Transcript
ANDERSON: In this lecture, we venture into the style of thinking known as apocalyptic, dealing specifically with the subject, the tyranny of evil. Not long ago, a tract for the Times was left at my front door, with the lead line: "Is time running out for mankind?" The leaflet declares
that long ago, the Bible foretold vast changes that will affect all mankind in the very near future, our future. Turning the page of the leaflet, the evidence is presented. Urgent problems which human beings cannot solve, such as massive famine hitting millions of people, the spread of crime and violence, sickness and pollution threatening our lives.
The leaflet asks the question, on the inside page: "How do we know that time is running out?" And it gives the answer, "These conditions were foretold centuries ago in the Bible. And when university Professor D. F. Fleming" -- that is another authority -- "when university Professor D. F. Fleming observed that historians increasingly look back upon
world wars, starting in 1914, as the turning point of modern history, that throws light on Jesus's statement in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 24 verse 34. "'Truly, I say to you that this generation will by no means pass away until all these things occur.'" So the tract presents a timeline, beginning with 1914, the beginning
of our generation, and the timeline runs through a series of disastrous events. World wars, disease epidemics, violent crimes, global pollution. And there is a big slash mark which cutes through the line marking the end of the system. So we are told in this leaflet that it is later than we think.
The end is at hand. But, on the final page of the leaflet, there is a cheering note. The leaflet announces that you can be happy that so little time is left, for, we read, "The news that God will soon destroy this corrupt world should make honest-hearted persons everywhere rejoice. For, on the other side of the catastrophe, beyond the end of the system,
will be lasting peace, eternal life and real health, no more crime and hunger, and the earth a delightful place in which to live." Promises that are generously supported with scriptural quotations. So, all this and heaven, too! What more can you want? Mainline Judaism and Christianity have attempted to dismiss the type of literature called
apocalyptic, of which the two best examples in the biblical cannon are the book of Daniel in the Old Testament and the Revelation of John in the New. Judaism has concentrated, for the most part, on the Torah, and its requirements, and has regarded with suspicion apocalyptic literature like Daniel. And many Christians have turned primarily to selected portions of the New Testament,
and insofar as they turn to the Old Testament, prefer to look at the pre-exilic prophets and the Psalms. Generally, it is held that apocalyptic is a kind of sectarian aberration, or, to borrow a phrase, "a fall from true religion into the dark realm of fantasy." But this judgement I submit to you is questionable. In any case, we know
from American history that millennial movements have broken out from time to time, and in recent days the book by Hal Lindsey entitled The Late Great Planet Earth has enjoyed a popularity that has astounded and worried some Christian leaders. If we are to understand the two party system that has prevailed in American Protestantism, for at least a century.
then we have to consider the tension between an apocalyptic and prophecy, especially because of the fact that the New Testament itself is heavily influenced by this way of thinking. Paul Hanson begins his illuminating book, The Dawn of Apocalyptic, recently off the press, by pointing out that apocalyptic type thinking, whether expressed in the Bible
or in other ways, has profoundly influenced many of the younger generation. The members of the younger generation are disillusioned by the god progress, worshipped by the parents of the younger generation, a god whose altar has been served by the acolytes of reason and achievement. Dr. Hanson says these words: "Within houses
sprawling across carpets of grass and cars speeding across belts of concrete, they" -- the younger generation -- "recognize not the fruits of the good life, but the symbols of a demon who has duped a generation into believing it was imbibing soma when in fact it was drinking hemlock." In the frantic, goal-oriented activity of adult society, they discern not lives dedicated
to the fulfillment of man's deepest needs, but lives lusting after Mother Earth's goods, and betraying their misdirection by transforming the mother into a whore, and earth exploited with no respect for her own health, and thereby transformed into a stinking sphere of poisonous waters and lethal air. "The brooding young minority," he continues, "
views the ecological crisis as more than a call to superficial housecleaning. Rather, they find themselves alienated from the establishment, finding that its values and social structures are perverted from the very roots. And reflecting on the signs of the times," he continues, "the young people began to look upon the universe with a new respect, even as a place
charged with ominous powers, and infused with a will which cannot be violated by man's disrespectful exploitation of his environment. Hence, the younger generation withdrew from the political scene, convinced that we are living in the time of the imminent collapse of this order and the dawn of a new era. The rest of us,"
concludes Dr. Hanson, "remain within the system." But we, too, are a bit disturbed by the signs of the times, and are intrigued by the increasing popularity of apocalyptic visions in the literature of our time. In fact, it was just the other day that the Boston Globe carried a front page article, a lead article, in which it pointed out that the United States population losses will
exceed those of the Soviet Union by 10 times, if Russia puts her finger on the trigger first in an atomic war. So these are times of what you might call the apocalyptic jitters. Enough has been said to indicate that apocalyptic thinking must be taken with theological seriousness, especially if we are to consider our political
responsibility in the context of the biblical faith. So, let's turn first of all to a discussion of the relationship between prophecy and [apocalyptic?]. The apocalyptic perspective in the Old Testament is represented by literature which is found on the margin of prophecy. For instance, in Isaiah 25-27, the so-called little apocalypse
of Isaiah, embedded right in the heart of that scroll. Or it is found likewise in the last part of the Book of Zechariah, so-called Deuteron-Zechariah. But a full-blown example of apocalyptic is the apocalypse of Daniel, which is included in the third open-ended division of the Hebrew Bible known as the Writings. It's interesting
that the Apocalypse of Daniel, which is popularly thought to be a parade example of biblical prophecy, as in Hal Lindsey's book, is not included in the cannon of the prophets of the Old Testament. Rather, it's included, as I've already indicated, in the canon of the writings. In fact, it's a wonder that the book of Daniel made it into the canon, and probably it did so because of the view
that this book was written in the Babylonian period, and hence in the time before the cessation of prophecy, which in rabbinical judgement occurred in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. The location of the book of Daniel among the Writings rather than the prophets is appropriate in that it calls into question the relationship between prophecy and apocalyptic. There are some who maintain that apocalyptic is
an extraneous development in Israelite tradition. It is a foreign importation, as it were, or at least something which is out of the main stream of Israelite thought. According to one view, apocalyptic reflects the dualism of Zoroastrian religion, Persian religion, and thus shows concessions to the Persian culture which was introduced by Cyrus the Great, after the
conquest of Babylon in the year 539 B.C. This is a type of literature, then, allegedly which introduced a strange and foreign kind of dualism between the kingdom of good and the kingdom of evil, and thus represents a king of religious development that occurred in the Persian period between the advent of Cyrus the Great and the coming of
Alexander the Great in the year 332 B.C. The more recent view espoused by the late Old Testament theologian Gerhart von Rad is that the origins of apocalyptic are not to be found in the circle of prophecy, but rather in the wisdom movement, the movement which is represented by such books as Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and Job,
and much literature of that type, which flourished in the late Old Testament period. So, in his book Theology of the Old Testament, Gerhart von Rad maintains that apocalyptic is not the child of prophecy, but rather emerged out of a context of wisdom thinking, and thus represents a kind of proto-gnostic development. A kind of literature which preceded
the gnostic literature which flourished in the period of the New Testament. Now, these extreme views, I believe, have been laid to rest by Paul Hanson, who in his book The Dawn of Apocalyptic convincingly shows that apocalyptic belongs in the main stream of Israelite tradition. It is my own conviction that apocalyptic is prophecy in a
new idiom. It is prophecy, but prophecy of a different sort. And it rests upon a different view of God's relation to the temporal process, and specifically to the realm of politics. So, there are affinities between prophecy and apocalyptic, but there are also differences, and as I've just suggested, the main difference is to be found in the fact that in
apocalyptic, we have a different notion of God's relationship to the whole temporal process. Apocalyptic shares with prophecy the vision of the future realization of God's purpose. A future realization which in prophecy is expressed in such imagery as the Kingdom of God, the day of the Lord, or the God who comes as [chauffage?], judge, or
vindicator to vindicate the elect by overthrowing the high and the mighty, and exalting those of low degree. These are fundamental motifs in prophecy, and they reappear, though in a different context, in apocalyptic. Or, to put the matter differently, both prophecy and apocalyptic share the vision of God's transcendence. God is transcendent to the whole historical
process. He is Creator, King, Lord, Sovereign, and God's transcendence in both prophecy and apocalyptic is symbolized by the heavenly council. A concrete portrayal of God's transcendence. The heavenly council is the cosmic context in which the decrees for the future are announced. Now, that imagery
you remember is quite important in prophecy. The prophets, as we have indicated before, understood themselves to be part of God's cosmic administration, and therefore privy to His secret decrees. The prophets performed their role within the politics of God. Thus, Isaiah of Jerusalem, according to the report of his inaugural vision in Isaiah 6, was lifted above
the flux and contingency of history, evidenced in the death of King Uzziah, and found himself transported in a vision into the heavenly temple, or the heavenly palace, where he beheld the king, par excellence. "Yahweh, of hosts, whose glory fills the whole earth. In the day that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord. Sitting
upon His throne, high, and lifted up. And his train filled the whole cosmic temple, and the whole earth was filled with His glory." In that vision, Isaiah hears the King speaking in the heavenly council, saying: "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" And Isaiah accepted the task of being God's messenger. The prophet who translates, or interprets, the
cosmic purpose of God into the concrete realities of the political world. "'Here am I, Lord. Send me.'" In the book of Amos, we read, chapter 3 verse 7: "Surely, the Lord God does nothing in the historical realm without revealing His secret to His servants, the prophets." So you see the prophets, then, envision themselves as
somehow being brought into the context of the cosmic, the heavenly council, hearing the secret of God and receiving the commission to announce it and to interpret it to people in their concrete, historical circumstances. The apocalyptic seer also testified that God had chosen to reveal, through visions, His mystery, or His secret. But the vision of
God's future, in apocalyptic, is esoteric. That is to say, it is given in a symbolic code. Only a few can understand the message, can decode it. And thus understand what God is about to do. An excellent illustration of the apocalyptic secret is found in the second chapter of the Apocalypse of Daniel. In that chapter, we are told that Nebuchadnezzar,
the Babylonian monarch, had a nightmare, and it was so terrifying to him that he called together all of his wise men and soothsayers throughout the empire to perform an impossible task. Not only to interpret his dream, but to tell him what his dream was, in the first place. Not even Freudian sages could handle that counselling situation. All of the wise men of the empire failed.
What we are told, that to Daniel, there was revealed the mystery -- the Aramaic word there is [raz?]. The mystery, [mysterion?]. Remember that passage in the New Testament. Mark 4:11-12. "Unto you is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God." So to Daniel, then there was revealed a mystery, a secret.
And he proceeds, then, not only to tell the king what his dream was, but to give its interpretation. The dream was a terrifying one. "'You saw, o king, and behold a great image. This image, mighty and of exceeding brightness, stood before you and its appearance was frightening.'" He then goes on to describe a composite image whose head was a fine gold. Its breast
and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay. This composite image, as we are told later on, represents kingdoms, four kingdoms. Each one worse than the previous one, so that there is a process of historical deterioration, or disintegration going on. One is reminded of the Greek
historian, or Greek thinker, Hesiod, who likewise thought of the kingdoms progressing, or retrogressing, in deterioration. At any rate, "'As you look,' said Daniel, 'A stone was cut out by no human hand, and it smote the image.'" It rolled down and smashed that image to smithereens. "'But the stone grew larger and larger until it became a great mountain
filling the whole earth.' So, Daniel said to the king, 'There is a God in heaven who reveals secrets, and He who reveals secrets makes known to you what shall be in the latter days.'" We are told, in the interpretation, that the mystery, the secret known only to a few, is that God is King, and that His Kingdom will come on earth as it is
in heaven. The earthly kingdoms are transitory, and they decline. But His Kingdom, of which the saints of Israel are to be the bearer, is an everlasting kingdom, which eventually will fill the whole earth. Now, it is noteworthy that the story which I have just alluded to presupposes a political situation. For Daniel is in the court of the Babylonian king,
and therefore deeply involved in, and right at the center of, politics. And furthermore, Daniel interprets a political situation. That is to say, he interprets the present situation in the light of previous successions of political kingdoms. So, apocalyptic of this type is heavily political in its orientation. But apocalyptic has a different view than prophecy with regard to
the temporal process. The task of the prophet, we have said, was to interpret his vision of God's transcendence in mundane affairs, in the conviction that God was working in and through the historical process, using agents like the Assyrians, or the Babylonians, or the Persians, to accomplish His purpose. But the apocalyptic seer sense that the vision of God's
transcendence is in tension with the political realities of history, so much so that the vision cannot be translated effectively into the ongoing historical process. I quote Paul Hanson in this regard. He says, "Prophetic eschatology is transformed into apocalyptic at the point where the task of translating the cosmic vision into the
categories of mundane reality is abdicated." Or, to quote him specifically from his book The Dawn of Apocalyptic, "The visionary element is the vision of a divine order transcending all mundane institutions and structures. A vision which constantly call those institutions and structures under judgement, stubbornly refusing at the same time to become identified with them. The element of realism
is concerned with the day-to-day maintenance of those same, mundane institutions and structures, and with preserving continuity so as to assure a context for the continued life of the community." So far, the prophets would stand within that statement. When separated from the realism, the historical realism, the vision leads to a retreat into the world of ecstasy and dreams, and to an
abdication of the social responsibility of translating the vision of the divine order into the realm of everyday earthly concerns. When separated from the vision, the realism becomes a sterile preserver of the status quo, which absolutizes and eternalizes the existing order together with all of its inequities. So, apocalyptic reflects a collapse of the
optimistic confidence in the activity of God in and through the political arena. In and through the historical process. There is a profound discontinuity between the world as it is and the world God intends. To recall the apocalyptic track mentioned at the beginning of this lecture, the whole system is hostile to God,
and must be shattered in order that God may bring about a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth, about which we read in the latter part of the prophecy of the book of Isaiah, often called Trito-Isaiah. Chapter 65, verse 17. "' For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth. And the former thing shall not be remembered or come into mind, but be glad and rejoice forever
in that which I create. For behold, I create Jerusalem, a rejoicing. And her people, a joy.'" And this writer, one who at least anticipates the later development of apocalyptic, goes on to say that in the time of the new creation, everything is going to be changed. There will be no more suffering or sorrowing. There will be no more infant mortality,
because everyone will live to a ripe, old, and blessed age. There will be no insecurity -- economic insecurity -- and there will be no meaningless work, he says. And above all, there will be a complete transformation not only of nature, but of human nature. Everything is going to be changed. For in that day, the wolf and the lamb shall feed together. The lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent's
food. "They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain," says the Lord. Now, the shift in emphasis from the historical, the realistic, to the cosmic or the transcendent, was occasioned in my judgement by a new awareness of the radical power of evil that infects the whole political world in which we live and move and have our being.
Remember that the prophets attempted to understand Israel's sufferings in terms of covenant theology. Whether mosaic covenant theology, with its conditional "if," or whether the unconditional covenant theology which is associated with the promises of grace to David, as in 2 Samuel 7, Psalm 89, Psalm 132, and so forth. For the prophets, the historical arena
is the place where Yahweh meets His people, calls them to covenant relationship, and therefore to knowledge of God, knowing Yahweh, and summons them to responsibility in social life, as in Micah 6:8. The prophets then call the people to repentance, to responsibility, and to coexistence with God in the historical arena. But,
Israel's covenant theology ran into two major difficulties. In the first place, Israel's history, as historians and prophets look back over it, was one of covenant failure, right from the beginning. Ezekiel goes so far as to say, in chapter 20, that the people of Israel were sinful, or rebellious, against Yahweh, right from the land of Egypt.
There was never a moment in Israel's history, from the very time of her election or formation as God's people, when she lived in faithful covenant relationship with God. A historical doctrine of original sin, if there ever was one. And Jeremiah, in his own way, could say that there was a time, back in the halcyon wilderness days, when Israel was a faithful bride of Yahweh,
but the moment the people set their foot on the soil of Canaan and began to participate in political reality, they were seduced into the worship of false idols, and thus they forgot Yahweh, their covenant God. So the prophets then sense that there is inherent in human nature a weakness, a perversity, a failure which could only be overcome when Yahweh
changes human nature, giving the people a new heart. Not a heart of stone, as Ezekiel puts it, but a heart of flesh. The people would have a future only in the grace of God, which cannot be understood within covenant theology, or the grace of God breaks beyond all kinds of theology, whether it's [divitic?] theology or mosaic theology. So, this is the first problem, then, that was encountered.
The problem of human nature. But there was another problem. Even granting Israel's culpability, the punishment was out of all proportion to the crime committed. That's the problem to which the prophet Habakkuk addresses himself in the complaints, or the laments, with which the book begins. In his expostulations with God, Habakkuk, who was a contemporary of Jeremiah, living in a
time just before the fall of the nation and the exile of the people -- in his expostulations, he raises the lament which is so often heard in the laments of the psalter. How long, O Yahweh? So he says, "O Yahweh, how long shall I cry for help and Thou wilt not hear? Or cry to Thee, 'Violence!' And Thou wilt not save. Why dost Thou make me
see wrongs and look upon trouble? Destruction and violence are before me. Strife and contention arise. So the law is slacked, and justice never goes forth, for the wicked surround the righteous. So justice goes forth, perverted." He recognizes that the Babylonian, the Chaldean, was the instrument in Yahweh's historical sovereignty, and in that respect he agreed with Isaiah
and Micah and Jeremiah and so forth. But the problem as he sees it is that the Chaldean, or the Babylonians, whom Yahweh is raising up, come as a terrible avalanche of evil. They come bent solely for power. In fact, power is their God. At kings they scoff, and of rulers they make sport. They laugh at every fortress. They heap up earth and take it. Then they sweep by like the wind, and go
on. Guilty men whose own might is their God. These are the military men, who suppose that brute power, military power, is running history. So, Habakkuk is quite willing to admit that the Babylonian is the instrument of God's sovereignty, the agent of God's purpose, but he is perturbed about the fact that this power comes in such a way as to destroy all
relative moral distinctions in human history between the relatively righteous and the relatively unrighteous. He raises the question in his second lament. "'Thou who are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on wrong. Why dost Thou look on faithless man and art slant when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?'" On his watchtower, you will recall,
according to the second chapter, Habakkuk received an answer. It was a somewhat enigmatic answer, to the effect that he should wait. Wait for the future when God's purpose will become clear. But in the meantime, one can live only by a faithfulness which radically clings to the promise of God despite the enigmas and the tragedies of history.
In the present time, Habakkuk was told you cannot understand, but the vision, though it carries, will come and be clarified and there will be a time in the future when God's purpose will become clear. You can see, then, that at the time of the fall of the nation, the exile of the people, the question of evil, radical evil, was pressing itself into the consciousness of Israel. The people had to begin to face the question which we put in
philosophical language, the question of theodicy. The righteousness of God's administration. Habakkuk's question prepares the way for the apocalyptic view of history. One measure of the difference between prophecy and apocalyptic is to be found in the way each uses the language of traditional mythology. The ancient myths of the Canaanites, the Babylonians, and so forth. Jeremiah was able to
envision Yahweh as a divine warrior coming against His own people. Not just against the foreigners, no. Yahweh as the divine warrior had a case, a contest, an engagement against His people, and Jeremiah could say that Yahweh was coming against His own people in the guise of the foe from the north, whoever that foe was. The foe of the north is coming! And Jeremiah describes the coming of this foe in the providence
of God in terms of the old myth of chaos, the return of the earth to chaos. Remember that poignant passage in chapter four of the book of Jeremiah, almost contemporary in its ring. "I looked on the earth and lo, it was waste and void." (Greek) The words found at the very beginning of the Genesis creation story. "And I look to the heavens, that they had no light. I looked on the mountains, and lo they were quaking,
and all the hills moved to and fro. I looked and lo, there was no man. And all the birds of the air had fled. I looked and lo, the fruitful land was a desert, and all its cities were laid in ruins before Yahweh, before His fierce anger. For thus says Yahweh. 'The whole land shall be a desolation, yet I will not make the full land. For this
the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above be black, for I have spoken. I have purposed. I have not relented, nor will I turn back.'" Now you see, in that context, while Jeremiah uses the language of chaos, the myth of chaos, He does so in a way to suggest that the disaster, when it comes, is going to be a meaningful disaster, but because it will be the sign of the judgement of God upon His own people. This is the
evidence of the wrath of God. The judgement of God, and therefore Jeremiah can use language like that to call the people to repentance while there is still time. Otherwise, chaos is ahead. But apocalyptic used the mystical language to portray a dimension of evil more terrible than anything conceived within covenant theology. More terrible than anything that even
Jeremiah could realize with this vision of chaos. Thus we read, in Isaiah 27 chapter 1 -- this is a portion of the so-called little Apocalypse of Isaiah -- Isaiah 27:1. We read that in the final time, Yahweh will come as divine warrior to overcome the powers of evil which now are described in demonic terms. In fact, the language from Isaiah 27:1 has affinities
with the old Canaanite myth, the Ugaritic myth, of Baal's conflict with Jah the sea. Baal versus the sea, the powers of chaos, the serpent, leviathan, the dragon. We read in Isaiah 27:1: "In that day, Yahweh, with His hard and great and strong sword, will punish leviathan, the fleeing serpent. Leviathan, the twisting serpent, and He will
slay the dragon that is in the sea." Here, we find a new and more radical view of evil. No longer is the issue sin and its deserved punishment, but rather the conquest of radical evil that infects the historical process itself. It's significant, then, that the apocalyptic writers no longer call Israel
to repentance. Nor do they emphasize the fulfillment of God's promises within Israel's ongoing history. That is to say, the heilsgeschichte, the sacred history. The reason is that apocalyptic writers see Israel in particular, and all mankind in general, as victims of a whole system or kingdom of evil. They see the people to be victimized by ominous powers
that both seduce and afflict the people. The source of evil is not traceable to covenant failure. It's not traceable to the human will in revolt against the suzerain of the covenant, but rather to a sinister demonic dimension of existence. Remember what we heard some time ago. A sinister force erased 18 minutes of the Nixon tape.
So this sinister dimension of existence is expressed mythically as the kingdom of Satan versus the Kingdom of God, as in the Gospel of Mark. I suspect that many people today can begin to appreciate the myth of Satan, for they feel that they are helplessly caught in the grip of massive powers in society.
They find themselves caught up in a system that they think is intrinsically evil, and they stand apprehensively in the face of what is coming, inevitably in the future. So, in the view of many people, the whole social sphere has to be exorcised if there is hope for the future. It's not just an individual exorcism, but rather the whole political realm, the whole social realm,
is so infected and corrupted with ominous, demonic, irrational powers that it must be exorcised if there is to be any hope. Apocalyptic literature, which flourished in the period 200 B.C. to 200 A.D., 400 years, is so varied that generalizations are difficult. But for the purpose of our discussion, it's sufficient to notice that one of apocalyptic's chief
characteristics is a profound pessimism about the political structures and the world powers that shape and tyrannize human life. In apocalyptic literature, the distinction between this world, or this age, and the world to come, or the age to come, is not a historical distinction such as we would make between an old era and a new ear. No, the distinction
is much sharper than that. The two ages -- this age and the age to come -- are separated by a deep qualitative gulf. This age, according to apocalyptic, is perishable and transient. The age to come will be eternal and gloriously transfigured. This age is under the sway of demonic powers. In the apocalyptic idiom, it is under the dominion of Satan. The age
to come will be the time of liberation from all the powers that dehumanize life. In the apocalyptic idiom, the divine warrior will win his final victory over all of the powers of darkness, chaos, and death. This age is characterized by the moral and religious decay of mankind. The age to come will be a time when Israel and all people will experience the glorious liberty of the children of
God. So deep is the gulf between these two ages that human effort is utterly ineffective in bringing about any improvement in society. In the language of the apocalyptic tract, to recall it once again, the entire system has to be destroyed. And this will happen when God, working through catastrophe, terminates the present corrupt system
and ushers in His Kingdom, according to a prearranged plan to which the apocalyptic seer is made privy. Kingdom belongs to God, and to God alone, and not to human beings. Now, it should not be supposed that apocalyptic is completely otherworldly and therefore irrelevant, politically. The futuristic language of apocalyptic may serve to evoke
a radical obedience to the Torah, and faithful perseverance in the face of all hostilities. The apocalypse of Daniel was a tract for a political revolution, the Maccabean revolution. It provided a theological basis for a minority to make a stand with fierce zeal for the Torah, even when all of the odds, humanly speaking, were against them. One of the key texts in the
Apocalypse of Daniel is found in chapter 11, verse 32. "The people who know God shall stand firm and take action." Even though they're a minority, even though they seem to have no chance, the people who know God shall stand firm and take action. Understandably, apocalyptic literature has had a strong appeal for many modern people who feel
that they are a helpless minority over against the establishment, the powers that are in firm control of the human situation. Nevertheless, while apocalyptic has a political appeal and a certain kind of political relevance, this type of literature shifts the accent from the prophetic call for corporate repentance and social reform to an appeal to an individual or a small minority to take a stand
in faith. Confident that the time is near when God will usher in the new age through a world catastrophe, apocalyptic characteristically calls for the virtues of patience, long suffering, perseverance, and waiting. And insofar as apocalyptic literature calls for waiting and perseverance, it can, in some situations,
lead to a kind of political cop-out, a retreat from the world as we know from various sectarian expressions of apocalyptic. I am reminded of an incident which occurred some years ago when I was teaching in the department of philosophy and religion at Colgate University. Teachers and their spouses were invited one evening to the home of the chairman of the department, a philosopher, for a social affair. At one point,
the philosopher enlivened the conversation by calling our attention to a current news item. A group of people up in Canada, figuring that the world would end in just seven days, had sold their goods and had gathered into a barn to await the final consummation. The philosopher, half humorously and half seriously, put to us the question: suppose that this little circle, this
esoteric group and no one else, know through some secret revelation that the world would end in seven days. What would you do? So, we went around the social circle that evening, each person testifying on the spot about what he or she would do under such a circumstance. There were various answers. One said that more time would be spent with the family. Another said that
it would be a time to sit lightly on daily responsibilities, and another said that it would be time perhaps to read a great book, or to listen to great music, and so forth. I shall not forget the testimony of the chairman's wife. She said that she had always wanted to be emancipated from household work, so knowing that the world would end in seven days, she proposed to hire a maid
to do the household chores, and she said that she would tell her that she would be paid at the end of the week.
Let me bring this lecture, now, to a summary and conclusion. Israel's faith in the presence of God in history, and specifically His activity in the historical arena, was shipwrecked on the rocks of suffering and evil. The prophets, as we have noted, attempted to account for Israel's sufferings in terms of sin. That is, failure in covenant responsibility. In this perspective, Israel was culpable. Israel was to blame.
And the punishment was completely and fully deserved. But apocalyptic writers knew that the sufferings of this present age cannot be accounted for on the basis of deserved punishment. Too often suffering is grotesquely out of proportion to the sins of those upon whom political tragedy falls. A grim fact of which our generation, which has witnessed the holocausts of Hiroshima, and Auschwitz, is
well aware. Faced with the power of radical evil, apocalypticists could not use the prophetic language of guilt -- that is to say, sin -- and repentance, for they saw that human beings in general and not just Israel alone, were the victims of a whole system of monstrous evil that must be destroyed catastrophically if there is to be human salvation. This view
is reflected in the well-known 7th chapter of the book of Daniel, which Hal Lindsey acclaims as "the greatest chapter of the Old Testament," a somewhat extravagant statement. And the vision found in Daniel 7, the beasts come up out of the waters of chaos, one by one, you remember. Out of the depths of the sea, the locus of chaos and evil, and meaninglessness. These beasts symbolize historical evil
that is unhuman in its brutality, and that's why they're portrayed as beasts. Evil that has its locus in the mysterious depths of the chaotic sea of ancient mythology, or as we might say, within the processes of history. Each beast is more terrible than the previous one, suggesting that things will get much worse before they get better. But over against these beasts that rise up out of the depths of the sea,
the seer envisions the situation in the heavenly council where the great king is enthroned, and he describes one like a son of man. That is to say, a human being, with a human visage, not a beastly countenance, coming transcendently with the clouds of heaven. And so, in this way, the vision is interpreted to mean that the victory over radical evil comes not within history,
immanently, as we would say, but it comes from the cosmic realm. It comes transcendently, or in terms of the myth, it comes with the primal man. One like a son of man, a human being, who comes with the clouds of heaven. What a contrast. Between authority which is grounded from below in the processes of history and the dark depths of human nature
to an authority which rests upon the sovereignty of God who is Creator and King, forever and ever. The apocalyptic view of history, then, represents a profound modification of prophecy. Prophecy with its emphasis upon the continuity of God's purpose in history, evidenced in Jeremiah's purchase of a field, and His promise that the time would come when real estate would still have value. God's
future Kingdom will come on earth, according to the apocalyptic gospel, but by a radical eruption. A radical break through, from a transcendent or heavenly source. That is the Gospel of the Apocalypse of Daniel. It remains to be seen, in the final lecture, how in the New Testament, this apocalyptic view of the Kingdom of God
is modified.