Millenialism

In dit onderzoek wil ik graag een bijdrage leveren aan het beter begrijpen van de opvattingen van de Jehovah’s Getuigen vanuit een historische en theologische invalshoek. Aanleiding van dit onderzoek ligt in mijn achtergrond. Ik ben opgevoed als Getuige van Jehovah. Hierdoor ben ik goed bekend met de opvattingen van de Getuigen. Tijdens het lezen van het boek The Gentile Times Reconsidered werd ik erop geattendeerd dat bepaalde methoden om profetische periodes uit te rekenen hun oorsprong vinden bij Joachim van Fiore. Dit wekte mijn nieuwsgierigheid. Ik wilde weten wie Joachim van Fiore was en welke ideeën hij had. Kan Joachim één van de bronnen zijn voor de opvattingen van de Getuigen van Jehovah?

This article considers the hermeneutical approaches of several eschatological positions concerning the book of Revelation, and in particular, the kingdom views attached to each position. Rather than giving a summary statement of the three popular millennial positions, the article's focus is to explore each position’s supporting hermeneutical base against the backdrop of a consistently literal, grammatical-historical interpretation.

This is an excerpt from a draft version of my book A God of Our Invention: How Religion Shaped the Western World (Apocryphile Press, 2023). The chapter this is extract is taken from looks at how belief in the eschaton impacted the world in the Middle Ages and also today. Some footnotes have been shortened for this draft. Comments welcome.]

Daniel 2 is a critical evaluation of three differing eschatological opinions taking the stone in Daniel 2 as their basis.  Daniel 2 is not absolutely decisive at resolving the differences involved.  More conclusive lines of argument are sought in both Old and New Testaments.  Moral implications are also investigated.  In all, we hope to help you toward making informed decisions.

The aim of this study is to highlight the links between eschatological ideas and social/ethical beliefs of the Moscow spiritist circle who viewed their fellowship as a religious eschatological community. Eschatological doctrine of the group could be characterized both as "catastrophic" and "progressive" millennialism. Eschatological social project suggested the elimination of the border between the earthly and heavenly realms and a shift towards egalitarian social model through a total renewal of the present world. The analysis of the documents demonstrates that the circle members considered themselves as active participants of the escha-tological process. According to the catastrophic worldview of the circle's members, the final battle of Good and Evil, which involves both human and spirits, is already in progress. In advance of the Apocalypse, ethical questions were crucial, because the realization of the ethical ideal was a key to salvation. The members of the circle perceived the outside world as a hostile environment and tended to redraw the boundaries between the community and the "infected" world.

This study of the three-part anti-EU documentary 'The Rape of Europe' first explains the six essential components of the case made by the English Pentecostal Evangelist David Hathaway for an incursion of metaphysical evil deriving the ancient near eastern moon deity (also identified as Ba'al and Satan) into European history from the late nineteenth century to the present through the German importation of the Ishtar Gate from Babylon and the Pergamum altar (the 'Seat of Satan') to Berlin, and further expressed in the seductive relations of oil-rich Islamic nations with the European Union, which Hathaway finds to be prefigured in chapter 17 of the Book of Revelation. The second section shows that these six arguments are proposed by and large without defensible scholarly evidence. Hathaway's case is, however of an order of complexity, and made with such an apparently broad array ancient and modern evidence, that it is very difficult for those not practised in classical studies and biblical exegesis to spot the key flaws in Hathaway's arguments. The article draws in closing six conclusions arising from the analysis of Hathaway's proposal, noting his achievement of playing successfully on fears and suspicions latent in his audience's cultural context, especially through his powerful and skilfully unsettling use of martial music and of images from the two world wars and of the Holocaust.