Eschatology Quotes

“I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space.”
― Lord Byron George Gordon

“...left to ourselves we lapse into a kind of collusion with entrophy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there's nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task in the present...is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.”
― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

“What we have at the moment isn't as the old liturgies used to say, 'the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead,' but a vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may work out in the end. ”
― N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

“The only philosophy that can be practiced responsibly in the face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption. Knowledge has no light but that shed on the world by redemption: all else is reconstruction, mere technique. Perspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, that reveal its fissures and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will one day appear in the Messianic light.”
― Theodor Adorno

“The first time [Christ] came to slay sin in men. The second time He will come to slay men in sin.”
― A. W. Pink

“God's Kingdom is "present in its beginnings, but still future in its fullness. This guards us from an under-realized eschatology (expecting no change now) and an over-realized eschatology (expecting all change now). In this stage, we embrace the reality that while we're not yet what we will be, we're also no longer what we used to be.”
― Tullian Tchividjian

“The Church expected the Second Coming of Christ immediately, and no doubt this was so in the ordinary literal sense. But it was certainly expected also in another sense. The converts in all the cities of Asia and (soon) of Europe where the small groups were founded had known, in their conversion, one way or another, a first coming of their Redeemer. And then? And then! That was the consequent task and trouble — the then. He had come, and they adored and believed, they communicated and practiced, and waited for his further exhibition of himself. The then lasted, and there seemed to be no farther equivalent Now. Time became the individual and catholic problem. The Church had to become as catholic — as universal and as durable — as time.”
― Charles Walter Stansby Williams, The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church

“The only means for averting the divine chastisement that takes the shape of warfare is, however, repentance from moral and spiritual evildoing; the peace movements of the West would therefore be well advised to direct their activities towards fostering respect for the human life created at conception in the womb, for God's law with respect to marital and family life and the ordering of human affairs in general, and above all for the true religion revealed in the Sacred Scriptures.”
― John R. Stephenson, Eschatology

“To speak evil' is to speak this fateful, paradoxical situation that is the reversible concatenation of good and evil.
That is to say that the irresistible pursuit of good, the movement of Integral Reality - for this is what good is: it is the movement towards integrality, towards an integral order of the world - is immoral. The eschatological perspective of a better world is in itself immoral. For the reason that our technical mastery of the world, our technical approach to good, having become an automatic and irresistible mechanism, none of this is any longer of the order of morality or of any kind of finality. Nor is to speak and read evil the same thing as vulgar nihilism, the nihilism of a denunciation of all values, that of the
prophets of doom.
To denounce the reality contract or the reality 'conspiracy' is not at all nihilistic. It is not in any sense to deny an obvious fact, in the style of 'All is sign, nothing is real - nothing is true, everything is simulacrum' - an absurd proposition since it is also a realist one!
It is one thing to note the vanishing of the real into the Virtual, another to deny it so as to pass beyond the real and the Virtual.
It is one thing to reject morality in the name of a vulgar immoralism, another to do so, like Nietzsche so as to pass beyond good and evil.
To be 'nihilistic' is to deny things at their greatest degree of intensity, not in their lowest versions. Now, existence and self-evidence have always been the lowest forms.
If there is nihilism, then, it is not a nihilism of value, but a nihilism of form. It is to speak the world in its radicality, in its dual, reversible form, and this has never meant banking on catastrophe, any more than on violence.
No finality, either positive or negative, is ever the last word in the story.
And the Apocalypse itself is a facile solution.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact

“[B]iblical eschatology is fundamentally not a matter of calendar but of Christology. Developing an eschatological understanding is not a matter of assembling isolated texts in some artificial scheme, but rather one of gaining a comprehensive and integrated perspective of the sovereign God's purposes for human history.”
― John Jefferson Davis, Christ's Victorious Kingdom

“Quotes from the Book:

“The main characteristic of the approaches of the Hour is escalating disorder and confusion and that there shall be such turbulence affecting both the world of ideas and that of events that, as other hadiths say, even stable intelligent people will be in danger of losing their bearings.

Only those will be able to find their way that have armed themselves with the knowledge of how to understand these times and guard themselves against their dangers.

When as Muslims we speak of dangers, it must be understood that the gravest of all as far as we are concerned is disbelief, not physical danger. Next to disbelief comes moral confusion leading to corruption of such magnitude as to lead, even in the presence of faith, to punishment in Hell.

This is why the Prophet—may God’s blessings and peace be upon him—warned of this worst kind of danger, saying: ‘Seditions will occur, when a man shall awaken in the morning a believer, becoming a disbeliever by nightfall, save he whom God has given life to by means of knowledge.’
[Ibn Maja, Sunan, Kitab (36) al-Fitan, Bab (9) Mā yakūn min al-fitan, 3954].

*

This then is how to approach the subject: first one should familiarize oneself with the details, meditate on them at length, while applying the knowledge to the surrounding phenomena and events, then strive to extract and grasp the patterns, after which one may move on to deduce the principles, which are the all-inclusive cosmic laws involved. Principles, precisely because of their all-inclusive nature, are few, but need effort and time to be adequately comprehended. Having understood these, one is under obligation to transmit this knowledge and discuss it frequently with one’s children, relatives, friends, and as far as possible transmit it to the entire upcoming generation.”
― Mostafa al-Badawi, Twilight of a World: The Signs of the Times at the Approaches of the Hour According to Islam

“When we talk about a dispensational theological system, we should understand this to mean the harmonization of biblical principles and events that are not isolated but seen as a collection of truths working together towards a single common goal that God has established for his glory. The system itself represents a tool that organizes these truths into a coherent systematic structural approach to the Scriptures, that can then be used to aid in better understanding God’s revealed revelation concerning his eschatological plans. (p. 15 - Dispensational Theology: A Textbook on Eschatology in the Twenty-First Century)”
― Reid Ashbaucher

“When we talk about a dispensational theological system, we should understand this to mean the harmonization of biblical principles and events that are not isolated but seen as a collection of truths working together towards a single common goal that God has established for his glory. The system itself represents a tool that organizes these truths into a coherent systematic structural approach to the Scriptures, that can then be used to aid in better understanding God’s revealed revelation concerning his eschatological plans.”
― Reid A. Ashbaucher, Dispensational Theology: A Textbook on Eschatology in the Twenty-first Century

“We are now accelerating towards probably the most important moment in the entire history of Earth, comparable in significance only to the emergence of life itself on this planet -- the Technological Singularity, Intelligence Supernova, the Omega Point of Homo sapiens, progressively morphing into one Global Mind. This 'cosmic event' would mark the end of human era, as we are to inexorably transcend our animal biology, and even more importantly, we are to transcend our limited dimensionality. History is, after all, 'a shockwave of eschatology' in the words of McKenna.”
― Alex M. Vikoulov, The Intelligence Supernova: Essays on Cybernetic Transhumanism, The Simulation Singularity & The Syntellect Emergence

“The influence that Marxism has achieved, far from being the result or proof of its scientific character, is almost entirely due to its prophetic, fantastic, and irrational elements. Marxism is a doctrine of blind confidence that a paradise of universal satisfaction is awaiting us just round the corner. Almost all the prophecies of Marx and his followers have already proved to be false, but this does not disturb the spiritual certainty of the faithful, any more than it did in the case of chiliastic sects: for it is a certainty not based on any empirical premises or supposed 'historical laws', but simply on the psychological need for certainty. In this sense Marxism performs the function of a religion, and its efficacy is of a religious character. But it is a caricature and a bogus form of religion, since it presents its temporal eschatology as a scientific system, which religious mythologies do not purport to be.”
― Leszek Kołakowski, Main Currents Of Marxism: The Founders, The Golden Age, The Breakdown

“[It is within the liturgy above all that] the Church is informed of her cosmical and eschatological vocation, receives the power to fulfill it and thus truly becomes “what she is”—the sacrament, in Christ, of the Kingdom. In this sense the liturgy is indeed “means of grace”…in the all-embracing meaning as the means of always making the Church what she is—a realm of grace, of communion with God, of new knowledge and new life. The liturgy of the Church is cosmical and eschatological because the Church is cosmical and eschatological; but the Church would not have been cosmical and eschatological had she not been given, as the very source and constitution of her life and faith, the experience of the new creation, the experience and vision of the Kingdom which is to come.”
― Alexander Schmemann

“It is worth noting that the first statement of the salvation covenant speaks in terms of families rather than isolated individuals or nation-states. The heavenly Father, "from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named" (Eph. 3:15), desires that the family structure, so basic to human society and yet now so marked by the effects of sin, should be a primary sphere for the revelation of the redeeming action of his grace. This family emphasis, so prominent in the Scriptures, has not always been adequately recognized in evangelical understanding of the plan of salvation.”
― John Jefferson Davis, Christ's Victorious Kingdom

“The statement that Abraham's descendants shall "possess the gate of their enemies" is the promise of spiritual and cultural dominance of the godly covenant people.”
― John Jefferson Davis, Christ's Victorious Kingdom

“[T]he many Gentile proselytes to Judaism provided a natural point of contact for the apostle's evangelistic endeavors. Paul's preaching in the synagogues and in public places led to the gathering of house churches in the various cities which were the focus of his mission. Paul's basic mission strategy, in fact, relied significantly on establishing a Christian fellowship in a household of some size and from there working out into others in the town. The Christian community at Corinth, for example, seemed to be made up of a number of house churches. Paul baptized the households of Crispus, Gaius, and Stephanas, all of some social standing (1 Cor. 1:14-16). These early house churches had the merit of integrating Christian faith into the context of the people's daily lives, rather than merely into an institutional setting.”
― John Jefferson Davis, Christ's Victorious Kingdom

“In retrospect this period of Roman Catholic missionary expansion represents a mixed picture. Christianity did spread far beyond the borders of Europe and the Mediterranean basin as a result, but at the cost of being inextricably associated with Western colonialism in the minds of the subject peoples. This same problem of disentangling the essentials of Christian faith from its Western political and cultural trappings was also to face Protestant missionaries in succeeding centuries.”
― John Jefferson Davis, Christ's Victorious Kingdom

“Significantly, in Luke 4:18-19...the Lord reads from the Isaiah scroll, but stops at 61:2a ("the acceptable year of the Lord"), and omits 61:2b ("the day of vengeance of our God").”
― John Jefferson Davis, Christ's Victorious Kingdom

“The foregoing observations...suggest that influences other than purely exegetical ones can affect the church's outlook....Church history also suggests that eschatological positions can significantly influence the church's understanding of the nature and scope of its mission to the world.”
― John Jefferson Davis, Christ's Victorious Kingdom

“In the postmillennial framework the key to the church's hope is faith in the sovereignty of God and the power of the Spirit, not in world conditions as such.”
― John Jefferson Davis, Christ's Victorious Kingdom

“Postmillennialism is an eschatological outlook that anticipates a period of unprecedented revival in the church prior to the return of Christ, resulting from new outpourings of the Holy Spirit. This great revival is expected to be characterized by the church's numerical expansion and spiritual vitality. As a secondary result of the growing influence of Christian values, the world as a whole is expected to experience conditions of significant peace and economic improvement.”
― John Jefferson Davis, Christ's Victorious Kingdom

“As far as relevant myths are concerned we are in the world of ‘eschatology’, the discourse on Last Things (from the Greek words eskhatos, last, and logia, discourse). Eschatological matters are of the highest importance to some, for they illuminate the whole point of being. The faithful take the view that matters of the First Importance are illuminated by the discussion of Last Things, for they, the latter, are the consummation of being and the apotheosis of existence; in short, things not to be sneezed at. To the more sceptical, there is the suspicion that nowhere else in speculative discourse has so much endless nonsense been written. The sceptical, I suspect, consider that if normal theological discourse and myths in general are the Himalaya of nonsense, then eschatology is the Martian Olympus Mons, towering miles above petty terrestrial Everests.”
― Peter Atkins, On Being: A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence

“When the eschatological element disappears into the shadows, the worldly economy becomes properly infinite, which is to say, interminable and aimless. The paradox of the Church is that, from the eschatological point of view, it must renounce the world, but it cannot do this because, from the point of view of the economy, it is of the world, which it cannot renounce without renouncing itself. But this is exactly where the decisive crisis is situated: because courage—and this seems to us to be the ultimate sense of Benedict XVI’s message—is nothing but the capacity to keep oneself connected with one’s own end.”
― Giorgio Agamben, The Mystery of Evil: Benedict XVI and the End of Days

“We are a species poised between an awareness of our ultimate insignificance and an ability to reach far beyond our mundane lives, into the void, to solve the most fundamental mysteries of the cosmos.”
― Katie Mack, The End of Everything

“While All three Abrahamic religions offer a linear view of reality, in that all three assume that God is to be found not in the past but in the present and the future, all three traditions look back to founding principles that are enshrined in sacred texts. So, without giving up that eschatological vision, it behooves us to examine our roots so we can discover what is present in our spiritual DNA. Then we can proceed faithfully into the future, while we remain anchored in those founding visions present in our sacred texts.”
― Robert D. Cornwall, Called to Bless: Finding Hope by Reclaiming Our Spiritual Roots

“Humanity has been fetishizing the end of the world ever since we invented its beginning. It’s just easier to destroy it than to heal it, I guess. Chalk it up to our intellectually lazy nature.”
― Casey Fisher, The Subtle Cause