Book Review
Wake-Up Call
The Apocalypse: Warning, Hope & Consolation
by Michael D. O'Brien
reviewed by Jeffrey Wald
Michael D. O'Brien's latest nonfiction book, The Apocalypse: Warning, Hope & Consolation, is both prescient and pressing. The Catholic author O'Brien is perhaps best known for his many novels exploring Christian themes, including Theophilos, Strangers and Sojourners, and the apocalyptic Father Elijah series. In The Apocalypse, he takes a break from fiction to respond to the question, "Are we living in apocalyptic times?" His short answer is yes, but we "have been living in this hour from the moment Our Lord ascended into heaven." And although the Christian faithful may get impatient, and the time of Christ's Ascension may seem to be in the distant past, "one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as a day" in the eyes of the Lord (2 Peter 3:8).
While O'Brien cautions against fear-mongering and attempting to predict the dates of apocalyptic events—since only the Father knows the exact day and hour (Matt. 24:36)—he does remind us of the admonitions of Christ, the New Testament writers, and the early Church fathers that we remain sober and awake, and he also indicates how certain features of the modern world are uniquely apocalyptic. For example, he asks:
How many people in our times now believe that the triumph of good over evil in the world will be achieved through social revolution or social evolution? How many have succumbed to the belief that man will save himself when sufficient knowledge and energy are applied to the human condition? I would suggest that this intrinsic perversity now dominates the entire Western world.
The Antichrist's Deception
O'Brien aptly identifies one of the most fundamental errors of the modern world, an error at the very heart of modernity: the belief that man no longer needs God because men are progressively becoming gods. In this schema, history is viewed as a forward march toward prosperity, justice, peace, universal kindness, worldwide pluralism, technical perfection, untroubled consciences, unlimited knowledge, and enlightenment. O'Brien considers this postmillennial vision to be completely at odds with Christianity's teaching about the apocalypse. Christ foretells not a heaven on earth, but a new heaven and a new earth after the former ones have violently passed away. People will not grow more virtuous, loving, faithful, and truth-filled, but rather more deceitful, ignorant, sinful, and corrupt. And, as fantastic and mythical as it may sound, a great beast, the Antichrist, will arise and swallow most of the earth.
If this all sounds a bit too much like a Teutonic saga, perhaps we have stopped reading, or heeding, Scripture. Perhaps, as O'Brien writes, "we live as if we are under no threat, convinced on some level that no beast is going to stare us in the face and devour us." But that is not what the prophets and the New Testament writers foretold. They prophesied persecution, a fight not against mere flesh and bones but against spiritual powers of darkness, and a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. As the Apostle Paul writes, "[Christ] will not come unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God" (2 Thess. 2:3–4).
O'Brien rightly notes that while we do not know when the Antichrist will come, "the Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment." At the root of the Antichrist's deception will be a false messianism, a replacing of the saving power of the Cross with a futile belief in the saving power of man.
Somber but Hopeful
The temptation of the Church and her faithful is to play by the world's established rules of progress, enlightenment, and moral agnosticism. Those who call themselves Christian will increasingly have "itching ears" and "will not endure sound teaching" but will rather "accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings" (2 Tim. 4:3–4). As enlightened modern men, they will hold a "form of religion but deny the power of it" (2 Tim. 3:5), instead placing their trust in the power of technology, science, reason, and progressive politics. But as O'Brien reminds us, the Kingdom will not be fulfilled "by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God's victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven."
He concludes his book with reflections concerning how a faithful Christian should live in these times. Certainly, his diagnosis is somber, but shall we thus despair? Of course not, for we know the outcome. We know that Christ has already won victory on the cross, and when he comes again, he will once and for all slay the dragon that holds humanity in bondage. Ultimately, O'Brien's message is one of hope: although things look bleak now, Christ and those who serve him are on the right side of history. In the meantime, O'Brien admonishes us to "be zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish" (2 Peter 3:14), to "proclaim the word, [and] be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient" (2 Tim. 4:2), and not to "sleep, as others do, but keep awake and be sober" (1 Thess. 5:6).
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