One recalls C.S. Lewis’ dystopian novel That Hideous Strength, a longtime favorite of mine, where he speaks of “false writings” and “men maddened with false promises and soured with true miseries.” Lewis held to an apocalyptic vision of moral and intellectual surrender to the idols of mere self-sufficiency and hedonistic indulgence, of a time characterized by the death of meaning and the weakening of belief in a just and merciful God. “The shadow of one dark wing is over all Tellus,” the human spirit is being progressively “enclosed,” as he describes it. There is not much of the Rapture here, little indication of the new Jerusalem prophesied in Revelation.
