This essay began by questioning whether the book of Revelation was the sole source for the rich apocalyptic legacy in Western Christendom. It is, according to this essay, no doubt a tour de force in that history. Yet the history also reveals that Western Christians have had an ambivalent relationship with Revelation. The post-Augustinian shift from historical to spiritual readings is demonstrative of that point. That shift was, like Matthew and Luke’s appropriation of Mark, a domestication of the apocalyptic tradition. And from roughly that point in history, Christians have both foregrounded and retreated from that position based on our interpretive agendas. The biblical tradition and the interpretive legacy have embedded within them both potentialities, for historicizing or for spiritualizing readings, and we are their inheritors.
With this inheritance comes great responsibility. History shows how easy it is for those enthusiastic for a final, definitive ending to risk actions that bring about lesser, still devastating ends. Today, however, more is at stake than the welfare of the members of an apocalyptic group. Apocalyptic scripts and a highly weaponized world make for a volatile mixture. As Catherine Wessinger observes, for example,
In the 1980s Americans learned that President Reagan (Republican, served 1981–1989) had been influenced by [Hal] Lindsey’s predictions about the roles of Israel and nuclear war in the final events. Throughout the Reagan administration Americans who did not believe in these apocalyptic prophecies contemplated the danger of having a Dispensationalist President as commander of the American nuclear arsenal. (Wessinger, 428; cf. Boyer, 140–43)
Apocalyptic scripts also make it much too easy to separate the world into sheep and goats, “axes of evil” and “elect nations”—perpetually seeking to identify antichrists for destruction. For example, George W. Bush’s war on terror was often framed in the totalizing language of good versus evil. Again, Wessinger notes that the Bush administration’s response to the attacks of 9/11 by Islamic jihadists was an act of “apocalyptic mirroring” (see Rosenfeld) in which “the radical dualism of the Bush administration matched that of jihadists, and Bush’s apocalyptic war rhetoric mirrored that of bin Laden and colleagues” (Wessinger, 436). In a speech delivered on September 14, 2011, Bush declared that it was America’s responsibility “to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil” (italics added; see Räisänen, 155). It should also be noted that the lyrics of hymns such as “Onward Christian Soldiers” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”—the musical selections for the Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the victims of 9/11 on September 14, 2001—reflect the anticipation of some fully to participate in the apocalypse on their time rather than God’s. But all such appropriations are irrational and zealous impositions on the biblical texts—all of the texts we have identified as apocalyptic within the Christian canon (Jewett).
Perhaps it is our role as scholars, theologians, ministers, priests, and simply as rational human beings to remind those in our midst of the consequences of such human impositions on our sacred texts. The models of Jonestown, the Branch Davidians, and Heaven’s Gate are just a few examples of the potential for disaster when we set the apocalyptic clock on our time. One could readily add other events and groups to an ever-expanding list (e.g., the Manson Family, Aum Shinrikyo, and the Solar Temple). Against the reflex to expedite the apocalyptic clock, we would do well to heed what the biblical texts actually have to say about the time frame of the end; for example, Jesus’ words in Mark 13:32: “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” What is most tragic, however, is that our self-imposed acceleration of the apocalyptic clock has also accelerated the dangers of which the seer John issues an awesome warning against anyone who adds to his prophecy.
I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this scroll: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this scroll. And if anyone takes words away from this scroll of prophecy, God will take away from that person any share in the tree of life and in the Holy City, which are described in this scroll. (Rev. 22:18–19)
The reflex to accelerate an apocalyptic schedule has actualized the calamities of which John warns. With or without explicit appeal to apocalyptic texts, the effort to determine the course of history through force has already begun to inflict plagues of biblical proportions on our world: the plague of war, the plague of famine, the plague of disease, the plague of a deteriorating ecosystem, and the plague of abject poverty are just a few prime examples. The time has come to stop and recognize the gravity, both explicit and implicit, of the scriptural inheritances that inform our apocalyptic legacy. Only then will we be able to begin to neutralize it.