THE
END OF THE WORLD
The central doctrine of Christianity is the teaching that Jesus
rose from the dead, thereby proving his divinity and his role as the
Christ (cristos. the annointed
one, a title which as Messiah indicated
that he was to be seen as the promised leader who would free Israel
from oppression). When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE,
Jews who lived elsewhere (and at the time of Jesus there were Jewish
communities throughout the Roman world) came to live for the day when
the Messiah would arrive and rebuild the Temple. For those Jews
who had come to accept Jesus as the promised Messiah--the first
Christians, then--the period that they had lived through came to be
seen as the time of an anti-Christ, and tn the Book of Revelation attrributed to
the apostle John there is the fascinating pun that equates the
numerical equivalents of the Hebrew letters for the name of the Emperor
Nero (six hundred sixty-six) with the Greek letters that, also treated
as numbers, expressed "the great beast." (Today, with our Arabic
numerals we have "666" but do keep in mind that in that period this
nicely symmetrical arrarangement of digits was not yet possible.)
A "second coming" of Christ was seen as imminent, and connected with
this is is the idea that the dead would be brought back to
life--resurrected, even as Jesus had been--and brought to judgment.
At the time of Jesus the idea of personal immortality was not yet
universally accepted, but for those who did accept it the idea
definitely was that "eternal life" was not just survival of a soul but
a restoration of both soul and body and the promise of a renewed
physical existence that corresponded to the life of the legendary Adam
and Eve in Eden. Christians accepted it as part of their official
doctrine in the Nicene Creed, and the Jewish teacher Maimonides in the
Middle Ages made it one of the thirteen key precepts of Judaism.
Islam also accepted it and, interestingly enough, sees Jesus as
returning to earth in order to lead a mass conversion to the teachiings
of the Qur'an.
All three traditions have long since embellished the central idea of a
period of conflict followed by an unending era of heaven on earth, and
in each there have been fringe movements that have concentrated on the
idea that the end of the world (as we know it) is during the lifetime
of its members. Inevitably any of these movements (examples would
be the Lubavticher groups in Judaism, Seventh Day Adventists and
Jehovah's Witnesses in Christianity, the Ahmadiyya cult in Islam) call
for their members in effect to segregate themselves from the corrupting
influence of a world already seen as under the control of the powers of
darkness.
The general discussion of how the world we know is supposed to end is
known as eschatology,
and most of the literature deals with Christian outlooks, especially as
this has come to be popularized in books such as the Left
Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. There
are several points that I would like to note in particular.
--Normally
mainline denominations--Jewish, Christian, or Muslim--do not insist on
the end of the world being predictable, much less imminent.
Instead there is simply a general belief in a resurrection of the body
connected with a time of judgment and a future world that will be
heaven for some and hell for others.
--Groups, especially Christian
ones, that do emphasize the end of the world also insist more strongly
on the role of individual prophecies as well as on interpretations that
attempt to fit current events into scriptural prophecies.
--Groups such as these may
well influence political events. In the United States there
is considerable discussion about the role of such beliefs in
determining foreign policy since 2000.
--While more readily apparent
in the Abrahamic traditions, there are still parallels in Asian
religious history, as in the Yellow
Turban movement in ancient China. Dissatisfaction with a
present era and the belief in a utopian future, usually to be achieved
through violence under the leadership of a charistmatic leader, is an
indicator that we need to understand that religious beliefs can
sometimes have a negative impact on society. The Gospel saying "I
have not come to bring peace but a sword" should be a reminder of this.