VIEW FROM THE PEW
I wanted to get this package in the mail then get home before Mother Nature comes back to slam us with another storm. That was the gist of my counter chat at the post office last week.
“You can’t blame Mother Nature,” said the clerk. “Yeah, hard to deny climate change,” I said. No, says he. “That’s not where it’s coming from” and he pointed heavenward with a solemn frown.
Oops, it seemed that we were moving into an “end of the world” theme. So I just muttered some end of the conversation thing and scurried away thinking his supervisor might frown on such a dialogue and the people in line behind me certainly would like me to move along. But ever since then, I wished I had asked him what he meant and what was his source.
Extreme weather conditions seem to be battering every corner of the globe. It’s one after another worst, biggest, most disastrous event. A season to worry and fret, buy and hoard supplies. A stimulus to renew global warming concerns.
And time to revive the “end times” predictions. There’s a lot of that going around. Preachers and predictors of doom find fuel for their theories in hurricanes, volcanic eruptions and other natural disasters.
The annual memorial of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by al-Qaeda fanatics always fans the flames for the doomsday vision. We relive the day when 19 terrorists hijacked four airplanes and killed 2,977 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania in deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The events struck fear into millions of Americans, anxiety refreshed annually.
Families of the victims, first responders and civic organizations have mostly prevailed in their efforts to curtail politicians from exploiting the tragedies.
But there’s no such rein on religious doomsayers.
Deadly disasters, fires, famines? All part of God’s plan to punish humans who break his commandments.
Leaders of nations who execute, starve and enslave opponents inside or develop nuclear weapons or cyber tools to destroy enemies outside. Yep, it’s all part of the Almighty’s agenda to put an end to life on the planet he created.
Signs of end times
Even Brexit, the British withdrawal from the European Union, fits in predictions of the world winding down. So does the spread of a religion that is not Christian, and especially the intolerant fanatics therein. Name a country, an organization, a popular form of music, any cultural aspect of sexuality, an outrageous public figure: you’ll find a self-ordained prophet who can fit it into his vision of a grand finale.
Where do they get this stuff, you might ask. It’s in the Bible, or so they believe. Revelation, the final book of Christian scriptures, contains vivid imagery of the struggle between good and evil, the tribulations of people and their interaction with God, and a triumphant end for people who obey the Almighty. The book is attributed to St. John the Evangelist, author of one of the four Gospels. It was written near the end of the first century while John was banished by Roman authorities to the Greek island of Patmos. It has been the source of artists’ depictions of heaven and hell with John describing his dreams filled with Satan as a beast and a dragon, the Blessed Mother as queen of heaven, the Four Horsemen — pestilence, war, famine, death — as harbingers of the end of the world.
I hereby confess I have listened to a televangelist preacher or two who absolutely loved some of the lurid imagery of a whore of Babylon and a woman giving birth to a dragon-slaying baby. I admit to laughing at their rollicking rants that seemed focused on the women.
Not so funny is the frequent interpretation of fundamentalist Christians that the anti-Christ of John’s vision was either the current pope or the entire Catholic Church.
There was a time when I enjoyed science fiction books and movies. But the “end times” genre is not for me anymore. How many television series with that theme have there been? Among scripts about alien invasions and survivalists hiding from evil government forces, some had the Book of Revelation as a resource. A pair of anti-Catholic authors turned a hefty profit with the “Left Behind” series: a “true Christian” would be sucked up to heaven in an instant while the guy next to him stayed on the ground. They were not quite biblical in the sorting out of saints and sinners.
My aversion to Revelation dates back to a couple of college classes eons ago when I got tangled in grasping the symbols and numerology: there are seven seals and seven letters, and four of this, and 12 of that. What does scarlet mean as opposed to green? I hated it. Enough with the symbols, allusions and veiled references; tell me a straightforward story. I’m pretty sure my grades in those two classes were not As.
Rather than keep banging my brain in solitude with this discomforting subject, I chose to go back to school for help. Regina Pfeiffer, associate professor of religious studies at Chaminade University, had the patience to help me, recapping some of the lecture she gave at a June Adult Faith Formation Workshop for parish catechists and RCIA teachers.
“Students have said they are afraid to read Revelation because of how televangelists and media portray it,” she told me. “I teach it as a book of hope, not a book of fear. I focus on the positive aspects of the text. I told the workshop students: don’t be afraid of the book.”
Totally different from the Gospels’ narrative, this book is apocalyptic writing, a Jewish style of writing that was used between 200 B.C. and about 200 A.D. “This style came from the time in history when people were waiting for God to do something. The Jews as a nation were ruled by one conqueror after another, Persian, Greek, Roman.
“The message is to remain faithful to God no matter how bad things get. Have hope,” said the Catholic teacher.
It helps if a reader can put herself in the shoes of a Christian living when John wrote the book. It was at least 50 years after Jesus had ascended to heaven, promising to return. Early Christians thought the Second Coming was imminent. They were persecuted by Roman rulers, and had seen those remaining in the Jewish faith devastated by Rome’s destruction of their temple in Jerusalem.
Symbolism and code
“There is symbolism, some is written in code,” explained the professor. “If I’m going to criticize the emperor, I needed to use that. So when the author referred to Babylon, it stands for Rome.” The anti-Christ could be the emperor — Nero, Caligula, Domitian — who persecuted Christians. Colors are symbolic: red is violence, black is death.
The numbers are easily decipherable if you get the code. With 1,000 taken as meaning a huge amount, multiplied by 12, referring to the tribes of Israel, and 12 again for the Apostles, and you reach 144,000.
That was a widely misunderstood number, interpreted by literal Christian groups as the actual limit on how many will get to heaven. I remember the subject discussed at my doorstep by a door-to-door evangelizing missionary.
But scholars interpret 144,000 as “a vision of a great multitude, too many to count. The meaning is that the covenant God had with the Jews was extended to all humanity,” said the professor.
“When studying Scripture, you have to do exegesis, look at the text in its original context, in the writer’s time. Then do eisegesis, how do we see it in our current situation. “The book talks about the suffering, the oppression that people have experienced. I had the students look at it in terms of their own tribulations. The anti-Christ is whatever keeps you from God.
“That is what we have to do with all of the Bible. What do I draw out of the original context to apply to my life, to my current situation?”
I questioned why the people who compiled the various epistles and Gospels together even included the mystifying book of Revelation. Pfeiffer said, “Revelation is necessary because all of us have times when we struggle, that’s when the darkness is the worst. But God is there helping you through your struggles. At the end of the book there is light. I don’t think any of the books of the Bible are meant to frighten us. Even when the prophets predict dire things, it is to remind people to follow God’s decree.
“Televangelists like to have people afraid. I think people want certainty, they want the black and white; if you do this, this is the result. People are drawn to a message that gives that certainty.
“The prophets and Revelation are not intended to predict the future. Their message is to have God in our lives, and have faith, hope and love.” She said fundamentalists “try to use the Bible as the predictor, rather than a way, a path.”
“There has always been a form of millennialism, the idea that at some point God will come.” But the idea of the Rapture, of some people being physically snatched up to heaven while others are left behind “was never a Christian concept down through history. It is a viewpoint that arose in the 1880s in the ‘holiness’ churches established in America.”
She said “The second coming of Christ is still a strong teaching in the Catholic Church, but not the concept of a 1,000-year period of tribulation” before the end of time.
So, my take-away from that is to seek a Catholic site for online research, because there is a lot of really weird opinion and interpretation out there. And as for the Rapture, recognize a fictional plot when you see it. And as for fanning your anxiety about things beyond control, find occasional respite from the television news; how about a book?
Pfeiffer said when a student asked her how to know if she is interpreting a Bible passage correctly, “my answer was, if your interpretation is bringing you to faith, love of neighbor, more selflessness, then probably yes. If not, probably not.”
