This chapter analyzes the evolution of the Brazilian evangelical imagination through a comparison of two popular songs from different eras. The first, “The King is Coming Back” (a 1980s hymn), represents an eschatology of rupture and individual escape, where believers await a transcendent event that will interrupt worldly life. The second, “Let the Lion Roar” (a 2020 worship song), embodies a new eschatology of immanent transformation and cosmic warfare. Here, Christ’s return is not an escape from the world but a divine intervention to rule over and redeem the nations, a process in which believers actively participate. This shift from individual salvation to national redemption is contextualized by the rise of spiritual warfare theology, popularized by texts like Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness. The chapter concludes that this new musical and theological movement provides the “radiant image of redemption” for those living in a state of social disintegration and perpetual war.

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Singing the Apocalypse in Two Movements

  • André Castro

摘要

This chapter analyzes the evolution of the Brazilian evangelical imagination through a comparison of two popular songs from different eras. The first, “The King is Coming Back” (a 1980s hymn), represents an eschatology of rupture and individual escape, where believers await a transcendent event that will interrupt worldly life. The second, “Let the Lion Roar” (a 2020 worship song), embodies a new eschatology of immanent transformation and cosmic warfare. Here, Christ’s return is not an escape from the world but a divine intervention to rule over and redeem the nations, a process in which believers actively participate. This shift from individual salvation to national redemption is contextualized by the rise of spiritual warfare theology, popularized by texts like Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness. The chapter concludes that this new musical and theological movement provides the “radiant image of redemption” for those living in a state of social disintegration and perpetual war.