Approaching the Apocalypse

A Short History of Christian Millenarianism

John M. Court

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9781845117580
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857710451
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

Embracing two thousand years of intense and fiery admonition, "Approaching the Apocalypse" offers students of religion, history and politics the definitive handbook to Doomsday. Ideas about divinely-inspired disaster have an enduring place in the history of Christian thought. For centuries men and women have made preparations for the imminent end of the world, and for the thousand year reign of Christ and his saints. Inspired principally by the startling texts of the "Book of Revelation", Christianity has a rich and varied tradition of looking forward to the purifying fires of Armageddon. But what do recurring motifs like the Rapture, pestilence, biblical prophecy and the building of the New Jerusalem really add up to? And how have interpretations of these patterns differed from century to century?Charting a steady course between the feverish predictions of early Christian heretics like the Montanists, and the febrile outpourings of modern-day millennialists, such as the Branch Davidians and Christian Zionists in America, John M Court explores the continuities and differences between their violent visions of cataclysm.
His history comprises an incisive analysis of such movements and figures as the Levellers and Diggers, James Jezreel and his Trumpeters, Seventh-Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses, cargo-cults and drug cultures. "Approaching the Apocalypse" shows why prophecies of plague, earthquake and flame continue to resonate so powerfully in the Christian imagination, and beyond.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Approaching the Apocalypse
• Contents
• Preface
• I. Introduction
• II. The Roots of the Idea
• III. The Biblical Basis
• IV. The Return of Christ
• V. Millenarians Among the Church Fathers
• VI. Apocalypse Then: The Year 1000
• VII. Joachim of Fiore (c.1135–1202 CE)
• VIII. The Black Death and Other Plagues
• IX. Apocalypse and Civil War (1500 CE and After)
• X. Edward Irving (1792–1834 CE) and the Catholic Apostolic Movement
• XI. Across the Pond
• XII. Joanna Southcott (1750–1814 CE) and her Followers
• XIII. J.J. Jezreel: The Trumpeter and His Tower
• XIV. An Anglican Israel at the End of Time: The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury
• XV. ‘Somewhere a Place for Us’: Modern Utopias
• XVI. Christian Missions and the Cargo Cults
• XVII. Figures of the Messiah: David Koresh and the Waco Siege
• XVIII. 'Apocalypse Now’: Celebrating the Millennium on or After 2000 CE
• XIX. Epilogue
• Notes
• Glossary
• Select Bibliography
• Index