What is it
about October and The End? The End—as in the end of the world, the Second
Coming, the Final Judgment, the Eschaton, the Millennium. In this essay, I’ll used “The End” as a
generic term for any of these events associated in Christian theology with
history coming to its God-directed finale.
Throughout the
history of the church, Christian leaders have succumbed to the temptation to
predict the time of The End. I won’t try
to name all those we know about but here’s a sampling.
Martin of Tours
(316-397) was very clear in his expectation that The End would take place
before AD 400. He said, "There is
no doubt that the Antichrist has already been born. Firmly established already
in his early years, he will, after reaching maturity, achieve supreme
power."
The approach of
the year 1000 seems to have led some to believe The End was near but there
doesn’t appear to have been the widespread panic historians used to report.
Anabaptist
leader Thomas Müntzer believed 1525 would mark the beginning of The End, in
particular the Millennium. Müntzer was
executed for his role in the Peasants’ Revolt.
Though he
opposed Müntzer’s radicalism, Martin Luther (about whom I’ll say more later
this month) believed The End would come in 1600. Indeed, magisterial reformers, the
Anabaptists, and some Catholics, though for different reasons, also believed
the Reformation was evidence of The End’s approach.
New England pastor Cotton Mather (1663-1728) predicted The End would
come in 1697or maybe 1716 or maybe 1736.
Sadly, because of Mather’s association with the notorious witch trials
in Salem, Massachusetts, we may forget he was one of the most influential
leaders in colonial America.
Mather died before Jonathan Edwards, another New England pastor,
gained fame. The events surrounding the
Great Awakening led Edwards to surmise that The End would come about the year
2000.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, leaders in the
revival giving birth to Pentecostalism believed it to be the promised
outpouring of the Spirit before The End.
This list of those saying The End was only a few years away
could go on and it would include such contemporaries as Chuck Smith, Jerry Falwell, and Pat
Roberson. But let’s consider how October
was so often the focal point.
Most famous was William Miller’s prediction that The End would
come on October 22, 1844. Unlike other
prognosticators, the twice-wrong Miller would learn his lesson and refrain from
further specific predictions—though he continued to believe The End was near.
Well before Miller, Archbishop James Ussher (died 1655)
suggested October 23, 1997, as the date of The End. Ussher, author of the chronology still found
in some Bibles, believed that date would be 6000 years since the creation and,
therefore, the time for The End.
Charles Taze Russell, founder of the movement that would become
the Jehovah’s Witnesses, predicted The End would come in October 1914.
Edgar Whisenant, a former NASA engineer, predicted Christ would
return in 1988 and wrote a little book with the catchy title, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. He warned naysayers that only if the Bible
were wrong could his prediction be wrong. Though he suggested the most likely date
would be in late September, his revised prediction focused on October 3. Like many failed prophets, Whisenant
continued to predict The End until his end in 2001. In mid-1988, someone sent me copy of
Whisenant’s book, anonymously. I’ll always remember it included a coupon for a
year’s subscription to his magazine.
Korean Lee Jang Rim, founder and leader of the Dami Mission,
predicted The End would come on 28 October 1992. In November, The End having not taken place,
Lee disbanded the mission. In December,
Korean authorities convicted him of fraud and sentenced him to two years in
prison; Lee was proven to have used over four million dollars donated by his
followers to buy bonds with maturity dates beyond October 28.
Harold Camping, having once predicted The End would take place
in 1994, more recently targeted 21 October 2011 as date of The End (the rapture
having taken place in May).
Most recently, David Meade, who employs a variant of biblical
numerology to derive his predictions, claimed the world would end September 23
of this year (2017). Meade is now
pointing to October 15 as date for The End.[i] Tweaking the date just a bit more, Meade told
Time magazine, "it is possible
at the end of October we may be about to enter into the 7-year Tribulation
period, to be followed by a Millennium of peace."[ii] So, unless you read this blog entry quickly,
you might not be able to read it at all.
(By the way, Meade is a Roman Catholic; it’s not just evangelicals who
make such predictions.)
Assuming Meade’s predictions are just another example of October
Madness, what are we to make of this trend?
October is a month of transition. Often we see both the vestiges of summer and
the forewarnings of winter in a single month.
Indeed, though we’ve enjoyed temperatures in the 80s this October, we
all know October is no stranger to snow.
Perhaps the desire to escape the darkness and cold of winter
makes us susceptible to the promise of “that unclouded day” where there is no
night. On a deeper level, we see
evidence of darkness all around us: crime, injustice, and cruelty. We long for a day when justice will be done,
when wrongs will be righted, when victims will be vindicated, and when evil
will be but a vague memory if not forgotten altogether. The emotional and spiritual toll stories of
child abuse, war, and mass-murder take on us may make us open to hearing those
who would tell us to mark our calendars for the big Day when everything will
change.
Lee Jang Rim may have exploited his follower’s hopes for his
personal profit but William Miller proclaimed his prophecies to give urgency to
the task of winning souls. When we hear
those who say The End is so close we shouldn’t worry too much about our IRAs we
should stop and ask about the speaker’s motivations and why we might be so
tempted to believe. All of us know
about the failed prophecies of a Harold Camping yet people we may know continue
to believe, continue to buy the books, continue to argue obscure texts with
their neighbors and their pastors, and continue to face disappointment with a “maybe-next-time”
attitude.
I grew up in a church where a “dispensations” chart was
displayed on the sanctuary wall. I
recall staring at the strange figures on the chart, wondering what they meant,
wondering just where the world was on the chart’s timeline, wondering if I
would make it into college before the big events on the chart began taking
place. I did. In college, I began to realize the
dispensational scheme had some inherent problems. For instance, the dispensationalist’s habit
of basing assertions on linking half a verse written by one writer to half a
verse written by another writer living centuries later violated basic
principles of Biblical interpretation. At
the same time, I learned other Christians had different ways of looking at The
End.
The only view I had known before going to college is called
pre-millennialism, the view that says Christ will return sometime before his
thousand-year reign on earth. His
Kingdom comes when Christ suddenly appears to stop once and for all the world’s
decline into spiritual darkness. Another
view popular among American evangelicals prior to the middle of the nineteenth
century is known as post-millennialism.
As the name suggests, this view expects the millennium to begin prior to
Christ’s return. Very simply, those
holding the view believe the Kingdom will come as a result of the gospel being
preached in all its transforming power.
Premillennialists and postmillennialists haven’t always gotten
along but, at their best, both look to the power of God to change the
world. Yet, both are also susceptible to
certain foibles. Premillennialists look
so longingly for the next world they are sometimes guilty of neglecting the
needs of this world. They have sometimes
viewed any social ministry as a betrayal of the call to evangelism.
Postmillennialists work so hard to change the world they might
easily be content with human achievements.
This problem was exacerbated as denominations tending to hold
post-millennial views fell prey to theological liberalism; in some of these
denominations evangelism and missions are defined almost exclusively in terms social
and economic programs, with little or no emphasis on conversion (a hallmark of
evangelicalism). The problem became so
pronounced that some more conservative evangelicals avoided any association
with “the social gospel” by focusing exclusively on spiritual ministry. D. L. Moody, whose Chicago ministry once
included giving food to the poor, eventually announced he would only
concentrate on giving “the Bread of Life.”
Of course, many premillennialists still demonstrated God’s love
in practical ways such as feeding the hungry and otherwise caring for the poor
and many postmillennialists still strove to see men and women converted to
Christ. But finding the balance remains
a challenge.
Those who suffer October Madness have likely failed to find that
balance. Convinced The End is near, they
live in a state of excited expectation, awaiting to be rewarded for their
cleverness in seeing what so many failed to see—and hoping to see those who
scoffed at them get their eternal comeuppance.
We can easily understand if they see battles against poverty, racism,
and injustice as a waste of time.
But imbalance in thinking about now and then, The Present and
The End, can take other forms.
Brian Stanley’s The Global
Diffusion of Evangelicalism is the final volume of IVP’s history of
evangelicalism. According to Stanley,
the years following 1950 have seen the majority world, the world outside North
America and Europe, become the venue of the most exciting and thriving forms of
evangelicalism. What happens in Africa,
South America, and Asia in the opening years of the twenty-first century will
shape the future of evangelicalism.
Because these locales know such poverty and injustice, church leaders
are tempted to believe resolving these problems is tantamount to bringing the
Kingdom into reality.
Stanley warns leaders in these places of the danger of
being “…tipped away from a Bible
centered gospel that, while being properly holistic, still holds to the
soteriological centrality and ethical normativity of the cross, towards a form
of religious materialism [summed up in] the promise of unlimited health and
wealth in the here and now.”[iii] Though Stanley does not
believe evangelicals in the majority world have lost sight of a future only God
can give he does believe much hangs on the course they take in the coming
years.
The battle for the
integrity of the gospel in the opening years of the twenty-first century is
being fought not primarily in the lecture rooms of North American seminaries
but in the shanty towns, urban slums, and villages of Africa, Asia, and Latin
America.[iv]
When October Madness
captures headlines, it only momentarily embarrasses those of us who still say,
“Come, Lord Jesus.” We get over it and
continue to embrace the words of the Creed, “I believe in Jesus Christ...Who…sitteth
on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence he shall come….”
As we strive for balance, it’s probably good to remember we
should care about this world because we care about the next world.
And, of course, in the end, The End is in God’s hands.
[i] Leada Gore, “Man who claimed world would end Sept. 23
has new Doomsday date (http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/09/man_who_claimed_world_would_en.html.
Accessed 5 October 2017.)
[ii] “David Meade Said the World Was Going to End Last Weekend. Now He Says
It's Really Happening in October” (http://time.com/4955640/doomsday-world-end-david-meade.
Accessed 5 October 2017.)
[iii] Stanley, p. 247.
Bracketed material added. The
phrase “soteriological centrality” refers to a focus on spiritual salvation.
