The Failure of Angry God Theology: Part 6 – End Times Errors In Church History

In my last post I surveyed some Biblical examples of failed apocalyptic predictions of imminent judgment in the end times. In today’s post, I turn to some further examples from throughout church history. In my next post I will look at a few examples in other religions.

Montanist Millenarians

Many believers in Christianity’s first few centuries held imminent apocalyptic beliefs. One well known group was the Montanists.

Montanus and two charismatic female prophets, Maximilla and Prisca, claimed to receive new revelation from God (“New Prophesy”). They claimed that a new age of the Spirit was dawning and that the New Jerusalem would soon descend near the town of Pepuza (Kirsch, 2006, pp. 104-105). This imminent end called for strict ascetic living and no compromise under Roman persecution.

According to Maximilla, “after me there will be no prophesy, but the End” (Kirsch, 2006, p. 104). Montanism impressed no less a theologian than Tertullian, who wrote of reports from Roman soldiers stationed in Palestine who claimed to “see the spires and towers of a  city hovering above the horizon at dawn – surely an early sighting of the celestial Jerusalem!” (Kirsch, 2006, p. 105).

Of course, none of this came about. Montanism was eventually condemned as heretical and mostly died out by the 6th century CE.

Apocalypticism and the Crusades

While Christianity has always sparked imminent apocalyptic movements, from Augustine till well into the middle ages much of this was subdued. The anticipated final end had not materialized. Christianity had gone from persecuted sect to the official religion of the empire. Finally, an allegorical and amillenial approach to prophesy came to predominate, with the millennial kingdom being seen as corresponding to the church age (Kyle, 1998, pp. 37-39).

But there were notable exceptions. Imminent apocalyptic expectations played into the violence of the Crusades. Timothy Weber explains:

Many believed that the rise and spread of Islam, the Viking and Magyar invasions, and the Muslim capture of Jerusalem meant that the end was near…In a version of his 1095 sermon that led to the First Crusade, Pope Urban II stated that an expedition to free Jerusalem would help the faith “flourish again in these last times, so that when Antichrist begins his reign there – as he shortly must – he will find enough Christians to fight.” Peasants by the thousands joined the People’s Crusade, hoping to be in the holy land when Jesus established his kingdom. They also believed it was their duty to kill Jews along the way. Their justification: the Antichrist will come from the tribe of Dan, and Jews will be among his most devoted followers (Weber in Walls, 2008, p. 371).

Jonathan Kirsch notes the apocalyptic fervor that accompanied the Crusades, including vivid religious experiences:

“Many portents appeared in the sky as well as on the earth, and excited not a few who were previously indifferent to the Crusades,” writes Ekkehard of Aura in Jerusalem Journey, an account from the eleventh century. “Some showed the sign of the cross stamped by divine influence on their foreheads or clothes or on some parts of their body, and by that mark they believed themselves to be ordained for the army of God” (Kirsch, 2006, pp. 163-164).

English Puritan Apocalypticism 

The Reformation would lead to another upswell in imminent apocalyptic expectations. Perhaps the most infamous incident is the disastrous theocracy that was attempted at Munster. However, I will use a few examples from the English and American Puritans.

Apocalyptic expectations exploded in England in the 16th and 17th centuries, peaking in the late 1640s and 1650s (Kyle, 1998, pp. 64-66). Many social and religious factors played into this phenomenon. Richard Kyle explains the outlook:

The Reformation paved the way for Christ’s return by exposing the papal Antichrist. The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 convinced many that England was God’s instrument – the elect nation. The advance of the Turks into Europe horrified many English, persuading them that the hordes of Gog and Magog were at their doorsteps…most contemporary English people saw the Thirty Years War as a religious conflict (Kyle, 1998, p. 66),

After England’s break with Roman Catholicism under King Henry VIII, fierce conflict ensued over what form the Church of England should take. The Puritans saw the Church of England as still too Catholic and they associated both it and the Papacy with the Antichrist. The persecution of the Puritans and their defiant opposition would eventually lead to the English Civil War.

In that war, both the Puritans and their opponents saw each other as in league with the Antichrist (Kirsch, 1998, p. 175). “The Puritans understood their quarrel with the king in prophetic terms: they were God’s army fighting against the army of the papal Antichrist and his ally, the English king” (Weber in Walls, 2008, p. 374) .

After the Puritan army under Oliver Cromwell defeated the royalists and captured and executed King Charles I, there was intense debate over what kind of government was needed until Jesus’ second coming, widely expected by 1736 (Weber in Walls, 2008, p. 375).

One group that almost gained control were the Fifth Monarchists. They took their name from Daniel 7, which described the world’s four great empires. Supposedly, the fall of the fourth empire’s final king would inaugurate the government of God and his saints (Weber in Walls, 2008, p. 375). Kyle surveys some of their basic beliefs:

The reign of God on earth would of course begin in England…The Antichrist was to be destroyed, England purified, and then the kingdom of Christ would spread throughout the world. The English armies led by Oliver Cromwell would sweep through Europe and defeat the pope. The Jews meanwhile would return to the Holy Land and defeat the Turks. These events would come to pass between 1655 and 1657 (Kyle, 1998, p. 67).

Cromwell ended up rejecting the Fifth Monarchists’ demands as too extreme. They revolted and were defeated. Kirsch narrates how, as soldiers broke into one of their rallies, they cried “Lord, appear, now or never.” “Needless to say, the Lord was once again a no-show” (Kirsch, 2006, p. 176).

Eventually Cromwell himself died and the throne returned again to Charles II, the beheaded king’s son.

The year 1666 and the connection between 1000 years (the millennium) and 666 (the number of the beast) led many to believe that 1666 would be the time of the end. “The Quaker George Fox wrote that in 1666 nearly every thunderstorm aroused end-time anxiety” (Kyle, 1998, pp. 67-68).

New England Puritan Apocalypticism

Imminent apocalyptic beliefs thoroughly colored the American Puritans and has colored much of American religion since then. As Kyle notes, “Americans have tended to see themselves as the chosen nation and their enemies as demonic” (Kyle, 1998, p. 78).

I note in passing that eschatological beliefs played a significant role in colonialism more generally. For example, Columbus wrote an apocalyptic Book of Prophesies and was partly motivated in his colonial endeavors by the desire to finance the reconquest of Jerusalem from the Muslims and convert the heathen in the East to help bring in the final end (Kyle, 1998, p. 57).

The Puritans saw America as a New Jerusalem, a City upon a Hill, and themselves as a kind of new Israel. For example, John Cotton preached that New England was “the new promised land reserved by God for his elect people as the actual site for a new heaven and a new earth” (quoted in Kirsch, 2006, p. 173).

These convictions played into the way they saw and treated Native Americans. For example, Increase Mather suggested that the red horse of the Apocalypse foretold the bloodshed between the colonialists and Native Americans in King Philip’s War. His son Cotton Mather regarded Native American opponents as in league with the Antichrist (Kyle, 1998, pp. 78-79). Not unrelatedly, some Puritans justified genocidal murder of Native Americans by appeal to Old Testament passages commanding the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites (Boyd, 2017, pp. 26- 27).

Imminent apocalyptic expectations also played into the hysteria of the Salem Witch trials. Speaking of Cotton Mather, the above mentioned Puritan minister, who also played an integral role in the trials, historian Damian Thompson explains: “Fear of witches is above all evidence of End-time anxiety, since it was believed that the Last Days would see a terrible loosing of the powers of darkness” (quoted in Kirsch, 2006, p. 178). Mather also dabbled in date-setting, predicting that the end would arrive first in 1697 and then 1716 (Kyle, 1998, p. 79). Needless to say, this did not happen.

The Millerite “Great Disappointment”

Moving to another example, one of the most famous failed apocalyptic predictions in American history was the Millerite “Great Disappointment” of 1844. American Baptist layman William Miller came to believe that the 2,300 days predicted in Daniel 8:14 actually corresponded to 2,300 years and that the sanctuary cleansing the text predicted referred to Jesus’ second coming. Through an elaborate analysis, Miller’s calculations indicated to him that Jesus would return in 1843 (Kyle, 1998, p. 89).

The cautious Miller at first continued his studies and kept his ideas to himself. But he and others later started to share them widely in huge evangelistic tours that converted many. According to Kyle, at its high point, there may have been anywhere between thirty to one hundred thousand Millerites (Kyle, 1998, p. 89).

When Christ did not return in Miller’s 1843 timetable, he recalculated and came up with even more specifics dates: first March 21, 1844 and then October 6, 1844. Kyle describes what subsequently happened:

From about mid-August to October the Millerites engaged in a frenzy of activity. They flooded the country with their periodicals, books, and pamphlets. Many withdrew from their churches in anticipation of the second advent. They were instructed to get their affairs in order. Many did – selling their property, closing their stores, resigning their jobs, and abandoning their animals and crops…But the Great Disappointment was the last straw. When the Lord dis not return as expected, massive confusion and disillusionment set in…The Millerite movement fragmented and went in several directions (Kyle, 1998, pp. 90-91).

Dispensational Premillennial Predictions

As my last example from church history, I will look at still enormously influential dispensational premillennial teachings on the end times. I will spend a little more time on this view because it exercises enormous influence over American Christianity and politics. I will also highlight other problems with it in a later post.

Dispensationalism is a conservative Evangelical view that arose in the mid-19th century. It claims that God relates to people throughout history in different ways depending on which “dispensation” they live in. Classic Dispensationalism teaches that God has two eternally district peoples: Israel and the church.

Dispensational premillennialism teaches that God will restore the Jewish people to the land of Israel and that there will be a “rapture” of believers before and distinct from Jesus’ “second coming.” Dispensationalists believe that earth has a predetermined pessimistic future, with a single Antichrist figure who will gain world power, a seven year tribulation period, and a variety of severe supernatural judgments that will occur before Jesus’ second coming, the battle of Armageddon, the enactment of a one thousand year millennial kingdom, and after that a final resurrection and judgment.

There are a number of problems with dispensationalism. Most of them fall outside the scope of this series, but I note in passing that their beliefs about ethnic Jews being uniquely and eternally favored by God face serious evidential, moral, and theological problems. Such views are contradicted by the way the New Testament interprets the Old Testament and understands God’s one people. Their framework for interpreting the Bible is only selectively literal and involves implausible exegetical leaps. Finally, even if Jewish people were eternally chosen by God, they would be held to certain conditions under the Mosaic covenant, such as treating other inhabitants of the land with justice, which the modern state of Israel is violating.

In a future post I will note a number of serious moral and pragmatic problems that flow out of dispensationalism’s view of Israel and its fatalistic view of the end times. However, in today’s post I use it as an example of failed imminent apocalyptic expectations.

As Kyle observes, part of the genius of dispensationalism is that,

It does not lock itself into a specific schedule for the second advent. On one hand, it avoids setting exact dates for Christ’s return (though some dispensationalists have fallen into this trap). On the other, it maintains an intense expectancy for the secret rapture. Christ could return at any time. Yet he may delay his return for years. While the historic premillennialists were wedded to exact millennial arithmetic, the dispensationalists lived with “maybes,” (Kyle, 1998, p. 103).

With Kyle’s characterization in mind, I will obviously not be able to show that dispensationalism is definitively falsified by failed expectations. My more modest goal here is three-fold. I want to:

1) Show how a common dispensational interpretation of modern Israel as the fig tree in Matthew 24:32-34, supposedly signaling that Jesus will come again within a generation, is becoming ever more implausible. 2) Give some examples of prominent dispensationalists who have fallen into the date-setting trap and been shown to be wrong. And 3) point out how often dispensationalists have had to scramble their ideas about the end times cast.

First of all, we begin with a common dispensational interpretation of Matthew 24:32-34. This passage reads as follows:

“Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”

In its original context, this passage probably referred to the generation of Jesus’ contemporaries (as I argued in a previous post). However, to get out of the implication that Jesus was wrong, some dispensationalists have argued that “this generation” actually refers to a future generation that will go through the events of the end.

The turbulent changes of the twentieth century and especially the emergence of the modern state of Israel played into dispensationalists anxieties and enthusiasm. They saw the re-emergence of Israel as a miraculous fulfillment of prophesy; though it is easily explicable as a normal historical event (see Bunton, 2013). This supposed fulfillment has played into the plausibility of dispensationalism to many (Kyle, 1998, p. 116).

According to Harold Lindsey and some other prominent dispensationalists, the fig tree that puts forth its first leaves (signally that the return of Christ is near) was the emergence of the modern nation of Israel.

Lindsey equates the fig tree with Israel: “When the Jewish people, after nearly 2000 years of exile…became a nation on May 14, 1948, the ‘fig tree’ put forth its first leaves.”…Lindsey contends that Jesus is here connecting his second coming with the rebirth of Israel. Noting that a biblical generation was about forty years, he goes on to say that “within forty years or so of 1948, all these things will take place” (Kyle, 1998, p. 119).

Later on, as it became clear that his prediction was not going to happen, Lindsey backtracked. He reminding his readers that he had qualified his earlier prediction and suggested that Matthew 24:34 might instead have the events of Israel’s 1967 Six Day War in mind. He also redefined a biblical generation as “somewhere between 40 and 100 years” (Kyle, 1998, p. 119).

But this too is becomes more-and-more implausible. The outer limit to these new predictions will be 2067. When Jesus does not return by then, I fully expect dispensationalists to change their narrative once again. Perhaps those who still hold to this interpretation of Matthew 24: 32-34 will abandon it for another. Perhaps they will say that the fig tree showing its leaves refers to some other event they expect related to Israel: the rebuilding of the temple, the expansion of Israel to its supposed “full biblical boundaries.” I expect for dispensationalists to push for these “fulfillments,” in spite of the violence and injustice they would necessitate.

Secondly, let me give some other examples of prominent dispensationalists who have made failed predictions of immanent apocalyptic judgment.

According to the Bible teacher and prophesy expert Leonard Sale-Harrison, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was the predicted Antichrist and the end would come in 1940 or 1941 (Kyle, 1998, p. 111).

In his 1950 crusade, Billy Graham told his audience: “We may have another year, maybe two years to work for Jesus, and [then] ladies and gentlemen, I believe it is all going to be over” (Kirsch, 2006, pp. 218-219).

Chuck Smith, the long-time pastor of Calvary Chapel in Southern California, declared in one of his books (Future Survival) that, “the Lord is coming for his church before the end of 1981,” a mistake Smith later repented of (Kyle, 1998, p. 120).

Influential televangelist and end times expert, Jack Van Impe, insisted in a 1975 newsletter that the “Soviet flag would fly over Independence Hall in Philadelphia by 1976” (Kyle, 1998, p. 120). One of his videos from 1992 indicated that the rapture, World War III, and Armageddon would occur in about eight years (Kyle, 1998, p. 120).

I remember chuckling to myself at a book I saw at my Aunt Connie’s called 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988, by Edgar Whisenant. According to Kyle the book sold 2 million copies (Kyle, 121). Presumably Whisenant’s rationales stemmed (like Lindsey’s)from his interpretation of current events and  especially the perceived significance of the modern state of Israel.

In his book Armageddon: Appointment with Destiny, Grand R. Jeffries indicated that the end is near and will probably occur around the year 2000 (Kyle, 1998, p. 120).

Of course, many dispensationalists discourage such specific and sensationalist date-setting. But many of the more popular proponents gravitate toward this, or claims very close to it.

Beyond the date setting problem, popular dispensationalist are regularly having to revise their understandings of which individuals, countries, and events will likely be the fulfillers of God’s end times plan.

For example, note how the common interpretation of Gog and Magog as referring the Soviet Union had to be scrapped after its collapse in the early 1990s. Now it is common for dispensationalists to see Gog and Magog as referring to an Islamic confederacy (Kirsch, 2006, p. 225).

G. K. Beale observes,

Interpreters who hold this view [a futurist approach to Revelation] are constantly changing their interpretation of historical events to make what is happening currently fit into the pattern. In the twentieth century alone, for instance, numerous individuals, from Hitler to Saddam Hussein, with various popes and other politicians (as has been the case from the medieval period up to the present), have been identified as the antichrist, and then quietly discarded when they pass from the scene. The same is true with specific historical events or institutions (the Second World War, the European Common Market, the Gulf War, Y2K, Saddam Hussein’s supposed rebuilding of Babylon). In short, the Bible is interpreted by modern events first, instead of by itself (Beale, 2015, p. 8).

In my next post I will look at some examples of failed apocalyptic predictions of imminent judgment in other religions.

 

References

Beale, G. K. and Campbell, D. H. (2015). Revelation: A shorter commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Boyd, G. A., (2017). Crucifixion of the warrior god: Interpreting the old testament’s violent portraits of god in light of the cross, vol. 1. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

Bunton, M. (2013). The palestinian-israeli conflict: A very short introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Kirsch, J. (2006). A history of the end of the world: How the most controversial book in the bible changed the course of western civilization. New York, NY: HarperSanFrancisco.

Kyle, R. (1998). The last days are here again: A history of the end times. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Weber, T. P. “Millennialism” in The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology. Ed. Jerry L. Walls. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008. pp. 365-383. Print.

The Failure of Angry God Theology: Part 7 – Non-Christian End Times Errors

In my last few posts I gave some examples of  failed apocalyptic predictions of imminent  judgment from the Christian tradition. In today’s post I will survey a few non-Christian examples of such mistaken apocalyptic expectations.

Traditional Judaism teaches that at the end of days God will regather the exiled Jewish diaspora to the land of Israel. God will raise up a Jewish Messiah who will defeat Israel’s enemies and usher in an era of peace and justice. There will be a resurrection of the dead, a final judgment, and reward in the world to come for the righteous and punishment for the unrighteous in Gehinnom.

Judaism has had a number of imminent apocalyptic movements within its history, sometimes connected with a messianic claimant and usually with the hope of reestablished national sovereignty in the land of Israel, with a return of exiled tribes.

This has sometimes combined with revolutionary (or colonial) violence and tragic miscalculations. Probably the most famous failed messianic claimants were Simon bar Kokhba and Sabbatai Sevi. Dale Allison narrates a lesser known episode from the 5th century CE. A Jewish man from the island of Crete took for himself the name of Moses and,

Perhaps prompted by belief that the Son of David would come in the eighty-fifth Jubilee (cf. b. ‘Abod. Zar. 9a-b), as well as by deteriorating conditions for Jews throughout the empire, Moses, over the course of a year of itinerant ministry, persuaded large numbers that he was the long-awaited Messiah, who would lead the faithful, via a dry sea, to the land of Israel. Those who believed in him abandoned their businesses and possessions. On the appointed day of redemption, he promised followers that they would, following their second Moses, see the miracle of the Red Sea duplicated. Some of the faithful, having ventured to a promontory overlooking the sea, flung themselves from the precipice, expecting the waves to part before them. The sea, indifferent as always, took no notice, with predictable and disastrous consequences (Allison, 2010, pp. 259-260).

Like Christianity and Judaism, Islam also believes in a future resurrection and final judgment, with the righteous rewarded in Paradise and the wicked punished in hell.

Before that time, Islamic sources seem to indicate that a number of signs will occur and things on earth will generally become more chaotic and corrupt (Yusuf, 2015, pp. 1829-31). An antichrist-like deceiver will arise and a coming Mahdi (“guided one”) with the returned prophet Jesus will battle against him – eventually establishing a time of peace, justice, and a return to Islamic values. At some time after this it appears there will be another falling away into evil before world-wide destruction, the resurrection of the dead, and final judgment (Yusuf, 2015, pp. 1830-1831; Islamic eschatology).

A number of Muslims have claimed to be the coming Mahdi, perhaps most famously, Muhammad Ahmad of the Mahdist revolt in Sudan. Of course, none of them have brought about lasting victory or widespread peace and justice.

One modern example of a failed Muslim apocalyptic movement is the terrorist group known as ISIL, IS or ISIS. Joseph Keating explains ISIS’ apocalyptic worldview and how it is failing to be fulfilled:

In ISIS’s apocalyptic propaganda, the otherwise unremarkable Syrian town of Dabiq was to be the site of a showdown with “Rome,” the Christian invaders of the Middle East, which was to immediately precede the conquest of Constantinople, and then the Day of Judgment. ISIS named its English-language magazine after the city, which it captured in the summer of 2014, and heavily fortified the town, despite it having little strategic value. But in October 2016, ISIS lost Dabiq after a short battle with Turkish-backed rebels. The Day of Judgment hasn’t happened yet…

ISIS has now lost not just Dabiq and Mosul—the Iraqi city where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed himself caliph in 2014—but most of the territory that was once under its control. The crumbling of the caliphate presents a problem for the organization’s propagandists. But ISIS is hardly the first movement to have to adapt when a doomsday prophecy turned out wrong. And past examples suggest that it isn’t even necessarily the end of the world for ISIS.

Let me survey a few examples from indigenous religious movements. One example comes from the South African Xhosa people. John Illife explains how Christian eschatological ideas mixed together with a traditional Xhosa cosmology in a volatile way.

Its power was displayed in 1857, at a time of cattle disease and white expansion, when prophets persuaded many Xhosa to kill their cattle and abandon cultivation because their ancestors were to be reborn with finer cattle and drive the Europeans back into the sea. Perhaps one-third of Xhosa died and the Cape Government seized the opportunity to destroy their society, alienating more than half of their land and admitting at least 22,150 of them to work in the colony (cited in Gould, 1997, p. 54).

One last example of failed apocalyptic expectations is the Native American Ghost Dance movement. In the late 18th century an apocalyptic movement began to arise among many Native American tribes that combined Ghost Dance lore with Christian apocalyptic beliefs. After the prophet Wovoka experienced what he believed was a vision from God, he proclaimed that,

if the Indians separated themselves from the world, and dutifully performed the Ghost Dance at the appointed intervals, and for the specified time, a millennial renewal would occur; the ghosts of ancestors would return to dwell with the living; the land would be restored to its original cover, richness, and fertility; the white man would disappear; and the buffalo would return (Gould, 1997, p. 56).

Although the Ghost Dance movement was separatist and pacifist, the incomprehension and racism of most whites caused them to be alarmed by it. This led to military action that culminated in the murder of Chief Sitting Bull and the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890 (Gould, 1997, pp. 56-61). Despite supposedly heavenly revelations that special medicine shirts were invulnerable to bullets, many Native American men, women, and children were killed and the movement mostly died out afterward.

In these last three post I have shown that ideas about imminent apocalyptic judgment have been ubiquitous in a variety of religious movements and these predictions have consistently ended up being wrong. In my next post I will survey a number of harmful practical effects that (often) flow out of imminent apocalyptic beliefs.

 

References

Allison, D. C. (2010). Constructing Jesus: Memory, imagination, and history. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Gould, S. J. (1997). Questioning the millennium: A rationalist’s guide to a precisely arbitrary countdown. New York, NY: Harmony Books.

Yusuf, H. “Death, Dying, and The Afterlife in the Quran” In The study quran: A new translation and commentary. (Ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr). pp. 1819-1855. New York, NY: HarperOne.

The Failure of Angry God Theology: Part 4 – The Initial Implausibility of Targeted End Times Destruction

In my last post I critiqued the notion that unfortunate circumstances are normatively punishments from God. In today’s post we begin to consider apocalyptic notions of destructive judgment in the “end times” (prior to the eschaton, in a future post I will consider the matter of hell).

A number of world religions teach that this world will one day be destroyed. Of course, modern science predicts this as well. But from a purely natural perspective, this is seen as a brute inevitability. It is not (necessarily) seen as a positive act of punition.

In religions with a cyclical view of time, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, or Jainism, the universe’s destruction is seen as coinciding with the it being reborn again into a new set of  cycles of life, death, and reincarnation. In religions with a linear view of time, such as Judaism, Islam, or Christianity, the end of this current earthly age is seen as the time of final judgment and eternal reward or punishment.

Beyond teachings about a final judgment and possible punishment, many of these religions teach that prior to this, toward the end of history, earthly life will get worse-and-worse and God (or perhaps other spiritual forces) will inflict unusually devastating acts of judgment on humanity and the earth.

For example, many of these religions teach that immorality and violence will increase, as will earthquakes and other natural disasters. Some teach that supernatural acts of great destruction will be inflicted on the world by God or other spiritual forces.

In the Christian tradition, those such as  dispensational premillennialists who take a futurist and often literal approach to the book of Revelation place a particular emphasis on this pessimistic future and these kinds of violent events.

In these next few posts I plan on arguing that this view of God and violent end times judgment is undermined by a range of evidences.

It’s important for me to emphasize that I do believe in a form of God’s future eschatological judgment. Accordingly, at the end of this series I will take one post to survey my positive beliefs about future judgment. But in today’s post we start with the negative.

I will argue in this post that we should deem such judgments initially implausible. In my next few posts I will argue that we have positive evidence against many such views: namely, that their predictions of imminent judgment consistently fail to obtain. Finally, before moving on to a consideration of hell, I will argue that notions of destructive end times judgments also lead to harmful practical effects.

We turn now to the subject of today’s post. Why should we deem miraculous end times judgments initially implausible? Because, as I argued in my first post of this series, we don’t see such supernatural miracles of judgment today and most if not all past claims to supernatural miracles of judgment are undermined by evidence.

Evidence against past miracles of destruction in the Bible are particularly significant toward the plausibility of future miracles of destruction in the end times because many beliefs about end times judgment grew out of a reflection on Biblical narratives of supernatural judgment.

For example, Edward Fudge notes that,

As we move through the Old Testament, the descriptive language in these accounts gradually forms a lexicon of judgment and a vocabulary of destruction. When later biblical writers wish to describe some future judgment against sinners, they often go to this lexicon of judgment for an appropriate descriptive symbol. Although descriptions of historical judgments necessarily occur within the present age, both Old and New Testament books often borrow language from these historical judgments to describe God’s final punishment of the wicked in the age to come (Fudge, 2011, p. 59).

While Fudge is specifically considering the issue of hell, the same truth applies to supernatural judgments at the end of history but before the eschaton.

G. K. Beale, in his commentary on Revelation, notes that “John bases the plagues of chs. 8, 9, and 16 on the plagues of Exodus” (Beale, 2015, p. 13). He and other commentators observe how much of Revelation alludes to or directly references Old Testament impressions on God’s judgment in enunciating it’s own outline of coming events.

J. Richard Middleton argues that many of the later Old Testament and New Testament images of cosmic destruction at the eschatological coming of God draw from the Mount Sinai account of God’s coming and giving of the law.

To understand the Old Testament imagery of cosmic destruction, we need to turn to the central and paradigmatic theophany in the Old Testament. YHWH’s descent upon Mount Sinai in Exodus 19 in cloud, fire, thunder, and earthquake. The Sinai theophany draws on the terrifying experience of thunderstorms and also on classic storm images found in theophanies of ancient Near Eastern deities from Canaan and Mesopotamia. Perhaps more important for our purposes, the Sinai theophany becomes a model for many other Old Testament manifestations of the God of Israel, which tend to be depicted in poetic and prophetic visions (Middleton, 2014, p. 110).

The miracles of destructive judgment in the Old Testament not only provide much of the imagery of prophesied future judgment in the end times, the conviction that God so comported himself in times past plays into the plausibility for many that he would do so again in the future. Richard Kyle explains:

Another biblical teaching – that the world was destroyed by a flood – has encouraged apocalyptic thinking. Christians believe that God judged the first world by water because of its evil and wickedness. They are convinced that this world’s sin and violence will bring a second divine judgment…A crucial factor in convincing people that “the world would end catastrophically was their belief that a similar catastrophe had already occurred” (Kyle, 1998, p. 22).

All of this is important because, as I argued in my first post, we have excellent reasons for doubting most of these Old Testament events actually occurred. We have scientific and archeological evidence against a world-wide flood and against the Egyptian plagues in the Exodus account. Evidence against the Exodus account also calls into question the Sinai theophany narrative contained within it, as does critical analysis of Mosaic law, which shows it to be anything but 100 percent purely divine.

I note in passing that even if there was some kind of Sinai encounter with God and a revealing of law (perhaps accommodated to their ancient context), we can question if the Israelites were right in the threatening way they interpreted the glory of God. I think here of a point I made in my series on religious experience and God’s love:

People’s religious encounters with  the divine are at least partly structured and colored by their preconceived notions about it. In a violent culture [such as in the Old Testament] where earthly rulers were often tyrannical and where many saw God as the direct cause of both good and evil circumstances, it would be natural to be terrified at meeting such an awesome, overpowering, “kingly” Being…

It is interesting that when God or an angel appear to people in the Bible they tend to begin by saying “fear not.” Even today, even in experiences more sharply characterized by love, people often feel overwhelmed by the immensity of God.

I want to explain one final element of my case for the initial implausibility of end times miracles of destruction. In my first post in this series I referenced the principle of analogy. This is a principle of evaluating historical probability. The principle is two-sided. If a historical account contains descriptions of events that bear no analogy to our current experience today and which bears analogy to a different genre (such as mythology), it should be deemed initially improbable.

This principle does not say we can know for sure that such events did not happen. Nor does it say that other evidential considerations cannot override this initially improbability. It just says they are (initially) unlikely or improbable. Without recourse to a consistent application of such a principle, fantastical tales become just as plausible as sober ones. As Robert Price notes:

Again, we weren’t there and thus have do not know that natural law always operated as it does now…but there is no particular reason not to think so, and unless we do, we have no criterion at all. We will be at the mercy of old stories of people turning lead into gold, turning into werewolves, using magic to win battles. If in our experience it takes a whole army to defeat an army, we will judge improbable any ancient tale that has a single man defeating an army. What else can we do? (Price in Beilby and Eddy, 2009, p. 56).

While strictly speaking, the principle of analogy is a methodology for historical analysis, I think it rightly gives us a reason to deem future miracles of destruction initially implausible as well. This because, as we have seen, we do not experience such destructive miracles today and we have evidence against many such narratives of destructive miracles in the past.

All of this would undercut the probability of future miracles of destruction in the end times just on its own, by virtue of the principle of analogy. But the fact that teachings on future end times miracles of destruction directly draw on imagery from Biblical narratives that are positively undermined by evidence adds to their lack of credibility.

While this post has primarily considered supernatural miracles of judgment, my last post on unfortunate circumstances argues that such circumstances are rarely if ever judgments from God. To me, this undercuts the plausibility that God will positively initiate (rather than allow) greater natural disasters in the end times as a form of judgment. Indeed, as I will argue in a later post, this way of perceiving world events leads to superstitious misreadings of natural phenomena and fatalism about our relationship to others and our environment.

If there does end up being destructive judgments in an end times (whether natural or supernatural destructions), I think we should still recognize that wide-spread destructive punishments do not mean that every single individual is guilty or being targeted by God. Indeed, the consistent teaching of the New Testament is that believers will also go through tribulation and be refined by it.

Also, we should bear in mind that Biblical judgment is often meant to prompt repentance and lead to restoration. Often predicted judgments are provisional and can be altered if people repent (Jeremiah 18:7-8, Jonah 3:10-4:2, see also Richard Bauckham’s comments on Revelation 9:20-21 (Bauckham, 1993, p. 40-41)).

Finally, much Biblical judgment involves a turning over to the destructive results of one’s own choices. Many of the agents of destructive in Revelation appear to be demonic. Greg Boyd argues that the author of Revelation views many of the destructions as God allowing Satan and his demons greater freedom to devastate the earth as people harden in their rejection of him (Boyd, 2017, pp. 593-628).

I sometimes wonder if some end times destruction will be the result of God giving us over to the effects of our own destructive habits of harming the environment and proliferating weapons of mass destruction. But if that is the case, we can still do something to prevent this by proactively changing our policies and behavior. Indeed, the God who calls us to steward the earth and partner with him in restoring all things expects nothing less from us.

In my next post I will begin to survey some failed predictions of imminent apocalyptic judgment in the end times.

 

References

Bauckham, R. (1993). New testament theology: The theology of the book of revelation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Beale, G. K. and Campbell, D. H. (2015). Revelation: A shorter commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Boyd, G. A. (2017). Crucifixion of the warrior god:  Interpreting the old testament’s violent portraits of god in light of the cross, Vols. 1. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

Fudge, E. W. (2011). The fire that consumes: A biblical and historical study of the doctrine of final punishment, 3rd Ed. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books.

Kyle, R. (1998). The last days are here again: A history of the end times. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Middleton, J. R. (2014). A new heaven and a new earth: Reclaiming biblical eschatology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Price, R. M. (2009). “Jesus at the vanishing point.” In Beilby, J. K. & Eddy, P. R. (Eds.). The historical jesus: Five views. pp. 55-83. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.

The Failure of Angry God Theology: Part 5 – Biblical End Times Errors

In my last post I argued that apocalyptic notions of destructive judgment in the end times are initially improbable. There I also noted that I do believe in a form of God’s future eschatological judgment and indicated that at the end of this series I would write about these positive beliefs.

In today’s post I will begin to survey a number of  predictions of imminent apocalyptic judgment that failed to (fully) be fulfilled. This is an important part of my cumulative case against many such views. It will also illustrate for us a variety of dangers that often flow out of end times thinking that we should seek to avoid.

So far, prophesies about the final end have been repeatedly wrong, and often to great harm (see Kyle, 1998; Kirsch, 2006; Gould, 1997; and Weber in Walls, 2008).

Let me start with some examples from the Bible itself. In my next few posts I will survey other examples throughout church history and in other religions.

Daniel 11:3-12:4 appears to be an unbroken discussion of the actions of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (215-164 BCE)  and supposed subsequent happenings. The earlier part of chapter 11 is transparently about Antiochus Epiphanes and conflict between the kingdom of the North (the Seleucid Empire) and the kingdom of the South (the Ptolemaic Empire) (Sparks, 2008, pp. 116-118; Collins, 1994).

The problem is that the passage goes on to predict things that were never fulfilled. Specifically, the text predicts that Antiochus would die in Palestine (11:45) and that shortly thereafter the general resurrection and judgment would happen and God’s final kingdom would be established (11:40-12:4). We have three sources for Antiochus’ death and they all agree that he died in Persia, not Palestine (Sparks, 2008, p. 117). And obviously the final end did not occur in the 2cd century BCE.

Some conservative Christians believe that verse 36 marks a change of focus from Antiochus and the 2cd century to the time of the Antichrist and the eschatological end. Conservatives are virtually forced to make a break somewhere in 11:2-12:4. But so far as I can see, there is no contextual basis for this.

The text makes no clear break itself. If it is supposed to break, the description of Antiochus is left hanging unresolved. Verse 42 goes on to talk about more conflict with Egypt (the kingdom of the South); which, as John J. Collins notes, has been a constant theme in this whole section (Collins, 1994, p. 65), including parts that are unmistakably about Antiochus. There are abundant reasons for seeing the section as one whole and no reason to make an arbitrary break apart from the self-serving desire to save Daniel from being in error.

As another Biblical example, consider the New Testament teaching on imminent coming judgment and vindication. While I believe that Jesus and the early church were wrong about the timing and perhaps some of the details concerning coming end times judgment, I also believe there are core truths we can draw from their eschatological outlook (on which see my future post).

A strong case can be made that Jesus explicitly said that the final end would occur within the lifetime of his contemporaries (Mk 8:38-9:1 c.f. Matt. 16:24-28 and Lk. 9:23-27; Mk. 13:30 c.f. Matt. 24:34 and Lk. 21:32; Mk.14:62; Matt. 10:23; 23:34-36). Attempts to reinterpret or spiritualize this fail: a.) in context, “generation” in Mark 13:30 refers to that (current) generation and b.) much of what these texts describe could not be said to have happened in the first century (Allision, 2010, pp. 31-220; Stark, 2011, pp. 160-207; Loftus in Loftus, 2010, pp. 316-343; and Dunn, 2003, pp. 431-437).

Elsewhere Jesus is remembered as speaking more generally of the kingdom’s imminent coming (Mark. 1:5; Matt. 10:7; 24:42-44; 25:1-13 c.f. Lk. 12:35-40; Lk. 10:8-11; 18:7-8; 21:34-36; etc.). Later Christian writings very much seem to be reinterpreting the tradition in light of its failure (John 21:22-23; 2 Pet. 3:3-13; 1 Clem. 23:3-5; Gospel of Thomas; etc.) (Allison, 2010, pp. 125-134; Stark, 2011, pp. 204-207; and Loftus in Loftus, 2010, pp. 327-333).

Much of the rest of Jesus’ message is illuminated by seeing him in this paradigm (apocalyptic prophet) (Ehrman, 1999, pp. 141-214; Grant, 1977, pp. 18-29. and Allison, 1998). Jesus’ message and actions closely mirror other millenary groups who expected the end in their lifetime (see particularly Allison, 1998, pp. 78-94 for the global pattern).

Finally, part of the reason it seems likely that Jesus taught an imminent apocalyptic end is that this was the view of both his mentor John the Baptist (Matt. 3:2, 7, 10; etc.) and the early church (1 Thess. 1:10; 2:19; 3:13; 4:15-17; 5:23; 2 Thess. 1:6-10;  1 Cor. 2:6; 4:5; 7:29-31; 10:11; 11:26; 15:51-52; 16:22; Phil. 1:6, 10; 3:20; 4:5; Rom 8:18, 22-23; 13:11-12; 16:20; James 5:1-9; Cor.7:28-31; Heb. 1:2; 9:26; 10:25, 37; 1 Pet. 1:20; 4:7; 5:1; Jude 14-15, 18; 1 John 2:17-18; Rev. 1:1, 7; 2:16, 25; 3:10-11; 22:6- 7, 10, 12, 20). It is unlikely that Jesus held a completely different view, seeing as that would involve two discontinuities: Jesus rejecting John’s apocalypticism and then some of Jesus’ followers rejecting that rejection (Allison in Miller, 2001, p. 85. Allison, 2010,.pp. 48-55).

As to the early church’s imminent apocalyptic expectations, not all of the verses cited above are explicit about imminence. But most are. Perhaps most clearly, in 1 Corinthians 7:17-31 Paul counsels people, including slaves and virgins, to not go out of their way to change their circumstances or focus on worldly things because the present form of the world is in crisis and passing away. In 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 he indicates his belief that both he and other first century believers will be alive when Jesus returns.

Beyond clear passages such as these, the sheer ubiquity of more general immanency indicators is problematic (see Babinski). For various New Testament authors to assert that Jesus’ coming was going to happen “immediately” (Mk. 13:24) after events in their generation or that it was “right at the very gates” (Mk. 13:29), that “He who is coming will come, and will not delay” (Heb. 10:37), that “the coming of the Lord is at hand…Behold, the Judge is standing right at the door” (James 5:8-9), or that Jesus was “coming quickly” (Rev. 3:11; 22:6, 7, 10, 12, 20) etc. when in reality this would not happen for 2000 + more years is misleading at best. Robert Price aptly asks,

But what sort of a revelation is it that is couched in terms unintelligible to those whose sake it is vouchsafed? Given God’s infinite expanse of cosmic eons, what could ‘soon’ possibly mean if it bears no relation to our own use of the word? After all, if God is talking to human beings, he has to use human terms if he wants to be understood. And if he really meant, ‘I am coming thousands of years in the future,’ why didn’t he just say so? (Price, 2007, pp. 159-160).

Again, although I think there are general principles we can glean from the New Testament’s eschatological teachings, in my view its errors regarding end times judgment play into other reasons to reject a number of overly rigid and violent eschatological expectations contained within it and/or associated with it.

 

References

Allison, D. C. (2010). Constructing Jesus: Memory, imagination, and history. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Allison, D. C. (1998). Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian prophet. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

Allison, D. C. (2001). A Response. In The apocalyptic jesus: A debate. Ed. Miller, R. J. Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge Press.

Collins, J. J. (1994). Daniel: A commentary on the book of daniel (Hermeneia: A critical & historical commentary on the bible). Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

Dunn, J. D. G. (2003). Jesus remembered: Christianity in the making volume 1. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Ehrman, B. D. (1999). Jesus: Apocalyptic prophet of the new millennium. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Gould, S. J. (1997). Questioning the millennium: A rationalist’s guide to a precisely arbitrary countdown. New York, NY: Harmony Books.

Grant, M. (1977). Jesus: An historians review of the gospels. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Kirsch, J. (2006). A history of the end of the world: How the most controversial book in the bible changed the course of western civilization. New York, NY: HarperSanFrancisco.

Kyle, R. (1998). The last days are here again: A history of the end times. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.

Price, R. M. (2007). The paperback apocalypse: How the christian church was left behind. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Sparks, K. L. (2008). God’s word in human words: An evangelical appropriation of critical biblical scholarship. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Stark, T. (2011). The human faces of god: What scripture reveals when it gets god wrong (and why inerrancy tries to hide it). Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.

Weber, T. P. (2008). “Millennialism.” In The oxford handbook of eschatology. (Ed. Jerry L. Walls). pp. 365-383. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.