APOCALYPSE: NOW
Introduction
“Luke, that book changed my life more than anything else I’ve ever read or anything I’ve ever seen.” These words were spoken to me by a member of my congregation as we sat digesting our lunch and sipping coffee. The reading material that was so important to my parishioner was Heaven is for Real. [1] And the strange thing is that this passion for Heaven is for Real is not strange at all. In my 15 years in professional ministry, I have been struck by how popular, influential, and uncritically received books like Heaven is for Real are. [2] Other works such as 90 Minutes in Heaven and 23 Minutes in Hell have achieved fame and have sold in large quantities. These works have provided hope and courage for multitudes of believers. And while the high sales and the speaking tours and movie deals, along with the tyranny of the present, may make it appear that these works and their popularity is a new phenomenon, it isn’t. [3] The market may seem saturated with these kinds of works, making them look like a novelty, but they fit into an ancient and very popular genre. Both the narrative format and the use of rhetoric demonstrate that these works are apocalypses. Moreover, these popular apocalyptic visions and visitations belong in the tradition of the Ancient Jewish and Christian apocalypses of the previous three millennia and which evidence deep anxiety and the need to produce apocalyptic rhetoric.
Pernning in the Gyre
“FOR certain minutes at the least
That crafty demon and that loud beast
That plague me day and night
Ran out of my sight;
Though I had long pernned in the gyre,
Between my hatred and desire.
I saw my freedom won
And all laugh in the sun.” [4]
Whatever W. B. Yeats was, he was not a dull man. And his eccentric, occultic, and apocalyptic views made their way into his poetry. While these tendencies are most famously seen in The Second Coming, [5] they also feature prominently in this much lesser known poem from the same collection. Yeats’ pernner in the gyre is an important image as “gyre” is not merely a spiral, but rather a cyclical historical vision derived and adapted from Pre-Socratic Greek philosophy. [6] Yeats believed that the world was on the ragged edge of a cataclysmic change—and one not for the better.
He was not the only one. Occultism was alive and well at the turn of the 20th century. The world was changing and there were cultural forces arrayed at stopping or slowing the transformation away from the spiritual to cold, industrialized materialism. From the Arts Deco and Nouveau movements to seances and spiritualist and occultist literature, the early 1900s, on an artistic level, were often the resistance against what people thoroughly believed was a frightening future. It is important to note, however, that the foreboding apocalypses produced were not limited to the works of Occultists, and Christian magicians. [7] Nor was this trend towards spiritism and apocalypticism unresisted; men of the arts and letters like Kipling mocked what he viewed as fraudulent fakery. [8] And even among those who had little interest in spiritual things, there was an interest in the apocalyptic and the “sublime” that was to be met or meted out through machinery and the machinations of men. [9] The literature of the early 20th century seems to carry the theme of dissatisfaction with Enlightenment infused Modernistic Western Societies. For many, the post-Civil War and Victorian enthusiasm and optimism had become horrified disappointment after the First World War, compounded by a worldwide depression and then followed up by another World War, which became a nuclear war, followed by a very long Cold War with ceaseless hot proxy wars and the ever-looming threat of nuclear exchange, only to be supplanted with the threat of Islamic Terrorism and now the fears of social disintegration, Chinese expansionism, and renewed fears of a nuclear exchange. The century following the First World War has been one full of political upheaval, social transformation, and theological crisis.
Such a time is perfectly suited for the apocalyptic. But what vision shall be revealed? Yeats’ concept of history repeating? science fiction’s Janus-like double-sided coin of utopia and dystopia? the extinction-event vision of the cults and isms of Hale-Bopp and Mayan Calendar infamy? or the secular fears of Y2K and modern preppers with their “go-bags” and inexhaustible ammo? Perhaps the “zombie” craze was more social commentary than slasher. [10]
But beyond the secular and spiritualist apocalypses is a century replete with Christian apocalypse, often in the form of near-death or actual death experiences where the witness is given secret knowledge and a vision of the spiritual realms and insight into the plans and purposes of God. In what follows I am only going to consider apocalyptic in America from the late 20th century till now. I believe that when we consider both a historical analysis of the apocalyptic genre and the apocalyptic literature produced recently, we can see that these works receive wide readership because socio-political and cultural-theological factors have primed audiences to desire and positively respond to apocalyptic rhetoric.
Apocalyptic Discourse
Throughout history human beings have produced apocalyptic writings. Greg Carey provides us with a definition of apocalyptic discourse that is helpful in moving forwards in this work. He states that,
Apocalyptic discourse refers to the constellation of apocalyptic topics as they function in the larger early Jewish and Christian literary and social contexts. Thus, apocalyptic discourse should be treated as a flexible set of resources that early Jews and Christians could employ for a variety of persuasive tasks. [11]
The key point that Carey makes is that apocalypses exist as discourse and as such they have rhetorical force. [12] This point is echoed by Christoph Auffarth. [13] In pointing out the genric transition from “prophetic to apocalyptic eschatology” he offers several reasons this came about. [14] However, all of his proposed explanations presuppose that apocalypses were written with rhetorical purpose. It does not matter whether prophets began to speak of eschatological things out of a desire to resist Babylon or to promote Dualism or really anything. The central point is that apocalypses are written not (merely) as transporting visions, but as rhetoric.
It must be said that while “rhetoric” talk may sound as though it minimizes the historical value of the claims, that is to miss the point. Certainly, some who emphasize the rhetorical value of apocalyptic do not hold to inerrancy and believe that all these apocalypses are either pure fiction, fraud, or fantasy. [15] But not everyone who emphasizes rhetorical force in apocalyptic denies biblical inerrancy—certainly not for me—and, again, it misses the point.
One can believe that Daniel and Revelation are historically reliable revelations from God, which are records of actual conversations between God and men and which give accurate predictions about the future AND believe that these books were written with rhetorical purpose. Indeed, John tells us that they are written with rhetorical purpose. Rev 1:3 opens with a promise of blessing to those who obey the words of the prophecy. How does one “obey” a prediction about the future? By acting in line with the rhetorical force. [16] Daniel and John wrote apocalypses not merely to delight and affright, but to get people right. I believe those scholars who do not hold to a Futurist reading of Revelation or of Old Testament apocalypses are right to emphasize the cultural milieux in which these were written. Of course, they were written to encourage believers in times of trouble, to persuade and dissuade.
Therefore, as we consider apocalypse neither canonicity nor inspiration is really relevant to the discussion. Similarly, especially as we consider our latter-day apocalypses, the question of facticity is not particularly important to this paper. Whether the Apostle John or Don Piper actually “went” to heaven is immaterial. What matters is that they wrote about it, and they wrote about it for a purpose. And that purpose was more than to simply disclose celestial geography or geopolitical prophecy. The purpose was rhetorical. The purpose was to effect change in the lives of those who read the words of their apocalypses. Apocalyptic writers either wish to effect behavioral change or theological change, or both. [17]
This is central and perhaps the hinge upon which my thesis hangs: all apocalypse is rhetorical. And it is not self-evident that all apocalypse fulfills the same rhetorical function. Much of the non-canonical apocalyptic functions theologically to promote a dualistic cosmology, but it would be quite a stretch to suggest that John’s Revelation is dualistic. Non-canonical apocalypses from the Christian era seem to have Gnostic tendencies, but not always. [18]
There is a significant question however, with respect to the “facticity” of apocalypse that has a bearing on its rhetorical force. While for many of these works it is unlikely to ever be conclusive, it is worth asking to what degree these were fictional, and understood as fictional? The citation of Enoch in Jude may be no more an indication of facticity or canonicity than Paul’s citation of Greek playwrights. We know that there is canonical material that was written as a performance: the Psalms. Song of Solomon possesses a long tradition of being treated as drama. [19] Beyond the canonical fictional apocalypses, even acknowledged works of fiction, have influenced Christian thought and behavior for centuries. Consider Dante’s Divine Comedy; it is clearly fiction and yet has influenced the theology of Hell more than, probably, anything else, including the Bible. Add to that the sheer exhausting number of films and television series that rely on near-death experiences and we see that fictional does not mean unacceptable in the world of apocalyptic.[20] And the acceptability of fiction in the apocalyptic genre redounds to its possession of rhetorical force. Indeed, the volume and popularity of fictional apocalyptic only enhances the argument that fictional apocalypses have powerful rhetoric to impart. If fictional apocalypses are not a powerful vehicle for delivering rhetoric, then artists would not use these tropes as often as they do.
Even if one is highly cynical and believes that the modern apocalypses are only written to sell books, that doesn’t negate that they have rhetorical force. Lots of people have near-death experiences and not all of them have New York Times bestsellers. Whatever the truth-content of contemporary Christian apocalypse, the reality is that the message of these works connects with the book reading (and buying) public. One may argue that modern apocalyptic contains shallow, vapid, or even heretical rhetoric. That does not matter. The significance lies in modern Christian apocalyptic, real or fictional, possessing a rhetorical message that appeals to readers. People want what the Burpos, Pipers, and Wieses of the world are selling.
Does this mean that apocalypses are simply a reflection of cultural theological values or are they transgressive and transformational? This is, of course, another way of asking whether life imitates art or if art imitates life. The answer, I believe, is yes. And how these modern apocalypses both reflect and realign theology and practice is what I will consider next.
The Message from Beyond
One of the phenomena I have found most fascinating in my career as a pastor is the number of times people would tell me that they have certain and factual information concerning heaven, hell, or the afterlife and their source is a modern apocalypse. For example, consider the war described in Heaven is for Real.[21] Here we are told about a conversation Colton and Todd had on their way to Wal-Mart. Colton informs Todd that Todd is going to have to fight against monsters with either a sword or a bow and arrow while the women and children watch, but that Jesus will ultimately win. In the midst of the relation of Colton’s descriptions Todd adds this commentary, after quoting Rev 9,
For centuries, theologians have mined these kinds of passages for symbolism: maybe the combination of all those different body parts stood for some kind of country, or each stood for a kingdom of some sort. Others have suggested that “breastplates of iron” indicate some kind of modern military machine that John had no reference point to describe.
But maybe we sophisticated grown-ups have tried to make things more complicated than they are. Maybe we are too educated, too “smart,” to name these creatures in the simple language of a child: monsters. [22]
Anyone paying attention to the rhetorical force of the book can sense immediately that Todd has made a significant statement. Todd’s assessment of essentially the entire history of interpretation on Revelation is dismissed as unbiblical egg-headery compared to the vision his son had and his son’s interpretation of that vision. And this kind of credence is not only granted by Todd to Colton, but by huge numbers of Christian to Colton.
Again, it is not my purpose or place to say whether Colton did or did not have the visions he has claimed. That’s not relevant to this work. But Colton’s description of the events of Revelation was relevant to Todd and Lynn Vincent and the editors of the work. And they all agreed that the readers of Heaven is for Real needed to know about the coming war.
Similar excerpts can be taken from any modern apocalypse. Piper ponders why he was not allowed to stay in Heaven. While he has no answer, he is confident that his story is one God wants people to hear. [23] He goes on to tell about people who affirm that God specifically sent Don to speak to certain people and share his vision of Heaven to give hope to the hopeless. [24] Bill Wiese claims that Christ was present with him in hell but hid that knowledge from Bill so that he could experience the despair of the lost. [25] This conversation with the Lord continues into a command by Jesus for Bill to warn the world of the horrors of hell and the urgency of getting right with God. Christ tells Bill that He is coming “very, very soon.” [26] Bill goes on to wish he had asked Jesus what “very, very soon” actually meant, but while in God’s presence one would never ask such an impertinent question—rather it is all important that Bill, and everyone reading the book, get out the Gospel. [27]
The question is not whether there is theological rhetoric being conveyed in these revelations but what theological rhetoric. Not only that, but the question that I find particularly relevant for pastors and theologians is why the theological rhetoric employed is finding such an eager audience? As noted above from the early 20th century till now there has been no lack of popular interest in the world beyond. Figures like Aleister Crowley and Edgar Cayce stand shoulder to shoulder with the children of Fatima and Don Piper in the popular imagination.
I cannot say whether there is a greater interest in the apocalyptic today than there was one-hundred or one-thousand years ago, and perhaps all the focus on the apocalyptic in pop-culture is an accident of cheap paper and ink and not a real reflection of the societal interest in messages from the great beyond. Perhaps we are living in a time that fixates on the apocalyptic because of the horrors of the 20th century and the ever-present possibility of human extinction. [28] But perhaps all people at all times have had such a focus. And whether we think such books and movies are a score or a scourge for the church, they will almost certainly keep on coming. Perhaps not, perhaps Americans will surrender their existential anxieties and learn to stop worrying and love the bomb. I doubt it. I believe that as long as there are nuclear arms there will be a sizeable portion of the population who will care deeply about the world after this one if for no other reason than fears that this life may soon, and without warning, be over. Many have made the same observations; the union of apocalypticism and nuclear annihilation looms large in the imaginations of those who analyze the 20th Century. But I believe that in contemporary American Evangelicalism another factor drives apocalypticism.
There will always be people who have apocalyptic messages to communicate a world on the brink of disaster. However, within American Evangelicalism, the rhetorical force of our contemporary apocalypses revolves around reassurance. One could describe such reassurance as triumphalism or exhortation depending on one’s generosity. The key takeaway is that heaven is great and it is for believers in Jesus Christ and that hell is real and it is for unbelievers. One may act on that information as they feel impelled, but none of these works are noteworthy for their divergence from the popular Evangelical theological imaginary. Indeed, they reaffirm the faith already practiced—which I believe partly explains their commercial success.
These books offer the average American Evangelical comforting reassurance that they win, they are right, and all the unbelievers are wrong. These works do not grant new revelation or make predictions. Rather they tell us that heaven is good and hell is bad and you want to believe in Jesus so you can go to the good place and not the bad place. But why does this message sell? Because Christianity in America continues its decline in numbers, and socio-political influence. Americans who have long believed in Jesus need reassurance that what they believe about the afterlife corresponds to reality. They see century-old churches close their doors and society disintegrate and they are fearful. The church in America has never been so weak culturally and politically—at least not in living memory. Burpo, Piper, and Wiese give reassurance that those who trust in Christ are not fools; they are doing it right; they are wise and their wisdom will be revealed to all someday.
The End
At the beginning of this paper, I said the contemporary American Evangelical Apocalypses belong in “the tradition of the Ancient Jewish and Christian apocalypses of the previous three millennia and which evidence deep anxiety and the need to produce apocalyptic rhetoric.” No one can say whether interest in the apocalyptic is higher or lower than in previous points in history. But we can say that the apocalyptic has a long and relatively unbroken history. Moreover, the works of contemporary American Evangelicals fit nicely into the tradition of non-canonical Christian apocalyptic.
The claim that apocalyptic material is of interest because of fears of global conflict is uncontroversial. And I believe that certainly plays a role in the interest and publishing success of these works. But I believe that the changing socio-cultural milieu plays a larger part. Christians in America find themselves reorienting to a changing world—in many ways a hostile world. And in such a world reassurance from Heaven encourages and strengthens.
The facticity of these apocalypses makes little difference to its rhetoric. These words encourage believers to continue to believe what they already believe. They function as calls to keep the faith. And that message seems to resonate, and I predict more apocalypses will be written and unless there is a significant social change in favor of the church, we will continue to see apocalypses that are (broadly) orthodox reaffirmations of the faith people already hold, functioning to encourage and comfort in trying times.
Notes
[1] Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent, Heaven Is for Real (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010).
[2] Hitchcock gives an fuller treatment about the veracity of these claims. I am not interested in whether or not these stories are true, but rather why they are written and why they resonate. Mark. Hitchcock, Visits to Heaven and Back (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2015).
[3] Books about visits to heaven, or hell, have had large print runs in the past. Consider Marietta Davis’s story Scenes Beyond the Grave that was in print, in nearly 40 updated editions since the 1850s. Several modernizations of Davis’s celestial and infernal adventures have been created, one with a title clearly playing off of Ninety Minutes in Heaven. Marietta Davis, Caught up into Heaven (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1999). Marietta Davis, James L. Scott, and Gordon Lindsay, Scenes beyond the Grave: Visions of Marietta Davis, 36th ed. (Dallas, Texas: Christ for the Nations, Inc., 1990). Dennis Prince, Nolene Prince, and Marietta Davis, Nine Days in Heaven: The Vision of Marietta Davis, 1st ed. (Lake Mary: Creation House, 2006).
[4] William Butler Yeats, "Demon and Beast" in Later Poems (London: Macmillan, 1922), 344–45.
[5] Yeats, “The Second Coming” in Later Poems, 346–47.
[6] Colin McDowell and Timothy Materer, “Gyre and Vortex: W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound,” Twentieth Century Literature 31, no. 4 (1985): 343–67.
[7] The secret life of Charles Williams that was subtly, though sometimes not so subtly, revealed through his novels and poetry is indicative of the strength of Occultism in early 20th Century Britain. That a Christian as influential as Williams could also be a not-so-secret practitioner of magic seems scandalous by today’s standards. Whatever his arcane practice means, soteriologically, Williams was a brilliant novelist and poet and his works are worth reading. The most commonly read of his works are: Charles Williams, Charles Williams Omnibus (Oxford: Oxford City Press, 2012); Charles Williams, Taliessin through Logres & The Region of the Summer Stars, Inklings Heritage Series (Berkeley: Apocryphile, 2016).
[8] Rudyard Kipling, "En-Dor" in The Years Between (Garden City: Doubleday, 1919), 53–55.
[9] Alan P. R. Gregory, Science Fiction Theology: Beauty and the Transformation of the Sublime, (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2015), 3–7.
[10] Kevin O’Neill, The Afterlife in Popular Culture: Heaven, Hell, and the Underworld in the American Imagination (Santa Barbara: Greenwood, 2022), 26-28.
[11] Greg Carey, Ultimate Things: An Introduction to Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic Literature (St. Louis, Mo.: Chalice Press, 2005), 5. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10632102.
[12] Carey, 14.
[13] Christoph Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, The Fall of the Angels, Themes in Biblical Narrative (Leiden; Brill, 2004), 2–3.
[14] Auffarth and Stuckenbruck, The Fall of the Angels, 1.
[15] Granted, many believe that Daniel and other apocalypses are indeed works for fiction. Carey, Ultimate Things, 37–41.
[16] This could also be called the perlocutionary force.
[17] Auffarth and Stuckenbruck write about this concept vis-à-vis the “fall of the angels” and the reimagining of Satan in Christian theo-mythology. They argue that Satan in the dualistic, Premodern world was the eternal villain; however, this concept gave way to a Modernist vision of a Faustian trickster. One may theorize what kind of behavioral change such a paradigm shift is wont to create, but it is undeniable that such a transition is a significant theological realignment. Auffarth and Stuckenbruck, The Fall of the Angels, 7.
[18] Dylan M. Burns, “Apocalypses among Gnostics and Manichaeans,” in The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, ed. John J. Collins, Oxford Handbooks (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 359–61 http://site.ebrary.com/id/10837503.
[19] Joseph R. Jones, “The ‘Song of Songs’ as a Drama in the Commentators from Origen to the Twelfth Century,” Comparative Drama 17, no. 1 (1983): 17–39.
[20] Kevin O’Neill, The Afterlife in Popular Culture, v–ix.
[21] Todd Burpo and Lynn Vincent, Heaven Is for Real, 135–39.
[22] Burpo and Vincent, Heaven is for Real, 137.
[23] Don Piper and Cecil Murphey, 90 Minutes in Heaven (Grand Rapids: Revell, 2004), 158.
[24] Piper and Murphey, 90 Minutes in Heaven, 158.
[25] Bill Wiese, 23 Minutes in Hell (Lake Mary: Charisma House, 2006), 37.
[26] Wiese, 23 Minutes in Hell, 37.
[27] Wiese, 23 Minutes in Hell, 38.
[28] James Berger, “Introduction: Twentieth-Century Apocalypse: Forecasts and Aftermaths,” Twentieth Century Literature 46, no. 4 (2000): 387–95.
Bibliography
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