**Rowland Croucher**
Guest
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 Posted: Fri Oct 31, 2008 7:39 am Post subject: Gog, Tribulation etc. : the End is Nigh |
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Sightings 10/30/08
'Gog' on the Move
-- John Howell
Those who followed early coverage of the 2008 Olympics will remember
President Bush's interview with NBC's Bob Costas during which the two men
discussed Russia's bombing of Georgia. Asked what he had said to Vladimir
Putin during the opening ceremonies about the still-simmering conflict, Bush
– in a sublime display of locker-room diplomacy that quotation alone cannot
capture – stated, "I said this violence is unacceptable."
More interesting than Bush's attentions, however, are those of the
premillennialists who contribute to raptureready.com's 'Rapture Index', a
calculus for predicting the coming apocalypse, which the site describes as
"the prophetic speedometer of end-time activity." Premillennialists believe
that a period of apocalyptic tribulation will precede Christ's reign on
earth; the index comprises forty-five "end time components" or indicators
that this apocalypse is nigh, and the individual score in each category
contributes to an overall numerical index. The Russia-Georgia conflict
falls into index category twenty-three: "Gog (Russia)." As of the September
28th assessment, category twenty-three contributes five points, the maximum
for an individual category, to the overall Rapture Index of 164—a figure
that signifies (earnestly) "Fasten your seat belts" in the index's
standardized scale.
Anyone who is familiar with Paul Boyer's book, *When Time Shall Be No More:
Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture* – or who is otherwise acquainted
with the ins and outs of end-time speculation – will be familiar with the
longstanding tradition in end-time prophecy that associates Russia with Gog
of Ezekiel 38:2, which reads, "Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the
land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against
him" (KJV). Some translations include "Rosh" among Gog's territories, and
it is from the resemblance of Rosh to Russia, Meshech to Moscow, and Tubal
to Tubalsk that prophets of the apocalypse, like the famous premillennialist
John Nelson Darby, implicate the actions of Russia's leaders in the approach
of the Antichrist. Boyer's text, published in 1994, is a dispatch from the
close of the Cold War, one of myriad historical developments that have
threatened apocalypse predictors with obsolescence. But Boyer cautions that
prophecy believers operate with an extraordinarily flexible hermeneutic when
discerning the signs of the times, and he anticipates various directions in
which end-time prophecy might move (for example, toward the Middle East).
So in one sense the Russia-Georgia conflict rights the narrative of
impending doom by reintroducing a Gog on the move; but in another sense it
is relatively inconsequential: Insofar as raptureready.com's Rapture Index
is a reliable indicator of end-time speculation more generally, the fact
that the overall score hasn't dipped below "Heavy Prophetic Activity" in at
least the past four years suggests that the end is always nigh if one is
looking at things in proper, premillennial perspective.
And while it might be tempting to dismiss raptureready.com's Rapture Index –
along with innumerable other web-based, end-time technologies – as a
curiosity, one cannot but observe the consonance between the behavior of the
Rapture Index and that of a more 'mainstream' (perhaps 'secularized'?)
disaster calculus: the Homeland Security Advisory System. Since its
introduction on March 12, 2002, the threat advisory has not dipped below
Yellow, or "Significant Risk of Terrorist Attacks," and has for the most
part oscillated between Yellow and Orange, with the occasional escalation to
Red. Reading the chronology of the threat advisory, which is available on
the Department of Homeland Security website, one might even suppose that any
change at all is due to the effort to keep the threat in view, such that
crisis, or terror, becomes atmospheric rather than eruptive.
Without a premillennialist's faith in numerology, it is perhaps difficult to
calculate the impact of this atmospheric terror on material instances of
culture, but the days following September 11, 2001, have seen the
proliferation and immense success of films and television series about
comic-book saviors as well as apocalyptic scenarios. NBC's popular
*Heroes*employs prophetic types and tropes to figure forth its
narrative, and The CW
Network's *Supernatural*, about two debonair, demon-hunting brothers, is in
the process of developing a storyline wherein Sam and Dean have a role to
play in halting the world's steady march toward Tribulation. Unfortunately,
the demon Lilith (yes, that Lilith) is simultaneously trying to expedite the
process: The angel Castiel tells Dean that Lilith has succeeded in opening
one of the sixty-six seals, which are like "locks on a door" to Lucifer.
Perhaps someone should tell the writers what any good prophet of the
apocalypse knows: Not only are there are only seven seals, but also, pace
every postmillennial hope, there's no halting the end-of-days.
John Howell is a PhD student in Religion and Literature at the University of
Chicago Divinity School.
*Sightings* comes from the Martin Marty
Center<http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/>at the University of
Chicago Divinity School.
Attribution
Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author
of the column, *Sightings*, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of
Chicago Divinity School.
--
Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/ (20,000 articles 4000 humor)
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