Judgment Day
If readers are interesting in my own opinion on the topic of the Apocalypse, and I hope this is not heresy, let me tell you:
My suspicion is that the prophecies of St. John will be interpreted before the events as accurately as Old Testaments predictions of the Messiah were interpreted to picture Jesus coming in the form of the war leader. No one could have known, no one could have anticipated, that the promises messiah would not conquer the oppressor, Rome, but the oppressor Death. What if the cataclysmic events of the New Testament Apocalypse prophecies of a Second Coming are to be fulfilled by something as much more wonderful, yet still strangely fitting the Old Testament prophecy, as the First Coming was?
I see no reason why the daydreams of science fiction and the shocking promises and threats of the Apocalypse cannot both, in their own way, be true. We may be wearing shiny one-piece jumpsuits and eating Soylent Green, Soma, and stroon when the Day of Judgment comes. The Beast of the prophecy could easily be an AI named the Motherlove, or a psionic posthuman named Emperor Palpatine.
Myself, I am what you might call a semi-preterist. I suspect the Beast of the prophecy was Nero; but I think prophetic messages have a recurring theme, a kernel, that is still pertinent for our time, and for times to come. As far as today is concerned, the prophecy of the Beast may well be a warning that every man is subject to the Nero of his own sinful nature in his own soul.
That the world might see a Day of Judgment when the skies above the world roll back like a scroll to reveal the glory of God terrifies me less, and seems no more and no less likely, than that I myself will suffer a Day of Judgment once I am in my grave, and an omnipotent judge roll back the much tinier roof of that shell of selfishness each man uses to hide his soul in, and all my beloved sins will be exposed to sunlight like so many maggots falling from an opened coffin.
To me the literal end of the world is not an issue: each man meets the end of the world when he dies.
Every day is Judgment Day, or might be. If the Final Judgment and the Eschaton has to await the heat death of the universe in AD 10 ^ 150, what would that change? It would still be a drop in the ocean of Eternity.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
