A few months ago I was invited to do a remote interview with a podcaster from Ukraine, Mikhail Abakumov, who has emigrated to Poland because of the war.  Mikhail is a Christian scholar, working with Ukranian refugees, and writing a dissertation on the famous German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, famous for being involved with, and eventually executed for, an assassination plot against Hitler.  Bonhoeffer has been an inspiration to many Christian seminarians, pastors, theologians, and thinkers at large ever since. During my interview with Mikhail I learned something that blew my mind.  I knew full well that many American fundamentalists had long identified the Soviet Union, and then Russia (or one of its leaders) as the "Antichrist" (the "evil empire"); I had no idea that conservative Slavic Christians returned the favor and thought the same of the USA.  Particularly today.  That in fact the war in Ukraine was a fulfillment of Scriptural prophecies, especially the book of Revelation, which showed how the conflict would end and what world order would emerge from its ashes. I asked [...]

I continue here my post from yesterday, explaining the Christian background to U.S. Support of Israel, taken from my recently-published book Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End ****************************** It is important to stress that evangelicals think God is faithful to Israel even if Jews are not faithful to God.  He has fulfilled and will continue to fulfill his promises that Israel will have the Promised Land.  But Jews who reject his messiah cannot possibly be saved.  That is not God’s fault.  He is not the one who broke the eternal covenant.  Jews did when they rejected their own messiah.  Therefore, they will be punished. To evangelical readers that is clear from the book of Revelation, which describes “the End” as standing in straight continuity with and in fulfillment of “the Beginning.” As we have seen, according to Revelation, the only inhabitants of the earth who will be saved are those who refuse the mark of the beast and instead receive the seal of God.  In Revelation 7 the two groups of these [...]

One section of new book Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says About the End explains some of the socio-political consequences of the belief that “the end is near.  Here’s a consequence that I bet is not widely known:  U.S. Foreign Policy on Israel. In my book I emphatically state that I am not taking a stand on U.S. policy per se and certainly not on the Israeli-Palestinian issue itself.  I am interested purely in the historical question: why has the U.S. been (and still is) so invested in supporting Israel in particular? This is how I explain it in the book (this will take two posts).   ****************************** Modern Israel in Ancient Prophecy? Many people – possibly most – hold some beliefs without knowing quite why.  Because of our upbringing, environment, and news sources, certain ideas just seem like common sense.  Those raised in families, communities, and churches that believe the United States needs to provide substantial support for Israel usually know some of the reasons: we need to promote stability in the Middle East, [...]

I move on now to discuss Revelation’s view of ruling the world.  If at the end of time God destroys everyone other than his followers, whom will they rule?  I begin by picking up my final question in the last post. ****************************** Where does the book of Revelation stand on the morality of domination?  There is really not much doubt.  When the catastrophes have run their course, Christ’s followers are granted world dominion. To understand what that might mean for John of Patmos we have to consider one of the stranger anomalies of his narrative.  After the wrath of God has been satisfied: what remains of the population of earth?  At the last judgment in ch. 20 everyone whose name does not appear in the “book of life” – that is, anyone who is not a follower of Jesus – is sent to the second death in “the lake of fire” (20:11-15). Doesn’t “everyone” mean everyone?   John stresses that it does: after earth’s entire non-Christian population is cast into the fiery lake, so too are [...]

I've been presenting a lecture I gave to a regional meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature recently on the violence of the book of Revelation.  In my previous post I talked about a passage that strikes me as excessively ugly, which discusses Jesus' treatment of the prophetess Jezebel (a Christian leader/teacher) from the church of Thyatira.   At this point in my lecture I move on from detailing aspects of the violence of the text to considering its significance. ****************************** Most of Revelation, of course, is not about what will happen to Christians that John considers wayward, but to those outside the church who suffer incomprehensible catastrophes and are eventually tossed alive into a lake of burning sulfur. But why would it have to be this way, even if God is just and decides to avenge his persecuted or even martyred followers and to wipe out the masses of the ungodly?  Couldn’t he simply give them a simultaneous and fatal coronary?  Or just disintegrate them with a cosmic ray gun?  Not for John.  The wrath [...]

One argument used to support the idea that the controlling image of Christ in the narrative is the lamb who was slain is that this is how he is introduced in his very first appearance in the book.  Anything that follows must therefore be read in light of this introductory image.  The problem is that this claim is simply not true.  Christ first appears not in chapter 5 as the sacrificial lamb but in chapter 1 as “one like a Son of Man,” (1:13) that is, as the cosmic judge of the earth referred to in Daniel 7, who destroys God's enemies and their rule.  In this opening vision Christ is dressed in a white robe and gold sash, just as the mighty angels who will later pour out the bowls of God’s wrath (15:6).  But he is far mightier than these earth-destroyers.  His hair is white, not to show that he is old and decrepit but to reveal that he is the One who has ruled from eternity past (see Daniel 7:9), the “alpha [...]

In my previous post I started giving the lecture I gave recently to a group of professional biblical scholars about how my views of Revelation have changed.  After thinking that the book predicted our future (I gave up on that one forty years ago!) I began to think that the book was a positive message for true followers.  In this reading – which I held for many, many years -- the point of the book is that God is sovereign, just, and loving toward his faithful, and in the end truth will prevail.  Above all, Revelation is a book of hope.   I no longer see it that way and am a bit surprised I did for so many years.  The book of Revelation is not principally about hope, let alone the love of God.  Words for hope -- ελπις / ελπιζω – occur some 80 times in the New Testament, but not once in this book.  And God himself is never said to love his followers in this book and they are never referred [...]

Have you ever wondered why fundamentalists are adamant Zionists?  (Did you know they were and historically always have been?)  It seems to outsiders a bizarre mystery: you love Israel but you hate Jews?  Well, OK, you say you love Jews, but how exactly do you show it?  By supporting Israel, I guess.  But Israel is a nation and the Jews are individual people, most of whom have nothing to do with the state of Israel, at least directly.  And even if you do love individual Jews, let’s be realistic here: you think that even though God is in favor of Israel, all the Jews will be going straight to hell.  What’s that all about? Many fundamentalists, of course, believe that Jews in the end will be saved.  But not while remaining faithful Jews.  They will convert to become followers of Jesus.  So they will be saved as Christians, not as Jews.  Those who don’t convert, even the heroes of modern-day Israel, well… sorry.. If God is opposed to non-Christian Jews, why is he pro-non-Christian Israel?  [...]