The word “apocalypse” is one that pretty much everyone is familiar with these days. It refers to some catastrophic event that seems to threaten the very survival of humanity. It’s a pretty common theme in the entertainment industry dating back to the late 19th century, when the first great example of secular apocalyptic literature appeared - that was “War Of The Worlds,” written by H.G. Wells and published in 1897, which was about a Martian invasion of earth. The idea of alien apocalypse has been around ever since then. After World War II, the Cold War gave rise to stories about what you might call the nuclear apocalypse - so, the fear of nuclear war. In the 1960’s, really starting with the movie “Night of the Living Dead,” the idea of a zombie apocalypse became a popular genre and it remains popular today. There have been lots of movies and TV shows featuring zombies, and if you’ve ever seen an episode of “The Walking Dead” you’ll be familiar with it. There have been, of course, apocalypse movies dealing with asteroids crashing into the earth and making earth uninhabitable, and the most recent entry to the apocalypse genre in the entertainment industry is probably climate change apocalypse. There have also be enapocalypse stories about deadly viruses - so in a way we’ve been living in our own apocalypse story for two years now! Some people do, in fact, get caught up in something similar to a personal apocalypse, and these people are often said to be dealing with an existential crisis - some crisis that makes them fear for their very existence.
In terms of religion, apocalypse stories are pretty common, and they usually refer to some sort of coming cataclysmic event that will precede God’s final judgement on sinful humanity. As Christians we’re pretty familiar with the idea of apocalyptic literature. Jesus sometimes spoke apocalyptically. One of his most famous apocalyptic statements is in Matthew 24. I’m not going to read it now, but I am going to refer to it a couple of times later tonight. Jesus spoke apocalyptically near the end of his life, as the cross was looming over him. When Matthew 24 appears in the lectionary, it’s right at the start of the Season of Advent. Some people might think that’s unusual - why put an apocalyptic passage so soon before Christmas when we should all be thinking happy thoughts? But a feature of apocalyptic prophecy is that it prophesies destruction or the end, but always allows for deliverance as well. So, we start with the uncertainty of the end at the start of Advent, and then on Christmas Eve God intrudes into the human condition to rescue us. The other great apocalyptic book of the New Testament is Revelation. That’s far too complicated to talk about in detail, but it also seems to point ahead to the end times and destruction, with the last two chapters pointing the way out as God recreates everything in a perfect condition. Revelation was probably written during a time of great Roman persecution of the church.
In the Old Testament, most apocalyptic writing is from the prophets, although you could argue that the earliest bit of apocalyptic writing is the story of Noah and the Ark. It has all the characteristics of an apocalypse - God sends a disaster to earth to deal with sinful humanity, but rescues a remnant to rebuild with. This week I’ve asked you to read passages from three prophets who represent apocalyptic prophecy: Daniel, Joel and Zephaniah.
We do not know a lot about Daniel or his background. It’s interesting that the Book of Daniel doesn’t describe Daniel as a prophet, and the book doesn’t seem to be written as a prophecy. It’s more of a narrative (a story) about Daniel. He isn’t generally recognized as a prophet in Judaism, in fact. The Book of Daniel is considered part of what’s known as the Ketuvim (or “the writings”) in Jewish Scripture. It’s in the last part of the Tanakh (the Jewish “Bible” for lack of a better word, and it’s grouped with 12 other books: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ruth, 1&2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther. So the Ketuvim is a diverse collection of writings. It was the Christian church that included Daniel as one of the prophets - and, actually, as one of the major prophets along with Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Daniel is perhaps the most recent book of the Old Testament to be written (probably in about the 2nd century BC) and it describes events that took place as the Jewish exile in Babylon was ending. In the story Daniel has become a trusted servant of King Nebuchadnezzar, but he has managed to remain faithful to the God of Israel. The Book written about him describes events in the empire in bizarre ways that are very similar in some ways to the visions we find in the Book of Revelation, and that also influenced some of Jesus’ apocalyptic sayings.
I asked you to specifically read Chapter 12 because some of the content does actually seem to have had a huge influence on Jesus. Chapter 12 is a continuation of Chapter 11, which is set during the reign of a king named Darius. He had succeeded Cyrus, who had allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem, but many including Daniel had stayed behind. So this is no longer an exile. Those Jews still in Persia are there freely. Chapter 11 describes a great battle between a legitimate king and a usurper. Remember that the Book is written in the 2nd century. This usually is understood as portraying Daniel having a vision of a 2nd century event in which a man named Antiochus Epiphanes, a Greek king, extended his authority southward toward Jerusalem and engaged in a persecution of the Jews. This was a time of great chaos and confusion. Persia was still powerful, the ancient Greek empire was in serious decline and the Roman Republic was starting to gain strength so there’s a lot happening in the region. If you’re familiar with the Apocrypha, the Books of Maccabees come from that time.
Chapter 12 starts with a reference to Michael - apparently the famous archangel in spite of the fact that he’s described as a “great prince,” who’s generally seen as the protector of the Jewish nation. The Book describes this as “... a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” That’s a picture of apocalypse. Daniel is instructed to keep all this secret until the end of time. There’s a mystery involved in how long this time of anguish will last, which reminds me a little bit of Jesus in Matthew 24 (I told you we’d get back to that saying) “about that day or hour no one knows. Not the angels in heaven, nor even the Son, but only the Father.” Apocalyptic literature that stands the test of time has to be deliberately vague, because it’s easily disproved if it predicts the end at a specific moment in time, and the end doesn’t happen when that moment comes! Daniel does say that “From the time that the regular burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that desolates is set up, there shall be one thousand two hundred ninety days.” If the burnt offering is taken away that seems to speak of the destruction of the Temple, which happened in about the year AD80 at the hands of the Romans. In Matthew 24 Jesus prophesies the destruction of the Temple, and adds these words: “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel - let the reader understand - then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. … For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now - and never to be equaled again.” What was this abomination? Since it’s equated by both Daniel and Jesus with the destruction of the Temple, most think it’s a reference to the last act of contempt the Romans showed the Jews after they brutally put down a Jewish uprising. The Romans sent a legion into the Temple and set up Roman standards and idols of pagan gods in this holiest of Jewish spaces. So most see this vision of Daniel (and the words of Jesus that relate to it) as relating to the destruction of the Temple by the Romans and the suffering of the Jewish people at Roman hands after their rebellion is crushed. Daniel then finishes this classic apocalyptic vision with the necessary statement of hope: “Happy are those who persevere and attain the thousand three hundred thirty-five days. But you, go your way, and rest; you shall rise for your reward at the end of the days.”
I’m not going to spend as much time on the other two passages. We’re told nothing about Joel except that he’s the son of Pethuel, and actually Joel 1:1 is the only time in the entire Hebrew Bible that he’s mentioned, although he’s mentioned prominently by Peter in Acts. The prophecy seems to have been written after the exile. There’s a reference to “the Greeks” in Chapter 3, and although the word “temple” doesn’t appear, there are clear references to religious practices which would have taken place within the temple. The passage I asked you to read is well known to Christians because of Peter’s sermon on the Day of Pentecost. The pouring out of God’s Spirit on the people which Joel describes is, to Peter, what explains the dramatic events of Pentecost. Peter goes on then to quote the remainder of the passage: “I will show portents in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and columns of smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.” Peter seems to be understanding the events of Pentecost as the beginning of the end, so to speak. Joel’s description of “blood and fire and columns of smoke” sound to me like the eruption of a volcano, which is a pretty frightening thing, and the reference to the moon and sun seems to be the description of an eclipse. We know those today. They’re not uncommon and they’re not dangerous, but they were in fact considered signs of God’s anger and judgement until the relatively recent past, and every time one happened it caused great fear among the people. But Joel holds out hope, finishing this passage with a promise: “... everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved; for in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls.” So God will not destroy everything (similar to the so-called Rainbow Covenant of Genesis.) Some will survive; some will go on. The only hope is to trust in God.
We know a little bit more about Zephaniah than we did about Daniel. The start of the book implies that he came from a prominent family. He was “... son of Cushi son of Gedaliah son of Amariah son of Hezekiah …” The mention of several generations tells us that his family had been significant for some time. He also tells us about himself with the reference to Josiah, so we know that he’s from Judah (because Josiah was King of Judah) and we know that this is written during the last few years before Judah was conquered by Babylon because there were only a handful of short-reigned kings after him.
The book starts with God saying “‘I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth,’ says the Lord. ‘I will sweep away humans and animals; I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. I will make the wicked stumble. I will cut off humanity from the face of the earth,’ says the Lord.” Again, this reminds us of God’s interactions with humanity even as far back as the days of Noah, when God threatened to destroy all living things. According to Zephaniah, God then specifically directs his anger toward Judah and Jerusalem. You might remember that last week we talked about a flood of refugees from Israel to Jerusalem as Israel fell, and the concern that they would bring their religious apostasy (for lack of a better word) into Judah. That seems to have happened and it’s at the heart of God’s anger toward Judah now, and if you follow through the next few verses, what you find is that it isn’dft so much the religious apostasy that angers God - it’s the sense of complacency the people of Judah have about what they’re doing. “At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps, and I will punish the people who rest complacently on their dregs, those who say in their hearts, ‘The Lord will not do good, nor will he do harm.’” In other words the people of Jerusalem no longer really trust God. It’s as if they think God doesn’t care. That’s their great sin. I don’t think we need to go into great detail about the rest of the passage I asked you to read, because it’s again fairly standard apocalyptic material, but - again, like all apocalyptic material, it offers a way out: “Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his commands; seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the Lord’s wrath.”
So, again, the nature of apocalyptic prophecy is that it speaks of the end times, it portrays frightening events and visions, and it gives a way to escape what’s going to happen; some vision of hope or promise. I think it appeals to people because it speaks of perhaps the greatest mystery of all: what happens when time itself stops? Does time stop? Where does eternity begin? How does all this come about? Questions that philosophy and religion have always struggled with.
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