By Bill Leonard
“But one thing remains to be proved. When did the 2,300 years begin?… Let us begin it where the angel told us, from the going forth of the decree to build the walls of Jerusalem in troublous times, 457 years before Christ; take 457 from 2,300 [Daniel 4:18], and it will leave A.D. 1843.”
From such intricate mathematics, Baptist preacher William Miller wrote Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ about the Year 1843. “I think no one can doubt it,” he said. Yet Jesus tarried, and the “Millerites” — a substantial group of 19th century Protestants — experienced the “First Great Disappointment.” Miller recalculated a more specific date, Oct. 22, 1844, a “Second Great Disappointment” that produced new interpretations and the beginning of Adventism, a movement that birthed several new denominations.
Now a group led by Family Radio network founder, Harold Camping (age 89) predicts that the Great Judgment will occur on May 21, 2011. Camping’s initial computations led him to identify 1994 as the end time; mistakes he insists have now been corrected by cleaner math and special revelation. The Rapture will occur on May 21, lifting Christians out of this world, leaving those who remain to endure Tribulation.
This is nothing new. Jews and Christians have speculated for at least 3,000 years on when the world would end and how to get ready. From Daniel to Revelation, predictions abound, interpreted literally, figuratively, allegorically or incidentally by innumerable individuals and religious communities.
Jesus himself spoke often of the immediacy of the Kingdom and his disciples thought it near enough to demand the best seats. In the earliest New Testament epistle (52 C.E.) Paul warns the Thessalonians not to be led astray by idle speculations: “About dates and times, my friends we need not write to you, for you know perfectly well that the Day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night. While they are talking of peace and security, all at once calamity is upon them, sudden as the pangs that come upon a woman with child; and there will be no escape” (1 Thess. 5:1-3 NEB).
Yet Paul cannot resist a prediction of his own, that “the Lord himself will descend from heaven; first the Christian dead will rise, then we who are left alive shall join them, caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord. Console one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:15-18 NEB).
When some eschatologically obsessed folks stopped working Paul added the pithy admonition: “anyone who will not work, shall not eat” (2 Thess. 3:10 REB). Let that be a lesson.
Then there is the Anti-Christ, Revelation’s mysterious and fearful figure, whose candidates appear throughout history and include the Emperor Nero, assorted popes, Martin Luther, Henry VIII, Ann Hutchinson, General Sherman, Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., the Clintons, the late Osama Bin Laden and maybe even Aerosmith’s Stephen Tyler (“American Idol”). You have to stand in line to be the Anti-Christ.
Millennial theories abound. Preachers such as Jonathan Edwards and Charles G. Finney were postmillennialists who believed that Jesus would return after a thousand years of spiritual and social renewal nurtured by a revived church. Later revivalists like Dwight L. Moody and Billy Graham turned to premillennialism, the idea that Jesus will return before his thousand-year earthly reign including the Rapture of true believers, a Great Tribulation, and Satan’s ultimate defeat at Armageddon. Historicist premillennialists reject pretribulation rapture while books like Left Behind promote a dispensational approach to the “times and seasons” but with differences regarding Rapture before, during or after the Great Tribulation. Amillennialists suggest that millennial language is merely symbolic, not literal. The church prepares the way for Christ’s ultimate return.
Shaker millennialists declared that the second coming occurred in Mother Ann Lee, the female reflection of the male/female nature of God. John Humphrey Noyes founded the Oneida Community on the belief that Christ returned at the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E., a reality long overlooked by the church. Mormons assert that Jesus will return to America, in the vicinity of Independence, Mo.
Thomas Merton, monk and mystic, uniting time and eternity inseparably, wrote in The Sign of Jonas: “But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question. Eternity is in the present. Eternity is in the palm of the hand. Eternity is a seed of fire, whose sudden roots break barriers that keep my heart from being an abyss. The things of time are in connivance with eternity.”
For now, let’s keep last things last. The end will come, for individuals and ultimately for the entire enterprise, but perhaps the answers lie, not in escapist theories, but with dying whales, vanishing forests, polluted water and rising ozone, “the fire next time.” We recalculate yet another “Great Disappointment,” but refuse to listen to what the world and its non-human inhabitants are telling us. We hope for “peace and security,” plotting our escape as the planet cries in pain, edging toward its own end.
So if there is an ounce of Jesus in any of us, let’s opt out of the Rapture and stay right here to the bitter end, because there is still justice to be done and too much good to be accomplished to forsake this world, even in Jesus’ name. For Jesus’ sake let’s stay behind, loving God with all our hearts, and if we can muster it, loving our neighbors as ourselves. What Rapture!