ANTICHRIST
SUPERSTAR AND
THE PAPERBACK APOCALYPSE
Ever
since Chicken Little started the trend, it hasn't taken much to set
people going with cries of “The sky is falling!” The deciding factor
seems to be more the psychological state of the doom-criers than the
apparent proximity of doom. For whatever reason, fundamentalist prophets
have been getting quite a hearing in the last decade, if the sales of
their books are any indication. For instance, Hal Lindsey's The Late
Great Planet Earth has racked up printing after printing (literally
millions of copies so far), and has' spawned sequels like The
Terminal Generation. Tim LaHaye (of the Moral Majority) has released
a new edition of his The Beginning of the End. And new titles
like Apocalypse Next (get it?) keep rolling off the presses.
These books try to match up Bible prophecies and current events (both
usually twisted out of context) to show that our current troubles are
setting the stage for Armageddon. The reader had better get converted
quick so as to escape God’s wrath.
Popular fascination with
Armageddon and Antichrist turned out to be a gold mine for
science-fiction writers as well. Seeing the success of The Omen
trilogy of films and books, other authors tried their hands at paperback
apocalypses and gave us books like Robert McCammmon’s Baal and
James Patterson's Virgin. Interestingly, fundamentalists had
already beat them to the punch. For years, there had been a steady
trickle of end-of-the-world novels from fundamentalists, appropriating
the genre of futurist fiction for evangelistic propaganda. It might be
interesting to compare the two groups (religious and secular) of novels,
centering on their treatment of the Antichrist, who seems to be the
central figure in most of them. First, however, we'll take a brief look
at the development of the Antichrist legend. Then we should be in a good
position to see just how creatively each group of writers has dealt with
it.
The Legend of
Antichrist
An ancient Christian text
called "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" predicts the coming of the
Antichrist in fairly typical terms: “Then shall appear the deceiver of
the world [posing] as the Son of God. And he shall do signs and wonders,
and the earth shall be given into his hands, and he shall do evil such
as has not been done through the ages."
"Antichrist" implies both
"false Christ" and "opponent of Christ." The title is used by only one
of the writers of the Bible (the Elder John in 1 John
2:18; 4:3). It is a
Christian term, but the basic idea seems to be much older. This
nefarious figure was originally called "Belial" (2 Corinthians 6:l5a),
which means "man of sin" (2 Thessalonians 2:3). Originally he seems to
have been a personification of Satan pictured as the Chaos Dragon,
borrowed from Babylonian mythology. The Dragon would make one final
assault on heaven in the Last Days. He would appear in Israel in human
form as a false messiah, leading the people astray and claiming divine
honors for himself. After persecuting the faithful, he is finally
destroyed by the archangel Michael, paving the way for the birth of the
true Messiah.
Around the time of Jesus
(give or take a century), the Antichrist or Belial legend became
politicized. The oppression suffered at the hands of foreign conquerors
led Jews and, later, Christians to identify particular political figures
with "the Beast." Candidates included Antiochus Epiphanes, Caligula,
Nero, and Domitian. Now instead of a false messiah corning from within
Israel, the Antichrist came to be pictured as a ruthless pagan tyrant,
trying to destroy the true faith from outside. He also tries to enslave
the whole world, taking advantage of a dreadful famine to do this. He
decrees that only those who take his mark (like the Stamp Act in
colonial times) can buy scarce and precious grain. "No one could buy or
sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the Beast or the
number of his name” (Revelation 13:17b). The "number of his name" is
666. It refers to the ancient practice of coding names by their letters
used as numbers. Wall graffiti at Pompeii preserves someone's puppy
love: “I love her whose number is 545.” The author of the Book of
Revelation probably meant 666 to refer to the name "Nero," though he
actually thought the "Beast" was the current ruler Domitian. He had
woven together with the Antichrist legend a contemporary legend that
Nero had either escaped assassination or actually risen from the dead,
and would return to retake his throne. The author of Revelation thought
he had, in the person of Domitian, and would soon be vanquished by Jesus
Christ, returning from heaven.
It is fairly obvious that
his hope was premature. The second coming failed to materialize on
schedule. And this left interpreters of Revelation with quite a problem
on their hands. As time went by,
Rome fell without being
destroyed by Christ. The Jews were dispersed from Palestine. Everybody
forgot about Nero. So it was gradually concluded that whenever Christ
did return, Israel and the Roman Empire would have to have been
restored so both would be there waiting for him. And whoever the
Antichrist turned out to be, his name would have to count up to 666.
Early church fathers recorded several options. Some thought the future
Antichrist would be somebody named “Evanthas," or "Latinus,” or “Teitan”
(Titan), or “Diclux," since all these resulted in the proper
computation.
As time went on,
Antichrist’s legend grew in the telling. Medieval Catholics added a
character called The Emperor of the Last Days, a great Christian king
who would unify Europe and convert the Muslims just before the coming of
Antichrist. Muslims had it the other way around. In their version,
Antichrist (whom they expected to be named “Dejjal” or "Dejjat”) would
be vanquished by the return of Jesus together with the Mahdi, a
messianic descendant of Muhammad. Jews associated Antichrist with the
Christianized Roman power, and called him "Armillus” (= Romulus).
Finally, the Protestant Reformers Luther and Calvin claimed that the
Papacy (not any particular pope) was Antichrist. More radical sectarian
Protestants never bought this, however. They continue to suggest
candidates for the position including Mussolini, Hitler, FDR, Henry
Kissinger, and King Juan Carlos of Spain! And that brings us back up to
Lindsey, LaHaye, and company.
Fundamentalist
Fiction
As the Moral Majority
shows, the blue-nosed ethics of fundamentalism are often simply the
backwater survival of the cultural values of yesteryear. A
fundamentalist leader of the last century once wrote "A novel is nothing
but a well-told lie.” This sounds shocking to us, but it used to be a
common prejudice. Plato thought that fiction writers were liars, as did
the authorities in Shakespeare's day. That's why he had to title several
of his plays "The True History of...'" even when they weren't. This kind
of distaste for imagination hung on longer among fundamentalists than
anywhere else. The result was that their breakthrough into fiction has
been slow and hesitant. Usually, fiction has had to justify itself as
moral catechism or evangelistic propaganda. And the Antichrist novels we
are considering fall squarely into this category.
First of all, what books
are we talking about? We will be taking our examples from six novels,
though there are several others. The earliest seems to be Sidney
Watson's The Mark of the Beast (1918). Next comes
Rapture by TV faith healer Ernest Angley (Robin Williams's "Reverend
Earnest Angry”). Incidentally, the title refers to the fundamentalist
belief in the "Rapture" (or "catching up"), i.e., the bodily ascension
of believers to join Christ at the second coming, similar to the idea of
UFO-believers being caught up into waiting space-ships. Angley's book
came out in 1950, and is still in print, but the work that opened the
floodgate seems to have been Salem Kirban's
666,
published in 1970. His name may ring a bell if you've read Stephen
King's The Dead Zone. There the hero, recently recovered from a
coma, is pictured reading through a stack of tracts given him by his
mother who is something of a fanatic. “One of them, by a man named Salem
Kirban, struck him as nearly pagan in its loving contemplation of a
bloody apocalypse and the yawning barbecue pits of hell.” (p. 124).
This isn't too far from the truth, as we will see below. One of Kirban's
associates, Gary Cohen, tried his hand at an apocalyptic novel
Civilization’s Last Hurrah. It appeared in 1974 and was recently
reissued as The Horsemen are Coming. In 1978, Frank Allnutt wrote
The Peacemaker, wherein a thinly-veiled Henry Kissinger turns out
to be Antichrist. Finally, Carol Balizet’s The Seven Last Years
was published in 1979 and issued as a mass market paperback by Bantam
Books the following year.
Without exception, these
novels are admittedly aimed at scaring readers into being ready for the
Rapture. Invariably, the protagonists have been warned by “saved” loved
ones to repent before it's too late. But you guessed it, it’s too late.
The loved ones disappear into the sky, and the protagonist gets
converted just in time to suffer the terrors of the End-Time. The
warning is clear: “Men, don't let this happen to you!” King's remark
about Kirban's relishing the torments of the damned has some basis. For
these writers, there is nothing to be afraid of, since they are sure
they will be among the elect. Thus the horrors of the apocalypse can be
dangled before the reader in an “I-told-you-so” fashion. .For instance,
Cohen’s novel shows the starving masses being reduced to eating
processed human flesh. A cover blurb promises the reader “a couple of
very delightful evenings with the book.”
One suspects that these
books have another, hidden, purpose. They bolster fundamentalist
readers' belief in the second coming of Christ by putting it in
narrative past-tense form. According to their faith, all this should be
happening soon. Yet time passes, generations pass, and still it does not
happen. The disappointment is not acknowledged. Instead it is tacitly
cushioned by reading books which show it happening in the
reader's own day. Believers would like to see real
narrative accounts of the Rapture and the Antichrist, say, in Time
magazine. Lacking this, they must content themselves with make-believe,
provided by these novels with their depictions of news reporters
covering the apocalypse.
Speaking of "covering the
apocalypse," let's see how the fundamentalist authors depict the
Antichrist. Who is he? How does he rise to power? Watson’s Antichrist is
Lucien Apleon (from “Apollyon," The Destroyer in Revelation 9:11), a
charismatic figure who having established a wide social and artistic
reputation, is said simply to have been "made" the head of the "Revived
Roman Empire." Angley's Antichrist is referred to in the story, even by
his own followers, only as "the Beast," and appears but once. Allnut’s
pseudo-Kissinger (Alfred K. Kiefer) is the U. S. Secretary of State who
rises to the presidency by plotting the deaths of everyone above him.
Cohen's Beast is Baruch Mindor (= "Blessed Nimrod, " as in the builder
of the Tower of Babel), the premier of a united eurocommunist Western
Europe, who also becomes head of the United Nations and solidifies it
into a world government. Mindor remains a two-dimensional cut-out of a
bureaucrat throughout the book.
Both Balizet and Kirban do
a better job with their villain. Balizet’s is Bishop Uriah Leonard, who
(like The Final Conflict's Damien Thorn) heads a relief
organization. When the U. S. Government collapses in the wake of a
superdestructive earthquake, his is the only force left capable of
bringing any order to the chaos. Soon he is elected Pope Sixtus the
Sixth (hint, hint) and becomes de facto ruler over Western Europe.
Balizet is the only one of the religious writers who gives an intriguing
peek into the Antichrist's own perception of things. On the eve of
Armageddon, he is asked by his lieutenant, "Do you feel any fear? Any
doubts?” The Anti-Pope replies, “I have spent too many years, too many
centuries of effort to be stricken now with doubts. I must do what it is
my nature to do." (p. 338).
Kirban's Antichrist is
probably the best of the bunch. He is "Brother Bartholomew,” a holy man
from Iraq who makes an international name for himself as a peacemaker
and negotiator. He is eventually drafted by the acclamation of both
parties to become President of the United States, then of a Federated
States of Europe. After a cryogenic recovery from an attempt on his
life, Brother Bartholomew goes mad, bringing the world, literally, to
the brink of destruction. Despite severe stylistic flaws, Kirban is
reasonably effective in painting Bartholomew as a seductive
pseudo-Christ futilely trying to secure his grasp on a world rapidly
collapsing upon itself.
So much for how they treat
the Antichrist. How are these books as literature? Remember, they are
really attempts to translate theology into fictional idiom. The
transition is none too easy. Watson has his characters launch into long
sermons. He hesitates on the border of doctrinal exposition, often
failing to pass over into real narrative description. Angley is even
worse on this score. He cannot figure out how to make the symbolic
prophecies of Revelation come alive. Hal Lindsey rather mundanely makes
the monstrous locusts from the bottomless pit into helicopter gunships,
but Angley's imagination will not carry him even this far. Instead,
e.g., the four horsemen of the apocalypse are just plunked down
unassimilated. The hero merely looks out the window of his house in a
small midwestern town and sees them riding down the street!
Most of the books have
trouble with fairly basic elements of writing. The characters remain
two-dimensional, and the passage of large amounts of time is simply
stated, without giving the reader a "feel" for it happening. Far more
embarrassing are juvenile gaffes such as Kirban’s switching from first
to third person narration in mid-paragraph! Angley actually has one of
Antichrist's
interrogators say "We have ways of making smart guys like you talk." (p.
197). But just as serious a flaw is the tendency for the story to be
narrated from the viewpoint of a fanatic. The style is preachy, and too
much is taken for granted. It is impossible for any non-fundamentalist
to suspend disbelief long enough to take it all seriously, even as
fiction. He or she will be constantly put off by the in-crowd, smug
tone. It is too reminiscent of the puzzling fundamentalist bumper
sticker "Warning: In case of Rapture, Driver will Disappear.”
A happy exception to this
multitude of. sins is Balizet’s The Seven Last Years. Her
characters are good, and she treats them with sensitivity. There is even
a reasonably sympathetic treatment of a gay character, surprising
coming from this quarter. Balizet is not afraid to make the book long
enough (345 pages) to allow for detailed description and narrative
texture. When she writes up an apocalyptic earthquake, she describes the
social aftermath well and knows how to integrate it into the succeeding
action. She has taken the trouble to think out what would happen if
everyone had to take the mark of Antichrist. There are month-long
extensions of the deadline because of the difficulty in
enforcing such a measure. Quickwitted landowners set up black market
farm colonies for those individuals unwilling to take the mark.
Perhaps most important,
Balizet realizes that her readers may not share her convictions, so she
depicts her beliefs from the outsider’s standpoint. For instance the
character Francis’s gay lover Douglas has just renounced Antichrist and
been martyred for his faith. Francis is troubled and blurts out, "What
if we’re wrong and Douglas was right and he's in heaven now playing a
harp or something?" (p. 264). Balizet knows how all this must sound to
the reader, and writes accordingly. It is no coincidence that hers is
the only one of these novels to have been taken on by a mass-market
publisher.
Damien and Company
Those Antichrist novels
which originated in secular publishing take a very different approach
from those just considered. Nevertheless, there is a surprising link
between the two groups of books. The Omen, the first of
the secular novels, originated in an idea of born-again Christian
Robert L. Munger. He wanted the film to serve as a warning to the public
about the coming Antichrist, a la the propaganda fiction we have
reviewed. Hal Lindsey (The Late Great Planet Earth) was even
taken on as a consultant, but he dropped out when he saw the film
version going off in what he thought were “unscriptural" directions.
Yet it is the creative and
flexible way in which the secular fiction handles the biblical
Antichrist lore that is one of its greatest strengths. It is only too
obvious that the fundamentalist writers felt obliged to squeeze in every
jot and tittle of their inherited doctrines. And there is quite a number
of jots and tittles! The result is often a stiff and contrived clutter
of catastrophes and monsters, leaving little room for plot or
characterization. By contrast, the secular writers have no religious axe
to grind. They can pick and choose those elements from the tradition
which seem most valuable for a good story. And, needless to say, we are
finally dealing with professional novelists. Their aim is to spin a
yarn, and hopefully a chilling one. Whereas the first group of writers
aimed at scaring you out of hell, the second wants to scare the hell out
of you. The nasty products of their imagination include David Seltzer's
The Omen (1976), Joseph Howard's Damien (1978) and Gordon
McGill's The Final Conflict (1980). These three books, of course,
form the Omen trilogy. Unrelated to this series are Robert R.
McCammon's Baal (1978) and James Patterson's Virgin
(1980). It might be well to note that, creative adaptation aside, there
are a few instances of factual fudging in the books. The Omen
mixes up Bible quotations, attributing passages from Daniel to the Book
of Revelation, and texts from Revelation to the Psalms! Father Tassone
(Brennan in the film) recites a bad poem:
When the Jews return to
Zion,
And a comet fills [film: "rips"] the sky,
And the Holy Roman Empire rises,
Then you and I must die.
From the eternal sea he rises,
Creating armies on either shore,
Turning man against his brother,
Till man exists no more
This is said to be from the
Book of Revelation, but it isn’t. In The Final Conflict, Damien
Thorn quotes another phony prophecy and that from a phony book! There is
no “Book of Hebron," not even in the Apocrypha, where Damien pretends
to find it.
But enough quibbling; on to
the really interesting stuff. First, let’s look at The Omen.
Damien is born of a jackal, a sort of blasphemous mockery of the virgin
birth of Christ. The Bible says nothing on this subject, but one
recurring note in medieval speculation was that Antichrist would be born
of a whore through the power of Satan. The jackal was an innovative
touch. As or the
interpretation of the mark of the Beast as the Antichrist’s own birth
mark, this has only a dim precedent, where one early medieval source
says he has "on his face an inscription, ‘Antichrist.’” The reason for
the change must have been to salvage the classic "mark of the Beast"
theme without introducing the mass-starvation scenario, which was
beyond the scope of The Omen. Instead it is cleverly adapted
along the lines of the mark of the devil which supposedly identifies
witches. Only it is the Beast himself, together with his immediate
cronies, who has it. The legend supports the book in having the young
Antichrist being both intelligent and malevolent beyond his years, and
in having him educated by a clique of witches and sorcerers (Mrs.
Baylock and Sergeant Neff).
Regarding the apocalyptic
predictions in the poem quoted above, which set the stage for Damien’s
appearance, we have already seen that the Antichrist legend does predict
the reestablishment of Israel and the Roman Empire. Ala Hal Lindsey,
The Omen takes the revived Roman Empire to be the Common Market. The
mention of a comet might refer to the falling to earth of the "star"
Wormwood to pollute the water (Revelation 8:10-11). Or it may have
something to do with the "great light" mentioned in the Fatima
prophecies. In The Omen, its primary purpose is to signal
Damien's birth. As for the other books, Damien sets the stage for
the Antichrist to manipulate famine conditions so as to lock up control
of the starving nations. This is fully in accord with the traditional
legend.
Baal
repeats the Satanic
conception and wunderkind themes, and as in The Final Conflict,
the Antichrist is pictured as a perverse nihilist, a la the Marquis de
Sade. Baal says to a Catholic priest, "Your god is one of white
steepled churches. That's all; beyond the church doors He has no
strength. Mine is the god of the alleys, the whorehouse, the world. Mine
is the true king.” (p. 60) . The novel element in Baal is that the
Antichrist is set in an Islamic context. Instead of posing as the
returned Christ, Baal pretends to be "the Living Muhammad" (i.e., the
Mahdi, or messianic savior from Muhammad's line).
Virgin
also departs from the standard fundamentalist framework by taking its
departure from the Catholic cult of Our Lady of Fatima, wherein the
Virgin Mary is expected to defeat Satan at the end of time. In this
clever book, the Pope finally reveals the famous secret portions of the
Fatima message. It turns out that in the last days, now upon us, there
are to be two virgin births, of Christ and Antichrist. The problem is to
determine which is which. One twist follows another till the very end of
the book, when we discover that there are three virgin births. There are
two Antichrists, and Christ is born female! Fascinating.
This all brings us to one
of the most interesting aspects of the whole matter. The Omen
trilogy, Baal, and Virgin all make clever use of various
features of the legend. Their main purpose in so doing is to tell a good
tale. But it is striking how they manage to accentuate certain
theological points better than the admittedly religious novels do. If
one looks carefully, each of the novels has a distinctive theological
structure.
The Omen
portrays the coming of Antichrist as an inexorable doom, the scourge of
humanity. Unlike the current fundamentalist cheer-leading for
Armageddon, much historic Christian belief has dreaded the coming of the
End, even calling it "Doomsday.” It was seen as a sword of Damocles,
suspended above a sinful world ripe for judgment. Christ, of course, was
to be the judge. In The Omen, there is actually no place for a
second coming of Christ. Antichrist takes his place as the executioner
of humanity, an avenging angel “turning man against his brother, till
man exists no more.” The only hope of averting this doom is to slay the
infant Antichrist before it is too late. And it is too late. A sense of
fatalistic foreboding builds as the story progresses, as attempt after
attempt to stop the child fails. As in the apocalyptic writings, the
countdown is underway and no one can avert it.
We can pass over Damien,
which essentially re-does the story of The Omen a few years later
and less effectively, just marking time until The Final Conflict.
This book is an ingenious reversal of the premise of The Omen.
Now a new star signals not Damien’s birth, but the rebirth of Christ.
This time, it is Damien who must frantically try to destroy the child
before it is too late. For if he fails, the world will be "forced to
endure a second ordeal of Jesus Christ," the dawn of the Millennium.
Despite the large number of New Testament texts which explicitly
predict the return of Christ as an adult descending directly from
heaven, there actually is a biblical precedent for The Final Conflict’s
version. In the Book of Revelation, we find a pas sage (Revelation
12:16) which seems to have been incorporated from a pre-Christian
Jewish document. It shows Satan (symbolized as the Dragon) chasing a
pregnant woman into the desert, where he seeks to devour her new-born
Son who is clearly
supposed to be the Messiah. The Child is rescued, snatched away to
safety. The important point is that the Christ is shown being born in
the Last Days as an infant, not appearing full-grown. And this is
exactly the way it happens in The Final Conflict, at least in the
book. The movie jerks the rug out from under its own feet by having
Christ return as an adult after all, contradicting the whole of the
preceding story.
Baal
highlights still another
neglected element of the apocalyptic tradition. This is the doctrine of
the two ages. How do we explain the presence of suffering and evil in a
world supposedly ruled by God? Apocalyptic thinkers believed that God
was allowing Satan to rule in the present age, but would soon put a stop
to it. Then he would bring in a new golden age, the Millennium. The
Messiah would destroy the Antichrist to bring this about. Now all this
is just a step away from admitting that God is not really in
control, but is only one of two equal forces (the other being Satan)
fighting over the world. Evil abounds when Satan has the upper hand, and
vice versa.
This is known as "dualism"
and became the chief doctrine of one of early Christianity's fiercest
competitors, Manichaeism. Baal puts the Antichrist legend into an
out-and-out dualistic framework. In this book, the danger posed by the
Antichrist Baal is that he will forever upset and destroy the eternal
balance between the co-equal powers Jehovah and Satan. Actually, this is
closer to Michael Moorcock's Elric novels, where the hero tries to
prevent either Law or Chaos from upsetting the balance, than it is to
traditional Christianity. But one wonders if something like this isn't
implied in a belief in Satan.
Finally, Virgin is
by and large an imaginative reworking of many themes found in The
Omen and The Final Conflict. Both Christ and Antichrist are
born, and agents of each try to kill the other. The distinctive thing
here is that the rebirth of Christ is neither a mission of judgment nor
one of millennial salvation. Rather, it seems to be a "second chance"
offered to humanity. Christ will appear as a humble teacher and healer,
giving the message of peace and repentance all over again. This time
maybe we will listen. Surprisingly, this notion has no support at all in
the apocalyptic tradition. This may be a surprise, since if you
mentioned a "second coming of Christ" to most people, this is probably
what would come to mind. Nor is it hard to guess why. Come to think of
it, it does seem a bit incongruous to implicate Jesus, the compassionate
savior of Christians, in all that cosmic bloodshed. Can we really
imagine Jesus Christ stoking Kirban's "yawning barbecue pits of hell"?
Conclusion
If this article has
illustrated anything at all, it would have to be that one finds both
fiction and theology in the strangest places! Taking off from the
current end-of-the-world craze, we surveyed the legend of the
Antichrist. Then we saw how fundamentalists tried, with limited success,
to appropriate the medium of fiction for propaganda purposes. The result
was routine scare-tactics, with the bright exception of Carol Balizet's
engaging novel The Seven Last Years. Finally, we found that
several avowedly fictional books on the Antichrist reworked the legend
in entertaining ways. Not only that, but in the process, they came up
with some thought-provoking religious insights. On the whole, it is
tempting to conclude that the novelists did a better job writing
theology than the theologians did writing fiction. If this is true, it
is probably because both good fiction and good theology grow from a soil
of free- soaring imagination, unfettered by orthodox conformism.
REFERENCES
Bousset, William. The
Antichrist Legend. London: n. p., 1 8960
Culleton, R. Gerald (ed.).
The Reign of Antichrist. Rockford, Ill.: TAN Books and
Publishers, 1974.
Huchede, P. History of
Antichrist. Rockford, Ill.: TAN Books and Publishers, 1971.
Pink, Arthur W. The
Antichrist. Minneapolis: Klock & Klock Christian Publishers, 1979.
Puhalo, Lev, Apostasy
and Antichrist. Trans. Vasili Novakshonoff. Jordanville, N. Y.: Holy
Trinity Monastery, 1978.
By
Robert M. Price