Prophecy in the New Millennium

When Prophecies Persist

Suzanne Newcombe, Sarah Harvey, Suzanne Newcombe, Sarah Harvey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317074588
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

Secular and spiritual prophets of doom abound in the information-rich twenty-first century - as they have for millennia. But there has yet to be worldwide floods, meteor impact, global computer failure, obvious alien contact, or direct intervention from God to end the world as we know it. Considering the frequency with which prophecy apparently fails, why do prophecies continue to be made, and what social functions do they serve? This volume gives a concise, but comprehensive, overview of the rich diversity of prophecy, its role in major world religions as well as in new religions and alternative spiritualties, its social dynamics and its impact on individuals' lives. Academic analyses are complimented with contextualized primary source testimonies of those who live and have lived within a prophetic framework. The book argues that the key to understanding the more dramatic, apocalyptic and millenarian aspects of prophecy is in appreciating prophecy's more mundane manifestations and its role in providing meaning and motivation in everyday life.

Chapter 1
From the Extraordinary to the Ordinary: An Overview of Prophecy

Suzanne Newcombe and Sarah Harvey

Apocalyptic images fascinate and terrify; at the dawn of the new millennium, end-times prophecy can be found everywhere. Images of the world destroyed – overwhelmed by water, ice or fire – have inspired both the religious and artistic imagination for millennia. Popular imagination acknowledges a kind of incomprehensibility of this scale of disaster, inviting an image of a ‘hand of God’. In modern times we worry about the possibility of a human-created end of time – through nuclear war (Strozier 2002) or environmental mismanagement. Recent action films like Armageddon (1998), The Day after Tomorrow (2004), I Am Legend (2007) and 2012 (2009) testify to the lucrative popularity of the end-times scenario. More visibly, there continues to be a proliferation of newspaper headlines, books, music, disaster movies and other media activity relating to ‘end of the world as we know it’ – prophecies of Christ’s imminent return, the ‘end’ of the Mayan calendar cycle on 21 December 2012, and the possibility of a cataclysmic disaster such as a meteor-impact or a nuclear attack by terrorists.

There are several good academic volumes that focus on violent and volatile millennialism (Landes 2011, Wessinger 2000, Wessinger 2011). This volume aims to bring about a more comprehensive understanding of the wider effects of the spectrum of prophetic expression.1 The founder of Inform, Professor Eileen Barker, often states that the only dependable generalisation one can make when considering the scope and variety of contemporary religious expression is that you cannot make generalisations. Of course, as a social scientist, one can and must make a variety of limited generalisations about the groups studied, seeking to discover trends and patterns as well as putting religious beliefs and behaviour into context. But the idea of always being open to the exception, another way of considering the situation, the other points of view, is central to Inform’s approach. Likewise, we hope that the reader of this volume will be able to consider the variety of insights provided by the contributors to this volume as challenges to conventional generalisations and assumptions about the nature of prophecy.

The End of the World: A New Millennium for Prophecy

The minority who fervently believe the ‘end is nigh’ attract avid voyeuristic attention from the popular press. Predictions are sometimes made on a grand scale, such as Family Radio’s 2011 prediction of the imminent Rapture and End of Times in the United States which gained extensive press coverage (mentioned by Barkun, Johnston and Melton in this volume. See also Bartlett 2012). There is also reoccurring media attention to individual ‘survivalists’, quietly stockpiling supplies or preparing for the End of the social order as we know it ‘just in case’. For example, in the United States both the National Geographic and the Discovery television channels have run weekly ‘reality’ series on ‘Preppers’ – individuals actively preparing for an ‘end-times’ scenario (Genzlinger 2012) – and media reports in June 2012 state that Spike TV will run a reality TV series called ‘Last Family on Earth’ in which contestants compete in various disaster scenarios (see Daily Mail, 5 June 2012). The press typically positions the reader as a sceptical outsider. There is an assumption that prophecy is something of a marginal activity. The observer is asked – how could these people believe so strongly in something so unlikely? Their visions of the future seem irrational and fantastic. How can people base their life decisions on a belief in such divergence from the general consensus?

Although images of a dramatic end enjoy widespread visibility, those who irrevocably change their lives in response to prophecy – who refuse employment and the accumulation of wealth, who choose not to educate their children for future employment in anticipation of an immediate end – are small in number. Some religious movements have inspired people to sell assets and await the arrival of the new kingdom, but others have taken more direct, violent action, such as the group suicides of 37 members of Heaven’s Gate in 1997 or the active attempt to trigger the end-times by releasing deadly Sarin gas into the Tokyo underground by Aum Shinrikyo (now known as Aleph) in 1995. These examples push the boundaries of the general public’s comprehension, provoking anxiety and concern about those who ascribe to millennial beliefs.

Also provoking social anxiety are the few individuals who decide to take their own life, or other drastic action on the basis of an idiosyncratic interpretation of these apocalyptic themes. Examples of this include the tragic case of a British schoolgirl who decided to pre-empt the inevitable destruction of humanity due to nuclear meltdown in 2012 by hanging herself (Daily Mail, 18 May 2012), or the case of Peter Gersten who has vowed to jump into a space-time portal that he believes will open up on the 21 December 2012 at Bell Rock near Sedona, Arizona.2

In social contexts of relative peace and prosperity, these numbers will probably always be small – but some of the contributors to the volume have personally organised their lives around the belief of an imminent ‘end’. Suzanne Rough (Chapter 18) does not consider herself a prophet, but rather an ‘auditor’ who helps bring messages of the ‘Hierarchy’ and the Ascended Masters Kuthumi and Serapis Bey to a wider audience.3 In anticipation of natural disasters in 2012, she has established an educational community in Lapland where she hopes that those prepared for worldwide flooding will avoid the worst effects of the disaster. Likewise Livingstone Fagan (Chapter 14) does not consider himself a prophet directly, but considers himself as called upon to continue to spread the prophecies of David Koresh, who was the leader of the Branch Davidian community in Waco, Texas and one of the 75 killed in the conclusion of a siege initiated by the United States government’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on the community in 1993. Hani Zaccarelli (Chapter 13) writes from the perspective of someone who was raised within a religious culture that believed the last days were near, whilst Abi Freeman May (Chapter 11) writes from the perspective of someone who joined such a group as a young adult. These personal accounts can add an insight into the lived experience of prophecy and the effects of belief.

But prophecy is not just about apocalyptic, end-times scenarios. It is also about more mundane predictions. It can provide narratives for envisioning a future world, for critiquing contemporary society and for fixing the problems of the current world, as well as methods of personal divination and accessing what might be considered ‘divine guidance’ for everyday life.

What Is Prophecy?

Prophecy is often thought of in the context of its more extreme millenarian aspects. But prophecy is a much further-ranging spectrum of human behaviour than its extreme form might suggest: a prophecy usually provides information about something beyond normal human ability to predict. While it is often assumed that prophecies are predictive – foreseeing something which has not yet occurred, prophecies can also be used as a retrospective explanation as to why something occurred. Damian Thompson, in his study of the millennial expectations of members of the Kensington Temple in London, makes a useful distinction between ‘predictive millennialism’, associated with the date-setting, end-of-world type scenarios and the less personally risky ‘explanatory millennialism’ which uses a millennial narrative to critique the current social situation (2005: 9).

A prophecy can manifest in many different ways: the source of the unique insight might be attributed to God, or a channelled source like an ‘Ascended Master’ or someone in the ‘spirit world’, or it may just be an inherent ‘gift’. Sometimes a prophecy is experienced by an individual or group; sometimes it takes the form of a voice, other times a physical apparition or dream. At other times, prophecies are understood to have been given by channelled entities during a purposefully induced trance. Sometimes apparatuses, such as a crystal ball or tarot cards, are used to see the future. Others look for insight into the future from a more systematic approach which could range from studying arrangements of numbers or looking for hidden codes in sacred books to studying the movement of the stars or tracing symbolic meaning on the landscape.

Prophecy could be considered to be a fundamental expression of religious experience. This is the approach taken by Margaret Poloma, a contributor to this volume. Based on her research on contemporary Christian prophecy, she argues that: ‘Prophecy is a particular type of religious experience that can be regarded as an extension of prayer experiences familiar to most pray-ers. One of the first encounters with the prophetic appears to be God offering guidance and personal direction’ (Poloma 2001: 173). This insight into the more mundane level of prophecy is essential in coming to terms with the persistence of prophecy. It is also important to note that the language, rhetoric and imagery of prophecy prevalent in the media also affects those who are not prophets and do not seek a personal religious experience.

Prophets, those who have unique access to prophecy, are often considered to have a special quality that some find authoritative. In many contexts, the social role of prophets can be described by Max Weber’s concept of charisma:

… a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which s/he is ‘set apart’ from ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These as such are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as divine in origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader (Weber [1920] 1968: 241).

But conversely, those who claim unique prophetic insight are often not believed and are subject to ridicule, an archetypal example being the figure of Cassandra in Greek mythology. Contemporary prophets often find a small audience which recognises them as a charismatic leader while being a subject of contempt and derision from the greater population. Contemporary prophets are no exception to the more familiar historical expressions. One example of this from the secular milieu is the figure of Alex Jones, a well-known radio presenter and ‘conspiracist’ in the United States who is considered prophetic by some of his audience and ridiculed by his antagonists. Jones’ form of prophecy is explored in this volume in the chapter by David G. Robertson (Chapter 15).

Prophecy in the New Millennium: Trends and Patterns

Far from being exclusive to the domain of minority and ‘new’ religious movements, the prophetic finds ambivalent expression in a broad spectrum of contemporary cultures. This volume aims to demonstrate how prophecy can be found in most global religious movements, and even popular scientific thinking. It hopes to make the extreme beliefs of the apocalyptic end more understandable by showing continuity with the more mundane functioning of prophecy within religious movements, both new and old. The extremes of belief can be illuminated with the more mainstream elements of the prophetic; conversely the more mundane expressions of prophecy can be better understood in the context of its more radical expressions.

Fascination with apocalyptic visions is not limited to Christian and post-Christian nations. One recent poll suggested that around 14 per cent of the global population actively believe that the world will end within their lifetime (Ipsos 2012). The nature and global accessibility of modern communication technology and the expansion of literacy and leisure time has meant that more people are exposed to a wider range of prophetic narratives. One of the chapter authors, Christopher Bell (Chapter 9), describes how he met a Tibetan monk in India who reported to have been somewhat influenced by publicity for the 2012 (2009) movie.

Interest in apocalyptic narratives extends beyond those who literally believe that they will form an imminent future for humanity. In some ways prophesying ‘end times’ and/or the establishment of a new, righteous world order, serves as a theodicy for the dispossessed. A feeling of ‘knowing’ the future can give a sense of power in a situation where an individual feels very little agency. With the pervasive influence of global economic systems, where income disparity is great, the perception of being ‘oppressed’ could also include the populations of the developed world. Andrew Fergus Wilson (Chapter 16) argues that it is through these ‘end-times’ stories, through images of utopias and dystopias, that some are actively trying to create an understanding of the modern world. It is a world where our personal experience remains localised, but the effects of technology and the extent of mass communications are felt on a global scale.

As contemporary 24-hour news channels broadcast tragedies of disasters – tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, terrorist attacks, nuclear accidents and more – in real-time across the globe, an individual can identify with both the personal tragedies of the lives lost, but also with an idea of humanity as having a single, globalised future. The drama and emotion of these events, fuelled by access to minute-by-minute commentary on the extent of damage and known information, forces individuals who have any contact with a news source to confront their emotions about the event. It is these images that often make their way into religious narratives of ‘end-times’ scenarios as described by Abi Freeman May in Chapter 11.4 The rise of 24-hour and Internet news has also contributed to the process of ‘mainstreaming the fringe’, described by Michael Barkun in Chapter 2, in which ideas once the domain of ‘insular subcultures’, including prophetic beliefs, become accessible to a wider audience.

Prophecy in Established Traditions

Prophecy takes specific forms in specific religious traditions: the language and imagery of Judeo-Christian prophecy – including a belief in the return of Jesus as the Messiah, ‘trials and tribulations’ of natural disaster and warfare, and the eventual establishment of a paradise on earth – are pervasive within European and North American cultures. However, it is perhaps less well known that prophecy is an important part of the Islamic, Hindu and Buddhist traditions, as well as many indigenous religions. Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s oldest extant religions, emphasises cycles o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 From the Extraordinary to the Ordinary: An Overview of Prophecy
• Part I: Perspectives on prophecy
• Part II: Perennial Prophecy in Mainstream Traditions
• Part III: Contemporary Case Studies
• Part IV: 2012 Prophecies
• Index