Looking back on this succinct review of how the apocalyptic legacy has endured over the Christian centuries, I, for one, am perplexed—yet not surprised—by the apocalyptically saturated culture in which we continue to live today. Over the last several decades, myriad films on the imminent end have been produced. Examples include The Seventh Seal (1958), Fail Safe (1964), Planet of the Apes (1968), The Omega Man (1971), The Omen (1976), Apocalypse Now (1979), Pale Rider (1985), The Seventh Sign (1988), the Terminator series (1984, 1991, 2003, 2009, and possibly a fifth episode in the series in 2015), Independence Day (1996), The Matrix series (1999, 2003, 2003), Apocalypto (2006), Knowing (2009), The Road (2009), The Book of Eli (2010), and The Colony (2013). At best, this is just a small representation of the hundreds of films produced in the recent past on an apocalyptic and catastrophic “end.”
A great deal of apocalyptic music has also emerged over the same period: The End, by the Doors, 1967; Burn, by Deep Purple, 1974; It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine), by R.E.M., 1987; Idioteque, by Radiohead, 2000; When the Man Comes Around, by Johnny Cash, 2002; and Radioactive, by Imagine Dragons, 2013.
From the literary world, one need look no further than Hal Lindsey and Carla C. Carlson’s best-selling The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) and Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins’s sixteen books in the Left Behind series (1995‒2007). Both pairs of authors were greatly influenced by another form of futurism known as dispensationalism, a term coined by British author John Nelson Darby (1800‒1882) that “refers to the idea that all time can be divided into [seven] separate periods known as dispensations. The present dispensation spans the time between the first and second comings of Christ, and the next great dispensation will be the millennium” (Koester, 275). The reading and composition strategy of Lindsey and Carlson was to cut and paste a series of biblical passages to give the reader a comprehensive view of the end-time scenario. According to Craig Koester, “Hal Lindsey’s Late, Great Planet Earth … linked the biblical text used in Darby’s system [esp. Genesis 15; Daniel 9; 1 Thessalonians 4; 2 Thessalonians 2; 1 John 2; and the entirety of Revelation] to current newspaper headlines, giving readers the impression that scripture had predicted the dominant political trends of the Cold War. The Left Behind novels … present Darby’s system through the medium of fiction” (Koester, 275).
Examples of Lindsey and Carlson’s interpretation of current events as correlative of apocalyptic biblical scenarios include, but surely are not limited to examples like these:
The seal visions … predict the outbreak of war in the Middle East.… They tell of economic distress, shortage of food, and the death of a quarter of the human race as a result of these disasters.… The sixth seal vision may describe the beginning of nuclear war, and the trumpet visions may foretell the disasters of that war.… The bowl visions describe the fearful punishment that will be inflicted on those who reject the Christian Gospel. (Wainwright, 84)
Unrealized scenarios, in Lindsey and Carlson’s schema, are considered “still yet to come” rather than failed. Jack Van Impe, a popular apocalyptic and “historical” dispensationalist preacher on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, is another outstanding example of the ongoing hermeneutic tradition initiated by Darby and executed by Lindsey and Carlson. He too postpones unfulfilled prophetic expectations and continues to look to contemporary events as potential signs of imminent fulfillment.
The Left Behind series, as noted above, correlates apocalyptic biblical themes with fictional events (although the narrative can include real-world entities). For example, the first novel
opens against a context of international food shortages, inflation (Rev. 6:5–6) and conflict (Rev. 6:4) in the Middle East. Amidst the upheaval, the rapture occurs. Children and Christian adults are taken up, but a few of those left behind appreciate what has occurred; most prefer the explanations offered by United Nations Secretary General Nicolae Carpathia, who promises a solution to the world’s problems, heads a new ten-member (evoking the “ten crowns” of Rev. 13:2) Security Council, and brokers a peace deal for Israel. Carpathia is hailed as a great leader and replaces the United Nations with a totalitarian Global Community, as nations seeking peace and security willingly surrender their sovereignty. (Rev. 13; Wright, 2009, 81)
The popularity of the Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series cannot be overstated. Combined sales of the books are well into the tens of millions. These books are, for many Christians, the primary source for their understanding of Christian apocalyptic. As Koester has noted, “The view of the future presented in [Left Behind] affirms that God is sovereign despite ominous world conditions.… The novels show that simple believers, who know the biblical script, are far better informed about global developments than the commentators on television” (Koester, 278). An appealing script for the apocalyptically inclined, indeed.
No survey of the apocalyptic legacy of Christian Scripture is complete without an acknowledgment of three of the most sensational and horrific demonstrations of that legacy in recent memory: Jonestown (1978), the Branch Davidians (1993), and Heaven’s Gate (1997). As noted in the beginning of this essay, one generalized way to categorize the trajectories of apocalyptic groups is according to their responses when initial prophecies of an imminent event have been delayed. The group in question can disband; they can move the date of the end into the undefined future; or they can initiate a violent end within the parameters of their apocalyptic rhetoric. The three groups just named all chose the last option, under different circumstances. These three groups (and several others like them) pique our imaginations when we discuss modern apocalyptic groups. They represent the most extreme cases.
It may very well be that my own interest in apocalyptic groups began with the images I witnessed, as an eighteen-year-old, of the Jonestown debacle. The photos and film sent over the newswire were shocking: piles of bodies (many of whom were children) stacked up and grouped together in a jungle in Guyana, a dead US Congressman and reporters executed point blank lying on an airstrip, and syringes and vats of cyanide-laced, purple Kool Aid. Over 900 people died on a single day, March 18, 1978.
What we learned about the group and its leaders after the mass suicide was equally sensational. Pastor Jim Jones (1931‒1978) had led his flock from its roots in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Redwood Valley, California, then to San Francisco, and ultimately to their final “utopian” location in Jonestown, Guyana. The group’s migration to Jonestown began in 1977 and was executed in several stages: survey, development, occupation. Dominant in the group’s rhetoric were themes of persecution, suffering, and potential martyrdom for the cause. The echoes of Christian apocalyptic are not difficult to discern in this rhetoric. Jones and his flock were committed to fighting what they perceived as “the injustices of a racist, classist, and capitalistic society” (Moore, 95). Jones believed that the group’s new location in the jungles of Guyana would allow for the free exercise of their religion and the development of a socialist utopia.
The utopian beginnings of the relocated group were hounded by reports as early as 1972—the San Francisco years—“when a religion reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that a member wanting to leave the group had died under suspicious circumstances” (Moore, 97). Moore also reports that “the apostate group called the Concerned Relatives publicized an ‘accusation of Human Rights Violations,’ which detailed abuses that they believed were occurring in Jonestown” (Moore, 97). These accusations were the impetus for the visit of US Congressman Leo Ryan’s visit to Jonestown in 1978. These accusations, combined with some current members desiring to leave Jonestown in conjunction with Jones’s elevated paranoia (which may have included an increasing dependence on narcotics), fueled the volatile mix of the rhetoric of persecution and suffering and perceived external pressures. The pressure and paranoia became so acute that the infamous “white nights” (actual rehearsals of mass suicide) became more common in the latter stages of the group’s existence. The actual performance was executed on the evening of March 18, 1978. In the words of the self-proclaimed messiah Jones, it was an act of “revolutionary suicide,” an act no doubt influenced by apocalyptic ideation.
Fifteen years after the events of Jonestown, another apocalyptic group, the Branch Davidians, appeared on our apocalyptic landscape. The forensic analysis of the global press and the emerging World Wide Web allowed us our closest and most detailed look at an apocalyptic group and its violent end. Led by David Koresh (Vernon Howell, born 1959), another self-proclaimed messiah (Koresh is the Hebrew transliteration of Cyrus, a reference to the Persian king proclaimed messiah by the prophet Isaiah in Isa. 45:1), the Branch Davidians—an offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventists Church—engaged in a lethal gun battle with US federal agents on April 19, 1993, in which their compound was destroyed by fire and seventy-six Davidians lost their lives. The source of the fire is still under debate: the two competing theories are that federal tear-gas canisters started the fire in the compound, or that members of the Davidians started the fire from within.
What is especially fascinating about this group was their explicit employment of the book of Revelation to map out their perceived apocalyptic destiny. Kenneth Newport argues, “The text [i.e., the book of Revelation] was at the very least an important factor … in the decision of the Branch Davidians to self-destruct (or ‘act out their biblical destiny’ as they would more probably have seen it)” (Newport, 213). He continues, “The community read the Book of Revelation (together with numerous other parts of the Bible, especially the Psalms) and what they read there, I suggest, together with the context in which they read it, led to the group’s planned for and well executed apocalyptic self-destruction” (Newport, 213). Certainly texts like Rev. 10:7 were used by Koresh to depict himself as the seventh angel of the Apocalypse. The description of a lamblike beast in Rev. 13:11–18 was used to demonize the US government. Such passages were vital to group awareness. Thus, for the Branch Davidians, “the arrival of the ATF and then the FBI on the morning of 28 February, 1993, was highly significant and prophetically charged” (Newport, 219). For the Davidians (especially Koresh), as for Jonestown, all pressures from outside the group were biblically prophesied signs of the apocalyptic times. So when the Waco Tribune-Herald began publishing a critical exposé on Koresh, called “The Sinful Messiah,” the day before the first day of the siege on the Davidian compound, all signs pointed to their impending end.
An interesting variation on the modern apocalyptic group coming to an abrupt end is Heaven’s Gate. Founded in 1972 by Marshall Applewhite (1932‒1997) and Bonnie Lu Nettles (1928‒1985), the group chose to end their lives via ritualistic suicide by consuming a lethal combination of Phenobarbital (an anticonvulsant barbiturate) mixed with applesauce and chased with vodka. After law-enforcement authorities received an anonymous tip, thirty-nine bodies were discovered in a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe (an affluent suburb of San Diego), twenty-one women and eighteen men of various ages from twenty-six to seventy-two. The ritualistic suicides were performed over several days in 1997: fifteen on March 22, fifteen on March 23, seven on March 24, and the final two somewhere between March 24 and their eventual discovery on March 26.
The bodies (known as “vessels” by Heaven’s Gate members) were all dressed in black shirts and trousers, black Nike sneakers, and a purple cloth covered their upper torsos. Each had an armband with the words “Heaven’s Gate Away Team” embroidered on the band. The majority of the deceased had in their possession a five-dollar bill and three quarters.
The impetus for this ritualistic suicide is uniquely different from the rhetoric of persecution, suffering, and martyrdom commonplace in Jonestown and in Waco, Texas, among the Branch Davidians. Benjamin Zeller concludes that “while the movement surely experienced a sense of persecution and failure … these conditions are not in themselves sufficient to cause self-violence” (Zeller, 175). What motivated this group ritualistically to end their lives was their belief (according to their still-active website: heavensgate.com) that humanity needed to move beyond human existence to their rightful place at the “next level above human,” the realm of God. For the members, the imminent timing of this transition was critical because it was their belief that the earth was soon to be “recycled.”
It should be noted, however, that ritualistic suicide was not always a part of the group’s theology. Rather, “for the first decade of the group’s history it flatly rejected the very notion of suicide, arguing instead for the need to transition into the heavens while still embodied” (Zeller, 175). So what mechanism triggered the shift from embodied to disembodied transformation? The matter is still up for debate, but it should be noted that the death of cofounder Bonnie Lu Nettles of liver cancer in 1985 caused some cognitive dissonance among the membership. This period also marked the beginning of the group’s devaluation of the body (from this point on, referred to as “vessels”) that may have been a first step in their formulation of ritual suicide as spiritual release to the next level above human. This new understanding of the body, in combination with the belief that the earth was soon to be “recycled,” played out when the comet Hale-Bopp manifested itself in the late-March skies of 1997. For Applewhite and the members of the Heaven’s Gate group, this was the sign. A hypothesis was promoted by the group that located behind this comet was a spaceship that would gather the “elect” for the trip to the level above human. Although Zeller argued (as mentioned above) that the experienced sense of persecution and failure was not sufficient to explain the ritualistic violence that the group enacted, members were convinced in the days leading up to their end of “a massive government conspiracy to hide an extraterrestrial flying saucer trailing the comet” (Zeller, 177).