By Christian
If you’ve never heard of eschatology and have no idea what the nnark is, let alone what the hunting of the snark is supposed to be: don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with you. You should be more worried when you’re on this hunt. We’ll explain why in a moment.
First of all, this beautiful foreign word from the Greek: Eschatology
Eschatology (/ˌɛskəˈtɒlədʒi/ ⓘ; from Ancient Greek ἔσχατος (éskhatos) ‚last‘ and -logy) concerns expectations of the end of present age, human history, or the world itself.
Wikipedia
Okay. So this might have been on your mind before. „When are the end times coming?“ „When is Armageddon coming?“ „When can we expect the return of Christ?“ „When will the end come?“ And so on. If I were to list all the formulations, the time for this part of the series would already be over.
And to be clear: when it comes to something as important for your own life as the end of the world, it’s understandable that you want to know more about it.
The only question is: How much can we know about it? Is there anything about it in the Bible? Well, probably nothing as obvious as a date, otherwise it would be clear to everyone. But perhaps we only need to understand and combine the coded terms in the Bible book of Daniel, the New Testament and especially the Book of Revelation to unravel this mystery? There are even said to be signs that we only need to decipher. And many claim to be able to do this! When translating the book „The Gentile Times Reconsidered“, I was shocked, to say the least, by the long list of predicted dates of the end times: From the Reformation to today alone, he lists dozens of predictions and years.
And that brings us to this strange hunting of the snark. This story by Lewis Carrol is hardly known outside the English-speaking world (Wikipedia). But you do know Alice in Wonderland, don’t you? It’s also by him. The story The Hunting of the Snark (An Agony in Eight Fits) was published in 1876:
What does this ballad have to do with eschatology? Well, our preoccupation with the subject of eschatology must never develop into such an adventure:
The poem is a ballad about a strange hunting expedition that sets out with care, hope and a completely blank sea map to catch a mysterious creature called a snark. What exactly they want to do with the snark is left open, but some of its characteristics are listed.
The crew is led by the bellman with his bell.
One of the characters (The Baker) had received the warning on the day the hunting party’s ship set sail that some snarks are boojums, and anyone unlucky enough to meet a boojum will immediately disappear „gently and suddenly“. The baker has exactly this bad luck at the end of the ballad, because the snark he finally found was a boojum.
Die Jagd auf den Snark (Wikipedia)
Do you see the parallels? I’ll adapt the description to the topic:
Finding the one correct biblical eschatology is a strange endeavour, which some undertake with meticulous care and great hopes, but only with a vague description in very few biblical texts. What they should then do with this eschatology is an open question.
The seekers are motivated by charismatic leaders or teachings.
If you are unlucky, you can disappear „gently and suddenly“ during this search.
The hunt for the only true eschatology (Christian)
Now I’m not saying that we don’t find anything about eschatology in the Bible. But an obsessive search to understand the Bible’s statements on the ‚end times‘ and the further course of history precisely and ‚correctly‘, or even to predict a date, has proved to be like searching for the Snark. There are endless interpretations, speculations and you can spend a lot of time on them. And some have disappeared from reality, so to speak.
Unfortunately, what is often overlooked is the decisive role played by one’s own assumptions and interpretations.
The biblical scholar Dr Michael S. Heiser has dealt with precisely this topic in a blog series on eschatology, which I would like to reproduce here (and translated into German in the channel ‚Beröer Suche‘).
He uses some terms relating to eschatology that you may not be familiar with. The following explanations and diagrams are taken from Wikipedia.
First of all, we will often hear the term millennium. The word is derived from the Latin word for 1000 and refers to a period of 1000 years. Millenarianism (or chiliasm, derived from the Greek word) is the belief that refers to a 1000 year (literal or symbolic) reign of Jesus Christ, which is found in Revelation 20:1-10.
Essentially, there are these main directions of millennialism:
After the first coming of Christ around 2000 years ago, the following would happen according to the most important main currents:
Premillenarianism
The Latin syllable pre means ‚before‘. The idea is that we read in the Bible that there will be a ‚great tribulation‘, followed by Jesus‘ second coming. This is followed by the millennium and then the final judgement.
Dispensationalism
The more modern dispensationalism envisages a previous second coming of Christ for the Church. This can be accompanied by a ‚rapture‘ in which the believers are taken from the earth.
Postmillenarianism
The Latin syllable post means „after“. In this belief system, Jesus only comes a second time after the millennium and then carries out the final judgement.
Amillennialism
The prefix ‚a‘ here means as much as never „not“ or „none“. In other words, no millennium. The number 1000 is understood symbolically and the whole time between the first and second coming of Christ is regarded as the millennium.
In addition to these views, there are an almost incalculable number of others that differ in certain details.
But why are there such different views, even though the text of the Old and New Testaments is the same? Dr Heiser explains this in his blog, which we will start with in the next part.
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