Doomsday

THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE! from Daniel Cowen on Vimeo.

Straight from the book and that’s the honest truth it is.

In the texts we have read and the movies we have seen thus far, how has the issue of “free will” and being helpless in the face of prophecy been addressed? Illustrate your argument with at least three examples.

The second half of the “Glorious Appearing” was far less exciting then the first half. Once Jesus returns, the action comes to a halt, as the faithful characters no longer can die. This is where the reader of faith and the reader of pleasure would probably diverge in terms of interest. The book just turns into interpretations of the Judgments and the establishment of the Millennial Kingdom from the Bible.

There are a series of collective, yet personal, experiences once Jesus returns. Though Jesus literally answers the prayers of the characters, they still use the Bible as a source of information.

During what I’m guessing is a regular Bible study session, Chaim says, “Books by men seem superfluous now …Whenever we pray I feel as if Messiah is here with me, answering my questions even before I ask. Let us begin with a time of worship and prayer (342).” The Bible has become unnecessary with the presence of Jesus. Though, the characters can just ask Jesus about their questions, they still turn to Chiam to explain the judgment process. Why don’t the characters just pray and ask Jesus if he’s giving direct answers?

One main question that arises several times is why Satan will be released in 1000 years while his followers were cast into the lake of fire for eternity. The explanation offered, through the interpretation of text, as oppose to a direct answer from Jesus, is that the people born during the Millennium must have a choice to follow Christ or turn their back on the Messiah. Why is Jesus offering future generations to be tempted by Satan? If they are born during the Millennial Kingdom, should they not know Jesus personally and understand him to be their lord and savior? If Jesus is so saddened to punish humans who stray from him, why does he make them vulnerable to the Antichrist?

The second half of Glorious Appearing documents the fulfillment of prophesy – “history written in advance” (237).

Members of the Trib Force continuously exclaim over Carpathia’s eternal capacity to reject the prophesy, even as it starts to be fulfilled in front of his eyes. “Carpathia had to have read the Bible. He had to know all this was prophesied. He even had to know the predicted outcome. Yet he brazenly came to the very post he was supposed to, and…he still had the gall to believe he would prevail” (269).

From this and similar statements, it seems as if everything is predestined – who will win, who will lose, who will live, and who will die. When Ming asks Eleazar about people who choose not to come to Israel, he just laughs and replies, “Did you see anyone at the judgment today who appeared to have a choice?” (368).

But at other times throughout Glorious Appearing, the authors emphasize that it is possible to have a choice. By choosing to believe in Jesus, a person will be spared the plagues and ultimately the lake of fire. Conversely, those who choose to believe in the Antichrist get the punishment they deserve. “The Unity Army soldiers were slain simply by the Lord’s words…they had long since made their decision. They had pledged their loyalty to the god of this world, had willingly taken the mark of Antichrist and bowed the knee to him. For them there was no recourse” (239).

It seems to me LaHaye and Jenkins are trying to have it both ways. Do we have free will to choose between good and evil? Or is everything predestined, and are our actions today just fulfilling ancient prophesies?

The questions are more than merely theological. As McAlister notes, “the series offers its readers a way to see the aggressive actions of the United States (and those of terrorists or other actors in the region) as part of a divine plan…beyond any human agency to effect – or to judge.” (McAlister 194). Obviously, it can be a slippery slope from predestination to abdication of responsibility.

In Glorious Appearing, Jesus doesn’t seem to mind the color of one’s skin or where they were born. Everyone is spoken to in their own tongue, even their own accent! And we’re reminded of this more times than the number “7” appears in Revelation.

It becomes a sick joke, particularly when Ming thinks Jesus is speaking directly to her and is asked to step forward only to find a million others stepping forward too (295). It’s even worse when Chang thinks “The message his Savior imparted was definitely for him alone…” when this same false assumption was made just a dozen times before (326).

I disagree with Quinby in her reading that this text is racist and McAlister in her reading that GA displayed “impressive changes in race politics (17, McAlister reading).” The characters were not particularly westernized or Christian but essentially without identity, meaning Chang was a Chinese character to match a Asian tech-whiz stereotype, not because his Asian status was of importance to his character. The embarrassing caricatures of Carmela and Shaniqua do not grapple with the question of race but use awkward Ebonics to highlight the pervasiveness of the word. The only thing that mattered was coming to Jesus.

By Jesus describing Chang’s previous religion as “aberrant,” one could assume the book was using a racist, imperialist tone, especially after Mac refers to the west Texan accent as “the language of Heaven.” (325 & 341) Though in that same scene everyone gets a joke at the same moment, as if their minds were strung together in a collective unconscious, they even hear “Jesus laugh at Chaim’s Manna crack.” (341) The community, or lack of individuality, is startling. Even Jesus isn’t allowed a spotlight, as despite his “magnanimous comments about Himself, Rayford was struck by how lowly, humble, and compassionate [Jesus] sounded.” The point is that if you are saved, your nationality and race amounts to the language in which Jesus speaks to you.

By the time I got to the end of Glorious Appearing, I could see the appeal of it. It takes away the need for thought and responsibility. It gives the Christians and the Jews the option to be a child again, and to wholly rely on your mommy or daddy.

You aren’t held responsible because you don’t know any better. It gives the unthinking sheep a Shepard to herd them to moral slaughter. God/Jesus tells his followers what to do, so they don’t have to make decisions. They don’t have to question whether killing all these people is ethical. They don’t have to wonder if any of Carpathia’s people took the mark out of fear or to keep their families safe. Good people of other faiths still deserve to burn in the fires of hell because don’t fall completely in line. How do you tell a small child that they deserve to be killed because they were too young and too innocent to understand that they’re evil? But since God says it is right, it must be so. Since God is giving the orders, his followers have no responsibility. They are simply the knives used, not the brain that directs the action. They take no responsibility because that is God’s role as their father.

It is a tempting arrangement, which will result in the stunting of personal growth. If a person cannot grow up and question her parents, take responsibility of her own actions, learn to say no, or at least, ask why, then she remain a child her entire life.

The McAlister piece brings together many of the issues we raised last week in class.  I’m glad that we read this after the class because it really crystallized how I understand and think about Left Behind.  There are many things I wanted to discuss in this blog post, but in the interest of brevity, I’ll choose one and leave the rest for class.

She reads the novels as placing importance on the roles of the Jews, specifically as interfaith relations are important in regards to imperialism.  The U.S. has always been imperialistic, this attitude/policy has just been called by another name (e.g.; “making the world safe for democracy.”) Democracy (as opposed to governments based on religious law) is a pursuit of liberalism.  But McAlister says that this sort of  liberalism is also rooted in Christian evangelism in the way that it seeks to convert others to their sect.

In the lecture I posted, Slavoj Zizek makes the claim that liberalism and fundamentalism are a false conflict and that fundamentalism can actually grow out of liberalism.  (I’m not sure if I understood his entire lecture correctly.)  Zizek also talks about a change in anti-Semitism that occurred during pre-Nazi years.  He says that previously anti-Semites sought to eradicate Jewishness, so conversion was an acceptable alternative.  Then, the concept of a Jew changed to an inherent quality so that physical annihilation was something they desired.  During Hitler’s rule, he and Eichmann considered moving all Jews to another homeland to answer the Jewish Question.  Ultimately, the Final Solution resulted in the Holocaust.  Then, Zizek says, with the founding of Israel in 1948, the attitude changed again.  This changed perception of the Jew from nomadic to established in a homeland and fueled hatred against this new type of Jew.  He says that many Middle Eastern countries (he gives Iran for example) allow Jews to live freely in their country, but antagonize Israel.   And, importantly, Zizek says this is responsible for a new type of anti-Semitism, one directed against Israel.

To connect with our topic of interest – Christian evangelist notions about Israel: McAlister notes the omission of any discussion of American Jews and Palestine or Palestinians  from Left Behind.  About the first she writes: “Jews are instrumental when they matter but they do not matter at all unless they make themselves of interest to God by becoming Israelis.”  About the latter: “the notion of Palesinian is made invisivble, impossible…there is no Palestinian problem on the evangelical map.”  That is: the creation of the state of Israel as opposed to Palestine antagonizes the need for the state to exist for the Second Coming.  Further, McAlister connects this with general U.S. Middle East foreign policy, because the U.S. is largely evangelical Christian.

I came across this yesterday and thought it fit right in with the discussion we had at the end of class, particularly in reference to skepticism as it seeks to break from dualism.

Lynne Layton writes:

John Powers says of Lynch’s [Blue Velvet]  “Such a dichotomy is typical…it would be wrong to criticize Blue Velvet and the others for dramatizing the excluded middle, for not finding alternatives to the extremes of good and evil that give them their spark.  Literary gothicism is distinguished by similar stylization; it does with the territory.  Nevertheless, one suspects these films don’t dramatize alternatives because they can’t imagine alternatives. ”
…

Perhaps the patriarchal dominant is the psychology and politics of this split world, a world with no alternatives to black-and-white thinking because so much vulnerability is kept secret.  As anxiety heightens, splitting intensifies.

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Briefly – In life-and-death decisions, there are usually (but not always) two options.  In Glorious Appearing, too, there is no middle ground.  A person can either accept or reject creed and therefore be damned or saved.  The Rapture is preceded by great turbulence, likely a time of anxiety, in which the “splitting” Layton talks about is apparent.

Thought/comments?

“While both the authors and the publisher have claimed that thousands of readers have experienced a Christian conversion due to the novels, scholars such as Frykholm have been unable to document even a single case in which a reader experienced a Christian conversion. When Frykholm requested evidence of conversion from the publisher, Tyndale submitted only seven cases; four were reportedly hearsay and three were reportedly readers that had reaffirmed their lapsed faith in Christianity.”

– Frykholm, A. “Rapture Culture” 2004: p. 161

63,000,000 read it, but like me, did their concentration wane during the 4-page sermons?