An end-time is a time when a large, incumbent order is coming to an end. The incumbent order can collapse or it can whither away but in either case it becomes difficult for people to see the shape of the future clearly. 'What comes next?' becomes harder to answer while 'What comes after?' becomes the more urgent and relevant question.
We are in an end-time. We are in a dis-orienting time when venerable truths and institutions are beginning to lose their vigor. We are returning to a time like in the ancient past when environmental conditions could be much more threatening than they have been for millennia, and when the natural environment occupied a far more vital part of human consciousness than it has for millennia.
The Biblical teachings (as opposed to the teachings of the daughter religions -- Rabbinic, Christian, Islamic) seem to be fitting in better with our contemporary zeitgeist because those teachings addressed the problematics of an earlier end-time when a brand new order was coming into being.
The Biblical teachings stand there for us as a manual for identifying what are the important parameters of understanding an end-time moment when the over-arching, incumbent cultural and institutional order can no longer support the edifice of civilization. In such a moment individuals with prophetic sensibilities must instead turn for guidance to the unvarnished word of God.
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