Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 8. Eger Journal of American Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 28)
Studies - Donald E. Morse: The End of the World in American History and Fantasy: The Trumpet of the Last Judgement
For Dante in his vision, Apocalypse becomes impossible —let alone predictable —since although the dead are judged in an Other World, both time and judgment are continuous. In Michelangelo's fresco, on the other hand, all the dead from all of time are summoned to appear before the throne of God on one future Day of Judgment. Burkitt points out the radically different orientation between these two beliefs. If the Other World is a place, then individuals enter one by one when they die; the conception of the Last Judgment, on the other hand, makes the Other World a time, an era, which all individuals experience simultaneously, a "Divine Event to which all Nature moves." It is this Divine Event that is set forth by the Apocalypses. The doctrine of the Apocalypses is the doctrine of the last Judgment. (2)'~ Reinhold Neibuhr, in his remarkable study, The Nature and Destiny of Man, discusses the differences between those cultures and societies that expect a Messiah and those that do not (see especially volume I). A similar distinction might be drawn between those apocalyptic societies and cultures that expect a last Judgment —often within the believer's lifetime —and those non-apocalyptic societies that do not. Irish culture, for example, does not expect a Last Judgment being firmly rooted in a view of the Other World as a place similar to Dante's that one enters serially upon death. United States culture by and large accepting as consensus reality the apocalyptic belief in the Other World as occurring only at the End of Time, on the other hand, does expect a Last Day of Judgment. 1 3 Believers in Apocalypse, whenever it is predicted to occur, exhibit total devotion to this idea. "The emotional effect of apocalyptic writing, as exhibited in the great series which extends from the Book of Daniel to the Apocalypse of Baruch, is that everything is subordinated to the announcement of the End. Everything leads up to Once an End to Time is granted, once a Last Day is accepted, Apocalypse becomes possible. And once Apocalypse becomes possible, then it is but a short step to predicting when it will occur, and from there another short step to the rise of millenarianism. 1 3 "A nation whose quasi-official high priest is the reverend Billy Graham, author of Approaching Hoofbeats: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, is rather clearly more likely than most other countries to have strong intimations of the Millennium" (Bloom). 224
