Premillennialists and Their Charts

Randall Stephens

It's hard to narrate the history of millennialism to a general audience without losing the plot in a thicket of obscure Bible verses, dispensational disorientation, and premill fatigue. Sure, there's a rage to explain. But how many paragraphs should a historian of American millennialism devote to "Armageddon," "tribulation," "Gog," "Magog," "Mark of the Beast"? (Paul Boyer navigated this well in his classic When Time Shall Be No More. That's a wonderful guide.)

What better illustration of the Babel of premill confusion than the charts, diagrams, and cartoons premill experts used. The gleeful focus on minutiae, sidetracks, and the like dominates so much premill writing from the 19th and 20th centuries. It must not have been too difficult for a superfan of Star Trek to have turned his/her attention to the second advent in the 1970s or 80s.

So, I paste here some of my favorite confusing charts and illustrations. Try explaining any one of these to a room full of the uninitiated. It would be easier to wax eloquent about the distinguishing characteristics of the Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi, Vulcans, and Cardassians.

From William E. Blackstone's wildly popular Jesus Is Coming (1878). Degree of difficulty: 6 out of 10.


Click to enlarge this iconic Millerite poster from 1843, which deciphers prophetic math from Daniel and Revelation. Would like to see a black light version of it. Degree of difficulty: 9 out of 10.


From Isaac Cummings Wellcome, History of the Second Advent Message and Mission, Doctrine and People (1874). Degree of difficulty: 7 out of 10.



And finally, this one from a copy I picked up back in seminary days, Clarence Larkin, The Dispensational Truth: God's Plan and Purpose in the Ages (1920). This handsome text has some real mind-blowing charts in it. Degree of difficulty: 8 out of 10.


Comments

John Fea said…
Brendan Pietsch, a graduate students working with Grant Wacker at Duke, is working on a very interesting dissertation on dispensationalism that focuses on these charts. If I remember correctly, the title of his dissertation is something like "Dispensational Modernism."
Jeff Crocombe said…
There's an interesting article on Millerite "art" at: http://www.cornerstonemag.com/cart/millerite-art/. It links to a number of illustrations including http://www.cornerstonemag.com/cart/img/millerite/fig_3.jpg which is 38 feet long! These and many others are part of the Jenks Collection at Aurora university. There's a video of an Seventh-day Adventist Historian at Andrews University explaining the 1843 Millerite chart mentioned in the post at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-xbz8-E-3U
Kelly J. Baker said…
Randall, if you want to see current day millennial charting, LaHaye's _Revelation Unveiled_ charts the end, bowls, seals and occasionally Satan.

I made copies of his charts, which aren't quite as elaborate as the Millerites, for the students in my Apocalypse in American culture course. I am not sure if they made LaHaye easier to understand or not, but the clip art for Satan is not to be missed.

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