Biblical End Times: What We Fail To Understand

Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done. Mark 13:30 (KJV)

It comes in a variety of pronouncements: The Reveling, The Revelations, Apocalypse, The Battle of Armageddon, Final damnation, etc. Nearly all religions of the World have their very own take on a prophetic vision of the end days. Here, we will take a dive into Christianity, the religion of my childhood and research.

This particular topic is rather pungent and has been around for centuries. The bitter-end is when the pronouncement that the Book of Revelations and The Book of Daniel are word-for-word true and the predictions will definitely come true; as foretold in the Christian Holy Book. These are being echoed by people of the Christian faith at the top hierarchy right to the bottom. It is a known fact that late Christians for many centuries now, have been taking the Bible literally and have utterly failed to understand the meaning and even the historicity of it.

One of my repugnance with Christianity is the utterance that the World will come to an abrupt end soon. Thereon, the Judeo-Christian God will ascend from the Heavens (the sky) and judge the people of the earth, punishes the wicked by casting them down to the fiery pit of Hell. A story of torturous masochism, to put it in a soft tone of voice. These writings would be rich with symbolism, strange, and hard to understand. Especially for our day and age. These were widely written by a visionary, seer or prophet.

"Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the Lord." Jeremiah 23:16 (KJV)

A mental decay would take the form of YouTube preachers or Televangelists, who put up a front as to being the wisecrack when it comes to the topic of Christianity, Faith and the End-times, yet enormously wrong on understanding these apocalyptic writings, textual variants of the Bible for the generation of the time. Christians often misread the ancient text, wrongly translating and providing a misconstrued explanation that is far from what it was initially intended. Charlatans and opportunistic people saw a loophole in Christianity and used to their full advantage; use to garner financial support with sewing seeds for God in the form of money, expensive material things, fame and popularity. I crudely call it "The Elites of Christian Hollywood."

"Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." Matthew 21:43 (KJV)

The early Christians had known the accurate way of reading end-times writings, as it relates to their time and geolocation. It would probably be far from how we would read the Bible in the 21st century. They would have understood it as to be an event or state that will occur within their lifetime; ancient apocalypses were not talking about what is going to occur in the next 1000/2000 years hence. They did not envisage. The ancient people would have read a ton of apocalyptic writings and would have understood it to bring hope and that "The Kingdom of God" will bring much-needed justice to the people, overthrowing the inequitable, discriminatory, dictatorial ruling of the Romans, so on and so forth. Cognitive dissonance.

There're developed within Isreal, about 150 years before Jesus this worldview that scholars have called Apocalypticism. These Jewish Apocalypticist thought they were living at the end of time. Things were just as bad as they could possibly be. There are wars, rumours of war, there are earthquakes and famines, there are drought, there's pestilence things are terrible now. But, God is soon gonna intervene. He's right around the corner. This appears to be what many jews through in the days of Jesus. It's what the people who produce the Dead Sea Scrolls believed is what Jesus appears to believe. And when is this going to happen? Jesus says to his disciples [Mark 9:1] 'some of you standing here won't taste death before they see the kingdom of God having come in power.' — Bart D. Ehrman, New Testament Scholar

Yet, the Brobdingnagian questions are still at large. Who will survive this wrath and who will not. Would the chosen one be of those who gasp Judaism, Christianity or Mormonism? Who carries the correct teachings, the evangelical Christians or the Roman Catholics? Will all unbelievers be cast down to the pits of Hell? The answers are given so far by big names in "The Elites of Christian Hollywood" industry often spew out vague nebulous. They seem to be altering, thrusting illusory misleading pronouncements with a handful of metaphorical explanations. Evasive might be the word.

Prophecy Fails. The apocalyptic text addresses the issues of their own age. It is not to be taken literally, but rather symbolically. Christians have been inaccurate, as they prefer reading and inserting what they want to hear.

Until the next ostensible apocalypse, keep thinking and researching.

Originally published on my old self-hosted blog at sprybear.com & Medium.com

Photo by Osman Rana / Unsplash