Tag: apocalyptic

07/6/18

Decoding the Apocalypse, Part 2

public domain; “The Great Day of His Wrath,” by John Martin (1851)

David Meade (not his real name) believes he has decoded “the Great Sign of the Woman” in Revelation 12—“the most important revelation of the century.” He claims his writings help Christians “understand how the book of Revelation plays out.” According to Meade, October of 2017 corresponded to the Jewish year 5778, which in turn initiated a twelve-month time period that represents the potential unfolding of the seals of the Book of Revelation (chapters 6-8). Along with the mistakes and miscalculations he made in tying his theories about Plant X or Nibiru to astronomy (See “Decoding the Apocalypse, Part 1”), he repeated the interpretive errors others have been making with Biblical prophecy for at least 200 years.

William Miller saw military action at the Battle of Plattsburgh during the War of 1812. One of the many shots fired by the British on the American defenders of the fort exploded two feet from him, wounding three of his men and killing another. Not only did the vastly outnumbered American forces overcome the British at Plattsburgh, Miller survived without a scratch. He considered this to be a miraculous event, and began a gradual rejection of his Deistic faith.

After his conversion to evangelical Christianity, his Deist friends challenged him to justify his newfound faith, so he began a careful study of the Bible. As a result of his studies, Miller became convinced that the date of the Second Coming or Advent of Christ was revealed in Biblical prophecy. Drawing heavily on Daniel 8:14, he believed its reference to the restoration of the sanctuary meant the Earth would be cleansed by fire (destroyed) at the Second Advent of Christ. He also concluded the 2,300 days until the restoration of the temple began with the decree of Artaxerxes I in 457 BC to rebuild Jerusalem. Using the day-age principle, where each of the 2,300 days mentioned in the prophetic verse represented a calendar year, he concluded the Advent of Christ would happen in 1843.

“I was thus brought … to the solemn conclusion, that in about twenty-five years from that time in 1818 all the affairs of our present state would be wound up.” By 1840, what had been an “obscure, regional movement,” became a national movement known as the Millerites, and later as Adventists. Despite two unfulfilled predictions for the Advent of Christ, Miller and his followers persisted in looking for the soon-coming of Christ. The Seventh Day Adventists denomination is an offshoot of the Millerites. See “William Miller (preacher)” and “William Miller” for more information on Miller and his followers. Failing to distinguish between what is known as prophetic and apocalyptic eschatology, Meade, Miller and a variety of others interested in the “end times” have made false claims in their interpretation of apocalyptic passages like Daniel 8:14 and chapter 12 of Revelation.

Before going any further, let’s define some of the important terms in this discussion. Prophecy is an oral, divine message mediated through an individual (or prophet). It can admonish—be either accusatory or exhortatory—or predict—foretell future events. Eschatology is a combination of Greek words meaning “the study of last things.” It includes the study of death, the intermediate state, the afterlife, judgment, the time of Christ’s second coming (or Advent), the millennium (Revelation 20), heaven and hell. So prophetic eschatology refers to a pronouncement about last things.

Apocalyptic is a genre of biblical literature that uses symbolic language to describe God’s actions and coming judgment described within eschatological passages. The term is derived from the Greek word apokalypsis, meaning revelation or unveiling. The Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible made the following distinction between prophetic and apocalyptic eschatology:

In prophetic eschatology, the dominant form in the OT, God is expected to act within history to restore man and nature to the perfect condition, which existed prior to man’s fall. Apocalyptic eschatology, on the other hand, expects God to destroy the old imperfect order before restoring the world to paradise.

In its discussion of the literary genre of apocalypse, the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery pointed out how modern readers are often confused by apocalyptic passages. The imagery and otherworldly experiences “seem bizarre and out of sync with most of Scripture.” Readers who take this literature at face value, as did Meade and Miller, will often try to determine “what will happen when,” and therefore miss the intent of the apocalyptic message. “When read aloud an apocalypse held ancient listeners spellbound with special effects and promise of better days ahead.” The visions of heaven and the future, with extraordinary creatures and events, drew their attention to a whole new world.

There are noticeable patterns of thought and certain characteristics within apocalyptic literature. There is a pattern of dualism between God and Satan; good and evil. Apocalyptic thought was characteristically pessimistic, describing a cosmic catastrophe before the final, decisive victory of God. This led to the contrast between the present evil age and the age to come that “would bring the blessings of the kingdom of God.” There was an imminent expectation of the end of the world, culminating in the ultimate triumph of God and his people over their enemies.

The Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible said: “Many apocalypses contained predictions of the future historical experience of Israel (or of the Christian church), culminating in a final and decisive victory of God and his people.” For example, in the book of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream contains a series of foreign empires referred to under the symbolism of the various parts of a gigantic statue. The image was destroyed by the kingdom of God, symbolized by a stone cut without hands from a mountain (Daniel 2:31-45).

One of the characteristics of apocalyptic literature is pseudonymity. With the exception of Daniel and Revelation, the primary examples of apocalypse in the Bible, most surviving extra biblical apocalypses are pseudonymous. The apocryphal book of 1 Enoch, written by a series of unnamed authors between 200 BC and 100 AD, is an example of apocalyptic pseudonymity. Apocalypse is also typically revelation in the form of visions that require an interpreter. “They were recounted in detail and accompanied by an interpretation.” The second half of Daniel (7-12) and all of Revelation are visions. The basic theme of apocalypse is to recount the history of the cosmos from the time of creation until the consummation of that history and the central role of God within its unfolding.

The basic structure of biblical thought is salvation history; apocalypticism characteristically saw salvation history within the context of world history. Salvation history is the distinctive notion, shared by OT and NT authors alike, that God reveals himself through saving acts and revelations during the course of history, particularly the history of his chosen people.

There is also an extensive use of symbolism in apocalypse. When symbolism was used in prophetic visions, it was usually uncomplicated, as in Isaiah 6:6. But “the symbolism of apocalyptic visions was both more complex and more bizarre than that of prophetic visions.” Several scholars have noted how the complexity of symbolism in prophetic visions became almost apocalyptic as the classic prophetic period ended. For example, the symbolism used in the book of Zechariah is borderline apocalyptic. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery noted where the imagery in the NT might allude to earlier biblical phrases, but those phrases have to be reinterpreted in their NT context. “The imagery in the book of Revelation has many parallels with the books of Ezekiel and Daniel, but individual images cannot be assumed to mean the same in both contexts.” Apocalyptic imagery is fluid and dependent upon the immediate context in which it is used.

So William Miller’s calculation that the end of the world and the return of Christ was coming in 1843, founded upon his understanding of the 2,300 days of Daniel 8:14, was itself a false prophecy. David Meade’s attempts to equate the vision in Revelation 12 to current astronomical, political and social phenomena misses the point of the apocalyptic vision in that chapter. Much of apocalyptic imagery “is like that of our familiar political cartoons in which caricatures and symbolic figures or objects represent people and events on the current scene.” Despite its seeming concreteness, the imagery in apocalyptic writing is fundamentally nonvisual and nonpictorial. “While this literature seems to paint specific pictures, the images are almost impossible to put into composite pictorial form.” So what are you to do when reading apocalyptic passages in the Bible? I suggest you listen to the following advice given in the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery:

The imagery of the genre of apocalypse has probably been subjected to more incorrect interpretation than any other aspect of Scripture. The problem is primarily a matter of distance between the ancient audience and modern interpreters. To bridge that distance the following guidelines are necessary: (1) Read with the ear of an ancient listener. Apocalyptic forms of expression were very common outside the Bible, and contemporary readers need to become familiar with that mindset to understand biblical apocalyptic literature and symbolism. (2) Be sensitive to the setting of crisis. Apocalyptic authors wrote with a flair for the spectacular in an attempt to lift the sights of despairing listeners from their current problems to God’s striking solutions. (3) Expect symbolic language. The events described in apocalyptic literature are often presented with literary techniques found more commonly in poetry: metaphor, hyperbole, personification, irony, numerical patterns and so forth. These special effects allowed apocalyptic to describe heaven and the future with captivating imagery. (4) Consider the oral nature of ancient society. Literature was written to be read aloud or quoted from memory. Listeners came away with an overall impression more like an impressionistic painting than like a photograph in high resolution. Individual details remained a puzzle, but the big picture was clear. (5) Recognize the function of apocalypse. It was a message of hope for the oppressed, a warning to the oppressors and a call to commitment for those unsure of their loyalties.

10/20/17

Beginning of the End?

credit: Chuck Sigler

According to David Meade, September 23, 2017 was a momentous day—the day that the prophecies written in chapter 12 of the book of Revelation will be evident. He said the world itself was not ending then, but the world as we know it will end. There was to be a series of catastrophic events over the course of weeks afterwards. “A major part of the world will not be the same the beginning of October.” … Still waiting … Anything happening yet?

As The Washington Post noted, the pregnant woman described in the twelfth chapter of Revelation was to appear in the sky on September 23rd. On her head will be a crown of twelve stars. She’ll be clothed with the sun; the moon will be under her feet. The woman represents the constellation Virgo, which will be “clothed in sunlight” and positioned over the moon and under nine stars and three planets. The planet Jupiter will emerge from Virgo, “as though she is giving birth.”

But then Meade revised his prediction, saying that while there were major signs in the skies on September 23rd, but the most important date of the millennium was October 15th, 2017—which would be the beginning of the world’s destruction, the beginning of a seven-year period of tribulation. On his website, Meade wrote: “Hold on and watch — wait until the middle of October and I don’t believe you’ll be disappointed.” You could buy and read his book, but he warned, “You don’t have long to read it.”

Before Meade there was Harold Camping, who predicted the end of the world twice. The first time was supposed to happen between September 15th and 27th, 1994. The second prediction by Camping said it was supposed to happen in 2011. On May 21, 2011, at 6 pm local time, the Rapture and Judgment Day was to take place. Then on October 21, 2011 would be the end of the world. He would later write that while his statements were incorrect and sinful, they allowed God to get the attention of a great many people who otherwise would not have paid attention. “Even as God used sinful Balaam to accomplish His purposes, so He used our sin to accomplish His purpose of making the whole world acquainted with the Bible.”

Meade and Camping are examples of a repeated mistake made by Christians when they fail to read and interpret the visionary texts of the Bible correctly. They often confuse or misinterpret two related visionary genres, prophecy and apocalypse. In How to Read the Bible as Literature, Leland Ryken described visionary literature as picturing setting, characters and events in an imaginary context as opposed to ordinary, empirical reality. This, however, does not mean that the visionary literature of the Bible is pure fantasy.

Visionary literature pictures settings, characters, and events that differ from ordinary reality. This is not to say that the things described in visionary literature did not happen in past history or will not happen in future history. But it does mean that the things as pictured by the writer exist in the imagination, not in empirical reality.

Neither prophecy nor apocalypse is entirely visionary; nor are they necessarily futuristic in their orientation. But they will transform the known world or the present state of things into an imagined reality. “In one way or another, visionary literature takes us to a strange world where ordinary rules of reality no longer prevail.” Ryken said the simplest form of this kind of transformation is to give a futuristic picture of the changed fortunes of a person or group or nation. The motifs of transformation and reversal in visionary literature mean that when interpreting it, the reader needs to be “ready for the reversal of ordinary reality.”

There are several elements or themes within Biblical visionary literature that form its otherness that must be cautiously read and interpreted. There is the portrayal of a transcendental or supernatural world, usually of heaven. This transcendence primarily takes the reader beyond the visible, spatial world and not forward in time. The scope of Biblical visionary literature is cosmic rather than localized. There are supernatural, fantastic agents and creatures. Inanimate objects and forces of nature become actors in the visionary drama.

In the strange and frequently surrealistic world of visionary literature, virtually any aspect of creation can become a participant in the ongoing drama of God’s judgments and redemption. It is a world where a river can overflow a nation (Isaiah 8:5-8), where a branch can build a temple (Zechariah 6:12) and a ram ‘s horn can grow to the sky and knock stars to the ground (Daniel 8:9-10).

The strangeness of such writing leads to a related rule for reading it: visionary literature is a form of fantasy literature in which readers use their imaginations to picture unfamiliar scenes and agents. And the reader must remember that the vision is an imagined reality—different than ordinary, empirical reality. “The best introduction to such visionary literature in the bible is other fantasy literature, such as the Narnia stories of C. S. Lewis.”

The purpose of visionary literature is to break through our normal way of thinking and shock us into seeing that things are not as they appear. The world may not continue on as it is now; there is something wrong with the status quo; or reality cannot be confined to what we can see with our senses. This element of the unexpected extends even into the structure of visionary literature. It has brief, shifting units. There is a range of diverse literary material in the Biblical visionary texts. There can be visual descriptions, dialogues, monologues, brief narrative segments, letters, prayers, hymns, or parables. Visionary elements may be mixed with realistic scenes and events. “Instead of looking for the smooth flow of narrative, be prepared for a disjointed series of diverse, self-contained units.”

There is more that could be said, but this gives us a sense of what constitutes visionary literature in the Bible. Now back to Meade and his prophesied end of the world. He is taking an explicitly apocalyptic text, Revelation 12, and treating it as if it were a prophetic text.  There are specific features of apocalypse that distinguishes it from its literary cousin, prophecy. The Biblical scholar Leon Morris summarized the features found in apocalyptic literature as follows:

  • The vision or revelation is of the secret things of God, inaccessible to normal human knowledge. There are secrets of nature, of heaven, of history of the end.
  • Pseudonymy
  • History is rewritten as prophecy
  • There is a determinism in history ending in cosmic cataclysm, which will establish God’s rule.
  • Dualism (good and evil).
  • Pessimism about God’s saving rule in the present.
  • Bizarre and wild symbols denote historical movements or events.

Apocalyptic is a rather loose category, meaning that texts designated as such won’t always share all the same features. Revelation, for example is not pseudonymous. And the book of Revelation often modifies the apocalyptic features it does have. The golden age for apocalyptic literature was roughly between 200 BC and 400 AD. It is primarily found in Jewish and early Christian texts. Some examples include: Assumption of Moses, 1-2-3 Enoch, 2-3 Baruch, 4 Ezra, Apocalypse of Peter, Apocalypse of Paul, Apocalypse of Thomas, and Ascension of Isaiah. Within the Bible, the following show some features of apocalyptic literature: Numbers 23-24 (Balaam’s oracles), Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah 24-27, 1 Thessalonians 4-5, 2 Thessalonians 1-2, the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21), Revelation. Some scholars would also add parts of Zechariah. With these particular in mind, here is how another Biblical scholar, J. J. Collins, defined apocalypse:

A genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.

Now let’s turn to the text of Revelation 12 used by Meade in his prediction that October 15th, 2017 would initiate a seven-year period of tribulation, resulting in the destruction of the world. Here is a four-minute YouTube video by Unsealed that illustrates how Meade and other Christians believe September 23rd represents a spiritual sign of the ending of the “Church Age.” On his website, Meade said: “We’re all watching for the September 23 Sign because we know it means the end of the ‘Church Age.’  That is a spiritual sign only.  But it is huge.” Now compare the video to the following verses in Revelation 12 that it interprets.

And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne. (Revelation 12:1-5)

This passage in chapter 12 of Revelation is one visionary unit in a series of visions give to John by an angel (Revelation 1:1). After the letters to the seven churches, which represent the Church universal, John looked up and saw a door open in heaven (Revelation 4:1). Then came a series of visions including the throne room in heaven. The scroll and the Lamb, the seven seals, the 144,000 of Israel, the seven trumpets, the angel and the little scroll, the two witnesses, and more. At the sound of the seventh trumpet, the twenty-four elders worshiped God. Then God’s temple in heaven opened to reveal “the ark of his covenant.”

The context of Revelation has many of the characteristics of apocalyptic literature. There is a vision framed within a narrative. It’s mediated by an angel to John, and discloses a series of scenes of what is happening in heaven. Chapter 12 describes the conflict between good and evil; the pregnant woman and the dragon. There was the symbolic representation of the encounter of the woman and the dragon; and what happened afterwards.

Revelation 12:1-5 is a condensed retelling of the story of the gospel using apocalyptic. There will be enmity between the seed of the woman and the serpent. In pain she will bring forth children (Genesis 3:15-16). Jesus is that seed, and the verse in Genesis 3 has been traditionally identified as the protoevangelium—the first gospel. Satan intended to “devour” him, but failed. Jesus was caught up—by God—to his throne at his ascension (Acts 1:9-11). A final clue that the passage is not a prophetic foretelling of a future time to John, namely the September 23, 2017 initiation of the end of the church age, is the parallel here to the Greek myth about the birth of Apollo. Gordon Fee, in his commentary on Revelation related the following.

It is important for the modern reader to know that the whole scene is a common one in ancient mythology as well; thus the first readers of this book, mostly Gentile converts in the province of Asia, could hardly have missed here an echo of the well-known myth from their own history. In that myth about the birth of Apollo to Leto, wife of Zeus, the dragon Python hoped to slay the child (Apollo) but he was protected by Poseidon. When grown Apollo then slew the dragon. But whatever the coincidences that may exist between that myth and the essential Christian story, John’s imagery has effected its total transformation into the basic (historical) story of Christ, who through his cross and resurrection thus defeated the dragon. At the same time, the astute biblical reader will see something of a replay, but in a radically new way, of the scene in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3; but now the woman withstands the snake, and her child is rescued by God, who also protects the woman in “the wilderness.”

The interpretation of Biblical apocalyptic literature is fraught the dangers of misunderstanding and misinterpretation, as Harold Camping discovered and hopefully David Meade will himself acknowledge. In his own apocalyptic narrative in the Olivet Discourse of Matthew 24, Jesus said: no one knows the time of his return and the end of the age; not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only (Matthew 24:36). Not even David Meade knows.