Apocalypse!
True to apocalyptic stories is the weighty use of symbols, visual imagery and figurative language. Apocalypses are filled to overflowing with strange beasts and supposed impossibilities.
1. Christian--The Book of Revelation
2. Jewish--The Day of Yahweh
3. Indian--The End of the Kali Age
4. Hopi--Emergence to the Fifth World
5. Norse--Ragnarok
6. Contemporary--Entropy and Heat Death
One Biblical source chapter for end-time events is found in the Book of Revelation. Changing weather patterns, natural disasters, emergence of deadly new diseases and drug-resistant strains of old diseases are very disturbing portends of a coming global disaster. It becomes a dark picture but Revelation says that it is going to work out all right.
Revelation, like most apocalypses predicts dire happenings--appearing of the Anti-Christ, the Beast 666, the Battle of Armageddon, the Great Tribulation, the Second Coming of Christ, the raising of the dead, the Final Judgment and the end of all things. It is from Revelation that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse come. A new Heaven and a new Earth is promised. There is reward for good and eternal punishment for evil. Now, that is a wonderful thought!
Jewish apocalyptics are found in the Torah (the Old Testament for Christians and Messianic Jews)--Joel 3, Ezekiel 37, Isaiah 24-27, Zachariah 14 and Daniel 7-12.
For exciting apocalyptic reading see Daniel 2:32-33 as Nebuchadnezzar describes his vision of the multimetallic image with head of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron and feet of part iron and part clay. This image, ninety feet high and 9 feet wide, excited terror! It was awe-inspiring as well as glamorous, exceptional and stupendous. There was no movement to the image. It simply stood there towering over the entire plain of Babylon. All of a sudden, from out of nowhere, a stone smote the image on its feet of iron and clay with such force that all the metals were pulverized. Then a wind blew the dust of the image away, so that it entirely disappeared. The stone began to grow as a living stone, and it filled the whole world, taking the place of this image. Wow! That is a powerful happening! Daniel then interprets King Nebuchadnezzar's dream which depicted this image and his interpretation points to catastrophic end-time events.
The Hebrew prophets spoke of dire happenings as the Day of Yauweh, when the dead will return to
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