Anyone who knows me knows I take a dim view of millenialism (i.e. the belief that we are “living in the end times” and the world will soon come to an end in accordance with ancient prophecies). I think it’s illogical and often dangerous. Mind you, I am one of those heathen unbeliever types, so my opinion on the matter may not mean much, but I also think it’s lousy theology. Countless people have made titanic jackasses of themselves straining to make the words of the biblical Book of Revelations and similar mystical parts of the Bible (or the Koran) seem like they fit modern events–and it’s been going on for thousands of years.
It seems like at least once a generation there’s some fool or other who finds some way to take various world events and say “See! This fits the prophecies!” Which is pretty easy to do if you’ve got a lot of vague words and symbolism that are wide open to interpretation (see all the Nostradamus foolishness as a case in point). There are people who’ve literally turned their whole lives upside down only to be crushed when the expected millenium never came to pass.
Besides, isn’t it one thing to believe in prophecy, and entirely another to intentionally attempt to engineer its fulfillment?
I thought of that recently when re-reading this 2002 piece on people in Israel attempting to raise a pure red calf. I mean, isn’t this sort of thing dangerous? Wouldn’t most people even consider it a little sacreligious, an attempt to make themselves the instruments of God’s will instead of allowing God’s will to be expressed on its own?
I do find myself wondering though: that calf would be three years old now. Did it sprout some non-red hairs, or what?
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I’m a Christian myself, though I’ve always viewed this sort of thing as of mild interest and no more than that. The Bible specifically says that no one knows or will know when the end will come except The Father Himself.
(I’m sometimes amused by speculating that the way to ensure that the end times won’t come is to predict that they will.)
But it seems to me that Christians ought to be acting as though the world could end at any moment, while at the same time, that it probably won’t happen anytime soon. That way, we are prepared in case it does come, but we don’t just sit out on the curb, looking at the sky and waiting for the heavenly whirlwind to come.
I’m also vaguely offended by the notion that somehow God isn’t able to fulfill His own prophecies without our help.
Amen, sister.
I seem to recall reading an article on the subject in the New Yorker as many as eight years ago or even more. Apparently, these efforts to raise the perfect red heifer have been going on for many years, to no avail (so far).
Maybe it’s one of those impossible tasks, like in the fairy tales, where the thing one is required to do is actually impossible. Perhaps failure is built in. The heifers always seem to develop a few hairy flaws as they age.
I’m sure someone will be using that great, flat built-up table of a foundation to play soccer tournaments or whatever, long before any mashiachs flap their wings, float down from heaven, land there, and do whatever else mashiachs do
Of course, there is no reason someone can’t breed a pure red heifer (with no white hairs whatsoever), butcher it ritually at three years of age, toss a few chops onto a bronze altar, and declare that the end days have come. Whatever that is supposed to mean.
(Actually, the end days around this part of the solar system are sort of predictable. About 5-10 billion years. Whenever the sun’s hydrogen is close to getting fully converted to helium, or whatever happens then. Any closer to the sun than half way to Jupiter, and you won’t live to report what happened.)
But back to the holy of holies. The Israelis ought to have expelled the then relatively small population of Arabs from west of the Jordan river in mid-June 1967. All at once, while the Arabs, the Arabists of the US State Department, the Kremlin, and the rest of the usual crowd tried to figure out which the Arabs had failed again to destroy Israel. Controlling more land and in position to interdict shipping on the Suez Canal, all this would have improved Israel’s position as a military ally of all sort of people. If not the US, they would eventually find other customers. Because we aren’t really going to be hanging around calling shots in the Middle East that much longer, and everybody is coming to realize that.
Believe it or not, expelling all those Arabs probably would have marked the end of the Arab wars against them. Because a total sudden shift in populations is something that is never undone. Ask the eastern woodland indian tribes. Ask the Armenians of eastern Turkey. Ask the Germans of Poland, the Sudeten lands, Jugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, the Baltic states, Danzig, East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia. Ask the Serbs of the former Krajina or of Albania.
But the Israelis were too cowardly to do to the Arabs what the Arabs would do to them in a split second. So fuck ‘em.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I think millenialism is as silly as biblical literalism.
But, since you brought it up Dean, you might find this piece about a man named Vendyl Jones planning to recover the Ark of the Covenant interesting. Weird, and fraught with definite ambiguities and possible deliberate misrepresentations, but very interesting.
My wee wifey’s late foster sister was a proud member of the Religous Right. When she wasn’t attacking Freepers for supporting that liberal, Bush, she was attacking millenialists for heresy.
Matthew 24. Mark 13. These are central to the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels. The Book of Revelation or Apocalypse is one of the most interesting and important, albeit mysterious, books in the New Testament. All of this, the doctrine of the Second Coming of the Christ, the Anti-Christ, the Tribulation, the Rapture, the Last Judgement, Heaven and Hell, are as central to historic Christian theology as are His Incarnation, His Virgin Birth, the Immaculate Conception of His Virgin Mother, His miracles, His Crucifixion, His Resurrection, His Body and Blood in the bread and wine of the Eucharist (Transubstantiation).
I admire and support all of that. I know, I know, modernists want a boring, watered-down “Christianity” with all of those holy and fascinating dogmas eliminated and replaced with a “Social(ist) Gospel”. I’m against that. I’m a reactionary.
I think a Christian should be mindful of End Times prophecy, that we are to watch for the signs, but that we are to live our lives as if Jesus is returning today anyway. So, somehow divining the exact date from Biblical prophecy is kinda pointless in that we’re to assume Jesus is coming back any minute anyway.
With that said, I find End Times prophecy endlessly interesting. But there are those who delve too deeply into it and become more concerned about the end of the world than their own walk with Christ. Walking with Christ is the primary concern of every Christian. Let God worry about the exact date of the Tribulation.
On a final note: I think Israel becoming a nation after 2000 years of non-existance is quite important to prophecy and marks the beginning (or end) of something quite unique in all of human history and isn’t given nearly s much attention as it deserves. Think about it for a second. It’s like me saying there will once again be a Roman nation founded by Romans themselves – or a new Babylonian or Persian nation. That would make no sense. These people no longer exist. Israel, however, remaind a nation in exile and beyond all odd it came together again in our lifetime! How is this not astounding?
All serious religious traditions from antiquity postulate qualities from ancestral tales, myths and texts. The People of the Salmon, the dreamweavers, the aborigines with their knowledge of the Dreamtime, the Ghost Dance religion, the tales of the Raven, even the Inuit have their fabled stories. The point being that myth plays a role both in history and in the history of human consciousness. There is a truth toward which these myths point. The modern western human intellect has: “…no cultural mechanisms for allowing dreams to substantially enter into and shape consciousness.
Ergo, the rationalist relegates such myth to the dustbin of acceptable human thought and substitutes quasi-dogma of its own particular selection. Here is another such tale, the origin of which can be equally relegated:
White Buffalo Calf Woman.
Is it any wonder that the book of Joel proclaims that old men will dream dreams and young men will prophecy ?
Well, it is and it isn’t. Various efforts to recreate past civilizations have happened many times in history. The Kurds would still like their own independent Kurdistan–looks like they’re to be thwarted on that for the foreseeable future, but they’ll be wanting it for a long time. Lithuania was gone for a long time in history, too. Same for some of the Baltic states.
There have been various efforts in history to set up new communities or nations called Israel or Zion, with varying degrees of success.
It is impressive that the Jews kept enough of their religion and sense of identity over 2,000 years to actually want to re-establish an old homeland. It’s impressive that one people kept its faith for so long.
Kevin D.:
Yes, it is astounding that Israel, the Jewish people, has survived, kept its faith, and finally is prevailing after all these millennia, especially after so much persecution, even to the Holocaust. The Jews are truly a Chosen People.
McKiernan:
Profound. Thank you. You are absolutely right. Myth is the language though which the Divine speaks to us. It is infinitely more true than rationalism or positivism.
But how many modern peoples can trace their lineage back through time 4000+ years and lay claim to a piece of land that they currently possess? A piece of land taken from them by every great empire of history only for them to reclaim 2000 years after its final dectruction? What may be going on with the Kurds, Lithuania or Baltic states doesn’t even compare to these series of events. The only thing that could compare to it is if some group of people claim to descend from the ancient Babylonians, retianed the Babylonian culture, laws and religious heritage all this time and somehow setup shop where the Babylonian empire once stood. If that happened then we’d have something to compare against.
I’ve tried to get the who “rationalism” thing but I simply can’t. I’ve tried reading Ayn Rand’s “Atlus Shrugged” but the characters seemed like complete assholes. Nevermind the fact that I think the writing itself is bland and dry. If rationalism = asshole keep me out of it.
Kevin D.:
Don’t read Atlas Shrugged if you don’t enjoy it. It’s not an assignment, you’re not being tested or graded on it, and nobody here will think any the less of you if you don’t read it. It’s way too long unless you have all the time in the world and nothing else you’d rather be reading or doing. It’s probably not the best place to begin reading Rand in the first place, and I don’t expect anybody but Arnold Harris and myself to read her at all anyway. I don’t expect you to read Spengler either.
Well, you did suggest Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton and I’m having a ball with it. I’m also going to check out Robert Farrar Capon, as you suggested as well.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Producing a red heifer doesn’t mean the end of times have come. Some will see it that way, but I don’t know if the people involved share that view. It’s something with it’s own value, and not necessarily different than other objects used in rituals.
Similarly, a Jewish state is also associated with messianic times, and some have opposed the state of Israel because of that. But most Jews feel that a Jewish state is in itself a nice thing to have even if God doesn’t send the Messiah along with it. Also, while the red heifer MIGHT produce strong religious feelings that will cause problems in the middle east, the state of Israel already HAS, and will continue to do so.
Myths certainly serve a useful purpose, though today we perhaps rely on them less than earlier times. But they remain myths, no matter their utility; and yes, they still can be useful.
But seeking to regenerate fallen civilizations is not limited to the Middle East. All across western Europe, various “ethnic” groups are trying to recreate what once was–even if that “once” is blown up into miraculous realms of good and plenty.
The Irish have done a pretty good job–as have the Welsh–in rebuilding a language and culture base that had been well-pounded by the British. Their languages are now taught in their schools and broadcast over TV and radio. There’s been a huge regrowth of Scottish culture, too, with the Scottish National Party being exactly that: promoting Scottish language and culture to the exclusion of English.
Similar efforts, to lesser effect, are found in Cornwall, Brittany and various Langue d’Oc and Langue d’Oil regions of France. Then there are the Basques, of course, with their mixture of terror and politics. There are also national movements rife in Central Asia and Central Europe, seeking to reclaim what was lost under the USSR’s domination. Chechnya anyone?
Latin America has seen similar movements–Chiapas, for example–and India has all sorts of tribal groups seeking to reestablish themselves as some sort of power, referring back to periods before the Mugal invasions, even before the Aryan invasions. Oh, and then there’s Tibet, and other regions of what is now China. Even in North Africa, Berber movements are trying to assert themselves over or in parity with the Arab invasions of the 7th C.
They all rely on histories of various qualities, largly admixed with myth. But seeking the “Golden Age” is at least as old as Plato, though the Hindus move it back a few million years.
I strongly recommend The Ghost Dance: The Origins of Religion by Weston LaBarre. The book is a bit dated in that it relies upon a Feudian framework to carry a lot of its argument, but that can be read through; it doesn’t obviate the points he’s making.
If you’ve an interest in religions, in myths, and how they influence each other, you really do need to read this book. It’s out of print, but available through online book dealers other than Amazon and Barnes &Noble.
Kevin D.:
“Well, you did suggest Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton and I’m having a ball with it. I’m also going to check out Robert Farrar Capon, as you suggested as well.
Thanks for the suggestions.”
Good! Enjoy!
We need a favorite books thread! When do we want it? NOW!(the crowd of demonstraters waves their placards and shouts).
No, not really. If one is a believer, then it makes sense to that person that God would choose to work through them. I’m not a Christian, but I am a Deist, and I firmly believe that the United States is the sword of God, and he uses us to set the world right.
As far as prophesy goes, what is the alternative? Don’t do something because it has been foretold? That flies in the face of believing in a prophecy in the first place. “The prophecy was fulfilled despite my best efforts” is the motto of the unbeliever, not the believer.
America is the sword of God. “Praise the Power* that hath made and preseerved us a nation….”
(*in my theology, the Holy Trinity and the Queen of Heaven)
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