I smile and go about my business, my head tucked behind my computer screen.
“Yes, we should all read it, especially now,” a man says with a serious look. “You know the day is coming, the day of the Rapture when God will begin the End of Times and make His judgments.”
After my friendly remark, now I risk getting buckled into a long discussion on the Beast with seven heads and ten horns (Rev. 17:2), the Whore of Babylon, and the whole bucket of Christian eschatology.
As a big word, eschatology is not one you’d use at the supermarket while buying beer and pretzels. In Christian theology, eschatology is the study of the destiny of mankind according to the purposes of God.
This New Year is supposed to be when the baby-boomers begin to turn sixty years old. The flower-child generation was once all about Jesus’ peace and love. Now, many of them along with some of their own children fret and moan about the whole process of Revelation as the Apostle John outlined in the last book of the Holy Bible.
John wrote Revelation in the later part of the first century while laid up in the pokey on a Greek island called Patmos. The tyrannical, brutal Romans locked him up for talking too much about Christ’s esoteric teachings of charity, peace, and tolerance. Scholars say this explains why he refers to Rome as the godless Babylon, empire of evil and abusive military power. Revelation is a phantasmagorical vision of how God will re-set the world right.
Meanwhile, all a guy has to do these days is sit down for a cup of java and, presto, people around are studying the Bible for clues about their salvation come the judgment day, the Rapture, when God snatches good folks up into heaven, while the rest of us commonplace sinners are shackled to the earth by gravity to sort out apocalyptic problems like global warming, wars, and pestilence. In times of uncertainty, when our otherwise secluded nation is attacked, clutching onto the Bible and looking for God can bring a surge of warmth and security over one’s soul.
I know this because the ancient texts of the Bible comfort me. Hell, while back in college, I sold my only means of transportation, a Honda 350 motorcycle, just to study the New Testament in Greek at U.C. Berkeley. How fanatic can a guy get?
The 9/11 attack provoked a new wave of religious fundamentalism and doomsday mania, although this preoccupation has plagued the human mind long before John wrote Revelation. A cultural wave of fundamentalist reaction began especially when Muslim terrorists attacked certain icons of our nation’s most sacred beliefs -- the towers of capitalism, our sense of security, or, according to some Biblical interpretation, Aaron’s golden cow (Ex. 32).
With deep roots in irrational puritan soil, American history is colored with many periods of maniac politics and social mores. Works of art like the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (novel published in 1850) or, more recently, the movie Good Night and Good Luck (2005), strip bare the frequent and bizarre extremism of American culture.
At times, we mere mortals are beside ourselves, at a loss for answers. We seek comfort and security. When someone pokes our nest, we fly beyond our own imaginations and react in extreme ways. Getting swept up in the moment of tribulations, we can run to rash actions. Extreme reactions may be partly what the Apostle Paul meant by the term (rapturo) The Rapture (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17), the only instance of this word in the Bible.
With all the extreme politics today, we certainly could use more balance. Open debate, including constructive criticism, always helps a free democracy remain balanced.
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