NeoShinka

By: Charz

Apr 20 2011

Tags: Ame no Kisaki, Archeofuturism, Book of Revelation, Brethren of the Free Spirit, Chiliasm, Dulcinian, Eschatology, European Union, Futurism, Gabinetto RS/33, Hal Lindsey, Holy Roman Catholic Church, Jerry Jenkins, Joachim of Fiore, Joachimites, Kanako Miyamae, Maria†Holic, Minari Endō, New Testament, Orson Welles, Osoroshii Kami, Paleofuturism, Retrofuturism, Roger Bacon, Roman Empire, Ryūken Ishima, Shaft, Shaft Nouveau, Tim LaHaye, Tradition, Zondervan

Category: Funny, Maria†Holic

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Maria Holic Alive E02

Past views of the Future

Book of Revelations Historical Interpretations

Revelation has a wide variety of interpretations, ranging from the simple message that we should have faith that God will prevail (symbolic interpretation), to complex end time scenarios (futurist interpretation), to the views of critics who deny any spiritual value to Revelation at all.

In the early Christian era, Christians generally understood the book to predict future events, especially an upcoming millennium of paradise on earth. In the late classical and medieval eras, the Church disavowed the simplis view of the millennium as a literal thousand-year kingdom. With the Protestant Reformation, fundamentalist opponents of Roman Catholicism adopted a historicist view, in which the predicted apocalypse is believed to be playing out in church history. A catholic scholar countered with preterism, the belief that Revelation predicted events that actually occurred as predicted in the 1st century. In the 19th century, futurism (belief, initially defended by catholic scholar against historicism, that the predictions refer to future events) largely replaced historicism among conservative Protestants.
(wiki)

Futurism, Preterism and Historicism

In the early church the Book of Revelation was much discussed and much disputed; it entered into the canon only after some significant debate. What is clear, however, is that by the second half of the second century it had been accepted by the western church as part of scripture.

Chiliasm, belief in the coming of a thousand-year period which would be qualitatively different from the age in which humankind now lives, was a view to which a significant number of the early church writers were drawn. They include justin Martyr, Ireaneus of Lyons, Tertullian, Hippolytus… All such expositors were as much concerned with the book of Daniel as with Revelation, but the outcome was much the same : this world was to be transformed into some other.

It was Augustine (354-430) who was to bring about fundamental change to the Church’s understanding of the book of Revelation, a change that was to last for nearly a thousand years. …Augustine argued that the bulk of the book refers to the present state of the world and the place and role of the Church in it. Hence he famously argued that the millennium was not a time yet future, but the period of the Church even now present. This ‘millennium’ refers, he said, to a long but indefinite time span between, the first appearance of Christ and his second coming.

The Agustinian model of interpreting Revelation soon became dominant and remained largely without significant challenge until the work of Joachim of Fiore. In many ways Joachim’s overall paradigm simply harks back to the pre-Augustinian tradition, though the detail of his scheme was rather novel. In outline he argued that the history of the human race is to be divided into three ages, the age of the Father (the age of Law), the age of the Son (the age of gospel), and the age of the Spirit (the age of freedom). For Joachim, the Church and people are currently living in the third and final stage in the course of history.

This view (of Joachim of Fiore) was to become central during and after the Reformation, when Protestants in general argued that the book of Revelation is a panorama of human history from the time of John himself to the dawn of the millennium, and perhaps even a little beyond. Central to this whole scheme was the view that the Pope and/ or the Roman Catholic Church in general was the Antichrist predicted in scripture.

Such views are ubiquitous in the literature and virtually any work concerned with the interpretation of Revelation and written by a Protestant between about 1550 and 1850 falls within this basic ‘historicist’ interpretative paradigm.

Needless to say, Roman Catholic writers were not impressed with the view that the Pope was the Antichrist, and sought to defend the Church from such attack. In part this defence could take the form of simple restatement of the older Augustinian view, but in addition to this a number of very substantial volumes were written in an effort to shift the paradigm once more. The most important of these were aimed at establishing two other methods of interpretation : preterism and futurism.

In outline preterists argued that the book of Revelation falls into two parts. One deals with the first three or four centuries of the Christian church an ends with the victory of Christianity over Judaism and Paganism and the establishment of the Church. The second part, a relatively small section, deals with the events that are to occur in the three and a half literal years of Antichirst immediately before the end of the world.

Futurists basically reversed this pattern and argued that almost all of Revelation pertains to the last few years of the earth’s history, while the first three chapters or so deal with John’s own day. In either case the present is devoid of prophetic fulfilment.

Preterism has not survived in any significant form among prophecy believer today, though one might argue that an extreme form of it has transmuted to become the scholarly consensus (Revelation speaks only of John’s own time and not about the future at all). Futurism, however, is a real force to be reckoned with. This method, which has now broken free from its Roman Catholic historical moorings, exercises considerable influence, not least in North America. For example, Hal Lindsey’s work The Late Great Planet Earth presents a basically futurist reading of the book of Daniel. This became the best seller of the 1970s with something like 27 million copies in print. More recently the Left Behind series has achieved quite phenomenal success, with tens of millions of copies being sold.

Kenneth G. C. Newport, The Branch Davidians of Waco, 2006, p 29-31

Heretical Fiction : The Late, Great Planet Earth

The Late, Great Planet Earth is the title of a anti-european 1970 book co-authored by Hal Lindsey and Carole C. Carlson. Like many previous books, The Late, Great Planet Earth postulated an Antichrist ruling over a ten-member or ten-nation European confederacy. Lindsey believed that what was then the six-member European Economic Community (later the 27-member European Union) could be a forerunner of this confederacy, which he considered to be a revival of the Roman Empire. He also foretold a Russian invasion of Israel, as well as an increase in the frequency of famines, wars and earthquakes, as key events leading up to the end of the world. He found little in the Bible that could represent the United States of America, but he suggested that Ezekiel 13:13 could be speaking of the United States in part.
(wiki)

Heretical Fiction : Left Behind

Left Behind is a series of 16 anti-catholic and anti-european novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, dealing with dispensationalist End Times. The primary conflict of the series is the members of the Tribulation Force against the Global Community and its leader Nicolae Carpathia, a Romanian politician reborn as the Antichrist. Through his parents, Carpathia possessed a unique bloodline, dating back to Ancient Rome, so he could actually claim to be a Roman descendant. This references both the early Christian belief that the Antichrist would come in the form of a Roman emperor (sic), as well as the current Pre-Millennialist Christian view that the Antichrist will emerge from a “New Roman Empire”(resic). During the period for a year and a half after the Rapture, where Christians were taken away from earth, Nicolae Carpathia rises to power. He begins to deal with the idea of a one-world religion with top officials in the Global Community. The “Global Community Faith” is established in the Vatican City after the Global Community was established in New Babylon. This new syncretistic, global religion accepts any religion and faith in the world, claiming equality. The “Global Community Faith” is quickly renamed “Enigma Babylon One World Faith” and Cardinal Peter Mathews is named Pontifex Maximus of Enigma Babylon One World Faith by Nicolae Carpathia.
(wiki)