As We Know It

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The end of the world, as we know it, is really more recent than we think.  Yes, Christians of a certain stripe have been looking for the second coming since the first leaving, but that detailed map of how we’re living in the end times, courtesy Hal Lindsey, is a new thing.  Here are the fast facts.

First and second centuries, Common Era: early Christians tended to think Jesus would “be right back.”  When that didn’t happen they began to look in the Bible for reasons why and started to develop theologies to cover the bases.

Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages: settled in for the long haul, theologians developed eschatology.  Although that sounds like a disease, it’s actually a system for thinking about how the end of the world will come down.  There were conflicting theories.  The two main flavors were premillennialism and amillennialism.

Early Modernism: Protestants came along and searched the Bible for minute clues to make into a system.  In response, postmillennialism became a thing.  Now there were three options.  Various phases were discussed: tribulation, resurrection of the dead, and the already-met millennium.

1820s: William Miller, a Baptist minister, began number-crunching and figured the end of the world would take place by 1843.  His followers, “the Millerites,” continued on after what was called “the Great Disappointment.” 

1830s: John Nelson Darby, a Plymouth Brethren leader, came up with Dispensationalism, a scheme that divides history into eras, or “dispensations.”  He thought we were living near the end of that scheme about 200 years ago.  The idea of “the rapture” was added to the other phases.

1917: Cyrus I. Scofield, published the Scofield Reference Bible.  A man with little formal education (and a “colorful” background), he applied Darby’s dispensations in his Bible, giving the United States a road map to the end times.

1970: Hal Lindsey, a seminary educated evangelical, published The Late, Great Planet Earth.  It became the best selling book (classified as nonfiction) for the entire decade.  New ideas, such as “the Rapture” and “the Antichrist” began to be read back into the Bible.  The book was made into a movie.

1976: David Seltzer, a Jewish screenwriter, penned The Omen.  The movie made use of Lindsey’s adaptation of Scofield’s adaptation of Darby’s ideas.  The wider public, seeing it on the big screen, believed it was about to happen.

2000: the world still didn’t end, either with a second coming or Y2K, as many predicted.  Round numbers will do that to people.  It didn’t stop predictions of the end of the world.

2012: the Mayan calendar gave out.  A movie was made.  People believed. Apocalypse averted.

2024: you fill in the blanks.

Image credit: Albrecht Dürer

Church of Advent

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It’s a common name. You might know one yourself: William Miller. Indeed, for many years of my own life I borrowed that surname from my stepfather before returning to my birthright after seminary. But the ordinariness of the name alone doesn’t explain it. Joseph Smith, a fellow creator of a new religion, also bore an innocuous name, and he was a Junior. While many people might have trouble placing William Miller among religious founders, they would likely know of Seventh-Day Adventism, a religion that sprang from the root of his teaching. During his lifetime the preferred title was Millerite, but Adventist also worked. David L. Rowe presents a sympathetic, but not hagiographic account of this somewhat remarkable life in God’s Strange Work: William Miller and the End of the World. For Miller, you see, predicted the year Jesus would return.

A self-taught farmer, Miller became convinced that the Bible indicated 1843 would be the end. This idea was based on calculations derived from cryptic books such as Daniel and considering their days to be years. A touch of math and before you know it, it’s all gonna burn. During the intense period known as the Second Great Awakening upstate New York was perhaps the most religiously creative place on the planet. New ideas bumped into each other and, as if the bounds of Christianity were too constraining, flew out into new forms of belief. People grew convinced that the world might indeed end in 1843. When it didn’t, they called it the Great Disappointment and carried on. Adventism is still with us today.

Rowe also makes the point that for being such an obscure individual, Miller influenced the great religious movements that would give us modern day Fundamentalism as well as Jehovah’s Witnesses. These groups trace their spiritual ancestry to the convictions of a not-so-simple farmer who could fill an auditorium with his plain speaking and clear exposition of the scriptures. He devised his end times scenario with the use of only a Bible and concordance. No seminary or advanced theological reading was necessary. Millerites did not reach the numbers of Latter-Day Saints. They were disowned by the Baptist Church that gave them birth. They got the date of the end of the world wrong. Yet they persisted. It is a curious story with a long afterlife that still helps elect extremist presidents to this day. William Miller, ever unassuming, managed to change the very world that he was certain would end even before the midpoint of the nineteenth century.