Out of curiosity, given the millennia-old tradition of people picking certain bits out of religious texts as evidence that the end-times are nigh, what mistake do you think that your historical counterparts made that you’re not making? I mean, I get that you’re really hedging your bets, but at this point I’d think that taking anything to be an element of the prophecied end times would be a sucker bet. The whole bit about never knowing when Jesus will come back seems like a much solider proposition.
A mere three years difference is ‘pretty much the same historical moment’ in my opinion.
I do know that some high-ranking members of the US political and military elite during the 1980’s were convinced that the End Times and the Rapture were close at hand, and men in that position have the ability to bring it about. I’m not sure if Reagan was of this opinion. Apart from the Cuban Missile Crisis the early 1980’s were the most tense and dangerous time of the Cold War. But it sounds like you were an adult during that period, I was born in the late 1970’s.
Well not putting words into the good Friar’s mouth, but the situation now is quantifiably different than it was even one hundred years ago, as mentioned above prior to 1945 talk of fiery destruction from the sky was just a metaphor, afterwards it was a potential reality. I’ve never believed even an all-out exchange at the height of the Cold War would have meant the end of humanity, but civilisation being almost completely destroyed and several billion dead is more than apocalyptic enough for my liking.
I know what you’re saying, and I’m not a believer in prophecy or the End Times, but I do think that the world situation really is noticeably different than it was before.
And take the internet, until very recently we would not be capable of having this conversation. Two thousand years ago for the average person the known world was small and news travelled slowly, now a large percentage of the worlds population is interconnected, aware of their surroundings and news can literally travel around the world in an instant.
I think we don’t appreciate just how different our historical era is because we grew up in it and take rapid technological change for granted, but that has not been the experience for most of humanity for most of human history.
From 1975 to 1982, I was actually 13 to 20. And Reagan had expressed belief that we may be in the End Times but, contrary to what some on the Left thought, was in no hurry to get it rolling.
While no longer a Rapturist but a Christian who takes End Times prophecy seriously but recognizes there are a variety of possibly valid interpretations, I do
enjoy reading the fictional takes over the past century. I have not yet read the Catholic “Lord of the World” by Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson, but I have read
British Evangelical’s Sydney Watson’s “In the Twinkling of an Eye” and “The Mark of the Beast” from the 1910’s, up to the various rush of novels from the 1970s,
the Left Behind series, and the much better “Christ Clone Trilogy” by James BeauSeigneur. The technology is advanced, the AntiChrist may differ in ethnicity &
pathway to power. TCCT actually presented a creepily unique vision of the Rapture - a world full of dead Christians.
