Freeper Research Project: Survey of Freeper views of “How it all Ends”

Various | March 7, 2006 | Alamo-Girl

[Alamo-Girl]

The last Freeper Research Project on Freeper personality types is currently being compiled and will be posted soon.

Meanwhile, we are embarking on a new survey to determine what Freepers believe is the end of all that there is.:

Eschatology is the study of the end of history according to Christian theology.

Teleology is the study of final causes, the end results.

Freepers’ answers will no doubt be strongly related to personal religious beliefs - but this is not a religion thread!

If you wish to argue for or against any particular belief system please take it up somewhere on the Religion Forum.

Here we are simply doing a survey of Freeper views on the subject.

Please consider the following list of beliefs and end time scenarios and then post which of them would apply to you, or if you believe something else - then please give a short description of what you believe.

If you spot an error in my definitions, please let me know.

Thank you so much for your participation in this survey!!!

Christianity (paraphrased from this webpage)

Historical Premillennialism: The Antichrist appears on earth before the seven year Tribulation begins. Rapture follows tribulation. Christ and his Church return to earth to rule for a Millennium. The forces of evil are conquered. The faithful live during the thousand years in Jerusalem, while occupying spiritual bodies. After the millennium, all people are judged and the faithful spend eternity on a new earth (not in heaven).

Dispensational Premillennialism: (a.k.a. Dispensationalism) The Tribulation precedes the second coming of Christ, and the subsequent establishment of the millennial kingdom -- a thousand-year golden age on Earth under the authority of Christ. Afterwards, in a brief, final battle, Satan is permanently conquered. The Final Judgment follows the millennium.

Pre-Tribulation Rapture: (or "pre-trib") The Rapture happens just before the Tribulation, so that believers will not have to experience any of its disruption and pain.

Post-tribulation Rapture: (or "post-trib") The faithful experience the full horrors of the entire Tribulation and are raptured only at the end of the 7 years.

Mid-Tribulation Rapture: (or "mid-trib") The Rapture happens 42 months into the Tribulation. Up to that time, the Antichrist brings peace to the world. After 42 months, events take a sudden turn for the worse.

Pre-wrath Rapture: That the church must experience most of the Tribulation, and then be raptured towards the end of the Tribulation period.

Partial Rapture: The faithful born-again believers are raptured just before the Tribulation. Newly born again believers are raptured during or at the end of the Tribulation.

Amillennialism: (Also known as Nonmillennialism). The Kingdom of God is present in the world today through the presence of the heavenly reign of Christ, the Bible, the Holy Spirit and Christianity. Both good and evil will continue in the world until the current Church Age ends suddenly as Christ returns to the sky above the earth. The Rapture follows. The Redeemed are transported to heaven where they will adopt spiritual bodies. The majority of humanity will be sent to Hell at this time for eternal punishment. The world will be abandoned. History is no more.

Amillennialism, Roman Catholic: These anticipate Jesus coming to Earth and gathering the Church together. But they generally do not use the term "rapture."

Postmillennialism: (Also known as "Christian Reconstruction", "Kingdom Now Theology" and "Dominion Theology.") These believe “that the kingdom of God is now being extended in the world through the preaching of the gospel and the saving work of the Holy Spirit, that the world eventually is to be Christianized, and that the return of Christ will occur at the close of a long period of righteousness and peace, commonly called the millennium.”

Preterism is a belief that the events prophesized in the New Testament have already happened. The great war of Armageddon in the book of Revelation occurred in the late 60's and early 70's CE when the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, many Jews were killed and the rest were driven from Palestine. When Jesus talked about the end of the world, he did not mean that the physical world would be no more.

No Millennialism: These interpret the contents of the books of Daniel and Revelation as having no prophetic information for our future.

Judaism - The scattered Jewish exiles will be gathered to the geographic Israel, her enemies will be defeated, the third temple built, sacrifices resumed, the dead resurrected. The Jewish Messiah will become the King of Israel and divide Israel into its original tribes and defend it in a great war. God will intervene and banish all evil. After the 6,000^th year of the Jewish calendar the seventh millennium will be holy, peaceful, tranquil. (Olam Haba) and all people will know God.

Islam - On a day of reckoning, God will resurrect and judge the dead, send the righteous to heaven and the evil to hell. This will be preceded by a Muhammed-like holy warrior, the Mahdi (twelfth imam) – who defends Islam from the antiChrist, beasts, etc.

Buddhism - Buddha’s teachings will disappear and all will fall into ruin to be replaced by Maitreya and his teachings.

Hinduism All will fall into ruin followed by the appearance of an avatar (Kalki Avatar)

Atheism:

Big Crunch The universe expands by strictly naturalistic means and then collapses.

Cyclic The universe expands by strictly naturalistic means, collapses, and then expands again etc.

Endless Expansion The universe never quits expanding but reaches maximum entropy killing everything anyway

[dljordan]

Mankind will be virtually destroyed in a holocaust. Survivors will crawl from the ashes. A group of guys will get together, invent a religion and form a hereditary preisthood and put everyone else to work for them. It starts all over from there.

[Rutles4Ever]

Amillienialism, Catholic.

"There is nothing new under the sun..."

[Uri’el-2012]

My youthful training was in classical Amillennialism.
I was told we were living in the millennium,
I saw the error in that as Satan's chain seemed to be too long.
There was not no joy.

After many years of study,
I now take the entire Holy Word of G-d very seriously,
I have come to the :

Dispensational
Pre-Tribulation Rapture
Pre-millennialism
position.

b'shem Y'shua

[restornu]

Thanks for the ping and it should be fun!

[.cnI redruM]

Big Crunch - Here's a question. Why preempt the categories and consider this beautiful and complicated, machine which requires incalculable amounts of physical energy to operate at all, the result of a bunch of random dice rolls?

[WalterSkinner]

..put me in the Dispensational Premillennial and Pre-Tribulation Rapture camp, in that I believe it is the most defendable if one accepts Plenary (complete) Inspiration of the Bible and a Historical / Grammatical (literal) mode of interpretation...

[Supernatural]

Historical Premillennialism comes closest to what I believe.

[Supernatural]

"It will end when Seattle Seahawk fans stop crying".

LOL! It ain't over until its over.

[little jeremiah]

Well, according to the Puranas, we have exactly 427,000 more years to go before Kalki arrives, kills all the miscreants, and sets things to rights. Then a couple of hundred years of setting things to rights, and another Satya Yuga, which lasts, IIRC, 1,800,000 years. In which the earth is like a Garden of Eden and all is well. And so it goes, for a long time, until Brahma's night, when everything is destroyed. Then in his morning, all is created again, and goes through the yuga cyles.

Cycles within cycles, destruction followed by creation followed by destruction etc.

But beyond all this cyclic creation and destruction is the eternal Paravyoma, the eternal Kingdom of God. This material creation is just a shadow or cloud in the eternal sky.

And yes, I take it as absolutely true.

[Alamo-Girl]

The opinion from both sides of the crevo debate would be helpful to this survey... hint.

[agere_contra]

Amillennialism, Roman Catholic. "The heavens will vanish like smoke, and the earth will wear out like a garment."

Basically: there will be no more time and space - but we will be in the presence of He who created time and space. The walls separating us from true, uncreated Reality will tumble down. There are simply no words for this - eye has not seen, nor ear has heard, what God has prepared for His Faithful.

[who knows what evil?]

I don't see HOW or WHY we're so special during this generation to be spared suffering for Christ.

Exactly...such an attitude is the height of arrogance. Why should 'G-d Bless America', when America doesn't bless G-d? Where is the cry for 'repentance'? In any event; mark me as 'Pre-Wrath'. I think we'll all find out pretty soon who was right and who was wrong...

[hosepipe]

The end of all there is(Teleology)?.. Hmmm..

1) The end of current human societal evolution...
2) The end of the Earth?...
3) The end of this Universe?...
4) The end of "ME"?..
5) The end of this reality or sub-reality?..

Prequel; There is no end merely stages.. maybe plateaus.. or better even a series of beginnings with corresponding endings.. i.e. what comes after heaven and hell.. or has come before this current paradigm which was the end of "something" else.. This paradigm is all about beginnings and endings.. for the basic unit is a Day with a day divided into moments.. Much More important to me than time, is timing.. Teleology speaks about endings but ending presupposes a beginning. Teleology prefaces a moment in timing between an ending and a beginning, the next beginning..

Main body; I know very little about any of this, except for the endings and beginnings in my own life.. Even then I might have missed some plus, heroic study on these matters thru research(reading) over the years. What others believe mostly thru religion but also thru other sources.. Leads in me in several directions with fair arguments for some of them.. Not being prone to confusion I try to simplify.. In doing that I tend to lean toward a biblical view.. Which view, because there are many?.. I say either one of them is correct or all of them are partially correct.. But since I can't determine which one is accurate, who could, I tend to spend my time on the timing on the nexus between them.. Not the end but the end promising a new beginning.. What will that beginning look like.. and what is the result of the ending that caused the beginning to happen..

Maybe I'm into Nexusology and use Teleology is a spring board or even a pointer.. Having no good way to determine the end or new beginning completely I'm saddled with IF'n which is alright with me.. Biblical teleology is good in that stead.. as a pointer.. Adopting a hard stand on any of the available fairly well thought out assumptions would defeat my "druthers" which is Nexusology..

Synopsis; So the end of all there is is subjective.. All of what, where, to whom, when, and how.. I believe the answer lies in you're vantage point, you're view, you're composition of all there is like a painting.. A view from an angle with a light source casting shadows.. An intellectual painting.. With me I like to see the "view" from different angles with different light sources.. Heck its only a painting.. And the composition can be beautiful from several angles.. And since its an intellectual pursuit why not?..

I prefer to see the end as a promised new beginning and try to conduct my life here in the moment as if in the Nexus.. Because each day, hour, minute, second is an ending and a beginning.. I believe that if I can handle the moments well, the end and the pregnant beginning will take care of themselves.. Jesus said that I believe.. Too simple?.. Yeah maybe, but I do love simple.. After all I'm a Nexusologist.. Its simpler in the Nexus..

[bmwcyle]

Someday God will change the channel.

[swmobuffalo]

Pretrib rapture.

[The Toll]

It will all end just fine if you just walk away. Just walk away, all I want is the gazoline and you can walk away.

[HairOfTheDog]

It'll end when Jack dies. :~D

[PatrickHenry]

I have a bit of a quibble with your last category, labeled "atheism." Those are all competing ideas floating around in the field of cosmology, and scientists can be -- and often are -- of various religions. Or none. So one can be, for example, a Christian with any of the views you listed, and still foresee an endless expansion of the universe. In other words, the physical world is a whole different thing from how we view the spiritual. (In my always humble opinion.)

[JockoManning]

 

My pastor back in the 80s used the phrase, "Pan-Millenialism: It will all pan out in the end", with regards to whether the Rapture occurs before, halfway through, or after the 7-year Tribulation. Something about my personality or psyche is such that I have never felt a compunction to definitively come up with just exactly how I stand on my expectations for the return of Jesus Christ and the Rapture of the Church.

 

I do know, having lost to death one particular family member who was very dear to me and who I still miss everyday, that I cherish 

 

I Thessalonians Chapter 4:

 

 

13 But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. 14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.
15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. 16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.

 

 

I think whether Jesus returns this week, this month, this year, this decade, this century, or not for another 500 years, my job is to "know His voice" and to obey the Bible. And whether I have already come to the end of my lifetime when He finally returns or whether it happens during my life, the important thing is that I have trusted Him to forgive my sins, obeyed Him, and followed after Him. Loving Him and loving my fellow man each day is the focus of my life. With His help I will continue in this way till I draw my final breath.

 

His coming is as certain as the dawn. He is the KING of kings and LORD of lords and His kingdom will not end.

 

Without faith it is impossible to please God.

 

 

 

Thanks,

Jocko Manning

 

 

 

 

 

P.S.   For those reading this thread who don't know a whole lot about religion or theology, may I suggest a book?

 

 

My Descent Into Death 

 

by Howard Storm

 

 

One man's experience with death and the hereafter.  

 

http://makeashorterlink.com/?Q3AF411CC

 

 

 

jm

 

[WildHorseCrash]

Atheism:Agnosticism:

Endless Expansion The universe never quits expanding but reaches maximum entropy killing everything anyway