Apocalypse

Copyright 2020 Shane Rogers Entertainment

Midnight Facts for Insomniacs

Podcast Transcript

(Note: transcript consists of episode outline)

In this episode we’ll be diving deep into eschatological beliefs. Not to be confused with scatological beliefs. Both are arguably full of crap but this is ESCHATalogical, or concerning the End Times, Armageddon, Apocalypse, the Rapture, etc. And we will eventually define these terms. I also want to point out that I’m not picking on religious people here. We’re going to be focusing on the mystical and religious doomsday scenarios, but there are plenty of non- religious adherents to the idea of the end times. Witness: doomsday preppers. We’ve talked about this in the past. I’m really fascinated with preppers and the whole apocalyptic ideology. And they are experiencing a huge resurgence right now, with the crashing economy ,riots in the streets, the plague of COVID-19. It feels like the End Times whether you’re religious or not.

But let’s start with religion, and an almost universal version of eschatological myth.

Possibly the most popular version of an end times scenario is the flood myth. Most cultures have one. Typically, floods are viewed as apocalyptic cleansing events, they don’t actually result in the end of the world but rather the end of the current world and a rebirth. It’s like god shaking an Etch- a-Sketch. Is that the oldest reference we’ve ever made? It’s like God wiping a hard drive. And that’s true of most end time scenarios. They typically signal a new beginning. when it comes to the flood myth, obviously we have Noah in the Bible, but there are also Chinese flood myths, Indian, Greek, Irish, etc. In Norse mythology, which we’re going to return to when we talk about Ragnarok, there’s a great battle between the king of gods—Odin, along with his brothers—against the giant Ymir. Ymir is killed and floods the world with his blood, drowning all of the Giants except one, Bergelmir, who along with his wife survive on a floating vessel (like Noah) and re- populate the world with frost giants. Except that instead of an ark, they floated on a coffin over an ocean of blood. So, less cheerful. And fewer animals. I’d much rather chill on a giant floating zoo with my family, rather than just me and my wife on a bloody coffin. The coffin thing depends on the translation of the old Norse word Luor, which might also refer to a wooden chest or box. I don’t see how that’s much different, a coffin is just a wooden box that you die in, which is the natural result of floating on an ocean of blood.

Since we’re on the topic of Norse mythology, let’s get into their actual end-times scenario. Ragnarok. norse mythology is the mythology of the Vikings, famous for Odin and Thor and the biFrost rainbow bridge, Loki etc. Marvel fans will know all about this stuff... Although obviously a very modified version.

Ragnarok is a unique version of the apocalypse. There are very few civilizations that predict that their gods will die, that they will fail, and ultimately be destroyed. It’s a very fatalistic outlook. Harsh. Like, even the Mayan version of the end of the world is really just the end of humanity, the gods still survive. And the Christian version of Armageddon includes the eventual defeat of Satan, and usually the good guys are raptured away to heaven. Is “raptured” a legit verb? The act of yanking people off the planet. If aliens suck you up with a laser beam, are they rapturing you? “Don’t rapture me, bro.” Ragnarok begins with a mini ice age, three uninterrupted winters worth of blizzards and icy winds. humans will turn on each other in a desperate struggle for survival. It’s like the donner party but on a massive scale...it’s the donner festival, it’s donner lalapalooza. Donnerpalooza. “brother will slay brother, father will slay son, and son will slay father.” so I guess it’s more like thanksgiving. The giant wolves known as Skoll and Hati, who in Norse mythology have been pursuing the sun and the moon since the beginning of time, which is a long time to not get to stretch or take a nap, will finally catch their prey. And I feel like that’s kind of a silver lining, like how sad is it that they’ve been pursuing the sun and moon forever...it’s like when you hang a carrot from a stick and dangle it in front of a horse. Like yeah it works but you’re a dick unless you give the horse that carrot. I’m just saying let the wolf eat the sun. He’d have some serious indigestion. “Hati” btw translates to “one who hates.” That wolf is literally a hater. Also, another wolf, the giant Fenrir, snaps his chains and gets free. Again, I’m kind of on Team Wolf here. One has been chained up for eternity, the other two haven’t had a meal in millennia, they can’t catch a break. Anyway the stars also disappear so it’s getting pretty gloomy. Yggdrasil (igg-drizzle) the tree that rises through the nine worlds and binds everything together, it shakes, and that’s like a million Loma prietas. Very few of our listeners will get that reference. Tectonic chaos. The giant serpent jormagund will rise from the sea and go full Godzilla until Thor shows up and battles him to their mutual destruction. This snake is supposed to be the cause of earthquakes...I would have thought that would be the shaking of the universal tree...like a mild wind could cause a ten-point-oh, but hey, they didn’t ask me. I expect my magical, mythological explanations to have some logic. Like, ok the world is on the back of a turtle and that’s cool but like is this a desert turtle because water-turtle-shells are slippery AF. So the contortions of the serpent will shake lose a massive ship called Naglfar (which translates to “nail ship”) from its moorings and it will drift away. Can you guess why this is called a nail ship? Because it’s made of the fingernails and toenails of corpses. Loki will become the ship’s captain, leading an army of giants. This is good stuff. Super creative. Odin will fight fenrir, and he will fight valiantly, and valiantly he will get his ass handed to him and be swallowed. Thor slays the serpent but is covered in so much venom that he drops dead as the world sinks into the sea, leaving nothing but a void. Not sure how that works, because we’ve covered this...a void is empty. It can’t include an ocean. But whatever. Some versions end there, but some include A man and a woman, Lif and Lifthrasir (Old Norse Líf and Lífþrasir, “Life” and “Striving after Life”) who survived by hiding in a specific woods, which somehow floated on top of the ocean...? Anyway these two incredibly apparently very selfish people who didn’t tell anyone else about their hiding place will venture out into the freezing cold world and repopulate the void...it doesn’t have to make sense. Anyway, they will breed and there will be rampant incest, brothers and sisters and lots of cousin- fucking, and the world will be populated by inbred idiots. Maybe this DID happen.

The Mayans

The Mayans used what is called a long-count calendar, which counts each day dating back to the supposed creation of the world. Similar to how Christians used the life of Jesus as a marker for BC and AD. Except the Mayans couldn’t have a BC because there was nothing before the creation of the world. It would be like if we counted dates starting with the creation of the earth in genesis, and we’d all be living circa the year 6000. Btw the Mayan creation date measured by our calendar would have been august 11, 3114 BC. Which is very specific. The Bible doesn’t get into details. I wish it would. It would be so cool if genesis was like, in the beginning god created the heaven and the earth. And lo, it was April 4th, at 3:17pm. It was a nice day in the void. The Mayans utilized the concept of cycles, one type of which is referred to by scholars as a b’ak’tun. A tun was about a year (360 days); 394 years made a b’ak’tun. According to Mayan legend, the gods actually created three failed worlds before the current one. Nobody’s perfect. Third time is the charm. Sometimes you make a crappy world and you have to wipe it clean and start from scratch. That’s what floods are for, right? So the previous world, the one before ours, lasted 13 b’ak’tuns which equates to 5,225 years. If you do the math starting with the very specific creation date of august 11, 3114 bc, that means the fourth world would potentially end on December 21, 2012. Or so I’m told. I didn’t do the math. I’m not that bored. I have stuff to do. So if you believed that the world was going to end in December 21, 2922, you had to first believe in the Mayan gods. Are there a lot of new age doomsday weirdos who actually worshipped Yaluk and Maximon? Because this is the prerequisite. And you had to be a pessimist, because you’re assuming that we are another failed world. presumably the Mayan gods would look at us and be like, oh crap, back to the drawing board. Many doomsday believers were convinced that the Maya were referring to a cataclysmic natural event, like a black hole at the center of our galaxy would swallow us on December 21st. Just in a single day. One of those sneaky black hole attacks that we see so often in the heavens. And if you believe THIS version then you have to believe that Mayan shamans of around the year 250 were more sophisticated than the scientists of today, Or at least the scientists of 2011. so People looking at the sky with their eyeballs were making better predictions than modern scientists with telescopes and satellites who have sent humans to the moon. I mean look, the Mayans were very advanced for the dark ages and all, but they were also regularly murdering people to appease the sky gods and playing ball games with the body parts so let’s not get too carried away. I’m not insulting the Mayans, Europe was a freaking disaster in the 200s, it’s just that no one is claiming that Roman gladiators know more than NASA. Most of us are at least somewhat familiar with the Christian concept of Armageddon or the end times, the final battle between good and evil, satan and God, dark and light, the autobots and decepticons. Let’s go back to where it all starts, which is with the Jews, pre- Christianity. Then we’ll end with the Christian version.

In Judaism:

Let’s talk about how these legends are born, the psychology of the end times, and one of the best ways to do this is to trace end-of- days beliefs in modern Christianity from their roots back in Judaism. Because for anyone who doesn’t know, the old testament is the foundational book for both Jews and Christians, and Judaism predates Christianity. So Christianity is actually a sect of Judaism.

At this point the Jews are living in the vicinity of modern Israel, and It all starts with king nebuchadnezzar of the Babylonians. In our secret societies episode We talked about Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem, the original home base of the knights Templar, but that was actually Solomon’s temple mark two, because the original was destroyed by nebuchadnezzar around 600 bc when he crushed the entire city of Jerusalem and enslaved or murdered the Jewish inhabitants.

Many Jews were dragged back to Babylon, and from their perspective, the world had ended. It was the end of the world as they knew it. Babylon was a massive, intimidating city for the time, with giant statues of dragons and demons and winged beasts, and this type of monstrous imagery always features in apocalyptic literature.

The experience of being conquered and subjugated, and watching their homes and temples burned to the ground obviously had a profound effect on Jews of the time. God had promised that the throne of David would last forever, but it turns out the eternal throne was not fireproof, and “forever” is apparently a subjective term. Obviously this incident introduces the idea of cataclysm, the total destruction of a civilization that had seemed eternal. Everything has an end. and at this point the Jews realize their religious texts need some revising. Maybe what God actually meant to say was that the throne of David is eternal unless you take it for granted and don’t act right. God reserves the right to wipe out anything he created if he doesn’t like how it’s shaping up. it’s like how McDonald’s reserves the right to refuse service… God reserves the right to wipe out an entire civilization . No shirt, no shoes, genocide.

So now many of the Jews are enslaved in Babylon, busily revising history, or at least scripture—so revising the future, I guess—but their fortunes change only fifty years later when the Persians go full nebuchadnezzar on Babylon, and give the Babylonians a taste of their own medicine. They wreck the city. Jews now have a glimmer of hope and feel vindicated: God has punished the evil doers and yet again brought destruction, but this time righteously. Destruction: not cool when it happens to you, very cool when it happens to your enemies. so at this point Jews probably incorporate the idea of destruction as a sanitizing force, a purging, a new beginning. The next major conqueror to sweep through the area is Alexander the great, and Jewish texts of this time begin incorporating Hellenistic a.k.a. Greek concepts. This is when we get the book of Enoch, which is really the foundation of apocalyptic literature when it comes to the big three: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. this is a remarkable text. Supposedly told from the perspective of Enoch as he visits heaven and witnesses a rebellion of the angels under the leadership of Azazel, The fallen angel who will eventually become known as Satan. so now we have the opposing forces of good and evil, God and Satan, demons and angels, all of the ingredients for a good apocalypse. Sprinkle in some fire and brimstone, rending of flesh...mmwwwa. Tasty apocalypse. Text from the book of Enoch will later be included among the dead sea scrolls, which on most cases are the oldest known copies of biblical literature. So the concept of the world rending battle of good and evil has been around for a long time, and was reasonably mainstream among Jews of the era.

Christian End Times

Most of the end times speculation in the Bible comes from the final chapter of the New Testament, revelations. Are you familiar with revelations? It’s intense. and most of us are familiar with the imagery even if we don’t know where it comes from, because it’s so baked into the culture. the horsemen of the apocalypse, death riding on a pale horse, fire and brimstone and earthquakes, “the sun becomes black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon like blood", the stars fall and the sky is rolled up like a scroll, angels sound the trumpets that signal the apocalypse, hail and fire a rain of blood, pits open in the land, locusts with human faces and lions teeth, there’s lots of numerology with an emphasis of sevens: a seven-headed beast, a seven/headed dragon, seven trumpets, a scroll with seven seals, seven bowls full of various plagues that are poured on the earth turning water to blood and inflicting painful sores in the sinners, and then of course 666 the concept of the antichrist and the mark of the beast. The book of revelations reads like a slayer song. This is Christianity by way of blumhouse. It’s undeniably violent and disturbing, but also disputed and open to interpretation. There are diverse sects of Christianity that have interpreted revelations differently when it comes to end times. For instance many Catholics and evangelicals believe in first judgment and final judgment. there is the first judgment, which is when you die and you are accepted into heaven or sent to limbo or hell. Limbo is heaven’s waiting room. You have to chill there until final judgment, which is when Jesus returns during the second coming, resurrects the dead, and passes final judgment. This is all very inefficient, and kind of mean. “I’m going to bring you back to life just to tell you you’re awful. Arise! You suck. That is my final judgment. Consider yourself judged.” The rapture is most closely associated with evangelicals, and there are different versions based on when the “tribulations” occur. . The tribulation is a really rough period of upheaval on earth, with the aforementioned plagues and riots and destruction of property. posttribulationists believe that the tribulation comes before the second coming. That’s a lot of coming. So first the tribulation occurs, and it lasts something like seven years. then the rapture, when the righteous are physically sucked up to heaven. Not their souls; their actual bodies. Then the second coming during which the remaining on earth are judged. Pretribulationalists on the other hand believe that the rapture happens before the tribulation. You know how on cooking competition shows the judges will always be like, ok, Jim and sue, your peach cobbler was amazing, you’re safe. Go up to heaven. Bill and sally, you have to wait until the commercial is over while we decide your fate. It’s exactly like that.

These literal translations of end times aren’t as rare as we often believe they are.

It’s funny to me, because you hear a lot about “doomsday cult,“ without realizing that many of the Christian sects that we encounter on a daily basis could qualify. obviously evangelicals and the rapture, that’s huge for them, the idea of end times and the apocalypse. One of the defining beliefs of the Jehova’s witnesses is Armageddon. Which is actually a battle prophesied to take place in Israel, at the hill of Meggido, the site where The armies of heaven will wipe the sinful off the planet. Did you know that the angels are also soldiers in an army? The heavenly host is the army of god. Did not know this. Jehovahs witnesses don’t celebrate holidays or birthdays, they believe secular society is evil, they shun anyone who leaves the church, they won’t salute flags or recite national anthems because they refuse to worship a nation over god. They’re a cult, a doomsday cult. In my experience, the more a sect focuses on apocalypse and end times, the more cultish it is. They’re also notorious for quietly revising their literature to account for apocalyptic predictions that don’t come true. here’s a very short, non- comprehensive list of years in which their processes predictions didn’t happen: 1877, 1891, 1904, 1916, 1917, 1920, 1922, 1935, 1938, 1941, 1942, 1961, 1966 1967, 1968, 1969, 1971, 1974, 1984, 1989. In particular the years 1914 and 1925 were asserted to be solid dates for the second coming. oops.

If it seems like I’m picking on the Jehovah’s witnesses, I am, but I want to be clear: apocalyptic thinking is not limited to cults, and it’s dangerous for a variety of reasons beyond the obvious. if you believe you’re going to be raptured, and the wicked will be punished, you WANT the end times to come. And by the way, this is a real problem with non-religious people too, preppers are literally spending all of their savings on rations and bunkers and bug out locations and elaborate defensive scenarios. If you’ve spent your life savings on something, you want to use that thing. You want it to be justified. There’s also a phenomenon referred to as apocalyptic scapegoating, which results from the anger and frustration experienced by adherents of these extreme beliefs when the prophecies don’t come to pass. And I’m not saying all Christians are crazy, or that all Christians believe this stuff, or that even the Christians who do believe this stuff are terrible people, but I do find it alarming.