Biblical Doomsday: The End of Days

While many Biblical concepts resonate with the general public, one of the most interesting and personal concepts is the ‘End of Days’ prophecy and the Book of Revelation. Old Testament prophets predicted (speaking on behalf of God) gloom and doom. Jesus has been cited as a deity obsessed with the Apocalypse, forever preaching about the ‘End Times’. Over the following 2100 years, religious fundamentalists have followed suit, dragging the faithful along by their short and curly bits. It’s even spawned a minor publishing industry. Alas, it’s all bovine fertilizer.    

For religious reasons relating to the concept of ‘eternal life’, many look forward to the world going down the gurgler, because that means that they, while going down the gurgler too, get deposited at the other end of the tube into an eternal paradise. Or so they believe. 

It’s a pity that so many peoples’ lives are so miserable that they literally look forward to someone else (i.e. – God and/or Jesus Christ) ending their mundane existence of everyday mortality and transporting them into another one of peaceful eternity, although who really knows, maybe it’s a case of going from the frying pan into the fire, just in case they go south instead of north!  Regardless, the great unwashed get support in their beliefs from religious fundamentalists or evangelists and those obsessed with the ‘End Times’.

It would seem that every time there is a natural disaster (even oil spills qualify), anywhere in the world, but especially in America, right-wing Christian fundamentalists and televangelists jump for joy, do high fives and are more than happy to point out, even gleefully telling “I told you so”, and the more the destruction, the better the mayhem, the greater the death toll, the higher they jump, the happier they are and the more they rub their hands gleefully together. Why? It’s to them yet another Sign that the ‘End of Days’ are near. That’s quite apart from those wars and rumours of wars, etc.

Of course if our fundamentalists and television Bible thumpers had lived 500 years ago, or 1000 years ago, or 1500 years ago, they would have been strutting out the same old line, the same old hype, the same old gloom and doom (gloom and doom for the rest of us sinners that is).

How long can these televangelists go on playing the same old ‘End of Days’ song before credibility runs out? - Seemingly indefinitely if you’re already preaching to the converted and/or the gullible.  No doubt 500 years from now their descendents will be screaming out the same old tired ‘End Times’ tune.

Is the 'End of Days' prophecy really believable? When it comes to the Bible, for all the prophecies therein, and all the prophets that pontificated, there's only one prophecy that ultimately matters - the 'End of Days', the apocalypse, Armageddon, etc. There are only two points that need to be made here. The first point is that 100% of Biblical scholars, Christian fundamentalists, televangelists, even the great unwashed reading and interpreting the Bible, who have predicted the end of the world, have got it wrong!

This is more than just a tad relevant. 100% of all ‘End of Days’ prophecies, and there have been thousands of them, scholarly or otherwise; have failed to come to pass; so much for the Bible being the literal word of God; so much for spot-on Biblical accuracy. I hope all here-and-now Christian fundamentalists and especially those televangelists take note of this (not that they will of course).

100% is not a trivial percentage! 100% of all end-of-the-world predictions have failed (that’s bloody obvious isn’t it? I mean we’re still here; we’re still standing)! If I’d received a fiver for each failed ‘End of Days’ doomsday prediction, I, my bank manager and the tax man would all be happy little campers.

Despite endless predictions, the 'End of Days' has not happened. So, what are you to believe when the next soothsayer (Christian fundamentalist, televangelist, etc.) comes along and says on such-and-such a date Armageddon will arrive? My response would be a swift kick in their private parts!

The second point, for those who take the Bible literally, is that Jesus told any and all who would listen that there would be those hearing his utterings about the ‘End Times’ that those very ‘End Times’ would happen within their lifetime. Alas, there is no one alive today who heard Jesus speak, so Christ's own prophecy has to be graded as an "F". Now either J.C. hasn’t a clue what he’s talking about, or the ‘End of Days’ he thought was imminent has now been cancelled (2100 years on is a bit of a stretch to call it a mere postponement). IMHO, if it hasn’t happened by now, it’s not going to.

In short, if you are eagerly awaiting the apocalypse, have a good supply of reading material and DVDs on hand, because it's going to be a Very Long Wait! If you’re eagerly waiting for the ‘End of Days’, have a nice wait. The odds are greater you’ll find a pot-of-gold at the end of the rainbow first; but at least you’ll have something to do – search for the pot; spend the gold – while you wait, and wait, and wait, and wait, then wait some more. 

It's just plain impossible for any rational person, given the historical track record, to accept that the 'End of Days' is not only near-and-dear but will happen at all.

By the way neither the phrase “End of Days”, “Second Coming” nor the phrase “End Times” actually appear in the (King James Version) of the Bible. Neither does the word “doomsday” nor “apocalypse” though “Armageddon” makes a singular appearance. But least you think it’s safe to go back into the waters, the phrase “end of the world” appears frequently. Here’s but one example.

Matthew 24:3: And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?

My response is to quote Gershwin and Heyward in “Porgy and Bess”: “It ain’t necessarily so, It ain’t necessarily so, De tings dat yo’ li’ble, To read in de Bible, It ain’t necessarily so.” Amen to that!

Doomsday: The End of the World in Art, Science, Mythology and Prophecy: Part One

The end of the world has been a popular theme in the arts (film, literature, etc.) as we’re no doubt aware. It’s also been a popular theme in science, in mythology, in religion, in prophecy, and so on. The fascination with the end of the world theme is that while unlikely (in your lifetime), it’s plausible as the dinosaurs found out 65 million years ago. So, in the short term, in your lifetime, is it likely, and if so, what’s the means of delivery?

I’d better start by defining exactly what I have in mind with the phrase ‘the end of the world’ as ‘the end’ can take several forms.

Firstly though to the time it takes for an the end of the world event: A real end of the world scenario will be a short term event, lasting from mere seconds (say a gamma ray burster) to several months (say a pandemic, all out nuclear war, a super-volcano). I’m not talking multi-decades to centuries here as per global warming and rising sea levels or the coming of the next Ice Age.

The End of the World = the Destruction of Planet Earth (“When Worlds Collide” scenarios). That is, Planet Earth and obviously all and sundry on same go down the gurgler.

The End of the World = the Destruction of All Life on Planet Earth – a sterile Earth. Planet Earth survives, to a greater or lesser extent, but nothing biological survives.

The End of the World = the Elimination of All Human Beings on Planet Earth (“On the Beach” related scenarios). Planet Earth and most life forms, excluding humans, survive. Now the survivors might amount to only bacteria, cockroaches and rats, but all that matters here is that 100% of all members of the human species are no more. Welcome to Planet Earth: Human Population Zero.

The End of the World = Drastic Alterations to the Status Quo of Human Beings on Planet Earth. There’s drastic chance of ending humanity, but ultimately not enough to wipe us all off the floor. 

I think for most of the populace, the ‘end of the world’ means the demise of the majority of the human population, excluding them of course. In other words, it’s akin to the “drastic alterations of the status quo of human beings on Planet Earth”. It’s ‘Armageddon’, ‘the apocalypse’, the ‘end of days’, the ‘second coming’, ‘the rapture’, or, stripped of any religious connotation, some sort of nuclear war, global pandemic, a combination of nasties caused by global warming, an asteroid strike that cataclysmic but not too cataclysmic, say it only wipes out 99.9% of humanity – that still leaves some six million odd bods and sods inhabiting the globe. Heck, with that number of survivors coupled with a ‘be fruitful and multiply’ scenario, Planet Earth will again be overpopulated with human beings pretty quick-smart. I mean we lost millions in WWII, but still the population expanded. 

The End of the World in the Arts: A whole book could be written (and probably has been) on the end of the world theme in the movies and in literature, especially the science-fiction of the last 150 years or so. If someone can envision doomsday by one means or another, it’s been turned into a film or a TV series or a novel or short story, sometimes with, sometimes without, a happy ending. The end of the world theme in the arts might not be as popular as romantic fiction or crime fiction or even westerns, but it forms a pretty solid subgenre block of the overall disaster film or novel nevertheless.

The End of the World in Mythology/Religion: In mythology (or religion) there is no permanent end of the world. There’s always a rebirth, be it the Christian Armageddon or the Norse Ragnarok or within the Hindu mythology in India or even the various cyclic Mesoamerican cosmologies.

Take the Christian version: Well there’s no disputing the Biblical (tall) tales that ‘document’ some sort of domestic disagreement between ‘God’ and some sort of entity we call today ‘Satan’. If you believe those Biblical tall tales, the end result of that domestic dispute, Armageddon, isn’t in fact in dispute. There’s a decided element here of “This ain’t over till it’s over; this ain’t finished yet; I’ll be back”! However, if you believe the Bible and the Book of Revelation, then you realise that Armageddon should have taken place over 1900 plus years ago, at least according to Jesus Christ. He said that the final battle between good (‘God’) and evil (‘Satan’) – I bet he was biased in deciding who was what – would take place within a generation or two of his utterances. So, if it took place way back then it took place off planet and out of human sight – a real life ‘Star Wars’. But if it hasn’t happened yet, assuming ‘God’ and ‘Satan’ are really real extraterrestrials instead of mythological entities, then it probably isn’t ever likely to. I mean you can only hold off a grudge match so long. Maybe they’ve kissed and made up, or…   

If God or His scribes wished to make crystal clear the ideas and events and chronology central to ‘the end of the world’, Revelations, Armageddon, the Rapture, the Second Coming, etc., He or they failed – miserably. Any dozen Biblical scholars will give a dozen different interpretations of the ‘end of days’, from the literal to the metamorphic. The Book of Revelations, apparently that is, was intended for those of that era; that it was intended for generations far removed from those times is apparently not the case according to Biblical scholars. If you’re not going to make your point clear, well, what’s the point? How many hundreds upon hundreds of times have Biblical scholars prophesied the end of the world, or the end of days, or Armageddon, or the Second Coming, or Final Judgment (take your pick of relevant phrases) based on the Biblical verse? Well, we’re still here! We are indeed still here, so, so much for the reliability of The Bible, or God’s word, and/or the competence of so called Biblical experts. So, the next time some Bible-thumping Fundamentalist tells you that the ‘end is nigh’, take said message with a proverbial grain of salt and don’t lose any sleep over it!

Now the Biblical tale of the global flood is in fact global! Cultures from around the world tell similar tales to the Biblical flood. The argument is that therefore the story must be true as these diverse cultures had no contact with each other. My answer to that is related to bovine fertilizer! End of the world tales, or myths, the concept of Armageddon, punishing the wicked with total catastrophe was as common and popular then as now. We all love a good ‘end of the world’ story that has a moral attached. Alas, the choices or mechanisms available for said end of the world stories to myth makers’ way back then were rather limited. They had no knowledge of supernovae or gamma-ray bursts or massive solar flares or nuclear war and resulting holocausts or killer asteroids smacking into Planet Earth, etc. All they had to work with was the day-to-day sorts of routine natural events part and parcel of their daily lives. In fact, many tale-spinners might not have been familiar with, say, volcanoes, and while most relatively violent weather phenomena, like tornadoes, may be destructive, they aren’t destructive enough to wipe out the wicked that populate a wide area.  However, everyone would have experienced rain, heavy rain, even torrential rain say from hurricanes, etc. that resulted in minor flooding, or say witnessed storm surges from the sea that inundated the land, and/or witnessed rivers, ponds and lakes overflowing. It doesn’t take that much imagination to notch up minor real events, in the guise of story telling, to mega disaster proportions. If it rains heavily for one day and there’s some local flooding, up the ante to 40 days. It’s difficult to imagine any story teller from 5000 years ago coming up with any other sort of end of the world scenario!

The one point to the end of the world, mega disaster stories is that there must be at least one survivor to tell the tale! I gather in this case that includes survivors such as Noah and kin.
I have read of one other explanation for universal flood stories. If I recall correctly, a student of Freud came up with the idea that the tellers/inventors of flood tales got the idea from dreams in their sleep. And they dreamed the dream all because they were asleep with relatively full bladders. Personally, I think that’s a piss-weak explanation!

Then there’s the Norse Ragnarok. The gods and the giants battle it out and the gods come out second best. But, there are survivors who start things up all over again. It’s reflected in the Richard Wagner conclusion to his epic four linked opera series “Der Ring Des Nibelungen”. The final opera, “Gotterdammerung” (“Twilight of the Gods”) ends with the destruction of the gods, but a rebirth and a new beginning. The very characters who started off the whole Ring Cycle are the very same and only survivors at the end. Will history repeat itself?

To be continued…

The End of Days: Cancelled Due To Unforseen Circumstances: Part One

The End of Days should have happened a long, long time ago, 80 generations ago in fact – if it were to happen at all. They didn’t end, though many hope, pray and predict they still will. I say they won’t. Why? Nearly all the players have exited stage left - and right. So, it’s not the end of days that’s coming, rather the twilight of the gods that have come, with just a mere handful around now. We call them the ‘Greys’.

Introduction: I start the story here to point out that 1) behind all mythology, including Biblical mythology lurks a tiny grain of historical truth and that 2) God isn’t a supernatural deity but just one of many extraterrestrials who have arrived on Earth eons before and have divided jurisdiction over various terrestrial geographical areas among themselves. God’s patch of turf to oversee and govern was of course what we now call the Middle East. The logic behind that is too long and complicated to go into again; I’ve done that previously. Let’s just say if you believe in God then you actually believe in extraterrestrial life, extraterrestrial intelligence and ‘ancient astronauts’. Since our mob of ‘gods’ are extraterrestrials, they must have arrived in spaceships, one of which, for lack of a better name I’ll call the Starship Heaven under the command of Captain God (or His more alien sounding name, Yahweh). 

The End of Days/Second Coming was supposed to have happened by the year 100 AD at the very latest, probably earlier according to no less an authority than Jesus Christ himself. It ain’t happened, so what went wrong? Well, what went wrong was probably due to that motley and rather nasty crowd of extraterrestrial cast and crew (God and His; the gods and their alien hangers-on) being arrested, tied and convicted for all those gross violations of their Prime Directive against us, as well as their planned atrocities we know as the apocalypse or Armageddon (or polytheistic equivalents).

Our gods, including God, now convicts, are now probably still cooling their alien heels in the slammer of whatever extra-solar planet they originally hailed from. Let’s look at and trace the background to this scenario.

1) Wars between the Gods: The mutiny that Captain God of the Starship Heaven faced was just one of many in mythology. In the Judeo-Christian lore, we have angels loyal to God vs. angels loyal to Satan. We all know the story how those not loyal to God got the heave-ho, though it was rather more a case of a ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ where Captain Bligh won and the mutineers were exiled.

Mythology is full of turf disputes – wars in heaven – the second best known example being the ten years war between the Titans and the Olympians. And we all know who won that contest, and if you need a hint, think of those Olympic Games and how they are not called the Titan Games.

In the mythology of the Norse lands, the Aesir and Vanir War was a war that occurred between one clan of gods, the Aesir (Odin, Thor, etc.) and another tribe, the Vanir. So these two groups of gods fought a war over turf, but in this case the war ultimately resulted in the unification of the two clans into a single tribe of gods. The deities Njord (daddy to), Freyr (the son), and Freya (the daughter) were members of the Vanir.

In ancient Mesopotamia, you’ll find references to a conflict between the older and primordial gods and the next generation of younger gods. For example you have Enlil (King of the gods) challenged by his daughter, hardly daddy’s little girl in this case, Inana (or Inanna), goddess of sex, fertility and war. To make long stories shorter, this older vs. younger generation conflict ultimately resulted in the epic battle between Marduk and Tiamat.

Even in tranquil Polynesia you had the god Tu (or Tumatauenga) who wanted to do in mum and dad – the earth mother and sky father gods Rangi (or Ranginui) and Papa (or Papatuanuku). Yet another domestic power struggle apparently.

2) Gods Behaving Badly: God’s not the only SOB. The gods not only committed mayhem on each other but took special delight in singling out us humans for a bit of the old blood sports. Of course, based on the authority of the Old Testament, this was especially true for God.

God’s record on human rights violations puts Him heads and shoulders above any and all human dictators, historical, recent or present that you care to name. God is a bloodthirsty, vengeful, egotistical tyrant. The authority for that statement is provided by the Bible itself which provides dozens of case studies that run counter to those who would like to persist in the fiction that God is a loving God who cares for each and every one of us. Read the Bible and learn that the phrase “loving God” is an oxymoron – a total contradiction in terms. No official representative of any monotheistically inspired Church of God based on the Bible should be able to say with a straight face that “God loves you” – the hypocrisy would be sickening.

However, it’s rather unfair to single out God alone as bloodthirsty. We all know how bloodthirsty the Aztecs, Maya and Incas were, sacrificing thousands upon thousands of victims, not all of them POWs by any means, in honour of their gods, and in very Old Testament like fashion. And more than one deity (like Zeus) tried to drown the lot of us.

Fortunately for the human species, the gods (including God) left (or were dragged away kicking and screaming) before they exterminated the lot of us. The Big Question is why. We know they left because many said they would return. Second comings aren’t unique to God and company.

3) Second Comings: However, the exact reason for the departure of the gods (including God) isn’t detailed in our historical literature, but they apparently vowed many eons before General Douglas MacArthur to return.

So we have the Greek/Roman Astraea, a goddess of justice, daughter of Jupiter (but not Mrs. Jupiter), who got entirely fed up with humans and their violent ways, and left for the heavens, but vowing (at a time never mentioned) to return to usher in a new Golden Age! One question needs asking. How come she pointed her finger at humans as being violent without first looking and criticisg her own kind?

Quetzalcoatl was one of the most important of ‘gods’ in the Mesoamerican pantheon, starting with the Olmecs, but also the Maya, and most notably the Aztecs. Quetzalcoatl must have left promising to return one day for the Aztecs welcomed Cortes and the Spanish conquistadors with open arms thinking this event was the return of their beloved Quetzalcoatl and company (though there’s now some academic doubt about the reality of that relationship). Needless to say, they found out differently and much to their sorrow that Cortes was not Quetzalcoatl.

And of course most relevant to most of us is THAT Second Coming, otherwise hyped as the End of Days, and boy is it ever hyped.

4) The Hype: It would seem that every time there is a natural disaster (even oil spills qualify), anywhere in the world, but especially in America, right-wing Christian Fundamentalists and TV Evangelists jump for joy, do high fives and are more than happy to point out, even gleefully telling “I told you so”, and the more the destruction, the better the mayhem, the greater the death toll, the higher they jump, the happier they are and the more they rub their hands gleefully together. Why? It’s to them yet another Sign that the End of Days are near.

Well they are both right and wrong. There will be an end of days when the Sun engulfs us and roasts us alive, making global warming seem downright frigid in comparison. A real Hell on Earth certainly should appeal to the Fundamentalist and Evangelist mobs. However, it’s that ‘near’ part that’s in error. We won’t be solar barbequed for another five billion years, give or take a hundred million or so years in either direction.

As to THAT End of Days that so many are looking forward to – and if it takes disasters to convince the faithless and bring it on, so be it - sorry to rain on your parade folks, the solar barbeque is probably going to be something only for your great, great, great (add several million more “greats” here) grandkids to look forward to and enjoy. 

Of course if our Fundamentalists and TV Bible Thumpers had lived 500 years ago, or 1000 years ago, or 1500 years ago, they would have been strutting out the same old line, the same old hype, the same old gloom and doom (gloom and doom for the rest of us sinners that is).

How long can these Evangelists go on playing the same old End of Days song before credibility runs out? - Seemingly indefinitely if you’re already preaching to the converted and/or the gullible.  No doubt 500 years from now their descendents will be screaming out the same old tired tune.

I could of course name the names of many of these showbiz Evangelists, but you Americans know who I am talking about – those who live in opulent lifestyles thanks to your generous donations supporting their cause – the style of life to which they’ve become accustomed!

To be continued…