Christian Eschatology

We are the story of everything that we did and that happened to us in and as this body, over time and change, whether we remember it or not, whether others remember it or not.

No one understands all of Revelation's numbers and symbols. Still, almost all interpreters have come to a common assessment of several keys: the Lamb, the Beast, the Great Prostitute, the Other Beast and the New Jerusalem.

The more I think about the people who are placing their hope in the current end-of-the-world scheme, the less I want to laugh at them and the more I feel compassion.

By Kathleen O'Brien Religion News Service (RNS) Give these billboards credit: They don't hedge their bet. Judgment Day is coming May 21, 201...

Of course, Christians have been proclaiming the nearness of Jesus' return ever since there have been Christians. So far, one might conclude, Jesus has been uninterested in taking the bait.

Around 1830 John Nelson Darby, having selected scripture passages from Daniel, Revelation, 1 and 2 Thessalonians and elsewhere, pasted them together, called them a whole, and invented the Rapture, a word not found in the Bible.

Christians can bet on a supernatural rescue for themselves and their kind and wait for the cataclysm, or they can dedicate themselves to compassionate action to alleviate suffering and injustice, to creating a better world.

Predictions of the Apocalypse or its personal equivalent of a direct path to heaven have been a common theme throughout human history. We seem determined to keep ourselves in a constant state of preparation for the end of time.

You might think that scientists and Evangelicals have nothing in common. But you'd be wrong. Large numbers of both agree on one thing: the end is near.

We could see in the coming years the emergence of a new kind of eschatology -- fresh, different, wiser biblically, more mature theologically, and more responsible ethically.