Robertson is prophesying again. Watch: If you don’t want to watch, here are the main points: Trump is going to win the election “without question” After Trump is sworn in the United States will go to war with China, North...
eschatology
Is Donald Trump an Antichrist?”
D. Stephen Long is the Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics at Southern Methodist University. In his recent piece at the religion and ethics website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, he makes the case that we should start calling...
Former Fundamentalists Await the Apocalypse
Today a piece by Sarah Jones at New York Magazine caught my attention. Here is a taste of “Apocalypse Now?”: If you think it feels like the end of the world, you’re not alone. There is a pandemic. Donald Trump is...
Does “End-Time Apathy” Explain Why So Many Evangelicals Don’t Care About the Environment?
If Jesus is coming back at any moment to “rapture” his church, why should evangelicals care about the environment? As religious studies scholar Robin Globus Veldman writes, this theory has been “widely accepted” by environmentalists to explain evangelical apathy about...
CREATE!: Teaching Tolkien’s “Leaf By Niggle”
Yesterday in Created and Called for Community (CCC) we read and discussed J.R.R. Tolkien’s short story “Leaf by Niggle.” Here is a summary of the plot from Wikipedia: In this story, an artist, named Niggle, lives in a society that...
What Does the Bible Say About the Antichrist?
I spent most of my late teens and early twenties getting schooled in dispensational theology. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out when the rapture would come, the nature of the Great Tribulation, and the signs Antichrist’s...
The Evangelical Free Church Drops Premillennialism
When I was a student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS) between 1989 and 1992, the official position of the sponsoring denomination, the Evangelical Free Church of America, was premillennialism. In other words, in order to teach at TEDS or...
The Politics of the “Chosen One”
My daughter was quick to tell me that “Antichrist” was trending on Twitter today. Then I got a call from Emily McFarland Miller, a reporter for Religion News Service, to talk about the meaning of words like “Antichrist” and “Chosen...
Is Donald Trump the Antichrist?
Check out Sarah Jones’s playful piece at New York Magazine in the wake of Trump’s recent “chosen one” comments. So could Trump be the Antichrist? Look, anything is possible. I will tell you what my father once told me. Satan walks about...
The Author’s Corner with Donald Akenson
Donald Akenson is Douglas Professor of Canadian and Colonial History at Queen’s University. This interview is based on his new book Exporting the Rapture: John Nelson Darby and the Victorian Conquest of North-American Evangelicalism (Oxford University Press, 2018). JF: What led you to...
Nimrod Hughes and the Apocalypse of 1812
Nimrod Hughes believed that one-third of the world’s population would be destroyed on June 4, 1812. Read all about it at Past is Present, the blog of the American Antiquarian Society: Hughes’s prophetic pamphlet was titled A solemn warning to all...
The Anti-Christ in New Hampshire
If you have been following the GOP presidential race, you know that New Hampshire has fewer evangelicals than Iowa or South Carolina. But though evangelicals do not make a large swath of the population in the Granite State, it does...
Who Was Charles Ryrie and Why Does He Matter?
Charles Ryrie died today. I am guessing that many of the readers of The Way of Improvement Leads Home have never heard of Charles Ryrie. But any student of 20th-century evangelicalism needs to reckon with him and his legacy. Ryrie was...
For Your Information: The World Will End Tomorrow
I just wanted to give everyone a heads-up. Maybe I should call this post “Today in Christian Millennialism“ Read the entire story here....
Slacktivist on Why Rapture Prophets Can’t Celebrate 50th Anniversaries
What happens if you preside over a ministry devoted to the idea that the so-called “rapture” of the Christian church will occur at any moment, but your ministry is fifty years old or older? Wouldn’t it be a bad public...
I Want to Attend THIS Vacation BIble School
HT: Stuff Fundies Like
Pat Robertson and the Jeremiad
In 18th-century New England, earthquakes were usually interpreted as signs that God was punishing his covenanted people. Massachusetts felt the effects of regional earthquakes in 1638, 1661, 1663, and 1732. In 1727, the Boston area was hit with an earthquake...
This Week’s Patheos Column: Thy Kingdom Come: Harold Camping and American Evangelicalism
As I write this, Harold Camping is speaking to the press in the wake of his failed prediction that the rapture would occur on May 21, 2011. I have been amazed at how Camping’s false prophecy has become a cultural...
The World Will End on October 21, 2011
Last night Harold Camping said he was wrong about the “physical” rapture taking place on May 21, 2011, but he is sticking to his calculation that the end of the world will take place on October 21, 2011. He told […]
Camping Speaks Out
In case you are interested, Harold Camping is now speaking on Family Radio. Over at the Huffington Post, Jaweed Kaleem is live-blogging the interview.