"A" is for Armageddon: An Abecedarian of the Christian Eschaton
By
The Colonel

A is for Armageddon:
The final battle of Apocalypse between the Hosts of Heaven and the Legions of Hell.

B is for Babylon:
Enslaver of the Jews, the Mother of All Harlots. Exodus from Babylon was an important fulfillment of Biblical prophecy concerning the End of Days.

C is for Christopher Columbus:
He hoped to find an easy route to the Holy Land to transport soldiers to help hasten the eschaton.

D is for the Book of Daniel:
The first Apocalypse of the Jews and of the Old Testament.

E is for the Essenes:
Sectarian Messianic Jews, authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Were among the first to embrace a Premillenialist Apocalypse in which their enemies would be scoured from the earth. Based their beliefs largely on the Book of Daniel.

F is for the Flagellants:
Arose in 1260. Hoped that by scourging themselves they could avoid even worse punishment to be inflicted by Christ in the coming Apocalypse.

G is for the "Great Parenthesis":
John Nelson Darby's idea that God's eschatological clock has paused indefinitely after the Pentecost. We're still waiting for the last tick.

H is for Hildegard Von Bingen:
Wrote the "Scivias," a popular illuminated vision of the Apocalypse in which Satan is described as a large worm or serpent.

I is for Islam:
The original enemy of the Church. Along with the Jews, the primary villains of the Crusades.

J is for Joachim of Fiore:
Apocalyptic interpreter of Revelation. Considered the Jews the Antichrist and incorrectly predicted the victory of King Richard the Lion Heart during the third Crusade.

K is for David Koresh:
Leader of the Branch Davidians at Waco, direct descendants of the Millerites and Seventh Day Adventists. Their apocolyptism and its misinterpretation by the US government led to their eventual massacre at the hands of the ATF.

L is for Adso's "Letter on the Antichrist":
This epistle, written to the Queen of France in the 10th century, created a vision of the Antichrist that found wide popular appeal. Its influence has persisted to this day.

M is for Thomas Muentzer:
Lead a Peasant's Rebellion in Germany during the 1520s. The rebellion was crushed in the Battle at Thuringia, supposed by Muentzer and his followers to be Armageddon, where 5,000 of his army were slaughtered, despite promises that Muentzer would "..catch their cannonballs in his shirtsleeves."

N is for New Jerusalem:
The Kingdom of Heaven that Montanus of Phrygia believed would literally descend from the sky and reside upon a mountain in Phrygia, signaling the beginning of the Apocalypse.

O is for Orson Welles:
Narrated the film version of "The Late Great Planet Earth," Hal Lindsey's popular premillenialist text from the mid 1970s. The popularity of the book lead to widespread trend in apocalyptic interpretation of modern history.

P is for Postmillenialism and Premillenialism:
Postmillenialism is the belief that God's Kingdom on Earth can be brought about by the works of man during the "great parenthesis" of Darby's Dispensationalism.
Premillenialism is the belief that Apocalypse is immanent and inevitable, caught up in the tide of Biblical prophecy.

Q is for the Quickening:
Another word for the Christian Eschaton. Emphasizes the idea that events leading up to the End Times will increase in fervor and intensity until the eventual Apocalypse. "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."

R is for Ronald Reagan:
Referred to the Soviet Union as "The Evil Empire" during an address to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983. He also employed James Watt, a Pentecostal, as his Secretary of the Interior. Watt stated publicly in 1981 that conservation of natural resources shouldn't be a prime concern because, "I don't know how many future generations we can count on until the Lord returns."

S is for the Six Day War:
The battle in which the Israelis captured Jerusalem in 1967. Believed to be an important sign of the coming of the eschaton.

T is for the Taborite Rebellion:
The Taborites were a Christian sect located around Mt. Tabor in Bohemia during the mid fifteenth century. They believed that the Catholic Church was the Whore of Babylon and that the Pope was the Antichrist.

U is for Urban II:
Pope who launched the first Crusades. The Crusades were an attempt to fulfill Biblical prophecy and bring about the eschaton. Soldiers in the First Crusade, during the latter part of the eleventh century, were known as "Tafurs." Their zealotry, filth and brutality terrified both the Muslims and Jews whom they savaged with makeshift weapons as they made their bloody way to Jerusalem.

V is for the Vision of Saint John of Patmos:
The Book of Revelation. The only Apocalypse of the New Testament and the last book of the Christian Bible. Its inclusion in the canon was based on the agreement that its author was none other than the Saint John of the Gospels, though this is widely disbelieved today.

W is for the War Scroll:
An account of Armageddon from The Dead Sea Scrolls. Draws heavily from the Book of Daniel and describes in vivid detail the destruction and punishment of the enemies of the Essenes.

X is for Xerxes:
Persian king who sacked Babylon and inspired the Book of Isaiah, an important pre-apocalyptic prophecy that introduced the concept of the resurrection of the dead.

Y is for Y2K:
The latest failed eschatological milestone.

Z is for the Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society:
Apocalyptic origin of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Despite several failed predictions of Armageddon, the sect remains popular even today.

Vast majority of information gleaned from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/apocalypse/etc/cron.html.

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