Perilous Times
The Beginning Of Sorrows: To some Christians, the oil plume in the Gulf
of Mexico heralds the apocalypse.
Newsweek
The Beginning Of Sorrows: A growing conversation among Christians asks
the question that may have been inevitable: is the oil spill in the
gulf a sign of the coming apocalypse?
About 60 million white evangelicals live in America, and about one
third of them believe that the world will end in their lifetime,
according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
Broadly speaking, these Christians subscribe to a theology called
"premillennial dispensationalism." In this world view, they are
warriors on the side of God: a cosmic battle—culminating in apocalypse,
judgment, and, finally, the reign of Jesus in “a new heaven and a new
earth”—will come soon. The most determined of these believers mine the
Book of Revelation for signs that the end is near. A text of terrifying
and mysterious prophesy, Revelation forecasts the apocalypse in coded
language; Christians have spent lifetimes trying to break that code by
correlating its verses to current events. (A New York minister named
William Miller used Revelation and other sources to predict that the
world would end on Oct. 22, 1844. He had previously predicted—wrongly,
obviously—that the date would be March 21, 1843. The Millerites, once a
powerful and fast-growing sect, quickly became extinct.)
Now blogs on the Christian fringe are abuzz with possibility that the
oil spill is the realization of Revelation 8:8–11. “The second angel
blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with
fire, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea became blood, a third
of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were
destroyed … A third of the waters became wormwood, and many died from
the water, because it was made bitter.” According to Revelation, in
other words, something terrible happens to the world’s water, a
punishment to those of insufficient faith. The foul water, according to
the New Oxford Annotated Bible, mirrors one of the plagues God called
upon Egypt on behalf of his people Israel.
Though maybe it’s Revelation 16:3: “The second angel poured his bowl
into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and every
living thing in the sea died.”
Some interpreters are very sure: The oil spill matches biblical
prophesy and is another predictor of the end. One commenter at Godlike
Productions argues that the redness of the oil seen in pictures can be
interpreted as blood. “The water is tinted red from the oil … it
ACTUALLY looks like blood. coincidence??? NOT!!!!” On Facebook, at
least two discussion groups are devoted to mining the parallels between
events in the gulf and those predicted in the bible; and in a
heart-rending interview with CBS, a Louisiana minister named Theodore
Turner, whose congregation is one third fishermen, said he knew it to
be so. “The Bible prophesized hardships,” he said. “If we believe the
word of God is true—and we do—we also know that in addition to
prophesying hardships he promised to take care of us.”
But there’s a problem. In the place where American religion and
politics intersect, signs of the end times have traditionally been
interpreted by members of the right as punishment for ungodly behavior
by those on the left. And because the values of the religious right
have mirrored those of the Republican Party—at least before the last
presidential election—the "good guys" in the cosmic battle have tended
to look like Republicans on the far-right fringe and the “bad guys”
like liberal Democrats. Thus Hurricane Katrina was brought down upon
New Orleans because it was, in the words of Christian minister John
Hagee, a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah: the city had a gay-pride march
planned for the day the storm struck.
And, according to such fringe commentators as this one, President
Barack Obama embodies many of qualities of the Antichrist, as described
in Revelation 13:5–7: “The beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and
blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for 42
months. It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God … It was
given authority over every tribe and people and language and nation,
and all the inhabitants of the earth will worship it.”
Yet through a biblical lens, it’s hard to see the oil spill as anything
but God’s punishment for greed and a disrespect of Creation—and both of
those sins fall mostly on the shoulders of the Republicans, who have
been aggressively lobbying for more offshore drilling, without,
obviously, ensuring that appropriate safeguards are in place. (Remember
“Drill, baby, drill”? According to OpenSecrets.org, Republicans in the
last decade have far outstripped Democrats in donations from big oil,
sometimes by a factor of four.) So the question for biblical
literalists becomes one of political alliances. Does God wreak
apocalyptic wrath on members of one’s own party—or only on the
opposition?
Lisa Miller is NEWSWEEK's religion editor