The Little Book of the End of the World by Ken Mooney Read Free Book Online Page B

individually more powerful than the Bible suggests.
    In some places, Satan is called Lucifer, although this adds some complications to the concept of Satan as an ‘evil’ figure as the name Lucifer has not always been treated as an evil name in Christian thought.
    Lucifer of Cagliari was a fourth-century bishop in Sardinia, Italy, and even though the Church does not recognise him as a saint, the locals nonetheless refer to him as Saint Lucifer.
    Lucifer is also called the Morning Star, or Lightbringer, a figure associated with the planet Venus and the sun itself. The stories of the fallen angels, with Lucifer at their head, could actually be a reference to the worship of false gods, with the God of the Abrahamic religions displacing the sun gods of pagan mythology. This interpretation acknowledges some importance for these gods: rather than dismissing them completely, they become fallen angels who were doomed to fall through their own pride, only to be replaced by God directly.
    The Antichrist in Judaism
    Because the Jewish Messiah is yet to arrive, Judaism does not recognise an Antichrist as a rival to Jesus. Instead, the Antichrist is any one of the many false prophets, or pseudochristos , who will distract humanity and lead them astray from the path of the true Messiah. It is possible that the word ‘Antichrist’ has been created by an error in translating this word, adopting some of the other negative elements in the process.
    In Jewish belief, Jesus would actually fulfil the role of a pseudochristos , or Antichrist, in that he is seen as a false Messiah.
    There are still references throughout Jewish texts from the Middle Ages to an evil figure, a king and leader called Armilius who would be born of the union between Satan and a virgin. Armilius would rise to become a king, coming into conflict with the Jewish Messiah. Since Armilius is missing from the Bible and other canonical texts, he is not accepted as a legitimate Antichrist figure and may even have been used as a metaphor for Jesus in antichristian propaganda.
    The Antichrist in Islam
    Contrary to Judaism, the Antichrist plays a very specific role in the Endtimes of Islamic beliefs, although his origins are closer to the Jewish pseudochristos than Satan or the Devil.
    The Muslim Antichrist is named Al-Masih ad-Dajjall, literally meaning ‘false prophet’ or ‘deceiver’, and he is the last in a line of thirty such deceivers. He has no right eye, and his left eye sparkles like a star.
    The coming of the Dajjall coincides with a period of decadence amongst society when governments become corrupt and prayers are no longer spoken. The Dajjall becomes the leader of these corrupt forces until he comes up against Jesus and Mahdi . In fact, in some schools of Muslim belief, it is Jesus, not Mahdi, who is ultimately victorious over Dajjall.

6
    THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS

    With all the similarities between the Abrahamic religions, there is little truly unique to the Christian Apocalypse; however, the size and breadth of the numbers practising Christianity has meant that this Christian flavour to the End of the World has become the most pervasive and lasting. This vision has also become the easiest to adopt and manipulate by other sources, creating no end of movies, books and other media that attempt to portray the End of the World. This uniquely Christian version of the Endtimes mostly comes from the Book of Revelations, the last book of the New Testament. This is the book that lends us the word apocalypse, linking the word forever with the world-ending events that the book describes.
    Although the Book of Revelations provides a near-complete resource in Christian eschatology, the imagery found within is actually collected from other sources: some elements of Revelations make it a sequel to the Old Testament’s Book of Daniel, with this book expanding on some references and adding much more detail.
    The Book of Revelations takes the form of a dream and a possible