Changing Images Of The Beast: Apocalyptic Conspiracy Theories In American History -- By: James Alan Patterson

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 31:4 (Dec 1988)
Article: Changing Images Of The Beast: Apocalyptic Conspiracy Theories In American History
Author: James Alan Patterson


Changing Images Of The Beast:
Apocalyptic Conspiracy Theories In American History

James A. Patterson*

British evangelical Os Guinness creatively unveils an insider’s view of the fictional Central Security Council, an organization committed to “the complete neutralization of the modern Western church by subversion from within.1 Combining insightful sociological analysis with a format reminiscent of C. S. Lewis’ classic, The Screwtape Letters, Guinness depicts the crafty and subtle wiles of an Enemy that cleverly exploits the cultural captivity of unsuspecting Christians. The gradual unraveling of the Gravedigger plot leads to a sobering conclusion:

Our real enemy today is not secularism, not humanism, not Marxism, not any of the great religious rivals to the Christian gospel, not even modernization, but ourselves. We who are Western Christians are simply a special case of a universal human condition to which Pascal pointed earlier. “Jesus Christ comes to tell men that they have no enemies but themselves.” Or as it has been put more recently: “We have met the enemy and it is us.”2

This trenchant assessment of the Evil One’s preferred modus operandi stands in sharp contrast to the many and varied conspiracy theories that have dotted the landscape of American Protestant eschatology. Apocalypticists in the United States have demonstrated a chronic predilection to locate and identify external antichrists, promoting ecclesiastical institutions, nation states, alien ideologies, and even specific individuals as probable candidates. In the process, from the colonial period to the present, “Beast-watching” has captured the imaginations and better judgments of many interpreters of Biblical prophecy. Prophetic literature has been strewn with dramatic and sensational accounts of Satan’s alleged schemes against the faithful, but there have been few hints that some of the Church’s wounds were self-inflicted. Thus Guinness’ suggestion of the enemy within challenges a longstanding and deep-rooted apocalyptic tradition in America.

In the colonial era English Protestant convictions about the antichrist dominated American eschatology, particularly among the Puritans of New England. They widely assented to the English Reformed identification of papal Rome as the Beast, expressed ever so bluntly in the Westminster Confession of 1646:

*James Patterson is associate professor of history at Toccoa Falls College in Georgia.

There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ: nor can the Pope of Rome, in any...

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