The Real History of the End of the World Read online

  In later centuries, the worship of Ohrmazd mingled with that of the earlier god Mithra, whose symbol was a bull, and with other pre-Zoroastrian traditions. However, the central dogma of life being a struggle between good and evil, truth and lie never changed.

  The Avesta, later Zoroastrian books written in Old Persian, give detailed instructions for living an ethical life. Since there is complete free will, the decisions a person makes affect his or her final fate in the afterlife. Hell is described in terrifying, graphic images. Heaven, by contrast, is less clearly visualized, simply being a place of immortality and well-being.ad

  The Avesta also tell of a savior who will come at the end of time, wage a final battle, and pronounce a final judgment.

  The savior is called Saoshyant. He will appear to raise the dead and reunite the soul with the body. Those who died as adults will be resurrected as forty-year-olds (thereby driving another nail into the popular myth that people in ancient times were old at thirty). Those who died as children will return at about the age of fifteen.ae

  The Saoshyant is aided in this resurrection by a powerful entity in the form of a plant. One of the probable leftovers from earlier religious beliefs is the story of Haoma (Soma in Hindu). Haoma is both a god and a plant that is presumed to have mind-altering properties. Scholars have tried to identify the actual plant, perhaps a mushroom of some sort, but have not yet come to agreement.af Haoma is almost certainly the rebirth of a cult that Zoroaster had tried to suppress at least a part of. The plant was harvested ritually, made into a liquid, and drunk by the priests in a ceremony called Yasna. This was accompanied by the sacrifice of an animal.ag It was the joy that people apparently displayed as the animal was painfully slaughtered that offended Zoroaster in the first place.ah Haoma has been identified with the Indo-Iranian Vedic gods of the ancient world.

  As transmuted into the Zoroastrian tradition, the Haoma plant was ritually burned, mixed with the fat of the sacrificial animal, and ingested, first by the priests and then by the congregation, during the day-long Yasna ceremony. The plant was believed to give spiritual immortality. “The sacrament on earth, however, is only in anticipation of the final sacrifice of the bull Hadhayans performed by the Soshyant, the eschatological savior who, in the last days, will rise up from the seed of Zoroaster to restore the whole of the good creation. From the fat of this ultimate sacrificial victim the white Haoma will be prepared, the drink of immortality, by which all men are made anew, perfect and whole in body and in soul.”ai

  This eating of the sacrifice has resonances in Christianity, for the Haoma was also believed to be the son of Ohrmazd who willingly became the plant and the sacrifice for the salvation of the believers. “The plant is identical with the son of God: he is bruised and mangled in the mortar so that the life-giving fluid that proceeds from his body may give new life in body and soul to the worshipper.”aj But the sacrifice of Haoma does not just ensure personal salvation but also the welfare of the society as a whole. He gives health, makes herds of cattle multiply, protects from the attacks of wild beasts, and maintains the balance of the world.ak

  The story of the Saoshyant begins with the account of three virgins who swim in a lake in which Zoroaster has left some of his seed. Each of them becomes pregnant and one of these virgins becomes the mother of Soshyant. As he grows up, he gathers around him many others who fight demons and liars. He is also the one who resurrects the dead with the Haoma and is the final judge.al However, he does this only with the permission of Ohrmazd because the Soshyant is the son of Zoroaster and not divine in himself.

  Sometime around 500 B.C.E., the Zoroastrians developed a linear view of time that was expressed as a cosmic year of twelve millennia, ending with the time of the Soshyant. This is similar to later monotheistic divisions of the ages of the world. The Zoroastrians may have borrowed the idea from the Greeks. Interesting ideas tend to float about with trade routes and get adopted by a variety of cultures that find them attractive.

  Zoroastrians were persecuted from the time of the conquests of Alexander the Great until, in the third century C.E., the Sassanian Empire in Persia made Zoroastrianism the state religion. At that time, the Avesta, the holy books of the religion, had to be reconstructed because most had been lost during the centuries of suppression. Many have never been found. This renaissance lasted until the Muslim invasions of 651, at which time many Zoroastrians converted, fled, or died.

  While Zoroaster apparently intended the wicked to be totally destroyed at the end of the world, in the Sassanian tradition, “there will be a mighty conflagration, and all men will have to wade through a stream of molten metal which will seem like warm milk to the just and be in very truth what it is to the wicked. The sins of the damned are, however, purged away in this terrible ordeal and all creation returns to its Maker in joy.”am So the concept of redemption for even the worst sinners had been introduced.

  Today, the majority of the Zoroastrians in the world are the Parsi of India. They are the descendants of those who fled first from Alexander the Great and then from the armies of Islam.

  An ancient story about Zoroaster is that he was born laughing.an At what, no one knows, but perhaps he expected his life to be one of joy living together with all those on the side of Truth and Goodness.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  India

  The Great Mandala

  Even though its tradition is that the world is cycling though time, Hinduism does have a concept of the decay of the earth and the inhabitants on it as the end of a major cycle approaches. The time between regenerations is known as a kalpa, or “Day of Brahma.” This day is divided into one thousand mahayuga made up of four yuga of twelve thousand divine years each. A Day of Brahma is 4,320,000 years.ao So, even though we are presently in the final yuga there is probably a good long time before everything is destroyed and remade.

  Of course, this final age, the kali yuga, is marked by a decline in virtue and in the length of human lives. In the earlier ages, virtue reigned, and people lived four hundred years. Now the best we can manage is one hundred years, and virtue can barely hobble about.ap Still, some believe that the end of this kalpa won’t arrive until the average human life span goes down to ten years.aq

  When the Day of Brahma ends, everything in the world, but not the earth itself, will be destroyed. As the dawn of Brahma’s new day arrives, creation will occur again. It is only when a hundred years of these days are over that Brahma himself will die and everything with him. The total for this has been reckoned as 311,040,000,000,000 solar years.ar Therefore, the people of ancient India were more optimistic about the length of the universe than most scientists today.

  One kalpa is also described as the time it takes the universe to make one revolution. Of course, if one wants to measure it, it’s necessary to mark a starting point. The creators of the Vedas were phenomenal at astronomical mathematics, just as the Maya and Egyptians were. It has been suggested that the temples at Angkor Wat, in Cambodia, were built for astronomical observations, and archaeoastronomers have found that the measurements of the buildings correspond to both the turning of the seasons and to the cycles of the yuga, with the kali yuga being the shortest.as

  But even with this sophisticated computational ability, the Hindu scholar never pinpointed an exact day for the ending of the current kalpa.

  The theme of the pralaya, or dissolution of the world at the end of each yuga, makes up a good part of the Hindu epics: the Mahabharata , the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita. All have scenes of the destruction of the world, often in the form of a final battle. Even without a specific apocalyptic ending, the gods of the end are referenced throughout the Mahabharata. For instance, referring to a warrior, the epic states, “He was like Antaka at the end of time, destroying all things.”at

  The Mahabharata actually begins with signs of the approaching end. It is announced that trees are blossoming in the wrong seasons and animals are having monstrous young. There are earthquakes, comets, rivers flowing backwa
rd, dust storms, and even antelopes and parrots are warning of evil times to come.au Also, people of low caste are laughing and dancing, a sure sign of something wrong with the world.

  The kali yuga has been described in the epics in terms that may sound familiar to us now. In interviews with people of all levels, Professor Lance Nelson found that many people in India today interpret contemporary droughts, deforestation, and other disasters as being part of the kali yuga. They point out one of the other signs of the degeneration of the age, the lack of dharma, or just behavior. One man insisted, “The kali yuga has come one hundred percent. People used to be very happy and generous, but now they are misers. It used to be if I had grain and saw a hungry person I would give, and even if only women were home and one had no grain, she could borrow from another and clean it and grind it and make bread so no one could go to bed hungry.”av

  A battle scene from the Mahabharata. Réunion des musées nationaux / Art Resource, New York City

  Like many people across the world, those interviewed in India saw the problems of climate change and lack of care for others as signs of the approaching end. In the case of Sanskrit tradition from over three thousand years ago, the kali yuga is expressed in ecological terms: There is no rain for a hundred years, the world dries up, the water to unfit to drink.

  When I began this study, I thought I would find nothing in Hindu tradition that would compare with Western beliefs in the End Times. But it is clear that within the cycles of eternal renewal there is the sense that the present time, whenever that may be, is the end of the age.

  There is also the judgment and promise of heaven. And there is, as in most religions, a ray of hope. Even during the pralaya, while individual bodies or whole worlds die, their souls will remain with the Brahma to be reborn in the next creation.aw

  And we still have trillions of years to get our dharma in order and make the world a wonderful place in which to live.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Book of Daniel

  For understanding the Prophecies, we are, in the first place, to

  acquaint ourselves with the figurative language of the Prophets.

  This language is taken from the analogy between the world

  natural, and an empire or kingdom considered as a world politic.

  —Isaac Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel

  and the Apocalypse of St. John

  The Book of Daniel is one of the major sources for the symbols and the predictions of the coming end of the world that have been used by Christians and Jews up to the present day. It is written partially in Hebrew and partially in Aramaic. In it, a number of prophetic dreams are interpreted. In some, the dreamer is the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar; in others, Daniel, his servant/slave, is the dreamer. The influence of earlier Greek and Babylonian myths about the ages of the world is obvious in Daniel but there are additions to the tales that are unique.

  In the Christian Bible, the Book of Daniel is placed with the other prophets, such as Ezekiel and Jeremiah. In the Jewish Tanakh Daniel belongs between the Books of Esther and Ezra, creating a more chronological order.

  The first six chapters of Daniel tell the story of how Daniel was taken from Jerusalem to the court of King Nebuchadnezzar, where he and three other Jewish boys were trained to serve the king. In chapter two, Nebuchadnezzar is troubled by dreams that his magicians and wise men can’t interpret. The king orders all his advisers killed due to their incompetence, including Daniel and his friends (Daniel 2:12). In a night vision, Daniel received not only the meaning of the king’s dream but also the content, even though he hadn’t heard the specifics of the dream before.

  Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that he had dreamed there was a huge statue of a king. It was made of many elements, starting with gold at the head, then silver, bronze, iron, and finally at the feet, iron mixed with clay. In the king’s dream a stone struck the statue and destroyed it, after which the stone grew to become a mountain. Daniel, tactfully, tells the king that he is the gold head but that after him there will be kingdoms of decreasing worth. The mountain meant that “in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed” (Daniel 2:44).ax

  Nebuchadnezzar liked this interpretation and rescinded the order to kill all the wise men of the kingdom. He gave Daniel and his friends increased responsibility at court, and put Daniel in control of the wise men, something anyone could have guessed would turn out badly.

  Nebuchadnezzar seems to have forgotten how impressed he was with the Hebrew God and His prophecies. In chapter three, the king has a gold statue made, and commands all his people to worship it. The wise men, annoyed at having been upstaged by an outsider, tell Nebuchadnezzar that the Jews won’t comply with the public adoration of the statue. Daniel’s three companions, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, are thrown into a fiery furnace when they refuse. With the aid of a divine presence, the three walk safely through the flames (Daniel 3:19-27).

  Apparently Nebuchadnezzar was hard to convince even with this miraculous proof. Therefore, God sees that his life takes a downturn. He has more dreams, goes mad, and spends seven years grazing like an ox before he finally comes to his senses and praises God. Upon his death, his son, Belshazzar, takes over.

  Belshazzar must have also been a slow learner or had not paid attention to his father’s experiences with the god of the Jews. One day he decided to have a feast and use the ritual gold and silver vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had looted from the Temple in Jerusalem. While he and the court were all eating and drinking, a hand appeared in the air and began writing on the wall next to the lamp stand.ay Daniel interpreted the words mene, mene, tekel parsin to mean doom for Belshazzar (Daniel 5:5-29). That night, the king is killed, and Darius, the Mede, takes over the kingdom.

  Darius has no trouble with dreams, just bad advisers. Again Daniel is punished for not praying to the gods of the Medes and Persians and is punished by being thrown into a lion’s den. The lions don’t eat him, and his accusers and their families become the lions’ breakfast instead.

  Darius finally caught on that Daniel’s god was a force to be reckoned with and issued a proclamation that everyone in his kingdom “should tremble and fear before the God of Daniel” (Daniel 6:28). And high time, too. After this, Daniel lived out his days in peace.

  Now, in my opinion, all of this has just been prologue to show that Daniel is a good Jew and a deserving prophet. The second half of the book of Daniel is very different. Instead of a king, the dreamer is Daniel, and large parts of the story are told in first person. Chapters seven through twelve are decidedly apocalyptic, with many-horned monsters and other warnings of the end. Daniel is terrified and puzzled by his dreams and enters into them to ask what they mean. At one point, he needs to be visited by the angel Gabriel, first in the dream and then in reality, for the visions to be explained. The style of this section is very different from the first part, and many scholars have suggested that the second half of the book was written separately from the first.az

  While the mystery of who actually wrote the prophecies and when is important in biblical scholarship, it makes little difference in a history of how people viewed the upcoming end of the world. Most scholars now think that chapter eleven, particularly the image of “king of the north,” referred to the Greek invader Antiochus. The following chapter is seen as foretelling his defeat by the Maccabees, as is commemorated every year by the festival Hanukkah, and the visions in the second half of Daniel are believed to have been written in the second or third century B.C.E. and after the fall of Antiochus. That hasn’t kept many others, including John of Patmos, from seeing the visions of Daniel as specific to their own time.ba

  Daniel’s first dream is one of the most bizarre and popular among doomsday seekers. In it, Daniel saw four beasts rise out of a wind-tossed sea. The first was a lion with the wings of an eagle. As Daniel watched, its wings were plucked; it was made to walk on two feet and given a human mind. The second beast was a
bear with three tusks that was told to devour many bodies. The third beast was sort of like a leopard, except it had four heads and four wings. It was given dominion over the earth.

  The fourth beast is the one that captured the imagination of centuries of interpreters. It had iron teeth that destroyed everything around it. It also had ten horns. Daniel was staring at these when another horn began to grow, uprooting three others to make room. This horn had human eyes and a mouth that spoke arrogantly (Daniel 7:1-8).

  Just as the vision was at its worst, Daniel saw a celestial court ruled over by the Ancient of Days, which destroyed the fourth beast and diminished the power of the other three. An attendant at the court explained to him that the first three beasts were kingdoms that would submit to God but that the fourth would then arise and “devour the whole earth” (Daniel 7:23). This kingdom would last “for a time, two times and half a time” before finally being overthrown, after which all the kingdoms of the world would be given to “the people of the holy ones of the Most High” (Daniel 7:25-27).

  The view of most biblical scholars is that the four kingdoms in Daniel’s dream were Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome. Other scholars have suggested that the kingdoms are actually those created by the break up of the empire of Alexander the Great.bb

  This section of the dream had resonance for downtrodden people that continues to the present day. The identity of the “little horn” has been speculated on with as much intensity as the search for the Antichrist. Sometimes the two have been combined. People suffering under oppression must have found great comfort in the promise that the beast would be destroyed.

  The date of the end is suggested several times in Daniel. The first time is with the enigmatic phrase “for a time, two times and half a time.” Of course, the problems have always been just how much “a time” is and when does it start. Newton and the Millerites are among the many who have tried to figure these out.