The end of the world?

Howdy,

So do you believe we are living the Last Days?
Is the end of the world happen soon or are we there for a long ride?
Do you want the world to end?

Things like that.

* a song by the music band "Soundgarden" called "Black Hole Sun". For those who wonder.

 

The world probably will end when the sun becomes a red giant in billions of years. But who knows, by then if the descendants of our species are still around they may figure out a way to save the planet. A major catastrophe could wipe out humans, but I wouldn't call it likely. Less likely would be a major catastrophe to wipe out all life. Life has endured many horrific mass extinction disasters, but it would take a whole lot to kill everything.

I have doubts there's an afterlife, so I would rather nobody die, let alone the world end.

 

I would just like start by thanking the OP for not being Interaktive with another needless thread.

When I was eleven or twelve my mother started attending the Revelation seminars which were bible study meetings with the Seventh Dah Adventist Church. The year would have been like 1984 or 85. They had a complete breakdown on the end times. I was a voracious reader and read a lot of it. There were some videos we watched too. I remember them like breaking down the book of Daniel. Israel becoming a nation is prophesied by an olive tree. When the nations of the Earth surround Israel then Jesus will make a dramatic entrance and save the day.

‘They had this book about National Sunday Law when the government would force people to take Sundays off. There was a bill going before the US Senate at the time I think. I don’t think it was ever voted on. I could see the Supreme Court tossing it out on its ear anyway. Anyway the National Sunday law was a big sign of the end time. I don’t remember the full details on that one.

Later, my brother would take a Pentecostal approach to studying the end times and he would break down all the metaphors and had all the verses. This lead to disagreements between my brother and parents over stuff. My parents were quite conservative fundamentalists and although their views softened later, at the time they were of the mindset that one should not work on the Sabbath, Saturday, and women wore their dresses to the floor and didn’t cut their hair. They didn’t eat meat. There was lots to disagree with.

As for me, I read a lot of the literature because the internet didn’t exist yet and I pretty much read everything. You wouldn’t find me not reading something. I didn’t believe anything the Bible had to say. I had read large portions of it when I was a kid and walked away dissatisfied with the vision of reality that the Bible promotes. I preferred to listen to Slayer. Their apocalyptic song. “South of Heaven” is far more entertaining.

Ultimately however, what has made sense to me is that the Bible itself tells you that you’re not going to know when the end going to come. The Bible has a strange contradiction of telling you that your generation is wicked for seeking a sign and then dedicating an entire book to vague imagery that multiple generations of people have believed applied to their time. The Seventh Day Adventist Church and the Jehovah’s Witnesses and other groups had their start in the 1800’s when people were selling their property and going into retreat so that on the day their eschatology predicted they would be ready for the end of this system of things. Furthermore, the Crusades were fueled by interpretations of the Bible belief in the end times. The “Abomination of desolation” in the Holy place referred to in Daniel and Matthew was the motivator for many to cross Europe, killing Jews along the way, until they reached Jerusalem and spilled the blood of Muslims instead. It was commonly believed that the Al-Aqua mosque needed to be removed from the sight of the Temple Mount. There are other examples too.

I think the concept of having an end time begins with Zoroastrianism. This feature, as well as the idea of having a Satan figure, had a strong influence on Second Temple Judaism. The sect of Judaism known as the Essenes had a strong influence on the belief in a Messiah, although the Messiah of which they spoke was a King in the line of David who would sit on the throne after freeing Judea from Rome.


Anyway, I voted “other”. Biblical prophecy is interesting as a phenomenon to consider and study but I don’t recommend that anyone invest their mind in believing that these prophecies apply to our lives as a guide to future history.

 

Come on man, we are not living in the Middle Ages. YouTube is full of stories first hand from "the other side". They are called NDE's (Near Death Experiences). Even if half of them are true, that makes hundreds of witness of the afterlife.

 

OK, that was pretty funny.
I also don't like the image of God that the Bible depicts. He has some character, sometimes a bad character.

Well, a lot of people take it very seriously as you wrote. We are about to find out very soon.

 

Knowing personally that God lives, I must trust that he will do what he says he will do. How and when is Gods knowing. In America, people have crossed boundaries of wickedness which I never thought possible, as if of their having lost any sense of shame or accountability. So from my perspective, our nation is heading towards an awful thing at a quickened pace. This causes me to draw closer to what I know and believe to be the truth, which is essentially to be a good person, and to give honor and glory to the God I've come to know by his charity, in whom is my life. God does live. It isn't vain to believe or suspect that God lives, anymore than it is vain to allow the sense of accountability to restrict ones actions more so than the laws of man might hollow out a spacious place, which is a dog that won't hunt. In these tumultuous times, it is imperative to stay the course.

 

Where did you get the idea that God doesn't live? If we live and the Universe live, of course God lives. That goes without saying.
But then, it depends on how you imagine that God to be.

 

You people keep saying we are living in the "end times" year after year after year after year after year after.....you see where I'm going with this, right?

 

It's been over 2,000 years now. He was nailed to a cross, not a boomerang. He's not coming back...

 

The question is, why was He (Jesus) away?

 

Maybe he was never there to begin with.

 

It would take more than that to serve as proof. The brain doing odd things as we die would be unsurprising. There have been stories of extracorporeal sensation in some nde, i.e. sensing things their body could not possibly see/hear from their perspective. If corroborated well and repeatedly that would serve as evidence.

 

Most people don't know their last day. But for you the world ends when you die.

 

An eternity passes before I was born and blinked my first. An eternity will pass in the blink of an eye after I die. My life marks the exact mid point of eternity… see you at the end of eternity.

 

"The end of our civilization is surely coming but the world will survive"

I believe that this world goes on and on and on and on.......
and within two centuries this earth will be utopian where everbody knows our Creator from the least to the greatest.......
but there is a condition.......
the hearts of the fathers must be turned to the children... and the hearts of the children to their fathers..........
.... if not.......
this earth could be destroyed again somehow.......
......
.....
Malachi
4 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

2 But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall.

3 And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the Lord of hosts.

4 Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.

5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord:

6 And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.


https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Malachi 4&version=KJV

https://near-death.com/howard-storm-nde/

 

I thought the world end in 2012, but I missed it.

 

The end is coming, but it will have more to do with nuclear weapons, biological weapons and chemical weapons than religion.

 

Humanity is both stupid and arrogant and we have created another EXTINCTION event that is currently in progress per the Scientific data.

The planet will survive but whether or not humanity does is still TBD.

 

HUGE difference between an IMAGINARY "creator" and things that occur on the periphery of our CURRENT knowledge base.

Suffice to say that I have PERSONAL evidence of something BEYOND our PHYSICAL existence but NOT enough to make any DEFINITIVE claim of an "afterlife" as depicted by Xtian dogma.

What I have NEVER encountered is EVIDENCE of an imaginary "creator". Never had a "prayer answered", "witnessed" a "miracle" or "felt" some "divine presence" in my entire life.

The concepts of ETERNITY and the Laws of Physics establish that there is NO need for an imaginary "creator".

What we do have is an ETERNAL universe that comprises of matter, energy and things we do not YET understand.

Just because we do NOT understand something does NOT mean that it is "supernatural", instead it is merely UNKNOWN at the present point in time.

 

There is a high probability that a huge human catastrophe will soon occur, with all or a vast number of our species disappearing rapidly. Something that destroys the planet is less likely.

 

I agree. We face something more like the Dark Ages than Armageddon.

 

There is much here to agree with. Yet, there does seem to be an aspect to existence that tempts us to think there is an "essence" behind all the appearances of reality. I can understand how and why humans have always believed in religious faiths, even while for me, personally, they all fail fundamentally.

 

Depends what the 'end of the world' actually means. It would be very difficult to destroy the planet. It would be very diffucult (tho somewhat less so) to make it uninhabitable for humans.

...it would be relatively easy to collapse civilization. We've condenced enough wealth into few enough hands that a number of people could do that right now. Civilization collapse isnt the end the world. At least not for those of us with a will (and a plan) to survive and build the next world.

But I do think the collapse of civilization is likely in our lifetime, and most of 'the world' will die. We can stop it ...we just have to stop doing what the corporate elite and their govt stooges tell us to do.

 

Same here, religions are based upon the ignorance of our Stone Age ancestors and while they survived their knowledge base was woefully lacking hence the need for imaginary "creators" to explain what was beyond their grasp.

Fortunately we have advanced knowledge-wise which gives us a better insight but still by no means complete.

Something exists on the periphery of our knowledge and we will continue to question it for as long as humanity survives.

 

Most humans have dreams. Why would one need to be dead for it to count? Whose definition of "dead" are we using? If they are actually dead, I would claim they won't come back - that is, if they come back it's because they weren't truly dead.

Besides, humans don't make good witnesses ...

... especially if they are DEAD.