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ESCHATOLOGY AND APOCALYPSE IN THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENT OF THE NEW WORLD Spain and Portugal had laid the foundation for the incorporation of America as a sacred place within the confines of providential, ecclesiastical history. Theirs, however, was the Catholic apocalyptic interpretation of history which saw Luther “as the real Antichrist,” and the Protestant Reformation as the eschatological “great time of troubles” before the end of the world. Accordingly, in view of the apocalyptic and eschatological events taking place in Europe with the great schism which the Protestant Reformation brought in the Christian Old World, the New World increasingly acquired a prominent role in the providential history of salvation. For some Catholics “the Church's losses in the old were being compensated by her gains on the other side of the Atlantic,” and with the great harvest of the Indian souls' conversion to the Catholic faith it seemed that “the New World was restoring the religious balance of power which the Old World had been unable to maintain.” The great prophetic migratory transfer of the Gospel to America was seen, therefore, not only in the eschatological context of the Indians' conversion to Christianity and the spread of the Gospel to all the corners of the world, but also in the context of the apocalyptic struggle in the Old World between Christ and Antichrist, or the Church of Rome's struggle against the great tribulations Satan brought to the church with the Protestant Reformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE ENGLISH APOCALYPTIC TRADITION AND THE SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA The ultimate achievement of the apocalyptic tradition in England was undoubtedly the deep-seated conviction among Protestants and Puritans alike that prophetic revelations constitute the very essence of history. History, therefore, was placed within the sacred dimension of time and prophetic revelations situated within the dimension of history. Consequently, the accepted Augustinian view that an essential gulf divided sacred and profane history, or prophecy and history, was totally abolished in the English apocalyptic tradition. Prophecy became history, and history became prophecy. In other words, historical events were interpreted as the realization of prophetic revelation while divine prophecy was seen as the source for explaining the progress of history. This process was nothing less than the sacralization of historical time, or the creation of sacred time – the view that history not only revealed but also fulfilled the realization of divine prophecies. The root of this process of sacralization of historical time lies, as we have tried to explain in the previous chapter, in the belief that the ultimate issue regarding apocalyptic interpretation or understanding prophecies, is related to the question of time. Now imbued with sacred meaning, history and time constitute the medium by which prophetic revelations reach their realization. With the rise of the apocalyptic image of history within English Protestant historiography, then, history itself became a revelatory event as a history of salvation. Through God's divine providence, therefore, history and revelation were inextricably interwoven with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]