a letter to my aunt (on rapture, the Beast and the not yet)
Part of the inspiration for blogging came from the random questions that sometimes find their way to my e-mail box. the following was my response to my great-aunt Ruth upon receiving a lengthy forward asking whether or not bio-chips were the Mark of the Beast. You might already know this stuff, but Jen said I should post it in case anyone's looking for a clear way to talk about the "End".
Good Morning Aunt Ruth!
It's good to hear from you! Well, clearly whoever wrote this article spent a LOT of time on it. I can't respond to everything mentioned in there, but I'll tell you some things I've learned. I took a few classes on Apocalyptic Literature (Revelation, Jude, parts of 2 Peter, 1-2 Thessalonians, etc). These may/may not be things you've heard and I don't expect you to buy them all, because in truth, I'm not sure about all of it--research of ancient cultures is still a lot of educated guesswork, so that being said, please don't feel like you (or anyone) has to swallow all this. It's just what I've learned over the last 7 years and it does muddy the water a bit.
All of the books of the Bible were written, under the inspiration of God, by people writing to a certain group of other people in a specific context. The Gospels are good examples of this--each of the four has a different "target" audience, and although they share similar information, they present it in a unique way--Matthew is written to a Jewish audience, so it relies heavily on Old Testament prophecy (over 60 references!), Luke is written to an affluent Gentile audience so it really focuses on Jesus' relation to the poor and marginalized, particularly women, Mark is composed under extreme persecution, John is written to a group of Gentile converts from Greek philosophy--you get the idea. Paul's letters do the same thing, addressing specific problems of each church.
Revelation, therefore, is written from the island of Patmos, where historical records (Josephus, etc) tell us the Roman Emperor Domitian exiled John, the "Beloved Disciple" and leader of the church at Ephesus. John has a series of "visions" which he records in Revelation and passes back to the people at Ephesus.
Domitian was a particularly vile and arrogant emperor who demanded the worship of the people. He instituted an early forerunner of the Olympic games and called them the "Domitian games". He built a large coliseum near Ephesus to support the games, complete with seven gates and seven large lampstands, one by each gate. He also ordered that a crowd of 24 eunuchs follow him to all public events, wearing white robes and gold wreaths on their heads. They were told to sing "Worthy is Caesar, and most worthy to be praised!" at the whim of Domitian.
More than that, though, Domitian ruthlessly oppressed the people, particularly Jews and Christians. He demanded allegiance to himself--that everyone must declare "Caesar is Lord".
Other emperors had required this before Domitian, as emperor worship was common. Paul's letters to the church at Phillipi, Corinth and Colossians are full of anti-empire speech. As renowned evangelical scholar N.T. Wright puts it, "The central confession of Paul's letters is 'Jesus is Lord', which is also saying implicitly, 'and Caesar is NOT'."
Other emperors had required this before Domitian, as emperor worship was common. Paul's letters to the church at Phillipi, Corinth and Colossians are full of anti-empire speech. As renowned evangelical scholar N.T. Wright puts it, "The central confession of Paul's letters is 'Jesus is Lord', which is also saying implicitly, 'and Caesar is NOT'."
The economy shifted under Domitian and the currency of the Empire collapsed. There was panic in the Agora, the famed Roman marketplace. Domitian required all people who were buying and selling goods--household goods, fruit, meat and fish, oil, everything--to buy a special permit, which was a certain kind of crude tattoo affixed to the forehead or the right hand. All they had to do to receive the mark was say "Caesar is Lord". Christians loathed the tyrant Domitian, but could not dare to profane his name publicly or in correspondence, lest they be killed. As school children might develop a nickname for a hated teacher while passing notes, the early Christians called Domitian simply "the Beast."
With this new economic policy then, the central question for a Christian was "Will I take the mark of 'the Beast'?" If you didn't, you couldn't sell your goods--you couldn't ply your trade, you couldn't feed your family. The early church was conflicted--should we take it and cross our fingers, so God will know our allegiance is to Christ, or should we resist? And there were disagreements and the Church was starting to splinter
And when John spoke out publicly against Domitian, he was exiled to an island, where he has this triumphant vision where God asserts his power once and for all over the forces and rulers of this world. Where the seven-headed beast (Rome had seven hills) with it's twelve horns (Domitian installed 12 statues of himself in his coliseum.) meets his demise at a triumphant Christ on horseback and in glory. The choir of 24 men doesn't follow round Domitian, singing his praises, but sings to the only King--the King of Kings--Jesus, the slaughtered Lamb. Eusebius, one of the early "church fathers" tells us much of this.
If we know all this to be true, we then have to think about the implications for Revelation as a book of prophecy--that which will be, sometime, somewhere in time.
Part of the reason people tend to think of Revelation in this way doesn't go back as far as you might think. In the 1820's a young British preacher who was preparing to go to the U.S. and preach to the expanding Midwest in the Second Great Awakening wandered into a "Camp Meeting" on the outskirts of London. Camp Meetings were the forerunner of Pentecostalism in Britain, and it was not uncommon for people to share visions and dreams they had of Christ, or God giving them a special message. An eight-year old girl came forward and said she had had a dream where she saw people flying through the air, from the earth, to meet Jesus in the clouds. The evangelist, inspired by this girl said "Exactly! That's exactly what the Apostle Paul said in 1 Thessalonians--"Surely we will be caught up in the air to meet him!"
The young preacher was named John Nelson Darby and he was taken by this idea. He started studying the Scriptures, but access to the New Testament Greek was not easily had in the 1800's. He looked to Jerome's Latin translation, the Vulgate and found that the word Jerome used there was "Rapturo", which means "to be caught up". As Darby came to the states--Kansas and the expanding West, he began teaching a doctrine called "the rapture". As he read Scripture, he became convinced that the rapture of 1 Thessalonians would occur before the 1,000 year reign of Christ described in Revelation.
He attempted to look of the Bible and time chronologically and said that God had revealed himself in different ways at different times--the vengeful God of the Old Testament was the reign of God the Father, the time of Jesus was the first revelation of Christ, then the reign of the Spirit, but the "End" would begin with the return of Christ. He called these "dispensations" and there was a whole group of people who began to follow these teachings, including a man named Cyrus Scofield.
Scofield was upset that the people being converted on the expanding frontier didn't have a Bible to study for themselves, but he was also concerned that people might not know how to understand difficult passages of the Bible, like Revelation and other apocalyptic literature. He eventually produced the Scofield Study Bible, which was the first annotated Study Bible in history. It caught on like wildfire in the expanding West and millions of copies were sold. It was even used by a group of evangelical frontier scholars who decided to start a theological school in Dallas, Texas that would eventually become Dallas Theological Seminary. The doctrine, called "pre-millenial dispensation" was forever rooted in American Christianity.
From then until now, there have been debates about whether you're a "pre", "post", or "a" millienialist. In reality, these are nuanced clarifications of a theological belief that is only 170 years old. Evangelical believers in Britain and abroad don't adhere to this belief and are fascinated by our obsession with it, from the dispensationalist charts (John Hagee and others use, but they're based on a chart created in the 1860's) all the hugely successful "Left Behind" series. Of course, apocalyptic "prophecy" was amplified in the latter half of the last century, as we came towards the new millennium and many though the end was approaching.
In church history, there are always some movements that believe the Apocalypse is near, from the end of the first century, to the Middle Ages to Y2K, but none of those earlier movements had the elaborate projection or reading of "the End times" that premillenial dispensation has given us.
I think the hardest thing for folks to realize is what the Scripture does and doesn't say. Yes, Revelation speaks of an 'Anti-Christ', a charming character who deceives millions, but Paul speaks of 'anti-Christs' in 2 Thessalonians--as if there are many, not one. Jude speaks of hundreds of anti-christs going into the world, and 1 John goes the farthest when it says "many anti-christs have already come" and then goes on to talk about people who went out from them but were led astray--he calls them all anti-christs!
The books of the New Testament do not present a cohesive picture of "the End". They present it in different ways, trying to articulate it in words people can understand, but they don't all line up a certain way. They all point to a common hope, even to a point of vindication and to the eventual return (the technical term is 'parousia' in the Greek) of Christ, but they tend to use the language of Resurrection, not rapture. I clearly believe something will happen and that we are working towards and end. Jesus talks about this in the Gospels and I believe in the return of Christ.
Many things are still a bit fuzzy--though Revelation has the great "White Throne of Judgment" and the second death, Jesus says nothing of these things, nor does Paul. In fact, the only time Jesus mentions judgment is in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, who are separated by how they treated the "least of these", not on whether they prayed a prayer, walked an aisle, tithed or won souls.
To put it clearly, I don't know how it all plays out, and frankly, I'm quite alright with that. The New Testament is full of words of wisdom and expectation. Jesus' own teachings on the kingdom were full of the same thing. Scholars have called it the "already-not yet" tension. We are part of something, here on Earth, as followers of Christ--this is what Jesus was getting at when he said in Luke "The kingdom of God is among you.", but there is a "not-yet"--the sense of longing in our hearts put there by our Creator. Ecclesiastes says "God put eternity in the hearts of mankind".
To answer this e-mail directly, no, I don't believe microchips are the Mark of the Beast. Previous generations have thought everything from the 1's a 0's of computer programming to UPC barcoding was the Mark. I think these have become oddities of our religious life that have created a sort of new mythology where we attempt to judge the time and date, and the one thing that is consistent in the New Testament is that "no man knows the date or the time". If I'm taking Jesus seriously about the criteria for judgment (caring for the least of these) I think I'd better be more about that then trying to read supposed signs, but, admittedly, I'm still working this thing out myself.
Take care Aunt Ruth--it's good to hear from you!
Trey
