My Strange Bible: The Rise and Fall of the Apocalypse in America

In this episode Skyler shares some of his own research and questions on the Apocalyptic literature in the Bible following his interview with Dr. Shane Wood (Episode 13). He looks at questions such as "Why do churches shy away from Apocalyptic parts of the Bible? Where did this literature come from? What do people actually believe about it? and why did God speak in Apocalypses? Skyler is the pastor at the Christian Church of Litchfield in Litchfield, IL and a student at Lincoln Christian University where he is finishing up his Master in the New Testament.

Links:
My Strange Bible: Shane Wood
The Bible Project: Apocalypse Series
Brent Sandy, Plowshares and Pruning Hooks: Rethinking the language of Biblical Prophecy and Apocalyptic

Notes:
Apocalyptic Passages: Isaiah 24–27; 33; 34–35; Jeremiah 33:14–26; Ezekiel 38–39; Joel 3:9–17; Daniel 7-12; Zechariah 12–14; Matthew 24; Mark 13; 2 Thessalonians 2; Revelation.

The Fall out of Apocalyptic preaching in America happened through three cultural movements

• The rise of Higher criticism
• Comparative study of religion
• Darwinism

What is an Apocalypse? 

• The literature existed for about 700 years.
• Distinctly Jewish and Christian literature.
• Was seen with great skepticism after a heretical group used Revelation to espouse new teaching.
• SBL Definition: "a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spacial insofar as it involves another, supernatural world."
  • Skyler's paraphrase: "Apocalyptic literature is a writing style that reveals hidden truth in story form. Revealing future salvation and the supernatural world to humans by a heavenly messenger."

Five theme of Apocalyptic literature:

• Dualism
• Symbolism
• Narrative
• Cosmic End
• Future Salvation

Six functions of Apocalypses

• A call to worship
• Comfort that God is in control
• Insight into cosmic issues
• Hope for the persecuted
• Assurance of God’s victory
• Call to purity