|
by
Jared L. Olar |
JULY, 2013- In the previous issue
of Grace & Knowledge, editor Doug Ward explained the ancient Jewish
method of interpretation of Bible prophecy known as "pesher" (See
" `The
Harbinger' and Pesher Interpretation', Issue 27, November 2012, pp.22-28).
Among the examples he discussed were some interpretations that have been
popular in the former Worldwide Church of God and many of the groups that
originated from the WCG. In particular, Ward analyzed interpretations of the
letters to the seven churches in Rev. 2-3 that see those letters as prophecies
of seven "Church Eras" beginning in the days of the Apostles and
continuing until the Second Coming of Christ at the end of the world. As Ward
showed, Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God and its offshoots were not
the first and are not the only religious groups to promote a "Church
Eras" interpretation of St. John's letters to the seven churches of Asia.
Indeed, even Henry H. Halley presented a variation of the "Church
Eras" interpretation in his popular Bible Handbook (See the 22nd edition,
1924, 1959, pp.632-641), though Halley of course interpreted the letters from
the vantage point of an orthodox evangelical Protestant rather than a
Seventh-Day Sabbatarian disciple of Herbert Armstrong.
The
"Church Eras" interpretation was far from the only distinctively
"Armstrongist" interpretation of Bible
prophecy. To be sure, numerous other examples of "pesher"
interpretation of Bible prophecy could be cited from the milieu of the former
Worldwide Church of God and its offshoots. As Ward has shown the inadequacy and
inappropriateness of "Church Eras" interpretations of the letters to
the seven churches, the same flaws and weaknesses can be demonstrated in the
other WCG peshers. In this essay, we shall examine
what is perhaps one of the most important of those distinctive WCG
interpretations: the way Herbert Armstrong interpreted, and the way his
disciples still interpret, the prophetic visions found in Daniel chapters 2, 7,
and 8, and Revelation chapters 13 and 17.
|
The
Beast Chart |
Current and former members of the WCG and its offshoots will no
doubt recall the "Beast Chart" from Herbert Armstrong's old booklet, Who or What is the PROPHETIC BEAST? Armstrong's chart
interpreted the visions of Daniel and Revelation as a prediction of a
succession of kingdoms and empires, tracing human history from the time of
Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, who died in 562/1 B.C., until the present
generation, when, as Armstrong and his followers have expected, Jesus Christ
would return and overthrow the kingdom of the Antichrist. In Armstrong's
"Beast Chart," each substance in the image of Dan. 2, and each beast
and head and horn of the visions of Dan. 7-8 and Rev. 13, 17, was identified
with a specific kingdom or empire, with the Roman Catholic Church and Papacy
allied with them at almost every step of the way.
Just
as the "Church Eras" interpretation is not unique to the former WCG
and its offshoots, so too the approach that Armstrong took to these visions has
ample precedent in wider Adventist and fundamentalist Protestant circles. The
basis of this approach, though of course not the specifics of how each horn and
head is interpreted, can even be found in certain early Church Fathers such as
St. Irenaeus of Lyons or St. Hippolytus
of Rome and others. Thus, there is little dispute in Christian tradition that
Daniel's image represents the succession of empires starting with Nebuchadnezzar's
Chaldean Empire, followed by the Medo-Persian Empire,
followed by the empires of Alexander the Great and his successors, culminating
with the Roman Empire, which would be overthrown by the Kingdom of God.
Similarly, it is obvious to all that St. John intended his readers to recall
Daniel's visions of beasts when he wrote of a "Beast" that was a sort
of chimera of the four beasts of Daniel's vision. It is also obvious to all
that the "Beast" of Revelation represents the Roman Empire. Where the
various interpreters have parted ways, of course, is in the details of St.
John's visions that show the manner and timing of Christ's overthrow of the
Roman Empire.
In
bringing the history of the world from the days of the Apostles down to the
Second Coming of Christ, Armstrong's chart presented a series of so-called
"resurrections of the Roman Empire," beginning with Emperor Justinian
in A.D. 554 and supposed to conclude in the end times with a final resurrection
of the Roman Empire. Even though Herbert Armstrong has been dead for 27 years
and very few of his predictions have come to pass-indeed, most of his
predictions have been shown to be false-nevertheless members of WCG offshoots
continue to regard the "Beast Chart" as the proper schema for understanding
the history of the past 2,500 years of Western civilisation
as well as the shape of things to come in the very near future. To cite just
one example, this is the way Gerald Flurry's Philadelphia Church of God reacted
to the news of Pope John Paul II's death in 2005:
"As editor in chief Gerald Flurry has stated, `Over the
past 1,500 years there have been six resurrections of the `Holy' Roman Empire. Most of the time this empire revolved around Germany and the
Vatican, along with Italy' (June 2000). The seventh resurrection, which
is now in the making, will once again revolve around Germany and the Vatican.
And a German pope may be just the man to bring the two together."
Flurry's
suggestion that Pope Benedict XVI would play a role in a "seventh
resurrection" of the Roman Empire has, of course, been shown by subsequent
events to have been unfounded.
Now,
admittedly, "the Beast Chart" is a very impressive synthesis, and at
first glance, or even second or third glance, may appear to be seamlessly
coherent and correct. Unfortunately, like most of the forays of Armstrong and
his disciples into the areas of history and Bible prophecy, it turns out to be
nothing but a mangled mess of fudged history and arbitrary interpretation.
|
Three
Uprooted Horns |
Let's begin with those three horns in Dan. 7-horns which Armstrong
equated with the first three horns of Rev. 13-that are uprooted before the
Little Horn of Dan. 7. Armstrong interpreted the Little Horn as the Papacy,
which supposedly effected the overthrow of the three
Germanic barbarian kingdoms of the Vandals in North Africa, the kingdom of
Odoacer in Italy, and the kingdom of the Ostrogoths
in Italy.
There
are several problems with the interpretation of the three uprooted horns as the
Vandals, Odoacer, and the Ostrogoths. First, the Papacy neither engineered nor played a pivotal role in
the overthrow of those three kingdoms. Secondly, notice that "the
Beast Chart" shows these three horns in the specific order of
"Vandals, Odoacer, and Ostrogoths." All of
the other horns are identified with a historical, chronological succession of
kingdoms and rulers, so it would appear that Armstrong asserted that the Vandal
kingdom was overthrown before Odoacer's kingdom. But when we check history, we
find that General Belisarius overthrew the Vandal kingdom in A.D. 534, while
Odoacer had already been slain by Theodoric the Ostrogoth
in A.D. 493. The Ostrogoth kingdom was in turn
overthrown through the warfare of the generals Belisarius and Narses in A.D. 554.
This
mistake could be fixed simply enough, just by switching Odoacer and the Vandals
around. But that is far from the only problem with the "Beast Chart,"
as we shall see. The chart next shows the fourth horn, identified as the famous
"Imperial Restoration" under Emperor Justinian in A.D. 554, which
Armstrong also identified as the healing of the Beast's deadly wound mentioned
in Rev. 13:3. The deadly wound he identified as the deposition of the Western
Emperor Romulus Augustulus in A.D. 476 A.D. That
interpretation seems to make some sort of sense-half the Empire was lost to the
barbarians, but most of Italy and North Africa and a large chunk of Spain were
temporarily recaptured under Justinian. This was supposedly the first
"resurrection" of the Roman Empire.
Of
course, contrary to what you'd expect from a "deadly wound" to a
kingdom or empire, the Roman Empire had not actually died or ceased to exist
from 476 to 554, nor was it ever in any danger of being completely toppled
during those decades-it just lost formal control over the Western half of its
territories. Therefore it's not accurate to call Justinian's Imperial
Restoration a "resurrection." Indeed, the Roman Empire continued to
exist without interruption from the time of Augustus Caesar until the Fall of
Constantinople in 1453-one of a large number of crucial historical facts that
Armstrong's chart glaringly omits for some reason. I suspect the reason the end
of the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453 didn't make it onto the chart is because it
would have shown a big problem with Armstrong's interpretations. He claimed
that the two iron legs of the image of Dan. 2 represented the two halves or
divisions of the Roman Empire. The Eastern half did not cease to exist until
1453, while the Western half went through a series of partial and total
collapses. But after 1453, what happened to the image's other leg? Now,
Armstrong said the unification of Italy and Germany in the 1870s constituted
the two legs of the image, but where was the other leg from 1453 until 1870?
Daniel didn't see an image that had a big section of its left leg missing,
after all.
|
German
Emperors |
Moving on, we see that Armstrong identified the fifth horn of the
Beast as the Western Empire of Charlemagne and his successors. Now that's quite
a chronological leap-from A.D. 554 to A.D. 800. What happened to the Roman
Empire during that time? Did it cease to exist? Not at all,
though Justinian's restoration proved to be short-lived and of no permanent
effect. In the late 500s, the Lombards invaded
Italy, and the Roman Empire lost control of almost all of Italy. Charlemagne
would later overthrow the Lombard kingdom and place the famous iron crown of
the Lombards on his own head. Also in the later 500s,
the Visigoths recaptured that chunk of Spain that the Empire had reconquered. However, the Empire maintained control in
North Africa until the 600s and 700s A.D., when the new religion of Islam arose
and swept through the Middle East and Africa, carving off huge swaths of the
Roman Empire. The Roman Emperor in Constantinople continued to claim authority
over those lands, but the reality on the ground was quite otherwise. So it was
that when the Pope crowned Charlemagne Emperor on Christmas Day in A.D.
800-thereby creating "the Holy Roman Empire"-the Roman Emperor in the
East was not at all pleased. It would be quite a while before the Roman
Emperors in the East acknowledged the legitimacy of their Western rivals or
counterparts.
Notice
that the Lombard and Visigoth kings in Italy and Spain, and the Frankish kings
in Gaul, are conspicuously absent from the "Beast Chart." When
Armstrong developed his chart, there just weren't enough horns on the Beast for
all of the various kingdoms that existed back then.
Next,
we find the sixth horn of the Beast of Rev. 13 identified as the Holy Roman
Empire of the German nation. That's a little puzzling, because that Empire
began with Charlemagne's coronation and continued to exist with only occasional
interregna until 1806. However, some-influenced by an anachronistic distinction
between Franks (French) and Germans-regard the coronation of Otto I the Great
in A.D. 962 as the proper beginning of the Holy Roman Empire, even though it
was obviously the same empire and the same crown that had existed since A.D.
800. It's hardly correct to pretend the Western Emperors from 800 to 962 were
not Germans, since those Emperors were Franks, Lombards,
Burgundians, or Franconians-Germans
all. There really doesn't seem to be adequate grounds to say that Charlemagne
and his empire constituted one horn while Otto the Great and his empire
constituted another horn.
The
same goes for Armstrong's identification of the seventh horn as the Habsburg
dynasty. The election of Rudolf von Habsburg in A.D. 1273 as King of the Romans
was no revival of a political entity that had utterly collapsed, nor the beginning of a new entity. Interregna and rival
claims and civil war in the succession of the Holy Roman Emperors were hardly
anything new-the Great Interregnum, which ended with Rudolf's accession, merely
lasted rather longer than usual. The imperial crown still existed, and simply
awaited someone to wear it again. There's really no compelling reason to see
the accession of the Habsburgs as a "resurrection" of the Roman
Empire, as a new horn. (And anyway, it took a good while after Rudolf's
election before the Habsburg dynasty got a "lock" on the crown.
Rudolf, incidentally, was never crowned Holy Roman Emperor.)
|
Napoleon's
Revival |
The Holy Roman Empire lasted until 1806, when it was ended by
Napoleon, Armstrong's eighth horn. Napoleon euthanised
the virtually dead Empire, and appointed himself Emperor, snatching the crown
from the Pope during a ceremony in which the Pope was an unwilling participant
(the Pope was being held hostage at the time). Napoleon was violently opposed
to Catholicism, and therefore would have none of that medieval heritage of a
"Holy" Roman Empire. Thus, one can rightly speak of an attempt to
resurrect the classical, pagan Roman Empire.
However,
it's here that we find another serious problem with Armstrong's chart. Rev.
13:5 refers to a period of 42 months (1,260 days), which Armstrong interpreted
according to the biblical "day for a year" principle as symbolic of a
period of 1,260 years. Armstrong said that period lasted from Justinian's
Imperial Restoration in 554 until the fall of Napoleon in 1814. But as
mentioned above, the Holy Roman Empire ended in 1806, not 1814. Why didn't
Armstrong find anything of prophetic significance in 1806? Because
he was looking for a period of 1,260 years, not 1,252 years.
But
for the sake of argument, let's grant that Armstrong interpreted Rev. 13:5
correctly. If so, why doesn't history record "the Beast" fulfilling
the prophecies of Rev. 13:6-8 in the years after 1814? Consulting the
historical record, the answer is obvious-after the Holy Roman Empire came to an
end in 1806, and after Napoleon's empire was dismantled in 1814, there was no
Roman Empire that could have done the things described in Rev. 13:6-8. At
least, according to Armstrong's own chart, not until the unification of Italy
(and Germany) in the 1870s, which is Armstrong's ninth horn.
Now,
although the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist in 1806, the Austrian Emperors
retained their crown until 1918, and from 1815 until Prussia created the German
Empire in 1871, there was a loose and ineffectual German Confederation that
served as successor to the defunct and ineffectual Holy Roman Empire. But we
don't see Austria and the German Confederation initiating a massive religious
persecution or achieving world superpower status, nor do we see any worldwide
worship of the Habsburg emperor (see Rev. 13:6-8). Anyway, even though the
Austrian Emperor, no longer "Roman Emperor," carried on elements of
the tradition of the German/Roman imperium, Austria
and the German Confederation just don't show up on Armstrong's chart. Again,
there apparently weren't enough horns on the Beast.
|
What
Roman Empire? |
Of course, in the 1930s we find both Mussolini and Hitler making
use of the idea of Roman Imperium for propaganda
purposes, but there is a pretty glaring fact that must be explained if one
wishes to believe that Armstrong's interpretation really was correct: neither
Italy nor Germany had "Emperors" in the 1930s and 1940s. Italy had a
king and a "duce," while Germany had a Fuehrer. The last German
emperors were Karl I von Habsburg-Lothringen and
Wilhelm II von Hohenzollern, both driven out in 1918. We haven't seen any
European emperors since. Why did this major change in world affairs-the end of
the German and Austrian monarchies-didn't merit a horn of its own in
Armstrong's interpretation, while the German kings and emperors Charlemagne,
Otto the Great, and Rudolf von Habsburg each merited their own? The answer is
that Armstrong was reading these prophetic visions with the belief that he was
living in the final generation before the end of the world, and therefore
sought to make the course of the preceding 19 centuries of European history
conform with St. John's visions. As we have seen, however, European history
does not neatly conform to the schema of the "Beast Chart."
So
where does all this leave us? In the East, no "resurrections" of the
Roman Empire at all, and in the West, one could argue that there have been,
say, no more than four or five "resurrections"-with another two or
three yet to take place, if we grant that St. John's vision was intended as a
forecast of a succession of resurrected Roman Empires. That's not the arbitrary
schema that Herbert Armstrong imposed onto the horned beasts of Daniel and
Revelation, but as we have seen, Armstrong frequently got his history as well
as his prophecy wrong.
In
truth, one of the weakest props supporting Armstrong's chart is his assumption
that the ten horns of the Beast represent a historical succession of kingdoms
and empires over the centuries. If one reads Revelation without "Armstrongist" glasses, however, one should see that
there is not the slightest suggestion in the text that St. John's visions of
the Beast were intended to be interpreted that way. In this way, then, this
interpretation is like the "Seven Church Eras" interpretation of Rev.
2-3. There's simply nothing in the scriptural text that would lead one to
believe that a progression of historical eras is what was envisioned. It's an
idea that the reader or interpreter brings to the text and imposes onto it.
Some
might respond to these criticisms by saying, "If Herbert Armstrong's
interpretation is wrong, then what other meaning could those visions possibly
have?" That is an understandable response. However, the answer to that
question is properly the subject of a whole different essay-or perhaps a series
of books. For our immediate purposes, what the correct interpretation might be
isn't particularly important. What matters is that the "Beast Chart"
doesn't hold up under close scrutiny. Once that interpretation is eliminated as
erroneous, then one may, and should, turn to other
possible interpretations.
Note: A version of this essay was originally published on 7 April 2005
on "xcg", a former weblog of Gary
Scott at xcg.kingary.net.
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