The End is Near
The list of “apocalyptic” world-ending prophecies is a storied history of disappointment beginning with Simon Bar Girora, an Essene, around 70 C.E. to Warren Jeffs in 2012. It is probably not unreasonable to suggest that humanity has been predicting the “end times” since we could conceive of such a thing.as revealing something hidden (the meaning of apocalypse). Declaring an apocalypse seems to be a way of expressing an ending one can control, a way of assuring the suffering that someday “every tear will be wiped away”. Far from gloom and doom, the “end times” seem to suggest a great reconciling; good for the insiders, but bad for the ones who aren’t part of the “in-crowd”. That’s the problem with much of how we understand modern apocalyptic predictions: we’re always saved. Malachi’s vision of the apocalypse, however, brings judgment on his own people as many of the Old Testament prophets did. The difficulty of remaining faithful is the history of salvation.
It is easy to condemn “the other” whoever the “other” may be. Less comfortable is it to find unity with the outsider by accepting that when it comes to righteousness, we all stand condemned equally. Salvation has less to do with being saved from the fires of Hell, and more to do with being saved from the hell of our egoism.
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