I recently completed a book called The End of the World as You Know It by Matthew L. Halstead. (It is the first of a number of books I'm reading, with the goal of reading at least four books this year.) I like weird topics and I like to read weird books about weird topics. Or at least topics that people don't seem to touch on a whole lot. As the book may imply, this is a book of eschatology. And for those who don't know what "eschatology" means, it is the study or the topic about the end of the world. I like to give a short summary of the book, but I also like to give my own personal views of the end of the world.
I think in the Western culture, and at least the past century, there is a growing belief that Christians will be sucked into heaven. There is also a debate when tribulation will start, when Christians will be taken to heaven, and when Jesus will return. There is also a lot of discussions on the prophecies surrounding Jesus second coming and what leads up to these "predictions".
The book largely debunks all of them, and I think I also largely believe in a lot of what the author is writing even before I read this book. Rather than writing a long blog, I rather do a bulletpoint summary of the book (and the summary is not in any particular order):
- Many folks today think Revelations is written to them. Although, the Bible is written for a lot of people past and present, the main audience that Revelations was written to are the seven churches mentioned in the beginning of Revelations. (Emphasizing "to", as Revelations is a letter written to different churches, much like Paul's letters to different churches.)
- Revelation is not only a letter, but also prophetic and apocalyptic. But prophetic is not what we think. It's not necessarily a prediction of the future but rather a declaration. Same thing with the term apocalyptic: just a declaration.
- The "last days" written in much of the New Testament was referring to the time period of the 1st century Christians. The first century Christians were under a lot of persecution, and they honestly thought they were living the last days of Christ. The book of Revelations was written to comfort those who want to know when Jesus will return. And as weird as Revelations might be to us 21st century folks, it wasn't weird to the 1st century Christians.
- Revelations was written such that the first century Christian understood its meaning. Which is a bit bizarre to me but that's what this guy says. The seven churches mentioned in the book of Revelations are real churches at the time. The beast stood for Nero, the seven heads of the Beast were the seven mountains/hills of Rome, and so on. It wasn't anything strange to the 1st century Christians. I compare this much like our political cartoons of our time. There may be a lot of symbolism but it means something of our time.
- Sorry, Christians won't get sucked into heaven. Rather, Jesus will bring heaven down to earth. In other words, Jesus will make earth a new earth, and it will be heaven. Not some cloud in the sky.
- And about Jesus coming down from heaven. It's going to be like a grand entrance. Maybe he'll ride on a cloud.
- Tribulations is not going to start at some distance future. It's already happening now. Which means, this "seven years" is figurative.
- The Beast mentioned in Revelation is/are just agents doing Satans work. The Antichrist is not really one person but could be many people. We really don't know.
- The mark of the Beast is whatever you want to believe it is. It's just numbers where modern Christians want you to think it's evil. Metaphorical, 666 does signify an imperfection but it's just numbers and does not necessarily spell doom. But then Christians use the mark of righteousness, which is the Lamb of God, Jesus.
- Jesus is the beginning and the end. The Alpha and the Omega. And Jesus not only is the end, he sums up the entire history of earth. When Jesus came in human form the first time, it was the beginning of the end. The end is not so much the event but it is the person, which is Jesus. And yet, as it is stated in Matthew 24, we truly do not know the time or hour that Christ will return.
- Jesus is also the Third Temple and we are part of it already. Many folks believe there will be a physical third Temple to be built in Jerusalem and it could very well possibly be built but I can't help but think that Jesus has already built a spiritual temple already for us.
My brutally honest opinion is that this book could be written more as a two or three part essay. The author repeated himself or gone around circles on certain topics, which I think could have been shorten or at least eliminate the duplicate parts and sentences. I largely believe this guy to a certain extent. Here's my thoughts on end times (also in bullet points):
- As a person who majored in Mechanical Engineering (where we have to study thermodynamics and which is one of the foundation of studying about astronomy and astrophysics), I can't help but believed that our Earth will someday be consumed by the sun as a giant red star. There is an imagery of "firey lakes" in the Bible and I truly believe that those who are left on Earth will see this. The sun as a red giant star is the firey lake. Although, by man's calculations, it will be in another 4 billion years and maybe we as species won't be here but if any intelligent life is left on Earth, well, the firey lake is coming at you.
- I really do think Jesus will come back but not in a way we think. If we look at studies on space travel, it is quite possible that anyone who can travel at the light speed could go to space and come back in thousands of years and barely aged at all. Maybe like the transporters on Star Trek, Jesus was "beamed up" to a space shuttle or became some kind of space dust to travel at the near speed of light.
- As mentioned before, Jesus is the Third Temple. It's being built and already built. Maybe it's the space dust we're going to be a part of again. There is a verse that I now find somewhat peculiar, is when Jesus says the Lord's prayer, "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be the name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Whatever his "will" is done on earth, it is done in "heaven" as well. Heaven itself can be loosely translated to "sky" or the "expanse" as explained in Genesis, or our known universe, not an actual place we think of, with angels with wings flying around with little hand held harps. It could very well be space dust or even the new study of dark matter and dark energy, and whatever force it uses to expand the universe faster than light speed.
- Tribulations is now, but I think our hardships run in cycles. There is a time of peace and there are times of war, and it's been a cycle of this throughout human history. We may come to a time of peace again but with the way our technology is advancing, it's hard to ignore the speed of which our news circulate around the world, so we could be coming to a world of peace but not without a long time of hardships.
- A.I., robots, and androids. It could very well be that our consciousness is uploaded to become a singularity and that could be our heaven. Sounds kind of like the Matrix, right? But if humans are ethical about this, robots taking over the world may not happen.
- The Universe could end in a few different ways. It could go into a complete heat death where everything will stop moving, it could expand forever, it could self-implode and explode again, or our universe could be spawning new parallel universes and there could be multi-verses already. But however the Universe ends, I hope I will become space dust. From dust we came to dust we will return...
