Apocalyptic expectations

Integral to the Salvation history was the notion of the world as finite. The world would end in some not so remote future date with consequences to the believers. Christians’ expectation of the end directed their understanding of the future. As long as the belief in the Apocalypse remained firm, there could be no other kind of future. Christians were unable to expect anything new from the future. There could be no change. The 16th and 17th centuries even saw an upsurge in apocalyptic thinking, so strong was the belief in the end of the world.

Millennialism, the expectation of Christ’s immediate return and the Millennium that would follow, was especially popular among the small Reformed sects in continental Europe. The tenet had been considered heretical since the St Augustine’s time, so the sects were persecuted, but little by little Millennialism spread among the Calvinists too. Signs were studied that would reveal the exact date of Christ’s return. Especially the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) with pestilence, hunger, and death that followed it – the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – made people believe that the end had come.

Millennialism landed in England a little later than in continental Europe. There it was adopted especially by the Puritans. When Charles I began to persecute them, they identified the Antichrist, one of the signs, with him. The King’s execution in 1649 signalled the start of the end of the world for them. Already before its abolition, there were dozens of independent and separatist sects outside the Church, too,  that waited for the immediate return of Christ. During the Civil War and Interregnum period, some of these became mass movements that actively tried to bring about the end of the world.

Most of these movements died after the Restoration, actively persecuted by the Church, and eventually people ceased from expecting the immediate return of Christ. But the belief that the world would end as told in the Book of Revelation was slow to die. Newton knew that the world would end; he simply postponed it to the 20th century.

It was only after people stopped expecting the end of the world that they could start expecting something new. Until then, there could be no change, and the concept of time would remain static.

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528):
The Horsemen of the Apocalypse