History isn't what you think it is - part 1

Don't feel bad, it isn't what Hank Hanegraaff thinks it is either.

For years the Bible answer man gave answers about every part of the Bible except one. When callers on his radio show asked about end times prophecies he would simply say that he was still researching it. Then, one day he said that his research was complete and that he had concluded that end times prophecies should be viewed through a system called preterism (the belief that most or all of the so-called 'end times' prophecies actually refer to the end of the early church and were fulfilled in the 1st century AD). Now Mr. Hanagraaff doesn't explain whether he's a partial or full-blown preterist. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, he still hasn't explained much of anything about his views, instead opting for a kind of French indie film thing of claiming poignancy while really just being vague. In his recent book, The Apocalypse Code, he is clear on one thing though; he doesn't think very highly of Tim Lehaye.

For those of you living under rocks (or just reading better books), Tim Lehaye is the driving force behind the Left Behind series. You know the one -- really popular, really bad movie adaptations. In his book, Hanagraaff spends a few hundred pages comparing Lehaye to a Nazi sympathizer, a Social Darwinist and... I don't know, my eyes started glazing over at one point, but he might have compared him to Rosie O'Donnell a time or two. Not only was it really bad form, but not even all of it was particularly accurate.

One of the things Mr. Hanagraaff railed against was Lehaye's idea of the Antichrist being physically killed, then coming back to life. Lehaye interpreted this from Revelation 13:3, where we are told that one of the heads of the Beast has a fatal wound that has been healed (much to the people's astonishment). Impossible, says Hanagraaff. Resurrecting yourself from the dead is an attribute of Christ, and Christ alone. It was the ultimate proof of His divinity. It can't happen with anyone else. It's a good point, but he's wrong about the Revelation passage. They both are.

It already has happened, and it bore no similarity to Christ's resurrection.

To understand how it happened, you need to know a little something about the mindset of people during medieval times. Life was hard in those days. Starvation and disease were rampant, and the Christians of that age knew very little about the Bible (I'll explain why in later posts). In this setting it had become quite fashionable to pitch superhuman, Christlike powers onto popular kings of that era.... and even some not so popular ones. Every region of Europe had its own 'sleeping emperor' legend. You know at least one of these -- King Arthur -- Camelot; once upon a very misguided group of people there really was a king of the Britains (too long ago to call them English) and there really was a legend that this king would return to usher in a utopian age. To us, now, those legends seem harmless. But one of the problems with legends like this, and the powerful delusion they created, was that if a person came along and told everyone, "Hey, I'm the guy," the people would, from time to time, actually believe him.

It had already happened before Frederick the Second. In 1225 AD an eccentric hermit claimed to be the reincarnation of Count Baldwin of Flanders, was promptly given the recently deceased Count's sovereign powers, and was actually spewing out royal edicts until that whole "recently deceased" thing became a problem and some of the people who knew the Count exposed the impostor as a peasant/con man.

But Frederick the Second took the cake. The real Frederick the Second (let's call him Frederick 1.0) was one of the most tyrannical rulers of the middle ages. He's was Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire at a time when 'Roman' was supposed to mean Roman Catholic, but mostly just meant modern day France and Germany, and he was excommunicated at a time when getting excommunicated while being an Emperor was akin to getting kicked out of Guns and Roses; in other words, it could happen, but... wow.... If you disagreed with Frederick 1.0, you died... badly. Murderer, blasphemer, as cruel as he was brilliant, Frederick 1.0 was certainly a beast in Biblical sense of the word. And in 1250 AD he died.

Then, 34 years later, he came back.

He first appeared in the town of Cologne, where he was viewed as a lunatic and driven out. But the return of Frederick 1.0 legend was a strong one and this impostor wasn't any simple con man. He seems to have genuinely believed that he was Frederick the second returned from the grave. Eventually others believed as well. Before long other countries were sending delegates to find out of this man was the long awaited harbinger of the millennial reign (more on this later as well) or if he were the Antichrist; there were legends for both. And before it was over an absurdly large portion of the empire accepted him as their Emperor. It took an army and a siege to depose him. Even under torture he refused to recant, saying that if they killed him he would return in a few days. Finally, they burned him at the stake, and no, he didn't return. Although another legend popped up that one day he would. I'll explain the beast and it's heads when we get to the Daniel prophecies. For now, I want to finish with the Hanagraaff/Lehaye tiff, and how it relates to the common misinterpretations of end times prophecies.

Why doesn't Mr. Hanagraaff seem to know that there is a perfectly logical explanation, and event, for Revelation 13:3 that satisfies the requirement that the "head" in question not actually conquer death (and I certainly see that as being a valid requirement). My guess is that he has never heard of it. I don't fault him for this.

You see, this is one of those historical events that you almost have to go looking for in order to find. I myself had been a medieval history buff for years and never came across it. It wasn't until I tried to write a fiction story set in the era, and had to do some serious research on medieval messianic expectations that I came across it. Now, years later, having come across a number of similarly interesting yet underreported historical events that I think I understand a bit about what is going on.

First, there is a bona fide anti-supernatural bias among mainstream historical scholars. This is convenient, since it allows them to discard the Biblical claims out of hand, but I don't think it is intentional so much as just a natural product of their worldview -- a worldview that looks at anything smacking of the "miraculous" as some sort of mistake, and then expunges it from the record.

Secondly, I think it owes something to the natural tendency of most mentally healthy persons to shy away from conspiracy theories. Most conspiracy theories are bunk, of course. They assume too much intelligence on the part of the shadow agents and far much more ability to keep secrets than what we see in real life. Yet, the more I look at history, the more it looks like one grand conspiracy to me.

I think I already mentioned the little dittie about the Babylonian captivity: that a nation of people supposed to separate from other nations failed to do so, and was ultimately carried off to a nation whose name literally means 'land of confusion'. How does several centuries of a country's history boil so easily down to a single Biblical moral (that being that denial of truth leads to slavery in the 'land of confusion')? It's almost as if some great 'conspirator' were guiding the action.

And I don't think it is Biblical history alone that does this. As we look at the prophecies of Daniel I will attempt to demonstrate how all of human history has this feeling of overriding control. I don't think we see it in modern history books simply because modern historians leave out the ironic events which reveal it. The result of this is like a Polaroid where one color has been left out. There is a faded, washed out feel, that gives modern historians the freedom to try and foist materialist causes onto anything and everything, but which fails to show the true reality.

And so Biblical scholars like Mr. Hanagraaff fall into the preterism trap when the real answer is right under their noses.... If only they knew where to look. And why don't they?

In the next, and mercifully shorter post, I look a little more into the reasons why preterism and a fully futuristic interpretation of end times prophecies miss the mark, also -- and suprisingly related -- I give my answer to that question asked by grand juries of every police involved shooting for the last six decades, "why didn't you try to shoot the gun out of his hand"?