Apocalypse (Then and) Now

This week Time magazine examines the best-selling book series Left Behind not as a sign of the world’s end, but of apocalypse hysteria. Time writer Nancy Gibbs interviewed people who might best be described as end times activists. They are quitting their jobs and becoming politically involved. They are pointing to earthquakes, floods, crime, the economy and the September 11 attacks as signs that the end is near. They are running websites like raptureready.com, keeping an eye on the End Times Index. And they’re reading Left Behind.

Initially offered to a pre-Y2K American audience, Left Behind has sold 7 million copies. The novel has grown into a series of books dramatizing the Bible’s Book of Revelation. The series has spawned a film, an audio dramatization, a “worship CD” and various chatroom communities. In an interview with Time, Left Behind reader Deborah Vargas says that reading Left Behind "was almost (like reading) a message right out of the Bible...Something within me started to change...I want to talk about it all the time.” Her enthusiasm echoes that of a new convert.

Now the Left Behind community anticipates the 10th book, The Remnant. Two months before its release, 2.4 million copies of The Remnant have been pre-ordered. Writes Time magazine’s Nancy Gibbs, “The biggest book of the summer is about the end of the world. It’s also a sign of our troubled times.”

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It was about two thousand years ago that St. John recorded his visions in a work that would become the last book of the Bible, Revelation. In John’s revelation, he foresees dramatic global events as the signals of the end of time. At the dawn of the second millenium, having heard of John’s visions and having observed some of the events John described as signs of the end, people gathered on high places to watch. More recently, the planet’s passage through the tail of Halley’s Comet in 1910, the Great War, the 1948 creation of an Israeli state and Y2K have all seen groups of people gathering, watching world events, convinced that the end had come.

Certainly, the times John describes as harbingers of the last days are troubled times. And certainly, the times in which we live are also troubled. But when, in the history of the world, have times not been troubled? We seem to suffer the same distortion as people in most eras, thinking that our time is unique in its tribulations. Meditating on our tendency, Annie Dillard writes,

Is it not late? A late time to be living? Are not our generations the crucial ones? For we have changed the world. Are not our heightened times the important ones? For we have nuclear bombs. Are we not especially significant because our century is?—our century and its unique Holocaust, its refugee populations, its serial totalitarian exterminations; our century and its antibiotics, silicon chips, men on the moon, and spliced genes? No we are not and it is not. These times of ours are ordinary times, a slice of life like any other. Who can bear to hear this, or who will consider it? Though perhaps we are the last generation—now there’s a comfort. Take the bomb threat away and what are we? Ordinary beads on a never-ending string. Our time is a routine twist of an improbable yarn.

Revelation belongs to a literary type, one common in the Jewish writings between 200 B.C. and 100 A.D. As apocalyptic literature, John’s visions have roots in Hebrew prophecy, seeking to comfort and encourage (not terrorize) people who were already well aware of the pain and terror caused by wars and natural disasters. The visions, the numbers, the symbols all ultimately point toward an ending of exile and a beginning of permanent communion with God. A complete story, really, told through vivid imagery.

Perhaps it is time to simply read Revelation, this time with a literary awareness rather than a modernist mindset. Maybe it’s time to put down the calculators and set aside the End Times Index. Mark writes that Jesus told his followers, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven...” Unfortunately, No One Knows doesn’t sound like a bestseller.