I no longer believe in
Eschatology – that is: the study of last things and end times. I no longer believe in eschatology; I believe
in eschatologies.
When I was young my
parents (who are Salvation Army officers – clergy in our quirky denominational
nomenclature) didn't talk much about eschatology, not that I remember anyway
[i]. Though my dad did show the
Thief in the Night series of films to
our congregation. And those films left a
significant mark (heh heh heh) on my young and impressionable soul.
I remember vivid nightmares of earthquakes and volcanoes. I remember that fear of coming home from school
and not finding anyone and being immediately convinced that I had missed the
rapture. I remember freaking out any time the moon
seemed especially large or orange. Eschatology
made me afraid. We didn't talk much about eschatology but held a sort of half-digested
and barely understood Premillennial Dispensationalism.
Later, when I was 19 or
20 I started studying eschatology for myself – partly as a way to undo some of
that fear that had never left me. And I quickly dropped the Pre-Millennial
Dispensationalist system. The continued “it
could happen at any moment” hype left me dry and I wanted to discover an
eschatology that was based less on fear and artificial divisions between “Israel”
and “the Church” (It seems to me that
Dispensationalism excels at creating a multiplicity of artificial
divisions).
I began reading about Postmillennialism – many of the early members of The
Salvation Army held a post-millennial eschatology and were convinced that they
would be instrumental in making the world a better place and ushering in the
Kingdom of God. That kind of eschatology
influenced some of the songs they wrote.The song, “Shout Aloud Salvation” by Salvationist George Scott Railton, for
instance:
March on, march on! we bring the jubilee;
Fight on, fight on! salvation makes us free;
We'll shout our Saviour's praises over every land and sea
As we go marching to Glory.
Early Salvation Army
soldiers and officers believed that the expanding work of the Army would, in
fact, bring about the great Jubilee, the kingdom of God on earth.
But I didn't stay long
there. I soon discovered Preterism – an
eschatological system that holds that most (or all) of the predictions of the end
times were fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. And this system seemed to make a lot of
sense. The pieces of the puzzle began to
come together for me. When Jesus said
that “this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have
happened.” (Luke 21:32) he meant what he said… this generation, the very one he
was speaking to as he made his predictions.
This belief freed me of
that dispensationalist fear, established within me a deeper commitment to
seeing the Kingdom of God here on earth, and gave me a great impetus to deeper
study of scripture. But that same
impetus toward study has, in recent years, moved me (however reluctantly) away
from a Preterist understanding of eschatology.
I say “reluctantly”
because I liked that Preterism made sense.
It was a single unified theory that explained everything (or seemed
to). I liked that it was whole and
complete. There was comfort in that. But
(and there’s always a “but,” right?) I have had to let it go.
Because I’ve come to realize that there is no eschatology of the bible – there is
no one eschatology; there are
many. Daniel’s eschatology is not the
same as Zephaniah’s. And the eschatologies of the synoptic gospels (though
strikingly similar) are not the same.
And neither is Paul’s eschatology the same as John’s. They were all writing at various times, to
different peoples, with different expectations and with different goals. And they each had different expectations
about what “the end” would (or should) look like.
I’ve come to accept that there is no way to meld all these eschatologies into
one Grand Unified Field Theory. There is
no eschatological Theory of Everything.
So what do I
believe? I do believe in the
resurrection in Jesus Christ – that we who believe live in Christ – and that in some sense
we live in and create the Kingdom of Heaven within us and around us in this
world here and now. “
Making heaven on earth is our business,” said William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army. I
believe that. I love that. Making heaven on earth is our business.
And whatever I might learn from the many and varied eschatologies of the bible –
I filter them all through that thought: how will this help me to better see and
create the Kingdom of God in the world around me? I don’t expect the world to end in a matter
of days or weeks or years. The kingdom
of God is an eternal and everlasting Kingdom and it begins anew each day.
[i]
The Salvation Army does not officially endorse or embrace any particular form
of eschatology. There is a wide variety
of opinion on the topic within our ranks.
