.
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The Apocalypse is a very broad topic, so what I want to do
today is discuss the empirical claims that are made in
connection with prophecy. These includes claims or
narratives about the “Four horsemen of the apocalypse,” the
rise of a figure known as the Anti-Christ, and the
construction of a timetable which supposedly informs us
about when the Apocalypse is set to occur. Increasingly, we
hear claims that this terrible figure, the Anti-Christ is alive
and working his evil on earth, we’re informed that there are
certain events which allow us to construct a timetable on
when other events are supposed to take place. For
instance, one of the common themes coming from
evangelists like Pat Robertson is that the establishment of
the State of Israel in 1949 is a significant milepost in human
history because that is supposedly one of the major events
that has to take place before the return of Jesus Christ. You
hear other claims, too, and these have to do with the four
horsemen. They are characters found in chapter 6 of
Revelation -- there is a red horse signifying war, a white
horse said to symbolize civil discord, a black horse
represents hunger and famine, and of course death rides a
pale horse. Now, these symbols are combined with other
narratives found elsewhere in apocalyptic texts about floods
and pestilence and other natural disasters. Revelation also
echoes a lot of themes from earlier writings, particularly
about the Jewish exodus from Egypt, or the captivity in
Babylon and the persecution of the Hebrews.