Expecting the End: Millennialism in Social and Historical Context

Chapter One

1 Millenarianism and the Dynamics of Apocalyptic Time Francis Danby’s painting The Opening of the Sixth Seal (1828) is one of the great forgotten icons of Ireland’s millennial past. Exhibited today in the National Gallery of Ireland, it is an impressive and massive work that immediately catches the eye of anyone entering the room in which it is displayed . The grand canvas presents a cataclysmic scene in the background and a group of humans in varying postures of abject terror in the foreground . At the centre of the human group stands a seminude woman with her back to the viewer, looking at the oncoming destruction—it looks like a waterfall of blood—with her arms outstretched as if in welcome. On her right lies an old king, prostrate at her feet with his crown fallen to the ground. Danby’s contemporaries immediately understood this detail as antislavery, with the woman slave welcoming the apocalyptic devastation and the king paralyzed with fear and remorse. The picture codifies the radical possibilities of millennial and apocalyptic thought. The picture was enormously successful, so much so that at its opening exhibition in London in 1834 it was given its own room to accommodate the crowds of viewers who came to see it. This response illustrates the kind of enthusiasm and excitement such prophetic assaults on the powers that be can generate. But two years later, at another exhibition, an anonymous Richard Landes Chapter One 2 Millenarianism and the Dynamics of Apocalyptic Time figure stole in one night and mutilated the picture. The portion of the canvas he removed was that of the woman and the king. Although there are other explanations for this mutilation, the most likely explanation has the vandal as one who found unbearable so popular and public a depiction of a king prostrate at the feet of a slave. As the high priest Amaziah complained to King Jeroboam of the vitality of prophecy, “the land is not able to bear all his words” (Amos 7:10). As with artwork, so with millennial movements: the key to millennial progress is neither the agency of the “roosters” (those who announce the imminent dawn of the apocalyptic transformation) nor that of the “owls” (those who insist that the night is still long and wish the roosters to be silenced), but rather the reaction of their audiences. Had Danby’s painting not attracted attention, made a sensation, and brought a “hidden transcript ” of antimonarchical sentiment into the open, it probably would not have been mutilated. Leaders who draw upon this apocalyptic interest with even a fraction of 1 percent of an audience wield a weapon of enormous potency. Messiahs exercise immense influence over their followers. Charismatic leaders demand total response, and the rewards of apocalyptic belief are commensurate with the intensity of the commitment.1 No rhetoric is more powerful than apocalyptic rhetoric; no greater motivation exists in the repertoire of human behavior than the belief that one’s every action is crucial to the final destiny of the human race.2 If the leader can convince his followers that God or the historical dialectic calls for ruthless destruction , there is almost no limit to the damage they can do, trying to save the world by destroying it.3 And every movement, no matter how large it becomes, starts small. But without the tacit or, still better, warm approval of the public, without the ability to enter the public sphere with apocalyptic proposals and get a hearing, such dedicated troops can do little. Millennialism brings out the most noble and most base elements of human behavior, inspiring anything from the genocidal rage of Crusaders and Nazis to the extravagant love of a Francis of Assisi or a George Fox. It continues to operate in this modern age where we, having dismissed God from the apocalyptic scenario, have replaced his immense destructive powers with our own. If we do not understand the appeal, the varieties and the dynamics of millennialism, we do not understand a critical element of one of our own and other cultures’ greatest passions.4 Millennial Perception in Apocalyptic Time Millennialists view a dramatically different world from the grey complexities we denizens of normal time have come to live with. They pay close attention to human suffering and its causes: evil, injustice, and oppression. The religious among them believe that a benevolent and omnipotent God, Richard Landes 3 gods...