Events of the Eschaton

Events of the Eschaton

Introduction

The term Eschatology comes from the Greek words 'e[scato' and 'lovgo', that mean 'end' and 'study of' respectively. In the light of these the meaning of these two terms, eschatology literally means the study of the final of last things, as mentioned in the Bible. The field of study extends to include a number of events and facts, such as death and the in between state, along with the themes that have more general or the corporate focus. The themes with general focus include events such as the return of the Christ, resurrection, judgment, tribulation, the millennial kingdom, and the eternal state. The details of these events would be presented in detail in the following paragraphs.

Personal Eschatology

Personal Eschatology states that there are certain final circumstances that each and every individual has to face and go through, including physical death and the intermediate states. No human beings can survive these views, apart from a few examples that have been described in Bible. For instance, the Christian's Lord survived death in itself and would show up in future. This is to say that physical death, which is inevitable for the normal human beings, was skipped by him and he was lifted from earth without going through the experience of physical death.

Views of Personal Eschatology

Following are the details of the events of Personal Eschatology, along with their significance and the ways in which they fit into the overall concept of Eschatology:

The first view of personal eschatology is marked when the soul enters the unconscious state of limbo, and stays there till the body enters resurrection. This soul sleep is linked to the 'falling asleep' of the Lord in Christianity, whose soul was lifted by the creator and who would return to earth in future (Walls, 2007). However, it is eminent to mention here that the term 'sleep' in this case is merely a metaphor, that is used to describe the deceased Christian individuals who would one day get up again to be with the Christ and their family members as well as friends. This would happen in the resurrection of life, and thus provides Christians with a hope that relatives who have passed away are not gone forever and would be returning one day.

This event does not imply that the deceased souls are in some sort of slumber, but this means that death is not the final destinations of human beings, and they are supposed to enter one view to another, with death not being their final destination. This indicates that death is not the ultimate ending of a soul; it is in fact only a temporary view and would be over in near future, when all the deceased souls would return to live with Christ and their family and friends. Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31 has demonstrated that the souls have a conscious and aware existence after death, and not an unconscious sleep, as mentioned by some of the religious scholars.

In real life, the view provides hope ...