No Gabriel's Horn — The Passing of Apocalypticism

1910

The Earth Will Not End Up With a Big Fire

Old Mother Earth is here to stay. The final earthquake, the lake of fire and other Biblical terrors anent the end of the world are feeble myths, discredited and scorned by the professors of the University of Chicago Divinity School.

The university experts come forth with assurances of this old world's permanency in an editorial entitled, "The Passing of Apocalypticism," in the current issue of the Biblical World, published by the university press. The "last day" is all a fairy tale, say the theological experts, and the timorous may cheer up.

The Angel Gabriel will have no chance to blow his horn, nor will the tumults and processions of the judgment day take place as advertised, according to the view taken by the divinity experts. For, say the professors, the cosmic cataclysm which has been the cause of nervous tension for centuries, positively will not occur. Historical criticism has quashed the Biblical bug-a-boo.

As for the annihilation of the sinners and the reorganization of society on a different basis, the Biblical World dismisses them without honorable mention. The horrors of the Revelations and the fiery prophecies of the Gospels are declared to be misinterpreted when applied to a convulsion such as has been predicted.

The author of the article, who shields his identity under the authority of the 13 editors of the Biblical World, intimates that the writers of the New Testament were not above inserting scary passages in the Scriptures simply to boost their own misguided opinions. Christ's saying are distorted and falsely attributed, it is alleged.

"Our hope is set not on a kingdom of God to be ushered in by a personal, visible coming of the king in the clouds, an overthrowing of all human institutions, and the establishing of new heavens and a new earth, but on the over larger and fuller development of the kingdom of God that is now on earth," says the editorial writer. "We are preaching the gospel not till, the witness having been born, the nations shall be destroyed and the handful of the redeemed shall become the nucleus of a new era, but in the confident hope that little by little the leaven may leaven the whole lump and the nations of the earth become the kingdom of God and of His Christ.

"The inspiration of victorious Christianity lies not in the hope of rescuing one's self and others from an impending cataclysm, but in the joyful devotion of one's self to the task of helping to create for today and for the future an order of things in which God's will shall be supreme and mutual love shall govern in all human relations.

"Instead of waking for the day of the Lord as an event which is to come 'out of the clouds,' Christians increasingly find inspiration to strenuous endeavor in the thought that working with God in an age-long process, they may not only achieve something for their own day, but make some contribution, be it ever so small, toward the realization of that ultimate ideal toward which God is continually guiding the race."

—The News, Frederick, MD, Sept, 20, 1910, p. 4.