Eschatology is a part of theology concerned with the final events of history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity. This concept is commonly referred to as the “end of the world” or “end times”.
The word arises from the Greek ἔσχατος eschatos meaning “last” and -logy meaning “the study of”, and first appeared in English around 1844. The Oxford English Dictionary defines eschatology as “the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind”.
In the context of mysticism, the term refers metaphorically to the end of ordinary reality and to reunion with the Divine. Many[quantify] religions treat eschatology as a future event prophesied in sacred texts or in folklore.
Most[quantify] modern eschatology and apocalypticism, both religious and secular, involves the violent disruption or destruction of the world; Christian and Jewish eschatologies view the end times as the consummation or perfection of God’s creation of the world,[4][self-published source?] albeit with violent overtures, such as the Great Tribulation. For example, according to some ancient Hebrew worldviews, reality unfolds along a linear path (or rather, a spiral path, with cyclical components that nonetheless have a linear trajectory); the world began with God and is ultimately headed toward God’s final goal for creation, the world to come.
Eschatologies vary as to their degree of optimism or pessimism about the future. In some eschatologies, conditions are better for some and worse for others, e.g. “heaven and hell”. They also vary as to time frames. Groups claiming imminent eschatology are also referred to as doomsday cults.
hristian eschatology is a major branch of study within Christian theology dealing with the “last things.” is the study of ‘end things’, whether the end of an individual life, the end of the age, the end of the world or the nature of the Kingdom of God. Broadly speaking, Christian eschatology is the study concerned with the ultimate destiny of the individual soul and the entire created order, based primarily upon biblical texts within the Old and New Testament.
Christian eschatology looks to study and discuss matters such as death and the afterlife, Heaven and Hell, the second coming of Jesus, the resurrection of the dead, the rapture, the tribulation, millennialism, the end of the world, the Last Judgment, and the New Heaven and New Earth in the world to come.
Eschatological passages are found in many places in the Bible, both in the Old and the New Testaments. There are also many extrabiblical examples of eschatological prophecies, as well as church traditions.
