A Brief History of End Time

Prophecy and Apocalypse, then and now

Paula Clifford

• Publisher: Sacristy Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781910519394
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Études bibliques

Blake, Nostradamus, Christian fundamentalists, and latter-day prophets are just some of the many individuals and groups—both religious and secular—who have speculated about the end of the world.

Are they just misguided enthusiasts or is there still something to be learnt from them now that more than 2, 000 years of the Christian era have passed without the Apocalypse? Why has the end of time exercised a continuing fascination over the human imagination?

In this thoroughly entertaining exploration of end-time ideas and beliefs, Dr Paula Clifford indulges her own fascination with the colourful array of characters and events, and artefacts associated with them. She reaches thoughtful and surprising conclusions in light of today's fears of environmental catastrophe and an ever-increasing knowledge of the origins and destiny of our universe.

This second edition has been updated to include the first decades of the third millennium.

Chapter 5

People of the End

Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour.

1 John 2:18

The rich variety of signs and events which from ancient times have been believed to herald the end of the world is not quite the whole story. There are also some people in the end-time scenario. And unlike any number of prophets who have claimed that the end is imminent, these figures are integral to the unfolding of the whole drama.

Already in Zoroastrianism specific figures were identified: the books of the Middle Persian period state that the end would be marked by the appearance of three “helpers” (Saoshyants) who would be born of virgins, and known as “sons of Zarathustra”. With Christianity there arose at least three major traditions relating to various people who were expected to emerge just before the end. The traditions grew up unevenly, so there is no neat succession or order to the way in which these people appear. But they are all individuals who, it is assumed, will be recognized for who and what they are.

Insofar as these figures are distinctive, they are clearly separate from the false prophets promised by Jesus in Matthew 24, who are signs of the end rather than people of it. They are also different in that they are no ordinary human beings. They may be heroic figures from a nation’s past, whether real or legendary, who return after a long period in which they were “asleep” somewhere on earth. They may be figures from a religious past—prophets who return to earth from heaven. Or they may be people of the future, such as Antichrist—a supernatural figure who takes human form, and whose family history and activities are a perverse reflection of those of the true Christ, with the function above all of deceiving and misleading the faithful. In this case, Antichrist is sometimes opposed by a human hero: a pope or emperor of the future.

Traditions like these, which are attached to real people or at least to supernatural figures in human form, have provoked the same abundance of interpretations as the various signs of the end. This is at least partly because traditions relating to people and signs can both be used to make sense of unusual or disturbing events. With signs it might work like this. Besides saying, “I know that the world will end and when the moon disappears in an eclipse I believe that it will happen very soon”, people might also think along the lines: “I am upset and confused by the disappearing moon. But if the world is about to end, then I understand why it has turned black.” When there are particular human or supernatural figures associated with the end, there is a similar statement of belief: “I know that before the end comes the world will see the return of certain prophets and the appearance of Antichrist.” But if the circumstances appear to warrant it, this can easily be reformulated: “This person is evil: I will call him Antichrist, and now I understand why he’s so evil. The end must be near.”

“Since the Middle Ages”, writes R. K. Emmerson, “interpretations of Antichrist . . . have been manipulated to attack religious institutions and political opponents.” [91] In other words, the expectation that certain signs and certain people will precede the end allows people to make their own identifications. A religious or political group can manipulate its members by claiming that the wickedness of the opposition is that of Antichrist himself; or that the perfection of a national hero points to a special role for him (and, by implication, for his people) at the end of time. In this way secular history—people and events—is given eschatological significance. It is relatively easy to dismiss passing comets, earthquakes, or plagues as events which took on eschatological overtones in the over-active imagination of just a few people. But identifying specific people as precursors of the end has a much wider influence, and may find a place in the folklore of an entire nation. The traditions of certain people emerging immediately prior to the end of time are virtually inseparable from the ways in which those traditions have been interpreted—the identifications that have been imposed on them.

The Two Witnesses

I will grant my two witnesses authority to prophesy for one thousand two hundred and sixty days, wearing sackcloth (Revelation 11:3).

There are two characters in the Old Testament who do not die but are taken directly up into heaven, and in Christian tradition they soon came to be identified with the witnesses in Revelation 11. The first is Enoch, who makes only a brief appearance in Genesis 5 as one of the godly men who lived before the flood. He is received into God’s presence (Genesis 5:24) at the comparatively young age, but possibly a significant one, of 365 years (his son Methuselah lived until he was 969).

Like the later Christian writer to the Hebrews, the author of the Wisdom of Solomon portrays Enoch as an outstanding example of a righteous man, and attributes his assumption into heaven to God’s desire to keep him that way:

There was one who pleased God and was loved by him,

and while living among sinners he was taken up.

He was caught up lest evil change his understanding

or guile deceive his soul (Wisdom 4:10‒11).

The book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) also sees him as an example. Enoch is included in the list of famous men (chapter 44) as one who “pleased the Lord and was taken up; he was an example of repentance to all generations” (Sirach 44:16). In addition, the wisdom tradition of the intertestamental period portrays Enoch as outstanding for his scientific knowledge:

He was the first among men born on earth to learn to write and to acquire knowledge and wisdom; and he wrote down in a book details about the signs of heaven according to the order of their months . . . And he was the first to write a testimony; and he warned the sons of men about what would happen in future generations on the earth . . . And what was and what will be he saw in a vision in his sleep, just as it will happen to the sons of men in every generation till the day of judgment (Jubilees 4:17‒19).

This is reflected in chapters 72 to 82 of 1 Enoch, which constitute “the book of the revolutions of the lights of heaven” revealed to Enoch by the archangel Uriel. Again according to Jubilees, Enoch’s righteousness and wisdom earned him a special position in world history:

In his life on earth Noah surpassed all mortal men in achieving perfect righteousness, except Enoch; for Enoch had a special function to be a witness to the world’s generations and report all the deeds of each generation till the day of judgment (Jubilees 10:17).

Enoch also appears as the culmination of yet another tradition, that of the appearance of the Son of Man from Daniel 7:13. In 1 Enoch 71 the writer describes how his spirit was taken into heaven to be greeted by the angels and archangels, including one who says: “You are the Son of Man who was born to righteousness, and righteousness remains over you, and the righteousness of the Head of Days will not leave you . . . There will be length of days with that Son of Man, and the righteous will have peace . . . ” (1 Enoch 71:14, 17). Earlier in the same book, though, the Son of Man is seen as an angelic being with no previous existence (1 Enoch 48) and the passage in chapter 71 is probably a later, possibly even Christian, addition. Nonetheless, it is a clear indication of the popularity of Enoch and the significant claims made for him in the intertestamental period.

It is widely assumed that these claims had their origin among the Jews in Babylon and the East, since there is some evidence of Babylonian influence on the legend. Like the magi from the East in the gospel narratives, Enoch is credited with comprehensive knowledge of the stars and their movements; and the description of the punishment of fallen angels in 1 Enoch 67 is strongly reminiscent of Zoroastrian teaching on the ordeal by molten metal.

In spite of the widespread interest in Enoch at the time when the Book of Revelation was written, it is by no means the case that interpreters agree that he is one of the Two Witnesses mentioned in chapter 11. Perhaps this is because he holds less interest for Christian writers who are not party to the long-standing Jewish tradition about him. The same cannot be said for the other likely witness.

The tradition that the prophet Elijah will return in the last days is one which pervades Christian writings and belief on the end-times throughout history. This is probably because Elijah, together with Moses, appears with Christ at his Transfiguration (Mark 9:4), and, in the conversation between Jesus and his disciples which follows, Jesus does not deny that “Elijah is indeed coming first to restore all things” (Mark 9:12). In this context, though, Jesus seems to be identifying John the Baptist as fulfilling the role of Elijah.

Elijah was taken into heaven in rather more spectacular manner than Enoch—caught up in a whirlwind with a chariot and horses of fire (2 Kings 2:11). The belief that the great prophet of Israel would return is expressed most fully in the Old Testament in the concluding verses of Malachi, which may have been intended to wind up the whole collection of books of the so-called minor prophets:

Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse (Malachi 4:5–6).

The role of Elijah as peacemaker and, particularly, as restorer of Israel is singled out by the writer of Sirach who, in his recital of famous men, describes Elijah as “ready at the appointed time . . . to calm the wrath of God before it breaks out in fury, to turn the heart of the father to the son, and to restore the tribes of Jacob” (Sirach 48:10). Elsewhere Elijah has other functions: anointing the Messiah or awakening the dead on judgment day.

Both Elijah and Enoch may be seen as Christ-like in that their respective departures from earth prefigure Christ’s ascension. In the earliest Christian tradition it is Elijah alone who is to return, although, within a couple of centuries, this has been largely replaced by the idea of two witnesses. (Later, however, the Franciscan order was to claim that St Francis was Elijah, and that the Two Witnesses would be Franciscan monks.) Their function at the end-time is to confront Antichrist and reconvert the Christians whom he has led astray. In some versions they are killed, only to return to life three and a half days later and to rejoin the saints in heaven. Some sources see their task as specifically to convert the Jews—who may first have become followers of Antichrist.

With the Reformation and its attacks on medieval scholasticism, belief in the literal return of Enoch and Elijah began to disappear. As Emmerson puts it: “Most Protestant exegetes emphasize that the ‘spirit’ of Elias was present in John the Baptist (Matthew 11:14), that the same ‘spirit’ is now present in the last days in the teaching of scripture, and that it is dangerous to expect the physical return of Enoch and Elias.” [92] However, this meant that the way was now wide open for identifying the Two Witnesses not with biblical characters but with contemporary individuals.

The Muggletonians

In 1636 two London weavers proclaimed themselves to be the last witnesses of Revelation 11. However, the better known seventeenth-century claimants to the title emerged early in the 1650s: they were Ludowick Muggleton and John Reeve.

The timing has to be significant. The execution of Charles I in 1649 has been hailed as a triumph for the Puritans, yet the country as a whole was uneasy at what had been done, and the English republicans met with a cold reception in the outside world. The church had lost its leader as well as its monarch, bishops had been abolished, and independent sects were springing up everywhere, most of them firmly opposed to any form of church discipline. It was very much in keeping with the millennial atmosphere of the 1640s that on Charles’s death many people felt that the anointed king could be followed only by Christ himself.

It is hardly surprising, then, that a number of the new sects were particularly interested in the end-time. Muggleton and Reeve were the founders of the Muggletonians, a radical sect which was noted for its hostility to church order of any kind and to intellectuals, and which survived until the twentieth century. In a book published in 1665, Muggleton described himself as one of “the Two last commissionated [sic] Witnesses and Prophets of the only high, immortal, glorious God, Christ Jesus.” [93] On the basis of this claim, Muggleton presents an interpretation of the book of Revelation which is wholly rooted in his rejection of all forms of organised religion. All forms of worship and all ministers are false, he argues, “from the first Pope to the last Quaker”. [94]

Claiming to be a reluctant prophet, Muggleton argues that people are ignorant because their teachers are ignorant: they “blind themselves in the knowledge of the true God, and the right devil, and of the true interpretation of the scriptures”. [95] Unlike many interpreters of Revelation, Muggleton sees it as a unified whole. The seven churches of Asia addressed in Revelation 2 and 3 are taken to have their counterparts in seven churches of Europe, who are summoned by seven “anti-angels”; they begin with the Church of Rome and end with the Quakers, whose ministry, says Muggleton, will last until the end of the world. [96] Given the turmoil of the time, this cannot be far away: “for is not almost all the world in an uproar, killing and destroying one another, ever since the seventh anti-angel did begin to sound?” [97]

Muggletonianism was very much a product of its time. Since the 1570s the Puritans had been using alternative forms of worship in addition to those prescribed by law in the Prayer Book. Informal prayer meetings abounded, which resulted in a tendency to undermine the exclusivity of formal church worship. After the execution of Charles I in 1649 the church in England was in disarray, with no generally accepted doctrine. Moreover, as Christopher Hill has pointed out, in the millennial atmosphere of the 1640s it was not hard to accept that God would first reveal things of the end to an Englishman. [98] Muggleton claimed that his interpretation of scripture was infallible, which meant that his designation of himself as a last witness could not be challenged. Despite the death of this “witness” in 1698 (at the age of 89) his sect lived on. And even today, some extreme brands of evangelicalism are marked by a similar anti-clericalism and anti-intellectualism and a comparable intolerance of any form of biblical interpretation other than their own.

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