THE END TIMES

"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand."



Eschatology. Yes, the spell checker on my computer is still working and this is actually a word—albeit a rather obscure one for the ninety-nine percent of us whose path through higher education did not include a few years at the seminary. But as unsexy as it sounds, for many, a good chat about eschatology will get the heart beating and the neurons firing and maybe even the endorphins pumping like few things this side of the local Nautilus.

Eschatology, to put it simply, is a theological term that means "the doctrine of last things," the study of the end times. And if that definition doesn't clarify the matter, let me throw out a few words that may help: Armageddon, plagues, 666 the Mark of the Beast, the Rapture, the Antichrist, the New Jerusalem, the Seventh Seal, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Judgment Day, and, of course, the Second Coming. Now that I have your attention, let me explain a little further. You see, when we talk about the Messiah, or the Second Coming, we are in essence talking about the end times, the end of history, when a religious savior is prophesied to return and sort out the rather embarrassing mess we have made of this planet that we have the good fortune to live on. And even though eschatology is a word used primarily in association with the Abrahamic religions—Islam, Judaism, and Christianity—our Eastern brothers and sisters have their own doctrines that describe the end, if not of the entire world, then at least of this age in history.

"When our whole existence is threatened, as it is today, the eschatological veins in the various religions come to the fore," observes Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr. And though some may accuse him of stating the obvious, the point is well taken. Like a slow-building multi-car pileup on a busy highway, we are witnessing the unprecedented convergence of eschatological trajectories that, for the most part, were set in motion thousands of years ago, and no one this side of paradise quite knows what will be left when the smoke clears. Will Jesus be standing there with his "terrible swift sword"? Or Islam's prophesied Mahdi declaring to the infidels of the West that there is "no god but God"? Or maybe a New Age messiah spreading the Aquarian gospel to a troubled world? Or perhaps some as yet unseen power, awakened by humanity's desperate need, will descend into Bethlehem and give birth to a golden age. Whatever the case, don't fool yourself into thinking that eschatology is merely a backward theological doctrine of a bygone era. In fact, today it seems to be all the rage. Everything from New Age preoccupations with prophesied "Earth changes" to digerati intuitions of a coming technological omega point called the "Singularity," to Hollywood's recent obsession with end-of-the-world scenarios could be seen as part of what we might call an "eschatologically driven" culture that has grown up in the time in which we live. And wherever you have this kind of culture, there are several other elements that you are likely to find near at hand. First and foremost is a messiah, a prophesied religious savior. And of course, any messiah worth his or her weight in human history needs a raison d'être, and that reason, more often than not, is to usher in a new messianic age, to bring about a promised new world, to help build Shambhala, to create a new heaven on a rejuvenated earth.


A DIFFERENT KIND OF MILLENNIUM

"And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."



If you were to walk into a major university these days and start talking about a new golden age, writing papers on how to build Shambhala, or waxing poetic to your students about creating heaven on earth, one of two things would happen: either you'd promptly be fired, or (if you have tenure) you might just be sent down the hall to the Millennial Studies Department. Indeed, in the world of academia where they actually study subjects like eschatology and messiahs, there is a name for the belief in the coming golden age—millennialism. And it's similar to eschatology . . . only different. "Eschatology is a term that means the doctrine of last things," explains Dr. Richard Landes, director of the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University, "and I use it to refer to the belief that when the day of judgment comes, a resolution will take place beyond the physical plane. In other words, the physical plane is going to be destroyed, vanish, or be transcended at that point. The bad go to hell, and the good go to heaven. Millennialism, on the other hand, is about the transformation of the world. It's a kind of outrageous hope that it is actually possible for embodied human beings to live in a just society together."

For Landes and a number of other scholars, millennialism is a label that can be applied to just about every truly progressive movement—religious, social, political, etcetera—whose vision and work in some way entail the creation of a just society on this earth. But when it comes to millennialism, the essential question is: How do we get to the promised kingdom? Good deeds? An apocalypse? A proletariat revolution? A messiah? "There are two patterns of millennialism," Dr. Catherine Wessinger of Loyola University explains, "catastrophic and progressive. Catastrophic millennialism is the belief that the transition to collective salvation will occur catastrophically. This is apocalypticism. The other type is called progressive millennialism, which is the belief that things are getting better all the time and that human effort, motivated by and working in conjunction with a higher power, can help to create the millennial kingdom." And that, she says, is where the whole notion of a messiah comes in: "The Messiah is someone who is believed to be empowered by a superhuman agent to create the millennial kingdom." That kingdom may take many forms. It may be painted with bright Hindu colors, with sober Buddhist hues, or even with New Age pastels. It may require every last ounce of effort and toil that we can muster, or it may come unexpectedly "like a thief in the night." It may be one beautiful historical age in an endless series of universal cycles, or it may be the greatest collective retirement party of all time. But one way or the other, the message of antiquity is unequivocal: collective salvation is possible through the grace, love, and wisdom of the coming World Teacher who will lead the way to a glorious future. That's the good news. The bad news is, of course, that accompanying many of the visions of this glorious future is a not-so-glorious apocalypse. All of which begs the obvious question: Are we getting close? Are we approaching midnight? And, how do we know if we are?


APOCALYPSE NOW?

"God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
no more water, the fire next time."



The evangelist John has spoken of . . . two resurrections in the book which is called the Apocalypse [Revelation], but in such a way that some Christians do not understand . . . and so construe the passage into ridiculous fancies." These words began St. Augustine's rebuke of the narrow, literal interpretations of the Book of Revelation which, in 410 AD, were finding plenty of traction among the residents of Rome. The Book of Revelation, for those who have neglected their Bible scholarship, was written by John of Patmos (not to be confused, most scholars agree, with the apostle John). John was the man, we might say, who put eschatology on the map. His visions foretell a powerful version of the end times, and in the early fifth century, they resonated with many Romans, who had just watched their city fall to the invading Visigoths—a defeat that had deeply shaken the confidence of the newly converted Roman Empire. Surely these must now be the end times, the population cried; the messianic kingdom of our Lord must be near at hand. In response, St. Augustine set forth a rebuke so powerful that his own more conservative and allegorical interpretation of the Book of Revelation became official Catholic Church policy regarding the Apocalypse from that moment forward. But Augustine did not altogether reject apocalyptic prophecy or the Second Coming, and both notions continued to exert tremendous influence on the spiritual development of the Western world. Various strains have long run rampant in both Christianity and Islam, influencing such important figures as Martin Luther, Christopher Columbus, and Oliver Cromwell. Augustine's rebuke is, however, the reason that apocalyptic visions figure more prominently in the Protestant mindset than the Catholic one, and why much of today's preoccupation with the end times and the Second Coming finds a more receptive home in Protestant hearts.

So it is perhaps no surprise that the United States, with its heavily Protestant population, would provide particularly fertile ground for all kinds of messianic fervor, and for what Dr. Wessinger calls "catastrophic millennialism"—the belief that the transition to a millennial kingdom will occur through a kind of apocalyptic event. Indeed, from Reagan's Interior Secretary James Watts's famous statement that conservation wasn't necessary because he didn't know how many generations we had "until the Lord returns" to Hal Lindsey's near-legendary seventies bestseller, The Late Great Planet Earth, Americans have continued to show an unexpected appetite for end times theology. The Late Great Planet Earth's original print run was for a few thousand copies. Thirty-five million later, Lindsey is still going strong. And that figure would be even more impressive if it weren't for that new kid on the block, the Left Behind series, which, at this point, is practically an industry in itself. Somebody, it seems, really believes not only that Christ is coming but that He is coming soon.

It is not only traditional religions that are driving this phenomenon. Even in the ever-optimistic love-and-light doctrines of the New Age, reading between the lines can be a little frightening. "I believe that a time of tribulation occurs whenever there's a great shift in consciousness," says Gordon-Michael Scallion, one of the most respected psychics/futurists on the circuit these days. In what has to be one of the strangest pairings of philosophical opposites since James Carville and Mary Matalin, some New Age voices are beginning to sound more and more like Christian fundamentalists with their talk of Earth changes and planetary shifts. Indeed, Scallion, who made his reputation accurately predicting several earthquakes, sounds almost like a fundamentalist preacher when he says, "We can look throughout the world and see that there have been specific predictions of certain signs that would indicate that the world is either going to be destroyed or going to be reborn. And these predictions have told us that various messengers and masters would come and help prepare the way. At the same time, there will be the 'anti-' of those people and there will be great battles. And when these battles are through, there will be a new earth born and, as a result, enlightenment for the planet. So these conditions are being met now. They're being fulfilled." As outlandish as it may seem, it is a statement that merely fleshes out the core doctrine of almost every religion in the world—the one difference being the specificity of Scallion's timing. But what makes him, and so many others, convinced that the moment is now? Is there really anything objective about this time in history that would lead us to the conclusion that a messiah, any messiah, is actually on his or her way?