On Facing Millennial Change
by Byron Belitsos
4/19/99
With the end of the millennium upon us and theY2K crisis imminent, the word “apocalypse” is going to be essential in everyone’s lexicon, especially the media. Originally – biblically – the term apocalypse meant a revealing of secrets, an “unveiling” of hidden truths. “Apocalyptical millennialism” – an impossible phrase for the media to pronounce glibly (and thus much less overused) – refers to the unveiling of the hidden secrets of times, at the end of historical time – more specifically at a millenium’s end. In the end-times, as the apocalyptical millennialist tale goes, evil and suffering – all the things and people one find insufferable – will finally come to a decisive end in a new and undreamed-of Utopia.
Throughout the 90’s, apocalyptical millennialism has become increasingly pervasive –n and not just in fundamentalist circles. If you look across the spectrum of today’s millennialist prophecies – from the rising Y2K paranoia to the Heaven’s Gate UFO cult – there seem to be two poles of apocalypticism. At one extreme is what I would call “New Age” millennialism, offering the individual a radical overcoming of the human condition – an apocalypse of the self. The other extreme is best represented by fundamentalist Christian millennialism, which preaches a fiery apocalypse of history. Both mark a decisive break from the more balanced visions of the future, such as that found in The Urantia Book – those forecasting a gradual lessening of evil (personal or historic) through evolutionary change that is grounded in cosmic law.
The sane approach to the coming millennial changes should exclude the shortcut fantasies of transformation dreamed up by the apocalyptical imagination of Christians, New Agers, or anyone else. Instead, we need to remain mindful of all forms of fluctuation in the tempo of change, while resting in the stillness of the eternal spirit within us. This means reckoning ourselves with the entire sweep of evolutionary change, including naturally-occurring periods of epochal transformation that might result from a global financial breakdown, or the consequences of the Y2K crisis. Squaring ourselves with genuine change does not mean embracing some magical apocalypse of time that removes the need for arduous inner spiritual work or involvement in the democratic political process.
Common Thread in Millenialism
How best to recognize a toxic version of apocalyptical millennialism? Despite all their diversity, the end-time prophecies of the late 1990’s do seem to share certain key qualities. First of all, most of them are sourced – often unwittingly – from the Bible itself, the common cultural template for apocalyptical fantasies in the West. Second and most important, they all manifest an all-too-human desire to put a sudden end to the misery of history, to make way for the new Utopia of the “beyond-times.”
Well, then, what exactly is time? The cosmologist Stephen Hawking published an almost unreadable book on the nature of time that became an international bestseller. Feels good to know that there’s a tidy “brief history of time” out there that someone, somewhere, has a handle on – right? But the truth is that we each have to consciously confront the problem of time: in fact, as The Urantia Book makes clear, we can’t even think logically without referring to some framework that describes the origin, history, and destiny of all things. Scholars like Mircea Eliade point out that every culture generates its governing myths within a framework that logically explains beginnings and endings. The archetypal pattern of mythic consciousness, he shows, always includes at least three elements: a creation myth (origin); a fall from grace into the suffering of time (history); and a vision of the last things, or end-times (destiny).
Christianity is certainly no exception here. Genesis provides a distinctive creation myth. This is followed by a fall from grace by Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from the Garden that marks the beginning of the misery of human history (See Genesis 3:18: “Cursed is the ground because of you, in toil shall you eat of it all the days of your life…”) As for the notion of destiny, the prophetic passages in Daniel, Ezekiel, the New Testament, and the Book of Revelation have been the scriptural well from which end-timers have drawn their magical visions of the end. In addition, most millennialist scenarios are also sourced from one-sided selections from the many phases of Jesus’ own teaching about the coming Kingdom of God. That’s perhaps one reason why we find the midwayers taking great pains to present the multifaceted nature of Jesus’ gospel in Paper 170.
Though it is more difficult to trace the universal, cross-cultural human urge that underlies apocalyptical millennialism, there are many clues. Again, one of its clearest marks is an immature impatience with time itself – with the inexorable slowness of evolution. End-times prophets simply cannot accept the pacing of the overcoming of evil in history.
Presumption Versus Hope
So what about the problem of evil? What kind of God is it, after all, who permits such unmitigated evils as war, famine, genocide and oppression? Must we endure such miseries forever? I believe the answer seems to come down to two stark alternatives: the presumptuous fantasies of end-time prophets, versus a balanced hopefulness that grows from some sort of religious faith or spiritual forbearance – true patience.
In Old Testament prophecy (see, for example, the Book of Joel), God is an omnipotent and just God who promises his people a “Day” of the end to evil and suffering. This hoped-for fulfillment of God’s promise is the basis of what theologians call hope eschatology. In hope eschatology, we live in the light of trust in the divine promise; in other words, our hope flowers forth in the serenity of a patient belief in an inevitably better future.
But such hopefulness is a narrow path. Hope always depends on a most difficult existential exercise – enduring faith. In his book Theology of Hope, the great theologian Jurgen Moltmann identifies the forms of impairment of hope as despair and presumption:
“Presumption is a premature, self-willed anticipation of the fulfillment of what we
hope for from God. Despair is the premature, arbitrary anticipation of the non-
fulfillment of what we hope for from God. Both forms of hopelessness,by anticipating the fulfillment or by giving up hope, cancel the wayfaring character of hope. They rebel against the patience in which hope trusts in the God of the promise.”
Presumption and despair are “sins against hope,” says Moltmann. And presumption is the impairment of hope deployed by apocalypticism. In essence, apocalyptical millennialism imposes a narrow, wishful, circumscribed, human timetable upon God’s cosmic promise of orderly evolutionary change that is based, if you will, on the absolute justice of karmic law. Apocalypticism strikes against our hope in lawful, cosmic evolution – with petty presumptuousness that thinks it knows just what the future holds for you and me.
Psychologically, apocalypticism chafes at the presence of evil, losing all sense of proportion. It is overly intolerant of imperfection. At some point it abandons the way of hopefulness in any divine promise. And in the end will manufacture some end-time scenario that’s customized to the needs of the moment. Currently, we are seeing this malady occur in the case of the Y2K crisis. It is true that Y2K is a national emergency of sorts; but watch the press over the coming months, and I predict that you will increasingly witness that this genuine crisis becomes framed in a presumptuous apocalypticism. Fearful visions will be spouted forth in the websites and broadsides of apocalyptical millennialists of every stripe.
As you do study this phenomenon, bear in mind throughout that apocalyptical millennialism is prideful as well as presumptuous. For example, philosopher Kenneth Burke shows that end-times predictions presume a knowledge of the very essence of human history. To proclaim “a history’s end,” says Kenneth Burke, “is a formal way of proclaiming its essence or nature…”
But through presuming that it knows the very secret of time, apocalypticism shortcuts the challenges of true faith and of spiritual practice. To restate: Sane spirituality rests on patient hope in the promises of the Father that we will all, in time and through our ascension toward Paradise, consummate our deepest spiritual aspirations. This hope beckons us forward in serenity. It may even allow us to discover God’s own faithfulness to unfathomable cosmic law. And finally, we find that the way of hope is also bathed in mystery – in not knowing how it’s all going to turn out, and when. It celebrates the great mysteries of time, of God, and of love.
Thus we find that faith (spiritual practice) and hope are interdependent; we find that together, they induce soul growth. Character is built through continually facing the challenge of the unknown with a practice that is energized with hope. When hope in the future becomes a presumptuous knowledge of the very secrets of time, our spiritual practice is derailed. This is the danger of apocalyptical thinking to person growth and to orderly progress of the human community.
Byron Belitsos has been reading The Urantia Book for 25 years. He is publisher of the new book , Just in Case: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Y2K Crisis, (Origin Press, May 1999), a widely acclaimed anthology of key essays on the Year 2000 computer crisis. He is also publisher and co-editor (with Fred Harris) of The Center Within: Lessons from the Heart of the Urantia Revelation, (December 1998). Both are available in bookstores or at his website: www.IntegralSpirit.com.