The Apocalypse in Rock

This lecture, given at the Grace Institute for Religious Learning on February 8th, 1998, sought to compare and contrast scripture with two rock operas based on the New Testament Book of Revelation. One musical selection was Genesis' "Supper's Ready," and the other was Daniel Amos' "Shotgun Angel," side B. Click here to see the flyer, and click here to see the parrallel libretto.

Though it rarely rears its head in mainline Protestant or Catholic churches the cry of "Jesus is coming!" is pervasive in evangelical churches around the world. It can seem like a whole other world if you're not prepared for it. It is, however, the world I was raised in, and by the time I started high school the Second Coming of Christ dominated nearly every church service and sermon I heard.

When I was a freshman in high school, I invited some friends to come to our youth group meeting on Friday night. Now usually our explicit activities, such as a movie or a party were advertised, but there was a great cloud of secrecy about this particular event. We were simply encouraged to bring our friends and be ready for anything.

When my mother swung onto the long driveway of the church with a van full of youth group kids, we found our way impeded by a roadblock. Bright lights were shone in our eyes, and men in unfamiliar uniforms approached us. "Got any Bibles in this car, ma'am?" One of them asked my mother. "Any Bibles in there?!" Another shouted at us. The doors were opened, and we were ordered out of the van, which they then searched. Our bibles were thrown into a basket as one of the guards took my mother aside. She then drove off, and we were escorted up to the church property.

All of the electricity seemed to be out, and the second story of the Fellowship Hall was lit only with candles. There were about 50 of us teenagers huddled in the cold and dark with no explanation, no idea what was to come next. After about a half hour, somebody started singing hymns: low, mournful songs about hope and deliverance. About fifteen minutes later, Brother Frank, Jr. came up the stairs. He was twenty-one years old, a superlative extemporaneous preacher, and our youth pastor.

Tonight he seemed to be broken beyond his years, however. He was shaking and pale. He couldn't look any of us in the eyes, and we were all instantly concerned. Falteringly he took the podium and appeared to be choking back tears. When he finally did speak it was strained and sorrowful.

"This morning they came and took my Daddy away." He was speaking about our pastor, Brother Frank, Sr. "They charged him with preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and right in front of my very eyes they handcuffed him and pistol-whipped him. The forced him to his knees and demanded that he renounce his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 'No' he shouted, over and over. 'I will never renounce him.' Then my Daddy began to sing, "Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine." The hit my Daddy on the head, and he kept singing. Then one of them put a gun to his temple, and pulled the trigger. I watched my Daddy die today."

He took a moment to get a grip on himself. "And now they are coming after me. And if you are not willing to renounce Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, they will be coming after you. It is the beginning of the end, my friends. America has been conquered by a malevolent force. The antichrist is rising, and the persecution of the church is beginning."

We met these words with both fear and hope, for we had been told such things would occur just before Jesus came back to rapture us away into heaven. We sang a few more songs, and then we heard the door being battered down one story below us. As we sang, the men in the unfamiliar uniforms burst into the room, waving their weapons and telling us all to stay seated and calm. Of course the girls were screaming, and we were all terrified. They grabbed Brother Frank and tied his hands behind his back. They forced him downstairs and out into the moonlit lawn below. We watched out of the second story window. As the uniformed men forced him to his knees and kicked him. We saw him shaking his head and screaming. Then we watched in silence as one of the men raised a pistol to his head and fired.

Brother Frank's head snapped forward, and he collapsed to the grass. Wordlessly we were escorted downstairs. Then the sirens began.

These kind of psychodramas were everyday fare in the church I was in during high school, and it was not unusual. Most evangelical and charismatic churches share the same apocalyptic worldview, and religious scare movies such as "A Thief in the Night" and "A Distant Thunder" were all the rage, combining horrid production values with frightening scenarios about teenagers whose families and friends get caught up in the rapture while they are left behind on earth to contend with men in black vans trying to tattoo the mark of the beast on their foreheads.

For all of their D-movie status, these films scared more than a few people into the Kingdom. Books such as Hal Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth" became bestsellers, outlining complex theological speculation for the popular reader, and evangelical churches around the world were whipped into a second-coming frenzy.

The idea of Jesus' imminent return is not new, however, and goes back all the way to the apostles, who believed that Jesus would return within their lifetimes. In this talk, I'll briefly outline the various ideas about Jesus return, after which we'll hear two short rock-operas based on different interpretations of this event. Hopefully we'll have some time at the end to discuss them, as well.

Christian theology calls the study of the end of the age "Eschatology" which means "Study of the last things." The general pattern of the early church went like this: Jesus would return in the next few years, at which time he would establish an earthly kingdom over which he would rule for a thousand years, a time known in theological language as the Millennium. The early church expressed what is thought of as a primitive pre-millennial view; Jesus would return before the millennium.

To the surprise if many Christians, though, Jesus didn't return, so the ideas of the second coming lost their allure. Even after Christianity conquered the known world, it seemed God's Kingdom was still not evident on the earth. Thus, in the fourth century, St. Augustine taught what we now call "a-mellinnialism", which, as you might expect from the name, doesn't advocate a physical, actual millennium at all, but instead a spiritual event facilitated by the church.

Even early Protestant groups considered the idea of an actual millennial Kingdom heretical. Mainline Protestants and many Catholics today espouse a form of A-Millenialism which hold Jesus' return to be a figurative one, to be realized when the church has done it's work creating a free and just society. When everyone "beneath their vine and fig tree shall be at peace and unafraid," then Jesus will be amongst us again. Since this is consonant with liberal Jewish teaching about the coming of Messiah, Jews and Christians may work together towards a common eschatological vision of the Kingdom of God, or as I prefer to call it, the Community of God. This is certainly the view which I hold today.

In the seventeenth century a new teaching, called "Post-Mellinnialism" was first formulated. In this schema, the Millennium, or the Kingdom of God is brought about by the efforts of the church. At the end of this 1,000 years of piece, Jesus bodily returns.

As you will see on your handouts, the Pre-Millennial view has Jesus returning before the Millennium, the Post-Millennial view has Jesus returning after the Millennium, and in the A-Millennial view Jesus doesn't return at all, except metaphorically.

Very recently, however, a new variety of Pre-Mellinialism has really taken hold in the evangelical churches, and generally involves events known as the rapture and the tribulation. Now the rapture is an event alluded to in only one place in scripture, the first book of Thessalonians.

1Ths. 4:15-17 says: "For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever."

The way this looks is this: A trumpet will sound, Jesus will descend into mid-air, then all of the graves will open and those Christians who have died will instantly be changed into immortal bodies, and will rise up into the air to float there with Jesus. Then all of those believers who are left alive will float up into the middle of the air.

The tribulation is a seven-year period of trials and suffering when God's wrath is poured out upon the earth. Oh, it's supposed to start out sweet, with the antichrist being hailed as a man of peace who ushers in a period of prosperity. The good times don't last, however, and horrid judgements are unleashed upon the earth, and the antichrist is revealed to be the enemy of God. The tribulation period generally concludes with the battle of Armageddon which will be won when Jesus rides out of the sky on a white horse to defeat Satan's armies.

The $72,000 question amongst these neo-Pre-Mellinnialists, however is this: will the rapture take place before the Tribulation, in the middle of the Tribulation, or after it? Or, as some assert, will it be a sporadic event, with many mini-raptures going on throughout the tribulation period?

Take a look at the chart on your handout titled "Pre-Millennial Rapture Timing Views" to help keep all this straight. Now while the mid- and post-tribulation perspectives have their proponents, by far the majority of evangelicals consider themselves "Pre-Tribulationalist" "Pre-Mellenialists." I am aware that you need a scorecard to keep these all straight, which is why I included the handouts.

The Pre-Tribulationalist view got its start with an adolescent mystic named Margaret MacDonald who died in 1840. She lived in Port Glasgow, Scotland and as a teenager was subject to visions where she spoke in tongues and uttered prophesies. An English Separatist named J.N. Darby was influenced by her and organized the first pre-trib systematic theology. Darby's ideas flourished in evangelical circles and within a hundred years of his death, became the normative eschatalogical theology for hundreds of millions of evangelical believers.

Questions? Briefly

Now, both of the rock-operas we will be featuring tonight favor the Pre-Millennial position, but whereas one is Pre-Trib, the other is decidedly Post-Trib. I'll let you discover which is which for yourselves.

The first band we will hear from is Daniel Amos, which at this point in their career, are basically a country-rock group based at Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California. The year is 1977, and side two of their album Shotgun Angel contains a album-side suite devoted to a retelling of the Pre-Millenial myth. Let's hear it...