Recorded on Thursday, april 30th from 6:00-7:30pm ET
Is this the Apocalypse?
Few questions have haunted human beings more persistently than this one: are we living in the last days? From the early church to the medieval plague years, from the World Wars to the Cold War, every generation has had its reasons to suspect the end was near. Our own moment — with its wars, pandemics, environmental crisis, and fracturing political order — feels no different.
In this class, Robyn Whitaker takes a candid look at scripture's apocalyptic texts and how they have been interpreted within American Christianity. We'll explore what texts like the Book of Revelation and Daniel meant in their ancient context and ask how that should shape the way we read them today. We'll also reckon with the history of apocalyptic prediction in the USA, and why dispensationalism has proven so persistently popular due to the influence of the Scofield Bible and the Left Behind novels. We’ll see how the theologies of Rapture, Tribulation, the Antichrist, and Armageddon have hijacked our thinking and quietly shaped foreign policy and popular culture.
But this isn't just a history lesson. We'll wrestle seriously with the unsettling feeling that our own moment somehow feels like the end of something. What do the Bible’s apocalypses have to say to people living in genuinely frightening times? And what does it mean to live faithfully when the world seems to be unravelling?
This class includes:
One-night live class
Live Q+A session
Link to class recording
Downloadable class slides
Cost: $25
Topics we’ll cover:
What is meant by apocalypse and why the language we use matters
How American evangelicals learned to read for end times and why it’s a problem
How Jewish and Christian apocalypses can be harnessed as texts of hope, not just catastrophe
How texts like Revelation can help us name and combat evil in times like these
YOUR INSTRUCTOR
Robyn Whitaker
Dr. Robyn Whitaker is a biblical scholar and public theologian who specialises in the Book of Revelation and the way the Bible gets used – and misused - in public discourse. She is author of several books including Revelation for Normal People and Even the Devil Quotes Scripture.
