{"id":41776,"date":"2021-05-22T05:38:57","date_gmt":"2021-05-22T10:38:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=41776"},"modified":"2021-05-22T05:38:57","modified_gmt":"2021-05-22T10:38:57","slug":"the-american-apocalypse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2021\/05\/the-american-apocalypse\/","title":{"rendered":"The American Apocalypse"},"content":{"rendered":"

The end of the world is a pretty dramatic scene.\u00a0 Perhaps it is because of that drama that the idea has captured the imagination of human beings for thousands of years and continues to do so today.\u00a0 It is not an uncommon topic of conversation among Latter-day Saints that I have known, including the occasional discussion of dreams or visions about the End Times.\u00a0 These types of discussions interested Christopher Blythe, who has \u201calways had a deep interest in apocalypticism\u201d and felt that \u201cmuch of the scholarship on Latter-day Saint last days beliefs seem to focus on official doctrine rather than the conversations occurring among lay Latter-day Saints.\u201d\u00a0 His recently-published book Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(Oxford University Press, 2020) focuses on \u201chow lay Latter-day Saint beliefs intersect with the official doctrine of the faith\u201d by examining the full span of apocalypticism among Latter-day Saints in the nineteenth century.\u00a0 He recently had an interview with Kurt Manwaring to discuss his research and book.\u00a0 What follows here is a co-post to the interview (a short discussion with quotes from the interview), but the full interview is available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As Blythe put it, an apocalypse is \u201cliterally an unveiling\u2014a revelation. It\u2019s also a genre of scriptural literature, which is best represented in the Bible with the Book of Revelation. \u2026 In popular usage, the apocalypse is the end of the world.\u201d\u00a0 The genre of literature is, first and foremost, \u201cthe story of a visionary being brought into otherworldly realms often with the aid of an angelic guide,\u201d and not necessarily a discussion of the end of the world.\u00a0 But, in the case of his book title, Blythe was invoking both the genre and eschatology, though he focuses \u201cmore on prophecies predicting the downfall of the United States and less on the millennium that comes after\u201d while discussing \u201ca lot of Latter-day Saint visionary accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Latter-day Saints have been apocalyptic in outlook from the start.\u00a0 Joseph Smith portrayed his visit from Moroni as an experience of being lectured by an angel about the Last Days, and, as Blythe put it: \u201cThe Book of Mormon is filled with apocalyptic material and details the destructions of several civilizations.\u201d\u00a0 While we \u201cspend much less time talking about apocalyptic events in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries than we did in the nineteenth,\u201d it is still a part of our thought today.\u00a0 For example, the Restoration Proclamation is \u201ca great example of how millenarian thought remains a key part of Latter-day Saint identity in the twenty-first century,\u201d though it displays a less apocalyptic outlook than the 1845 Proclamation of the Twelve with the latter document\u2019s \u201cgreater detail about how the Saints are to fulfill their last days assignment and how the last days will proceed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, there are some notable examples of visionary Latter-day Saints who have published apocalypses, even in recent history.\u00a0 A couple discussed in the interview included John Pontius and Julie Rowe.\u00a0 Pontius published a book in 2012 entitled Visions of Glory: One Man\u2019s Astonishing Account of the Last Days,<\/em>\u00a0in which he tells the story of a man he refers to as \u201cSpencer,\u201d an anonymous Latter-day Saint visionary from Salt Lake City.\u00a0 As summarized by Blythe:<\/p>\n

\u201cSpencer\u201d had had a series of near-death experiences and visions detailing parts of the afterlife and most importantly he had seen his own future as it led from great destructions in Salt Lake City to the establishment of the New Jerusalem in Jackson County, Missouri. Those who are familiar with the apocalyptic ideas common to nineteenth century Latter-day Saints would not be surprised by his visions. Pontius even printed some popular visionary literature as an appendix to Visions of Glory to show continuity between the scenarios presented by Spencer and those of his religious predecessors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Blythe stated that he suspects that \u201cVisions of Glory<\/em>\u00a0is the best-selling Latter-day Saint apocalyptic text of the past hundred years. \u2026 No other modern apocalypse has drawn as much attention.\u201d\u00a0 Part of the reason for that success seems to be due to the fact that the visions are generally presented in ways that \u201csupport the established rules on sharing revelatory experiences in the Church,\u201d specifically as personal messages to an anonymous individual.<\/p>\n

Rowe, on the other hand, is a visionary has taken a more controversial approach. \u00a0While Rowe \u201cmay very well be the most popular female visionary in Latter-day Saint history,\u201d she is different from \u201cSpencer\u201d because she went on to establish a movement.\u00a0 \u201cShe wrote a series of books, conducted a speaking tour, and started a YouTube channel.\u00a0 She claimed prophetic gifts which gave her special status within the Latter-day Saint public.\u201d\u00a0 She also was not shy in expressing theological ideas that run contrary to the official doctrine of the Church and was ultimately excommunicated.\u00a0 Blythe stated that:<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Terrible Revolution<\/em>, I compared Julie Rowe to \u201cSpencer\u201d and attempt to make sense of why \u201cSpencer\u201d has received more support and less criticism. Some have tried to explain this disparity as solely the result of sexism and that might play a role but I suspect it has more to do with Julie\u2019s ongoing presence in the public eye.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

For the full interview, head on over to Kurt Manwaring\u2019s site here<\/a>.\u00a0 There is a lot of interesting material that I wasn\u2019t able to cover, including some discussion about Chad Daybell and his apocalyptic literature (including a brief exchange about parallels between Daybell\u2019s zombies and Brigham Young\u2019s idea of blood atonement), how Hiram Page\u2019s visionary experiences with a seer stone helped set the paradigm for acceptable (and unacceptable) ways to share visions in the Church, and how the perception of the US government in Latter-day Saint apocalyptic revelations has evolved.\u00a0 It\u2019s well worth a read.<\/p>\n

For those who wish to stay around for discussion, I\u2019d be interested to hear: What are your thoughts about apocalyptic literature?\u00a0 Have you heard about John Pontius or Julie Rowe before? \u00a0If so, do you believe that the experiences the visions they have shared may be authentic?\u00a0 Why or why not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The end of the world is a pretty dramatic scene.\u00a0 Perhaps it is because of that drama that the idea has captured the imagination of human beings for thousands of years and continues to do so today.\u00a0 It is not an uncommon topic of conversation among Latter-day Saints that I have known, including the occasional discussion of dreams or visions about the End Times.\u00a0 These types of discussions interested Christopher Blythe, who has \u201calways had a deep interest in apocalypticism\u201d and felt that \u201cmuch of the scholarship on Latter-day Saint last days beliefs seem to focus on official doctrine rather than the conversations occurring among lay Latter-day Saints.\u201d\u00a0 His recently-published book Terrible Revolution: Latter-day Saints and the American Apocalypse\u00a0(Oxford University Press, 2020) focuses on \u201chow lay Latter-day Saint beliefs intersect with the official doctrine of the faith\u201d by examining the full span of apocalypticism among Latter-day Saints in the nineteenth century.\u00a0 He recently had an interview with Kurt Manwaring to discuss his research and book.\u00a0 What follows here is a co-post to the interview (a short discussion with quotes from the interview), but the full interview is available here. As Blythe put it, an apocalypse is \u201cliterally an unveiling\u2014a revelation. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10397,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2890],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-history","category-from-the-desk"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41777,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41776\/revisions\/41777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}