Spirit Of The Times

Irony Of The Times

I just can't help but think about how terribly funny (and simultaneously sad) it is, that at the end of the year 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future.

Sound like another of my articles? This one is thanks to Gary DeMar (go figure). . .

At that time, "Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science, and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through the study of the pagan past.Islam was now expanding at the expense of Christendom. . .The Ottoman Turks, after snuffing out all that remained of the Byzantine Empire, had overrun most of Greece, Albania and Serbia; presently they would be hammering at the gates of Vienna."

That information was taken from Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1942), 3.

Anyway: the intent of this article is to point out that the prevailing attitude of the times was a pessimistic one, similar to the attitude of many Christians today, and yet...the end has STILL not come.

Think of the wasted hours many may have spent in anxious worry over the advance of the Turks, the spiritual state of the Empire, or the fact that the refigerator had yet to be invented.

What can we learn from all this?

Post-Post Millennialists

The falacy of the complete Millennium

The Germans have a word which describes most arm-chair theologians, especially where Eschatology is concerned: zeitgeist.

It means, The Spirit of the Times.

In this respect, each generation in Christendom has formed and re-formed its own respective Eschatological views.

But what is the true answer? How are we to know what is true, without being affected by the influences of our own generational near-sightedness?

One solid answer is to glean the truths of each preceding age. Dispensationalism, for instance, grew out of the heritage of Medieval Catholic Eschatology. The Protestant Reformation, however, marks a break with the Roman Catholic Church. And even though some of its theology continued to draw from Medieval thought, much of it was a return to Biblical theology, the area of Eschatology included.

The death of John Knox in 1572 set the stage for a shift in the development of English apocalyptic interpretation. During his last year, Knox preached a series of dynamic sermons at St. Andrews University on the prophecies of Daniel. James Melville, who was a student at that time, wrote: "he maid me sa to grew and tremble, that I could not hold a pen to wryt." From that point on, prophetic studies dominated the theological discussions at St. Andrews for decades to come.

However, while many of these circumstances may have far-reaching results in our own century, it would be - of a certainty - very far-fetched to assume that the direct result of Medieval and Puritan Eschatological studies is our own day's hyper-dispensationalism, or even our day's post-post millennialism.

In order to claim that a post-post's view of the millenium is legitimate because it had its inception in the Medieval ideologies of the seven dispensations, etc., one would have to also accept the whole system.

The first problem with this (for Protestants) is that it means re-aligning with a Catholic idealogy, which has long since been abandoned.

The second is that, since the system is built upon the Middle English idea of

"The World shall last sixe thousand yeeres;

Two thousand thereof shall be a vacuitie

Two thousand the Law shall continue;"

(Daniel Featley's Clavis Mystica by R. Bauckman, Tudor Apocalypse (Appleford: Courtenay Classics, 1978), 2-283.),

one has to also accept this thought to accept the rest. Becaus as many earlier (Catholic) theologians believed, the earth would only last for about 6,000 years. (Six days of creation / six thousand years of History.)

But the system is fouled up. It would have been convenient for those who lived pre-15 or 1600. For us, however, it is obvious that the Tudor Apocalypse is not the end, nor the beginning of the end.

Once again, this belief is a result of a generational near-sightedness, one which is proved incorrect when placed against the test of time. To truly understand the whole "dating system," take it ALL the way back to Christ, who said, "this generation shall not pass, until all these things have been fulfilled."