The Real History of the End of the World (37 page)

 

 

 

 

O
ne of the most intriguing and relatively new twists in evangelical Christian belief is the idea of the Rapture. The notion is that those who are already the Christian elect shouldn't have to go through the premillennial Tribulations. Therefore, before things get nasty on earth, all of them will be transported bodily into heaven.

Now, this is not exactly a biblical doctrine. Only one person in the New Testament ever rose bodily into the next world. Even the Catholic tradition of the assumption into heaven of the Virgin Mary comes from an early folk belief. The closest one comes to an ascension is in Saint Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians (4:16-17), who had been having a rather rough time of it. He promises them that at the end: “with an archangel's call, and with the sound of God's trumpet, [Jesus] will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air.”

Until the early 1800s, this was taken either as a metaphor or as something that wouldn't happen until just before the Last Judgment. At that time, a group was formed in Ireland and England, led by a man named John Nelson Darby (1800-1882). They called themselves the Plymouth Brethren and rejected Church hierarchy. Their meetings were open to any Christian and were purposely without an agenda so that the Holy Spirit could lead them.
¹

The Brethren believed in evangelical missionary work but otherwise in remaining separate from the world. This included participation in the military for they were totally antiwar. This was not only based on Christian pacifism but on their conviction that “ ‘the saints' belong to no nationality: they are ‘heavenly men on earth.' ”
²
In their separation from the world, the Brethren acknowledged that armies might be necessary in these evil times, but that being a soldier was no job for a Christian. Several officers in the British military resigned their commissions after converting to the Brethren.
³

The Brethren believed in premillennial dispensationalism. Dispensations are just another way of describing the old organization of the ages of the world. Darby and the Brethren added the twist that each age was culminated by a disaster, starting with Adam and Eve being thrown out of Eden. The next dispensation was Noah's flood, then the Tower of Babel. After that was the time from Abraham to Moses, ending either with the Exodus or the founding of Israel, then Moses to Jesus. The time of Christ is the current dispensation. It will end with the tribulations that precede the Second Coming. It was the Brethren who came up with the Rapture as the ultimate in noninvolvement.

The evangelical work of the Brethren crossed the Atlantic by the late 1800s and was popularized at the 1875 Niagara Bible conference and later ones.
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Imaging the Rapture, Charles Anderson.
With the kind permission of the Bible Believers' Evangelistic Association, Inc. Copyright 1974,
www.bbea.org

Dwight L. Moody (1837-1899) was one of the driving forces behind the spread of the beliefs of the Brethren in the United States. With his partner, Ira Sankey, he composed hundreds of popular hymns. He also was a powerful preacher who traveled throughout America and Britain, spreading the dispensationalist view of the end of the world. For most of his life, he was also active in the YMCA, soup kitchens, and relief work on the battlefields of the Civil War, in which he was a conscientious objector.
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Cyrus Scofield (1843-1921) also had a great deal of influence in promoting the Rapture. He wrote Bible study courses and published tracts on dispensationalism. But his most lasting accomplishment was the publication in 1909 of
Scofield 's Reference Bible
by Oxford University Press. In it Scofield interpreted the Bible in such a way as to explain the dispensationalist doctrine. It was an instant success and is still in print.

It is not clear whether William Miller had read any of the teaching of the Brethren when he developed his belief in the ascension of believers at the millennium. The Millerites expected a bodily assumption into heaven although most of the other teachings of the Brethren, such as dispensationalism, were not part of his original message.

The Rapture seems to have become part of fundamental Christian dogma among groups that do not adhere to all the teachings of the Brethren. It has also been popularized by a series of books, starting with
The Late Great Planet Earth
by Hal Lindsey. This book predicted the Rapture for 1988, but Lindsey later revised this to 2000. In his more recent books, he has declined to set any more dates but continues to state that the time is imminent. In 2009, he presented a series of television programs that also appear on his website. These explained his take on the Rapture with many biblical citations.
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One of the most vivid images of the Rapture is that told by evangelist Jerry Fallwell (1933-2007):

This is a fairly dramatic image. My initial reaction is not to let the Christian drive. As a matter of fact, it might be a good idea for those who believe in the Rapture to consider using only public transport just for the sake of those left behind.

1
Ernest R. Sandeen, “Towards a Historical Interpretation of Christian Fundamentalism,”
Church History
36, no. 1 (1967): 67-68.

2
Peter Brock, “The Peace Testimony of the Early Plymouth Brethren,”
Church History
53, no. 1 (1994): 36.

3
Ibid., 39.

4
Nancy A. Schaefer, “Y2K as an Endtime Sign: Apocalypticsm in America at the
fin-demillennuum,
”
Journal of Popular Culture
38, no. 1 (2004): 84.

5
Randall Balmer,
The Encyclopeidia of Evangelism
(Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2004), 467.

6
Hal Lindsey,
The Hal Lindsey Report.
Available at
www.hallindsey.com/videos/?vid=61
. Accessed July 2009. More reports followed the completion of this book.

7
Quoted in Daniel Wojcik, “Embracing Doomsday: Faith, Fatalism and Apocalyptic Beliefs in the Nuclear Age,”
Western Folklore
55, no. 4 (1996): 309-310.

 

 

 

 

H
ow might the world end? Most of the millennial movements concentrate on the warning signs. Then millenarians work on becoming part of the remnant that will either survive or get a straight ticket to heaven. The general feeling is that some sort of (super)natural disaster will take place. It might be flood, earthquake, fire from the sky, or the stars going out. For those who have trouble visualizing the end, here are a few suggestions taken from recent films and documentaries.

 

If it is big enough, the impact could cause “dust clouds, changes in atmospheric chemistry, tsunami activity, climatic change with accompanying sea-level changes and possibly tectonic or volcanic activity.”
¹
On top of that, there could be “corrosive rain, water pollution, air pollution a thousand times worse than the harshest modern smog and airborne toxic metals lethal to any nonburrowing animals.”
²

This has apparently happened more than once in earth's history. Scientists generally agree that either one or more meteors played an important part in the extinction of the dinosaurs. It is still possible that some people might survive, living in underground facilities until the worst was over. After all, the received wisdom is that getting rid of the dinosaurs left the way free for mammals to stake a claim to be masters of the world. So this might not be the total end of the world, but it would definitely fit with the stories in many cultures in which a small group of survivors must start civilization all over again.

In most of the films about this, humankind sends up nuclear bombs that destroy the asteroid or whatever is about to fall from the skies. This is generally not considered the best idea, even though it makes for an exciting visual effect. My favorite suggestion is to hitch the object to a sail that catches the solar wind and steers it away from us. Of course, the odds are that we won't even see the object until it's too close to do anything about it.

So there's really no point in worrying about it now.

 

This is also a popular scenario. The caldera under Yellowstone National Park is a favorite possibility. Geologists have known for some time that there was a lake of magma underneath the area. It has caused a cataclysmic eruption at least three times already, with the last major event occurring about 600,000 years ago.
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But Yellowstone is not the only magma caldera, even in the United States. There is at least one more at Long Valley in California, near Yosemite National Park and the popular ski resort of Mammoth Lakes. Other possible sites are Japan, New Zealand, the Andes, and Indonesia.
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Yellowstone is the most frequently studied of these caldera, which are what remains after a major volcanic eruption. It has been noted that the area is continually undergoing seismic activity, and it certainly will erupt again at some point. “Because another caldera-forming eruption is almost inevitable, though not imminent, a continuous monitoring program is important.”
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Sounds like a good idea.

Super volcanoes are measured both by the intensity of the eruption and by the amount of material thrown into the atmosphere. “The biggest super-eruption recognized so far produced approximately five thousand cubic kilometers of deposits, creating the so-called Fish Canyon Tuff event in Colorado.
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By contrast, Mount St. Helens managed only one half cubic kilometer of ash. However, despite warnings that we are due for another super eruption soon, the odds are negligible that one will go off in the next one hundred years.”
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If it should happen that one did, the result would be immediate loss of life for those in the surrounding area from suffocation and heat. The sulfuric acid emitted would weaken the ozone layer and affect breathing. Clouds of ash in the atmosphere would block sunlight and could bring about several years of cold weather with poor harvests, thus bringing about global starvation. Ash could also keep planes from flying and disrupt electric power. The eruption could trigger other earthquakes and flooding.

Would it be the end of the world? It would certainly be a challenge to civilization but, again, some people would probably survive. And, since at the moment, we can't predict super volcanoes or do anything about them, I'm checking this off my list of things to worry about.

 

The gist of this apocalyptic prediction is that every now and then, seemingly on a whim, the North and South Poles change places. This sounded strange to me but I did some research and not only is this true, but the magnetic poles are constantly wandering about, within a certain radius, and they don't even move together! Sometimes the South Pole sets off toward Australia and the North Pole checks out Siberia. They don't move at the same pace, either.
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