It seems like “apocalypse” is a
subject of endless fascination for us humans: the is Greek in origin, and it
means “revelation.” Our biblical book of
Revelation, which of course was written in Greek, was originally referred to as
“The Apocalypse of John,” because (a) it
is of the literary genre of apocalypse and (b) it was written by somebody named
John, imprisoned we think on the Greek island of Patmos, which is actually
closer to modern-day Turkey than to mainland Greece. Apocalyptic literature,
apocalypse as a genre, was very popular in the few centuries surrounding the
birth of Christ, and the Bible contains some fine examples of it, most notably
Revelation, but also a few chapters in the Book of Daniel and a chapter
each—give or take a few verses—in Matthew, Mark and Luke, of which this
morning’s lectionary reading is a part.
By classic definition, apocalyptic
literature is written in extremis;
that is, it’s written as a reaction to extreme conditions, or in anticipation
of those conditions. That is certainly
true of Revelation: it was written, we think, as a reaction to all that went on
in the second half of the first century after Christ, which included most
notably the invasion of Jerusalem by the Romans and the destruction of the
Temple, including its desecration, to use apocalyptic language, by the placing
of the Emperor front and center instead of the Lord God almighty. For Jews, the destruction of the Temple—it happened in 70
AD—was an event that was cataclysmic, far more so than would be the burning of
a church for us. The Temple was the center of religion for them,
and equally important, the center of their culture and civilization. God was literally thought to reside there; if
the Temple wasn’t in Jerusalem, then neither was God.
Of course, apocalyptic literature is written
today, isn’t it? Pam
and Mike and I went to see the film Zombieland
when it first came out because,
well, we like a good zombie flick, and it is set in the time after the zombie
apocalypse, which will occur—behold!—because of our general environmental
meddling and bad hygiene, which allows some kind of bacteria to get out of hand
and turn a significant portion of the populace into, you know, zombies. In at least a slightly higher literary vein, Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road is set in the times after some
unspecified conflagration, and follows the travels of a father and son across
the blasted landscape. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which I can
assure you that Zombieland did not,
even though it’s a lot more fun, and shows how apocalypse has come up in the
estimation of human culture since the first century AD.
It also shows how the definition has
shifted: it originally meant “revelation,” as in the revelation of a final
cataclysmic battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, with
the forces of light inevitably winning in the end, that will nevertheless end
civilization as we know it. Thus the
naming of the literary genre. Now, in
our popular usage, it refers to the ultimate battle itself, or the ultimate
conflagration, that ends our culture and technology and et cetera.
There’s another species of modern
writing about things apocalyptic that most of us are familiar with; though it’s
not apocalypse in a classic literary sense, it nevertheless trades on and
profits from our fascination with all things apocalyptic every bit as much as Zombieland and The Road. The most
well-known example at present is the Left
Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, which has 13 volumes in the
original series and 3 or 4, now, in the prequel series, Before They Were
Left Behind. But the apocalyptic craze of the latter half of the 20th
century all started with a guy named Hal Lindsey, who wrote a certain book that
started the entire end-of-century popular Christian fascination with the end
times.
Lindsey was educated theologically at
Dallas Theological Seminary, after batting around as a tugboat captain, and
went to work for what was then called Campus Crusade for Christ and is now
simply Campus Crusade. In 1970, he
co-authored The Late Great Planet Earth with
a ghost-writer who in later editions would receive author credit. It was published by Zondervan Press, a
Christian house associated with the Southern Baptists, and though a great many
similar books had come before, the book’s breezy style and clear exposition of
very complex ideas ensured it was a major hit amongst Christians. Then, in 1973, it was picked up by Bantam,
the first such book to be published by a secular publisher, and sales went
through the roof. When it was all said
and done, The Late, Great Planet Earth
had become the number one nonfiction
bestseller of the 1970s, with over 9 million copies sold. Its successor, The 1980s: Countdown to
Armageddon spent 20 weeks on the
New York Times bestseller list, to the general consternation, no doubt, of the
New York Times.
The Late, Great Planet Earth and its sequel attempt to come up with a coherent set of
predictions about the end times from the complex, highly symbolic, and often
contradictory apocalyptic literature in Daniel, Revelation and the
gospels. Using a literal interpretive
lens, they assign players on the contemporary world stage—both nations and
individuals—to roles within the book of Revelation. For example, the Soviet
Union was the bear, and guess who was the eagle? Guess who were the good guys? And although Lindsey wouldn’t let himself get
pinned down to exact dates, his reading of the apocalyptic passages in scripture
convinced him that the end was near, and that it would probably happen sometime
during the 1980s. And I don’t know if
you noticed, but that didn’t happen, and so he set about revising his
prophecies, sharpening them up to try to make them more accurate and—just
incidentally, of course—sell more books.
What makes people go ga-ga over
apocalypse? I myself, as an
impressionable youth, spent many an hour discussing Lindsey’s book, and I even
went with a college group to hear him speak.
Why do we spend millions of dollars on the enterprise, along with
expending a large chunk of our lives reading about and talking and fulminating
about the end times? I think part of it
is a simple, innocent desire to know the future, to know that despite what it
looks like in the present—and nobody would doubt the prevalence of wars and
rumors of war in the last part of the last century—things will come out in the
end, that good will win over the forces that beset us, that God will win in the
end.
But there’s a darker side as well,
and it’s shown in Lindsey’s activities since it became apparent that he was,
uh, a little off in his predictions.
At present, he holds forth on Trinity Broadcast Network, at his own
expense, still prophesying, pointing out signs he thinks might be significant,
such as whether Israel signs some particular treaty or not, and railing against
the forces of the anti-christ. Forces
such as liberals, and Barack Obama, for example. Now you may or may not agree with them
politically, but most of us would hardly call align them with the anti-Christ .
. . but Lindsey does, and the dark side of apocalyptic literature, and our
tendency to pore over it, is that there always is a dark side, and it tends to consist of whomever we don’t like. The apocalypse is often an excuse to demonize
our enemies.
The Left Behind series shows this clearly: in the latter books, where the end-war—which
some call Armageddon—is fairly under way, the books depict Christ melting the
faces off of unbelievers, of slaughtering them on a great white steed, millions
of them. When questioned by interviewers
how they could reconcile this with a God who the Bible says is love, and with God’s Son who is called
the Prince of Peace, they shrug their shoulders and say: “Hey, I didn’t write
it, it’s in the Bible.”
Perhaps this is why the Bible itself
takes something of a dim view of expending a lot of time and effort trying to
figure out when it will all end. Paul
tells the people of the church at Thessalonica, in his first letter to them,
that regarding the end times—what he calls the “times and seasons”—they don’t
need anything written to them, because they themselves “know very well that the
day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” And he uses the
Jewish-apocalyptic term “day of the Lord,” from which our concept of the
Kingdom of God evolved.
Paul isn’t very keen on worrying too
much about when the second coming is going to be; as he says, it’ll catch us
unawares, it’ll come like a thief in the night . . . he just tells his
congregation members to keep awake, by which he means “keep ready.” You never know when it’s going to happen, you
never know when it’s going to come.
In the so-called “little apocalypse”
part of which we read today, Jesus says much the same thing. First he predicts the destruction of
Jerusalem—and he was right on the money about that—and the “desolating
sacrilege”—i.e., the emperor, who sets himself as equal to God—which will come
and occupy the temple, and then he says “Of course, you’ll see the signs like
when the fig tree gives off its tender shoots you know that Summer is
near. And after those days”—after the
destruction of Jerusalem, but note that he doesn’t say how long
after—“after those days, people will see the coming of the Son of Man.” Which, of course, is he himself. But, he warns, “about that day or hour no one
knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only God.”
So it’s not surprising that Hal
Lindsey doesn’t know, or Tim LaHaye, not even the Son knows, Jesus says, not
even he knows, only God. Sorry Charlie, but that’s the way it is. And why should we waste precious time and
money and talent pursuing something that we aren’t meant to know in the first
place? Why should Christians spend
millions of dollars on books purporting to tell us something we aren’t going to
know in the first place? Why should we
spend millions of hours running after something, millions of dollars and talent
that we could spend doing what is important, like, oh, I don’t know, spreading
the Gospel, feeding the hungry, and healing the sick?
But there’s one other thing I’d like
to point out before we leave the subject . . . and that’s the whole thing about
God being in the wholesale slaughter business.
Jesus talks about what the end-timers call the “tribulation,” at least a
bit, and while some—including me—interpret that as mostly about the Roman
invasion and destruction of Jerusalem, note that whatever it will be, God will
not be responsible. The God of love,
the God who is equated with love, is not responsible. “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom
against kingdom,” he says. “They will
hand you over to councils, you will be beaten,” but not once does he say that
it is God who will do it. Go on, read
all of Chapter 13 after we’re done.
Unlike Jenkins and LaHaye and
Lindsey, Jesus does not blame God for our propensity toward war and
destruction, for our inclinations to kill those we disagree with, of
slaughtering those who stand in the way of getting our way. Now, as in the past, it’s convenient to blame
God, to project our own deadly fantasies upon the God who is the exact opposite
of death. God is a God of forgiveness, a
God of peace, and God’s son the Prince of Peace. Though I don’t know how, and certainly don’t
know when, of that I am assured: In our
God there is no revenge, no slaughter, no violent retribution. Our God is Life, and we are the children of
Life. Amen.
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