The Book of Revelation and the Explicit Legacy of Christian Apocalypticism

Acknowledgment of the comprehensive influence of the book of Revelation on the Western Christian imagination goes unchallenged even with attempts by some denominations to altogether suppress it. It is, according to both form and content, the only true apocalypse in the New Testament (Collins 1979, 9; see the commentary on Revelation). Its rich imagery, full of beasts, martyrs, heavenly interlocutors, plagues, mysterious gematria, natural disasters, whores, and a great descending city is almost too much for the senses to comprehend, yet simultaneously hypersensual enough to draw even the casual reader into a hypnotic state of attention. It is like the car wreck on the highway that simultaneously repels and irresistibly attracts at least a momentary gaze as we cautiously pass by. It has been the source of Christian apocalyptic ambivalence and anxiety for the last two millennia. A summary of that interpretive history will bear out the alternating rhythm described above, in which our collective traditions have tried to come to terms with the last entry in the New Testament.

The apocalyptic legacy of the book of Revelation began early in the second century of the Common Era. According to Robert M. Royalty Jr. and Arthur W. Wainwright, proto-orthodox Christians like Justin Martyr (c. 100‒165) and Irenaeus (c. 130‒200) represented an interpretive position known as chiliasm (i.e., millenarian, from the Greek chilia, “thousand”). Chiliasm, which represented a literal interpretation of the book of Revelation, was theologically “mainstream” in the early second century. This position is best defined as the theological system that “believed literally in the thousand-year reign of the saints in Rev. 20:4 and the actual, physical new Jerusalem in Rev. 21‒22” (Royalty, 285). Wainwright argues that “the chiliasts lived in an age of persecution. It was for such an age that they believed the Apocalypse was written.… During this period Chiliasm provided an antidote to the fear of persecution. When people are oppressed, they find consolation in dreams of a better life and focus their anger on the institutions and leaders that threaten them” (Wainwright, 22). Thus Wainwright makes the interpretive assumption that the Apocalypse functioned as a rhetorical call for endurance during times of persecution.

One of the first challenges to literal chiliastic readings of the book of Revelation came from Phrygia in Asia Minor. The “New Prophecy” (c. 150‒175), or Montanism (as it was called by its opponents), was founded by Montanus, Prisca, and Maximilla. According to the New Prophecy, the new kingdom would be inaugurated by Christ—but in Pepuza, the geographical epicenter of the New Prophecy movement, and not Jerusalem. The New Prophecy thus challenged “normative” chiliastic expectations through a very selective literal approach to the text by its protagonists (including Tertullian, c. 160‒220).

The chiliastic certainty of the of the mid-second century was also countered by emerging late second-century and early third-century allegorical interpretations of the book of Revelation forwarded by the likes of Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria (third century), Clement of Alexandria (c. 150‒215), and Origen (c. 185‒254). These allegorical readings came to full fruition under Augustine of Hippo (ca. 354‒430), who himself was first a proponent of chiliasm until his “eschatological conversion” later in his career. Dionysius, Clement, and Origen began to challenge aspects of chiliasm, especially the literal interpretation of the new Jerusalem as a physical and earthly place where “the redeemed would eat, drink, marry, have children, and exercise dominion over other people” (Origen, De princ. 2.11.2–3). Thus the early challenges to the literal interpretations focused primarily on the location of the new Jerusalem (New Prophecy) and its physical nature, as depicted in Revelation 21‒22. These challenges were just enough to begin to dislodge the mainstream chiliastic interpretations that nevertheless prevailed until the reign of Constantine, in the fourth century of the Common Era. That is a fascinatingly long tenure for literal apocalyptic musings. In some ways, the first three centuries of the Christian era mirror the apocalyptic tension that existed in the now emerging canon, representing both movements with apocalyptic sensibilities and those that countered them. Our ambivalence regarding apocalypticism and the variety of divergent interpretive possibilities were beginning to take shape in these earliest Christian centuries.

It could be argued, if one follows the logic of Wainwright, that the fourth century, with the shift in Rome’s relationship to Christianity from one of indifference to persecution, then to tolerance and ultimately acceptance, also marked a shift in the Christian rhetorical posture toward apocalyptic literature in general, and the book of Revelation in particular. Violently imaginative and passive-aggressive fantasies of revenge of the Apocalypse were no longer necessary with Christianity’s new and prominent relationship to the empire. This was especially the case after 381, when Emperor Theodosius endorsed orthodox Nicene Christianity over Christian Arianism and banned all pagan religious ritual. What was once peripheral was now central, and the Christian relationship to its apocalyptic legacy needed to be reevaluated. On this matter, Royalty notes, “after the Roman emperors moved from tolerance to acceptance and promotion of orthodox Christianity, millenarian views were even more strongly challenged. No imperial ruler, political or ecclesiastical, eagerly anticipated the destruction of the empire they now controlled” (Royalty, 286).

The influence of Augustine’s allegorical reading of the Apocalypse was comprehensive and dominated orthodox circles from the fifth through thirteenth centuries of the Common Era. Perhaps the greatest challenge to traditional readings of the Apocalypse was Augustine’s hesitance in speculating about the date of the end. Recall that Aune’s working definition of apocalypse (see above) identified one of the key elements of literal apocalyptic readings as the expectation of the imminent end. This was not the case for Augustine, however, and in essence, by his very hesitation, he lowered the expectation of what is probably the most important aspect of apocalyptic eschatology: imminence. To challenge literal chiliastic views on the imminent apocalypse, derived from Revelation 20,

Augustine offered two key interpretive points in the City of God, Book 20. First, the thousand year period is symbolic of “the whole duration of the world,” the earthly fullness of time. Thus Augustine tried to put an end to speculations about dates and times for this millennium to start and end, a point for which he had plenty of biblical proof texts. Second, this symbolic millennium has already begun in the time of the church for that is what binds Satan until the final end.… And as for the final, final end, do not count the days, for the thousand year period is symbolic. (Royalty, 286–87)

Thus, with one powerful, stunning theological gesture, Augustine succeeded in shifting the emphasis from literal readings of the apocalypse to spiritual and nonmillennial readings that would last through the thirteenth century—until a Calabrian abbot named Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135‒1202) would once again shift our relationship and understanding of the Apocalypse.

In contrast to Augustine’s symbolic reading of the Apocalypse, Joachim of Fiore insisted on what he believed was a historical reading of the text. Joachim alleged that the persecution of Christians in his lifetime was evidence that the signs predicted in the book of Revelation were being realized. Thus Joachim countered the allegorized reading promoted by Augustine by renewing a historicized reading of the Apocalypse similar to those first endorsed by Justin and Irenaeus. After his spiritual conversion and time spent in the Holy Land on pilgrimage, Joachim returned to Calabria and became a recluse, devoting his study and prayer time to deciphering the book of Revelation. Completely frustrated with his attempt to come to terms with the text, he reported that upon awakening one Easter morning, the meaning of the Apocalypse was revealed to him. Thus, unlike Augustine, Joachim is best understood—like John of Patmos—as an apocalyptic seer.

Joachim’s primary contribution as a mystical seer was formulating a system (concordia) that divided human history into three historical epochs or states (status in Latin). The first status was the period from Adam to Jesus Christ, which Joachim called the period of God the Father, corresponding to the Hebrew Scriptures (and to the layperson’s church). The status from Jesus Christ to 1260 was the period of God the Son and of the Christian Testament (corresponding to the papal church). This was the period in which Joachim himself lived. The third and final status began in 1260 and was the period of the Holy Spirit. This third epoch corresponded to the Friars’ church. This age, according to Joachim, was the age of the new millennial kingdom:

[The third epoch] was to be inaugurated by a new Adam or a new Christ who would be the founder of a new monastic order. The transition between the Papal Church of the second age and the Spiritual Church of the third age would be a time of great troubles during which the period of the Papal Church was to endure all the sufferings that corresponded to Christ’s passion. The Papal Church would be resurrected as the Spiritual Church in which all men would live the contemplative life, practice apostolic poverty, and enjoy angelic natures. To this level Joachim’s ideas were debased and popularized during the thirteenth century by a series of pseudo-Joachimite writings, which probably originated amongst the spiritual Franciscans themselves. St. Francis was identified with the messiah that Joachim prophesied. During the later Middle Ages Joachimism and the Apocalypse preserved their ideological union. (Phelan, 14)

Again, in contrast to Augustine’s more domesticating and spiritual reading of the Apocalypse, Joachim revisited subversive interpretations of the text that were more at home in a historical interpretive framework. On this matter, Royalty notes, “Joachim reenergized historicized and potentially politically subversive readings of the Apocalypse, with one result being ideological challenges to ecclesiological and civil authorities in Europe within some monastic and mendicant religious communities” (Royalty, 289). And like the historicized readings of the first century, Joachim employed the powerful rhetoric of persecution. The echoes of his historicized reading reverberated most prominently from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries in Western Christendom and, in a few select traditions, are palpable even today (Sánchez).

The Protestant Reformation was also not immune from the perduring legacy of the Apocalypse to John. The onetime Roman Catholic German monk Martin Luther (1483‒1546) also had an ambivalent relationship with the book of Revelation. In his early career, Luther remarked,

I miss more than one thing in this book, and this makes me hold it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic … there is one sufficient reason for me not to think highly of it—Christ is neither taught nor known in it. (Luther 1960a, 399)

On a disenchanting trip to Rome, Luther felt betrayed by the “corruption” of the Catholic Church. This initiated an intense search of the Scriptures, which led him to conclude that salvation was a function of his own personal faith rather than derived from any corporate church entity—especially a church that he now found so dismaying. Luther set his own course with the posting of his Ninety-Five Theses in Wittenberg, Saxony, which ultimately led to his excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.

One of the most significant appropriations of the book of Revelation among Protestant Reformers, including Luther, was the equating of the papacy with the beast(s) of the Apocalypse. Wainwright notes that Luther himself promoted “that … the papacy was the beast of the land [Rev. 13:11–18], [and] the empire was the beast of the sea [Rev. 13:1–10]. But the pope, he [i.e., Luther] argued, had control over the empire” (Wainwright, 61). Luther was not the first or the only critic of the papacy who employed negative apocalyptic accusations at Rome: “Some of the sharpest criticism came from Bohemia and England. In Bohemia John Milicz (d. 1374), Mathias of Janow (d. 1394), and John Hus (1369–1415) implied the pope was Antichrist” (Wainwright, 59).

Roman Catholicism in general and the papacy in particular came under a severe Protestant challenge. The need for a swift Catholic response was clear. In some circles, the Catholic response was simply to employ the same apocalyptic polemic against the Protestants. Catholic bishops like Bertold Pürstinger (1463‒1543), bishop of Chiemsee (Germany), “explained that the locusts of the sixth trumpet vision [Rev. 9:13–19] were Lutherans. Serafino da Fermo described Luther as the star falling from heaven [Rev. 9:1] and the beast from the land [Rev. 13:11–18]” (Wainwright, 61).

Two other lines of interpretation employed by Catholics against Protestant antipapal interpretations were futurism, championed by the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Ribera (1537‒1591), and preterism, developed most fully by the Portuguese Jesuit Luis de Alcazar (1554‒1613). “Futurists contended that most of the prophecies in the Apocalypse were still unfulfilled, Preterists argued that most of them had been fulfilled already” (Wainwright, 63). Both methods of interpretation were effective. Futurism was attractive to Catholics, “because it dissociated the pope from Antichrist. It was cogent because it recognized the connection of the beast and the harlot of Rome, although it was a Rome of the future. Futurism challenged both the antipapal interpretation and the assumption that the Apocalypse provided a survey of church history” (Wainwright, 63). Preterism, by arguing that most of the prophecies of the Apocalypse had already been fulfilled, “was congenial to Catholics because it rejected the suggestion that the pope was Antichrist and it gave honor to the Roman Catholic Church” (Wainwright, 63).

One interesting offshoot of the Reformation era was the contemporary emergence of a group known as the Anabaptists. The name Anabaptist was not claimed by the group itself but rather came from other Christian groups opposed to their rejection of infant baptism (a common practice in Roman Catholic circles). The name is derived from the Greek anabaptismos, which is loosely translated as “being baptized (over) again.” The Anabaptists were part of a movement classified today as the Radical Reformation, and it should be noted that both Protestant and Catholics persecuted Anabaptists. Beyond their baptismal practices, Anabaptists rejected organized religious hierarchies in favor of an idealized theocratic state. This ideology led to a faction of their membership occupying the German city of Münster, which they likened to the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21), to await the return of the heavenly Christ. Within the Anabaptist ranks, a Dutch national named Jan Bockelson declared himself the Messiah of the end times, and coins were minted that referenced the imminent apocalypse. The siege of Münster ended violently in 1535.

In the nineteenth century, three religious movements emerged that also took a historical interpretive approach to the Apocalypse. Those groups are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) founded by Joseph Smith (c. 1830) shortly after the publication of the Book of Mormon; the Seventh-Day Adventists (Millerites), founded by William Miller (c. 1833); and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, founded by Charles Russell (c. 1872). These three US-born movements are relevant for the current discussion because all three movements predicted an imminent apocalypse in their initial years, survived those unrealized predictions, and continue to remain with us today. Therefore, all three movements are interesting examples of how to negotiate an evolving apocalyptic expectation.

Latter-Day Saints (LDS) are an interesting example of a religious group that expanded on the Christian canon by including the Book of Mormon, The Pearl of Great Price, and the Doctrine and Covenants as church Scripture. LDS members also accept the prophecies of their church leadership as authoritative. (The head of the LDS Church at any given time in its history is recognized as prophet.) This combination of Scriptures and “[prophetic] pronouncement of their leaders has led them to expect both the rebuilding of Jerusalem in the old world and the erection of the New Jerusalem [Revelation 21] in North America. They look forward to the return of Christ to inaugurate his millennial reign over the earth” (Wainwright, 99). This bifurcated manner of dividing the old and new worlds is consistent with the LDS belief that Jesus Christ also visited the Americas shortly after his resurrection, in the first century CE.

Seventh-Day Adventists, like the earliest apocalyptic Christians, also had to deal with their own version of the delay of the Parousia. Their founder, William Miller, predicted that Christ would return in 1843. When his prophecy was not fulfilled, he changed the date to 1844, but that too was not realized. This unrealized prophecy was cause for the earliest Adventists to reconsider and reconfigure their intense apocalyptic hopes. What does an apocalyptic group do when their dated expectation is not realized? As noted above, these groups can abandon their expectations, they can initiate their own (violent) apocalypse (see below for modern examples of this option), or they can adjust the anticipated date—thereby adjusting their imminent expectation much as Matthew and Luke adjusted the Markan apocalyptic time frame. Such was the case with the Adventists; and the denomination still thrives today, some 170 years after the original apocalyptic prophecy. The rhetorical shift they made was to the notion that “another divine event, invisible to human eyes, had occurred in 1844. Christ, they said, had entered the heavenly sanctuary (Heb. 9:24–28)” (Wainwright, 99; cf. Froom, 889–99).

Note that the domesticating of apocalyptic imminence among Adventists did not sway the denomination away from their allegiance to the Apocalypse itself. Wainwright notes, “In arguing for the observance of Saturday as the holy day, they quoted the statement that those who did not keep God’s commandments have the mark of the beast (Rev. 14:9–12). The Adventist John Nevis Andrews (1829–83) identified the beast from the land with the United States, whose two horns were civil and religious liberty. The beast from the sea and the whore of Babylon represented the papacy” (Wainwright, 99–100). Thus the continued Adventist appropriation of the Apocalypse shifted away from imminent temporal concerns toward an applied cosmological dualism, a trait common in most apocalyptic literature (as expressed, e.g., in the explicit distinction of insiders from outsiders, saved from unsaved, sinners from righteous).

At the forefront of Jehovah’s Witness appropriations of the Apocalypse is their privileging of the 144,000 elect referenced in Revelation 7 and 14. Revelation 7:4–8 reads:

Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel.

From the tribe of Judah, 12,000 were sealed,

from the tribe of Reuben 12,000,

from the tribe of Gad 12,000,

from the tribe of Asher 12,000,

from the tribe of Naphtali 12,000,

from the tribe of Manasseh 12,000,

from the tribe of Simeon 12,000,

from the tribe of Levi, 12,000,

from the tribe of Issachar 12,000,

from the tribe of Zebulun 12,000,

from the tribe of Joseph 12,000,

from the tribe of Benjamin 12,000.

And Rev. 14:1 again refers to the 144,000: “Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.” According to Jehovah’s Witnesses, “the United Nations and the world’s religious leaders will be on Satan’s side in the Battle of Armageddon. Against them will be ranged the 144,000 and the other sheep, but Christ’s heavenly army will actually win the victory, and the only survivors of the battle will be the Jehovah’s Witnesses” (Wainwright, 100). This position is consistent with founder Charles Russell’s original teaching that the 144,000 will constitute the foundation of God’s people during the Christian millennium and will do battle with people marked with the mark of the beast (Wainwright, 100). Again, the acute dualism of this apocalyptic appropriation is evident in this end-time narrative. And like the Adventist Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses have survived the crisis of unrealized apocalyptic prophecy.

Mistaken prophecies have not daunted the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Joseph Franklin Rutherford, who succeeded Russell as their leader, predicted that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and other faithful Israelites would return to earth in 1925. More recent Witnesses have entertained the hope that the millennium might begin about 1975. In spite of the failure of these expectations, the organization continues to thrive. (Wainwright, 101)