Apocalypse in the 1950s

Jimmy joined the army ‘cause he had no place to go
There ain’t nobody hirin’ ‘round here since all the jobs went down to Mexico
Reckoned that he’d learn himself a trade maybe see the world
Move to the city someday and marry a black haired girl
Somebody somewhere had another plan
Now he’s got a rifle in his hand
Rollin’ into Baghdad wonderin’ how he got this far
Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man’s war

         - Steve Earle, "Rich Man's War"

I've written before about the Christian fundamentalist notion of the Apocalypse, aka, end of the world, "the end times," that has become a mainstream notion in the Republican Party.  The short description is that it assumes that a cataclysmic war between Good and Evil will erupt over Israel, which will result in most of the Jews of the world being killed and the rest converting to Christianity.

With the appearance of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority group in 1979, followed by Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition soon afterward, the Christian Right became a progressively more influential force in the Republican Party.  And, in line with the apocalyptic doctrines they promoted, they adopted a strategy of supporting the most hardline military advocates in Israel's Likud Party (the party of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon).  Likud's rightwing-Zionist and Orthodox Jewish base believe this approach will restore the biblical kingdom of David and Solomon.  The Christian Right think it will hasten the end of the world and, not incidentally, of Judaism.  And of most Jews.  Very strange bedfellows.

Before 1979, it's safe to say this view was a fringe belief in American society, with extremely limited influence on US foreign policy.  Today, the Christian Right is the single most powerful influence on the Bush administration's Israel policy - no matter what tales conspiracy theorists spin about the "Jewish lobby."

I've come across an earlier version of this theory, in the form of a 1951 pamphlet by Gordon Lindsay, Present World Events in the Light of Prophecy.  It says it's a reprint of articles appearing in a magazine called The Voice of Healing.  In the foreward Lindsay says his message is urgent: "The greatest event of world history is about to transpire - the Second Coming of Christ."

Lindsay's pamphlet is done from a Pentecostal religious viewpoint.  Pentecostals and fundamentalists mutually distinguish themselves from each other, though they tend to share similar views on the "end times."  But it's largely a political polemic, with biblical quotations tossed in to support those positions with divine sanction.  Lindsay is outraged that the US had allied with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany and militarist Japan in the Second World War.

Lindsay assures us that Ezekiel 38 and 39 are end-time prophecies of Russia attacking Israel.  His method of scriptural exposition includes such insights as noting that the "Meschech" mentioned in Ezekiel 38:2 sounds kind of like "Moscow."  Actually, he says it's a "suspicious correspondence."

He also find another "interesting coincidence" in the King James translation of Matthew 24: 15-16, which speaks of seeing an "abomination of desolation" and fleeing into the mountains.  The first four letters of "abomination" are also the first four letters of "A-bomb."  Also, atomic bombs cause lots of "desolation."

You get the idea of Lindsay's brand of biblical hermeneutics.  His political perspective isn't much more sophisticated.  The Russians are very scary.  They're Communists.  They have the atomic bomb.  The end of the world is coming.

"America may thank God," he says, "that the head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, is a staunch believer in the Bible."  And a bitter opponent of racial desegregation.  Also a fanatical anticommunist who tried to compensate for his lack of practical accomplishments in the postwar period by promoting primitive fear-mongering.  (Those two things are my take, not Lindsay's.)

"Atomic warfare is no doubt a certainty," he tells us, "and was surely foreseen by the prophets."  Actually, I doubt that Isaiah and Ezekiel were really versed in nuclear physics, but we'll let that slide.  And all these problems, and the Korean War too, are America's fault.  More specifically, he says all in italics :

The great cities [of America] are a river of iniquity, of night clubs, play-houses, burlesque theaters with their degrading strip teases, gambling houses, dens of infamy, guilded houses of ill fame, honky tonks, saloons, beer joints and a host of other rendezvous of evil - plying their trades day and night to bring about the absolute corruption of the youth of the land.

I wonder what he would think about Britney Spears and Sex and the City.  I also wonder if we have any "dens of infamy" around here.  I'm curious as to what goes on in one those.

But he makes it clear that America's biggest political sin was allying with the Soviet Union against Hitler Germany.  Presumably, he didn't approve of Winston Churchill's famous statement after Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941, that if Hitler had just invaded Hell, he would find something nice to say about the Devil in the House of Commons.  Lindsay is quite emphatic about how evil it was to aid the USSR in their war against Germany.

Despite his certainty of national doom, he also thinks that somehow temporal salvation can still be had by mass conversion to Pentecostal Christianity, with its speaking in tongues and "far-reaching healing revivals."  He also thinks that "Flying Saucers" (in our more enlightened times we call them UFOs) are "one more warning to the sinner to repent and get right with God."

In addition, we hear about falling stars and some numerological speculations, e.g., 1290 is the "number of desolation."  (?!?) But he is wisely cautious in not pinning down dates too closely.  Although he does suggest that 2001 is probably the outside date for the Second Coming.  Of course, that was the date that Bush became president ...

All of this is really pretty dreary stuff.  It's bad theology, bad politics, bad history, bad prose.  The present-day versions are sometimes slicker.  They're certainly more marketable, as the Left Behind line of bestsellers shows.

But the basic idea isn't much more sophisticaed.  Today's version has far more emphasis on Israel rather than Russia as the key player in the Apocalypse.  Lindsay's 1951 version shows more obvious traces of traditional anti-Semitism.  Today's respectable version professes to be more "philo-Semitic" than most Jews themselves are.

And today's version is taken seriously by the president of the United States.  Which adds a dimension of religious fanaticism to our Middle Eastern policies that make practical solutions more difficult to achieve.