Please Post to Fivedoves

John Tng,

Please post to fivedoves the following article. Thanking you in advance for your interest in the Lord’s return and your website to help us watch the signs of the times.

Yours truly, Peter Van Breemen.

Readers of fivedoves, a Christian with insight into Bible prophecy, Aaron Williams, is working on carefully founded articles on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. As I preparation to releasing those articles, I asked him to explain why there are so many examples of antichrists (substitute messiahs) and why are there so many partial fulfillments of prophetic holy Scripture. Or, why was Napoleon Bonaparte called “the Antichrist” by some of his enemies.

My personal view is that Socialist Russia has already historically acted as “the red horse rider” of Revelation chapter 4. I hope brother Williams will help me understand as to whether that is true. For now, I have these preliminary words. His final two paragraphs give me a simple take-away:

“...Just about every nation, given the opportunity, tends to behave like an empire; while just about every leader, given the opportunity, tends to behave like an emperor. So doing, they will always resemble the beast-patterns of Daniel and the Book of Revelation.

Put more positively, every erstwhile conqueror has always reminded believers to watch keenly for the return of Jesus. If their millenarian expectations brought them out to the middle of some desert while the anticipated date delayed, and delayed, and delayed... Well, they were probably better off, spiritually, than their scornful peers who remained enmeshed in the cares of the world.”

Aaron Williams addresses “messianism” in the history of Russia and other countries. I had to look up that word in the wikipedia. So, here is an answer borrowed from the wikipedia concerning Slavic or Russian messianism.

“Romantic Slavic messianism held that the Slavs, especially the Russians, suffer in order that other European nations, and eventually all of humanity, may be redeemed.^[13] This theme had a profound impact in the development of Russian and Soviet imperialism; it also appears in works by the Polish Romantic poets Zygmunt Krasiński and Adam Mickiewicz, including the latter's familiar expression, "Polska Chrystusem narodów" ("Poland is the Christ of the nations").^[14]” [excerpt from wikipedia.com]

French and Russian Messianism:

"They were on to something!"

Umm... What?

by Aaron Williams – March 23, 2014

Biblical prophecies have always tended to yield one or more partial fulfillments, here or there, whatever the age and clime. This is not to say that every erstwhile interpretation was valid. What we can say is that apocalyptic anticipations have often resulted in insights from which we can learn, even while indulging illogical leaps and prejudicial perils... from which we can also learn!

In one interesting example, we see how Christian critics of Napoleon, the conquering head of atheistic France, adduced the attributes of Antichrist. In another example, we see how the Russian Tsar regarded himself in messianic terms when repelling the invasion of Napoleon.

It is not accidental that Napoleon modeled himself as a new Caesar, especially when we consider that previously, Charlemagne called his kingdom "The Holy Roman Empire of the Frankish Nation." It is noteworthy that subsequently, Otto I defeated the Franks and set up "The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation" -- and, of course, German leaders began to call themselves "Kaiser". Similarly, Russia's rulers laid claim to the title of Tsar (or Czar, a corruption of Caesar), asserting that they were the current leaders of the Byzantine Empire, founded by the Roman emperor Constantine.

These political and messianic impulses and justifications become significant when studying the four horsemen of the apocalypse, especially when we assess the roles of Russia and Germany as the second and third horseman-powers. I have been writing little essays along these lines, with a view to integrating them into a carefully grounded set of interpretations. For the moment, it is interesting to note a couple of his historical observations.

One observation is based on Philip Jenkins’ essay about The 160-Year Christian History Behind What’s Happening in Ukraine (baylorisr.org/2014/03/philip-jenkins-in-christianity-today):

This was nowhere more true than in Tsarist Russia, where -- right up to 1917 -- politics never lost their apocalyptic and messianic character. When the Byzantine Empire fell to the Turks in 1453, Muscovite Russia took up that mantle. Two Romes had fallen, proclaimed the Tsars, a third stands, and a fourth will never be. As the Third Rome, Moscow was heir to the hopes that surrounded the glorious Byzantine name, including the dreams and visions presented in such texts as the Apocalypse of Daniel. In this apocryphal tradition, a future Constantine would liberate the Orthodox Christian world from the Sons of Hagar, who were increasingly identified as the Muslim Ottomans. At the height of the Turkish wars in the 1770s, Catherine the Great christened one of her grandsons Constantine.

Through the 19th century, even seemingly rational and cynical Russian statesmen maintained this concept of the messianic nation, destined to defend Orthodoxy against Muslims and Catholics alike. Nothing would prevent that empire from freeing Christians in the Balkans and then extending its power over Anatolia, Syria, and Palestine. The words of Pseudo-Daniel still guided Russian actions in 1914.

Another observation comes from Delusions of Grandeur, by Douglas Wilson, which in turn quotes from Citizen Emperor: Napoleon in Power, by Philip Dwyer.

...of particular interest to modern Christians, who always need to be reminded of the dangers of newspaper exegesis, is the extent to which Napoleon was easily dropped into a prophetic story line. "It was common enough," Dwyer writes,

to portray Napoleon as a blood-thirsty tyrant, "the enemy of the human race." To depict him as "tyrant" is also to underline the illegitimacy, the evilness, of his reign. It was the first stage in portraying him as Antichrist. Satan, Lucifer, the Great Horned Serpent or the Devil was an image that flourished not only in most parts of Europe, but as far afield as the United States and Guatemala, regardless of religious affiliations. It appears to have been part of the millenarian movement at the end of the eighteenth century.

Alexander, the Russian czar -- Napoleon's erstwhile ally who then became his deadly foe -- was also greatly influenced by the apocalyptic imagery of Scripture:

He had always had religious convictions, but with the French invasion he increasingly turned to the Bible for inspiration, and especially to the eleventh chapter of the Book of Daniel, in which the King of the North (read Alexander) defeats the King of the South (read Napoleon). Napoleon's defeat became, in his mind, synonymous with God's will, and hence Alexander became His instrument. The Tsar got his way. The Russian army was ordered to pursue the French into Germany.

This would not be the last time that great historical events were driven by bad exegesis.

As in Daniel and the "pseudo-Daniel"? Yes, it has to be admitted that Daniel had lots of later imitators who pretended to represent an extension of the previous prophecies. To complicate matters, it became fashionable among historians to say that the biblical book of Daniel was written long after the events it described, as a bundle of retro-prophecies. One obvious feature about this debate is that Christian historians tend to line up on one side, while secular historians tend to line up on the other side. What goes? Apparently, the secular historians are afraid to encounter a miraculous situation: a real prophecy that really fulfills. An honest historian should unflinchingly examine his own assumptions.

This brings us to the point of this inquiry: we want to learn the truth. Obviously, it was never possible for earlier generations to understand Daniel's prophecies at all fully, because they were "sealed up until the time of the end" (Daniel 12:13). Moreover, it was never easy to piece together a good picture of the past (let alone the future) before scholarly resources became widely available. Fortunately, we can thank some conscientious Christian scholars for doing a pretty good job at explaining how the prophecies about the antichrist (and the four horsemen, and so on) were interpreted by earlier generations. From this standpoint, it is worthwhile to read Wilson’s full essay at booksandculture.com/articles/2014/marapr/delusions-of-grandeur.html?paging=off. Dwyer’s book is largely viewable at books.google.com/books/about/Citizen_Emperor.html?id=NcnYAQAAQBAJ. Of particular interest are pages 438-444, where the author documents Napoleon’s “Antichrist” reputation in England and Spain. However, the excerpts in this little essay should suffice to show a pattern.

The same pattern, viewed from a secular side, is that just about every nation, given the opportunity, tends to behave like an empire; while just about every leader, given the opportunity, tends to behave like an emperor. So doing, they will always resemble the beast-patterns of Daniel and the Book of Revelation.