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

“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

“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

“It’s like this. You go off on an adventure. Then you come home. Right? Well that’s what the universe is doing now. Ever since the Big Bang, it’s been heading off into the unknown on its adventure. But the day will come when it will all go back to the beginning. Everything will come home. Everything that was broken will be fixed. Everything that was forgotten will be remembered. It’ll be like the biggest reverse dynamite explosion ever. And then we’ll all be back together again and we’ll be home again.”
― Frank Cottrell Boyce, Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth

“Therefore, until Israel is where he ought to be, both religiously and politically, there can be no thorough and permanent solution of the international problems” (XVIII. 4. c.).”
― Alva J. McClain, The Greatness of the Kingdom: An Inductive Study of the Kingdom of God

“The Bible is the supreme authority. It is the standard by which we judge all extra-Biblical sources of information. It is the starting point of our epistemology.”
― Armando Ballart, The End Is Behind Us: Are We Living in Satan’s Little Season?

“All actors, all actresses, all great showmen, all carnivals, circuses — hell must be from end to end a tremendous rejoicing. But I don’t want to choose, I want them to mix. I want only one place where saints can become again alive, can start breathing, can start dancing, can start loving, can become spiritual playboys.”
― Osho

“Pannenberg thematizes the latter as “prolepsis”: although the New Creation still lies in our future, or more correctly in the “future of our future,” the Easter event is already and normatively a manifestation in our time and history of what is the not-yet still-future eschatological-apocalyptic destiny for all the world.”
― Robert John Russell

“Pannenberg understands God as Trinity to be at work in the world, both continually appearing in history as the “arrival” of the immediate future and as reaching back from the eschatological future to the Easter event in order to transform the world into the New Creation. In a breathtaking move, Pannenberg thematizes the latter as “prolepsis”: although the New Creation still lies in our future, or more correctly in the “future of our future,” the Easter event is already and normatively a manifestation in our time and history of what is the not-yet still-future eschatological-apocalyptic destiny for all the world.”
― Robert John Russell, Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction

“The future is not totally different from the present; instead the present is a manifestation of the future. “The relation of the essential reality of things to their present appearance is mediated by the relation between eternity and time.”
― Robert John Russell, Time in Eternity: Pannenberg, Physics, and Eschatology in Creative Mutual Interaction

“The Son of Man is not just a figure on a throne. It is a pattern that repeats, a collective revelation, a neural and cultural tipping point that transfigures those who have ears to hear. And that pattern is emerging now, under our skin and in our systems, because the ego is breaking.”
― Paule Patterson, The Son of Man & Its Mystical Awakening: Reclaiming Eschatology & Atonement During a Convergence of Globalization, Nihilism, Science, & Spirituality

“The coming of the Son of Man is not a calendar event. It is a transformational invitation. It arrives wherever hearts are pierced and egos undone.”
― Paule Patterson, The Son of Man & Its Mystical Awakening: Reclaiming Eschatology & Atonement During a Convergence of Globalization, Nihilism, Science, & Spirituality

“For too long, eschatology has been held hostage by fear and fantasy—trumpets, timelines, and tribulations. But Scripture was never just a script.”
― Paule Patterson, The Son of Man & Its Mystical Awakening: Reclaiming Eschatology & Atonement During a Convergence of Globalization, Nihilism, Science, & Spirituality

“Love is the culmination of the human eschaton.”
― Paule Patterson, The Son of Man & Its Mystical Awakening: Reclaiming Eschatology & Atonement During a Convergence of Globalization, Nihilism, Science, & Spirituality

“Yet, apocalypse also implies judgment, a necessary exposure of the lies we’ve inherited and lived by. Atonement is not always soft—it burns that which needs to die but wishes to cling on. The only way to kill shame is to hang it publicly.”
― Paule Patterson, The Son of Man & Its Mystical Awakening: Reclaiming Eschatology & Atonement During a Convergence of Globalization, Nihilism, Science, & Spirituality

“We’re not awaiting a divine invasion. We’re being invited into incarnation. Endings are always beginnings, and atonement an eschaton”
― Paule Patterson, The Son of Man & Its Mystical Awakening: Reclaiming Eschatology & Atonement During a Convergence of Globalization, Nihilism, Science, & Spirituality

“This book was written in the conviction that what Jesus named as ‘the coming of the Son of Man’ was never meant to be a prophecy of future spectacle or predetermined judgment, but a functional reality all humans will wrestle with and a call to conscious participation in divine reality—through ego death, inner transformation, and the reconciliation of all things.”
― Paule Patterson, The Son of Man & Its Mystical Awakening: Reclaiming Eschatology & Atonement During a Convergence of Globalization, Nihilism, Science, & Spirituality

“If the first Adam was formed from dust, and the second conceived of Spirit and born of woman, then the coming of the Son of Man signals something even more radical: a third Adam… Not a new individual, but the emergence of a collective humanity, transfigured.”
― Paule Patterson, The Son of Man & Its Mystical Awakening: Reclaiming Eschatology & Atonement During a Convergence of Globalization, Nihilism, Science, & Spirituality